1、A Brief History of Women in AmericaDeborah HoeflingerProperty-owning New Jersey women could vote from 1776 to 1807. During the time of the Revolutionary War “It was almost universally believed that a womans brain was smaller in capacity and therefore inferior in quality to that of a man.”Early Advoc
2、ates for Women Abigail Adams “ Remember the ladies!” Anne Hutchinson challenged the authority of male religious leaders in Puritan Massachusetts.Republican Motherhood The concept related to womens roles as mothers in the emerging United States before and after the American Revolution (c. 1760 to 180
3、0). It centered around the belief that children should be raised to uphold the ideals of republicanism, making them the perfect citizens of the new nation.Early 19th century Women1. Unable to vote.2. Legal status of a minor.3. Single could own her ownproperty.4. Married no control over herproperty o
4、r her children.5. Could not initiate divorce.6. Couldnt make wills, sign a contract, or bring suit in court without her husbands permission.“Separate Spheres” Concept“The Cult of Domesticity”eA womans “sphere” was in the home (it was arefuge from the cruel world outside).eHer role was to “civilize”
5、& educate her husband andfamily.e An 1830s MA minister:The power of woman is her dependence. A woman who gives up that dependence on man to become a reformer yields the power God has given her for her protection, and her character becomes unnatural!Cult of Domesticity = SlaveryThe 2nd Great Awakenin
6、g inspired women to improve society.Angelina Grimk Sarah Grimke Southern AbolitionistsLucy StoneeAmerican WomensSuffrage Assoc.eedited Womans JournalCult of Domesticity Between 1820 and the Civil War, the growth of new industries, businesses, and professions helped to create in America a new middle
7、class. (The Middle class consisted of families whose husbands worked as lawyers, office workers, factory managers, merchants, teachers, physicians and others.) Cult of Domesticity Although the new middle-class family had its roots in preindustrial society, it differed from the preindustrial family i
8、n three major ways: I) A nineteenth-century middle-class family did not have to make what it needed in order to survive. Men could work in jobs that produced goods or services while their wives and children stayed at home. 2) When husbands went off to work, they helped create the view that men alone
9、 should support the family. This belief held that the world of work, the public sphere, was a rough world, where a man did what he had to in order to succeed, that it was full of temptations, violence, and trouble. A woman who ventured out into such a world could easily fall prey to it, for women we
10、re weak and delicate creatures. A womans place was therefore in the private sphere, in the home, where she took charge of all that went on. 3) The middle-class family came to look at itself, and at the nuclear family in general, as the backbone of society. Kin and community remained important, but not nearly so much as they had once been.
