View source for Week 9 Questions/Comments-327 11


== General Questions ==

I was surprised (although I shouldn't really have been) at the number of these documents which refer to religion as important to their daily lives: from the lowell girls' rules enforcing religious practice to the teachers in the American west to the women on the gold mines everyone was obsessed with the sanctity of their own religion and the lack of religion in their society.  Were these women simply becoming teachers to help those less fortunate than them or were they really seeking an attempt at missionary work of people they truly believed to be spiritually beneath them.  Although the outcome of their work would still be the same, it would be important to know the background for which their work was done for it would tell more about the woman doing the work. --Sara S.



== Emma Willard, “Matrimonial Risks,” 1815 ==


== Caroline Gilman, “The Deferential Wife,” 1838 ==

I liked in ''The Deferential Wife'' by Caroline Gilman the quote "Men are not often unreasonable; their difficulties lie in not understanding the moral and physcial structure of our sex. They often wound through ignorance and are surprised at having offended. How clear is it, then, that woman loses by petulance and recrimination! Her first study must be self-control, almost to hypocrisy.  A good wife must smile amid a thousand perplexities, and clear her voice to tones of cheerfulness when her frames is drooping with disease, or else languish alone. Man on the contrary, when trials beset him, expects to find her ear and heart a ready receptacle." (page 147) Basically this is the formation of the idea that woman is reponsible for the morality and self-control of the man.  It is from this ideologue (which did develop concurrently with Republican Motherhood) that the arguments today about the dress and style of women are based upon.  It is interesting to see it in its' original context in The Deferential Wife. --Sara S.


== Catharine Beecher, “System and Order,” 1841 ==


== Catharine Sedgwick, “First to None,” 1828 ==


== Sarah Connell Ayer, “The Widowed State,” 1832-33 ==


== Eliza Ann Mulford, “Rules of the School,” 1814 ==


== Emma Willard, “A Rationale for Female Education,” 1819 ==


== Miss Burnham’s Report, “A Choctaw Mission School,” 1824 ==


== Letters from Teachers, “Reports on Western Schools,” 1847 ==


== Rules of the Mill from Lowell and Lancaster, 1820-1840 ==


== Harriet Farley, “A Letter from Lowell,” 1844 ==

== The Voice of Industry, “A Spirit of Protest,” 1846 ==


== Amelia Stewart Knight, “Crossing the Plains,” 1853 ==


== Mary Ballou, “A Woman’s View of the Gold Rush,” 1852 ==


== Petitions of the Cherokee Women’s Council on Removal, 1817, 1818 ==


== Sarah Winnemucca, “Life Among the Paiutes,” 1883 ==


== A Sioux Tale, “A Woman Kills Her Daughter” ==