Women’s Unit

“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting

values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human

possibilities” - Margaret Mead

Women fighting to be heard

• In the late 19th century and early 20th century, women were fighting for a voice in politics and literature.

• American women could not vote• They had almost no political or legal power• They could not own property

Women had few opportunities

• Education and career opportunities were limited (teachers, nurses, secretaries, and maids…and only if you did not have children)

• Little or no financial independence – you had to give your paycheck to your father or husband

• In most marriages, the husband made all the important decisions

The Right to Vote

The Suffrage Movement• Susan B. Anthony leads

movement in 1870s• Four states gave women

the right to vote by 1900• Suffragists held marches,

protest rallies, and hunger strikes for their cause

• All women did not have the right to vote in the U.S. until 1920

Feminist Literature • Female authors wanted to show women were

strong and intelligent – a radical view at this time.

• More women were going to college despite the belief at the time that intelligence would destroy a woman’s beauty.

• “Domestic” topics – home, children, female friendship, religion, abolition, suffrage, and love.

• Early feminist writers – Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Sojourner Truth, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Reaction to Women Writing

“America is now wholly given over to a d—d mob of scribbling women, and I

should have no chance of success while the public

taste is occupied with their trash-and should be

ashamed of myself if I did.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Difficulties for Women Writers• Conflict over their desire

to write and their role as mother/wife

• Work dismissed as “unimportant”

• Writing style criticized as too sentimental and “didactic” (preachy)

• Domestic topics not seen as “universal”

Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree)

“I could work as much and eat as much as a man…and ain’t I a woman?”

• Freed from slavery when New York abolished slavery in 1827.

• Began to lecture to spread God’s message

• Spoke for abolitionist and suffragette movements

• Famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech was given unprepared at a women’s rights convention in 1851.

Emily Dickinson• First major American

woman poet• Completely unknown in

her lifetime; poems were found by her sister after her death

• Chose to live in seclusion• Poetry famous for

unusual imagery, slant rhyme, odd punctuation

• Wrote about love, death, hope, success, nature

Charlotte Perkins Gilman• “It is not that women are

really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it.”

The “Rest Cure”

• After the birth of her daughter, Gilman suffered from postpartum depression which affects 10% of women who give birth

• Gilman was given the recommended treatment at that time, “the rest cure” – sleep, avoid intellectual activity, avoid excitement, do nothing creative

• This cure almost destroyed her

A Prolific Career• Wrote “The Yellow

Wallpaper” to challenge the “rest cure”

• Also wrote novels, stories, essays and self-published a magazine

• All her work focused on women’s suffrage, economic independence, and friendship between women

Important Quotations“And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of

his soul, not the servant of his body.” “There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex.

Might as well speak of a female liver.”

"A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband.”

Kate Chopin• Prolific writer – two novels, over

a hundred short stories, many poems and reviews.

• Began writing after the death of her husband; she had 6 children to support.

• Lived in New Orleans and wrote popular stories about Creoles, Cajuns, African-Americans

• Very successful as a writer of “local color” stories; published in some of the best publications of the time

• Master of irony – surprise twist at the end of the story

Until….The Awakening• Published in 1899• The story’s topic, adultery, and

the heroine’s actions were viewed as scandalous.

• Heroine viewed as a bad mother, a fallen woman, a selfish human being

• Because the story questioned traditional views of women and their role, it ended Chopin’s career

• Her work was ignored until the resurgence of feminism in the 1970s