The New England Women s Gender Roles - 950 Words

1.Historian Nancy Scott focuses on the New England women’s gender roles. A two-fold role, Domesticity and Feminism. A paradox in â€Å"progress† of women’s history in the United States of 1830’s. â€Å"New England women in 1835 endured subordination to men in marriage and society, profound disadvantage in education and in the economy, denial of access to official power in the churches that they populated, and virtual impotence in politics. A married woman had no legal existence apart from her husband’s†. Women had no voting and inheritance rights. Widows and single women with property had to submit to taxation without being represented. In economy they had second-class position. Those who worked earned one-fourth to one-half to men for†¦show more content†¦It also contained within itself the preconditions for organized feminism, by allotting a â€Å"separate† sphere for women and engendering sisterhood within that spher e. It assigned women a â€Å"vocation†, comparable to men’s vocation’s, but also implying in woman’s case, a unique sexual solidarity†. 2.The ideology of southern women’s domesticity developed both out of social and economic changes of late eighteenth century and the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth centuries. White middle-class Americans lives got complex with economic diversity. Men took jobs into factories and businesses, away from homes into new developing cities of the North. This robbed southern women of work like weaving, spinning, make candle, wax and soap etc. From producer they became consumer. They were to create an uplifting home environment for their husband’s return. â€Å"A Cardinal tenet of the ideology of domesticity and what made it attractive to so many white middle-class women held that women were morally superior to men. The ideology of domesticity articulated in the south confirmed for white southerners their regional superiority and the virtues of their racial beliefs and Institutions. This ideology also helped them to articulate the characteristics of the ideal woman†. (Source-2) Southern writer’s repeatedly told women how to behave to guarantee a happy marriage. Women were expected to be not only good wives but also responsible for turning their husbands