Women in the 19C United States of America: Over the River & Thru the Woods to Grandmother's House We Go

Saturday, September 10, 2022

Over the River & Thru the Woods to Grandmother's House We Go

My Grandmother

When I was young, we lived very close to my grandmother's house. My grandmother was a product of the last quarter of the 19th-century in the mid-west. Each day my mother would take my hand & we would walk to visit her. The path led through the woods & across a little stream, where wildflowers grew. It was beautiful. I cannot remember a day that my grandmother was not baking or sewing. She always wore her hair up on the back of her head, and her eyes sparkled just like my mother's. Her house smelled delicious. These paintings remind me of those visits, even of the wonderful scents of both the woods & of her house with its big windows gently covered with lace curtains.

Julius Garibaldi "Gari" Melchers (1860-1932) Lady Reading

Julius Garibaldi "Gari" Melchers (1860-1932) Young Woman Sewing

Julius Garibaldi "Gari" Melchers (1860-1932) Woman Sewing

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.”