Blog # 4

Section A

1. Women reflects a powerful ideology of gender roles that historians have labeled “the cult of true womanhood,” “the ideology of separate spheres,” or simply “domesticity.” This system of ideas, which took hold in the early years of the nineteenth century, treated men and women as complete and absolute opposites, with almost no common human traits that transcended the difference of gender. The ideology of true womanhood also saw the larger society as carved into complementary but mutually exclusive “spheres” of public and private concerns, work and home life, politics and family. “In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes,” declared by to Alexis the Tocqueville. “American women never manage the outward concerns of the family, or conduct a business, or take a part in political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor of the fields, or to make any of those laborious exertions, which demand the exertion of physical strength. No families are so poor, as to form an exception of this rule.” The so called “true” of the gender ideology found no interferences in any of their characteristics because everyone seemed to believe it.

2. The first female factory workers composed for “girls” that they were unmarried, many in their teens, of farming families were advocated by choice to become the labor force of the textile industry. These young women could help to provide their families with the cash that they required. The farm girls of Lowell saw this opportunity as a new possibility of personal independence and economic contribution for their gender. The declination of prices in wool and cotton led to cut the wages twice in one year. The Lowell girls did not agree and in 1834-1836 they conducted strikes that laid-off workers as a result the mill shut down. When the economy recovered and the mills were re-opened, the Lowell workers were forced to work more hours, six days a week and produced more. Therefore the Lowell girls joined with male workers in other factories to petition the state of legislature to establish a ten-hour legal limit to their workdays as a way to resist work pressure and keep up levels of employment. But, because women had lacked of power in the political system and franchise male the Lowell women found no support in their legislative petitions they could not achieve any gains. In the other hand, Irish immigration took over the textile factories as a consequence the worker class was divided in two groups: working women and true women that were going in separate ways. During this period, women for the first time expressed their ideas freely, fought for their rights, and began to participate in the political and social spheres as part of the political process.

Section B

1. The moral nature of women according to Sanger’s view was the force of desire that remains slumbered and most women until it was aroused by some outside influences.

2. Sanger thinks that the causes of prostitution for women were desertion, seduction, subsistence, or forced into prostitution by some other extraordinary event over which they had no control such as the economic depression in 1857. The relentless financial pressure of poor urban women led to a high number of prostitutes during this period. Some of the consequences of prostitution were the spreading of venereal diseases and the missing of moral values. In addition, prostitutes with family were segregated by people and live on the fringe of society.

3. In conclusion, Sanger believed that prostitutes were victims as a result of men’s callousness and their own lack of economic opportunity. He hoped that his studies about prostitution will help to eradicate it by finding the sources with the most accurate information that caused or led women to become prostitutes.