Ceili Shaughnessy
May 1, 2003
History 4070
Gagnon 8:00
Spring 2003
"Confusion has seized us, and all things go wrong,
the women have leaped from 'their spheres,'
And instead of fixed starts, shoots as comets along,
and are settling the world by the ears!"
-Maria Weston Chapman The Times That Try Men’s Souls
Women: Beyond Domesticity
Women’s emergence in politics and the public realm began long before the Suffrage Movement of the twentieth century. Before they were able to express opinions through the power of a vote, women organized, petitioned, and advocated important issues of the time. Women’s domestic duties were their primary obligations, but their moral authority in the household gave way to their role as activist within the community. As women bound together in their own sphere of sewing circles and religious organizations, they formed their own beliefs on the moral, social, and political nature of America. By broadening their domestic duties to include public affairs, women were able to emerge as a political voice. As advocates of education, religious issues, and abolition, many women were able to find their political roots in the home, only to tiptoe into the world dominated by men. Though they were not directly involved in politics, their influence on political issues was crucial, and they became a voice that the world could not ignore. In the nineteenth century, their support was thrown mainly behind social and moral issues like temperance and keeping the Sabbath, economic statements by financially supporting higher education for girls, and racial concerns of abolition.1
Though the right to vote took women almost 150 years to achieve, American women enjoyed considerable liberties as individuals. In order to understand how women influenced politics in the nineteenth century, and primarily the 1830’s, one must be aware of how they interacted with the rest of America in the eighteenth century. Women generally labored at home, but because of the American class structure, some women were able to engage in work outside of the home. Since only wealthy people could afford to hire or buy help to alleviate the domestic work, women, especially widows and the poor, were accepted as a minor faction of the work force. Women were also entitled to a share of dower rights, which supported the idea that women should be informed before a property sale that would affect the supplies of their dower. With the exception of Connecticut and Massachusetts, married women in the colonies had the opportunity to own land separate from their husbands. Many colonies had feme sole trading laws, which allowed women to sue and be sued if they were maintaining a business of an absent husband. This ability was pertinent to the survival of several groups of women. In Pennsylvania, which was a colony full of mariners, men would leave their wives frequently to travel, and such laws gave women the means to maintain their livelihood. Though women received basic rights, reforms brought by the American Revolution, industrialization, and religious fervor caused women to look to the public world for change. Women were not political strengths in the eighteenth century, but they recognized their inferior educations and their seemingly eternal ties to domesticity. As a result, they formed a response, which was revealed through their religion, demand for learning, and family and friends.2
Before moving on to the issues that shaped women’s movements, a person must recognize the limitations that were placed on women simply because of the way society perceived them. Through the images of women, there appears to be a sharp contrast between their weakness and inferiority and their strength and moral superiority. By forming two opposing representations of women, men were able to limit women in the male public and formal sphere while promoting freedom in the female domestic and informal realm. While Barbara Welter indicated “four cardinal virtues” of piety, submissiveness, domesticity, and purity, Frances Cogan listed her virtues of nineteenth century women through the notion of Real Womanhood, revealing a woman who was healthy, balanced, positive, and educated. While the generous woman formed opposition to her self-absorbed male complement, she was seen in light of her dependence on man, extravagance, and zeal, which excluded her from the political realm. Their greatest accomplishment came in their role as republican mothers, to raise sons who promoted the democratic ideals of the American nation. With this role, men gave women a false sense of power, because it chained women even further to their domestic world. While a contrast may have been formed between the woman on the pedestal and the real woman at home, men promoted any female attribute which established limitations; not to say that many women did not embrace these characteristics, but those who did not jumped off the pedestal and demanded recognition of the individual woman and not the epitomized version of the ideal woman, according to some men.3
Religious beliefs of the eighteenth century often placed women as subordinate and inferior to men in both the home and public, but religion actually gave them a domain to prosper in. With religious revivals of the early 1800’s, women began to devote themselves completely to their family and their churches. Stressing their spiritual equality with men, women gained new respect as moral equals, and even superiors. The qualities of piety and purity, which suited them in the world of family and housework, allowed women to flourish in the spiritual realm. The overwhelming presence of women in churches forced pastors and church leaders to respond to the needs of women as a dominant faction in the community. Religion united women under a cause, and organizations and committees emerged. Uniting under a common goal, like feeding the poor, women were able to exchange thoughts and ideas. Men tended to support these organizations, because women were seen as advocates of morality; thus, men could allow women’s fundraising and support of moral issues. As a result, women emerged as a political force. Their power came in the form of petitions, fundraisers, and volunteer work, all of which prospered because of women’s organizations. The spiritual role of women allowed them to comment on the world through literature and led volunteers out of the country for missionary work as educators, translators, medical support, and evangelizers. Religious equality then placed women in the role of teachers in the home, giving them the power of education. Christianity gave women the means to be advocates. From the seemingly domestic realm of the church, women were able to nurture their political voices and actions.4
Both the Temperance movement and efforts to keep the Sabbath day holy were issues that women were able to take head on because as social concerns, they remained in the domestic field. Advocating such central issues of the time, women were able to find a new sense of power in their formerly restrictive realm. Temperance was the leading movement for women of the nineteenth century. Alcohol was an issue that affected women directly and in the home, so Temperance was an issue that increasingly captured women’s time and efforts. Though their main political stances on Temperance came with the movement following the Civil War, the roots of concern with this social issue were formed earlier in the nineteenth century. In addition to advocating for temperance, Christian women stressed the necessity of keeping the Sabbath day holy. As angels of morality, women were easily able to attack individuals and businesses that did not rest on Sunday, the widely accepted holy day of rest. Through the means of literature, petitions, and public declarations, women brought their Sabbath concerns to light. In 1832, The Lady’s Book revealed its support for the movement by directly stating that if a man violated the Sabbath, he sinned against God and was bound to corruption. In support of keeping the Sabbath a day free of work, the magazine indicated that a day of rest and relaxation provided for a more efficient worker the other six days of the week. With such a statement, the magazine was able to appeal to the audience’s desire for morality and efficiency. Using their moral stance based in religion, women were able to speak out publicly on important issues like temperance and the Sabbath. They also found influence through literature as they gained the power of written word targeted at women across America.5
As organizations began to form outside of the church setting, women’s involvement in the community rapidly grew, as they gained attention for themselves and their issues. Women’s institutions sprang up quickly in areas like the North, where the line between domestic and public spheres became blurred, because women could easily make a transition from the privacy of the home to the public affiliation of an organization. In the South, the community was more attached to domesticity, which hindered the development of women’s societies and clubs. The variations in progress were not the only obstacle these organizations encountered. Factors such as age, family obligations, and marital status limited some women’s involvement. In New York in the 1830’s, the Female Reform Society had about sixty-seven percent of their members between twenty and forty, with even distributions among other ages. On the other hand New York’s Ladies Anti-Slavery Society had eighty-five percent of their members between twenty and forty, while the remaining fifteen percent were between fifty and fifty-nine. By limiting members to a certain age, organizations were preventing potentially passionate and dedicated women from joining. Reformers challenged this notion of only being able to advocate particular issues at certain points of life by separating themselves from any status. In the early 1830’s, the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society supported this challenge by banning the address of “Miss” or “Mrs.” that would indicate a woman’s marital status. As a result, women organizations were able to reach out to more female individuals and promote power through sheer numbers.6
In the eighteenth century, the focus of boys’ education was centered in the home as well as in formal schooling, and women began demanding educational advances for girls. Girls’ education was limited to basic needs, like literacy and domestic obligations, like sewing and maintaining a home. Educational advances occurred informally at first, through a combination of primarily domestic events, like reading circles and letter writing in combination with a few public displays, like debates. The result of organized functions for women was a demand for reform of education. Women wanted higher and more prestigious education and formal development of schooling for girls. Though higher education was aimed primarily at financially stable women in the North, the achievements made in women’s education were a victory for the gender as a whole.7
Many Northern women taught in Southern academies because Southern woman were obligated to teach their children at home. Formal education for girls flourished more quickly in Northern states, reflected in letters between personal correspondents. In a letter to Callie King, Marion Cobb, a resident of Athens, Georgia explained that a family friend was taking her daughter to Baltimore to be educated. For many women in the South, education either occurred in the comforts of the domestic sphere or involved traveling. The Southern limitation of women to the informal education of their homes was ironic because the first women’s college in the world was established in Georgia. On December 23, 1836, Georgia Female College, now Wesleyan, was chartered. Macon women, primarily through the Georgia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, showed their support of higher education of females, reflecting women’s emerging political thought through religious establishments. The college strayed from the traditional women’s education where the emphasis was on music and arts. Instead, Georgia Female College stressed the sciences, like philosophy, astronomy, botany, and geology. Women voiced their opinions in the public world, and their demands were met. Education reform proved to be of vital importance to women’s desires to expand their domestic roles.8
One of the leading advocates of the education reform for women was Catharine Beecher, who successfully justified education as a means of domesticity. She stressed the creativity of women as homemakers, advice of childcare and healthy living, training of teachers, and expansion of the teaching profession. Beecher established Hartford Female Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut in 1823, after being rejected for public funding by males, and thus by the political realm of American society. Wealthy women challenged this rejection by providing financial aide, revealing their political support of advancing women’s education. Similarly, Guelma Denn Anthony, Susan B. Anthony’s sister, wrote a letter to her brother in 1837 proclaiming how a gathering of women raised over 400 dollars for children who could not afford schooling. Using economic strength, women voiced their desire for universal education. Hartford Female Seminary taught the classics, to provide girls with a comparable education to boy’s institutions, but due to the lack of male support and growing finances, teachers were unable to specialize. At the same time, Beecher stressed a domestic education because of horrendous conditions like epidemics, medical bleeding practices, and incredibly poor sanitation conditions. With education reform, women were able to voice their support of a political issue. In an interview with The Lady’s Book, Dr. Spurzheim commented that women would never have influence until education was improved. He indicated that the improvements must be through the performance of women because men would take no interest in their counterpart’s intellect. Women ran with this advice, as schools appeared throughout the nation, with Beecher as the leading reformer. Through her efforts, she was able to establish public schools for girls and promote the economic power of a single woman, as a teacher.9
With advances in girls’ education, occupations for women expanded from factory labor to teaching. The education reform brought independence to women teachers, in the form of financial gain. Teaching was a more socially accepted position than the former jobs women filled and was open to all women, not just the poor or widowed. Prior to the education reform, women’s work in the public field was restricted primarily to work in industrial factories, which put women in harsh conditions with low pay. In response to long hours and the poor housing conditions, women workers went on strike in the Lowell Walkouts, which occurred in the 1820’s. The strikes were unsuccessful, but they resulted in a female political voice through the media. Females who recognized the harsh realities of factories produced Lowell Offerings, a magazine. Once again, women gained power through organizations, as women retaliated to labor conditions with the formation of the Female Labor Reform Association. As women began to voice their opinions through the written word and formal organizations, they laid the foundation for women to speak out on education reform and other issues that dominated female thought. From factories to teaching, women were breaking into the male world with their occupations. This trend continued through the nineteenth century. The Agitator remained true to its name as it rejected the confinement of women to the home and told women to make themselves useful and take on an occupation or trade. The education reform not only brought women to public political thought, but also challenged the traditional notion of female duties and obligations.10
A leading issue of the time, abolition was based on many Christian ideals of universal love and gave women a new political voice. For many women abolition advocates, the issue revolved around liberation, acceptance, and freedom in their personal Lord and Savior of all men, Jesus Christ. Many women abolitionists could not understand Christians who enslaved other humans, God’s own creations. An overwhelming tension existed between the economic need of white supremacy and the moralist approach of freedom. Through letters and other forms of literature petitions, and prayers, women involved in the anti-slavery movement made their voices known. Upon her arrival in New Rochelle in 1839, Susan B. Anthony, a leading abolitionist, wrote a letter to her sister. Anthony found pleasure in the town’s acceptance of her as an abolitionist, but she expressed alarm at the commotion they created over the presence of a free black man in a church. Though the man was wealthy, proper, and groomed, his presence upset and distracted the congregation. Anthony attacked such people as timid in their faith and unable to grasp the true meaning of Christianity. Thus, for many women like Anthony, abolitionist attempts were rooted in their beliefs of sharing love and acceptance with all people. Women abolitionists demanded for slaves and blacks what they wanted for themselves: freedom, opportunities, and a public voice.11
While fighting moral issues like temperance and the Sabbath and economic concerns such as girl’s higher education, women were able to attack slavery, a topic they were able to sympathize with as a form of oppression. Like the other movements they threw their efforts behind, women voiced their political opinions on slavery through fairs to raise money, petitions, letters, and making clothes for abolitionists. Abolition formed as a campaign in the 1830’s and was dramatically influenced by William Lloyd Garrison, who supported women’s involvement in the campaign and advocated an immediate end to slavery. As a result, many women adopted this view instead of the more conservation abolition technique of gradualism. A result of women’s organization under a highly contested political campaign was the beginnings of a suffrage movement for women. Advocating for racial equality, this movement formed as women continually questioned their own oppression, based on gender inequality. The abolition movement pushed them even further into the political world than either temperance or education reform had before. As a result of the anti-slavery movement, women deepened their ideological perspectives and gained a greater understanding of the political world. New organizations, like the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, continued to develop, outside of a religious context. As they stepped outside of the home and into a heated political debate, women made themselves visible to an issue that divided the nation.12
Just as women used religious magazines to promote and discuss the political involvement of women in America, the abolition movement also drew support from the written word. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, who was an education activist as well as an anti-slavery advocate, was criticized not only for her public declarations against slavery, but also for her writings. Peabody’s writings posed a threat because she made logical claims, which appealed to the public. Men feared such literature not only because a woman was crossing the line of domesticity, but also because women were making grounded political arguments about slavery. Though women like Lydia Maria Child used their writings to support everything from race to women’s rights to Indian rights, literature dominated as an abolitionary tactic. In addition to editing The Anti-Slavery Standard, Child published forty-seven books, many of which dealt with abolition. In 1833, she wrote “Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans,” which promoted and defended abolition. Literature proved to be an overwhelming force for women. Likewise, Sarah M. Grimke, another leading female activist, proposed a written resolution to the National Convention of Anti-Slavery Society, challenging abolitionists to associate with blacks in every societal norm, from the home to church, treating blacks as they would white. Even for some liberal abolitionists, this proposal was radical, and those who supported slavery were outraged. With the written word, women were able to evoke the power of emotions. By inducing anger in the public, women forced people to acknowledge the issue of slavery. Prior to the abolitionist movement, embarrassment was used to scare people into listening to the issues women were supporting. When addressing the immorality of prostitution, some women went as far as publishing names of the prostitutes’ clients. Whether the issue was prostitution or abolition, women were growing as an influence, and abolitionist literature reflected how the movement allowed women to acquire new political tactics.13
While many people supported women’s activism among various political agendas, women still faced the abusive hand of opposition. Throughout the country, men and women alike were infuriated by some women’s refusal to maintain their proper role, in the domestic realm of family, friends, and the home. One liberal magazine for Christian women broke into new terrains by devoting a section to their newly discovered political voice, titled, “Politics.” With discussions of education, slavery, taxation, the Sabbath, labor, and economics, this segment encouraged women to unite, act, and be heard. Such a daring column for its time was met with great opposition, especially from women. With anger, many women wrote in rebuking the title of the column and its lack of spirituality. These women, in addition to many fellow men, were outraged that a Christian magazine was traveling beyond Scripture, motherhood, and flowers. The editor of the magazine did not allow the author to print her name, to prevent personal attacks. Like the author of the section on politics, some women received only verbal and written attacks, but others were subject to physical harassment. When George Thompson, an abolitionist traveling through New England, was rumored to be attending a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, a horde of heated men surrounded the meeting area. For safety concerns, the women relocated, but Maria Chapman, one of the eight founders of BFASS, declared her willingness to die for her beliefs in universal freedom. Weeks later, Chapman was still unable to move through the city without men attacking her with verbal assaults. Meeting such opposition, women gained strength, experience, and greater conviction to defend their beliefs. The world may have expected women to whimper back into their holes of domesticity, but they had flourished too much, outside the hole of confinement.14
The various reforms of the 1830’s gave women a voice, political thought, and a path into the public world of men. Making advances into vital issues like temperance, the Sabbath, education, and slavery, women used any means they could to take a stance and be heard. Though they did not receive the right to vote until 1920, women’s emergence as a political voice in the nineteenth century was astounding. Fulfilling their obligations in the private realm of the home, women were still able to use religion and literature as a way to test to waters of public opinion and reform. One woman, one issue, one location did not account for the rapid advance of women into the publicly political world of men; the unification of women did. The issues women battled for were all intertwined and were all rooted in strength they gained in domestic power. Seen as meek but spiritual creatures, women were able to unite in the religious setting of church organizations, which gave them the power of advocating issues of spiritual concern, like temperance and the Sabbath. Gaining strength in numbers, they fought for educational advances for girls, which established an intellectual power for women, granting them new strength in public opinion. With this development, women emerged as a force through literature, allowing them to publicly combat increasingly political events of the day, like slavery. Though this tracing of women as a political voice is simplified, it serves to reflect how developmentally connected the issues were. Even without the power to vote, women in the 1830’s gained a voice; a voice that carries beyond the nineteenth century and into the heart of suffrage, equality, and women’s rights.
Endnotes
1.
Christine Bolt, The Women's Movements in the United
States and Britain from the 1790s to the 1920s (Amherst, 1993) pp. 25, 13
Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political
Society, 1780-1920," American Historical Review, Jun84, Vol 89 Issue 3,
p. 631, 635.
2.
Bolt, pp. 12-13,15-19,24, 32, 38
John Bouvier, Bouvier's Law Dictionary, 1856 ed, 6th ed Vol I.
3. Baker, pp.620, 624-626, 629; Ruth H. Bloch, "The Gendered Meanings of
Virtue in Revolutionary America," Rethinking the Political (Chicago, 1995) p. 20
Bolt p. 31
Frances B. Cogan, All-American Girl: The Ideal of Real Womanhood
in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America (Athens, 1989) p. 65.
4. Baker, p. 639, 631, 621, 625, 637
Bolt, pp. 14, 24
Cogan p. 65.
5. p. 633,637, 632
Bolt, p. 32 The Lady’s Book (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1832), Jan1832, Vol IV, p. 8
6. Anne M. Boylan, "Timid Girls, Venerable Widows and Dignified
Matrons: Life Cycle Patterns Among Organized Women in New York and Boston, 1797-1840,"
American Quarterly, Winter 1986, Vol 38, No 5, pp.779-797.
7. June Edwards, "Catharine Beecher: Educating Girls, Homemakers, and Teachers,"
Women in American Education, 1820-1955: The Female Force and Educational Reform
(Westport, Connecticut, 2002) pp. 2-9
Bolt p. 33-34.
9. Edwards, pp. 2-6
Editor's Table, The Lady's Book (Philadelphia), Mar1842 VolXXIV p. 178.
The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Gumela Anthony to Daniel Anthony, 11 Nov
1837, Series 3, Roll 6, Scholarly Resources Inc.
11. The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Susan B.
Anthony to Gumela Anthony, 15 June 1839, Series 3, Roll 6, Scholarly Resources Inc.
12. Bolt pp. 63-64
Baker pp. 630, 634
Margaret McFadden, NWSA Journal, 31 Jul 1996, Vol 8, No 2, p. 157.
13. Baker p. 633
McFadden p. 157
Edwards p. 30
Leon F. Litwack, "The Abolitionist Dilemma: The Antislavery Movement and the Northern Negro,"
The New England Quarterly, March 1961, Vol 34, No 1, pp. 50-73.
14. "Politics," The Christian Lady’s Magazine, April- June 1834
"Maria Weston Chapman and the Weston Sisters," from
http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/mariawestonchapman.html,
(from the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography webpage, as Chapman was a devoted Unitarian).