Republican Motherhood

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses the extraordinary women who helped change the world in the 19th Century and were under-appreciated by the history of the United States. The paper posits that 19th Century women ably and adroitly used their skills and experiences to form a more moral union. The paper highlights the women who struggled and were stifled, but learned how to launch reform movements. The paper stresses that this was done not through formal training, but through the manifold processes of their maturation as daughters, sisters, wives - and most of all, as mothers.

From the Paper:

"Paulina, in 1836, put her network of female activists to work - circulating petitions - in behalf of "...one of the very first women's rights causes in American history" (Ryan, 227), the New York State married women's property act. That cause was to end up a fortitudinous one for Paulina when her husband died in 1840; following that time, she "outgrew" her early religious faith and "felt free to think and act on my own convictions," Ryan chronicles on page 227. Paulina set out to travel and study in Europe, and returned to Oneida County where she delivered lectures on "female physiology, equipped with a femme modele," which she obtained in France."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Delamont, Sara. "The Domestic Ideology and Women's Education" in the Nineteenth Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World. Eds. Sara Delamont and Lorna Duffin. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1978, pp. 164-187.
• Douglass, Grace. "Daughters of Africa: Daughters of America" in We Are Your Sisters, Ed.
• Dorothy Sterling. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984.
• Duffin, Lorna. "Prisoners of Progress: Women and Evolution" in The Nineteenth Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World. Eds. Sara Delamont and Lorna Duffin. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1978, pp. 57-91.
• Hurner, Sheryl. "Discursive Identity Formation of Suffrage Women: Reframing the 'Cult of True Womanhood' Through Song." Western Journal of Communication 70 (2006): 234-260.

More papers on Republican Motherhood:

• Essay # 3499 : "Women's Influence"
• Essay # 11203 : "A Woman's Role in the Late 1800's"
• Essay # 39854 : "Women in the Nineteenth Century"

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