Week 15 Questions/Comments-327 13

1 Overarching questions about Woloch, Chapter 16, Woman Suffrage/Women’s Rights
How much did women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton influence future women's rights activist such as Carrie Chapman Catt or Alice Paul?-Melanie Houston

2 Julia Ward Howe, 1899, Reminiscences
Julia Ward Howe wrote "The Civil War came to an end, leaving the slave not only emancipated, but endowed with the full dignity of citizenship. The women of the North had greatly helped to open the door which admitted him to freedom and its safeguard, the ballot. Was this door to be shut in their face?" This realization pushed her towards getting involved in the suffrage movement. I personally would have been very frustrated if I had been an abolitionist and then eventually found myself less free than the people whose freedom I had a hand in. -Dana Nordling

I found this to be an interesting piece of commentary because Howe obviously stands very strong with her AWSA peers, yet really doesn't mention her differences with the NWSA. . . Above all the two suffrage groups' divide doesn't seem important to her. I tend to think she's just really content with helping out at all. I found it humorous when she referred to such cities as Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis as being "remote". Boston and Fredericksburg must've been the places to be? --Tanner Carlton

3 Stanton and Anthony, 1882, piece in History of Woman Suffrage
I understand how people saw race as constricting black women more than gender. However, I am nonetheless surprised at how few people like Mr. Purvis there seem to have been and how little was done to relieve black women's double disadvantages. This excerpt and the Francis Ellen Harper piece remind me of Toni Morrison's Sula when Sula asks "I'm a woman and I'm colored. Ain't that the same as being a man?" (142). Both of the nineteenth century pieces and contemporary work of fiction reflect the continued frustrations at the limitations imposed on black women by both their race and their gender. -Mary Fesak I find it very sad that the opponents to both women's rights and free blacks rights were able to push them apart so easily and cause them to be either or rather then both. This seriously hurt both causes even though at the time they believed that they were helping themselves. Ike C.

4 Frances Ellen (Watkins) Harper, 1866 Woman’s Rights convention
Frances Ellen Harper brings light to the difference between the white and black women’s idea of women’s rights. I found it very important to know that black women wanted their rights but they also wanted whites to acknowledge the wrongs that were done to them. While white women wanted to have more rights, even though they did not have to face the hardships that most black women faced. I think her last question “Are there not wrongs to be righted?” sums up the colored woman’s purpose for fighting for women’s rights. Black and white women experienced life differently and it makes sense that they would have different reasons for wanting women’s suffrage. –Katie Way

It's interesting to assess whether or not race was a "stronger," (if that's the correct word to use), social barrier than gender at this time. This would appear to be the case as women of different colors often separated in order to fight for women's rights. The concept of womanhood was not strong enough to pull the two groups together because of race. - Becca Sherman

6 Amelia Barr, (novelist and married) 1896, Speaks out against female suffrage
Oh my, Amelia Barr. . . a prime example of someone who was scared straight into line. Her first mythical line reveals exactly who she is regurgitating. "Discontent is a vice. . . six thousand years old," Did some conservative/patriarchal think tank pay her to write this or was she one of the first female preachers in American history? And another personal favorite, "as marriage becomes rarer. . .. more women are left adrift without helpers or protectors." Unsuccessful analysis; either women were beginning to not need their "helpers" and "protectors" or women's "protectors" and "helpers" were starting to not need their women. I say we blame this on the women. Solid Logic Amelia Barr. --Tanner Carlton

Although I agree with Tanner when she said, "Oh my, Amelia Barr . . . a prime example of someone who was scared straight into line." Nonetheless, the reality of it all is that A LOT more women were like Amelia Barr than what one would think. I think women like Amelia Barr were scared of having independence because they never witnessed a truly independent women; it would go out of their social norm.- Melanie Houston.

Because we consider this suffrage movement one specific to the white middle class, i have to disagree with women being scared of independence, especially in this time period. Sure they never witnessed the women that first came to the colonies, but now white women of the middle class have the luxury of being independent of men before marriage, they could work, they could think for themselves. I dont think this is a fear of independence, but a fear of change and movement away from a life dictated by typical english patriarchy and the amenities that it afforded.--Charlotte O.

7 Anna Garlin Spencer, 1898, response to anti-suffrage attacks
As mentioned in class, I find it very interesting that many women argued the importance of female suffrage by emphasizing the nurturing and ethical integrity of women. By arguing that only women are capable of understanding these ideals, it takes away the responsibility of men to be socially and emotionally competent, which I believe reinforces patriarchy and is problematic. -Katherine Miller

8 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 20th Century feminist, 1903, The Home
Gilman argued that society should have been more advanced at that point but instead women were held back by "primitive restrictions" and were kept a social idiot. This argument is a strong one and she backs it up with hypothetical examples that really make a point. How was this piece received by the public in 1903? -Dana Nordling

I too am curious to the reception of Gilman's "radical" views? More so though in the lens of how the reception effected Gilman's life individually, for instance she speaks of the duties of man and wife, but was she ever married? If so, how did a man of those times handle/feel about being married to someone with such views? -Katie Redmiles

10 Helen Campbell, 1893, study on NY wage laborers, “Shop Girls and Piece Workers”
Campbell made an interesting point when she said the the shop-girl "knows far better what constitutes the life of the rich than the rich ever know of the life of the poor." I had never really thought about it that way, but especially for the workers it must have been hard to watch the rich customers come in and compare them to herself and her station. -Suzannah C.

Campbell views the shop clerk differently because she hopes for upward mobility. But how founded were those hopes? How high were her chances of marrying up and moving beyond being a shop clerk? - Jess Hopkins

11 Lucy Maynard Salmon, 1897, Vassar Historian who studied domestic service
In Lucy Maynard Salmon’s Objections to Domestic Service, I find it interesting that there are only negative things to say about domestic work. While none of the responses in the reading are from the employees, it does say that she questioned them. Why would you question the employer, who is not doing the work, about the positives and negatives of the job? It seems to me that would only lead to biased results. – Katie Way

I wonder if the majority of domestic servants could write or were educated at all, especially those who were immigrants. That may be why the majority of those willing to submit written responses were the employers. -Suzannah C.

I found it interesting that the problems and disadvantages of domestic work back is closely similar to domestic work today. Many of the issues those women faced are faced by the large majority of domestic workers in America today.It is interesting how littler our culture and society has changed on a matter such as work fair treatment of domestic workers. -Katie Redmiles

It's interesting that the employer said that once a native born American girl goes into domestic service, she immediate loses her status among the immigrants. That the race or nationality of the workforce played such a big role isn't surprising, given history thus far, but shows the perceptions of different jobs going on. Once jobs get associated with a "the foreign born and colored element" they immediately get depreciated.--Sarah Palmer

12 Isabel Eaton, 1899, research on black servants in Philadelphia
This illustrates the barriers that African-American women faced when choosing a career. Many women explained that they were turned away from multiple jobs due to their race, common stereotypes, or generalizations. Some women even mentioned that they did not apply for certain jobs due to fear of rejection and discrimination. -Katherine Miller

One man said that he thought the problem was there were just not enough jobs. That would be oversimplifying it as race was clearly a factor, but there may be some truth there. When slavery ended the country had to figure out how to support 4 million new citizens. I would think it may be possible that the country was still struggling to deal with this. - Jess Hopkins

While I agree with Jess' statement on the lack of jobs in America at this time, I don't think that a huge emphasis on supporting four million new citizens was figuring out which jobs could be created for them. Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems unlikely that a nation would go from using these people as slaves to immediately trying to accommodate them with space to live and places to work. It's not surprising to me that African-American women, (bearing the double weight of being in two minority groups of the time), had the hardest time finding jobs. -- Becca Sherman

Sure finding jobs was a large factor and race was a factor, but i wonder how many African-American men and women chose to stay in relatively the same location working the same job just for pay. New jobs werent necessary, they just had to be paid by some sort. This is well after the war, so the preference for whites in servitude has started to diminish.--Charlotte O.

13 Clara Lanza, 1891, defends the female office clerk in NY
The head of the publishing firm who said that women were better clerks than men because men complained about the smallest things all the time is an interesting shift in stereotype. Lanza very much relies on old ideas of womanhood to defend the female clerk. Like the early female reformers, she's more expanding the domestic sphere than demanding a place in the public. The talk of the "matrimonial achievements" of women clerks surprised me with how modern it sounded, not so much for nowadays but for the 1950s, 1960s. (I've been watching Mad Men, that is basically what I am saying here.) It's an old idea that women marry men they met at work, but the rhetoric of it here just seems particularly modern. --Sarah Palmer

14 Leonara Barry, on what the Knights of Labor are doing for women, 1888
I find the fact that the KoL were supporting equal pay for women when most labor unions did not even let women within their groups. I could not help but think of labor leaders that I have studied, such as Mother Jones, who hated the idea of organizing women for labor, because they thought that women should not be working. These other groups fought for a living wage for the men of the family to support their family to prevent women from having to work. The KoL on the other hand organized women so that they could have a fair chance to "earn their livelihood." -Amy Wallace

While it's a good thing that the KoL supported equal pay for women, I'm still a bit skeptical about the organization's motivations. Many labor organizations limited women's involvement because they believed that a husband should earn a high enough wage to support his family. Did the KoL break with this trend because organization leaders believed that if women earned the same amount as men, employers would stop hiring as many women for cheaper labor so the men could have the jobs to support their families (while simultaneously gaining more support for the KoL by women because they wanted to receive equal pay)? -Mary Fesak

15 Sadie Frome, 1902, “Story of a Sweatshop Girl”
Frome's narrative seems surprisingly happy for the life of an orphan immigrant factory girl. She has a remarkable amount of hope about the future and seems to be saving up money and educating herself nicely. Plus her union actually got them shorter hours without getting her fired or her pay reduced, and it's been a while since I read that in a primary source. In many ways, she seems like right now she's living the beginning stages of the American dream. That might be her writing style, though. She elides the sad bits. But on the other hand, her writing on Henry and the fortune teller seems genuinely optimistic, and statistically life had to work out for someone so there's that. It's just so odd to read a life story where things for this girl in this extremely vulnerable position is pretty much doing alright. -- Sarah Palmer