America's Nineteenth-Century Social System

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Nineteenth-century America solidified a social system that shaped gender relations to ensure women would be treated differently than men. This system was designed to limit the influence of women to the private sphere of the home and family. The system was known as ‘true womanhood’ or the ‘cult of domesticity’. This ideology held that women were designed distinctively for the role of wife and mother. This designated women into a ‘Separate Sphere’ than that of men. Women’s Sphere made women’s options for work, education, voicing their opinions or for supporting reform into the private realm of the home. Christian ideals of womanhood believed being a housewife and mother was not ‘work’ but an effortless expression of women’s true feminine …show more content…
Men would be the provider, offer security, and maintain protection of the family. They were considered the breadwinners, often working outside the home, were in politics and reinforced attributes of being competitive, aggressive, rational, and worldly. The industrialization of America was transpiring at this time and helped change the economy dramatically. This change created new strata to establish classes within America. Most men were now obligated to make the money required for daily life and household needs. The goods and many services previously generated at home and then traded with neighbors or friends began to be manufactured by power driven machines. And while the market changed drastically and fortunes were made and lost, the women’s management skills of the household and emotional strength were crucial in the family dynamics of this new economy. (Dubois, 195). Even in the state of turmoil the industrialization of America was experiencing, some things were to remain the same, women’s roles and virtues. The idea of women only working within their ‘ideal’ Sphere of piety, submissiveness, domesticity and purity in everything they did is misleading. There were challenges to the ideology in many ways by all women of varying …show more content…
These movements pushed the boundaries of their ‘sphere’ by teaching women ideals normally meant for the sphere of men. They learn incorporated their charities and were able to circumvent the men’s world of business. The women learned to network, plan, hold charity meetings, collect donations, do investment management as well as participating in legal avenues previously held by men: incorporations, defending of contracts, signing contract and the ability to purchase and sell properties. Farming women sold items previously traded to friends and neighbors. This included extra butter, eggs and canned goods. Prostitution became another outlet for women to challenge the boundaries of their separate sphere. One of the most important intersections of the new economy and the market revolution in America was the working class. Many unmarried women left their homes as teenagers and young women to use their previous skills as seamstresses and spinners to become factory workers in such places as the Lowell
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