Women's Education In The Antebellum Era

Plantation mistresses had varying roles in the Antebellum era. Living in the antebellum South, they supported the institution of slavery for it alleviated them from domestic chores and improved their status in the society. Through slavery, the plantation mistresses could portray the ultimate housewife because they did not have to carry out manual labor commonly associated with their domestic duty. They proved to be essential to the plantation economy in the South, especially because they undertook the organizational roles. When the slaveholders were committed elsewhere, their wives took over. Historians might be somewhat silent over the

Many women devoted most of their time trying to show men that they too can work just as hard as them. They tried to show men that they can do all the things that men thought only they could do. For example, in Sojourner Truth speech, she says, “I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And a’n’t I a women? I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear de lash as well!”.(Sojourner Truth,440-441) In Sojourner Truth 's women 's right speech, she explains all the farm labor she was put through and how she can do as much as any man, even though she’s a woman. However, it was not just about women wanting to join the workforce, but they also wanted to be educated like the men. Most women were kept from getting involved with political system, because of their household ‘jobs’ they needed to do and because they did not understand the full concept of reading or writing. Most women had to educate themselves from hearing their masters talk. However, for the women who were educated; like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, they used it to their advantage and brought women together by hosting a women’s right convention and had The Declaration of Sentiments signed by at least a hundred people who supported women’s

Were married American women in the late 1800’s expected to restrict their sphere of interest to the home and the family? In the late 1800’s women were second-class citizens. Women were expected to limit their interest to the home and family. Women were not encouraged to obtain a real education or pursue a professional career. After marriage, women did not have the right to own their own property, keep their own wages, or sign a contract. In addition, all women were denied the right to vote. “The cult of true womanhood ideology extended middle-class ideals far beyond the middle class and affected marriage, female education, and employment choices, as well as strategies for obtaining women’s rights…”(WOMEN). American women of the late 1800’s struggled with no rights in the government, considered inferior, and married women had no separate identity from her husband.

Women. strong , independent, empowered, intelligent. These are just a few of the qualities women have today and had back in the 1920’s. Men refused to acknowledge these attributes and stopped women from achieving anything besides cleaning, cooking, taking care of the children, and sewing. Women had to stick up for themselves when no one else would listen. The women suffragists created organizations and led marches to gain support for women 's rights. But the fight was not over and their lives were not perfect after the movement.

Women faced other inequalities in America as well at the time. Among These inequalities were voting inequalities, limited property rights, a lack of custody rights, employment disadvantages, and more. While these women certainly did work to expand these rights, they mostly focused on voting rights. This makes sense, as many of their objectives could be blocked by anti-suffrage politicians. When women got voting rights, they were able to

Early American social hierarchies differed markedly for women of color—whether free or enslaved—whose relationships to the white regimes of early America were manifold and complex. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women in the colonies of the English West Indies and Carolinas, particularly women of color, were seen as subordinate by white male slave owners because of race and shared oppression of the female gender. However, these women were a means of economic gain for white slave owners. Taken from Africa to the New World as slave laborers, white slave owners valued these women for their ability in domestic work and fieldwork where they performed primarily unskilled agricultural tasks, as well as their potential to bear children. White slave owners of the Early Americas, driven by greed and opportunism, used political laws, physical characteristics of women, and social constructs of gender roles to appropriate

Sally Hemings was a slave on the Monticello plantation in the late 18th century, and her experience helps us to understand that her gender aided the way she was treated versus if they went by the color of her skin (Dilkes Mullins). {Woman during this era were thought of as property, they were objectified, they were treated poorly and had no choice. Their husbands were liable for anything that they did} [Being a female during this era outweighed what one 's social status was. It did not matter what race you were, but if you were a woman, you were treated as such] (Dilkes Mullins).

The culture, history, economy, and politics of the Southern states have been studied extensively. Yet, one element of life in the South has received much less attention: women 's experiences during childbirth (Simon, Richard M. "Women 's Birth Experiences and Evaluations: A View from the American South" no. 1, 2016, pp.1-38). Childbirth plays a substantial role in enslaved woman 's lives positively and negatively. During slavery, enslaved poor women who were wet-nurses were forced to give up their milk just to feed another women’s child. Feeding another woman 's child with one 's own milk constituted a form of labor, but it was work that could only be undertaken by lactating women who had borne their own children (West, E. and Knight, R. "Mother 's Milk: Slavery, Wet-Nursing and Black and White Women in the Antebellum South" no. 37, 2017, pp.

For women in the Southern Colonies had very few legal rights such as not being able to vote or preach.

While reading about American history the thing that I found most appealing was the limited rights that women had during this era. Although women gave the early settlers longer life expectancy and brought hope to their future, women still were not considered equal to a man. Women were discriminated against and didn’t play an important role in early American history. Generally, women had fewer legal rights and career opportunity than men because they were considered weak and not able to perform certain tasks. Different women came from different ethnic backgrounds and were all created equal in the eyes of men. Men believed that women served only one purpose which was to take care of the household. Being a wife and a mother was considered

The Fourteenth Amendment was designed to grant citizenship to whoever was born in the United States and grant protection of civil rights to all Americans and the recently freed slaves.

The Reconstruction Era occurred in 1865, it was was a period after the Civil War in which America was focused on rebuilding the broken South. In 1867, the Radical reconstruction gave former slaves a voice in government. During this era, formers slaves gained a platform in the government, with some blacks as Congressmen. However, not everyone supported the idea of Reconstruction. Less than a decade after the Reconstruction period, a small group composed of democratic ex-confederate veterans, white farmers and white southerners sympathetic to white supremacy joined forces together to form the Ku Klux Klan. The clan spread fear and terror towards the blacks in a systematic way. Their reign of terror was felt throughout the south. It spread fear using guerilla tactics, whipping, beating, and lynching. The Klan’s purpose

First Generations: Women of Colonial America, written by Carol Berkin, is a novel that took ten years to make. Carol Berkin received her B.A. from Barnard College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has worked as a consultant on PBS and History Channel documentaries. Berkin has written several books on the topic of women in America. Some of her publications include: Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence (2004) and Civil War Wives: The Life and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant (2009). The prejudice that the author brings forward strongly is the notion of feminism.

In “The Pastoralization of Housework” by Jeanne Boydston, Boydston explores the effect of the romanization of housework. The pastoralization of housework that occurred during the Antebellum period was the result of the development of early industrialization. In order to have something remain constant in the changing times the formation of two separate gender spheres allowed a routine to an ever changing society. A result of these two spheres was the pastoralization of domestic labor in the early 1800s that made labor ‘invisible’ and began to discredit the women’s work at home, but also raised them to a higher pedestal in the family dynamic. By embracing the idea of True Motherhood women were able to flourish by the naturalization of the social

During the 1950s and 60s, education was an extremely important aspect of American life and culture. Through education, women were able to do more than just take care of the housework. An education enabled women to break free from their traditional roles. It made it possible for them to play a part in the government. Women had more knowledge about the issues that were occurring around them. Through their education, the women could get a job, earn a wage, and be considered equal to the men. This change in roles showed how education shaped the life of women as well as other people in America. Education has helped us get closer to the perfect American life which involved the chance for everyone to get an education.