Women in the 19C United States of America: American artist Mary Blood Mellen 1817-1882

Friday, January 8, 2021

American artist Mary Blood Mellen 1817-1882

Mary Blood Mellen (American artist, 1817-1882), Blood Family Homestead (Sterling, Massachusetts), c 1859

Mary Blood was born in Sterling, Massachusetts, in 1817. Following her marriage to Rev. Charles Mellen in 1840, the couple moved to Gloucester. By the end of that decade, Mellen found herself working alongside artist Fitz Hugh Lane.

In recent years, scholars have discovered that the relationship between Lane & Mellen, which has often been presented as one of master artist & student, was really more than that. Although Mellen’s style is clearly a derivative of Lane’s maritime art, it is now believed that the Lane & Mellen relationship was really much more of a collaboration than was originally thought.
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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.”