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Old January 23rd, 2016 #8
Robbie Key
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Ch. 2: Feminine Disestablishment

http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/M...as-FAC-Ch2.mp3 (2:13)

- what is to be women's role in this new society? women are to be passive and submissive. they are to provide examples of moral elevation. they have their sphere and must remain in it. most women approved this. sarah hale, doctrine of the feminine sphere. far more adherents than elizabeth cady stanton, a suffragette - who is far better known because she was a proto-feminist, hence more useful to The Agenda pushers. women were sacred within their role but nothing outside it. at least that is what douglas argues. these traditionalists did reform education, but that was part of women's role - women's education. women were supposed to be christian. that was a proper concern. parallel in bond between pastor and flock and woman and husband/kids. women and preachers worked together in Temperance movement. to rescue woman victim of drunken man, as much as him. Linda Huntley Sigourney, pre-civil war writer, poet. Temperance tales. Hale: "a fiend and an angel." fiend is man, angel is woman. a spiritual creature and a brute. and hale was a moderate, a mainstreamer. this was the common view. "women must engineer their wellbeing in a world dominated by a sex essentially hostile to it" - mainstream view. man's world. ... house and church alike move from centers of activity to places of words rather than deeds. life is centered elsewhere in the community, in later 1800s, compared to 1600s. DISESTABLISHMENT: end of state-supported religion, paralleled by disestablishment, informally, of women, through their changing role and importance in home. shift from PRODUCER to CONSUMER is the status shift. from the center, more or less, to the periphery. but this was a northern, northeastern, middle-class status shift. life from 1800-65 was still about the same for other women in other areas. the Southern "lady" was still economically important, what with slaves, running the household. her role didnt change till after the civil war. 1800, only nyc and phi had >50k residents. people made homespun in 1800, but by 1830, production was more commercial/industrial than domestic, particularly in the NE. the US was moving from agricultural to mft in the NE, so the home declined as a locus of production. the position of women declined as production shifted from home to factory. Bushnell saw an "Age of Homespun" yielding to a complete social-domestic revolution brought on by the rise of commercial manufactures. the home ceased to be a factory, with its farm producing goods for it to turn into products. women were valued for economic reasons, when they ran households; but far less so when they simply bought things as consumers. Dotha, mother, vs Mary, wife, Bushnell, symbolize the shift from producer and director, intelligent and respected, to sentimental piece and influence, less respected or listened to. women were obviously economically visible, but became less visible as middle-class consumers. not as clear what they did or what its value was. Eliza Farnham. woman as bird (her eastern view) vs woman as woman (westerner she interviews' view). Sara Josepha Hale - keep women from the "contagion" of money-making, let men handle that. new role being worked out post-Age of Homespun. two separate roles: commerce for men, pethood for women. Female Academies. taught very different material to women. women were kept away from natural sciences, more taught language and literature and history. "Grace Greenwood" - trivial female education as means of oppression. Thorstein Veblen - woman as emblem of 'conspicuous consumption. different variety of dumbed-down education. today it's for all (non-jews). serious education for women did not make progress till decade after the civil war, says douglas. women were to be educated to better serve men, reformers and conservatives agreed. not to play big role as participants but rather as consumers and agents of moral influence: "a saint and a consumer." literary women: Sara Edgarton Mayo. reading as way to while away hours while men worked. 'sentimental domestic novels' dominated women's market, 1840-80. The Wide, Wide World (1850). first of best-selling domestic novels. character ellen - consumer who loves buying. Harriet Beecher Stowe: "undoubtedly the most gifted woman writer of the period." character Mary Scudder. women as functional and spiritual, men as shiftless thinkers. character Eva van Arsdel. woman the producer < woman the consumer. ... in consumer society, advertising is the most important institution, idea of David Potter. Shift from consumption to production, 1860-90. first rise of huge amounts of advertising during that period. advertising all about influence. writers says it's a distinct american trait - inability to focus and think for sustained period. George Powell, advertising pioneer. the feminine is the subconscious of capitalist society, which the advertiser must tap. Nathaniel Fowler, "most important figure in early American advertising" said women direct the buying of everything, even for men, hence should be aimed at. the 'influence' women were supposed to yield is the 'mother of advertising.' ... Lowell factories. for girls who would later generations attend Mount Holyoke and Vassar. to do good by stealth. girls should always 'move in curves.' 1845-75 "the great heyday of feminine authorship." vicarious lives, parasitic lives. victory without risk. rewards without effort. this is part of the middle-class woman's life promoted by certain female writers. cult of motherhood and maternity, strong as cult of democracy in mid-19th century america. paternal authority waned from jonathan edwards' time. a waning force in 19th century. women got flattery and worship in place of justice and equality. in reality women could demand almost anything (being nurses in Civil War, even the vote) as due their maternal nature. women took over primary education teaching - but only in US, NOT in other countries. ministers and women: from exerting power to exercising influence. substituting life for literature. a room of one's own? at least one is important in domestic sphere, if not society.

vocabulary: paean, panegyric, enormities, superannuated, concomitant, taciturn, didactic, obfuscate, palliative, sub rosa, epistolary, sedulous, mutatis mutandis, furbish, ratiocination, apotheosis, acumen, monomania, epistemology, suasion, grandiloquence, decorous, denouement

http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p...as#post1911170