At the end of nineteenth century men and women migrated from rural areas to urban areas for industrial work (Smith, p.142). This change ushered in the system of wage labor which became the way most members of lower class gained income. However, wages for workers were incredibly low (Smith, p.145). The blooming trend among the middle-class of the head of household as the only working individual of the family was completely unattainable for working class families. It was a necessity for lower-class women to work to support the family as well as maintain their role as mother and keeper of the home (Smith, p.273). Wage labor introduced a new way of life for women that included bouts of extreme poverty, intense labor, and a change in their relations with men. Working women in the industrial age faced unsatisfactory to even dangerous relations with men from marital relations, sexual coercion, and sexual harassment. Such negative relations were due to working women’s vulnerability in law, economic standing, and the popular negative view of the working woman. For most working class women marriage was not a matter of emotion but a matter of necessity for survival. Wages were so low for the working class that women would never have any form of meat in their diets and were forced to rely on low quality foods to survive, such hardship is described by a textile worker who lamented on contents of her pantry: “butter we never have. A roast of meat none of us ever sees (Smith, p.147). In “The Struggle for The Breeches: Plebian Marriage” Anne K. Clark explains that marriage was seen as an opportunity for working class men and women to pool their wages together (Clarke, p.121). Frau Hoffman expresses this notion when she discloses the groom’s fir... ... middle of paper ... ...age between her mother and father in which she remarks that her “father had particularly admired [her] mother for her sweetness” (Beeton, p. 67). Also the barmaid from the primary sources does receive help from a male figure who accompanied her home and made sure she was not “molested” (Beeton, p. 260). An elderly working woman, Frau Hoffman, describes a rather positive and long marriage between her and her husband and stresses that a woman must “be faithful and good to her husband and honor and love him” (Beeton, p.364). But due to the extreme poverty found in the working class, the conditions in factories, and the evidence in popular songs for the abuse of women it can be assumed that many working class women did not experience pleasant marriages and their economic and legal vulnerability allowed for negative male relationships to occur for a majority of women.
Hollingsworth and Tyyska discuss the employment of women in their article, both wage work and work performed outside of the “paid labour force.” (14). They also look at work discrimination of women based on gender and marital status. They argue that disapproval of married women working for wages during the Depression was expressed not only by those in position of power, such as politicians, but also by the general public and labour unions. They suggest that the number of women in the workforce increased as more young wives stayed working until the birth of their first child and older women entered the workforce in response to depression based deprivation. Hollingsworth and Tyyska also give examples of work that married women did that was an extension of their domestic duties such as babysitting for working mothers or taking in laundry. They also state that some women took in boarders, sold extra produce from gardens, or ran make-shift restaurant operations out of their homes.
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.
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...
The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her
Even these limited options that provided women with opportunities were not available for the right reasons. The State Library of Victoria adds that, “Only the rising need for labor and the diminishing supply of manpower has forced this revolutionary adjustment”(10). Up until when the labor force desperately needed women, they received few opportunities and unequal pay. Even after many factories were forced to hire women workers they begrudgingly did...
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.
Many middle class and elite women followed the same thinking pattern of most men in the nineteenth century that women should focus on preserving their morality, improving society, and being domestic subservient wives (lecture). This ideal of true womanhood directly conflicted with working class women’s definition of womanhood and the changing work patterns in the United States. Because middle class and elite woman did not view working women as “true women,” these women often ostracized working class women, which caused tension and increased class divisions (lecture). Additionally, this class rift between women most likely contributed to the slow progress of the women’s rights movement that began in the later half of the nineteenth century. As men were reluctant to accept the shifting definitions of womanhood, many middle class and elite women were also hesitant to accept these changes and began to relate to lower class women in a more hostile
This source provided the unique perspective of what was thought to be the perfect household, with a man who worked and a wife who cooked and cleaned. However, it also showed how a woman could also do what a man can do, and in some cases they could do it even better. This work is appropriate to use in this essay because it shows how men talked down to their wives as if they were children. This work shows the gradual progression of woman equality and how a woman is able to make her own decisions without her husband’s input.
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.
In the nineteen twenties, the crusade for women’s rights gained a much greater force than it had in the past. What helped to make this possible was the economic upturn. The wages of workers increased, and women also began to weigh more heavily in the workforce. Beginning in World War One, American women began to take the jobs of their spouses to support their families. They continued to work even after the war was over. The amount of women making up the overall labor forced increased about two percent in the time between 1920 and 1930, totaling to about twenty two percent in 1930 (“Women in the Labor Force”). Although they did not take the same jobs that men did, women were still an important ...
"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a woman in isolation, struggling to cope with mental illness, which has been diagnosed by her husband, a physician. Going beyond this surface level, the reader sees the narrator as a developing feminist, struggling with the societal values of the time. As a woman writer in the late nineteenth century, Gilman herself felt the adverse effects of the male-centric society, and consequently, placed many allusions to her own personal struggles as a feminist in her writing. Throughout the story, the narrator undergoes a psychological journey that correlates with the advancement of her mental condition. The restrictions which society places on her as a woman have a worsening effect on her until illness progresses into hysteria. The narrator makes comments and observations that demonstrate her will to overcome the oppression of the male dominant society. The conflict between her views and those of the society can be seen in the way she interacts physically, mentally, and emotionally with the three most prominent aspects of her life: her husband, John, the yellow wallpaper in her room, and her illness, "temporary nervous depression." In the end, her illness becomes a method of coping with the injustices forced upon her as a woman. As the reader delves into the narrative, a progression can be seen from the normality the narrator displays early in the passage, to the insanity she demonstrates near the conclusion.
In Christine Stansell’s City of Women, the main issue discussed is “the misfortunes laboring women suffered and the problems they caused” (xi). Throughout the book, Stansell delves into the different aspects that affected these female New Yorkers’ lives, such as inadequate wages, societal stigmas about women laborers, and the hierarchal class system, within antebellum America. She argues that since the nation’s founding, in 1789, the bedrock of these tribulations working women would be mercilessly exposed to was gender inequality. Women’s opportunities and livelihoods were strongly dependent on the dominant male figure in their life, due to the fact that in that period there was very few available and accepted forms of employment for women. Stansell claims, “Paid work was sparse and unstable. Laboring women were confined within a patriarchal economy predicated on direct dependence on men” (18). As the work continues, she illustrates these women’s desires to break away from their reliance on men, as well as the avenues they took to achieve this desired independence. To help solidify her
... a feme covert, a dependant. Jeanne Boydston paints a wholly different picture of Eighteenth Century America and women’s involvement in the burgeoning labor market. In The Woman Who Wasn't There: Women's Market Labor and the Transition to Capitalism in the United States Boydston points to the emphasis on household productivity in order to deal with an erratic economy. She tells us that by the mid-eighteenth century the flexible nature of “woman’s work” (which could be done at home, with tools that were readily available) gave rise to the role of wife as “deputy husband”. Though soon the growing linkage between what Boydston calls “independent manhood” and “economic agency” began to overwhelm. There was a reordering of the concept of gender in late eighteenth century America, and the concept of separate spheres that Linda Kerber eloquently debunks began to take hold.
For most women, their only way to survive, economically and socially, was to get married. Women who worked in factories made twenty-seven cents to every man's dollar. Therefore, single women could not make a living and needed to get married. Marriage, defined as two becoming one, caused women to lose their identities and to no longer be treated as people. Women could not divorce their husbands, even if the men impoverished, raped or cheated on them; and they were blamed whenever marital dissatisfaction arose. In the Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms, published in 1888, it states “Whatever have been the cares of the day, greet your husband with a smile when he returns. Make your personal appearance just as beautiful as possible. Let him enter rooms so attractive and sunny that all the recollections of his home, when away from the same, shall attract him back”. While their husbands were out at work, the woman's role was to make the home as physically appealing as possible. Women were confined to their homes, rarely allowed to leave. Wives could have kind and loving husbands, yet still feel the oppression that society had placed on them. Unable to work, to leave their homes, or to vote created an oppressing environment for white middle-class women. A woman’s political voice was tied to their husbands, due to their shared identity. In “The Story of an Hour”, the protagonist, Louise Mallard, felt vast freedom when her husband unexpectedly died. Once they married, they shared an identity; she only lived for him. And upon his death, Louis Mallard allowed to finally live for herself. Although, Louise claimed that she did love her husband and will cry upon seeing his body, the idea of freedom overtakes all her senses. Louise’s conflicted reaction to her husband’s death implies that all marriages are
There are beasts to be fed, cattle to be milked, turf to be carried, whatever the driving rain and the mud; in spring and summer they must help to dig and plant and reap”(Henn.23). By all these duties the women are getting older before their time; at thirty- five obviously their beauty has gone. Nora sees Peggy Cavangh and Mary Brien as symbols of both of the time awaits her, and of the time that passes her by. But above all and beyond all these, the play records that conventional loveless marriages “arranged by matchmakers, dowry balanced against land and cattle”( Henn.23) which is customary in the eastern rural parts of Ireland. “ In no other country in the world is marriage undertaken so late in life, and perhaps in no other country in the world is there so high a proportion of the unmarried. Worse than the number of bachelors and old maids is the custom of deferring marriage until the man is almost sterile and the woman incapable of producing more than one or two children” ( Henn.23). people’s very mentality is opposite to the youthful union. The present system is actually originated because of the stress and poverty of the bygone age. But still regarded as the ideal one. What once was a necessity has become an accepted system. In the rural areas