The tendency for the early middle-class reformers to view themselves as mother figures to the working-class created a sense of superiority and self-righteousness amidst their cause. As the shift from motherhood into the workforce commenced, the second generation reformers formed a professional model within the women’s movement, in which the middle-class was the expert and the working-class served as the client. Harriet Stanton Blatch perhaps most perpetuated the conflict between class relations and the need to split women into ranks. She viewed the working-class women as incapable of leading the movement due to her own prejudice and their lack of education, also struggling to maintain her prominence amongst rivals, such as Susan B. Anthony, …show more content…
One newspaper stated that, “mothers are often forced to beat the children in order to keep them at work, but it is that or starve.” Writer Mary Britton Miller referred to immigrant children as “slow, uncomprehending machines” due to the idea that “the average Italian mother watches the growth of a child, not with a view to becoming old enough to receive an education, but with a hungry eagerness for her to reach the age when she can be put into use as a wage-earning home slave.” Elizabeth Watson believed that immigrant working-class mothers treated children in a way that served convenience, and that these mothers constantly forced their children to work for the sake of making money and supported their children with the very bare necessities. Women like Miller and Watson advocated for charity from male leaders to support childcare, such as nurseries and kindergartens, also believing that wages for men should increase so that women could stay at home to properly care for their children. Middle-class reformers angrily attacked immigrant mothers for being “ingenious and resourceful in evading the school law and tricking the truant officers and the judges.” These writings painted a portrait of immigrant mothers as lazy, idle, immoral, and …show more content…
Developing tight-knit communities with a gift-and-exchange, or reciprocity, system, immigrant women did not pay heed to the difference between unpaid and paid labor. Constantly working to care for their families, neighbors, and households, both men and women had to become learners of a variety of skills in order to survive in America. This collectivist society contrasted with that of the white middle class; immigrant families lived however they wished to, neglecting strict family structure with the newfound sense of opportunity and freedom in America, reflecting their cultures of the Old World. Immigrants lived in overcrowded spaces with people of diverse backgrounds, continually collaborating and exchanging goods and resources. Immigrant women concentrated on providing the basic necessities for the common good, rather than instilling the values and qualities that middle-class women focused on into their children’s upbringing. One can understand the clash of ideals between immigrant women, who willingly gave up education for themselves and their children for the sake of gaining “bread and roses”, and middle-class reformers, who valued strict family frameworks and saw immigrant mothers as neglectful towards their children. Immigrant mothers believed that having their children work rather than receive an education was still more beneficial than allowing children to “run on
According to Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, between 1880 and about World War I, the vast majority of Eastern European Jews and Southern Italians came to the United States populating neighborhoods in New York and the Lower East Side is the best example. One thing, which was common to the immigrant experience is that, all immigrants come to the United States as the “land of opportunity”. They come to America with different types of expectations that are conditioned by their origins and families. But every immigrant comes to America wanting to make himself/herself into a person, to be an individual and to become somebody. In this case, the author showed in Bread Givers, Sarah’s desire to make herself into something and bring something unique to America, which only she can bring. It is an effort to understand the immigrants, particularly Jewish immigrants, from a woman’s point of view. The book shows that it was a challenge for Jewish immigrant children, particularly females, on the account of the intensity of their family’s connections and obligations that was so critical for the immigrant communities. This was true for the immigrants who came to settle in the neighborhoods like the one Sarah and her family settled in.
Immigrants come to America, the revered City upon a Hill, with wide eyes and high hopes, eager to have their every dream and wild reverie fulfilled. Rarely, if ever, is this actually the case. A select few do achieve the stereotypical ‘rags to riches’ transformation – thus perpetuating the myth. The Garcia family from Julia Alvarez’s book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, fall prey to this fairytale. They start off the tale well enough: the girls are treated like royalty, princesses of their Island home, but remained locked in their tower, also known as the walls of their family compound. The family is forced to flee their Dominican Republic paradise – which they affectionately refer to as simply, the Island – trading it instead for the cold, mean streets of American suburbs. After a brief acclimation period, during which the girls realize how much freedom is now available to them, they enthusiastically try to shed their Island roots and become true “American girls.” They throw themselves into the American lifestyle, but there is one slight snag in their plan: they, as a group, are unable to forget their Island heritage and upbringing, despite how hard they try to do so. The story of the Garcia girls is not a fairytale – not of the Disney variety anyway; it is the story of immigrants who do not make the miraculous transition from rags to riches, but from stifling social conventions to unabridged freedom too quickly, leaving them with nothing but confusion and unresolved questions of identity.
During the early 20th century in the U.S, most children of the lower and middle class were workers. These children worked long dangerous shifts that even an adult would find tiresome. On July 22, 1905, at a convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, Florence Kelley gave a famous speech regarding the extraneous child labor of the time. Kelley’s argument was to add laws to help the workers or abolish the practice completely. Kelley uses pathos to highlight the need for change and diction get her point across to the audience.
In Florence Kelley’s 1905 speech to the Philadelphia convention of the National American Women Suffrage Association, she accentuates the obligatory need to reform the working conditions for young children.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the fight for equal and just treatment for both women and children was one of the most historically prominent movements in America. Courageous women everywhere fought, protested and petitioned with the hope that they would achieve equal rights and better treatment for all, especially children. One of these women is known as Florence Kelley. On July 22, 1905, Kelley made her mark on the nation when she delivered a speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association, raising awareness of the cruel truth of the severity behind child labor through the use of repetition, imagery and oxymorons.
Rhetorical Analysis of Florence Kelley’s Speech Florence Kelley’s address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1905) touches upon both the social and political aspects of the need for reform regarding child labor laws. By revealing the shocking truth about how young children around the country work for long hours in inappropriate conditions, Kelley is able to emphasize the urgency of this situation. Simultaneously, she defends women’s suffrage by presenting the logical statement that there would be laws to prevent extreme child labor if women had the right to vote; more progress could be made if women and men worked together, starting with women’s right to vote. In her address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Florence Kelley establishes a dramatic tone and appeals to her audience’s emotions to persuade them to advocate for a reform of child labor laws by employing several rhetorical strategies. To begin, Kelley utilizes the audience’s sense of logic to generate answers to rhetorical questions such as, “If mothers and the teachers from Georgia could vote, would the Georgia Legislature have refused at every session for the last three years to stop the work in the mills of children under twelve years of age?” and “would the New Jersey Legislature have passed that shameful repeal bill enabling girls of fourteen years to work all night, if the mothers in New Jersey were enfranchised?”
In Jane Addams’s effort to try to assimilate immigrants into the American culture, she targeted the immigrant children first. Addams believed if the children became assimilated, the adults would follow suit. Hull House offered cooking classes and adolescents often took them so they could learn how...
Moving from the unpleasant life in the old country to America is a glorious moment for an immigrant family that is highlighted and told by many personal accounts over the course of history. Many people write about the long boat ride, seeing The Statue of Liberty and the “golden” lined streets of New York City and how it brought them hope and comfort that they too could be successful in American and make it their home. Few authors tend to highlight the social and political developments that they encountered in the new world and how it affected people’s identity and the community that they lived in. Authors from the literature that we read in class highlight these developments in the world around them, more particularly the struggles of assimilating
As many women took on a domestic role during this era, by the turn of the century women were certainly not strangers to the work force. As the developing American nation altered the lives of its citizens, both men and women found themselves struggling economically and migrated into cities to find work in the emerging industrialized labor movement . Ho...
Family dynamics present interesting revelations, especially regarding the relationship between parents and children. While most families undoubtedly encounter dysfunction at some point throughout life, immigrant families seemingly experience such stress continually. A handful of short stories, including “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, “Who’s irish” by Gish Jen, and “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” by Yiyun Li, demonstrate how strained relations erupt in immigrant families. Familial tension noticeably arises because of the immigrant parents’ inability to fully adjust to the American way of life. Further, immigrant parents adhere to strict expectations in an attempt to uphold the family’s conservative heritage. Finally, immigrant parents typically
Susan Brownell Anthony, being an abolitionist, educational reformer, labor activist, and organizer for woman suffrage, used her intellectual and confident mind to fight for parity. Anthony fought for women through campaigning for women’s rights as well as a suffragist for many around the nation. She had focused her attention on the need for women to reform law in their own interests, both to improve their conditions and to challenge the "maleness" of current law. Susan B. Anthony helped the abolitionists and fought for women’s rights to change the United States with her Quaker values and strong beliefs in equality.
Susan B. Anthony is the most well known name in women's rights from the 1800s. Most people who are not familiar with the history of this time are aware of Susan's reputation and nearly everyone of my generation has seen and held a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar. For these reasons I was greatly surprised to learn that Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the original women's rights movement spokeswoman and Susan B. Anthony her protégé.
Kuttner also agrees, “a lot of ugly realities were concealed by “traditional values”; the legal and economic emancipation of women was long overdue, and the task now is to reconcile gender equality with the healthy raising of the next generation.” (124). Before the 1890s, females had no other options but to live with their parents before marriage and with their husband after marriage. They couldn’t work and if they did, their wages were way lower than men.
Mary went from not even attending school in Russia, to star pupil in America, illustrating the promise that America had to offer immigrants. American afforded Mary with opportunities that were impossible in her home country of Russia. Even though Frieda also lived in America, her circumstances represent the realities of the Old World. For instance, Frieda’s only way of learning about American history was through Mary, as she was not afforded time to read while working. By not attending school, Frieda did not only became stuck in the Old World mentality in terms of education but also in terms of marriage. Her father “had put Frieda to work out of necessity. The necessity was hardly lifted when she had an offer of marriage, but my father would not stand in the way of what he considered her welfare” (Antin, 218). Frieda was not given the opportunity to marry for love, as was the American way, but was married out of necessity for her welfare, reminiscent of the Old World mentality. Public education provided Mary with the opportunity to marry not because she had to in order to survive, but because she wanted to. The stark contrast between the lives of Frieda, representing life in the
Though the concept of the New Woman was empowering to many, some women did not want to give up their roles as housewives. These women felt there was a great dignity in the lifestyle of the housewife, and that raising children was not a job to scoff at. Mary Freeman's short story “The Revolt of 'Mother',” tells the story of such a domestic woman, Sarah, who has no interest in leaving her position as mother, but still wishes to have her voice heard in the private sphere of her home. Freeman's “Revolt of Mother,” illustrates an alternative means of resistance for women who rejected the oppression of patriarchy without a withdrawal from the domestic lifestyle. First to understand why this story is critical to empowering women who wished to remain tied to their domestic roots, we need to look at the limitations imposed upon their resistance.