During The Second Great Awakening, the legal rights of men and women were greatly influenced by gender and race. Paul Johnson and Simon Wilentz’s book, The Kingdom of Matthias, describes the life of two young women, Isabella Van Wagenen and Isabella Matthews Laisdell, both of whom men’s power effected. During the nineteenth century, men were the “backbone” of the family; the men made the money, supported, and provided for the family. Throughout the era, women were nothing more than housewives. A woman’s daily job was to cook, clean, and care for the children. The views of motherhood changed over time as the mothers began bearing fewer children. This alteration was made with the intentions of showing each child more attention with the hopes that the family would rise in social standard and class. There are extreme cases of women's social and spiritual roles changing in The Kingdom of Matthias (Kelly, Dustin). The rising market shaped the rights and freedoms of the women in society. Matthias thought that the increasing rights of women degraded his rights as a man and as a laborer (Fiorini, 3/27).
Matthias had always claimed that the world was a man's world, and he declared that women were evil and a man's distraction from God. Matthias’ prophecies claimed, “there would be no market, no money, no buying or selling, no wage system with its insidious domination of one father over another, no economic depression of any kind” and that, "everything that has the smell of women, will be destroyed and only real men will be saved; all mock men will be damned (Johnson and Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias, 93)”. Before the contributing factors to women’s status change,–The Market Revolution and The Second Great Awakening–they lived exceptionall...
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...hey actually had a say on some decisions (Warder, Graham, Dr.). These changes all made Matthias furious; he still believed that men were all powerful. During this era, the two genders-male and female- became only more equal.
During the nineteenth century and The Second Great Awakening, the rising market and the changing of women’s roles in society began affecting everything around society. Before the growth of the women’s roles, Matthias and the rest of the men in the community had control over the women, but as the women began gaining freedoms, the men lost their complete control over the ladies, and Matthias began to feel as if his rights as a man and as a laborer had been taken away (Fiorini, 3/10). The book’s has a strong relation to women’s rights during the era of The Second Great Awakening and the equality between men and women during the nineteenth century.
During this time period women were not respected at all and were belittled by all med in their lives. Even though men don’t appreciate what women they still did as they were told. In particular, “Women have an astoundingly long list of responsibilities and duties – th...
...s would act upon women in many different ways from beating them or with sexual activities on a regular basis. These acts of misogyny, trying to keep them only doing household chores while verbally degrading them could be known as just a small bump in the progression towards women’s rights and could be a lead example on why women should have rights. Matthias was however able to make his followers believe in his religion and grasp the beliefs and to go against the progression of women’s rights. The ‘kingdom’ eventually fell because the way society was growing during the Second Great Awakening and the Market Revolution; it gave women the chance to have power to incorporate them into society respectively.
In The Kingdom of Matthias by Johnson and Wilentz, the authors clearly show the significance that the historical events had on the larger economic, social, and religious changes occurring in the United States during the 1820s and 1830s. Both social hierarchy and gender played a large role in the changes during that time period. The effect of the large differences in gender roles exhibited in the The Kingdom of Matthias is still visible and relevant in America’s society today.
Matthias enforced this belief in his home by abusing his wife to make her fear him. But his wife, Margaret, was tough and didn’t believe her husband was any more powerful than she was. These actions caused Matthias to despite women, which grew more and more as he became older. Once he created his Kingdom later in his life, he made clear his feelings toward women in that they were nothing better than maids and sexual subjects to men. He forced strict rules on women that they were only to cook, clean and take care of the family while the man went out and did the “important work”.
Today, women and men have equal rights, however, not long ago men believed women were lower than them. During the late eighteenth century, men expected women to stay at home and raise children. Women were given very few opportunities to expand their education past high school because colleges and universities would not accept females. This was a loss for women everywhere because it took away positions of power for them. It was even frowned upon if a woman showed interest in medicine or law because that was a man’s place, not a woman’s, just like it was a man’s duty to vote and not a woman’s.
Women, like black slaves, were treated unequally from the male before the nineteenth century. The role of the women played the part of their description, physically and emotionally weak, which during this time period all women did was took care of their household and husband, and followed their orders. Women were classified as the “weaker sex” or below the standards of men in the early part of the century. Soon after the decades unfolded, women gradually surfaced to breathe the air of freedom and self determination, when they were given specific freedoms such as the opportunity for an education, their voting rights, ownership of property, and being employed.
Men and women were seen to live in separate social class from the men where women were considered not only physically weaker, but morally superior to men. This meant that women were the best suited for the domestic role of keeping the house. Women were not allowed in the public circle and forbidden to be involved with politics and economic affairs as the men made all the
Throughout most of recorded history, women generally have endured significantly fewer career opportunities and choices, and even less legal rights, than that of men. The “weaker sex,” women were long considered naturally, both physically and mentally, inferior to men. Delicate and feeble minded, women were unable to perform any task that required muscular or intellectual development. This idea of women being inherently weaker, coupled with their natural biological role of the child bearer, resulted in the stereotype that “a woman’s place is in the home.” Therefore, wife and mother were the major social roles and significant professions assigned to women, and were the ways in which women identified and expressed themselves. However, women’s history has also seen many instances in which these ideas were challenged-where women (and some men) fought for, and to a large degree accomplished, a re-evaluation of traditional views of their role in society.
Women spent majority of their day ironing, washing clothes, baking, sewing clothes and raising their children (page 17). Religion also added to women’s lesser status (page 18). Religion was at the core life of Americans, female submission was decreed to be part of God’s order (page 18). Lucretia Mott soon pointed out that many scriptures celebrated female strength and independence (page 18). As a young girl Elizabeth Cady Stanton learned about laws that limited rights of wives and as an adult found ways to reform marriage and divorce laws (page 23). Things were looking up for women, by 1850 female wage workers made up nearly a quarter of the manufacturing labor work force (page 30). Women were still excluded from occupations such as the military, ministry, law, medicine and jobs felt inappropriate for women (page 32). During this antebellum period women were starting to rise up and realize they deserved to have the same rights and privileges men received. This gave women hope that things could change. By the second quarter of the 19th century few positive changes for women pushed Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B Anthony, Lucy Stone and others to challenge injustices and reform efforts (page
As the years dragged on in the new nation the roles of men and women became more distinct and further apart for one another. Women were not allowed to go anywhere in public without an escort, they could not hold a position in office let allow vote, and they could only learn the basics of education (reading, writing, and arithmetic). In law the children belonged to the husband and so did the wife’s property and money. The only job women could think about having was being a ‘governess’ which would give other women education.
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 ...
The Kingdom of Matthias is a collection of history that seeks to inform on the story of Robert Matthews, who later adopted the name Matthias the Prophet. The story also sets forth to describe the socioeconomic state of the United States during which the rise of cults was rampant. It also lays the groundwork and establishes the framework for which modern day cults are viewed.
The book became a great source of information for me, which explained the difficulties faced by women of the mentioned period. The author succeeded to convince me that today it is important to remember the ones who managed to change the course of history. Contemporary women should be thankful to the processes, which took place starting from the nineteenth century. Personally, I am the one believing that society should live in terms of equality. It is not fair and inhuman to create barriers to any of the social members.
Scholz, S. (2014). Feminist Scholarship on the Old Testament: Introduction. Available: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361-0020.xml. Last accessed 19th March 2014.
The result of this was an alteration of society 's relation to nature. The text goes over the change of role for women due to this alteration, and it argues that women have always taken part in domestic labour before it was being eroded by technological advances. (Green 60) Schreiner explains through the text that industrial expansion was a huge factor in reducing and restricting the traditional roles of the female body: “For the present, we see no such natural and spontaneous division of labor based on natural sexual distinctions in the new fields of intellectual or delicately skilled manual labor, which are taking the place of the old.” (160-61) This portrays the access of labour through an appeal to the detrimental effects of technological progress for a women in the early twentieth-century. (Green 60) The “place of old” became elusive, and was taken over by the new. The female body was becoming degenerated as a whole by this technological growth. (Green 60) The text again displayed the constraint that these technological