Women sent children, husbands, and servants to buy groceries, pick up mail, and complete the everyday jobs that they couldn’t carry out. Women are conditioned to avoid the public limelight. For men what was most important in life was a good wife who could cook, maintain a clean house, and have children: “Though the town and the country were worlds apart, a good woman is the same in
It was seen that a women belonged at home with the kids, and that her work was in the kitchen. Women were seen as weak, unlike a man who could support his family while having a job. It was her role to mend to her husband, and to clean the house, wash the clothes – anything other than that was unnatural. But women were capable a doing a man’s job, and many things a man could
This strongly represents the cultural and societal views of the time because they believed being a housewife was their "sole responsibility". Katherine, the teacher, was criticized and gossiped about because she was older than thirty and not married. My own grandmother, who was about the same age in the 1950's as the students in the film, in fact graduated with honors and a Bachelor's degree in Sociology. However, shortly after, she married, started a family, and did not pursue a career. She has never expressed regret for her decision, but it is a real life example of what society expected of women during that time period.
Women’s Roles in the Revolutionary War: Histiography Essay Many times the roles of women and their impact on the American Revolution are overlooked in our textbooks. In fact very little is mentioned unless it is in reference to the courageous Molly Pitcher or a more recognizable female patriot of Betsy Ross. During Colonial times women’s roles were limited. Once married a woman lost all of her legal and property rights to her husband thus delegating women to fulfill the only roles left open to them; wife, mother, homemaker. This being said it might automatically be assumed that women would not have played a vital role during our nations revolt against Britain, instead they played a vital part in the revolution in a multitude of ways such as nurses, spies, and even as soldiers.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, author Zora Neale Hurston, supports and defies the stereotypical role of a woman. In her article Lewis states, “the role of wife is acquired when a women legally aligns herself with a man through marriage” (138). In early history females were married off at a young age by their parents and most often had no say so in the matter. This arrangement most often was done for the welfare of the families and not the children involved. This tradition has altered but the stereotypical role of the wife has changed very little.
The women of the Jarvis household possessed a vibrancy and passion towards activism not typically seen in the majority of women of their time –the 1900’s. Though there were, in fact, several reform movements that women were engaged in during that time period including the temperance and suffrage movements (both of which the Jarvis women participated in) most women solely devoted themselves to homemaking. While most women were happy focusing their lives solely on their family and home, the Jarvis women were on a crusade not to discredit or diminish the role of the homemaker, but to instead ensure that these very women were recognized and honored in their work as mothers. Thus, the mother of the household, Mrs. Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis helped
More often than not, Philadelphia women managed just fine financially. Women called upon their own skills acquired through their experience maintaining the household to follow a career path fit for themselves as individuals. Many women became employed as white washers, painters, midwifes, and other positions of such nature of the household. Particularly, if widows weren’t employed under these gender- segregated occupations, they often found themselves continuing their husband’s work in a specialized field. A widow’s experience in helping her husband’s business often provided enough knowledge for a woman to carry out such operations like shoe making.
Anna did not bloom to the knowledgeable being she became by herself, but she did so with the help of many catalysts during the plague year. Characters such as Elinor Mompellion, and already knowledgeable woman, give Anna the confidence she originally lacked to achieve her vision of an educated and independent life. Anna’s lust for knowledge comes when Elinor is introduced into her life as a mother type figure. Even before the introduction of their relationship, Anys Gowdie, an independent woman whom Anna admired, believed that Anna secretly was kind of independent, “I think you like to go and come without a man’s say so” and was searching for more in her life. These catalysts in Anna’s life caused the ‘journey from ignorance to knowledge’ she experienced to become the success that it did.
The point she was getting across to the reader was that wives are undervalued. This essay is humorous piece that also made a serious point: women who played the role of “wife” did many helpful things for husbands and, usually, children without anyone realizing. Still less did anyone acknowledge that these “wife’s tasks” could have been done by someone who wasn’t a wife, such as a man. The desired wife tasks included: * Work to support us so I can go back to school * Keep my house clean and pick up after me * See to it that my personal things are where I can find them when I need them * Take care of the babysitting arrangements * Be sensitive to my sexual needs * But do not demand attention when I am not in the mood * Do not bother me with complaints about a wife’s duties The essay fleshed out these duties and listed others. The point, of course, was that housewives were expected to do all these things, but no one ever expected a man to be capable of these tasks.
The women’s role was to be a wife and a mother. They set the tone for their households, cooking, cleaning, and morally and physically raising their children. Women seen no wrong with raising a family and maintaining a household, what they didn’t agree with was the fact that they had no support if their goal was anything else but that. In 1885 when Annie Nathan told her Dad that she had passed