Women – Popular Politics in Early America

November 14, 2013

Similarities Amongst Women and Other Minority Groups in the U.S.

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In his post, Lamoureux states that “I think a feminist is going to want to see women achieve some form of social success before a black man every time that decision is presented.” While I agree with Lamoureux that the feminist cause for gender equality must be understood in different terms than African American’s fight for racial equality, but can these two movements truly be seen as completely separate? After all, weren’t both of these groups denied citizenship, and the right to vote? Weren’t they both discriminated when it came to their occupation? Dubois highlights the similarities between the two group when she states “Citizenship represented a relation-ship to the larger society that was entirely and explicitly outside the boundaries of women’s familial relations. As citizens and voters, women would participate directly in society as individuals, not indirectly through their subordinate positions as wives and mothers.” It seems that in this sentence “women” can easily be interchanged with nearly any other minority group that has encountered discrimination and not given the right to vote or citizenship. That is not to say, of course, that the movement for women suffrage was identical to the Civil Rights movement and other minority moments, but simply that these movements cannot be looked at individually because common elements are shared amongst the various movements. While African Americans and other minority groups were discriminated on the color of their skin, women were discriminated through the manipulation of the public and private sphere, but yet, both acts of discrimination held the white man as more “able” while also denying work to these groups on the basis of their race or their gender. So while Lamoureux was right to say that some women at the time may have wished to attain freedom before Africans Americans, because they believed being white made them superior, I also think a good number of women felt that their movement was intertwined with other movements for rights and freedoms. Only these minority groups (African Americans, Jews, Indian American) could truly understand the white male dominated world in which these women lived, with all rights stripped away exhibited in their inability to attain citizenship or even the right to vote.

November 13, 2013

Public v. Private

I was mainly going to analyze and critique Ellen Dubois’ argument in her work, The Radicalism of the Women Suffrage Movement: Notes toward the Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Feminism, however; after reading some of these previous blog posts I felt the need to at the least comment on what I read. As someone who does not have much historical knowledge or background of the Feminist movement or really anything revolving Feminism in general, I figured much of the people in class (all boys) would use the blog post to comment on author’s argument’s credibility or even possibly a critique of the more historiographical approach by author Jonathon Earie, yet I was surprisingly mistaken. To keep it brief, I will comment on Mike Lamo’s post and some of the comments he himself makes and others that he disapproves of. I 100% agree with Mike when he argues that women such as Abigail Adams should not go over looked in their earlier efforts to promote the women’s voice. The works we read do not detail the first essential step in the women’s movement but grow the audience and take vital steps for the movement’s advancement. Furthermore, I agree with Mike that the dynamic discussed in Henry where the woman needed to establish herself in the private sphere first before the public sphere needs to be flushed out because I am not sold on that view.

Now to my critique of Ellen Dubois, like I stated earlier, I have no previous background to the Feminist movement and believe this limited knowledge keeps me from appropriately commenting on the points made in either scholarship read, so instead I will analyze the credibility of Dubois’ argument. Her approach revolves around the claim that the demand for the vote was the most radical program for women’s emancipation possible in the nineteenth century. She states, “My hypothesis is that the significance of the woman suffrage movement rested precisely on the fact that it bypassed women’s oppression within the family, or private sphere, and demanded instead her admission to citizenship, and through it admission to the public arena” (63). I believe Dubois’ argument and agree with what she says because she does a nice job at laying out previous contributions to the field as well as effectively explains her points and provides a legitimate outside example with the contrast to the more popular Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

My first concern was why the women’s movement saw a drastic turn to the public sphere. She right on cue, details the emergence of a sharp distinction between the family and society in the nineteenth century. Detailing the new two forms of social organization, Dubois explains the revolutionary possibility of a new way to relate to society not defined by their position within the family (64). She then provides historical background to the familial relations at the time with writing on the subservient household women and then adds that Suffragists accepted this role but refused to concede that it prohibited them from participation in the public sphere. Dubois then brings in previous established authors such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton to add to her argument, only continuing to reinforce her view in my opinion.

After she states that enfranchisement was the key demand of 19^th century feminists, she provides anti-suffrage voices and begins to solidify her argument in my mind. Providing the anti-suffrage voice, Dubois I believe, nicely disproves the family focused view and introduces why the movement remained a minority. By detailing the success of the WCTU and their ability to capture a wider audience of women, Dubois’ argument gained some strength in my opinion and made her view distinct from others previous. She finally solidifies her argument in my mind by concluding with, “Yet, the very fact that the WCTU had to come to terms with suffrage and eventually supported it indicates that the woman suffrage movement had succeeded in becoming the defining focus of 19^th century feminism, with respect to which all organized female protest had to orient itself” (69). In all, after reading Dubois and not having any previous knowledge, I do believe she provides a historically backed claim that shows some different thinking then previous familial heavy authors.

November 13, 2013

Dubois on the Radical Nature of the Suffrage Movement

In The Radcalism of the Woman Suffrage Movement, Ellen Dubois addresses recent scholarship denying the radicalism of the 19th century woman suffrage movement. These recent scholars assert that the patriarchal family structure has historically been the primary example of female oppression, and that the suffrage movement was not truly radical because it did not address that issue. Dubois argues that the suffrage movement was radical because by demanding for the vote, women were demanding their entry into the traditionally male-dominated public sphere of politics, as opposed to being relegated to the private sphere of maintaining the home and caring for the family. This distinction between the public and private sphere is crucial to Dubois’ argument, as she claims that up to this point in American society there had been no challenge to this separation of the genders into the private and public sphere. According to Dubois, the suffrage movement was therefore radical because it represented an effort by women to take on a role in society (namely that of voter) that had nothing to do with their role in the family.
Dubois concedes that 19th century woman suffragists did not seek to undermine the family structure or the idea that women should inherently take on a domestic role. Again, the mere fact that they were requesting to enter the public sphere was radical enough. Perhaps, as Max pointed out in his post, these women recognized that they had to pick their battles and therefore did not seek to dramatically change the dominant family dynamic. I agree with Dubois’ argument that the foray into the public sphere was the radical part of the woman suffrage movement. However, I am unsure of how radical it really was based on the precise political causes these women hoped to address with their voting rights. According to Dubois, it seems woman suffragists hoped to vote in order to address issues related to their place in the household and family. Dubois claims that woman suffragists thought their voting rights would allow them to address reforms in family law and the marriage contract, as well as improve husband-wife relations by making “democracy the law of the family.” (68) If Dubois is saying the radical element of the suffrage movement was that it thrust women into the public sphere, is her argument undermined by her claim that women planned to use their voting power solely on domestic issues related to the private sphere? It does make sense that women would want to address domestic issues, as those directly affected the most women. However, if the suffrage movement was radical because of suffragists’ desire for women to influence only their domestic role via voting as opposed to other, more public causes (economic policy, foreign affairs, etc.), I believe Dubois’ argument is somewhat weakened. Under Dubois’ argument, women push their way into the public sphere by getting the vote, but that push is not sustained if women then focus their political power solely on domestic issues.

November 12, 2013

Empowered Women: A "Force in History"

In her article, “The Power of Women’s Networks,” Mary P. Ryan examines the Female Moral Reform movement as indicative of women’s powerful role in guiding the course of history, as she mentions, “women have acted throughout the American past to shape events and to make history.” But Caldwell believes that the female reform movement, in actuality, was counterproductive because it separated women from the same communities of which they were trying to gain independence. He notes,”I believe that the effective female advocates of the Female Moral Reform Society in Utica suffered because of their lack of prescience to see that an argument which pushed women into a separate sphere for purposes of sexual purity, would necessarily push them into a separate sphere in other ways.” While I agree with Caldwell that the decision made by women in Utica to perform in the movement may have further distanced the women from their communities, but as I argue in my post, that same decision gave them an incredible amount of both control and influence. This also demonstrates the underlying argument behind Ryan’s work which aimed to explain the history of women in America without falling for the same misconceptions and gendered stereotypes that has muddled the facts and figures to date. As she acknowledges, “one of the first impulses of the feminist historians in the early 1970s who set about discovering women’s past was simply to chart the course of sexual inequality and the oppression of women.” (66) So, in recognizing this, by including accounts of women participation in the reform movement, Ryan has already drastically shifted the perception of women’s history, from an account of subordination and oppression, to an account of solidarity and strength. Mary sheds light on the empowerment these movements gave to women at the time, “In sum women were among the most active participants in the rich social life that transpired within the voluntary associations.” (69) Thus, in conclusion, by placing women at the center of these reform movements, Mary positions women in a place of power and authority, rather than in a position that is rooted in male dominance and female subordination.

November 12, 2013

Mary Ryan's Efficient Argument

I thought Mary P. Ryan’s article on antebellum women in Utica, New York was one of the more convincing and thorough pieces we have read so far. I think it was organized excellently and used its sources very well. “The Power of Women’s Networks: A Case Study of Female Moral Reform in Antebellum America” made an effective argument about how women came together and the powers that they did and did not have.

Ryan begins with a quick historiography of arguments made about women and power in the antebellum era. She then introduces the American Female Reform Society and proposes that the association “offers an excellent opportunity to examine the relationship between women’s power and the history of the sex/gender system. It may illuminate the nature, sources, and ambiguous historical impact of women’s efforts to exert influence on society at large” (67). Next, Ryan narrows in on the Utica Society. Dave “Big Wave” Sierra points out that it must be noted that her use of the Utica Society is very specific to the time and place. Ryan explains how Utica’s population, social and class makeup, and economy lent itself to the many associations that formed in the town. After establishing that associations had a strong hold on most social aspects of the society, Ryan does an excellent job of explaining why Utica women had more power in these associations than expected. The detailed backstory of how the Utica Female Reform Society sprang up and gained members really sold me on the idea that this town is an interesting case of women being able to exert power outside the home in the antebellum period.

Ryan then went into a minutely detailed description of how the association operated to exert influence over the sexual behavior of society. She discussed how the women were trying to better society as well as protect their own interests (usually as mothers). Ryan argues that these dual interests allowed women to establish a direct, collective, organized effort, which aimed to control behavior and change values in the community at large” (73). In order to make these claims, Ryan uses her sources extremely well. She gives specific newspaper articles, meeting minutes, and individual testimonies to show how these women organized and came together to gain power. I did feel, though, that some of her more empirical arguments were thin. Ryan also did a good job of showing the influence of these women with the narrative about the debate between the Society and the city’s clerks. This story did a good job of illuminating how women in these various associations had the ability (when working together) to bring flaws in society to light. Overall, I think that Ryan’s argument was strong because of her organization and effective use of sources. While towards the end of the piece, she tries to use Utica to generalize a little too much for my taste, I still believe that it was an efficient argument.

One, Eli Caldwell’s makes an extremely interesting point with his comparison of joke-telling moralities with the way the Female Moral Reform Society behaved. It did seem like the women just did not realize that their push for sexual purity would also put them down in different aspects of society. He concedes that maybe the women thought that once they cleaned up society, they could separate themselves. I agree with that, but would also add that at this time the idea of our modern day feminism did not really exist. I would maybe even argue that women of this era rarely wished or pushed for the complete equality that we see currently. This, though, is a very broad statement, and I am sure that it could possibly be easily countered with more research.

November 11, 2013

Feminism's Roots

Before the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, women discovered their ability to influence society through their experiences in organizational movements such as the Abolitionist and benevolent movements, as shown in the writings of Mary P. Ryan and Katherine Henry. Ryan argues “the origins of American feminism lay not in the abolitionist movement but in the women’s benevolent organizations that flourished in the nineteenth-century city.” Through her examples of benevolent organization and action in Utica, we can see how the avenues which women used to exert influence in society acted in accordance with Henry’s presentation of Grimke’s ideas of the public and private spheres of society. These women in Utica had power in the private spheres of their home, and through their shared experiences they came together publically. They carried out their actions against immoral sexual behavior successful in an extremely public fashion, forcing the public to garner a degree of respect for the female activists.

Henry portrays Grimke’s beliefs and actions in an extremely positive light, and provides evidence for Grimke’s ability aid the feminine cause while striving for abolition. Regardless of the type of activism, temperance, abolition, or benevolence, women in the early 18th centuries began to organize and realize their abilities to exert influence over society. Women were entering the public sphere for the first time in a political fashion; they were attempting to improve their society through historically political institutions such as the petition, public speech, and social networks.

Their entrance into the public sphere encountered expected resistance, even from other women. There was a delicate balance between entering the sphere of man while also being respected as a woman. Grimke noted in her relationship with Wald that in order to receive respect from her male peers, she felt she had to be a dutiful wife and care for her household chores. She would then be able to attract the attention of men, who would be impressed by her public speaking and reasoning. She was therefore able to enter the public sphere of man while keeping her female identity. Female activists, however, would come to find that they had to establish themselves even more into the public sphere of man, through education, work, and political activism, to eventually gain societal status in the later 19th century and eventually the right to vote in 1920.

The social organization emphasized by Ryan reminded me of the neighborhood loyalty in the Bowery. Organizations such as the firefighters became significant in-group efforts for a single cause, politically or otherwise. Both the firefighters and women’s organizations for benevolence were social groups influenced by public issues.

These female activists set the stage for eventual Feminist Movement that would take place. Ryan and Henry did well to demonstrate what it took to get females involved in the early movements that would lead to feminism, both ideologically and socially. The procedure would eventually become more drastic in modern terms, but in the early 19th century these actions by women were unprecedented.

October 17, 2013

An Expansion of Women's History

This past week, we read Theda Perdue’s Cherokee Women. I found it very interesting because I have not read many direct accounts of Native American life and society structure, and unsurprisingly ones I have read tended to focus on men. As Michael Lameroux points out in his post, this book fits into what I have seen from a few other books in my history classes in the past year or so. For example, last year I read Woody Holton’s Abigail Adams, which focused on how John Adams’ wife Abigail took an active and often equal role in their marriage. I also read Maya Jasanoff’s Liberty’s Exiles, which spent a good deal of time on Molly Brant, a woman of the Mohawk tribe who wielded great power in her community during the Revolutionary era, in great part due to her romantic relationship with the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs. However, those books focused on women of the upper echelons of their respective societies, and also ones who likely would not have had as much power were it not for their husbands’ positions. Perdue’s book, on the other hand, exposes the importance of the roles of a wider swath of Cherokee women.

Perdue begins by establishing that the Cherokee did have defined gender roles, which she describes as “theoretically rigid” but in reality not so, due to men’s propensity to help. Women’s duties included agricultural chores, which seems to have been typical of native societies who depended heavily on crops. (18) Another example of a similarly structured society is that of many western African cultures, where agricultural tasks were similarly seen as women’s work to the point that men who participated were lesser than their peers. However, Perdue makes it clear that things were much more fluid among the Cherokee, pointing out that men were often expected to help in these agricultural duties rather than discouraged. Perdue also points out the important role of the menstrual cycle in Cherokee society. Cherokee women derived power from the menstrual cycle as it was so tied to pregnancy and childbirth. Perdue’s account of the myth of the “stone man” shows that this reverence for women’s menstruation was a deep-rooted part of Cherokee culture.

If I had one issue with the book, it is that I am a bit worried about the primary source material Perdue uses to make these claims. In the introduction, Perdue outlines the difficulties of finding reliable primary source material on Native American women, noting that many of the early accounts of Native American life come from Europeans who lacked context for what they saw and likely misinterpreted a lot. That, combined with the fact that historians have neglected women in general until relatively recently, makes this a difficult subject to research. However, after the introduction, Perdue does not remark much on those concerns. I think that it is difficult to make definitive claims with such limited source material, and believe Perdue should have done more to justify why her sources were worthwhile and good enough to back up her claims.

October 17, 2013

"Hear that, Ed? Bears. Now you're putting the whole station in jeopardy."

As both Ian and AJ have commented, this book shocked my preconceived perception about Cherokee women. I, too, began this book with the notion that women maintained a submissive role to the men in Cherokee society as they did in European societies. A combination of menstrual power, farming techniques, and the ability to birth children, positioned women atop the gender ladder in Cherokee society. In conjunction with Ian’s claim, Perdue even goes so far as to say women were dangerous because they maintained the ability to bring about unknown change (34). Furthermore, Perdue discusses those Cherokees who crossed the traditional gender roles. As I read her description of the events, I came to the same conclusion as Perdue. Men who farmed were not taken seriously because they could neither fight nor bear a child, yet women who proved victorious on the battlefield showed their power to be proficient in nearly all aspects of life important to the Cherokees. Another aspect of the Cherokee society that Perdue brings up concerns the opposite of the classic Disney portrayal of Native Americans. Hunting was not nearly as important to the tribe as I anticipated it would be; however, farming various foods, especially corn, provided most of the tribe’s sustenance. This dependence on farming further elevated the status of women.

The concept of marriages in Cherokee culture also varied significantly from European marriages. Although the two cultures were similar in the reverence for childbearing ability, Cherokee women were revered for this ability and they derived much of their power from it (55). Perdue’s description of infidelity astonished me. As she states, married women were not given complete freedom to intermingle with other men; however, the attitude was drastically different than if a man cheated on a woman. Part of this attitude change derived from the lack of support men had to tell on their wives. In Cherokee culture, according to Perdue, it seemed in the man’s best interest to never speak of his wife’s infidelity. Additionally, when a man did decide to take action, an implausible experiment was the only way to punish his wife (reviving a dead fly and burrowing the fly in the woman’s body).

I wasn’t a big fan of the rest of Perdue’s book. Once she got away from the initial information about Cherokees (maybe I liked it because it was new and unique), Perdue describes the Indian encounters with Americans in extreme detail. Because Cherokee women adopted much different roles and lost much of their power due to this American invasion, I think the book loses some of its mystique during the chronicles of Cherokee maltreatment. Cherokee women adopted many western characteristics, such as religious beliefs and domestic roles. Interestingly though, the United States initially sought to maintain somewhat peaceful relations with the Cherokees and respected many of their customs, laws, and traditions. At least during Washington’s presidency, the overall American goal was to coexist with the Cherokees in a symbiotic relationship. As Perdue points out, Washington’s ideas severely hurt women because the American view of women was drastically different than the Cherokee. Washington didn’t even include women in his address to the Cherokee chief (112). Unfortunately for women, the American perception eventually became more of the norm within Cherokee culture and women’s power diminished severely as did the Cherokee nation itself.

October 17, 2013

Cherokee Balancing Act

In Cherokee Women, Theda Perdue presents the story of a people which has received scant coverage in recent writing: Native women. Perdue asserts that recent literature regarding Native cultures has skipped over the female population because it assumed that since women were not prevalent among Native sources then they did not contribute much to Native society. Perdue counters that this primary source absence is due to men controlling all the documents and literature in society so that women were victims of neglect in respect to being mentioned. One of Perdue’s overarching arguments, however, is that men and women cooperate to create a balancing system between their roles and beliefs in society.

As Perdue states early on, “women balanced men just as summer balanced winter.” This indicates how women and men were similar in that they occupied powerful roles in society but ones that were separate so that they would not intrude or disturb each other. Native Americans like virtually all other civilizations at the time imposed gender norms on their people which held that men engaged in war and hunted while women stayed at home and farmed the land to nourish their family. This explanation implies a semblance of equality between the sexes but it neglects to mention what Ian and AJ have both addressed- women enjoyed an almost dominating role over men because they were connected to, among other things: corn, babies and the home. As I will show, women could cross into various spheres. They both made the apt claim that women, unlike in most Western societies, held the capacity to wield substantial power over men and engage in behavior men may not have found possible. I also agree with AJ’s assertion that the work “distanced itself from other reads by presenting it in a manner that makes it manageable to the average history reader.” Perdue definitely organizes her work in a very categorical method, outlining the basics of a situation then delving into the specifics of the topic as a segue into the next topic.

The men and women in society saw gender as “an affirmation of cosmic order and balance” so that if they did not fill their own roles the society would not function correctly or to its potential. This is shown in the Cherokees’ reaction to men who attempted to fill the position of women, resulting in joking and being compared to bears, a sign of ineptitude and incongruence. Women, on the other hand, were afforded the ability to alter their identity into men. Women who became warriors were seen as particularly powerful because they overcame their innate weakness and the limitations traditionally ascribed to females. Such women “possessed extraordinary power: through war and menstruation she had male and female contact with blood.” Women were elevated into supreme positions as War Women and beloved women, these positions according them the power to live and interact in any circle of society, whether it be farming, fighting, birthing children, or maintaining the home. This balance between men and women can thus be seen as a system of women exercising much influence in daily life, in spite, of their absence from the period’s primary sources.

October 16, 2013

The Power of the Cherokee Women

Theda Purdue’s “Cherokee Women” is a piece that asserts a somewhat unheard of view regarding the power of women during colonial times. Radically different from the colonial/European view of the subservience of women, Cherokee females actually possessed a significant matrix of power within their society. One abstract way in which Cherokee women possessed power over the rest of their culture was during menstruation (30). Cherokee’s viewed menstrual blood as that of an unborn child, which could bring about unknown change in society. They feared this change because they did not know whether it would be good or bad, making the unknown their true tormentor (34).

With the common European and colonial portrayal of women in mind, I was shocked to read about women possessing this type of power within society. At first I thought it might just be an abnormality but, as I read further, Purdue asserts more claims regarding the power of Cherokee women. They alone had the right to abandon a new born if it was sickly, if anyone else did then it would be constituted as murder (33). To really cap it all off, Purdue quotes an eighteenth century trader named Alexander Longe which says “I have this to say that the women rules the roost and wears the breeches and sometimes will beat their husbands within an inch of their lives” (45). This statement alone encompasses the entirety that was Women’s power in the Cherokee nation. They were not subservient to men but instead, a balancing factor, with both genders performing their duties as needed to better the tribe as a whole. Unfortunately for the Cherokee women, as Europeans took more of a foothold within the American lands these equal rights began to shift into more of a reflection of European culture. Cherokee women lost their right to actively participate in government, farm, and have that same power they had before European arrival.

As there have not been any other posts this week to respond to, I would like to take this time to comment on how Perdue’s piece compliments my own research on the Cherokee nation. Her description of the Cherokee’s adoption of a republican directly corresponds to efforts of the people to show themselves as cultured in an attempt to avoid removal. This same idea connects to the alteration of women’s power within the tribe, as this shift is simply another way in which the Cherokee people hoped to portray themselves as peaceful and sophisticated individuals, rather than the savages that some whites coined them as. Throughout the beginning to mid nineteenth century, the Cherokee openly expressed these changes within their own newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix, in what could be viewed as a plea to both the United States Government and the rest of the nation to cease their efforts in removal. It is clear how important this land was to the people, as they were willing to radically alter their own customs to conform to white standards in order to maintain their place in the country. Unfortunately, the very people who spurred these publicized efforts into existence ended up signing over the Cherokee land to the United States, disregarding the will of the rest of the tribe for what they viewed as a lost effort.