Victorian America - Essay Example

Victorian America and the ‘feminisation of American culture’ Introduction Although Queen Victoria ruled Great Britain from 1837 until her death in 1901, her influence during what has been labeled the Victorian Age stretched across the ocean to touch the lands of America, albeit a little delayed. Therefore, the American Victorian Age is typically considered to have taken place roughly between the years of 1876 as Reconstruction following the Civil War was winding down and 1914 when the first World War, then known as the Great War, began.1 This was a time full of rapid change in America, in which every aspect of society was affected. The country gained 12 new states, doubling its geographical area, voted on 10 new amendments to their constitution and increased its population by more than twice its number at the beginning of this period. “Americans were becoming more diverse, more urban, and more mobile.”2 Slavery had legally come to an end and an entirely new population was struggling to redefine itself and find a home. Social norms were questioned and the preconceptions of the elders were no longer automatically assumed honorable. Technology had changed too, bringing with it the mechanized tools of the factory, enabling large groups of workers to earn living wages within a single location rather than struggle to grow crops out on the farm. With the advent of the machine and the production line, more and more Americans were moving to the cities to seek work, bringing the women in from the fields on the farms to the kitchens and family rooms of the middle class. This emerging middle class gave birth to what has since been referred to as the Cult of the True Woman, coined first by Barbara Welter in the mid-1960s3, a set of ideas and beliefs regarding the proper structure of the quintessential American family. However, through this ideology, women were brought into closer contact with one another, gaining power and voice enough to finally give rise to the feminist movements that marked the tremendous strides toward equal rights that were accomplished in the early part of the twentieth century. Through this process of growth and change, moving from the True Woman to the New Woman, the feminist movement was seen primarily as a masculine movement with very little to suggest the ‘feminisation of American culture’, with its emphasis on compassion, consideration and control that would emerge in the twenty-first century. The True Woman In leaving the farms for the cities with the new modernization of the cities and factories, Welter and others hypothesized that it became necessary for women to uphold the traditional ideologies the family had held dear while in a rural setting, thereby restricting them to a single idealized image of what embodies the True Woman. “The nineteenth-century American man was … at work long hours in a materialistic society. The religious values of his forebears were neglected in practice if not in intent, and he occasionally felt some guilt that he had turned this new land, this temple of the chosen people, into one vast countinghouse. But he could salve his conscience by reflecting that he had left behind a hostage, not only to fortune, but to all the values which he held so dear and treated so lightly. Woman, in the cult of True Womanhood … was the hostage in the home.”4 According to Poovey5, it was by “linking morality to a figure (rhetorically) immune to the self-interest and competition integral to economic success, [the cult] preserved virtue without inhibiting productivity” thus creating a perfect world in which men were free to pursue every material pursuit they wished while women were constrained to remain at home and protect the moral and ethical values of the family unit. “The ideals Welter uncovered in her analysis of nineteenth-century prescriptive literature, novels, diaries, and correspondence did not simply codify modern notions of women’s place. Rather, in response to dramatic economic and political upheavals, they constructed white, middle-class ‘True Women’ as the gladiators at the gate, fending off the evils that accompanied the pursuit of wealth and power by bourgeois men and the expansion of cities, factories, and plantations that fed their success. Yet this was a warrior without armor taking her stand behind a white picket fence. As Welter noted, the nineteenth-century True Woman had ‘to uphold the pillars of the temple with her frail white hand.’”6 That women subscribed to this ideology is evident in that “many [women] accepted the promise of domestic happiness and the circumscribed authority that supposedly inhered in piety, purity and submissiveness.”7 Hewitt points out “it was precisely those women with the greatest access to education, economic resources, and public authority who were most constrained by the cult’s precepts, yet it was also these women who most often embraced them.”8 The concept of the True Woman was founded on four core principles – those of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. According to Hewitt, “native born northern white women became an increasingly undifferentiated category, all middle-class adherents of a dominant ideal. As work on women who stood outside the cult’s reach multiplied, then, true womanhood lost its contested, dynamic character and became hostage to all the retrograde values that affluent white womanhood masked in a field newly focused on difference and conflict.”9 The hierarchy of these four core values was further delineated by Welter in their order of social importance. “Young men looking for a mate were cautioned to search first for piety, for if that were there, all else would follow.”10 Because religion didn’t take women away from her proper place within the home like so many other societies or movements did, piety was considered a safe avenue for a woman to pursue. “She would be another, better Eve, working in cooperation with the Redeemer, bringing the world back from its revolt and sin. The world would be reclaimed for God through her suffering.”11 Next to piety, purity was necessary in order to access the power inherent in the cult. “Without [purity] she was, in fact, no woman at all, but a member of some lower order … To contemplate the loss of purity brought tears; to be guilty of such a crime … brought madness or death.”12 However, this power was expected to be relinquished upon the wedding night as the woman traded in her purity, setting up a paradox that proved difficult to explain away. “Woman must preserve her virtue until marriage and marriage was necessary for her happiness. Yet, marriage was, literally, an end to innocence. She was told not to question this dilemma, but simply to accept it.”13 Therefore, submission became a defining aspect of the feminine, also placing her squarely by her own fireside first as daughter and sister, later as wife and mother, bringing in the fourth dimension of domesticity. “If she chose to listen to other voices than those of her proper mentors, sought other rooms than those of her home, she lost both her happiness and her power.”14 By the time the Victorian era reached America, the ideal middle class life was firmly established as consisting of a father going off to work and a mother who stayed at home and reared the children. “The onset of industrialization at the beginning of the nineteenth century highlighted differences among women just as it exacerbated those between men and women workers.”15 Widows, single women and others flocked to the mill towns of New England, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey attracted by the relatively high wages that could be earned in the factories, but even this began to change as the factory owners began working to reduce costs, lowering wages and demanding more work. “In 1870, 60 percent of all female workers were engaged in some aspect of domestic service and another 25 percent earned their livings in factories and workshops. Except for janitorial work, factory jobs were off-limits to black women. As late as 1900, when the proportion of white women in domestic service had dropped below 50 percent, most women of color supported themselves and their families with various forms of domestic service. Others participated in the agricultural work that continued to sustain the majority of black families.”16 At the same time, the more prosperous married women were prevented from holding any kind of job, instead expected to uphold the traditional feminine values of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. The New Woman Through this very restricted, hostile environment, several women’s groups organized to try to effect change and bring about more fulfilling or safer lives for their children. Although individuals such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Judith Sargent Murray advocated “increased independence for women through access to education”17 in the 1700s, it wasn’t until the middle 1800s that changes began in earnest. “Thousands of women in the 1830s and 1840s joined moral reform societies, organized to end licentiousness, seduction, and prostitution. Female temperance societies strove to save abused wives and families from drunken spouses. Individual reformers spoke out for women's rights.”18 At the same time, other women, such as Catherine Beecher, worked to extend high education to girls by opening up specialized schools that taught not only the traditional requirements, but instructed young women in academic subjects as well. Both within and without the cult, women were beginning to rebel against its constraining aspects from early on, whether they realized what they were doing or not. Roberts19 illustrates how journalism and the theater worked as a valve through which women were able to explore their more ‘subversive’ thoughts as well as to reach other similar minded women. “Both journalism and theater … gave women access to worlds where they were not subject to the limits imposed on the self by True Womanhood.”20 For those women who felt the cult was correct in that the True Woman held a special bond with the Supreme Being that enabled her to adhere more closely to the tenets of the traditional belief system, it was a natural extension to feel that it was these individuals who should be heard within the greater community as a force to protect the very home in which she was given dominion. For others, accepting the yoke of the True Woman was a hindrance to their expressing what they felt were equally valid thoughts and ideas, wishing to be able to pursue their limits to the same degree as men without the unnatural restrictions imposed on them by those men. There were many women who helped show the way, but two in particular, Catherine Beecher and Francis Willard, who invoked the strength of the True Woman and worked within the cult to bring about the social change they felt was necessary in obtaining the evolution of the cult to that of the New Woman. In her biography on Catherine Beecher, Katherine Sklar21 demonstrates not only that Beecher was definitely a product of the True Womanhood cult, but also how she worked within that ideology to help bring about change and provide a socially acceptable avenue of refuge for other young women like her who felt trapped and constrained within the cult but who did not wish to necessarily step into the realms of the ‘fallen women’. The ideology of the cult can be seen in Sklar’s depiction of how Beecher struggled with the idea of marriage to Metcalf Fisher, not just on a personal level, finding him cold and too reserved, but also from a reluctance to submerge her sense of self to the traditional role of True Woman. However, the prevalent thought at the time regarding the role of a woman and the importance of her personal views on matters such as this are clearly expressed in the reported reaction of her father to her concerns. “Let no caprice or inconsistency on your part becloud a prospect so deservedly a subject of complacency to your friends and so full of promises of earthly good.”22 After Fisher was lost at sea, Beecher struggled to find comfort in her religion, but emerged from the struggle unable to relinquish her sense of self and self-will. As a result of the new philosophy she had worked out for herself, one centered around the ideas of sacrifice and social service, Beecher moved to Hartford, Connecticut and opened up new schools as well as a series of other educational and beneficial enterprises. The philosophy that enabled her to do this in the public sphere without losing her connection to the True Woman was outlined in several tracts, books and lectures. Considered a prime spokesman for the domestic ideology, Beecher took the model of womanhood that restricted women to roles within the home or school thanks to the strong moral qualities that were exceptionally theirs and gave this role a significant social importance. This provided women with a sense of self-respect and value as women. Like Catherine Beecher, Francis Willard worked from within the cult of the True Woman to bring other women into a more public sphere by focusing on the responsibilities of women to protect their homes and families. According to Amy Slagell, “Willard knew that by recruiting, organizing and energizing interested women to being their work of transforming the world as she believed they were called to do, women would come to a new awareness of their power so that not only would the outer world be transformed, but the women themselves as well.”23 She introduced her so-called Home Protection argument to the ladies of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union “as a wedge argument, a way to break through the walls of prejudice an ‘average woman’ would likely bear toward suffrage and women’s political work.”24 Although she often referred to the ‘no taxation without representation’ argument as it applied to her own personal feelings, she took a “shrewd” approach of “a series of tangential moves, in the course of which women … were gradually led to understand that they could not protect their homes and families from liquor or other vices, without a voice in public affairs.”25 Because she knew she was working with many women who had, prior to their involvement with the WCTU, subscribed wholly to the concept of the True Woman, Willard’s approach “encouraged women to see themselves as serious participants in the political community”26 in a less threatening manner, allowing them to evolve the cult rather than destroy it altogether. In addition, Willard played a large role in making the murky business of politics available to women without ‘dirtying their skirts’ by further emphasizing the virtues of the True Woman and illustrating a picture in which women are necessary in the public sphere in order to clean up the mess that has been made by men. “Notably, while Willard used the ideal of domesticity to further her argument, she directly rejected another part of the True Womanhood ideal: submissiveness.”27 Instead, she helped strengthen women’s faith by helping them rediscover “scriptural passages that supported women’s activism and as they experienced a calling from God to work for temperance and for Home Protection.”28 As women and men held roles in different but complementary spheres, it was necessary for women to be involved in the public sphere if they were to provide the type of protection they were expected to provide. Through these movements, women obtained the right to hold property in their name in Mississippi in 1839 (with their husband’s permission), the first woman suffrage law was passed in 1869 in the territory of Wyoming and the first integrated jury is assembled in 1870, also in Wyoming. In this last case, “the chief justice stops a motion to prohibit the integration of the jury, stating: ‘It seems to be eminently proper for women to sit upon Grand Juries, which will give them the best possible opportunities to aid in suppressing the dens of infamy which curse the country.’”29 By 1890, Wyoming had gone so far as to extend the vote in all elections to women, something that wouldn’t be accomplished nationally for another 30 years.30 The Shape of Feminism The 1890s were plagued by a series of widespread societal issues such as severe economic depression, bloody labor disputes and racist terrorism as federal armies pulled out of the south. This urbanizing, industrializing, conflict-filled context was the realm of the middle class New Woman and the new Working Class Girl, each of whom enjoyed a measure of individuality and autonomy that frightened many of their contemporaries.  The individuality and power of these independent women marked a shift away from communal domesticity, undermining the Victorian culture with a new emphasis upon autonomy, pleasure, and consumption.31  The increase in numbers of independent, educated, unmarried older women punctuated this period.  “Perhaps the most striking evidence of change among women was the emergence of the college-educated, frequently unmarried, and self-supporting new woman.  Nearly half of all college-educated women in the late nineteenth century never married.  Those who married did so later than most women and bore fewer children.  For a few years or for a lifetime these independent career women began to create a new life-style.  They moved into growing female professions such as teaching and nursing.”32 In addition, women became very active in the total landscape of America’s immersion in consumerism and pleasure as they achieved access to more and more communal areas.  “Labor unions, women's clubs, and settlement houses all represented new public spaces for women, arenas in which they could experiment freely with new ideas and actions.  Between 1900 and World War I the old Victorian code which prescribed strict segregation of the sexes in separate spheres crumbled.  The women’s movement reached the apex of its political power, achieving new laws for pure food, protective legislation regulating wages and hours for working women and children, prison and court reforms.”33  With the advent of the twentieth century, it became as natural to see a woman enjoying public spaces such as dance halls, amusement parks, theaters and movies as it was to see a man. The younger crowd brought sexuality out of its closet with the new century while the second and third generation college-educated women gained, for the first time in history, the ability intellectually, socially and economically, to seek a new lifestyle and ideology that did not reduce her individuality or infringe upon her personal rights. It is also during this time that authors first began including information regarding the novelty of lesbian behavior. “Modern science and professionalism even shaped the cultural revolt of ‘sex radicals,’ many of whom had begun to call themselves feminists.  Female bohemians and radical intellectuals mounted an attack on Victorian norms and inhibitions using the scientific language of sexologists and Freudians.  They asserted that an active and expressive female sexuality was ‘normal’ according to the new science of psychology.  That scientific language also included a new cataloging of sexual ‘perversion’ which defined female/female loving relationships as pathological.”34 The View of Feminism Tracing through the history of the Victorian Age in America, it can be expected that the view of society toward women involved in the feminist movement would depend in large part upon what they’d heard and witnessed for themselves to that point. The times were changing quickly, ideas were springing up as fast as the machines could create new parts and women were gaining power at unprecedented rates with the development of new jobs in the factories and new access to education. Each new freedom or right won led to another being sought as the women moved their way toward equality one small step at a time. Each step represented a logical step forward as women sought to educate their daughters, daughters used their new educations to bring forward necessary social change and the necessary social change brought forward still more inequities in the system. The approach taken in supporting these ideals would have a large impact upon how the movement was seen. An understanding of the depth to which the idea of the True Woman took hold is necessary to understand just how masculine and unattractive a New Woman could appear to the traditionalist. She was demanding, relentless, determined and completely out of the control of any man. Her behavior was so completely unladylike in even expressing a desire to be heard that she was considered almost genderless. Her willingness to stand up for her rights, demand to be heard and insistence upon winning the vote were shocking not only to the men, but to the women who had previously supported the True Woman concept. That women would want something more than the simple life of cooking, cleaning and caring for her family was beyond the scope of the imagination and represented an unnatural creature full of self-indulgence and deviltry. That a woman was ready to do battle for her rights indicated that she was no woman at all, but a man trapped within a woman’s skin. That psychology began explaining lesbian relationships as pathological even while this condition figured prominently in many people’s stereotype of a feminist indicates the degree to which society in general viewed the movement as unnatural and grotesque. However, great women rose out of this culture that understood these oppositional forces, because they, too, subscribed to the ideals of the True Woman. Because of women such as Catherine Beecher and Francis Willard who worked from within the concept of the True Woman, an image of the feminist as a woman doing the job she was selected by God to do by obtaining the power of the vote and equal rights under the law, not everyone viewed the movement as something unnatural. In fact, by looking at the issue in the way that these women saw it, the feminist movement was a natural and unavoidable outcome of the True Woman ideal. As a True Woman, it was the responsibility of the wife to protect her children from all harm, but she needed the right to own property and the parental rights to her children if she was to adequately provide this protection. As a True Woman, the wife was also responsible for ensuring dinner was on the table every night. However, if she was not able to obtain decent employment making a living wage, she would not be able to provide this necessary dinner in the event that her husband left the family, died or neglected to bring his wages home from the factory before visiting the bar. If she was to provide assistance in protecting the home and family from outside invasion of unchristian or other harmful ideas, she must also have some say in deciding what ideas, practices, businesses and policies should be made to aid in that protection. In short, by pursuing the vote and equal rights, the feminist was merely carrying out the duties that had been assigned to her within the realm of the True Woman. That it exceeded the boundaries of what the society in general had in mind, while true, was irrelevant. Conclusion Although women came to America expecting some of the same liberties and freedoms their men fought for, it was a long time before they were able to enjoy the rights and freedoms they enjoy today. In the early days, women exercised some considerable freedom, especially if unmarried, to take up professional positions among the colonies, but as the educational requirements for these types of positions increased, women’s inability to obtain the proper education prevented them from entering these fields. Because women were not generally sent to higher education centers, typically obtaining only the ability to read among their other subjects which rotated around becoming a good housewife and mother, most women were forced to work in professions that consisted of factory labor, home maintenance (maids), seamstresses or other menial tasks. Women of color were even further restricted to the status of slave, house servant or janitorial work. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s, the Victorian Age, that women began organizing to bring about the social changes that were necessary to provide them with the rights necessary to fulfill those responsibilities they were charged with. While some women worked to set up schools and other institutions of learning that catered to educating young women in academic subjects, others worked to obtain legal rights and responsibilities that would allow them to change the laws that restricted them within their homes and kept them away from the public sphere. Through such women as Francis Willard and Catherine Beecher, women who subscribed fully to the concept of the True Woman were able to break the constraints of the True Woman ideal and come to an understanding of the issues involving women’s suffrage that didn’t threaten their own concepts of who they were and what they stood for. Although they were constrained by the tenets of the True Woman themselves, these women were able to affect change and hold socially acceptable public careers by expanding on those strengths that were afforded them through this same doctrine. By appealing to their concepts of protecting the home and family, as well as by focusing on the ideals of sacrifice and service to others, these women were able to provide a softer path for those others who cherished the ideology of a True Woman as a woman who displayed piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Looking at the various viewpoints and changes happening during these Victorian years, it is possible to imagine that Victorian America had little idea of how these events would lead to the ‘feminisation of American culture.’ Although this trend could have been foreseen if one cared to look deeply into the issues and the means by which women were enacting change while still remaining consistent with their own identities. By focusing on the home and hearth as the necessary driving factors for obtaining feminine rights, women’s political motives were, by definition, ‘soft’ and liberal. Because they were the gender assigned with the protection of the home, their movements and proposals centered around the defensive. Having learned first-hand the invisible shackles that bound them in times of difficulty, such as the inability to hold jobs, own property or bring lawsuits, women were naturally inclined to be compassionate toward the victim and supporting of social change that was perceived to be the best solution to the problem. However, the masculine nature of these ideas, the unthinkable notion of women working in the public sphere, obtaining educations equal to or greater than men and having the capacity to both care for a family and carry on such public functions struck the society as being so out of character that it took some time before the shock value wore off enough to take a more objective look. By that time, things were happening so fast that it would have been difficult for a Victorian American to have foreseen how these actions would eventually manifest themselves in the culture of the future. There was little time to reminisce either, as the world was soon after plunged into war, relying on men and women alike to support the war effort and heading irrevocably down the road to recognition of women’s liberty and participation in the culture of tomorrow. Footnotes 1 “America After the Civil War.” (2006). Education. Albany, NY: Albany Institute of History and Art. 2 Ibid. 3 see Welter, Barbara. (1966). “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18, N. 2, P. 1, pp. 151-74. 4 Welter, Barbara. (1966). “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18, N. 2, P. 1, p. 21. 5 see Poovey, Mary. (1988). Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 6 Hewitt, Nancy. (2002). “Taking the True Woman Hostage.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1, p. 157. 7 Roberts, Mary Louise. (Spring, 2002). “True Woman Revisited.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1, p. 150. 8 Hewitt, (2002), p. 150. 9 Ibid, p. 152. 10 Welter, (1966), p. 152. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid, p. 154. 13 Ibid, p. 158. 14 Ibid, p. 173. 15 Kessler-Harris, Alice. (n.d.). “Women and the Work Force.” The Reader’s Companion to American History. Houghton Mifflin Company. Retrieved 20 April, 2006 from < http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/rc_093200_womenandthew.htm> 16 Ibid. 17 Woloch, Nancy. (n.d. b). “Feminist Movement: From its Origins to 1960.” Reader’s Companion to American History. Retrieved 20 April, 2006 from < http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/rc_030901_ifromitsorig.htm> 18 Woloch, (n.d. b). 19 see Roberts, Mary Louise. (Spring, 2002). “True Woman Revisited.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1, p. 150-55. 20 Roberts, (2002), p. 153. 21 see Sklar, Katherine. (1973). Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity. London, England: Yale University Press. 22 Sklar, Katherine. (1973). Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity. London, England: Yale University Press, p. 36. 23 Slagell, Amy. (2002). “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs. Vol. 4, N. 1, p. 23. 24 Ibid, p. 10. 25 Flexner, Eleanor. (1975). Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge: Belknap Press, p. 187. 26 Ibid. 27 Slagell, (2002), p. 10. 28 Gifford, Carolyn. (1986). “Home Protection: The WCTU’s Conversion to Woman Suffrage.” Gender, Ideology, and Action: Historical Perspectives on Women’s Public Lives. Janet Sharistanian (Ed.). Westport: Greenwood Press, p. 111. 29 National Women’s History Project. (2002). “Timeline of Legal History of Women in the United States.” Women’s Rights Movement Living the Legacy. Retrieved 20 April, 2006 from < http://www.legacy98.org/timeline.html> 30 Ibid. 31 Evans, Sara M. (1989). Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. The Free Press, p. 145. 32 Ibid, p. 146. 33 Ibid, p. 160. 34 Ibid, p. 164. References “America After the Civil War.” (2006). Education. Albany, NY: Albany Institute of History and Art. Douglas, Angela. (1977). The Feminisation of American Culture. New York: Knopf. Evans, Sara M. (1989). Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. The Free Press, p. 145. Hewitt, Nancy. (2002). “Taking the True Woman Hostage.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1, pp. 156-62. Flexner, Eleanor. (1975). Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge: Belknap Press, p. 187. Gifford, Carolyn. (1986). “Home Protection: The WCTU’s Conversion to Woman Suffrage.” Gender, Ideology, and Action: Historical Perspectives on Women’s Public Lives. Janet Sharistanian (Ed.). Westport: Greenwood Press, pp. 95-120. Kessler-Harris, Alice. (n.d.). “Women and the Work Force.” The Reader’s Companion to American History. Houghton Mifflin Company. Retrieved 20 April, 2006 from < http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/rc_093200_womenandthew.htm> National Women’s History Project. (2002). “Timeline of Legal History of Women in the United States.” Women’s Rights Movement Living the Legacy. Retrieved 20 April, 2006 from < http://www.legacy98.org/timeline.html> Poovey, Mary. (1988). Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roberts, Mary Louise. “True Woman Revisited.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1. Spring 2002, pp. 150-55. Sklar, Katherine. (1973). Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity. London, England: Yale University Press. Slagell, Amy. (2002). “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs. Vol. 4, N. 1, pp. 1-23. Welter, Barbara. (1966). “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18, N. 2, P. 1, pp. 151-74. Woloch, Nancy. (n.d. b). “Feminist Movement: From its Origins to 1960.” Reader’s Companion to American History. Retrieved 20 April, 2006 from < http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/rc_030901_ifromitsorig.htm> Read More