WOMEN AND THE REPUBLIC

“Washington and Liberty”

REPUBLICAN WIFE AND MOTHER• Women of the eighteenth century were expected to marry,

bear children, tend the household, and defer to theirhusbands in all matters; in short to be a dutiful wife.

• With few exceptions, women were confined to the domesticsphere

• Women possessed few political rights. They could not voteor hold public office. While single women enjoyed someeconomic rights. Once married, however, women sufferedthe loss or severe restriction of economic rights for no otherreason than her marital status.

• Upon marriage, the husband acquired ownership of all hiswife’s property—including her possessions from prior tothe marriage. Her husband would also acquire ownershipof whatever she might inherit, unless a will created aspecial trusteeship for a woman. Contracts could not beenforced unless agreed to by the husband. Married womendid possess the “dower’s right” to use one-third of herhusband’s estate while she lived. But even then it was onlythe use of the proceeds of her husband’s estate. In mostcases, she could not bequeath that portion to heirs of herchoice. It reverted to her husband’s heirs.

Deputy Husband

REPUBLICAN MOTHERHOOD• According to eighteenth-century social norms,

women played a subservient role.• Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the

Laws of England (1765) captures the prevailingview on gender roles in a revolutionary age: “Bymarriage, the husband and wife are one person inlaw; that is, the very being or legal existence ofthe woman is suspended during the marriage, or atleast incorporated and consolidated into that of thehusband; under whose wing, protection, and covershe performs every thing….”

• By the 1790s some women began to claim aspecial female contribution to the healthyfunctioning of the republic. Popular sentimentbegan to endorse the idea that women best servedthe republic by becoming educated, virtuousmothers able to train their sons to be the thinking,rational citizens required by a government basedon popular sovereignty. Women supportedrepublicanism by fulfilling their maternal duties.

Judith Sargent Murray wrote essaysdefending women’s right to equalityof education.

THE ADAMS EXCHANGE

• In March of 1776 Abigail Adams resistedwoman’s confinement to a restrictive position insociety: “… I desire you would Remember theLadies, and be more generous and favorable tothem than your ancestors. Do not put suchunlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.Remember all Men would be tyrants if theycould. If particular care and attention is not paidto the Ladies we are determined to foment aRebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound byany Laws in which we have no voice, orRepresentation. That your Sex are NaturallyTyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly establishedas to admit of no dispute, but such of you aswish to be happy willingly give up the harsh titleof Master for the more tender and endearing oneof Friend…. Men of Sense in all Ages abhorthose customs which treat us only as vassals ofyour Sex.”

Abigail Adams served as her husband’sconfidant and collaborator throughouthis political career.

“ABSOLUTE POWER”• John Adams answered: “As to Declarations of Independency, be

patient. Read our Privateering Laws, and our Commercial Laws.What signifies a Word. As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, Icannot but laugh. We have been told that our Struggle hasloosened the bands of Government every where. That Childrenand Apprentices were disobedient—that schools and Colleges weregrown turbulent—that Indians slighted their Guardians andNegroes grew insolent to their Masters. But your Letter was thefirst Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfulthan all the rest were grown discontented.—This is rather toocoarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I won’t blot it out.Depend upon it, We know better than to repeal our Masculinesystems. Although they are in full Force, you know they are littlemore than Theory. We dare not exert our Power in its full Latitude.We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in Practice you know Weare the subjects.”

• Abigail Adams exposed the hypocrisy: “I can not say that I thinkyou very generous to the Ladies, for whilst you are proclaimingpeace and good will to Men, Emancipating all Nations, you insistupon retaining absolute power over Wives. But you mustremember that Arbitrary power is like most other things which arevery hard, very liable to be broken—and notwithstanding all yourwise Laws and Maxims we have it in our power not only to freeour selves but to subdue our Masters, and without violence throwboth your natural and legal authority at your feet—”

President Adams

MIXED LEGACY• The Revolution brought little change in the

status of women. In the 1780s, as earlier,the great majority of people believed awoman’s duty was to take care of herhousehold and raise her children. Therevolutionary emphasis on liberty andequality did, however, bring someimprovements in female schooling, such asthe formation of several female academies.These were justified by the argument thatwomen had to be educated so that they couldinculcate republican virtues in their sons anddaughters. But the organized fight forwomen’s rights did not begin until thenineteenth century.

• Between 1775 and 1807, New Jerseypermitted all people worth over fifty poundsto vote. Free blacks and single womencould vote, but not married women.

REPUBLICAN WIFE• The republican wife was qualified to be a companion

and helper. Wives had to subordinate their individualinterests for the greater good of the whole. Therepublican wife was affectionate, virtuous, chaste,and capable of enormous moral authority over herhusband and children. But as historian Jan Lewiselucidates, “Indeed, she led to a dead end, for hercapability always depended upon masculinesusceptibility. She had no more power than manallowed, and even if republican doctrine suggestedthat men ought to welcome feminine influence, thatdoctrine held no sway over those who did notsubscribe to its credo. That generalization, of course,describes the fundamental weakness in republicanism;it had no power over those who were not or did notwant to be virtuous. In that sense republicanismserved women no more poorly than men: all werebaffled by unalloyed vice. Even thoughrepublicanism enhanced woman’s status andlegitimated improvements in her education as well asher entry into benevolent reform movements, it alsoplaced implicit checks upon her power.”

THE CLASH• Despite the ideology of the Revolution, women’s lives,

both private and political, continued to be defined bydependence and deference. The lingering concept ofhierarchy clashed with the principles of egalitarianismthat flowed from the Revolution. As men moved tocreate a politically democratic society, “republicanmotherhood” still confined women to the domesticsphere.

• In 1782 Eliza Wilkinson demanded the expansion ofthe feminine sphere, considering confinement to thedomestic sphere to be a form of enslavement. In 1793Priscilla Mason called for sexual equality: “Being thestronger party, [men] early seized the sceptre and thesword; with these they gave laws to society; theydenied women the advantage of liberal education;forbid them to exercise their talents on those greatoccasions, which would serve to improve them. Theydoom’d the sex to servile or frivolous employments, onpurpose to degrade their minds, that they themselvesmight hold unrivall’d, the power and pre-eminencethey had usurped. Happily a more liberal way ofthinking begins to prevail.”

Fashion Plate of the 1850s

SEPARATE SPHERES• Seventeenth and eighteenth-century families were primarily economic units in

which men and women developed partnerships centered in the home. In the earlynineteenth century, industrialization gave rise to a new urban middle class and tookmen involved in commerce and industry away from the home for their work. Thisseparation of the home and the family from the workplace led to a redefinition of thehome as primarily the woman’s sphere. Traditional woman’s work, such as cooking,cleaning, and raising children, was now separated from the outside world of workand money. Contemporary authors, writing of man’s sphere and woman’s sphere,redefined the ideal woman in a way that devalued woman’s work and created a newprescriptive woman’s role. Victorian, middle-class women now sought fulfillmentthrough self-sacrifice. Today, historians refer to this social expectation and role ofwomen as the “cult of domesticity.”

• During the 1830s, Angelina and Sarah Grimke began to challenge this narrowdefinition through their participation in the antislavery movement. Because theytraveled, spoke in public, and lectured to crowds of both men and women, manyaccused them of leaving their appointed sphere, defying the laws of God, andendangering the family. Most women did not agree with the Grimke sisters.Catharine Beecher, for instance, argued women should influence society but onlythrough the domestic sphere. Eventually the “woman question” led to a split in theantislavery movement and the beginning of the nineteenth-century women’s rightsmovement.

WIVES AND HUSBANDS• Relations between spouses also were evolving.

Wives continued to be legally subordinate totheir husbands, but under the doctrine ofseparate spheres, middle-class women weredemanding and winning greater voice in thoseareas where they were deemed to be particularlycompetent: exerting moral influence on thefamily and creating within the home a calmrefuge from the harsh, competitive worldoutside. As middle-class women gained morecontrol over the frequency of their pregnancies,the size of white middle-class families declinedmarkedly.

• While the authority of fathers, husbands,professionals, and other social “superiors”waned, new relationships among people insimilar positions were forged through theproliferation of voluntary associations.Temperance and moral-reform societies ofwhite middle-class women encouragedsociability among members and attempted toenhance influence on outside groups. “The Nest”

CULT OF DOMESTICITY• In the 1830s, Catharine Beecher and

Angelina Grimke exchanged arguments oversocial expectations of women. Beechercaptured the sentiments of most middle-classand well-to-do Americans when she wrote,“But while woman holds a subordinaterelation in society to the other sex, it is notbecause it was designed that her duties onher influence should be any the lessimportant or all-pervading. But it wasdesigned that the mode of gaining influenceand of exercising power should be altogetherdifferent and peculiar…. Woman is to winevery thing by peace and love; by makingherself so much respected, esteemed andloved, that to yield to her opinions and togratify her wishes, will be the free-willoffering of the heart. But this is to be allaccomplished in the domestic and socialcircle.”

Godey’s Lady’s Book

BEECHER-GRIMKE EXCHANGE• Angelina Grimke countered Beecher,

using argumentation based on naturalrights doctrine: “Now, I believe it iswoman’s right to have a voice in allthe laws and regulations by which sheis to be governed, whether in Churchor State; and that the presentarrangements of society, on thesepoints, are a violation of human rights,a rank usurpation of power, a violentseizure and confiscation of what issacredly and inalienably hers—thusinflicting upon woman outrageouswrongs, working mischief incalculablein the social circle, and that in itsinfluence on the world producing onlyevil,…”

Angelina Grimke

Sarah Grimke

CULT OF TRUE WOMANHOOD• Historian Barbara Welter identified the

ideal women of the nineteenth centuryas the embodiment of “four cardinalvirtues—piety, purity, submissiveness,and domesticity.” After a thoroughanalysis of women’s popular literatureof the nineteenth century, Welterconcluded that nearly all whitemiddle-class and well-to-do womenaspired toward attaining these virtues,even though they made femaleshostages in the domestic sphere. “Putthem all together and they spell mother,daughter, sister, wife—woman.Without them, no matter whether therewas fame, achievement or wealth, allwas ashes. With them she waspromised happiness and power.”

SENECA FALLS CONVENTION• Welter contends, however, “The very

perfection of True Womanhood …carried within itself the seeds of itsown destruction. For if woman was sovery little less than the angels, shewould surely take a more active part inrunning the world,… Real womenoften felt they did not live up to theideal of True Womanhood: some ofthem blamed themselves, somechallenged the standard, some tried tokeep the virtues and enlarge the scopeof womanhood. Somehow throughthis mixture of challenge andacceptance, of change and continuity,the True Woman evolved into the NewWoman—a transformation as startlingin its way as the abolition of slavery orthe coming of the machine age….”

Mott, Stanton, LowellGirls, and “flapper” ofthe “New Era”