Comments on: Getting better all the time?

By: Hillary Hardy

Hillary Hardy — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 04:41:20 +0000

During the Republican Motherhood, women were finally recognized for their use in raising their young, the future citizens, to be enlightened and moral people who would vote for the right things. . But by the 1850s the cult of domesticity did not recognize women’s sole role of raising future voters. Middle class women’s only place was in the home as work moved from the family style farming to man dominated capitalism. Women stopped sharing in the family income, to using the husband’s income as a consumer. Middle class women left the work to the men, smacking their status in the faces of working women who would have delighted in relaxing at home with the family but were forced to support the family. These pre-soccer moms were eat up with the home and it’s chores, decorating and maintaining it, as well as raising its inhabitants, and forming a social network with other women. They formed clubs and read women’s literature, kept up with fashions, shopped, and enjoyed the new forms of entertainment the 19th century had to offer, but never involved themselves in politics or. These women lost their roles as moral agents AND working women who took part in the economy that the Republican women are known for and became ladies in a separate sphere with a separate culture.

By: Julia Toms

Julia Toms — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 03:55:15 +0000

The Revolutionary War had a significant effect on American women. With many of their husbands leaving for war, women had to step up and find their own place in society. Many cities and towns developed significant populations of impoverished women, but many strong women also emerged during this time. Some women engaged themselves in combat, others in fighting for education. Still, few argued that their place remained in the family. This strengthened the patriarchal structure of American society, instead of challenging it. The Revolution provoked people of both genders in America to reconsider the contribution of women to the family and to society. In the mid- nineteenth century, women’s rights and power had somewhat grown and gotten better. Women were encouraged to attend elementary school, but were strongly discouraged to get any further education. Women’s roles in the household and family were still extremely important, however they took a leap forward in the mid- nineteenth century. Women served as the guardians of the “domestic virtues”, which dictated their place within their family and their family’s place in society. Women began to occupy what is known as their “separate sphere”, which left them confined to their households and interactions with other women. Women’s rights grew from the end of the American Revolution and the mid- nineteenth century because they began to emerge into society and gain a higher level of respect, but their place in society was still confined to the household.

By: Anne Garland

Anne Garland — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 03:44:59 +0000

Between the time of the American Revolution and the 1850’s, women had gradually acquired more rights and power but for the most part their status stayed relatively the same. Women were still discouraged from formal education and seen as inferior to men, but in 1837 the first college in allowed the enrollment of women. They also had no political or social rights. Family life remained very much the same in which the male figure would be the sole income producer and the wife was responsible for primarily domestic roles. Women were seen as the “guardians of the domestic virtues” such as benevolence and morality. This “cult of domesticity” gave middle-class women benefits and costs which allowed them to have more material lives than in the past. Women thus began to form their own form of culture, including literary magazines and clubs. Although women’s rights were “getting better all the time” and were still treated with great inferiority compared to men.

By: Elizabeth Buoyer

Elizabeth Buoyer — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 03:17:22 +0000

The lyrics to the Beatles’ song “Getting Better” is hardly accurate in summarizing the progress that womens’ rights made between the post-Revolutionary era and 1850. The phrase “getting better all the time” is not applicable to womens’ rights right after the Revolution, during the drafting of the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” an idea that was carried over into the working of the Constitution. Nowadays that phrase applies to man as a species, but this quotation is really only referring to males. Neither document gives any leeway for women to obtain rights.
The idea of women as maternal figures was established during this post-Revolutionary era. Women had played major roles during the Revolution: they took care of the farms and shops while their husbands were away, and some even followed their husbands to war camps. After the war, everything went back to normal except for the fact that women came to be valued in the home to educate their children and to instill in them moral values in order to bring good citizens into the world. Women held this same position until the 1850s. However, this allowed them to grow continually more isolated. Women lived in their separate “domestic sphere.” Even though women appeared to be progressing within their own sphere, the isolation limited them from progressing within the world of men. Womens’ literature became popular, but only within their own world. Women had no political rights and could rarely obtain higher educations, even though some womens’ universities were being established. Clearly, the separation of women was an oppressive isolation that was not allowing things to get better for them until much later in the century.

By: Ellen Short

Ellen Short — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 02:00:39 +0000

I think that women in the 1850s were actually taking a step backward from when they were “Republican mothers” in the eighteenth century. Previously mothers had raised their children by means of training the next generation of knowledgeable Americans. People thought that mothers should be educated in order to be able to teach their children the ideals of American society. Yes, the schooling was just to make them better wives and mothers, but in the South especially during the 1850s women had hardly any rights. Their main goals were to be a nurturing mother, not necessarily an educator. White women were subordinate to their husbands in the North and South. The Beetles quote connects because the lyrics “I used to be cruel to my woman I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved Man I was mean but I’m changing my scene And I’m doing the best that I can” this is similar to the husbands in the 1850s, but they did not care much to change their ways.

By: Caroline Hughes

Caroline Hughes — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:56:57 +0000

During the period marked by the end of the revolution leading up to about 1850 women hardly acquired any rights or power. Instead women gained a more fragile and inferior view of their gender. Female education during this time period still remained very limited, there were a few Universities that accepted women, one of them being Oberlin in Ohio which permitted four female students to enroll in 1837. A few universities followed Oberlin’s example but a woman’s right to education was still usually denied. The roles of women during this time period centered around domestic work, and raising children. Even more importance was placed on the domestic role of women than in earlier time periods, however this new domestic role of women only isolated them from the rest of the world limiting their roles in politics and business, proving to further hinder the development of women’s rights.

By: Laura Wright

Laura Wright — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:14:02 +0000

In the period between the end of the American Revolution and 1850, as distinctions began to emerge between the workplace and home life, women were getting pushed out of the public and political eye and into a “separate sphere”. They had much less access to education than men and they began to no longer be needed for their family’s income. They transferred from the producers to the consumers, learning how to keep a clean and comfortable house for their families. Women also began to form their own social clubs and networks. Books and magazines dedicated solely to the topics of their “separate sphere” started to appear. Politics and religion were not topics important to the women, whereas fashion, shopping, and homemaking were. This so called “cult of domesticity” placed great value on the female and domestic roles as wife and mother but more and more detached women from the outside world. A connection between the Beatles “Getting Better” and women in the American Revolution is in the lyrics “I used to be cruel to my woman
I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved
Man I was mean but I’m changing my scene
And I’m doing the best that I can”
Lennon admitted in an interview this was about beating his wife (and at this time after the Revolution in many states wife beating was not illegal and husbands had absolute authority over their wives). Also at this time, like Lennon kept his woman apart from the things she loved, men of this time kept women away from many important things of society. It could have appeared that things were “getting better” for women when really things were getting worse by their seclusion.

By: Chandler Watlington

Chandler Watlington — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:15:59 +0000

During the time period after the Revolutionary War all the way through 1850 thier was very little change in women’s place in society. It was believed that a woman’s duty was to raise her children and run her home to satisfy her husband. They had significantly less opportunities for education than men, which is a discrimination that lasted into the mid-nineteenth century. Even lower class women, who were forced to become laborers in the industrial revolution were ostracized from many jobs. Thier sole occupation was working in mills because they were banned from jobs that entailed manual labor such as construction or sailing. They were also excluded from nearly all early craft unions, which meant women had virtually no control over thier working conditions. Buisness and politics were also considered innapropriate for women to take part in because none of these matters impacted their domestic lives. Ultimately, the progress for women’s rights remained moslty stagnant throughout the post Revolutionary War period. It was not until the feminist movement really took hold during the second half of the nineteenth century that women began to demand equal rights with men.

By: Eliza McGehee

Eliza McGehee — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:44:40 +0000

In the years after the American Revolution, I believe that not only did women’s rights not improve, they were even more isolated and cut down than before. During Jefferson’s presidency, the “Republican Mother” still stayed at home, but they were updated and connected to the politics and other issues going on around them. This is very different to the true isolation of women in the mid 1800s. This “Cult of Domesticity” completely pushed women aside, gave them no legal or political rights, and no opportunities for education. This was clearly seen in the middle class. Women left the factory and stayed at home, becoming the nurturer for the family. This lead to the rise of a distinctive female culture and society. These women formed social groups, and they focused on materialistic things. These women had no idea what was going on in politics and in the country. Women were isolated and had no say in the government. As a result, I believe that they lost many of their rights to be intellectual and involved in the mid-nineteenth century

By: Paula Yust

Paula Yust — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:14:40 +0000

I think that the role of women between 1800 to 1850 improved in some areas and were decreased in some ways. Women still only received an elementary education, but they played an important role in child-rearing and were valued for their role in the family to an extent. Women were oppressed by their husbands and had few rights. Women were not allowed to work outside the home and the “cult of domesticity” in middle class America kept them from stepping outside the boundaries men set for them. Women were allowed to have “their whole sphere”, magazines, novels and societies they were all controlled and censored by men to force women into submission. On the surface, women seemed to be valued more and more independent, but underneath women were subject to more oppression then ever.