Women and the Law in Early 19th Century

Click here: => dizahicchea.fastdownloadcloud.ru/dt?s=YToyOntzOjc6InJlZmVyZXIiO3M6MzA6Imh0dHA6Ly9iYW5kY2FtcC5jb21fZHRfcG9zdGVyLyI7czozOiJrZXkiO3M6NTI6IlRoZSByaWdodHMgb2Ygc2luZ2xlIHdvbWVuIGluIHRoZSBlYXJseSAxOXRoIGNlbnR1cnkiO30=


Maria Montessori was an Italian doctor in the 19th and 20th centuries. In it he argued for legal equality for women. In 1872 the Prohibition party became the first national political party to recognize the right of suffrage for women in its platform.

Professional women did not get the important assignments and promotions given to their male colleagues. They were the first American women to gain bachelor degrees. The situation in New England and the Chesapeake was far different. Studies in Family Planning.

Women and the Law in Early 19th Century

Seven out of ten people in the United States lived in small towns with populations under 2500 or on farms in 1870. In Indiana, the 1880 census reported a population of almost 2 million residents, about 55 per square mile, 1,010,000 men and 968,000 women. About three out of four people lived in rural areas. The Victorian home was to be a haven of comfort and quiet, sheltered from the harsh realities of the working world. Housework took on a scientific quality, efficiency being the watchword. Children were to be cherished and nurtured. Morality was protected through the promulgation of Protestant beliefs and social protest against alcohol, poverty and the decay of urban living. Pulling against these traditions was the sense of urgency, movement and progress so evident in the geographical, industrial, technological and political changes affecting the country. Jobs opened up in factories, retail establishments and offices, giving single women new options. Education became mandatory for both genders in many states. Women sought higher education, too, first in all female institutions and then in co-ed environments. Their lives, however, were tied to house and children, endlessly unacknowledged work, little opportunity for outside contact or variety of experience, and little relief from everyday triviality. The extent to which farm women felt any fulfillment or larger meaning may indeed have been tied to how well they could balance the tensions between the expectations of the culture and the day-to-day, unrelenting tasks of housekeeping, child rearing and farm life. While she does so much for the comfort of others, she nearly ruins her own health and life. It is because she cannot be easy and comfortable when there is the least disorder or dirt to be seen. Implicit in this advice is the notion that by keeping a clean, neat, pious home and filling it with warmth and inviting smells, women are achieving their highest calling. The movement to elevate the status of housework found an early voice in the writings of Catherine Beecher. Beecher devoted much effort to glorifying housekeeping and attempting to convince her readers that their daily duties, however tedious or distressing, constituted important works assigned to them by Nature and God. She went so far as to suggest a explicit weekly schedules and rational designs for the kitchen and cooking areas. Her many manuals and cookbooks offered not only a philosophy for housekeeping, but practical methods for accomplishing those philosophical ends. In his book, So Sweet to Labor, author Norton Juster looked at the advice given and the responses received in a few publications of the time. Women wrote letters that described the endless, repetitive work undertaken week by week. Not that it was all woe — many reported about the joys of fulfilling their womanly role as keeper of the house, or wrote to chastise their complaining sisters. This was in addition to childcare, three meals a day, hauling water and keeping the fire burning in the stove, a chore that in itself took at least one hour each day. Then there was making the family garments and seasonal preserving of fruits, vegetables and meat. Often, too, the scope of work extended to the farm itself. During planting and harvest, if she did not work in the fields herself, she provided room and board for the extra help that did. How-to manuals, magazine and newspaper articles set high, if not impossible, standards for moral rectitude, cleanliness and cheerfulness. The realities posed by the sheer number of tasks to be completed daily, monthly and yearly stressed even the hardiest of women. Even so, many women responded to the challenges place before them with humor and pride. All my life I have been engaged in the study of their special ailments, and no conclusion is more firmly rooted in my mind than a devout thankfulness that I belong to the other sex. This is not to say that the illness which did afflict women were inconsequential. For example, for every 100 women who were twenty in 1865, more than 5 would die of tuberculosis by age 30, more than 8 by age 50. Disease was real, and devastating. Rural women were required, by the nature of their work, to be healthy and strong. But that was often not the case. Beset by long days of labor, they were often exhausted, mentally and physically. Working class women sought help in patent medicines and an increasing number of self-help books and magazines. Cures calling for eggs, tar, soot, herbal extracts and other household ingredients illuminated the pages of popular magazines. Dose, a spoon full three times a day, and increase by degrees to three tablespoons full a day. Or, apply a poultice of hot potatoes; renew as often as it becomes hard or cool. It is said to be a very excellent remedy. These home remedies were often supplemented with a myriad patent medicines, many with high percentages of alcohol, and the liberal use of laudanum. Childbearing and child mortality remained two of the most serious health issues for women and their families. There is evidence that white women in the later part of the century were controlling their fertility. Between 1800 and 1900, their birthrates dropped by half, while those of blacks and European immigrants grew, even though their childhood death rates were higher. On average, women earlier in the century gave birth to seven live babies in her lifetime. One-third to one-half would not survive to age 5. By 1900, the birthrate had dropped to an average of 3. Even with this reduction in birthrate, many families lost children early, before they reached adulthood. Elaborate dresses, with bustles, and nipped waists and yards of heavy fabric and lace, illustrated the pages of these magazines. Probably the most disputed piece of clothing during this period was the corset. Both physicians and early feminists decried their use. Long term results of wearing the undergarment included fractured ribs, collapsed lungs, displacement of the liver and uterine prolapses. Feminists attacked corseting because of its potential harm to internal organs and its restriction of movement. They advised physicians to counsel their female patients on the dangers of corseting. Even popular literature, where illustrations of the latest fashions prevailed, commented on corseting. They have been banished from my wardrobe so long I had almost forgotten there was such an article... One feels so perfectly free and easy. Few objections were raised to the idea that girls should be educated on par with boys. Instead the need for such education was tied to the needs of the new republic; women would make sure that patriot sons were reared properly. As publicly supported education expanded in the early decades of the 19th century, girls were included along with boys. By 1860, it was almost as likely for a white girl as a white boy to attend school, even in farming regions of the country. The success of these early ventures assured that when secondary education expanded after the Civil War, it would be overwhelmingly co-educational. In 1870, there were only 160 high schools in the country. By 1880, the figure was almost 800 and by the end of the century, the number had grown to 6000. From 1870 until the middle of the twentieth century, female high school graduates outnumbered male graduates. And, the Census of 1880 found that the proportion of literacy for young women was actually higher than of young men. The movement for equal education for girls and boys moved forward almost without opposition. The idea fitted nicely into the social ideology that women were the rearers of children and the moral companions of men within the family, so some education seemed appropriate. Early in the century, though, this acceptance stopped short of college. Oberlin College in Ohio was the first to admit women in 1837. And when the Michigan legislature founded a state university that same year, it provided places for women, although women were not actually allowed to attend until 1870. Even when women were admitted to some private and public colleges, they were not treated as equals. Even so, a college educated woman was seen as benefit to herself, her husband and her family. Until, of course, the results of a college education on women became known. By the end of the 19th century, it became evident that college-educated women did not marry as often as other women. Regardless of who did the counting, the figures always showed that at least a fourth of women who graduated from college never married, more that double the proportion of non-college women. And, if they married at all, they did so later in life, and consequently had fewer children. The intent of educating women — making them better wives and mothers — showed every indication of doing just the opposite. Once doors had been opened, expectations raised and new skills learned, how women used their education or what conclusions they drew from it were not always what their teachers — or society — intended. As the land grant colleges began to sprout in western and northern regions, rural women found opportunities open to them that were more technical than intellectual. First promoted by Catherine Beecher and her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe in the 1830s and 1840s, this notion was carried through in the Western and Midwestern land grant colleges founded after the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. By 1875, the national Grange membership had passed 850,000. Indiana ranked second behind Missouri in Grange membership in Mid-Central region of the US that year, with 60,298 members and 1,485 Granges, 498 for every 100,000 in agricultural population. Early in the movement, Grangers welcomed women into their ranks with equal voice and voting rights, recognizing their importance to rural family economies and communities. Women took the opportunity and participated fully. They wrote for the Grange Visitor and other rural papers, lobbied in state and local forums for fair treatment of small farmers and gave speeches at Grange sponsored speaking tours. The extension of equal voting rights in this organization led Grange women to support both woman suffrage and temperance. The Grange also provided a very important social outlet for farm women, one that allowed them to participate as equals in an organization that attempted to directly improve their lives and the lives of their families. The Grange formed cooperatives and farmer-owned businesses in addition to political activism. Most of the business ventures failed and, as agricultural conditions improved in the 1880s, the Grange movement slowly lost members. In later years, the Grange became, for the most part, a social organization, fostering cooperation among farm families. It had roots among women in the country and the city, and was very strong in the Midwest. These visits continued for many weeks. Similar vigils spontaneously erupted in another Ohio town and one in New York. Over the next six months, until the actions died away, about 3000 saloons were closed. Temperance legislation finally received consideration in Congress, but the most lasting consequence of the actions was the formation of the WCTU. Not only was the saloon the place in which husbands spent their wages on liquor, but it was also the recognized site of gambling and prostitution. Even those women whose husbands were temperate or abstainers supported the movement as a way to spread the proper ideas about family life and responsibility. And, although the movement was primarily middle-class, a study in 1885 revealed that almost 30 percent of the members were wives of skilled and unskilled workers, attesting to the popularity of the cause among women of all classes. The substantial and rapid growth of the WCTU after 1874 far outpaced any organization working on behalf of woman suffrage. Frances Willard, first elected to the presidency of the organization in 1879 an office she held for eighteen years , consistently pointed out that if women were to be effective in the cause of temperance, they would need the power of the ballot box. Willard envisioned an organization with a broader mission, although temperance remained its main cause. By 1889, she had instituted 39 departments organized under headings like labor, health, social purity, peace and arbitration. She envisioned an organization for all women. Women who became involved in it saw and learned things that moved them in new and often quite unexpected, unsettling directions. Indeed, many woman activists for suffrage and other social causes began their public work in temperance organizations. The nineteenth-century quest for woman suffrage never had the widespread support that temperance did. The idea for equal suffrage and expanded rights for women arose from the abolition movement before the Civil War. Even so, feminist leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Women remained very active in the anti-slavery movement in the North and following the war, in the organizations that pushed for equal rights for blacks. For these activists, the logical expansion of rights for newly-freed blacks extended to women as well. Women activists moved from pious and moral opposition against slavery to political action on their own behalf. They lost this battle, but continued to call for woman suffrage. For many women, support of their right to vote came through activism in other causes. With the expansion of education, participation in the workforce and social protest movement like temperance, women began to question their proscribed role as quiet supporters of family morality and began to demand direct political participation. Macy advertisement, 1887 The nineteenth century was marked by a move from a society of producers to a society of consumers. The expansion of communications, transportation and mass production became an equalizing force between rural and urban living as an expansive number of consumer goods became available by mail order and in large department stores. The latest in styles and conveniences — at least as defined by mass culture — were as equally available to folks in Chicago as they were to those living at the far reaches of western settlement. Rural families relied on the Montgomery Ward founded in 1872 and Sears 1893 catalogs to keep them abreast on the latest conveniences, machinery, and fashion styles. The sewing machine is one example. First patented in the 1850s, the sewing machine was initially so expensive that they were only purchased by factories which mass produced clothing. Manufactured clothing became widely available as a result of the Civil War because of the need to produce uniforms for the army. As a result, manufacturers of sewing machines realized the potential of the home customer and devised time payment plans and trade-in allowances to finance purchases. Larger and more efficient that their counterparts before the Civil War, these large cast iron stoves had reservoirs to heat water along with ovens and cooktops. They produced the heat for the kitchen as well. Still, it was hard, hot, heavy work. In six days, an up-to-date coal stove consumed 292 pounds of new coal, 14 pounds of kindling and produced 27 pounds of ash to be sifted out. Pages and pages of mail order catalogs were dedicated to tools like cherry pitters and apple peelers, enameled steel pots and kettles, meat choppers and butter churns. Add to that household linens, clothing, shoes and hats, sewing notions, furniture, and toys , and the farm family had the convenience of the department store at their fingertips. Unlike trading with the local storekeeper, mail order transactions were impersonal and led to a new phenomenon -national advertising. Early on, advertisers identified women as their audience and quickly learned that they had to create a demand for many new items. This they did with aplomb. Aaron Montgomery Ward, the first national mail order entrepreneur, used yet another kind of selling device. He aligned himself with the Grange, which in the 1870s represented thousands of potential customers. Household advice manuals and formal instruction soon addressed the skills necessary to be a successful consumer. For the first time, manuals in the 1870s included chapters on how to identify quality foods when shopping in a market. Home economist began teaching women how to shop and plan for shopping. Instruction even went so far as to include how to prepare and keeping to a household budget, once believed to be the purview of the husband. As much as this new consumer culture changed the buying patterns of urban residents, it had an even greater impact on rural dwellers. Although barter was still a medium of exchange at the local general store, purchases from mail order catalogs required the exchange of cash for goods. More important than that, perhaps, was the leveling factor it produced between rural and urban dwellers and between the northeastern, midwestern, southern and newly opened western areas of the country. The consumer culture of the late nineteenth century was one important part of an emerging mass culture in which women were major players. Attaining the proscribed female role of wife, mother and moral safeguard of home and family was more than many women could bear, and their physical and mental health suffered. New opportunities in education, employment and social protest caused many women to question the role society cast for them. Involvement in any of these activities often led to unanticipated results and actions that defined new roles for women in the decades that followed. Additional Readings: Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York:Random House, 1973. The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1984. A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of Women. History of Women in the United States, Part 6, Working the Land. At Odds: Women and the Family from Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. So Sweet to Labor: Rural Women in America 1865-1895. New York: The Viking Press, 1979. Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982 Mintz, Stephen and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1988. Womanhood in America front he Colonial Times to the Present. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York Pantheon Books, 1982. Dimity Convictions : the American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens : Ohio University Press, 1976.

When the zip Department of Education was created, Carter named Shirley Mount Hufstedler to head it. Under the common law doctrine of husbands gained control of their wives' real estate and wages. They were ready to become independent and break out of the social norms. Despite all this, the Servile still emphasized on the importance of love and mutual counselling within a marriage and prohibited any form of divorce so the wife would have someone to look after her. Custom, statue and practice not only reduced women's rights and freedoms but prevented single or widowed women from holding for office on the justification that they might one day marry. Child marriage endangers the of young girls, leading to an increased risk of complications in pregnancy or childbirth. Free black men in late colonial and revolutionary New England, for example, sought to exploit these competing tensions to their advantage. But it was quickly obvious that the commission was not very interested in pursuing these complaints. The idea fitted nicely into the social ideology that women were the rearers of children and the moral companions of men within the family, so some education seemed appropriate.