No matter the era there have been rights that have been taken away from one person or another. This can be seen heavily during the Victorian Era-- around the time that Pride and Prejudice was published. One of the bigger movements in that era relate to women’s rights. They didn’t have any sort of rights, they couldn’t own property, couldn’t become employed, and much more. These rights affected women’s self values, they became less confident which influenced their actions. This made them think of what to do and how to get it done. Later on women started to actually do what they were thinking which caused society to rethink about the legal rights given to women.
Women were highly pressured by society to be the best woman possible-- that primarily meant marrying a person you hardly know and keep a smile on your face the whole time. For example in Pride and Prejudice marriage is highly sought after throughout the book, although it can become a controversy like when Mr. Bennet tells Elizabeth that “an unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins,” (pg. 52). Women were pressured by law that once you get married you basically become your husbands property, as where all their things now belonged to their husband and if anything happened to him you’d be left with nothing. Just that alone is very disheartening which can already bring down your self esteem. Now add the fact that women couldn’t get jobs for they were either full or they didn’t want a woman doing anything a man can do for men are superior than women according to law. So the goal of the family was to have each of the daughters married off to a goo...
... middle of paper ...
... something, change it. Eventually it will happen, you just can’t give up after the first no. You have to try again and again, but we don’t let anything stop us. It may take some time but that feeling will be the feeling of hope, triumph, achievement, and the knowing that you’ve forever changed the future is a feeling will never be forgotten. Everything is a chain reaction, it starts with what you feel and goes into what you can go about it and then goes on to actually creating a break in that chain and starting a new era.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice. New York Modern Library. 1995. Print.
Wojtczak, Helena. "Women's Status in Mid-19th Century." English Women's History. Hastings Press, Web.
United Kingdom Parliament. "Women's Property Act, 1882."Http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1882/75/pdfs/ukpga_18820075_en.pdf. Legislation.gov, n.d. Web.
Although it can be said that seeing as women had no rights during the time period, why not have them serve their husbands as a primary goal. Women usually were less educated, had restrictions on trades that they may practice and limited job opportunities. (S.V. Rosser, 2008 p23) They also were considered to be too young at the time of marriage to know what is best for them so their parents chose their suitor. In fact, one could say if the girl is too young to know what is best for he, should she marry at that age in the first place? Although work was not always strenuous for wives of wealthy suitors, they should have their own lives within the marriage like their husband and not have to constantly please them and have their own lives dictated to...
Gaining woman 's rights and establishing woman suffrage were the obstacles that woman activists of the nineteenth century faced back then. Women 's rights are said to be universal and that means that it concerns all women. Most of the policies and laws in the nineteenth century highlighted the importance of men and their rights. However, women strived and struggled to fight for their rights. There was a similar group of people who fought for their rights who were African Americans. Voting rights and worker recognition was the main focus of women, as well as African Americans. Moreover, women 's rights and abolition often clashed together, but both events worked together as women were supporters of abolition. There were numerous rights that
In the 1920's women's roles were soon starting to change. After World War One it was called the "Jazz Age", known for new music and dancing styles. It was also known as the "Golden Twenties" or "Roaring Twenties" and everyone seemed to have money. Both single and married women we earning higher- paying jobs. Women were much more than just staying home with their kids and doing house work. They become independent both financially and literally. Women also earned the right to vote in 1920 after the Nineteenth Amendment was adopted. They worked hard for the same or greater equality as men and while all this was going on they also brought out a new style known as the flapper. All this brought them much much closer to their goal.
(i) Women were limited regarding the responsibility for, obliging them to wed in order to acquire, hence keeping them from achieving genuine autonomy (it is this issue which practices proto-women 's activist scholars like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë). (ii) Women did not have full rights over their own particular body, which implied they had no lawful security against sexual viciousness (e.g. the possibility that a spouse could assault his better half was not conceded as law until late in the twentieth century). (iii) Women were victimized in the working environment, which not just implied ladies were paid not as much as men for the same work, it additionally confined them from applying for certain occupations, denied them advancement, and made no stipend for maternity take off. A considerable lot of these issues hold on
For a very long time, men always had a higher status than women. In marriages during the beginning of the 1900s, men were dominant over their wives. They were the providers and the leaders of their families.(Bernstein, 2011) For women, their main goal in life was to get married to a man that could provide for them financially. Women did not attend college or have careers, so having a man asking for their hand in marriage was a need and a privilege. Originally, marriage contracts stated that any property that the woman owned automatically became his once they were married. (Bernstein, 2011) Even though marriage contracts were changed so that women could own their own property and they gained the right to vote in 1920, women were still looked down upon. (Bernstein, 2011) Until the 1980s, rape within marriages was legal because technically it was the wife’s job to have sex with her husband. (Bernstein, 2011) Women literally only seen as something for men to marry so they had someone provide them with children and to take care of them
18th and 19th Century Attitudes Towards Women From the author of both sources we can immediately gather that they both relate to middle-class women. Working class women were on the whole illiterate, as they were offered no education, so therefore would not be purchasing, 'The Magazine of Domestic Economy'. For Florence Nightingale to be able to write diaries, this demanded a middle-class upbringing. With the ability of hindsight, we know that Florence Nightingale was a very unusual woman, as the, 'Lady with the Lamp' tendered to many injured soldiers in the Crimean war. Despite experiencing the nurturing into being the 'typical woman', such as attending tea parties and presenting yourself respectably as a lady, she seems bored by this monotonous routine, as suggested when she finishes her entry with the sentence, "And that is all."
Many groups (e.g. industrial workers, farmers, women, good government advocates, journalists, immigrants, socialists) reacted against the concentration of economic and political power in fewer and fewer hands between 1865 and 1990. What did each of these groups want (i.e. agenda)? Looking at the records of presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as prior presidents, assess how each of these groups succeeded in achieving these aims from 1880 to 1920.
Women were confronted by many social obligation in the late nineteenth century. Women were living lives that reflected their social rank. They were expected to be economically dependent and legally inferior. No matter what class women were in, men were seen as the ones who go to work and make the money. That way, the women would have to be dependent since they were not able to go to work and make a good salary. No matter what class a woman was in, she could own property in her own name. When a woman became married she " lost control of any property she owned, inherited, or earned" ( Kagan et al. 569). A woman's legal identity was given to her husband.
In the nineteenth century, the United States didn’t have as much freedom, equality, protection from the government, and freedom of speech. The United States showed a highly discrimination on race, gender, religion, and disability status. Numerous people for example, African Americans were treated unequal than the white individuals due to race. The white individuals have more power than the African Americans because they were more interested in protecting the laws that makes them more powerful. In contrast, African Americans were slaves, they didn’t have the right to vote, and they are unequal than white individuals. The United States created civil rights and civil liberties, so that the world will be equal. Civil rights guarantees equal treatment in society by the government officials regarding to public rights, the judicial system, and public programs. Civil liberties establish freedom of speech, the right to vote, marry, and privacy. The congress passed numerous laws that will help subordinate inequality in the United States under the Bill of Rights and was passed after the Constitution. Some amendments that showed inequality in the United States
towards African Americans are presented in number of works of scholars from all types of divers
Marriage is problematic for women more than it is for men. Women are submissive while men dominant. This dominance given to men give them total control over the activities in which their wives participate. Women often occupy their time with activities in their homes and family. During the early 1900s, women are discriminated against; they aren 't expected to work. They aren 't allowed to talk finances or to make financial decisions. Women are to depend on the men in their life. Women are not independent, the jobs they have are their motherly and wifely duties. With these duties, men are available and able to have an extramarital affair. Therefore, women face more difficulties in a marriage because they never had the chance to be heard.
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.
Women roles have changed drastically in the last 50 to 80 years, women no longer have to completely conform to society’s gender roles and now enjoy the idea of being individuals. Along with the evolution of women roles in society, women presence and acceptance have drastically grown in modern literature. In early literature it was common to see women roles as simply caretakers, wives or as background; women roles and ideas were nearly non-existent and was rather seen than heard. The belief that women were more involved in the raising of children and taking care of the household was a great theme in many early literatures; women did not get much credit for being apart of the frontier and expansion of many of the nations success until much later.
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.
Throughout the early 1800s, British women most often were relegated to a subordinate role in society by their institutionalized obligations, laws, and the more powerfully entrenched males. In that time, a young woman’s role was close to a life of servitude and slavery. Women were often controlled by the men in their lives, whether it was a father, brother or the eventual husband. Marriage during this time was often a gamble; one could either be in it for the right reasons, such as love, or for the wrong reasons, such as advancing social status. In 19th century Britain, laws were enacted to further suppress women and reflected the societal belief that women were supposed to do two things: marry and have children. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen portrayed a women’s struggle within a society that stresses the importance of marriage and strict behavioral customs. As evidenced by the Bennett daughters: Elizabeth and Jane, as well as Charlotte Collins, marriage for young women was a pursuit that dominated their lives.