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Deprecated: header(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($response_code) of type int is deprecated in /home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/WebResponse.php on line 38 https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=72.219.192.53McClurken Wiki - User contributions [en]2026-09-18T22:25:33ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.22.0https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328--Week_5_Questions/Comments328--Week 5 Questions/Comments2008-02-14T10:14:14Z<p>72.219.192.53: /* Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892 */</p>
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<div>== Harriet Brunkhurst's article ==<br />
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In Harriet Brunkhurst's article I found it sad to read how the mother of working women expected so much more of their working daughters than of their working sons. Not only was being looked down upon for being in the same level as men bad enoough, but they were expected to cook, clean and do other odd end things around the house after a tiresome day at work, while the sons did nothing but relax after a tiresome day at work. The part that most hit me was Cecil's story. Her mother has her work and wants to hear nothing about how Cecil is tired from work yet she has the nerver to say "John is so tired when he returns from work" about her husband!!! -Emely Amaya<br />
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I also found it interesting to read Harriet Brunkhurst’s article in Major Problems in American Women’s History. It was sad that the women were not as respected as men for holding full time business jobs. However, I think it was largely to do with the context of the time. Mothers couldn’t empathize with their daughters because they expected them to play the same role in the household that they had once held. They knew that their daughters were the main providers, but the idea of this was out of line with the traditional norms and expectations of society at the time. This conflict created a double standard for the working girls, conforming to both the expectations one would hold for the head of the house as well as the expectations for the woman of the house, with fewer of the benefits of each. --Jessica Kilday<br />
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The other thing that stuck out to me about Harriet Brunkhurst's piece was the bit about housework being so much more tiresome than paid jobs were at the time. It kind of brings up that little dig that with the sphere of domesticity, women were expected to work around the house and were no longer considered real "breadwinners" because their jobs were innate. It seems almost as if the mothers were upset their daughters could go out and make money for "shorter workdays" while they were stuck at home taking care of the household and making sure the family was comfortable when they returned home, finding their family ungrateful for all they do. -- Kelly Wuyscik <br />
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In Harriet Brunkhurst's article entitled "Business Girls," she identifies how a mother and daughter struggle in their relationship. Despite the daughter's role as the breadwinner, the mother, who is a homemaker, inflicts her judgment of her daughter's behavior within the confines of the home. The mother "would yield without question to husband or son occupying the same position, debates Rose's every movement simply because she is a girl."(266) We read about suppression of race and gender, but the suppression from within the structure of a girl's life can dictate a life of inadequacy. Our socialization and placement in the world is influenced by school, government, friends and most importantly family. The family instills values and beliefs and is the most enduring agent in the life of a child. If this type of suppression exists within the family, what can be expected of a child as an adult?--LisaM <br />
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I think Lisa makes a good point about what can be expected of a child as an adult. I know my mother struggles with having her mom live with her right now. My grandma was raised that women stay home, do housework, raise children, and have a 'man' provide for them. Every day mom comes home tired and wore out (its been stressful at work lately) and my grandmother gets on her case about laundry, dishes, vacuming, and the like the moment she walks in, but says nothing to my father who helps my mom out with housework all the time. She fights with mom but when dad says something she shuts up and leaves mom alone. Its almost like I watch and live in this time setting because she also does it to me when I'm visiting my parents --Ashley Wilkins<br />
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In continuation of the discussion on Harriet Brunkhurst's article, I feel that the constrictions of women's lives from within the family can still be seen today. Although less explicitly obvious I still feel that the expectations to adhere to domestic sphere are very strong. There is still an understanding in our culture that a woman is in charge of the home. Today, when a male takes on domestic chores he is not necessarily seen as less male, but when a female does not keep a clean room or home she is blamed and suffers the burden of conforming to the domestic ideals still implicit. I don't think that women have yet been freed from the guilt of not following the social norm. Unfortunately, as Brunkhurst's article demonstrates, for the most part it is the female relatives placing the burden upon young women. -- Meredith Bojarski<br />
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As a man in what I feel is a very egalitarian marriage, I can second Meredith's post above completely! My mother-in-law was a traditional stay at home mom who raised two daughters, 10 years apart in age. She raised the daughters, kept an immaculate and spotless house (still does now), and made sure the home was a "refuge" for her husband who was a Philadelphia police officer. When my in-laws come down on occasion, she doesn't understand when my wife is not flying around the house picking stuff up. She'll sometimes chide my wife when she sees me vacuuming the house or doing laundry. Despite the fact that we both work full time, her mom's expectation is that Debbie should be keeping house most of the time as well. She really does not comprehend that the "second shift" at home, with a houseful of kids, is a two person deal. To be honest, I probably still only do about 30 percent to my wife's 70 percent of the domestic stuff - not that I'm complaining! - Phil N.<br />
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== Comparisons ==<br />
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It is interesting to compare Modern American Women: “The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service” with how Fannie Williams describes the “Problem of Employment for Negro Women in Major Problems. Both of these sources describe working conditions for African American women. The first source discusses the role of the “nurse” in the household. The nurse however is responsible for much more than caring for the health of children and family, she is asked to carry out household tasks as well. It is almost as if slavery is continued by the need and difficulty of African American women to find work. The second source points out specifically that, African American women are more commonly employed to domestic service. She seems to take a different spin out however by suggesting that if you can’t be employed to a more honorable position, then make the position you can work more honorable. The question then becomes, what makes a position honorable? And how can you elevate a position if you have no control over the pay, benefits, or job description? --Jessica Kilday<br />
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How was sexual harassment handled during the early 20th century? I mean there are accounts of needing witnesses and having detectives, but it all seems a bit informal. --Justin Mattos<br />
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Like Justin, I am curious how sexual harassment was handled. It seemed that many males got away with sexual harassing females because the females did not want to lose their job. Did this occur often? Did many of the harassers get dealt with? --Ashley Wilkins<br />
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The readings in MP and MAW both discuss how difficult the lives of working women were, for every type of women. The immagrants were over worked and underpaid as well as black women, but they had to fight even harder to find a job, and then there were the white women who worked in department stores who ended up selling themselves to make ends meet. What was interesting about the department store essay was how none of the women referred to what they did after hours as prostiting. I assume this is because they were possibly ashamed of what they were doing and trying to make it sound like something its not. It was more than just going out to the theatre or dinner. Also surprisingly enough these girls were very young as well as the men they were intertaining seemed to be married most of the time. This was easy money for them which seemed to be why it was so appealing.<br />
--Michelle Mardeusz<br />
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I found Fannie Barrier Williams thoughts on the “problem of Employments for Negro Women” to be particularly interesting because rather then focusing on domestic servitude as wearing women down (all the essays in MAW did), she actually thought that it ALSO created girls with “more than ordinary strength of character.” She evens calls upon black women to raise the status of servant women. It is like she encourages women to take this job and then actively work to elevate the status of the occupation. However, it seems to focus a lot on the job as other people in society view it…. which is a very middle class America concern. – Cat Debelius<br />
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== Judy Yung, “Unbound Feet: Chinese Women in the Public Sphere" ==<br />
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I was amazed by the large role that the YWCA played in the liberation of Chinese women. From what I read, I think that they were more liberated than white women. --Justin Mattos<br />
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Like Justin I was surprised how the YWCA played such an important role. These women were isolated and this organization pulled them from their closets. It is amazing how customs shaped the Chinese woman's life experience. In "Unbound Feet" it states, "it was considered immodest to be seen too many times during the year."(263) Chinese women were made invisible by their culture. The idea of seeing a friend only on a special occasion, which was not due to distance, or the need to travel in a closed coach for short distances is suffocating. The YWCA recognized this and offered an opportunity that allowed women of similar backgrounds to meet and receive assistance outside their homes, but the most important contribution the YWCA gave these women was power. The power to meet, to decide and to change their lives in a way that they could now participate in it.--LisaM<br />
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I find it kind of interesting how the political events taking place in China had a big effect on the way Chinese people in Ameica lived. I admire how the women in Chinese in America helped the Revoultionary cause back in the homeland and helped liberize the women both here in America and in China by allowing them to unbind their feet, go out in public and learn to read and be educated and become independent from men.- Emely Amaya<br />
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I found it intriguiing while reading Judy Yung's essay in Unequal Sisters that the protestant church was the first to encourage chinese women and that the Chinese women's involvement with church activities helped to expand their gender roles. I knew foot binding has ended, but its always nice to read about something that ended that I felt was cruel. I also found it interesting that to support the revolution, women in China did various activities such as enlisting in the army and engaging in dangerous uncover work. --Ashley Wilkins<br />
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"Unbound Feet" doesn't go in depth on the foot binding issue. Based upon what I have read the process of foot binding was painful and and caused physical problems later in life, but what struck me was that there was a stigma attached to it. Foot binding made a woman more desirable, which makes them marriage worthy. I read one account where a potential mother-in-law checked the feet of the potential bride. If she had not been foot bound, the marriage was not approved by the family. Mothers performed this painful procedure, which began around the age of 4, on their daughters. Can you imagine putting a child in pain to conform to the norms within the culture.--LisaM<br />
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I agree with Lisa, I can't imagine putting a child that young through that much pain only to conform to the norms of the culture! It's interesting that the women, who know the pain that the foot binding causes, were the ones to bind the feet of the young girls. I think that it just shows how much women get caught up in the gender roles and norms of a given culture. --Katie Nelson<br />
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In Judy Yung's essay she says that black and Chinese women modeled their clubs after the white womens, but they formed these clubs because they were not allowed in the white womens, so why model it after them because after all each had different motives? This also brings me to another question which I'm not sure even deals with this just yet during this time, but the question of segregation. Everything was segregated into black and white like schools, theatres, and restrooms, so where does that leave people like the Chinese?<br />
--Michelle Mardeusz<br />
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In response to Michelle, I think the reason they modeled their clubs after the white women because they wanted to be accepted into that culture. Even though they had different motives they wanted acceptance as well. -- Kellye Sorber<br />
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I was impressed by the amount Chinese women were in the public sphere. I feel that if they had a larger population and an earlier start they could have surpassed the efforts of white women. I was surprised that the church was one of the main organizations that helped these women enter the public sphere. I would have thought that the church would have tried to keep women in traditional roles. -- Kellye Sorber<br />
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I was also surprised by the role that the church played in bringing the Chinese women into the public sphere. Although, I think that the church's main effort may have been to simply Americanize the Chinese women, and maybe they realized that they had to get them out of the house in order to do that. In that sense, maybe bringing them into the public sphere and beginning to change the gender norms was an afterthought rather than the primary motivation. --Katie Nelson<br />
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It seems as if the Chinese women first had to break through their own incredibly repressive culture, only to enter into what is a comparibly better but still repressive American Culture. Not only did these women face gender discrimination from men, racial discrimination from the other ethnic groups, but they were discriminated against in amazingly archaic ways by their own people (foot-binding,not leaving the home save for once a year, etc.). Despite the prejudices imposed on the Chinese by Americans, the lifting of their own cultural restraints after the Chinese revolution must have been a wonderful and exciting experience for the women. --Landon Davis<br />
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In the chapter “Unbound Feet: Chinese Women in the Public Sphere,” Chinese women had different views on why they should create clubs. The values they wanted to help in their clubs were support for education, socioeconomic mobility, and community improvement. The group of people who encouraged the Chinese women to organize the activities was the Protestant churches. Out of all the religions why did the Protestants support the Chinese women? –Ashley Scutari<br />
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I found this particular reading very interesting. In a way I saw a connection between all of the movements that women made into society. Most, if not all, women of all races appear to have been able to push themselves further into the public sphere because of the activities that they became involved in through churches. This appears to be no different in the case of Chinese American women. Judy Yung specifically mentions how they were able to expand their roles in society due to church groups and that being involved allowed them to leave their homes. I find this connection very important in seeing connections between various races. - Elizabeth Frank<br />
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== The Burdens of Rural Woman's Lives ==<br />
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I found it interesting to read in "The Burdens of Rural Woman's Lives" that the husband stayed home during the Civil War after being drafted by paying $300. It seemed to be a parallel to more recent wars like the Vietnam War. --Justin Mattos<br />
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Kind of going off of Justin's comment, I was actually curious about the farm woman's husban in "The Burden's of Rural Woman's Lives." Was it common for men to pay the $300 and get out of service? Or was this something only the wealthier could get away with? I ask this question mostly because everything I've learned about the Civil War indicated that there were soldiers needed on the battlefields and by reading about this family, they didn't seem like they had all that much money. -- Kelly Wuyscik<br />
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I also found interesting in "the burden of rural womens lives" the fact that this womoan not only never complained, but almost was bragging at points about how hard her work was but how easily she seemed to accomplish it. She talked about how many articles she was able to read while churning butter, the record amounts of wood or other goods she would stack and produce, and how at 58 she could easily walk a mile as fast as anyone else. She never complained even when mentioning that only 5 of her 8 children were still alive. Her son was attending Cornell, but she seemed most proud of the fact that she has survived such a hard life. I take my hat off to her. - Landon Davis<br />
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== Buffalobird Woman's Story ==<br />
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The article I really took interest in was ''Buffalobird Woman's Story''. I know that in Native American societies women were the oweners of the land they were in charge of agricultural practices. This had been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, and the fact that the government comes in a just changes everything really bothers me. They give them all these crops to plant when they don't even eat them and a lot of the crops are left in the ground. In reality the nation was just wasting their money providing seeds and showing them new planting techniques. I find it funny that in the end the women states that her old ways are more efficient then the new ways. She even proves this by winning a prize for her corn because she grew it the way she knew. What I am so confused about is why the government had to control how they grew their crops? Why waste time even worrying about what they are growing and how? Is it really that important of an issue? -- Amanda Taub<br />
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I agree with Amanda it seems like the government came in and told the Indians how and what to grow, but didnt teach them anything past that. The article talks about how the Indians did not like the way the food tasted or how it would spoil after a while. If the government was going to take the time to show the Indians how to produce the new foods, why not teach them how to perserve the new foods, or even cook and season them, so that the food was edible. It looks like the gov't only gave the Indians half of the knowledge they needed to make the new foods work. And if the Indians were happy beofre why even change it up in the first place? - Landon Davis<br />
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== Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892 ==<br />
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''Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892''really upset me. Number one the fact that this factory employer intentionally took advantage of the fact that she was young she was taken care of. It also really bothered me when her father pointed out to her that she was being employed weekly so she couldn't get paid more. I don't understand why the father would ever be fine with something like that. She is working just as hard as him to make money so the rest of the family could come to New York. The part that upset me the most is when she talked about how on her walks home she would pretend that she was coming home to her family and a warm meal. The last line" I used to keep this up until I turned the key in the door and opened it and stood facing the dark, cold, silent room." which makes me question, why even bother going through all this? Wouldn't it be better for the family to be together? Even if things were bad at least they would have each other. -- Amanda Taub<br />
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Like Amanda, I had a hard time getting through "Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892," because it was such a depressing piece. Listening to her little voice describe how terrible her life was and how horribly her father was about her situation just upset me a lot. The paragraph about her imaginary family was so heart wrenching I couldn't help but want that for her. To come home to an cold, lonely, empty house must have been terrible, especially at her age. I could never imaging going through something like that. -- Kelly Wuyscik<br />
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In response to Amanda, I also found this story very touching but I feel like you can see her desire to have her whole family together again. Her logic seems to be that if she could put up with the horrible treatment just a little longer she would then be able to be around her mother and the children again despite the hardships. I think she would agree that it would be better for the family to be together, which is why she pushes through the difficulties. At the same time, I don't fully agree why the father and Rose left the family instead of her father and someone else.- Elizabeth Frank<br />
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== Others ==<br />
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I was impressed by how well written some of the pieces were in the MAW reading. Obviously I am not referring to the writings to the Chicago based DEFENDER, but the two letters to the Jewish Forward, and the article "Harsh Conditions of Domestic Servitude" were both intelligent well worded essays. This points out to me the wasted potential of what must have been thousands upon thousands of women during this time period. They were reduced to factory, shopgirl, or domestic work, when they were clearly educated enough to make a real contribution to society. - Landon Davis <br />
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I thought Agnes Nester's piece, "The Story of a Glove Maker," explained very well the way women and young girls were treated in factories. The fact that they had clocks, not so they knew when to leave, but to calculate how much time they had lost is truly disheartening. It was unfair of the factory owners to take advantage of them and deduct pay because their machine broke. It just bothers me that things that were out of control were penalties to them. Walking around waiting for the beltboy to come and fix your sewing machine should not mean you lose pay. But I suppose that since women were considered such cheap labor and since the factory owners were skimping on that much, why should we expect them to have functioning machinery too? -- Kelly Wuyscik<br />
<br />
I found the journal "The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service" in MAW to be an eye opener. Reading about the negro woman and her daily taks including 14-16 hours of work with nursing children not hers as one of them to be insane. She was the main caretaker of these children with restricted visitation of her own.. seriously!? What got to me was the quote "I live a treadmill life; and I see my own children onl when they happen to see me on the streets when I am out with the children, or when my children come to the 'yard' to see me." -- Rose Ferguson<br />
<br />
I also thought the quote by Frances Willard to be incredibly true with her parallels to life and bicycles. "I always felt a strong attraction toward the bicycle, because it is the vehicle of so much harmless pleasure, and because the skill required in handling it obliges those who mount to keep clear heads and steady hands." I'm sure it was hard to keep a clear head when some of the work these women were doing wouldn't allow them to see their family. -- Rose Ferguson<br />
<br />
I found the quote by Francis Willard as she learned to ride a bicycle to be quite meaningful as well. It was a vehicle that forced women for a brief moment to concentrate on their own thoughts rather than what their husband or children or parents needed of them. It was a moment in which a woman could prove to herself her own strength and experience a physical freedom. Quite symbolic of breaking free of many of society's constraints.-- Meredith Bojarski<br />
<br />
In "The Story of a Glove Maker", it amazed me how hard these women worked and also how they had to pay out their own money to do their job like paying 50 cents a week for the use of power to run the machines!! That is insane. How did anyone make enough money to live on when they are charged just to use the sewing machines?~~Mary Beth Conrad<br />
<br />
I thought it was interesting reading about the women who wrote to the Jewish Daily Forward. The story of the young girl who lost her fiancee in the triangle shop fire. I felt so sorry for her. She was all alone in a new country and the advice she gets is "what the earth covers must be forgotten." (65) It would be hard for anyone to get over what she went through and I know it had been four years since the event but the advice still seems harsh to me.~~Mary Beth Conrad<br />
<br />
In "The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service", I was curious about the "service pan", the essay stated that it was left over food that the cook would "dispose" of. Was the cook dividing it up among her neighbors? How much left overs did they have? Was it just a once a week thing since the writer said she could only go home once every 2 weeks or could cooks go home more often than the nurse could?~~Mary Beth Conrad<br />
<br />
I found it interesting in the document of “Female Perspective on the Great migration” that over 500,000 blacks left the south between 1916 and 1919, then over a million by the 1920’s. This movement was called the “push and pull aspects of migration.” A lot of blacks pushed out of the South because there weren’t any new advancements and the pull was the new opportunities that lied ahead. With the African American women moving up to the North for work, how much did that really affect the jobs of immigrant women? Was it a huge effect or a little because immigrants usually worked for lower wage?<br />
-Ashley Scutari<br />
<br />
A couple of the accounts of domestic servitude in Modern American Women talk about having only “oral contracts.” Why is this? I thought by the late 19th Century people would hold written contracts. When I first read that I thought that oral contracts might be a positive thing for the servants because they could walk away from them with out series legal repercussions, but the more I think about it… maybe an oral contract is worse? In an oral contract the terms can change whenever the employer wants and the servant can’t really just walk away from it because they don’t have the money and resource to go anywhere else. Perhaps oral contracts were just another way to keep lower class (often black) women oppressed. – Cat Debelius<br />
<br />
To what extent was the North actually the “promise land” that poor southern black women thought it to be? It seems that domestic service was widespread, form South to North. – Cat Debelius<br />
<br />
The various stories about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were all very heartbreaking, especially the one where the girl lost her fiance'. Let's face it, factory life for men and women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a hellish existence in most cases. However, one would have to acknowledge that it was in many cases worse for women due to their lack of power at that time. They were more easily exploited than men; thus leading to all-female industries and factories in which men were the bosses and foremans and women were the production workers. - Phil N.<br />
<br />
<br />
Yet again I found that the articles in MAW moved me more than any other articles. In particular "WOrking Women Write the Jewish Daily Forward" got to me. The first story made me angry because of the horrible treatment that she had to endure because of her need for the job. I don't know if I would have been able to continue working in an area where the boss made unwelcome sexual advances. But even more so the 2nd story about the young girl whose bridegroom was killed in the Triangle Factory Fire touched me. Not only did she loose her love and have to deal with another man's advances, but she lost him when he went in to save others. He had been safe but then put himself back into danger. This document just showed how hard these girls actually had it. -Elizabeth Frank</div>72.219.192.53https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328--Week_5_Questions/Comments328--Week 5 Questions/Comments2008-02-14T10:11:02Z<p>72.219.192.53: /* Others */</p>
<hr />
<div>== Harriet Brunkhurst's article ==<br />
<br />
In Harriet Brunkhurst's article I found it sad to read how the mother of working women expected so much more of their working daughters than of their working sons. Not only was being looked down upon for being in the same level as men bad enoough, but they were expected to cook, clean and do other odd end things around the house after a tiresome day at work, while the sons did nothing but relax after a tiresome day at work. The part that most hit me was Cecil's story. Her mother has her work and wants to hear nothing about how Cecil is tired from work yet she has the nerver to say "John is so tired when he returns from work" about her husband!!! -Emely Amaya<br />
<br />
I also found it interesting to read Harriet Brunkhurst’s article in Major Problems in American Women’s History. It was sad that the women were not as respected as men for holding full time business jobs. However, I think it was largely to do with the context of the time. Mothers couldn’t empathize with their daughters because they expected them to play the same role in the household that they had once held. They knew that their daughters were the main providers, but the idea of this was out of line with the traditional norms and expectations of society at the time. This conflict created a double standard for the working girls, conforming to both the expectations one would hold for the head of the house as well as the expectations for the woman of the house, with fewer of the benefits of each. --Jessica Kilday<br />
<br />
The other thing that stuck out to me about Harriet Brunkhurst's piece was the bit about housework being so much more tiresome than paid jobs were at the time. It kind of brings up that little dig that with the sphere of domesticity, women were expected to work around the house and were no longer considered real "breadwinners" because their jobs were innate. It seems almost as if the mothers were upset their daughters could go out and make money for "shorter workdays" while they were stuck at home taking care of the household and making sure the family was comfortable when they returned home, finding their family ungrateful for all they do. -- Kelly Wuyscik <br />
<br />
In Harriet Brunkhurst's article entitled "Business Girls," she identifies how a mother and daughter struggle in their relationship. Despite the daughter's role as the breadwinner, the mother, who is a homemaker, inflicts her judgment of her daughter's behavior within the confines of the home. The mother "would yield without question to husband or son occupying the same position, debates Rose's every movement simply because she is a girl."(266) We read about suppression of race and gender, but the suppression from within the structure of a girl's life can dictate a life of inadequacy. Our socialization and placement in the world is influenced by school, government, friends and most importantly family. The family instills values and beliefs and is the most enduring agent in the life of a child. If this type of suppression exists within the family, what can be expected of a child as an adult?--LisaM <br />
<br />
I think Lisa makes a good point about what can be expected of a child as an adult. I know my mother struggles with having her mom live with her right now. My grandma was raised that women stay home, do housework, raise children, and have a 'man' provide for them. Every day mom comes home tired and wore out (its been stressful at work lately) and my grandmother gets on her case about laundry, dishes, vacuming, and the like the moment she walks in, but says nothing to my father who helps my mom out with housework all the time. She fights with mom but when dad says something she shuts up and leaves mom alone. Its almost like I watch and live in this time setting because she also does it to me when I'm visiting my parents --Ashley Wilkins<br />
<br />
In continuation of the discussion on Harriet Brunkhurst's article, I feel that the constrictions of women's lives from within the family can still be seen today. Although less explicitly obvious I still feel that the expectations to adhere to domestic sphere are very strong. There is still an understanding in our culture that a woman is in charge of the home. Today, when a male takes on domestic chores he is not necessarily seen as less male, but when a female does not keep a clean room or home she is blamed and suffers the burden of conforming to the domestic ideals still implicit. I don't think that women have yet been freed from the guilt of not following the social norm. Unfortunately, as Brunkhurst's article demonstrates, for the most part it is the female relatives placing the burden upon young women. -- Meredith Bojarski<br />
<br />
As a man in what I feel is a very egalitarian marriage, I can second Meredith's post above completely! My mother-in-law was a traditional stay at home mom who raised two daughters, 10 years apart in age. She raised the daughters, kept an immaculate and spotless house (still does now), and made sure the home was a "refuge" for her husband who was a Philadelphia police officer. When my in-laws come down on occasion, she doesn't understand when my wife is not flying around the house picking stuff up. She'll sometimes chide my wife when she sees me vacuuming the house or doing laundry. Despite the fact that we both work full time, her mom's expectation is that Debbie should be keeping house most of the time as well. She really does not comprehend that the "second shift" at home, with a houseful of kids, is a two person deal. To be honest, I probably still only do about 30 percent to my wife's 70 percent of the domestic stuff - not that I'm complaining! - Phil N.<br />
<br />
== Comparisons ==<br />
<br />
<br />
It is interesting to compare Modern American Women: “The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service” with how Fannie Williams describes the “Problem of Employment for Negro Women in Major Problems. Both of these sources describe working conditions for African American women. The first source discusses the role of the “nurse” in the household. The nurse however is responsible for much more than caring for the health of children and family, she is asked to carry out household tasks as well. It is almost as if slavery is continued by the need and difficulty of African American women to find work. The second source points out specifically that, African American women are more commonly employed to domestic service. She seems to take a different spin out however by suggesting that if you can’t be employed to a more honorable position, then make the position you can work more honorable. The question then becomes, what makes a position honorable? And how can you elevate a position if you have no control over the pay, benefits, or job description? --Jessica Kilday<br />
<br />
How was sexual harassment handled during the early 20th century? I mean there are accounts of needing witnesses and having detectives, but it all seems a bit informal. --Justin Mattos<br />
<br />
Like Justin, I am curious how sexual harassment was handled. It seemed that many males got away with sexual harassing females because the females did not want to lose their job. Did this occur often? Did many of the harassers get dealt with? --Ashley Wilkins<br />
<br />
The readings in MP and MAW both discuss how difficult the lives of working women were, for every type of women. The immagrants were over worked and underpaid as well as black women, but they had to fight even harder to find a job, and then there were the white women who worked in department stores who ended up selling themselves to make ends meet. What was interesting about the department store essay was how none of the women referred to what they did after hours as prostiting. I assume this is because they were possibly ashamed of what they were doing and trying to make it sound like something its not. It was more than just going out to the theatre or dinner. Also surprisingly enough these girls were very young as well as the men they were intertaining seemed to be married most of the time. This was easy money for them which seemed to be why it was so appealing.<br />
--Michelle Mardeusz<br />
<br />
I found Fannie Barrier Williams thoughts on the “problem of Employments for Negro Women” to be particularly interesting because rather then focusing on domestic servitude as wearing women down (all the essays in MAW did), she actually thought that it ALSO created girls with “more than ordinary strength of character.” She evens calls upon black women to raise the status of servant women. It is like she encourages women to take this job and then actively work to elevate the status of the occupation. However, it seems to focus a lot on the job as other people in society view it…. which is a very middle class America concern. – Cat Debelius<br />
<br />
== Judy Yung, “Unbound Feet: Chinese Women in the Public Sphere" ==<br />
<br />
<br />
I was amazed by the large role that the YWCA played in the liberation of Chinese women. From what I read, I think that they were more liberated than white women. --Justin Mattos<br />
<br />
Like Justin I was surprised how the YWCA played such an important role. These women were isolated and this organization pulled them from their closets. It is amazing how customs shaped the Chinese woman's life experience. In "Unbound Feet" it states, "it was considered immodest to be seen too many times during the year."(263) Chinese women were made invisible by their culture. The idea of seeing a friend only on a special occasion, which was not due to distance, or the need to travel in a closed coach for short distances is suffocating. The YWCA recognized this and offered an opportunity that allowed women of similar backgrounds to meet and receive assistance outside their homes, but the most important contribution the YWCA gave these women was power. The power to meet, to decide and to change their lives in a way that they could now participate in it.--LisaM<br />
<br />
I find it kind of interesting how the political events taking place in China had a big effect on the way Chinese people in Ameica lived. I admire how the women in Chinese in America helped the Revoultionary cause back in the homeland and helped liberize the women both here in America and in China by allowing them to unbind their feet, go out in public and learn to read and be educated and become independent from men.- Emely Amaya<br />
<br />
I found it intriguiing while reading Judy Yung's essay in Unequal Sisters that the protestant church was the first to encourage chinese women and that the Chinese women's involvement with church activities helped to expand their gender roles. I knew foot binding has ended, but its always nice to read about something that ended that I felt was cruel. I also found it interesting that to support the revolution, women in China did various activities such as enlisting in the army and engaging in dangerous uncover work. --Ashley Wilkins<br />
<br />
"Unbound Feet" doesn't go in depth on the foot binding issue. Based upon what I have read the process of foot binding was painful and and caused physical problems later in life, but what struck me was that there was a stigma attached to it. Foot binding made a woman more desirable, which makes them marriage worthy. I read one account where a potential mother-in-law checked the feet of the potential bride. If she had not been foot bound, the marriage was not approved by the family. Mothers performed this painful procedure, which began around the age of 4, on their daughters. Can you imagine putting a child in pain to conform to the norms within the culture.--LisaM<br />
<br />
I agree with Lisa, I can't imagine putting a child that young through that much pain only to conform to the norms of the culture! It's interesting that the women, who know the pain that the foot binding causes, were the ones to bind the feet of the young girls. I think that it just shows how much women get caught up in the gender roles and norms of a given culture. --Katie Nelson<br />
<br />
<br />
In Judy Yung's essay she says that black and Chinese women modeled their clubs after the white womens, but they formed these clubs because they were not allowed in the white womens, so why model it after them because after all each had different motives? This also brings me to another question which I'm not sure even deals with this just yet during this time, but the question of segregation. Everything was segregated into black and white like schools, theatres, and restrooms, so where does that leave people like the Chinese?<br />
--Michelle Mardeusz<br />
<br />
In response to Michelle, I think the reason they modeled their clubs after the white women because they wanted to be accepted into that culture. Even though they had different motives they wanted acceptance as well. -- Kellye Sorber<br />
<br />
I was impressed by the amount Chinese women were in the public sphere. I feel that if they had a larger population and an earlier start they could have surpassed the efforts of white women. I was surprised that the church was one of the main organizations that helped these women enter the public sphere. I would have thought that the church would have tried to keep women in traditional roles. -- Kellye Sorber<br />
<br />
I was also surprised by the role that the church played in bringing the Chinese women into the public sphere. Although, I think that the church's main effort may have been to simply Americanize the Chinese women, and maybe they realized that they had to get them out of the house in order to do that. In that sense, maybe bringing them into the public sphere and beginning to change the gender norms was an afterthought rather than the primary motivation. --Katie Nelson<br />
<br />
It seems as if the Chinese women first had to break through their own incredibly repressive culture, only to enter into what is a comparibly better but still repressive American Culture. Not only did these women face gender discrimination from men, racial discrimination from the other ethnic groups, but they were discriminated against in amazingly archaic ways by their own people (foot-binding,not leaving the home save for once a year, etc.). Despite the prejudices imposed on the Chinese by Americans, the lifting of their own cultural restraints after the Chinese revolution must have been a wonderful and exciting experience for the women. --Landon Davis<br />
<br />
In the chapter “Unbound Feet: Chinese Women in the Public Sphere,” Chinese women had different views on why they should create clubs. The values they wanted to help in their clubs were support for education, socioeconomic mobility, and community improvement. The group of people who encouraged the Chinese women to organize the activities was the Protestant churches. Out of all the religions why did the Protestants support the Chinese women? –Ashley Scutari<br />
<br />
<br />
I found this particular reading very interesting. In a way I saw a connection between all of the movements that women made into society. Most, if not all, women of all races appear to have been able to push themselves further into the public sphere because of the activities that they became involved in through churches. This appears to be no different in the case of Chinese American women. Judy Yung specifically mentions how they were able to expand their roles in society due to church groups and that being involved allowed them to leave their homes. I find this connection very important in seeing connections between various races. - Elizabeth Frank<br />
<br />
== The Burdens of Rural Woman's Lives ==<br />
<br />
I found it interesting to read in "The Burdens of Rural Woman's Lives" that the husband stayed home during the Civil War after being drafted by paying $300. It seemed to be a parallel to more recent wars like the Vietnam War. --Justin Mattos<br />
<br />
Kind of going off of Justin's comment, I was actually curious about the farm woman's husban in "The Burden's of Rural Woman's Lives." Was it common for men to pay the $300 and get out of service? Or was this something only the wealthier could get away with? I ask this question mostly because everything I've learned about the Civil War indicated that there were soldiers needed on the battlefields and by reading about this family, they didn't seem like they had all that much money. -- Kelly Wuyscik<br />
<br />
I also found interesting in "the burden of rural womens lives" the fact that this womoan not only never complained, but almost was bragging at points about how hard her work was but how easily she seemed to accomplish it. She talked about how many articles she was able to read while churning butter, the record amounts of wood or other goods she would stack and produce, and how at 58 she could easily walk a mile as fast as anyone else. She never complained even when mentioning that only 5 of her 8 children were still alive. Her son was attending Cornell, but she seemed most proud of the fact that she has survived such a hard life. I take my hat off to her. - Landon Davis<br />
<br />
<br />
== Buffalobird Woman's Story ==<br />
<br />
The article I really took interest in was ''Buffalobird Woman's Story''. I know that in Native American societies women were the oweners of the land they were in charge of agricultural practices. This had been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, and the fact that the government comes in a just changes everything really bothers me. They give them all these crops to plant when they don't even eat them and a lot of the crops are left in the ground. In reality the nation was just wasting their money providing seeds and showing them new planting techniques. I find it funny that in the end the women states that her old ways are more efficient then the new ways. She even proves this by winning a prize for her corn because she grew it the way she knew. What I am so confused about is why the government had to control how they grew their crops? Why waste time even worrying about what they are growing and how? Is it really that important of an issue? -- Amanda Taub<br />
<br />
I agree with Amanda it seems like the government came in and told the Indians how and what to grow, but didnt teach them anything past that. The article talks about how the Indians did not like the way the food tasted or how it would spoil after a while. If the government was going to take the time to show the Indians how to produce the new foods, why not teach them how to perserve the new foods, or even cook and season them, so that the food was edible. It looks like the gov't only gave the Indians half of the knowledge they needed to make the new foods work. And if the Indians were happy beofre why even change it up in the first place? - Landon Davis<br />
<br />
<br />
== Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892 ==<br />
<br />
''Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892''really upset me. Number one the fact that this factory employer intentionally took advantage of the fact that she was young she was taken care of. It also really bothered me when her father pointed out to her that she was being employed weekly so she couldn't get paid more. I don't understand why the father would ever be fine with something like that. She is working just as hard as him to make money so the rest of the family could come to New York. The part that upset me the most is when she talked about how on her walks home she would pretend that she was coming home to her family and a warm meal. The last line" I used to keep this up until I turned the key in the door and opened it and stood facing the dark, cold, silent room." which makes me question, why even bother going through all this? Wouldn't it be better for the family to be together? Even if things were bad at least they would have each other. -- Amanda Taub<br />
<br />
Like Amanda, I had a hard time getting through "Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892," because it was such a depressing piece. Listening to her little voice describe how terrible her life was and how horribly her father was about her situation just upset me a lot. The paragraph about her imaginary family was so heart wrenching I couldn't help but want that for her. To come home to an cold, lonely, empty house must have been terrible, especially at her age. I could never imaging going through something like that. -- Kelly Wuyscik <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Others ==<br />
<br />
<br />
I was impressed by how well written some of the pieces were in the MAW reading. Obviously I am not referring to the writings to the Chicago based DEFENDER, but the two letters to the Jewish Forward, and the article "Harsh Conditions of Domestic Servitude" were both intelligent well worded essays. This points out to me the wasted potential of what must have been thousands upon thousands of women during this time period. They were reduced to factory, shopgirl, or domestic work, when they were clearly educated enough to make a real contribution to society. - Landon Davis <br />
<br />
<br />
I thought Agnes Nester's piece, "The Story of a Glove Maker," explained very well the way women and young girls were treated in factories. The fact that they had clocks, not so they knew when to leave, but to calculate how much time they had lost is truly disheartening. It was unfair of the factory owners to take advantage of them and deduct pay because their machine broke. It just bothers me that things that were out of control were penalties to them. Walking around waiting for the beltboy to come and fix your sewing machine should not mean you lose pay. But I suppose that since women were considered such cheap labor and since the factory owners were skimping on that much, why should we expect them to have functioning machinery too? -- Kelly Wuyscik<br />
<br />
I found the journal "The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service" in MAW to be an eye opener. Reading about the negro woman and her daily taks including 14-16 hours of work with nursing children not hers as one of them to be insane. She was the main caretaker of these children with restricted visitation of her own.. seriously!? What got to me was the quote "I live a treadmill life; and I see my own children onl when they happen to see me on the streets when I am out with the children, or when my children come to the 'yard' to see me." -- Rose Ferguson<br />
<br />
I also thought the quote by Frances Willard to be incredibly true with her parallels to life and bicycles. "I always felt a strong attraction toward the bicycle, because it is the vehicle of so much harmless pleasure, and because the skill required in handling it obliges those who mount to keep clear heads and steady hands." I'm sure it was hard to keep a clear head when some of the work these women were doing wouldn't allow them to see their family. -- Rose Ferguson<br />
<br />
I found the quote by Francis Willard as she learned to ride a bicycle to be quite meaningful as well. It was a vehicle that forced women for a brief moment to concentrate on their own thoughts rather than what their husband or children or parents needed of them. It was a moment in which a woman could prove to herself her own strength and experience a physical freedom. Quite symbolic of breaking free of many of society's constraints.-- Meredith Bojarski<br />
<br />
In "The Story of a Glove Maker", it amazed me how hard these women worked and also how they had to pay out their own money to do their job like paying 50 cents a week for the use of power to run the machines!! That is insane. How did anyone make enough money to live on when they are charged just to use the sewing machines?~~Mary Beth Conrad<br />
<br />
I thought it was interesting reading about the women who wrote to the Jewish Daily Forward. The story of the young girl who lost her fiancee in the triangle shop fire. I felt so sorry for her. She was all alone in a new country and the advice she gets is "what the earth covers must be forgotten." (65) It would be hard for anyone to get over what she went through and I know it had been four years since the event but the advice still seems harsh to me.~~Mary Beth Conrad<br />
<br />
In "The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service", I was curious about the "service pan", the essay stated that it was left over food that the cook would "dispose" of. Was the cook dividing it up among her neighbors? How much left overs did they have? Was it just a once a week thing since the writer said she could only go home once every 2 weeks or could cooks go home more often than the nurse could?~~Mary Beth Conrad<br />
<br />
I found it interesting in the document of “Female Perspective on the Great migration” that over 500,000 blacks left the south between 1916 and 1919, then over a million by the 1920’s. This movement was called the “push and pull aspects of migration.” A lot of blacks pushed out of the South because there weren’t any new advancements and the pull was the new opportunities that lied ahead. With the African American women moving up to the North for work, how much did that really affect the jobs of immigrant women? Was it a huge effect or a little because immigrants usually worked for lower wage?<br />
-Ashley Scutari<br />
<br />
A couple of the accounts of domestic servitude in Modern American Women talk about having only “oral contracts.” Why is this? I thought by the late 19th Century people would hold written contracts. When I first read that I thought that oral contracts might be a positive thing for the servants because they could walk away from them with out series legal repercussions, but the more I think about it… maybe an oral contract is worse? In an oral contract the terms can change whenever the employer wants and the servant can’t really just walk away from it because they don’t have the money and resource to go anywhere else. Perhaps oral contracts were just another way to keep lower class (often black) women oppressed. – Cat Debelius<br />
<br />
To what extent was the North actually the “promise land” that poor southern black women thought it to be? It seems that domestic service was widespread, form South to North. – Cat Debelius<br />
<br />
The various stories about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were all very heartbreaking, especially the one where the girl lost her fiance'. Let's face it, factory life for men and women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a hellish existence in most cases. However, one would have to acknowledge that it was in many cases worse for women due to their lack of power at that time. They were more easily exploited than men; thus leading to all-female industries and factories in which men were the bosses and foremans and women were the production workers. - Phil N.<br />
<br />
<br />
Yet again I found that the articles in MAW moved me more than any other articles. In particular "WOrking Women Write the Jewish Daily Forward" got to me. The first story made me angry because of the horrible treatment that she had to endure because of her need for the job. I don't know if I would have been able to continue working in an area where the boss made unwelcome sexual advances. But even more so the 2nd story about the young girl whose bridegroom was killed in the Triangle Factory Fire touched me. Not only did she loose her love and have to deal with another man's advances, but she lost him when he went in to save others. He had been safe but then put himself back into danger. This document just showed how hard these girls actually had it. -Elizabeth Frank</div>72.219.192.53https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328--Week_5_Questions/Comments328--Week 5 Questions/Comments2008-02-14T10:06:37Z<p>72.219.192.53: /* Judy Yung, “Unbound Feet: Chinese Women in the Public Sphere" */</p>
<hr />
<div>== Harriet Brunkhurst's article ==<br />
<br />
In Harriet Brunkhurst's article I found it sad to read how the mother of working women expected so much more of their working daughters than of their working sons. Not only was being looked down upon for being in the same level as men bad enoough, but they were expected to cook, clean and do other odd end things around the house after a tiresome day at work, while the sons did nothing but relax after a tiresome day at work. The part that most hit me was Cecil's story. Her mother has her work and wants to hear nothing about how Cecil is tired from work yet she has the nerver to say "John is so tired when he returns from work" about her husband!!! -Emely Amaya<br />
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I also found it interesting to read Harriet Brunkhurst’s article in Major Problems in American Women’s History. It was sad that the women were not as respected as men for holding full time business jobs. However, I think it was largely to do with the context of the time. Mothers couldn’t empathize with their daughters because they expected them to play the same role in the household that they had once held. They knew that their daughters were the main providers, but the idea of this was out of line with the traditional norms and expectations of society at the time. This conflict created a double standard for the working girls, conforming to both the expectations one would hold for the head of the house as well as the expectations for the woman of the house, with fewer of the benefits of each. --Jessica Kilday<br />
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The other thing that stuck out to me about Harriet Brunkhurst's piece was the bit about housework being so much more tiresome than paid jobs were at the time. It kind of brings up that little dig that with the sphere of domesticity, women were expected to work around the house and were no longer considered real "breadwinners" because their jobs were innate. It seems almost as if the mothers were upset their daughters could go out and make money for "shorter workdays" while they were stuck at home taking care of the household and making sure the family was comfortable when they returned home, finding their family ungrateful for all they do. -- Kelly Wuyscik <br />
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In Harriet Brunkhurst's article entitled "Business Girls," she identifies how a mother and daughter struggle in their relationship. Despite the daughter's role as the breadwinner, the mother, who is a homemaker, inflicts her judgment of her daughter's behavior within the confines of the home. The mother "would yield without question to husband or son occupying the same position, debates Rose's every movement simply because she is a girl."(266) We read about suppression of race and gender, but the suppression from within the structure of a girl's life can dictate a life of inadequacy. Our socialization and placement in the world is influenced by school, government, friends and most importantly family. The family instills values and beliefs and is the most enduring agent in the life of a child. If this type of suppression exists within the family, what can be expected of a child as an adult?--LisaM <br />
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I think Lisa makes a good point about what can be expected of a child as an adult. I know my mother struggles with having her mom live with her right now. My grandma was raised that women stay home, do housework, raise children, and have a 'man' provide for them. Every day mom comes home tired and wore out (its been stressful at work lately) and my grandmother gets on her case about laundry, dishes, vacuming, and the like the moment she walks in, but says nothing to my father who helps my mom out with housework all the time. She fights with mom but when dad says something she shuts up and leaves mom alone. Its almost like I watch and live in this time setting because she also does it to me when I'm visiting my parents --Ashley Wilkins<br />
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In continuation of the discussion on Harriet Brunkhurst's article, I feel that the constrictions of women's lives from within the family can still be seen today. Although less explicitly obvious I still feel that the expectations to adhere to domestic sphere are very strong. There is still an understanding in our culture that a woman is in charge of the home. Today, when a male takes on domestic chores he is not necessarily seen as less male, but when a female does not keep a clean room or home she is blamed and suffers the burden of conforming to the domestic ideals still implicit. I don't think that women have yet been freed from the guilt of not following the social norm. Unfortunately, as Brunkhurst's article demonstrates, for the most part it is the female relatives placing the burden upon young women. -- Meredith Bojarski<br />
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As a man in what I feel is a very egalitarian marriage, I can second Meredith's post above completely! My mother-in-law was a traditional stay at home mom who raised two daughters, 10 years apart in age. She raised the daughters, kept an immaculate and spotless house (still does now), and made sure the home was a "refuge" for her husband who was a Philadelphia police officer. When my in-laws come down on occasion, she doesn't understand when my wife is not flying around the house picking stuff up. She'll sometimes chide my wife when she sees me vacuuming the house or doing laundry. Despite the fact that we both work full time, her mom's expectation is that Debbie should be keeping house most of the time as well. She really does not comprehend that the "second shift" at home, with a houseful of kids, is a two person deal. To be honest, I probably still only do about 30 percent to my wife's 70 percent of the domestic stuff - not that I'm complaining! - Phil N.<br />
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== Comparisons ==<br />
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It is interesting to compare Modern American Women: “The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service” with how Fannie Williams describes the “Problem of Employment for Negro Women in Major Problems. Both of these sources describe working conditions for African American women. The first source discusses the role of the “nurse” in the household. The nurse however is responsible for much more than caring for the health of children and family, she is asked to carry out household tasks as well. It is almost as if slavery is continued by the need and difficulty of African American women to find work. The second source points out specifically that, African American women are more commonly employed to domestic service. She seems to take a different spin out however by suggesting that if you can’t be employed to a more honorable position, then make the position you can work more honorable. The question then becomes, what makes a position honorable? And how can you elevate a position if you have no control over the pay, benefits, or job description? --Jessica Kilday<br />
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How was sexual harassment handled during the early 20th century? I mean there are accounts of needing witnesses and having detectives, but it all seems a bit informal. --Justin Mattos<br />
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Like Justin, I am curious how sexual harassment was handled. It seemed that many males got away with sexual harassing females because the females did not want to lose their job. Did this occur often? Did many of the harassers get dealt with? --Ashley Wilkins<br />
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The readings in MP and MAW both discuss how difficult the lives of working women were, for every type of women. The immagrants were over worked and underpaid as well as black women, but they had to fight even harder to find a job, and then there were the white women who worked in department stores who ended up selling themselves to make ends meet. What was interesting about the department store essay was how none of the women referred to what they did after hours as prostiting. I assume this is because they were possibly ashamed of what they were doing and trying to make it sound like something its not. It was more than just going out to the theatre or dinner. Also surprisingly enough these girls were very young as well as the men they were intertaining seemed to be married most of the time. This was easy money for them which seemed to be why it was so appealing.<br />
--Michelle Mardeusz<br />
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I found Fannie Barrier Williams thoughts on the “problem of Employments for Negro Women” to be particularly interesting because rather then focusing on domestic servitude as wearing women down (all the essays in MAW did), she actually thought that it ALSO created girls with “more than ordinary strength of character.” She evens calls upon black women to raise the status of servant women. It is like she encourages women to take this job and then actively work to elevate the status of the occupation. However, it seems to focus a lot on the job as other people in society view it…. which is a very middle class America concern. – Cat Debelius<br />
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== Judy Yung, “Unbound Feet: Chinese Women in the Public Sphere" ==<br />
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I was amazed by the large role that the YWCA played in the liberation of Chinese women. From what I read, I think that they were more liberated than white women. --Justin Mattos<br />
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Like Justin I was surprised how the YWCA played such an important role. These women were isolated and this organization pulled them from their closets. It is amazing how customs shaped the Chinese woman's life experience. In "Unbound Feet" it states, "it was considered immodest to be seen too many times during the year."(263) Chinese women were made invisible by their culture. The idea of seeing a friend only on a special occasion, which was not due to distance, or the need to travel in a closed coach for short distances is suffocating. The YWCA recognized this and offered an opportunity that allowed women of similar backgrounds to meet and receive assistance outside their homes, but the most important contribution the YWCA gave these women was power. The power to meet, to decide and to change their lives in a way that they could now participate in it.--LisaM<br />
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I find it kind of interesting how the political events taking place in China had a big effect on the way Chinese people in Ameica lived. I admire how the women in Chinese in America helped the Revoultionary cause back in the homeland and helped liberize the women both here in America and in China by allowing them to unbind their feet, go out in public and learn to read and be educated and become independent from men.- Emely Amaya<br />
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I found it intriguiing while reading Judy Yung's essay in Unequal Sisters that the protestant church was the first to encourage chinese women and that the Chinese women's involvement with church activities helped to expand their gender roles. I knew foot binding has ended, but its always nice to read about something that ended that I felt was cruel. I also found it interesting that to support the revolution, women in China did various activities such as enlisting in the army and engaging in dangerous uncover work. --Ashley Wilkins<br />
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"Unbound Feet" doesn't go in depth on the foot binding issue. Based upon what I have read the process of foot binding was painful and and caused physical problems later in life, but what struck me was that there was a stigma attached to it. Foot binding made a woman more desirable, which makes them marriage worthy. I read one account where a potential mother-in-law checked the feet of the potential bride. If she had not been foot bound, the marriage was not approved by the family. Mothers performed this painful procedure, which began around the age of 4, on their daughters. Can you imagine putting a child in pain to conform to the norms within the culture.--LisaM<br />
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I agree with Lisa, I can't imagine putting a child that young through that much pain only to conform to the norms of the culture! It's interesting that the women, who know the pain that the foot binding causes, were the ones to bind the feet of the young girls. I think that it just shows how much women get caught up in the gender roles and norms of a given culture. --Katie Nelson<br />
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In Judy Yung's essay she says that black and Chinese women modeled their clubs after the white womens, but they formed these clubs because they were not allowed in the white womens, so why model it after them because after all each had different motives? This also brings me to another question which I'm not sure even deals with this just yet during this time, but the question of segregation. Everything was segregated into black and white like schools, theatres, and restrooms, so where does that leave people like the Chinese?<br />
--Michelle Mardeusz<br />
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In response to Michelle, I think the reason they modeled their clubs after the white women because they wanted to be accepted into that culture. Even though they had different motives they wanted acceptance as well. -- Kellye Sorber<br />
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I was impressed by the amount Chinese women were in the public sphere. I feel that if they had a larger population and an earlier start they could have surpassed the efforts of white women. I was surprised that the church was one of the main organizations that helped these women enter the public sphere. I would have thought that the church would have tried to keep women in traditional roles. -- Kellye Sorber<br />
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I was also surprised by the role that the church played in bringing the Chinese women into the public sphere. Although, I think that the church's main effort may have been to simply Americanize the Chinese women, and maybe they realized that they had to get them out of the house in order to do that. In that sense, maybe bringing them into the public sphere and beginning to change the gender norms was an afterthought rather than the primary motivation. --Katie Nelson<br />
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It seems as if the Chinese women first had to break through their own incredibly repressive culture, only to enter into what is a comparibly better but still repressive American Culture. Not only did these women face gender discrimination from men, racial discrimination from the other ethnic groups, but they were discriminated against in amazingly archaic ways by their own people (foot-binding,not leaving the home save for once a year, etc.). Despite the prejudices imposed on the Chinese by Americans, the lifting of their own cultural restraints after the Chinese revolution must have been a wonderful and exciting experience for the women. --Landon Davis<br />
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In the chapter “Unbound Feet: Chinese Women in the Public Sphere,” Chinese women had different views on why they should create clubs. The values they wanted to help in their clubs were support for education, socioeconomic mobility, and community improvement. The group of people who encouraged the Chinese women to organize the activities was the Protestant churches. Out of all the religions why did the Protestants support the Chinese women? –Ashley Scutari<br />
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I found this particular reading very interesting. In a way I saw a connection between all of the movements that women made into society. Most, if not all, women of all races appear to have been able to push themselves further into the public sphere because of the activities that they became involved in through churches. This appears to be no different in the case of Chinese American women. Judy Yung specifically mentions how they were able to expand their roles in society due to church groups and that being involved allowed them to leave their homes. I find this connection very important in seeing connections between various races. - Elizabeth Frank<br />
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== The Burdens of Rural Woman's Lives ==<br />
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I found it interesting to read in "The Burdens of Rural Woman's Lives" that the husband stayed home during the Civil War after being drafted by paying $300. It seemed to be a parallel to more recent wars like the Vietnam War. --Justin Mattos<br />
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Kind of going off of Justin's comment, I was actually curious about the farm woman's husban in "The Burden's of Rural Woman's Lives." Was it common for men to pay the $300 and get out of service? Or was this something only the wealthier could get away with? I ask this question mostly because everything I've learned about the Civil War indicated that there were soldiers needed on the battlefields and by reading about this family, they didn't seem like they had all that much money. -- Kelly Wuyscik<br />
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I also found interesting in "the burden of rural womens lives" the fact that this womoan not only never complained, but almost was bragging at points about how hard her work was but how easily she seemed to accomplish it. She talked about how many articles she was able to read while churning butter, the record amounts of wood or other goods she would stack and produce, and how at 58 she could easily walk a mile as fast as anyone else. She never complained even when mentioning that only 5 of her 8 children were still alive. Her son was attending Cornell, but she seemed most proud of the fact that she has survived such a hard life. I take my hat off to her. - Landon Davis<br />
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== Buffalobird Woman's Story ==<br />
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The article I really took interest in was ''Buffalobird Woman's Story''. I know that in Native American societies women were the oweners of the land they were in charge of agricultural practices. This had been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, and the fact that the government comes in a just changes everything really bothers me. They give them all these crops to plant when they don't even eat them and a lot of the crops are left in the ground. In reality the nation was just wasting their money providing seeds and showing them new planting techniques. I find it funny that in the end the women states that her old ways are more efficient then the new ways. She even proves this by winning a prize for her corn because she grew it the way she knew. What I am so confused about is why the government had to control how they grew their crops? Why waste time even worrying about what they are growing and how? Is it really that important of an issue? -- Amanda Taub<br />
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I agree with Amanda it seems like the government came in and told the Indians how and what to grow, but didnt teach them anything past that. The article talks about how the Indians did not like the way the food tasted or how it would spoil after a while. If the government was going to take the time to show the Indians how to produce the new foods, why not teach them how to perserve the new foods, or even cook and season them, so that the food was edible. It looks like the gov't only gave the Indians half of the knowledge they needed to make the new foods work. And if the Indians were happy beofre why even change it up in the first place? - Landon Davis<br />
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== Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892 ==<br />
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''Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892''really upset me. Number one the fact that this factory employer intentionally took advantage of the fact that she was young she was taken care of. It also really bothered me when her father pointed out to her that she was being employed weekly so she couldn't get paid more. I don't understand why the father would ever be fine with something like that. She is working just as hard as him to make money so the rest of the family could come to New York. The part that upset me the most is when she talked about how on her walks home she would pretend that she was coming home to her family and a warm meal. The last line" I used to keep this up until I turned the key in the door and opened it and stood facing the dark, cold, silent room." which makes me question, why even bother going through all this? Wouldn't it be better for the family to be together? Even if things were bad at least they would have each other. -- Amanda Taub<br />
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Like Amanda, I had a hard time getting through "Rose Cohen Describes Her First Job in New York City, 1892," because it was such a depressing piece. Listening to her little voice describe how terrible her life was and how horribly her father was about her situation just upset me a lot. The paragraph about her imaginary family was so heart wrenching I couldn't help but want that for her. To come home to an cold, lonely, empty house must have been terrible, especially at her age. I could never imaging going through something like that. -- Kelly Wuyscik <br />
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== Others ==<br />
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I was impressed by how well written some of the pieces were in the MAW reading. Obviously I am not referring to the writings to the Chicago based DEFENDER, but the two letters to the Jewish Forward, and the article "Harsh Conditions of Domestic Servitude" were both intelligent well worded essays. This points out to me the wasted potential of what must have been thousands upon thousands of women during this time period. They were reduced to factory, shopgirl, or domestic work, when they were clearly educated enough to make a real contribution to society. - Landon Davis <br />
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I thought Agnes Nester's piece, "The Story of a Glove Maker," explained very well the way women and young girls were treated in factories. The fact that they had clocks, not so they knew when to leave, but to calculate how much time they had lost is truly disheartening. It was unfair of the factory owners to take advantage of them and deduct pay because their machine broke. It just bothers me that things that were out of control were penalties to them. Walking around waiting for the beltboy to come and fix your sewing machine should not mean you lose pay. But I suppose that since women were considered such cheap labor and since the factory owners were skimping on that much, why should we expect them to have functioning machinery too? -- Kelly Wuyscik<br />
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I found the journal "The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service" in MAW to be an eye opener. Reading about the negro woman and her daily taks including 14-16 hours of work with nursing children not hers as one of them to be insane. She was the main caretaker of these children with restricted visitation of her own.. seriously!? What got to me was the quote "I live a treadmill life; and I see my own children onl when they happen to see me on the streets when I am out with the children, or when my children come to the 'yard' to see me." -- Rose Ferguson<br />
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I also thought the quote by Frances Willard to be incredibly true with her parallels to life and bicycles. "I always felt a strong attraction toward the bicycle, because it is the vehicle of so much harmless pleasure, and because the skill required in handling it obliges those who mount to keep clear heads and steady hands." I'm sure it was hard to keep a clear head when some of the work these women were doing wouldn't allow them to see their family. -- Rose Ferguson<br />
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I found the quote by Francis Willard as she learned to ride a bicycle to be quite meaningful as well. It was a vehicle that forced women for a brief moment to concentrate on their own thoughts rather than what their husband or children or parents needed of them. It was a moment in which a woman could prove to herself her own strength and experience a physical freedom. Quite symbolic of breaking free of many of society's constraints.-- Meredith Bojarski<br />
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In "The Story of a Glove Maker", it amazed me how hard these women worked and also how they had to pay out their own money to do their job like paying 50 cents a week for the use of power to run the machines!! That is insane. How did anyone make enough money to live on when they are charged just to use the sewing machines?~~Mary Beth Conrad<br />
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I thought it was interesting reading about the women who wrote to the Jewish Daily Forward. The story of the young girl who lost her fiancee in the triangle shop fire. I felt so sorry for her. She was all alone in a new country and the advice she gets is "what the earth covers must be forgotten." (65) It would be hard for anyone to get over what she went through and I know it had been four years since the event but the advice still seems harsh to me.~~Mary Beth Conrad<br />
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In "The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service", I was curious about the "service pan", the essay stated that it was left over food that the cook would "dispose" of. Was the cook dividing it up among her neighbors? How much left overs did they have? Was it just a once a week thing since the writer said she could only go home once every 2 weeks or could cooks go home more often than the nurse could?~~Mary Beth Conrad<br />
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I found it interesting in the document of “Female Perspective on the Great migration” that over 500,000 blacks left the south between 1916 and 1919, then over a million by the 1920’s. This movement was called the “push and pull aspects of migration.” A lot of blacks pushed out of the South because there weren’t any new advancements and the pull was the new opportunities that lied ahead. With the African American women moving up to the North for work, how much did that really affect the jobs of immigrant women? Was it a huge effect or a little because immigrants usually worked for lower wage?<br />
-Ashley Scutari<br />
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A couple of the accounts of domestic servitude in Modern American Women talk about having only “oral contracts.” Why is this? I thought by the late 19th Century people would hold written contracts. When I first read that I thought that oral contracts might be a positive thing for the servants because they could walk away from them with out series legal repercussions, but the more I think about it… maybe an oral contract is worse? In an oral contract the terms can change whenever the employer wants and the servant can’t really just walk away from it because they don’t have the money and resource to go anywhere else. Perhaps oral contracts were just another way to keep lower class (often black) women oppressed. – Cat Debelius<br />
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To what extent was the North actually the “promise land” that poor southern black women thought it to be? It seems that domestic service was widespread, form South to North. – Cat Debelius<br />
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The various stories about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were all very heartbreaking, especially the one where the girl lost her fiance'. Let's face it, factory life for men and women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a hellish existence in most cases. However, one would have to acknowledge that it was in many cases worse for women due to their lack of power at that time. They were more easily exploited than men; thus leading to all-female industries and factories in which men were the bosses and foremans and women were the production workers. - Phil N.</div>72.219.192.53https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328--Week_2_Questions/Comments328--Week 2 Questions/Comments2008-01-23T21:38:49Z<p>72.219.192.53: </p>
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<div>I found it interesting that the concept of a separation between freedom and suffrage that existed during the Post-Civil War period is very well upheld assumption today. --Justin Mattos<br />
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The gradual disenfranchisement and barring from political participation of black women seems to be an interesting example of white society's influence on black culture. --Justin Mattos<br />
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What were the similarities between the political participation of black women and political participation of the women of immigrant groups and other minorities? --Justin Mattos<br />
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I thought it was very interesting in the reading where the author discussed the concept of family being the "unifying thread" that bound African Americans together. She says that "the notion of family members as having a mutual and continuing responsibility to help each other and to prepare for hard times" (pg 125). Wouldn't that have been true of any family during the reconstruction period, black or white? ~~Mary Beth C<br />
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I agree with Justin that it is interesting to see how the African American women were gradually pushed out of the political arena after having been so active and vocal. I think it is funny how the women would "take sactions" (pg 135),such as abstaining from sexual relations, against men that voted for the Democratic party! ~~ Mary Beth C<br />
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The concept that I found most intriguing overall in the reading was the conflicting views of freedom and suffrage being an individual possession versus communal. This led to the different treatment of people who voted against the popular view. To someone who thought individuals were responsible to only themselves they would view hostility against other voters as opposing the libreal democratic process whereas in the African American community, where suffrage was viewed as a collective possesion, it was right to be hostile towards those who threatened the well being of the whole community. -Karly Kovalcik<br />
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Although the difference may be slight on paper, there is a huge difference between the African American woman's perspective that her husband votes for her in a way that represents her political beliefs and ideologies versus a white woman's perspective that her husband voted for her without consulting with her because he acted individually in a way that was best for his wife and children. -Karly Kovalcik<br />
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After reading the article I made a decision that I had previously I had been flip-flopping between. I now believe that there needs to be subcategories of the women's history to include at least, but not limiting to, African American Women's history. The history seems to be so different just from the article we had to read. Such as, the black women feeling that they were equally part of the vote that the black men casted. I don't remember ever hearing about that before, at least with white women, but then again I haven't taken a women's history course before either -- Ashley Wilkins<br />
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The other thing I found interesting in the article by Elsa Brown was just how the women and men viewed the 'sense of the vote' at first. Such as the vote casted by the men was equally the women's vote, and how the black republican politicians were able to get (well, it seems like the article was meaning quite a few) many of the black women to reject black male democratic voters. Also, just the fact the black women to fight to even get to vote in Richmond's First African Baptist Church astounded me with the way the article was talking about community earlier on. It definitely feels like slowly, but surely, the women were losing the political say they had through their men. -- Ashley Wilkins<br />
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In chapter 8, Brown gives examples of the freed African American trying to regain the importance of ''the family''. The church was impacted by the new seating integration, families lived together in support, and even none relatives were taken into homes that had room in racial solidarity. Single and widowed women lived together, sharing incomes and responsibility over child care. In a way, black women were improving and strengthening the idea of ''the family'' that white society held such virtue in. By living as sisters with none relatives, but former "fellow servants", African American women created an even stronger sense of female solidarity and sisterhood than white women. While many white women of the time looked down on excessive charity (even to single women with children), black women were united. I believe the lacking sense of sisterhood among all white women and failure to unite with African American women hurt them in the struggle for suffrage.--Jackie Reed<br />
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The experience of slavery created a need to embrace other African Americans, so it is not surprising that they reached out to the community of African Americans during the Reconstruction Era and beyond. It was family and a sense of community that held African Americans together. "Whether one eats or starves in this setting depends on the available resources within the community as a whole."(126) This essay reminded me of a conversation that I had with a senior African American woman in Georgia, who told me that during the violence of the 1950s communities of African Americans posted neighborhood watches. According to the story, white males, sometimes intoxicated, would drive through black communities seeking victims. The men took on the responsibility of protecting the citizens within the community. This women said that they seldom left the neighborhood due to potential violence, and there was no need to because school, church, and markets were all within the perimeter of the black community.--LisaM<br />
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The concept that the freedom and political liberty of U.S. citizens was not synonymous (130) seems a blatent contradition to present day eyes. As we all know, the black codes in the Reconstruction Era disenfranchised large populations of blacks. Brown's essay states that black women felt they had a stake in the man's choice in voting. I recall in Georgia history, the sizeable female black population was considered a threat if allowed to vote; black women were inclined to vote Republican, and the South were Democrats.--LisaM<br />
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I agree with Karly about how there is a huge difference between the African American woman's perspective that her husband votes for her representing her political beliefs and to a white woman's perspective that the husband voted for her without consulting with her. That he voted for who he though was best for him and his wife and children. I think it shows that even though all men are superior when it comes to women, African American men have more respect to their wives then a white man does to his. -- Amanda Taub<br />
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Something that I found interesting in the reading was when it discussed how blacks were active participants throughout the state constitutional convention. African Americans both male and female crowded the galleries speaking their opinions letting their voices be heard. It says " White women, for example, certainly on occasion sat in the convention's gallery as visitors silently observing the proceedings..."(pg129). African American women were standing besides the men that "represented" them and took part in trying to make changes, while the white women sat there quietly letting their men make decisions for them. I just find this funny because you would think a white women would have a little more part in politics; but I guess an African American woman didn't have much to loose if she spoke out of turn or defended her own ideas. -- Amanda Taub<br />
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I thought it was interesting that Brown discussed the varying ways to interpret the word “freedom.” For black women, freedom was the ability to remain close to the community and help the family. She stated that for black women, “the charity of this penniless negress in receiving another poverty-stricken creature under her roof was characteristic of the freedmen” (p. 126). On the other hand, from the perspective of white men and women, freedom was the ability to get ahead and better oneself. For example, Brown states, “freedpeople should adopt naturally those habits of thrift, diligence, and acquisitiveness that were a cornerstone of free labor ideology” (p.127). This highlights an important difference in perspective. --Jessica Kilday<br />
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Brown talks a lot about the difference between freedom and political liberty. There was debate on whether or not civil right should be an “inherent corollary to freedom.” She mentions the views of Gibson when discussing this point, in which he suggests, “persons who had not yet learned to regulate their lives appropriately—to be thrifty, industrious, and diligent—were not yet capable of responsibly exercising liberty. Those not capable of political liberty would rely on those capable of it to protect their freedom” (p 130). In the time following the civil war, women did not have the right to vote, given this statement, is it because society did not view them as “capable of the responsibility?” Moreover, is this, to some extent true today, with the definition of “capable”, not applying to gender, but to age? --Jessica Kilday<br />
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In Browns essay I thought it was interesting on page 129 that during debates white women were silent and the African Americans were not. Instead they participated and loudly; however Brown doesn't say whether the African Amercians were men or women or both. Why were the white women silent? <br />
Michelle Mardeusz<br />
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What was also intersting to me in Browns essay was that Southern Black women and men debated the issue of woman suffrage (131). I assume this is because Black men were in the same boat as women in general because they didn't have much rights either so they understood the frustration of not having certain rights and in this case the right to vote. <br />
Michelle Mardeusz<br />
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I found it interesting that during the Reconstruction Era while men and women who had been slaves focused on finding the families that they had been separated from the white society surrounding these families found something wrong with the fact the black community latched onto the families they had around them. It seemed odd that they would have such a negative view on the fact that these people had such a strong desire to help out family members or even simply other people who experienced the difficulties of slavery with them. I would have thought that this would have been something that would have been admired instead of mocked. They were helping others out which was something that I had understood was the duty of any Christian, especially during this time period where the majority of the nation was Christian. Was it simply because they were a different skin color than them? Or was it because many white people during this period were so focused on improving their lot in life that they couldn't have cared less about how the others were doing? - Elizabeth Frank<br />
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I enjoyed reading how although the black women in communities were denied the right to actually cast a vote in elections they still made their political opinions known. I especially enjoyed reading that these women would threaten their husbands in order to insure they voted in a way that represented not only his opinions but also hers as well! - Elizabeth Frank</div>72.219.192.53https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_10_Questions/CommentsWeek 10 Questions/Comments2007-10-30T16:29:08Z<p>72.219.192.53: </p>
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<div>Woloch’s book--I found the reading The Cruel Mistress, to be a form of abolitionist propaganda to raise the argument about how inhumane slavery is. Angelina Grimke Weld would give great credibility to the abolitionist movement because of her observations of the southern community as she was once a southern herself. These observations are highly detailed as if it was fresh from her memories yet these accounts in her memories are at least fourteen years old. Thus it begs the question, did these mistresses really conduct themselves this way according to what Weld had witnessed? Are her memories that reliable? Or are these observations, in how mistresses treated their slaves, facts or exaggerations of the facts? –John Furner <br />
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I think it is likely that these mistresses did conduct themselves in a way very similar to Weld's accounts even though a decent amount of time had passed between when she had witnessed the actions and when she recorded them for publishing. The treatment that she described I believe was very common of the slave owners to not see their slaves as fully human and therefore not treat them as such. However, the treatment that stood out most to me during this entry was how the mistress would not beat the slaves herself but have that slave's brother or sister beat them. I would think this would make them want to act out more.- Elizabeth Frank<br />
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Woloch’ Book—Reading Louisa S. Cheeves McCord attack on Stowe was a bit difficult to swallow. It seems to me that she plays right into the Patriarchal system of having to assume the role to take care of those less fortunate. Otherwise, she attempts to give credence to southern white man’s burden for the purpose to have slaves. I find it amusing when she writes, “We proclaim it, on the contrary, a Godlike dispensation, a providential caring for the weak, and a refuge for the portionless.” (219) Why I find this amusing is that she believes the white race must assume a god like status in the care of the less fortunate, thereby the less fortunate group could only prosper in a civilized world, if they were enslaved by the white race; white man’s burden. However, if the white race were so godlike or given providence as she claims, then why are southern slave owners dependant on slaves for their very existence?—John Furner<br />
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In this week’s readings we see the cruelty of slavery for women, through the abuse and sexual exploitation of black women. Even whites were morally opposed to the institution of slavery as seen by Mary Chestnut’s diary. I was taken back by the popularity of masters forcing sexual relations between men and women. I knew it was a practice, however I was under the impression that slave breeding was not very popular, and mostly masters relied on natural reproduction. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of slave breeding? In the essay by Jennings, she explicitly discusses the role of white, slave owners in the sexual abuse of women. Did masters rape and abuse women simply because they could or did the sexual stereotypes of African American women of the time (“animal – like”, foreign, African queens, exotic, sexually aggressive, etc.) play into it? How did mistresses react to the relationships between masters and female slaves and illegitimate children? Are there examples of mistresses mistreating a woman she suspected was sleeping with her husband (I know Weld discusses the “cruel mistress” but I did not get the impression that her violence was deemed inappropriate or based on accusations of infidelity). Was there any advantage(s) to sleeping with the master? -Mary Beth D.<br />
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In the readings one of the things that stood out the most to me was in Modern Problems the article by Mrs. Virgina Hayes Shepard when she mentions Diana. I was surprised to see that when the master went to Diana to have sexual relations with her Diana actually went to her mistress for help. I thought that white mistresses would react badly to the idea that their husbands would be sleeping with the slaves but in DIana's case the mistress sympathized instead of becoming angry. It is stated that in part this is because she was also afraid of her husband. Is it possible that this is more common than we know because both the slave women and the mistresses were scared to bring it up?- Elizabeth Frank</div>72.219.192.53https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_5_Questions/CommentsWeek 5 Questions/Comments2007-09-26T22:16:08Z<p>72.219.192.53: </p>
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<div>"Thomas Paine Admits Women Have Some Rights" left me wondering if his comments would have helped or hindered women in the eighteenth century. Paine states grievances against women while projecting them to be weak and fragile. He praises their contributions and advocates for recognition of female accomplishment, while belittling women with allusions to their inability to care for themselves. Paine's claims seem to be overwhelmingly contradictory. So, my question is-- Could Paine be considered an early feminist? -Kelly Martin<br />
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When reading "Thomas Paine Admits Women Have Some Rights", I also was a bit confused to where Paine was coming from. His claim's were infact very contradictory with one another. After reading Kelly's question,this leads me to believe that he could be a considered an early feminist in some ways. -Katie D.<br />
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I also found "Thomas Paine Admits Women Have some Rights" very interesting in that he contradicts himself in saying women are weak but have a great deal of courage for putting up with oppression throughout time and the world. Though this article did make me wonder what men's reaction to his article would have been. - Elizabeth Frank<br />
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When reading the essay "A Carolina Patriot" in Woloch's book, there was an excerpt found from Eliza Wilkerson's wartime letters to an unspecified friend. I found it intersting that she said "For my part, "I would rather explore unknown regions, blessed with liberty, than remain in my native country if to be cursed with slavery"(p.123). Throughout this excerpt Eliza seems to be "inventing" herself - adopting the pose appropriate to a "female patriot". -Katie D.<br />
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I found the letter that Katie D. mentioned to be very interesting and I would agree with the statement that she seems to be "inventing" herself. Everything that she wrote is apparently saturated with patriotic thoughts and feelings. I am curious however just how common an attitude towards politics at the time was Eliza Wilkerson's or were more women inclined to have more of the feelings of Grace Galloway (starting on page 124). Grace Galloway's diary entries are such a total opposite to the letter of ELiza Wilkerson that a reader is battered with very strong opposing views. --Mary P.<br />
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In regards to Katie and Mary's comments, I am also curious about how a different audience would have altered Eliza Wilkerson's statements. How might her opinions or framing of opinions have been altered if voiced to a man? Would Eliza have the same feeling of invention? -Kelly Martin<br />
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While reading Benjamin Rush's "Thoughts Upon Female Education" I was struck by the change in the views concerning female education that we have come upon in just this short span that we have discussed. Where as before women were taught to read mostly so that they could read the Bible, now men are encouraged to promote the education of their daughters for the sake of their property, for women were often left as stewards of property and business during a husbands absence, but also, and from Rush's continuing mention of it importantly, the fact that these daughters will be growing up and getting married and having children, particularly sons, and they will have the task of educating these sons in a manner befitting their status and learning. --Mary P.<br />
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I though that it was interesting how in Esther DeBerdt's "Sentiments of an American Woman", she freely admits that women have "...feeble hands..." (115). I would have thought that a comment like that would be more likely to come from a man of that time and not a woman. ~Katherine S.~<br />
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I felt that the way Mary Jemison described the Native Americans in the article "The War for Independence...", made them seem very materialistic. It seemed that all the Native Americans cared about were the goods they were going to receive from the British and nothing else. ~Katherine S.~<br />
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I really enjoyed reading "An American Woman Asserts Women's Rights." I found it interesting that this woman flat out said that many women would do whatever they could to help the revolution during this time when many men felt like women wouldn't want to give up their luxuries to help the cause. I also enjoyed how she compared american women to the women of antiquity who helped save their nations. - Elizabeth Frank</div>72.219.192.53https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_5_Questions/CommentsWeek 5 Questions/Comments2007-09-26T22:09:08Z<p>72.219.192.53: </p>
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<div>"Thomas Paine Admits Women Have Some Rights" left me wondering if his comments would have helped or hindered women in the eighteenth century. Paine states grievances against women while projecting them to be weak and fragile. He praises their contributions and advocates for recognition of female accomplishment, while belittling women with allusions to their inability to care for themselves. Paine's claims seem to be overwhelmingly contradictory. So, my question is-- Could Paine be considered an early feminist? -Kelly Martin<br />
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When reading "Thomas Paine Admits Women Have Some Rights", I also was a bit confused to where Paine was coming from. His claim's were infact very contradictory with one another. After reading Kelly's question,this leads me to believe that he could be a considered an early feminist in some ways. -Katie D.<br />
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I also found "Thomas Paine Admits Women Have some Rights" very interesting in that he contradicts himself in saying women are weak but have a great deal of courage for putting up with oppression throughout time and the world. Though this article did make me wonder what men's reaction to his article would have been. - Elizabeth Frank<br />
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When reading the essay "A Carolina Patriot" in Woloch's book, there was an excerpt found from Eliza Wilkerson's wartime letters to an unspecified friend. I found it intersting that she said "For my part, "I would rather explore unknown regions, blessed with liberty, than remain in my native country if to be cursed with slavery"(p.123). Throughout this excerpt Eliza seems to be "inventing" herself - adopting the pose appropriate to a "female patriot". -Katie D.<br />
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I found the letter that Katie D. mentioned to be very interesting and I would agree with the statement that she seems to be "inventing" herself. Everything that she wrote is apparently saturated with patriotic thoughts and feelings. I am curious however just how common an attitude towards politics at the time was Eliza Wilkerson's or were more women inclined to have more of the feelings of Grace Galloway (starting on page 124). Grace Galloway's diary entries are such a total opposite to the letter of ELiza Wilkerson that a reader is battered with very strong opposing views. --Mary P.<br />
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In regards to Katie and Mary's comments, I am also curious about how a different audience would have altered Eliza Wilkerson's statements. How might her opinions or framing of opinions have been altered if voiced to a man? Would Eliza have the same feeling of invention? -Kelly Martin<br />
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While reading Benjamin Rush's "Thoughts Upon Female Education" I was struck by the change in the views concerning female education that we have come upon in just this short span that we have discussed. Where as before women were taught to read mostly so that they could read the Bible, now men are encouraged to promote the education of their daughters for the sake of their property, for women were often left as stewards of property and business during a husbands absence, but also, and from Rush's continuing mention of it importantly, the fact that these daughters will be growing up and getting married and having children, particularly sons, and they will have the task of educating these sons in a manner befitting their status and learning. --Mary P.<br />
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I though that it was interesting how in Esther DeBerdt's "Sentiments of an American Woman", she freely admits that women have "...feeble hands..." (115). I would have thought that a comment like that would be more likely to come from a man of that time and not a woman. ~Katherine S.~<br />
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I felt that the way Mary Jemison described the Native Americans in the article "The War for Independence...", made them seem very materialistic. It seemed that all the Native Americans cared about were the goods they were going to receive from the British and nothing else. ~Katherine S.~</div>72.219.192.53https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_2_Questions/CommentsWeek 2 Questions/Comments2007-09-05T23:40:49Z<p>72.219.192.53: </p>
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<div>I found it interesting in the passage by John Heckewelder( page 30- 33) in Modern Problems where he says that the women's work load was so much lighter than that of the mens. I found this particularly interesting because in one of my classes last semester we read some articles about Europeans reactions to Native American society in Virginia and it said how lazy the European men felt that the Indian men were because it appeared that the women did the majority of the work within the village. I thought it was interesting seeing the different views that this reading exposed. - Elizabeth Frank<br />
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Continuing from what Elizabeth wrote, It is infact very intersting to see how different groups of people play differnt roles, and how each group views those roles played by each gender.--Katie D.<br />
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I too was interested by the passage about women’s work written by John Heckewelder. I actually found myself getting a little miffed at him for saying such a thing. However, Mary Jemison somewhat backs up what he says in the account of her captivity. She hints that the work was different from the work that white women had to face, but in the end, it all equaled out. “Our labor was not severe; and that of one year was exactly similar in almost every respect to that of the others, with out that endless variety that is to be observed in the common labor of white people…their task is probably not harder than that of white women…” (Woloch 21). Of course, Jemison doesn’t really mention men’s work in her passage, so it’s hard to tell if Seneca men compare to the “macho men” that Heckewelder describes. --Kaitlyn G.<br />
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In Woloch's book, having to do with marriage and treatment of their wives,(p.9-11), I found it intersting how he says that there are many persons who believe, from the labour that they see the Indian women perform, that they are in a manner treated as slaves. These labours, indeed, are hard, compared with the tasks that are imposed upon females in civilized society, but they are no more than their fair share of the hardships attendant on savage life. So they are not only voluntarily, but cheerfully submitted to the work. <br />
--Katie D.<br />
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Katie, I was also interested in the idea that somehow fieldwork alone made slaves, but housework did not...Is there any explanation for that, Dr. McClurken? Or someone else who saw something I missed?--A. Meyer<br />
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This is a total shot in the dark, but from a European perspective, I think that they would be used to women doing domestic work as opposed to working in the fields. Taking care of the home was a woman's place in European society and when seeing a Native woman doing those tasks, that was a normal thing to them. However, when women were working in the fields, a red flag must have gone up and they were like "Whoa, must be a slave." I don't know, just a kind of [bad] a guess.--Kaitlyn G.<br />
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Throughout the personal narratives we have read, it has become obvious that Europeans thought their way of life to be far more superior to the way of life of the Natives they encountered. Due to the fact that they had never seen a society perform this way, Europeans defined this foreign culture as erroneous and thought it their divine right to intervene. Are there any current examples of this “responsibility” to intrude on foreign societies and make them like ours? Without trying to make this a political argument, one may argue the situation in Iraq. For instance, an attempt was made by the U.S. to spread democracy to this dictatorship. - Lisa Wilkerson<br />
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To what extent were European prejudices against natives based on differences about gender roles? To what extent were they more based on standards of living and tools? If native peoples had similar gender roles to Europeans, would the Europeans have had better gender relations, or would they still be doomed due to European prejudices about tools or desires for land?--Andrea Meyer<br />
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We have several accounts of Native men being introduced to European ideas about gender and the absolute rights European men had in the 17th century. How frequently and quickly did Natives apply these ideas, and how did the application process disrupt Native family dynamics? Because all our accounts are from Europeans, we really don't have any sense of how things were within the Native families when European ideas were experimented with. Did Native women resist European ideals or did some accept these "new" roles?--Andrea Meyer<br />
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It’s amazing that over 300 years later we are running into the same storylines. The story of Sarah Ahhaton committing adultery sounds as if it could’ve been taken right off the front pages of People Magazine. It’s surprising to see the parallels between our two time periods. Sarah accused her husband, William, of philandering long before he became suspicious and jealous of her relationship with Joseph. Yet, William was not put on trial and was not questioned about his unfaithfulness. It was Sarah who was wrongfully accused, pleaded innocent, and was ridiculed before she had even committed the sin (granted William did have a right to speculate- but that’s not the point). Why wasn’t William ever questioned about his running around? And what about Joseph- he gets off scot-free! What we see here is something that has continually found its way into society: the double standard.- Lisa Wilkerson<br />
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In Woloch page 21, the recollections of Mary Jemison, I was really struck by her point of view on the work and labor of Indian women. "Our labor was not severe... Notwithstanding the Indian women have all the fuel and bread to procure, and the cooking to perform, their task is probably not harder that that of white women, who have those articles provided for them; and their cares certainly are not half as numerous, nor half as great." As a European woman now being held in captivity, I think it's a more trustworthy look at the work of Indian women versus the work of white women. -- Vanessa Smiley<br />
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One of the things I personally liked about the Woloch reading was that she, right from the get go, reminded us that most women in the early period were not literate -- they could not read or write and therefore most of what we know about them comes from men or writings of elite, white women. I think that we, as historians need to keep that in mind when analyzing and studying these sorts of materials because more often than not, these stories and facts are altered or skewed in some way. -- Kelly Wuyscik<br />
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In the reading posted on Black Board it talks about how Christianity changed the gender roles and how women were treated. It shocked me that the women were summoned to a council and told that their influence basically had caused demons to come into the village (at least thats the impression I got). Also in that reading I saw how native american society ended up being very similar to the European society in which women were expected to be pure and loyal only to her husband and if she wasn't she was punished where as well men were SUPPOSED to be they often weren't and weren't punished for their adultery. I also am wondering why women let themselves be pushed into a role where they had less influence, if I had been in that position I'm positive I would have fought back. Does anyone else have thoughts on the black board reading?- Elizabeth Frank</div>72.219.192.53https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_2_Questions/CommentsWeek 2 Questions/Comments2007-09-04T02:09:42Z<p>72.219.192.53: New page: I found it interesting in the passage by John Heckewelder( page 30- 33) in Modern Problems where he says that the women's work load was so much lighter than that of the mens. I found this ...</p>
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<div>I found it interesting in the passage by John Heckewelder( page 30- 33) in Modern Problems where he says that the women's work load was so much lighter than that of the mens. I found this particularly interesting because in one of my classes last semester we read some articles about Europeans reactions to Native American society in Virginia and it said how lazy the European men felt that the Indian men were because it appeared that the women did the majority of the work within the village. I thought it was interesting seeing the different views that this reading exposed. - Elizabeth Frank</div>72.219.192.53 Deprecated: header(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($response_code) of type int is deprecated in /home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/WebResponse.php on line 38