History 201 Professor Studebaker “Her-Story of Women’s Suffrage” Makyla Pittman Imagine living a life filled with all forms of discrimination where you have no voice in the government under which you live and in the equality of social life where you are a chief factor. It is a difficult scenario to visualize and before the 19th century that was the reality of a women’s position in this world. With limited access, a young wife and mother was expected to manage a household, train her children, keep her friends and sustain the affections of her husband. In a world filled with patriarchal constraints women were forced to fall back on their instinctive resources of common sense, wisdom, diplomacy and knowledge of human nature. Education, employment, and politics are all barriers where women were held back from the full development of their faculties.
The paper referred to prostitutes as sisters and Men were usually depicted as the wrongdoers. This was a concept unheard of in Ingraham’s society. Ingaham shed light on the fact that once a woman was violated and abandoned by a man, she became shunned by the community, lost all opportunities to be married to a “good man,” had few job prospects available to her, as well as had no legal recourse. The only job women could hold at the time was as sweat shop employees, where they would be paid extremely low wages, on which survival was difficult, especially if the women had to support her children. Ingraham felt this broken system had been pushing women onto the street and into prostitution.
Black women weren’t even allowed to keep their child even if they birthed them! White women and Black women were both struggling at gaining rights. During the early 19th Century women didn’t have the right to vote which created much frustration among women, they even weren’t allowed to run for the presidency just because they are a different gender. In the 19th Century men believed that women’s only job was to clean and cook for the family. Women in general back in the 19th Century didn’t have many rights, but Black women were definitely on the short end of the stick if you compared the rights between Black and White women.
June is another victim of patriarchal oppression just like Connie’s mother, a typical “house wife”. Both the mother’s and sister’s roles fully reflect how women were treated at that time. They were controlled by males, displayed a lack of confidence and did not have their own independent self-consciousness. Oates used Connie’s independent identity and rebellious behaviors to represent women’s dissatisfaction with patriarchy, but had no courage to make a change. When Oates starts the story by introducing Connie without a last name, Oates created a character with a clear independent identity, while at the same time rebelling against the patriarchy.
This was a big change as, before this period, women hadn’t been able to put forth ideas to even challenge legislation let alone contribute to the making of new laws. The custody of children act 1839 played a big part in this change. This act came about when a woman - Caroline Norton - wrote a pamphlet which she named ‘The natural claim of a mother to the custody of her children as affected by the common law rights of the father’. Within this pamphlet Norton talked about the unfairness of the current laws which allowed the father to have absolute rights to the custody of his children no matter what, yet a mother, even if not proven guilty of adultery or any other
Introduction: For the past centuries and today fashion and shopping have always been mainly of interest to women, however men did also play a huge role in the industry of fashion. The department stores grew bigger and bigger on the influence of women but were run by mostly men. 'Women belonged to the world of leisure and men to the world of work.' Fathers, husbands had a role to earn the money which their daughter/ wife can spend on shopping to show their status. The Department stores were a perfect place to be at during the 19th century.
Susan B. Anthony also opposed abortion, which she saw as another instance of a "double standard" imposed upon women. In the nineteenth century, the decision to undergo an abortion was very often decided by men. There were none of the standard contraceptive options available to women today. Antibiotics had yet to be invented, and abortion was a life threatening and unsanitary procedure for the woman. Anthony wrote that "when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged,” Susan B. Anthony encouraged women to register to vote and then vote, using the Fourteenth Amendment as justification.
Women were still viewed as being inferior to men and did not have a voice to air their concerns or displeasure. In the beginning of the story, the main character hints to this oppression as she comments “perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” when describing John’s occupation as a physician (Gilman 82). Her husband John is expanding her level of depression by keeping her from the outside. Confining her to one room within a house that was viewed as being “a colonial mansion, a hereditary estate” is symbolic (Gilman 82). It shows that she is trapped within a small portion of a large house, similar to being trapped to adventure the outside world thus forced in to a land of fantasy not reality.
Day after day she was forced to burden the cruel thoughts of others opinions of being inferior because she was a women and a women with her own thoughts at that. Taking place in 1630, societies thought upon women as the subsidiary sex and not respected in the way modern day women is. The job of a puritan women was limited, care for your house, your husband, and your children. If a women stepped out of those bounds her life became hard and wicked. The only women who were relieved of these bonds were widows who had the privilege of being able to sue or be sued, owning their own home or land and disciplining children and servants.
The legal systems have perpetuated the injustices and discrimination against women and other minority groups in the society. The status of a woman in the American legal systems for example has deepened the misconception that women are inferior compared to men. The common law does not give a woman any legal recognition and is not allowed to own property. Historically, the American law has rendered the woman defenseless in the management of family and social affairs. For many years, women in the United States had no voting rights which denied them the opportunity to try their hand in politics.