Women in the 19C United States of America: Etiquette for American Ladies 1840

Thursday, January 17, 2019

Etiquette for American Ladies 1840 - No Children or Dogs

Etiquette for Ladies: With Hints on the Preservation, Improvement, and Display of Female Beauty. Published by Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia. 1838-1840

Ceremonious visits should be short; if the conversation ceases without being again continued by the person you have come to see, and if she gets up from her seat under any pretext whatever, custom requires you to make your salutation and withdraw.

If, before this tacit invitation to retire, other visitors are announced, you should adroitly leave them without saying much. If, while you are present, a letter is brought to the person you are visiting, and she should lay it' down without opening it, you must entreat her to read it. She will probably not do so, and-this circumstance will warn you to shorten your visit.

When you make a half-ceremonious call, and the person you are visiting insists upon your stopping, it is proper to do so, but after a few minutes you should rise to go; if you are urged still further, and are taken by the hands and made to sit down, as it were by force, to leave immediately would be impolite; but, nevertheless, after a short interval, get up a third time, and then certainly retire.

To carry children or dogs with one on a visit of ceremony, is altogether vulgar.
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About this blog

In colonial America, men were considered superior to woman in all ways. In a strict patriarchal hierarchy, men controlled not only wealth & political power but also how their children were raised, religious questions, & all matters of right & wrong.

In the early part of the 19Cy, however, many Americans experienced a revolution in gender. The doctrine of “separate spheres” maintained that woman’s sphere was the world of privacy, family, & morality while man’s sphere was the public world -– economic striving, political maneuvering, & social competition. But women were interested in equality.

In 1848, New York passed the Married Woman’s Property Act. Now a woman wasn’t automatically liable for her husband’s debts; she could enter contracts on her own; she could collect rents or receive an inheritance in her own right; she could file a lawsuit on her own behalf. She became for economic purposes, an individual. By 1900, every state has passed legislation modeled after this, granting married women some control over their property and earnings.

In 1870 after the Civi War, the 15th Amendment was ratified, saying, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” African-Americans could vote, but women could not.

But it was not until 1920, that the 19th Amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”