All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation. By Rebecca Traister. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2016, 339 pp., $10.79 (hardcover). Rebecca Traister examines the sexual, economic, and lives of women during the twenty-first century. She examines the history of unmarried women in the United States to reveal that the concept of a powerful single woman, often perceived as a modern phenomenon, is not a new idea and explores the options, besides traditional marriage, that were historically available to women. Traister is less concerned with the issue of single woman in which there is an increase of unmarried women who have both joined the political and cultural power. Most women don’t stay single but there is an …show more content…
While maintaining a friendship is important they are not always respected by society as the relationship is often affected by a marriage. Traister states,“ Has just been glancing over this note, he thinks I have written to freely” (Traister, 112). Bronte husband seems to be disturbed by the intimacy of Bronte and Nussey friendship in which he threatened Bronte if she didn’t burn the letters of Nussey by not allowing them to see each other. The love between women is so deliberately frightening that it should be destroyed, its relatable for a romantic interest to be jealous, or intimidated by the bond you share with your friend. Having a best friend is not uncommon but, female friendships offer so much more. Not only have women struggled more compared to women who are married because they often don’t have a partner they can fall back on to help which makes it easier to build their own financial needs. These could be women who compete with each other and those who are focused and often a …show more content…
However, Traister doesn’t talk about the female friendships that might not be like being in a heterosexual relation just instead with a friendship. She should’ve accounted the negative approach to friendships. Not all friendships are positive and there aren’t many delightful things about a friendship. Yet not all women’s relationships are positive but instead can be a negative relationship for some individuals. Though Traister focuses the book on the single woman who are graduating from college and are just about to start their careers in their profession. It appears as if she only focuses on one group of single women. Nevertheless, what about the woman who are over forty-five years or older who are divorced and woman who are widowed. There are many women who are over that age who are unmarried. While Traister has many descriptions of people who are starting their careers. There are many individuals who are unmarried and are aging. For example, Traister doesn’t mention any examples of older women and doesn’t mention what are the problems connecting to concerns of older single
May begins by exploring the origins of this "domestic containment" in the 30's and 40's. During the Depression, she argues, two different views of the family competed -- one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were sharply differentiated. Yet, despite the many single women glamorized in popular culture of the 1930's, families ultimately came to choose the latter option. Why? For one, according to May, for all its affirmation of the emancipation of women, Hollywood fell short of pointing the way toward a restructured family that would incorporate independent women. (May p.42) Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, for example, are both forced to choose between independence and a happy domestic life - the two cannot be squared. For another, New Deal programs aimed to raise the male employment level, which often meant doing nothing for female employment. And, finally, as historian Ruth Milkman has also noted, the g...
Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence. By Carol Berkin (New York: Vintage Books, 2006). 194 pp. Reviewed by Melissa Velazquez, October 12, 2015.
In “Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South,” Jacquelyn Hall explains that future generations would need to grapple with the expenses of commercialization and to expound a dream that grasped financial equity and group unanimity and also women’s freedom. I determined the reasons for ladies ' insubordination neither reclassified sexual orientation parts nor overcame financial reliance. I recollected why their craving for the trappings of advancement could obscure into a self-constraining consumerism. I estimated how a belief system of sentiment could end in sexual peril or a wedded lady 's troublesome twofold day. None of that, in any case, should cloud a generation’s legacy. I understand requirements for a standard of female open work, another style of sexual expressiveness, the section of ladies into open space and political battles beforehand cornered by men all these pushed against conventional limitations even as they made new susceptibilities.
...show us that the choices for women in marriage were both limited and limiting in their scope and consequences. As can be seen, it came down to a choice between honoring the private will of the self, versus, honoring the traditions and requirements of society as a whole. Women were subject to the conditions set down by the man of the house and because of the social inequality of women as a gender class; few fought the rope that tied them down to house, hearth, and husband, despite these dysfunctions. They simply resigned themselves to not having a choice.
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Risky Business: Feminism Now and Then.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (Spring 2007): 81-86. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Skinner Keller, Rosemary. Patriotism and the Female Sex: Abigail Adams and the American Revolution. Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1994.
Rosen, Ruth. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America. New York: Viking Penguin, 2000. 196.
Jeanne Wakatuski is a young girl who had to endure a rough childhood. She thought herself American, with a Japanese descent. However, with WWII and the internment camps, Jeanne struggled to in understanding who she really was. It started with Manzanar, at first she knew herself as a Japanese American. Living in Manzanar gave her a new perspective, “It (Manzanar) gradually filled me with shame for being a person, guilty of something enormous enough to deserve that kind of treatment” (Houston and Houston 161). Jeanne faced the problem of being someone who was not wanted or liked in the American society. A good section that shows the discrimination at the time was when Jeanne tried to join the Girl Scouts, which is on page 144. She was turned
The Broke Female The 60’s was certainly a time of women’s curiosity and venture outside of the norm “homemaker” role. Women not only found pleasure in the world, but in themselves as a whole and as a woman. Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown played an important role here as her intent was to guide women - or more specifically the single woman - in her pursuit of independence and pleasure. Sex and the Single Girl most definitely lead the readers on to believe that it was to empower women; even to break away from the norm and advocate the unattached female. My response will focus on the contradictory nature the guidebook, and other literature like Cosmopolitan, create when advising a woman to do and be something on the one hand while having an underlying message on the other.
Robert Kuttner, the author of “The Politics of Family” also believes that women should not only be the caretaker but whatever they want in a career. Robert Kuttner’s text does support Stephanie Coontz’ arguments about the issues related to traditional values and modernity in American families during the beginning of 1890 and how they have changed and need to be changed in order for families to have strong bonds with each other, especially women who need more freedom to choose their own lifestyle. During this generation people reveal everything to the society. They are open about premarital sexuality, birth control and they don’t hide anything from the society.
... 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.
Hewitt, Nancy. "Beyond the Search for Sisterhood: American Women's History in the 1980's."Social History. Vol. 10: No. 3 (1985): 299-321
The late nineteenth century was a critical time in reshaping the rights of women. Commonly this era is considered to be the beginning of what is know to western feminists as “first-wave feminism.” First-wave feminism predominately fought for legal rights such as suffrage, and property rights. A major hallmark of first-wave feminism is the concept of the “New Woman.” The phrase New Woman described educated, independent, career oriented women who stood in response to the idea of the “Cult of Domesticity,” that is the idea that women are meant to be domestic and submissive (Stevens 27).
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator and her husband John can be seen as strong representations of the effects society’s stereotypical gender roles as the dominant male and submissive female have within a marriage. Because John’s wife takes on the role as the submissive female, John essentially controlled all aspects of his wife’s life, resulting in the failure of the couple to properly communicate and understand each other. The story is intended to revolve around late 19th century America, however it still occurs today. Most marriages still follow the traditional gender stereotypes, potentially resulting in a majority of couples to uphold an unhealthy relationship or file for divorce. By comparing the “The yellow wallpaper” with the article “Eroticizing Inequality in the United States: The Consequences and Determinants of Traditional Gender Role Adherence in Intimate Relationships”, the similarities between the 19th century and 21st century marriage injustice can further be examined. If more couples were able to separate the power between the male and female, America would have less unhappy marriages and divorces.
In her essay, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret Fuller discusses the state of marriage in America during the 1800‘s. She is a victim of her own knowledge, and is literally considered ugly because of her wisdom. She feels that if certain stereotypes can be broken down, women can have the respect of men intellectually, physically, and emotionally. She explains why some of the inequalities exist in marriages around her. Fuller feels that once women are accepted as equals, men and women will be able achieve a true love not yet known to the people of the world.