HIST 1312 1st Edition Lecture 4 Outline of Last Lecture I The Gilded Age a General themes b New Businessmen c Presidents II Key Features of Corporations III Threat to the Pursuit of Happiness IV Pursuit of Property V Foreign Immigrants Outline of Current Lecture I Social Manners II Women Feminism and Sex in Progressive America III The Great Migration Blacks in White America IV White Attitudes and Scientific Racism Current Lecture The Victorian Era I Social Manners Two constant goals of Victorian life were the rejection of sin and the practice of responsibility o Many Americans at the time felt that women needed outside protection in their constant struggle with temptation o Supporters of the Cult of True Womanhood often referred to women and children as weaker vessels as feeble beings who were susceptible to sin unless isolated from the evils of society in the haven of domestic life Viewed fathers as the rightful protector of families who should have unlimited authority over his wife and children o This age is the beginning of separating men and women in the workplace Men work and women stay at home and care for children new concept of the house wife Cult of True Womanhood o In the last half of the nineteenth century Victorian ideals still held sway in American society at least among members of the middle and upper classes These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute o Strict hierarchical Victorian thought promoted a so called cult of true Womanhood which preached four cardinal virtues for women 1 Piety Advocates believed that women were far more religious and spiritual in nature than men o Men are corrupt and women are pure 2 Purity America s women were supposed to be pure of heart mind and of course body not engaging in sexual intercourse until marriage and even then not enjoying it 3 Submission Women were supposed to live in a kind of perpetual childhood passively responding to the actions and decisions of men o Women must submit to their husbands 4 Domesticity The Industrial Revolution had created a clear division between the public sphere of work man and the private sphere of home woman o Home and hearth according to the Cult of True Womanhood became the domain of woman and her refuge from the temptations of everyday life Three areas of social change in particular alarmed members of Victorian era American society 1 Dress Reform 2 Education of Women 3 Women Entering the Workforce II Women Feminism and Sex in Progressive America On May 9 1908 the United States Senate rejected a bill that would have established Mother s Day as a national holiday on the grounds that motherhood was too sacred to be demeaned by a day in its honor Just 11 years later in 1919 the Senate passed the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote At the dawn of the twentieth century women activists and their male allies were preaching a new day for women Restriction even in language o The arbiters of the English language stripped women or more properly ladies of their arms and legs words which seemed too sexually suggestive and replaced them with limbs o At the dinner table gentleman never offered a proper lady a chicken breast only light meat o Not everyone went along passively with this the stifling conventions of true womanhood The Women s Rights Movement o The Seneca Falls Convention beginning of womens rights movement Met in Seneca Falls New York from July 19 to July 20 1848 Organized by Quakers Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton First public gathering in the United States to address the rights of women One result of the convention was the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments o The National Woman Suffrage Association NWSA Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony A more radical woman s suffrage group accepted only women and opposed the Fifteenth Amendment since it only enfranchised African American men Wanted right to vote for all women and made the argument that women would eliminate the moral corruption in politics because they re pure o The American Woman Suffrage Association AWSA More moderate in its views than the NWSA Allowed men to join and rallied behind the Fifteenth Amendment as a step in the right direction toward greater civil rights for women Leaders of the AWSA included Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone Three main feminist movements 1870s 1919 1 The Suffragists o After 1870 suffragists focused on winning for women the right to vote Their arguments were slightly different than those of suffragists before the Civil War Early reformers had argued that women as human beings had a natural right to vote From the 1870s on however suffragists took their cues from the Cult of True Womanhood and argued that women were different and in some cases better than men Women for example were more noble more spiritual and truer of heart then men Granting women the right to vote they argued would help purify political corruption in the United States 2 The Social Feminists o Social feminists agreed with the suffragists that women should get the vote but dedicated themselves to social reforms other than suffrage o Prominent social feminists were often leaders of the settlement movement such as Jane Addams and Florence Kelley Florence Kelley 1859 1932 was a prominent feminist and social reformer Part of that generation of women who first gained access to higher education Kelley graduated from Cornell University in 1882 However like many women graduates of her time she had difficulty finding work that was worth her talents In 1891 she joined Jane Addams at Hull House From 1898 until 1932 Kelley served as the head of the National Consumers League NCL a lobbying group for the rights of working women and children 3 The Radical Feminists o Radical feminists offered a much stronger critique of American society economics and politics o They condemned the Cult of True Womanhood Their chief arguments were quite radical for America at the turn of the century They argued that Common humanity shared by men and women was far more important than sexual differences Social environment not biology determined the roles of men and women in society In an industrial society women would be released from the home enabled to make a broad human contribution rather than a narrow feminine contribution to society III The Great Migration Blacks in White America Although chattel slavery had been illegal for three