what opportunities were open to women in the domestic scene during the 19th century

The Role of the Wife and Mother

In the later nineteenth century things for women began to change. No doubt this had something to do with modernity and its intrinsic insistence on change, and no uncertainty it had something to do with the deportment of women themselves, with their desire to interruption out of the limits imposed on their sexual practice. The nineteenth century therefore apears to have been a turning point in the long history of women. The old tensions were still nowadays between work (at abode or in the shop) and family, betwixt the domestic ideal and social utility, beween the world of appearances, wearing apparel, and pleasance and the earth of subsistence, aprenticeship, and the practice of a profession, and betwixt religious practice equally spiritual exercise and social regulator and the new realm of education in secular schools.

Motherhood

"About every true female parent there is a sancity of martyrdom- and when she is no more than in the body, her children run across her with the ring of light around her head."

Godey's Lady's Book, 1867

Motherhood was viewed in advice literature, peculiarly by the 1890s, as one of the nigh important contributions women could make to her family and to the nation. With the influx of Southern European and other not-WASP immigrants in the latter half of the nineteenth century, many Americans feared losing what was so considered American. Women were having fewer children because of new opportunities available to them and because children were no longer every bit necessary as they were when families worked on farms. At the turn of the century, President Roosevelt popularized the idea of "race suicide" and encouraged childbirth to ensure the longevity of the nation.

In most images of women, particularly those with children, you practice not see the female parent's directly gaze. Rather, the emphasis is on the child and her human relationship to the child. Usually the female parent or both are romanticized: put in classical clothes or scenes in the home that convey a sense of peace and innocence. One of the most important American painters of mothers and children in this period was Mary Cassatt.

Kate Chopin

"Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer; than to remain a dupe to illusions all one'southward Life."
Kate Chopin, 1899

Dear and passion, marriage and independence, freedom and restraint - these are themes of her work distinctively realized in story after story. When Edna Pontellier, the heroine of The Awakening announces "I would requite up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; just I wouldn't give myself" she is addressing the crucial effect for many of Kate Chopin's women - the winning of a self, the keeping of it.

From the reaction of the readers garnered past the novel, and the attitudes of some of the characters inside the novel, it would be easy to classify Edna as a poor mother. However, the textual evidence is to the contrary. Although she does not hover over her children or live every waking moment solely dedicated to them, she attends to their needs and repeatedly shows her affection for them. While Madame Ratignolle sews new winter outfits for her children, Edna is content that her own'due south needs are currently met. "Mrs. Pontellier's mind was quite as rest apropos the present material needs of her children, and she could non see the use of anticipating and making wintertime garments the subject field of her summer meditations" (Chopin 639). Edna was "fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive style" (647). She does not alive solely for them, simply she does intendance for them. At times, Edna is very much a mother-woman. She demonstrates physical attachment to her children a number of times.

"Edna took him in her artillery, and resting herself in the rocker, began to cuddle and cuddle him, calling him all way of tender names, soothing him to sleep" (Chopin 663).

She tells her boys bedtime stories (666). She misses her children when she is away from them. "How glad she was to see the children! She wept for pleasure when she felt their little artillery clasping her..." (706). In the end, one of her final thoughts is of her children. "She thought of Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life. Just they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul" (723). "They were a part of her life," is the key.

Edna wanted more than to be but divers as a married woman and mother. Wanting more out of life does non brand her a poor female parent.

Spousal relationship

I of the most meaning changes to American culture in the tardily nineteenth century was the shift in women's roles. In addition to the anxiety experienced by most Americans as a upshot of rapid industrialization, advice givers, like Catharine Beecher and Sara Hale, were concerned that the habitation was no longer considered sacred and women were non beingness appreciated for their office maintaining.

While many women fulfilled their "responsibilities", a big number of women responded to this attempt to define and limit their roles with their own literature and work in the feminist movement.

Union

"Whatever accept been the cares of the day, greet your married man with a smile when he returns. Brand your personal appearance just every bit cute as possible. Permit him enter rooms then attractive and sunny that all the recollections of his domicile, when away from the aforementioned, shall attract him dorsum."

Hill'southward Manual of Social and Business Forms, 1888

It is the wife'due south responsibility to provide her husband "a happy abode... the unmarried spot of residuum which a human being has upon this earth for the cultivation of his noblest sensibilities."

Despite the reduction of legal requirements and lengthening of residence requirements, the divorce rates surged between 1870 and 1920 (Deglar). Advice givers believed the reasons for the changes to the American family were the result of women'due south "selfish desires" to pursue opportunities away from the dwelling house and a devaluation of the role of motherhood and housewife. In response, images of devoted wives and mothers were featured in numerous advice magazines. In these images, the married woman is usually draped over her husband, or holding her child to create the image of a nurturing woman and complete family. In many cases, the hubby looks ill or worried to remind women of the pressure and anxiety that men faced with the recent changes to the economy. Again, the woman's direct gaze is nearly never shown.

Reforming divorce laws

A number of changes were made to the legal status of women in the 19th century, peculiarly concerning marriage laws. The fact that fathers always received custody of their children, leaving the mother completely without any rights, slowly started to change. The Custody of Infants Deed in 1839 gave mothers of unblemished character admission to their children in the event of [[Legal separation|separation]] or divorce, and the Matrimonial Causes Deed in 1857 gave women limited access to divorce. Simply while the married man only had to prove his wife's adultery, a woman had to prove her hubby had not merely committed adultery but also incest, bigamy, cruelty or desertion.[commendation needed] In 1873 the Custody of Infants Act extended access to children to all women in the event of separation or divorce. In 1878, subsequently an amendment to the Matrimonial Causes Act, women could secure a separation on the grounds of cruelty and claim custody of their children. Magistrates even authorized protection orders to wives whose husbands have been convicted of aggravated assault. An important change was caused by an subpoena to the Married Women'due south Property Act in 1884 that fabricated a adult female no longer a 'chattel' but an independent and separate person. Through the Guardianship of Infants Act in 1886, women could exist made the sole guardian of their children if their hubby died.

Because her view of marriage is a complex one, Chopin's wives are a varied sort, some of them as contented and devoted to the home shrine as Adele Ratignolle, the mother-adult female; others question the ties of marriage lightly or seriously. In "Athenaise" a restless young woman marries Cazeau, an older neighbor, but to find herself appalled by the intimacy of marriage:

"It'due south jus' being married that I detes' and despise. . . I can't stand to live with a man, to have him e'er at that place; his coats an' pantaloons hanging in my room; his ugly bare feet - washing them in my tub befo' my very eyes, ugh!"

But her running away to New Orleans, her mild amour with a willing gentleman count for little when she discovers that she is meaning. Equally important as recognizing her pregnancy is Athenaise'due south discovery at her render that she finally truly desires her husband.

In much the aforementioned way, "Madame Celestin's Divorce" becomes a ways for a young wife to flirt with a sympathetic lawyer and to contemplate a separation in spite of the Catholic ban - until her traveling married man returns, and her blushes advise how she has forgiven all. "A Visit to Avoyelles" presents Doudouce, a human adamant to salve his erstwhile sweetheart from an calumniating husband and the burdens of a hard life, who finds his rescue unwelcome, his Mentine loyal to her married man even in her misery. Just as the heroine of Chopin's first novel, At Error, errs in attempting to direct the life of the man who cares for her, Doudouce has sought unsuccessfully to move Mentine; she has accepted her bad wedlock and seeks no solace. Perhaps it is no surprise that Chopin also wrote an account "In Sabine" in which a similar effort rescues "Tite Reine" (Little Queen), simply Chopin refuses to comment on the fate of the returned woman.

Chopin takes on divorce directly . . .

At Error, privately printed and before long forgotten, had taken on the question of divorce forthrightly and, though marred by melodrama and an engineered ending, implicitly pled for the reality of the end of love and the foolishness of meddling in the life decisions of others. Such meddling and manipulating, Chopin attests in "La Belle Zoraide," may destroy its objects.

One of several stories set earlier the war, this tale recounts the life of a beautiful mulatta, pampered by a mistress who wishes to marry her to another light-skinned servant. Just Zoraide has seen the handsome Mezor dance the bamboula in Congo Square, "his body, bare to the waist, similar a column of ebony," and she begs her mistress for the right to marry him. "Since I am not white, let me accept one from out of my own race whom my heart has chosen." Refused that right, Zoraide who "could non have helped loving him," bears his child. Her mistress, longing to have her pretty servant back again, sends the child abroad. Zoraide sinks into madness. Chopin's readers understood in the view of their day that of form the mixed blood Zoraide might yield to want, but non "A Respectable Adult female," in the story of that proper name. Mrs. Baroda is at first baffled at her interested response to the charming house guest, Gouvernail, simply comes to realize her own want and to await forward to his return. Petty is said, much is unsaid, but the story stops short of explicit clarification of the anticipated second visit.

Bibliographic Sources

Document 26: A.B. Griffin, "Woman'south Rights and Men's Wrongs," American Socialist, 5 December 1878, p. 386. "A Woman is Meliorate Than A Man?"

The Get-go Adult female in the Democracy Carolyn 50. Karcher - The Offset Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Kid. New Americanist Series. Durham, N.C. and London: Knuckles University Printing, 1998, ISBN 0-8223-1485/ISBN 0-8223-2163-7.

Certificate 13: "The Perplexed Housekeeper," The Round, 4 July 1870, p. 128. A Verse form Illustrating Contempt by the Oneida Community Held for the Institution of Marriage and its Bondage of Women

Howard, J.B. (n.d.). A Adult female Far Alee of Her Time. Retrieved from http://www.gp-chautaugua.org

Duby, G, & Perrot, M. (1991). A history of women, Emerging feminism from revolution to world war. Gius, Laterza and Figli Spa , Rome and Bari: "Belatedly 19th Century America." Advice for Women. 2002. Web. 13 Oct 2009.

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Source: http://people.loyno.edu/~kchopin/new/women/motherhood.html

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