During the 19th century, change was in the air. Industrialization, involving the movement of labor and resources away from agriculture and toward manufacturing and commercial industries, was in progress. As a result, thousands of women were moving from the domestic life to the industrial world. During the 19th century, the family economy was replaced by a new patriarchy which saw women moving from the small, safe world of family workshops or home-based businesses to larger scale sweatshops and factories.
Prior to these changes, career options were limited for women. The work of a wife was often alongside her husband, running a household, farm or plantation. "Indeed, a wife herself was considered her husband's chattel, or personal property" (Cullen-Dupont 212). Cooking for the household took a major part of a woman's time. Making garments, spinning yarn, and weaving cloth also took much time out of the day. After the Revolution and into the early 19th century, educating the children became the mother's responsibility. Widows and the wives of men off to war often managed large farms and plantations. Other women worked as servants or slaves. Unmarried women, the divorced, and women without property, might work in another household, helping out with household chores or substituting for the wife if there was not one in the family.
The Industrial Revolution was fueled by the economic need of many women, single and married, to find waged work outside their home. Women mostly found jobs in domestic service, textile factories, and work shops. They also worked in the coal mines. The Industrial Revolution provided independent wages, mobility and a better standard of living. " For some middle-class women, the new jobs offered freedo...
... middle of paper ...
...ersy over women leaving the domestic lifestyle, they contributed to the expansion of the manufacturing and service industries. Even though a woman's life was not equal to a man's in the 19th century, education, wages, and working conditions for women were increasing. As the standard of living continued to improve for women, hope for a better future flourished.
Works Cited
Cullen-Dupont, Kathryn. "Women's Rights Movement." The New Book of Knowledge. 2nd ed. 1994.
Hartman, Dorothy. "Women's Roles in the Late 19th Century." Life in the 1880's. Conner Prairie. 25 Mar. 2006 .
Ryan, Mary P. Womanhood in America from the Colonial Times to the Present. New York: F. Watts, 1983.
Spielvogel, Jackson. Western Civilization. 6th ed. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth Co., 2006.
Woloch, Nancy. Women and the American Experience. The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., 1996.
The literature of the nineteenth century cataloged the social, economical and political changes during its period. Through it many new concerns and ideologies were proposed and made their journeys through intellectual spheres that have endured and kept their relevance in our own period today. The literature, sometimes quite overtly, introduced the issues arising with the changes in society specifically due to the industrial revolution. In this mixture of new ideas was the question of women's labor and functions among this rapidly changing society. American authors as well as Victorian authors, like George Gissing and Mabel Wotton, explored these issues somewhat explicitly during this period. In America, Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Perkins Gilman expressed these issues in short stories with strong implications of the dangers of unfulfilled or unsatisfying labor available to women.
Men were considered as the breadwinner and women were supposed to do the household work and take care of children. But in fact, the Industrial Revolution in part was fuelled by the economic necessity of many women, single and married, to find waged work outside their home.
Women of the nineteenth century had very set expectations. There were only two types of women: upper class bourgeoisie and lower class farmer’s wives or daughters. Women were considered physically weaker to men, which meant that they were best suited to the domestic sphere while the men workers and made the money. The mill girls defied all of this, and created their own class of women: wage earning middle class women. These women were not like farmers’ wives that were typically uneducated, nor like the bourgeoisie women that were educated, by mostly in domestic and “womanly” skills. The mill girls went to college if they so desired, most of the time doing that in the stead of getting married and becoming a housewife. The mill girls were a
...ultiple children which, as any parent will tell you, would’ve been more than a full-time job. One key point from “A Fourierist Newspaper Criticizes the Nuclear Family” that supports the assertion is the fact that not all women back then were fulfilled being a full-time homemaker, and desired more opportunities and rights than society allowed them to possess. Their desire to be more than a homemaker would often be completely ignored, though, so just like slaves of the period, they had no other option than to fulfill their societal role. One key point from “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” that supports the assertion is the fact that a women’s education would be primarily in the domestic and social spheres with only a minimal amount of proper education, showing that society considered them only to have enough intellectual capacity to be a domestic household servant.
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...
...ing of home crafts, as the 17th and 18th century progressed, women became more than just a homemaker; they could own property, vote, and get a job.
The 1940s provided a drastic change in women’s employment rates and society's view of women. With the end of the Depression and the United States’ entrance into World War II, the number of jobs available to women significantly increased. As men were being drafted into military service, the United States needed more workers to fill the jobs left vacant by men going to war. Women entered the workforce during World War II due to the economic need of the country. The use of Patriotic rhetoric in government propaganda initiated and encouraged women to change their role in society. Yet, at the end of the war, the same ideas that encouraged women to accept new roles had an averse affect on women, encouraging them to leave the workforce. The patriotism promoted by propaganda in the 1940s, encouraged Americans to support the war effort and reinforced the existing patriarchal society. Propaganda's use of patriotism not only increased loyalty to America during the war, but also, increased loyalty to the traditional American patriarchal values held in society.
A huge part of the economical grow of the United States was the wealth being produced by the factories in New England. Women up until the factories started booming were seen as the child-bearer and were not allowed to have any kind of career. They were valued for factories because of their ability to do intricate work requiring dexterity and nimble fingers. "The Industrial Revolution has on the whole proved beneficial to women. It has resulted in greater leisure for women in the home and has relieved them from the drudgery and monotony that characterized much of the hand labour previously performed in connection with industrial work under the domestic system. For the woman workers outside the home it has resulted in better conditions, a greater variety of openings and an improved status" (Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, pg.4) The women could now make their own money and they didn’t have to live completely off their husbands. This allowed women to start thinking more freely and become a little bit more independent.
The Second Industrial Revolution had a major impact on women's lives. After being controlled fro so long women were experiencing what it was like to live an independent life. In the late nineteenth century women were participating in a variety of experiences, such as social disabilities confronted by all women, new employment patterns, and working class poverty and prostitution. These experiences will show how women were perceived in the Second Industrial Revolution.
towards African Americans are presented in number of works of scholars from all types of divers
The 19th Century is an age that is known for the Industrial Revolution. What some people don’t realize is the effect that this revolution had on gender roles in not only the middle and upper classes (Radek.) It started off at its worst, men were considered powerful, active, and brave; where as women were in no comparison said to be weak, passive, and timid (Radek.) Now we know this not to be true, however, back in the day people only went by what would allow ...
Industrialization had a major impact on the lives of every American, including women. Before the era of industrialization, around the 1790's, a typical home scene depicted women carding and spinning while the man in the family weaves (Doc F). One statistic shows that men dominated women in the factory work, while women took over teaching and domestic services (Doc G). This information all relates to the changes in women because they were being discriminated against and given children's work while the men worked in factories all day. Women wanted to be given an equal chance, just as the men had been given.
The Industrial Revolution was an era between 1780 and 1850 where new inventions and machinery flourished, replacing human labor with machines in the production and manufacturing of goods. The Cottage Industry helped give rise to the Industrial Revolution with its inventions such as the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, water frame, and spinning mule, all of which were mainly operated by women. This opened new opportunities for women in the working industry but this also introduced working class injustices, gender exploitation, and standard-of-living issues. Women 's experiences in factories reflected the profound social changes of the revolution and continuities with traditional working-class ways of life through their poor working conditions, demoralization, and little reward for their hard work.
19th-Century Women Works Cited Missing Women in the nineteenth century, for the most part, had to follow the common role presented to them by society. This role can be summed up by what historians call the “cult of domesticity”. The McGuffey Readers does a successful job at illustrating the women’s role in society. Women that took part in the overland trail, as described in “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey” had to try to follow these roles while facing many challenges that made it very difficult to do so. One of the most common expectations for women is that they are responsible for doing the chore of cleaning, whether it is cleaning the house, doing the laundry.
During the 1800s, society believed there to be a defined difference in character among men and women. Women were viewed simply as passive wives and mothers, while men were viewed as individuals with many different roles and opportunities. For women, education was not expected past a certain point, and those who pushed the limits were looked down on for their ambition. Marriage was an absolute necessity, and a career that surpassed any duties as housewife was practically unheard of. Jane Austen, a female author of the time, lived and wrote within this particular period. Many of her novels centered around women, such as Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice, who were able to live independent lives while bravely defying the rules of society. The roles expected of women in the nineteenth century can be portrayed clearly by Jane Austen's female characters of Pride and Prejudice.