Women's Right Movement

  

          In the 1800’s, women did not have many equal rights.  Women had four features of ideal womanhood, which were piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.  Piety was basically the practice of religious faith, which was significant to woman, as since Eve was the first who ate the forbidden fruit when referring to the biblical story, it was also believed that sin was the fault of women and that they started it.  Purity basically had to do with a woman’s greatest “treasure” being her virginity, which was supposed to be kept even if a male tried to assault her.  There was also submissiveness, which basically had to do with women being physically weaker than men as well.  However, this was mostly due to the fact that the women’s clothes would close off inner organs, causing them to faint often, and many thought this was just how women were.  Finally, there was domesticity.  At the time, it was believed that women should be busy inside the house, and this was further explained through The Cult of Domesticity.  The Cult of Domesticity basically said that middle class women were confined to the house, and their proper role was taking of it, along with their children and providing companionship to men.  Basically, women were supposed to remain out of the public eye and stay inside of a “Private Sphere”.  The “Private Sphere” was basically the home, or where women worked, contrasting with the “Public Sphere”, a violent place where men worked, full of temptations and trouble.  The roles of women in the 1800’s was quite different than today, and certainly not in a good way.

            In July 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention took place in Seneca Falls, New York.  Women gathered together to talk about reforms that could possibly make their daily lives better. These include finding solutions to the problems above, such as the Cult of Domesticity and the four features of ideal womanhood.  These women wrote the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, which was inspired by the Declaration of Independence, and even repeated direct phrases from it, with some altered details.  These altered details included ensuring that women were included in terms of equality, elective franchise, property rights, and many other subjects.  For example, the document says, “all men and women are created equal”, which sounds a lot like the Declaration of Independence, but they specifically made sure that women were included as well.  Also addressed in the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was women having the right to vote.  However, some women argued that the right to vote should not be addressed in the Declaration, as not only was it less important than solving other problems, but they thought people would react negatively to it.  Since women’s suffrage was so controversial, many women feared that including the right to vote would cause people to be upset about the Declaration and not change any of the addressed problems.  This prediction did come true as many were quite upset with the document when it was first released.  It sadly was not until 1920 when women were allowed to vote, and by then, the only woman who signed the Declaration that was still alive was 92 year old Charlotte Woodard Pierce.  Another debatable part of the convention was that there were still many voices not represented.  Only middle class white woman attended the convention, meaning that African American, Native American, Factory workers, slaves, and many more women could not attend and address the reforms they wanted.  These people had many problems that should have been addressed, for example, factory workers should have been able to argue for better working conditions.  Many of these voices were unfortunately left out of the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions.

            As a class, we had our own convention, in which we included many of the voices that were originally left out in our convention, and addressed many reforms, including ending slavery, the right to participate in all institutions, and freedom of speech.  Some of these were also addressed in the actual convention, such as the right to participate in all institutions (including voting, office holding, testifying in court, and many others).  However, since slaves could not participate in the convention, ending slavery was not on the real Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions.  Personally, I believe this is also the most important reform we discussed.  Slavery is terrible, full of poor treatment and living conditions, so getting rid of it would have been a major accomplishment and many lives would have been saved.  Also, slavery was such a big and well known example of unequal rights.  If slavery was abolished, than other groups of people, such as Native Americans and Middle Class Women, would notice this and be motivated and inspired by it.  They, too, would most likely stand up for themselves very strongly after this, and eventually, more problems than just slavery would be solved.  So not only would ending slavery benefit many in the short term, but it would motivate other people and have a beneficial long term affect as well.