Summary
 Lecture explores four different types of
PUBLIC ACTIVITY that women engaged in
during the antebellum period:




Benevolence
Moral Reform
Antislavery
Women’s Rights
 Woman’s Sphere and civic engagement
Benevolence
Philadelphia 1840
 Women’s societies created “for pious purposes”
 Response to urbanization/industrialization & the
problems they brought: poverty, crime, illness
Benevolence
 Foundation for
women’s public
activity
 Charitable &
humanitarian ends
 Clerical approval
 Bible societies,
missionary societies,
maternal societies,
Sunday-school
associations (“to impart
spiritual values to the
children of the poor”)
Catherine Beecher
Benevolence
 Limited to North
 Urbanization
 Proximity to other
women
 Clientele—the poor and
“impious” needed their
help
 Second Great
Awakening
 Religious upheaval
 Belief in the need to
improve the world
 Women’s piety made
them the perfect
volunteers for this job
Charles Finney
Benevolence
 Benefits of Benevolence:
 Skills: organizational, literary,
financial
 Providence Employment Society,
1830s: Run by wealthy women from
prominent families to help poor
seamstresses; created a small
garment society that became a
model employer and offered good
wages
 Access to the “public” activities:
Almshouses, asylums, hospitals, jails
 Gender Consciousness: Spurred
empathy for female victims (widows,
abandoned, prostitutes) & disdain for
their oppressors
 Limitation of Benevolence
 Did not challenge the “woman’s
sphere”
Almshouse
Benevolence
 SARAH HALE
 Early Life
 Lost mother, sister,
brother
 Widowed with five
children after 9
years of happy
marriage
 Opened millinery
business with sisterin-law that failed
 Turned to writing
Sarah Hale
Benevolence
 Godey’s Ladies Book
 “Moral and spiritual
exemplar” devoted to
“female
improvement”
 Woman’s sphere is
celebrated
 Major focus on female
education
Benevolence
 Godey’s Lady’s Book
 Exalts female
“influence” and
sacrifice
 Organizations
 Seaman’s Aid Society:
helped abandoned
wives, widows,
children
 Created boarding
house, clothing store
and workshop, infant
school, free library
 Opposes woman’s
rights
 Opposes fashion
Fashion plate from
Godey’s Lady’s Book
Moral
Reform
 Aggressive
benevolence
 Abate social ills
 Change men’s
behavior
 Double standard
A very guilty Richard Robinson sneaks away from the
freshly murdered--and quite modest, it appears--Helen
Jewett. A rendition by an artist without a taste for the
racy.
 Impose a single
 Changing masculinity
“pure” moral
standard on
 Fears about out-of-control young men
everyone
moving to cities to work as clerks
Moral
Reform
 Domestic agenda
 Raising children with
“piety and moral
education”
 Public agenda
 All female staff
 Protest in front of brothels
(singing hymns and
shaming)
 Petition state legislatures
to make seduction a crime
 Successful in MA 1846, NY
1848
Abolition
 Elizabeth Chandler
 Quaker
 Writer
 Justification for female
involvement
 Moral superiority
 Sisterhood
 Break up of slave
family
 Sexual abuse
Elizabeth Margaret Chandler
Female
Antislavery
Societies
 Over 100 groups by 1838
 Boston Society, 1832
 Maria Weston Chapman &
her sisters
 Mostly middle- & upper
class white women
 Petitioning & Fund-raising
Maria Weston Chapman
Female
Antislavery
Societies
 Philadelphia, 1833,
integrated
 Fortens: Charlotte,
Margaretta, Harriett,
Sarah,
 Role of Black women
 Pragmatic goals: Vigilance
Committee, Education
 Racism, Fall River, 1835
Charlotte Forten (1837-1914).
Taught freed slaves and wrote
Life on Sea Islands
Female Antislavery Societies
 National Female Anti-Slavery Society Meetings, 1837-1839,
and the burning of Philadelphia Hall (1838)
FundRaising
 Funds for literature
and lecturers
 Antislavery Fairs
 1834 first fair, Lydia Maria
Child, $200
 Maria Weston Chapman
 Wealth, educated,
international
connections
 Elegant expensive
goods
 Holiday event
 Thousands of $
Frederick Douglass
Literature
 Literacy
 Increase in women
authors/readers
 Lydia Maria Child
 Popular writer: The
Frugal Housewife
 An Appeal,1833
 Loses popularity
 Edits antislavery
newspaper
Lydia Maria Child
Literature
 Harriet Jacobs
 Slave autobiography
 Gave voice to
slaves
 Incidents in the Life
of a Slave Girl
 Sexual abuse of
slave women
Harriet Jacobs, 1813-1897
Petitioning
 Importance
 Immediate results: a
signature
 Measurement of
success
 Grassroots support
network
 Topics of Petitions
 Opposing annexation
of Texas
 Supporting abolition in
DC
 1838: 70% of
signatures are women
Petitioning
 Gag Rule
 1837 House of Reps
automatically tabled all
antislavery petitions
 One of the few
political activities
open to women
 Meaning of
petitioning
 Required knowledge
 Self-confidence
 Influenced woman’s
right
Lecturing
 Controversial &
difficult
 Unpleasant: mob
attacks, egg showers,
verbal attacks, bad
weather, poor
accommodations
 Threatened gender
norms
 Maria Stewart
 Wealth Boston widow
first woman to lecture
to mixed audiences,
1831-32
Lecturing
 Grimke Sisters, South Carolina sisters
Lecturing
 Letter to Garrison,
1834
 ‘36 Agents of NYASS
 Spoke to women
 “Promiscuous”
 Pastoral letter
 Beecher letter
 Letters on the equality
of the sexes, 1838,
Sarah
Lecturing
 Abby Kelley
 Lectured for over
20 years
 “long unrelieved
moral torture”
 Opened up the
West to
Garrisonians
 Lectured alone
 Persecuted
 “Satan”
Abby Kelley, 1811-1887
Abolition & Woman’s Rights
 Leadership
 Role models
 Widened the
woman’s rights
network
 Paved the way for
future feminist
lecturers
Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906 at the age of 30
Woman’s
Rights
 Challenged woman’s
sphere
 Male-dominated
professions
 Obstacles
 Training
 Licensing
 Gender assumptions:
Women are “delicate”
 Jane Swisshelm quote
Jane Swisshelm
Woman’s
Rights
 Elizabeth Blackwell
(1821-1910)
 Woman’s Sphere
 She focused on women as
nurturers
 Medical School
 Rejection
 Geneva
 Graduation 1849
 Rejection
 Shunned
 Dispensary in NY
Elizabeth Blackwell
Woman’s
Rights
 Antoinette Brown
Blackwell (1825-1921)
 Woman’s Sphere:
 Women had a moral nature
 Seminary
 Oberlin: But no degree
 Rejection
 Lyceum speaker
 Ordination
 South Butler, NY, 1853
Antoinette Brown Blackwell
Woman’s
Rights
 Seneca Falls, 1848
 Roots in
Abolition
 Lucretia Mott and
Elizabeth Cady
Stanton at World
Anti-Slavery
Convention in
London, 1840
 Women rejected
as delegates and
had to sit in the
balcony
Lucretia Mott
Woman’s
Rights
 Declaration of
Independence
 “We hold these truths to be
self evidence: that all men
and women are created
equal. . .”
 Issues:
 Addressed women’s
exclusion from:
 Higher education
 Professions
 Pulpit
 Profitable employment
Frederick Douglass
supports woman’s suffrage
resolution
Woman’s
Rights
 What Seneca Falls
ignored:
 Black women
 Segregation? Interracial
mvmt?
 Working-class women
 Lowell Mills
 Wages, hours, conditions
 Domestic duties
 Reproductive
control
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Woman’s
Rights
 Frances Wright, 1795-1852
 Background
 Raised by aunt in England, early
travel writer
 Befriends Marquis de Lafayette,
James Madison, Andrew
Jackson, Thomas Jefferson
 Nashoba
 Utopian society to free slaves
 Forbids marriage, private
property, religion
 Bad overseeing, malaria, poor
land, resistance: freed slaves
Frances Wright
Woman’s
Rights
 Public Lecturing, 1820s




Mixed audiences
Sexual emancipation
Critiqued clergy
Woman’s Rights
 Castigated
 “Monster”
 Quiet ending
 Married in Paris, left
husband and daughter and
moved to Cincinnati