Perfection_Era_Paper

Perfection Era Throughout history, women have played crucial roles in history. During the Second Great Awakening, female converts outnumbered males by about three to two. Usually the woman was the first convert of the family and the men who converted were related to women who had previously converted (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). Social changes during the Second Great Awakening played an important role in how women were viewed. Parents no longer arranged marriages of their children; couples were beginning to wed on the basis of affection rather than a marriage arranged by the parents. Women depended on marriage as an essential part of her economic security. With the uncertainty of the social changes, many women between the ages of 12 and 25 were drawn toward religion. Joining a church heightened a young woman’s sense of purpose. Women who were a part of the church were considered respectable, and this increased her chances of marriage (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). The era of change brought a different set of problems to women. Most men now worked outside the home in factories that made items like cloth, soap, and candles that women had once made and sold to help supplement the family income (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). As the workplace took on a whole new social identity, women were domestic and her home was her haven away from the workaday world. She was considered the center of the home teaching love, comfort and moral values to her husband and children (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). Women, who were considered morally strong, were held to a higher standard of sexual purity. Men’s sexual infidelity, was not condoned, but brought no lasting shame. Women who engaged in sexual relations before marriage or were unfaithful after marriage were considered an everlasting disgrace. Under this double standard, women were supposed to be passive, submissive and submerge their identities to those of her husband (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). Women played an important role in creating the ideal of domesticity. Lyman Beecher’s daughter Catherine was a supporter of “republican motherhood,” in which she argued that women exercised power as moral guardians of the nation. Catherine wrote many books on home management. Catherine also advocated giving women greater educational opportunities in order to become schoolteachers. She believed that school was an extension of the home and that teachers like mothers were to instill sound moral values in their children (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). In Europe after 1850 employment opportunities expanded for women, yet the middle class social expectation was that women would not be employed outside the home. The re-definition of women’s roles in Europe where changing due to the child rearing being done by hired nurses and governesses. The middle class was most numerous in England and in Britain where Queen Victoria’s reign gave these ideals the label of Victorianism (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). Very few American women had time to make the ideal of domesticity the center of attention in their lives. Farmers’ wives worked hard, while the lower-class families could not get by without the wages of the female members. As middle class women tried to live up to this standard, they found it confining and with nothing to do (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). Women faced many disadvantages in the Women’s Rights Movement. They were kept out of jobs, denied political rights and given only limited access to education beyond elementary education. When women married, the control of her property and legal position was completely taken over by her husband. Any unmarried woman was made the ward of a male relative (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). The abolitionists’ era was endorsed by William Lloyd Garrison. A deeply religious young man, Garrison advocated sending blacks to Africa and went to Baltimore to work for Benjamin Lundy, who edited the antislavery newspaper in the country (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). In Baltimore Garrison encountered the opinions of free African Americans, who played a major role in launching the abolitionist movement. Most of the African Americans considered the colonization movement as proslavery and anti-black. The African Americans were born and raised in American and were not going to be sent back to Africa. Garrison had been in Baltimore about a year when his radical views sent him to prison for libel (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). Upon Garrison’s release from prison, he returned to Boston determined to publish a new kind of antislavery journal. The first issue of The Liberator was published on January 1, 1831 and abolitionism was born. Garrison was abrasive in his writings regarding slavery and insisted that slavery end at once. He denounced colonization as a racist movement and upheld racial equality (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). As the drive for immediate freeing of all slaves, abolition faced massive obstacles. In the South slavery was extremely important to the economic life of plantation owners. The abolitionist caused much hostility in the south. The North faced many of the same obstacles as the South, with bitter resistance toward the abolitionists. The American Anti-Slavery Society was burned down in Philadelphia, and Elijah Lovejoy was murdered when he tried to protect his printing press from an angry crowd (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the most successful piece of antislavery literature in the nation’s history, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). When abolitionists divided over the issue of female participation, women found it easy to identify with the slaves, since both were victims of make tyranny. Sarah and Angelina Grimke’ took up the cause for women’s rights after they were criticized for speaking to audiences that included men as well as women. Sarah wanted to become a lawyer and argued that women should have the same rights as men. The women’s rights movement was launched after two abolitionists, Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott were forced to sit behind a curtain at the world antislavery convention in London. They organized a conference in New York in 1848 that started off by stating that “All men and women were created equal.” This convention called for opportunities for education and professional resolutions for women. Women also gained control of their property, recognition of legal equality and repealed laws giving father’s custody of children in divorce. The only resolution that did not pass unanimously was the right to vote (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stoff, 2005). The Second Great Awakening was more than a series of religious crazes and camp meetings. It was an organizing process that helped give meaning and direction to people suffering in various degrees from social strains as the nation was moving toward a new political and economic way of life. Middle class women turned to religion and reform as ways to shape society. As abolitionism and women’s rights unfolded, both turned to political action to accomplish their goals. The party system was seriously impacted by the reform movements that took place during the Second Great Awakening (McKivigan, J., & O'Brien Gibson, M. (2008).