...In the past, women have been subject to the “cult of domesticity.” This ideal lasted for centuries and ensnared women within a value system created by society that defined what a woman’s role should be. The cult presented women with four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. In the ages when these ideals were held at a high standard, works of literature written during this time reflected the societal standard. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, various essays, and our culture also depict the cult of domesticity that still exists regardless of the success of the feminist movements throughout history and in present day; meanwhile, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is a great example of women who lived within the “cult...
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...Necks of the 1800s: The Influence of the Powerless in Uncle Tom’s Cabin In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a movie about a woman that goes against tradition to marry a man of another religion, there is a scene in which the main character and her mother have the following conversation: Toula: Ma, Dad is so stubborn. What he says goes. [Quoting her father,] “Ah, the man is the head of the house!” Maria (mother): Let me tell you something, Toula. The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants (IMDb). During the 19th century, one had to be a white male in order to hold any official power or influence in society. Women, as well as African Americans, had little to no economic or political power until the...
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...beauty in women is still shown to this day where women have to wear heels and other painful beauty tools, showing a continuation from the past. Another continuation in the gender ideologies can be seen in Britain with the Cult of Domesticity. This was a value system that told women how to live and act telling them their role in society and what they should do to appease the men of their household. This can be seen in how women were expected to act and have the domestic life settled in Britain. Women must have a quiet home ready for when their husband returns from work. The roles of women in these societies centered on childcare, housekeeping, and supervising servants in the household. Another example of how gender roles affected the life of women was shown in Latin America which had patriarchal families. This is shown by the belief that teaching women to read and write would corrupt them and is furthered by the lack of opportunities for women in education. The oldest male made most of the decisions in the household. This continued to his death in which the males would inherit items and not the wife. Women had little rights which continued all throughout the time frame. Because of the lowered status with women due to the cult of domesticity, women tended to be more sociable in their own circles versus doing work with their husbands and socializing with the men. This reserved nature of women only helped to further lessen their stature in these societies. Women would...
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...Calisthenics employed democratic rhetoric to motivate the idea that the self-improvement of women through regular, controlled exercise would better the nation as a whole. By taking this approach, calisthenics both upheld gendered stereotypes while simultaneously threatening the distinction between the public and private domains. Framing exercise as necessary for Republican Motherhood places calisthenics in conversation with the cult of domesticity. Women were expected to maintain their fitness for the sake of those around them; it would supposedly make them better equipped to serve as birthers and caregivers. These assumptions accordingly reinforced the patriarchal structure of the home by cementing the domestic roles and responsibilities of...
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...aWorks Cited Buchanan, NiCole T., Isis H. Settles, and Krystle C. Woods. "Comparing Sexual Harassment Subtypes Among Black and White Women By Military Rank: Double Jeopardy, The Jezebel, and the Cult of True Womanhood." Psychology of Women Quarterly 32 (2008): 347-361. Buell, Sarah Josepha. "Publishers' Bindings Online: From Domestic Goddesses to Suffragists.” Publishers Bindings Online. http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/gallery/women.html (accessed October 31, 2011). Buell, Sarah Josepha. "Publishers' Bindings Online: From Domestic Goddesses to Suffragists." Publishers' Bindings Online. http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/gallery/women.html (accessed October 31, 2011). Davidson, James West, and Mark H. Lytle. After the fact: the art of historical detection. 2nd ed. New York: Knopf:, 1986. Hurner, Sheryl. "Discursive Identity Formation of Suffrage Women: Reframing the "Cult of True Womanhood" Through Song." Western Journal of Communication 70 (2006): 234-260. Irons, Charles F.. ""The Cult of Domesticity, Southern Style.” Reviews in American History 38 (2010): 253-258. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/rah/summary/v038/38.2.irons.html (accessed September 21, 2011). Meyerowitz, Joanne. "Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946-1958,." Journal of American History 79 (1993): 78-83. Meyers, Andrew. "Columbia American History Online." Columbia American History Online. http://caho-test.cc.columbia.edu/pcp/14104.html (accessed October 31, 2011). Roberts, Mary Louise...
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...free black man, and his point of view was likely influenced by his own experience as a black man in the United States. By showing support for this reform movement, he was able to exercise some of his limited social and political freedom through his limited freedom of speech in order to help other black people attain their own freedoms. Alongside black people, women also fought for equal social and political rights. Many women at the time sought after the right to vote and become more educated at the time, with some even advocating for full independence from the men in their lives (Doc 6). Even many women who did not support independence from men still supported the movement for women’s suffrage. The Cult of Domesticity was a very widely held idea at the time. The Cult of Domesticity was the idea that women should stay inside the traditional gender roles of homemaking and childcare. Even within this sphere, however, many women still pushed for political equality, even if they did not fully want the social equality aspect. Many women believed that the ability to vote would help them be better mothers to not only their children, but to America as a whole. Therefore, these documents help show that the Age of Reform was largely democratic reform. Another democratic reform was the push for equal economic opportunity. It was widely believed at the time that equal access to school and education would provide all children an equal opportunity to enter the workforce in the future. For many...
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...Philipps-Universität Marburg FB 10: Fremdsprachliche Philologien Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Class: Academic Writing | Instructor: Dr. Johanna Heil The House in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Ambivalence or Brilliance? Name: Anas Asmaeil Module: Literary Studies: History Semesters Studied: 1 Address: Adam-Krafft.7, 35039, Marburg Email: Shoqarqwa@hotmail.com Date of Submission: February 29, 2016 Student ID: 2739275 Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 1 2. [Main Part I] 2.1 Gothic Element 2.2 Feminism 3. Conclusion 1 [Bibliography] 1. Introduction: “All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.” By Georg Eliot It goes without saying that the more one ponders upon the masterpiece written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the more compelled one finds themselves to, not only reverence what she brought forth, but to also acclaim the diverse interpretations one can come up with of a text written well over a century ago. The story talks about a woman who is diagnosed with "temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency" (Gilman 1) and thus is sentenced by her physician to a rest cure. Following her husband’s and doctor’s orders, her suffering grows worse and worse and signs of depression, anxiety and dissociation manifest, quite the opposite of what was supposed to happen. Having the ability to scare and horrify the reader, this unique story had been considered as a classic...
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...The argument that the 1950s were an era of social conformity can have some solidarity mostly because of the spread of conformed lifestyles (via journalism and other media outlets) and the social movements that arose because of them. During this time, people did strive for a sense universal conformity in society. This placed demand on every member of the family to uphold themselves to a certain standard. In many ways it was an effort for the continuations of the cult of domesticity over females. This was noticed in Document 9, The Feminine Mystique, especially. Betty Friedan aimed to utilized the demands strictly place on women to further her notion that women were being suppressed. This document would later serve as a foundation to a new wave...
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...As the Americas started to grown there is evidence of different cultures and developments depending which part of the colonies you look at. Throughout the colonies there was a number of people who had farmed and saw agriculture as something that they could make a living in, using slaves a free labor. Slaves were however seen more in the south in the early 1800’s then in the northern towns. In the south cotton was a fast-growing business that needed many workers at hard at all times. Many of the slaves in the south how worked in large plantations were treated more harshly than slaves in smaller plantations. In the north, however, slavery was not evident. People who lived in the countryside regularly had farmed and sold their products to...
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...IDENTIFICATIONS * Manifest Destiny * Cotton Gin * American System of Manufacturers * Bartleby the Scrivener Market Revolution * Early 1800’s-1860 * Era of “Good Feeling” * From 1812, there is only one political party: democratic- republicans * Reassembles Hamilton’s view of America * Changes everything about how Americans work * Challenges ideas of freedom The Change * Before the Market Revolution work was done at home controlled by individuals, regulated by daylight. * Introduces the concept of “going to work” * Lays the foundation for modern America Transportation and Technology * Roads, railroads, steamboats, canals. Telegraph * Previously transporting between US cities was an expensive as shipping overseas * Production was local * No standardization, no connection Examples: * 1806 congress approved road from Cumberland, MD to Illinois * 1807, steamboat tested, made transportation upstream possible * 1825 Erie Canal-upstate New York connected to the Great Lakes * 1830’s telegraph developed * 1837 3000 miles of canal * For decades huge tracts of land go to railroad companies THE GROWING WEST * Between 1790 and 1840 4.5 million people move west of Appalachians * Between 1815 and 1821 six new states entered the Union: Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, and Maine * Southerners with slaves moved into a new Cotton Kingdom * Alabama, Mississippi...
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...The Family Sphere: The Changing Role of Women in the Home HIS 310 American Women's History Instructor: Dr. Cheryl Lemus April 18, 2016 Dr. Barbara Welter penned an influential article in 1966 titled “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860” which shed light on the often restrictive family sphere of existence within which, most American women throughout history had dwelt. According to Welter, true womanhood held that women were designed exclusively for the roles of wife and mother and were expected to cultivate Piety, Purity, Submissiveness, and Domesticity in all their relations (para.2). The Cult of True Womanhood, the idealized sainted mother, unconditional devotee of her husband and children, and the core power within the home still exists in the minds of many American men and women and seems to be an intrinsic part of our shared history. The ideal of the sphere of the American women and her relationship to the family evolved as the colonization of the United States evolved. When the first settlers arrived, women held a much more equitable role, laboring alongside the men to establish the country’s first settlements. As the initial settlements grew, the women who had proved vital in their creation were expected to lay down their hammers and saws and return to the family sphere. The supposition being that the return of the American woman to the family sphere was a returning to of them to their natural roles. She would leave the public sphere and revert to the more domestic...
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...Sociology & Family Theorizing and Researching 1. Structural Theories a) Materialism & Conflict theory Marx & Engles -changes in family lives reflect material change (ex, the mode of production, industrialization) macro-micro focus -power differences characterize society at all levels (ex, capitalism creates: exploitation of men in the workforce; oppression of women b) Political Economy -assumes the power of the one class over another (social control), capitalist relations of production -a more concentrated focus on how economic and political processes shape society and history and therefore family, families c) Structural Functionalism Parsons & Bales -the social institution of the family - family is seen as a function, and different parts of society helps it move along -the nuclear family performs functions -they saw the families as a main faction, economic support, these functions that happen in nuclear families include economic support -equilibrium, all parts help it work as a whole -hierarchical generations and role specialization within families produces harmony -the different roles that men and women take on, allows the family be a harmony -parsons and bales, gendered perspective on families, families having instrumental roles such as achieving income, feed the family, cloth the family, this would be men 2. Symbolic Interactionism Mead & Cooley - individuals create their own family realities through micro level interactions -from...
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...bringing up topics such as equal distribution of land and paper currency (Doc. G). Women’s rights was also a topic that came up at times during the Revolution. To be more clear, women were looked down upon and it was not expected of them to contribute at all, and to just “leave it to the men.” Women made it very clear during the American Revolution that they could stand their ground and contribute in a beneficial way (Doc. A). Women contributed in ways such as serving as aids, nurses, spies, and they also helped raise morale and keep spirits up during difficult trials faced in the war. As a result, social change occured as women gained a new sort of respect, and outshined the dull stereotype of being in the kitchen all day, also known as the Cult of...
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...government’s and society’s way of treating the mentally ill. In 1841, Dix began her journey in helping fight for the mentally ill who were kept in prisons, homes, and almshouses. Traveling to New Hampshire, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Europe Dix documented all the prisons she went to and the treatment of people who were not criminals. Once she gathered her data she went to the Massachusetts legislature in order to petition a grant for a state insane asylum. Her famous primary source was her written petition. Dorothea Dix’s petition to the legislature was significant being that she was a woman in the 1800s and that she impacted the way we treat mentally insane people today. In the late 19th century the “Cult of Domesticity” was the women’s God given right to work for her children and her husband. While women were in charge of staying true to Protestant beliefs some couldn’t help but see the opportunities in factories and education. Like Dorothea Dix, she challenged the limits by trying to be recognized by an all male courtroom to present her ideas and findings on how she can help the mentally ill. The psychotic were viewed as placed in that illness because they did something that did not please God. In a time where religion and gender greatly influenced all decisions, it was crazy to have a woman writing on behalf of the people who had wronged Christ. After working on her case for two years it was rewarding when she got her expansion of the asylum...
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...did, they would be called wicked or evil and be negatively judged by society. During the colonial era, women played an important, if restricted role in work and religious life. During the eighteen century, women were portrayed as weak, unintelligent, and inferior to men. As one minister stated “the woman is weak creature not endowed with like strength and constancy of mind.” (America 70) Women were seen as the “feebler vessels,” not as strong physically or spiritually as men and less emotionally stable. Women of the colonial era were expected to be devoted, passive, powerless, meek, graceful, sympathetic, and above all pure. As a matter of fact, the term “Cult of Womanhood” was an ancient ideology in the eighteen century defining women as pillars of virtue, who represent the value of pity, submissiveness, and domesticity. The role of the women was to be obedient, submissive, devoted to their husbands, and taking care of the children. That way of thinking was very common during that time. Because of those beliefs, the term “Angels in the House” the popular Victorian image of the ideal wife was well known and well applied by women. All of their rights were denied by men and society. They could not vote, preach, and go to public schools or colleges. They could not take part in legal activities on their own behalf, and the...
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