Women

1
Womens Unit

• If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in
  contrasting values, we must recognize the whole
  gamut of human possibilities - Margaret Mead

2
Women fighting to be heard

• In the late 19th century and early 20th century,
  women were fighting for a voice in politics and
  literature.
• American women could not vote
• They had almost no political or legal power
• They could not own property

3
Women had few opportunities

• Education and career opportunities were limited
  (teachers, nurses, secretaries, and maidsand
  only if you did not have children)
• Little or no financial independence you had to
  give your paycheck to your father or husband
• In most marriages, the husband made all the
  important decisions

4
The Right to Vote
5
The Suffrage Movement

• Susan B. Anthony leads movement in 1870s
• Four states gave women the right to vote by 1900
• Suffragists held marches, protest rallies, and
  hunger strikes for their cause
• All women did not have the right to vote in the
  U.S. until 1920

6
Feminist Literature

• Female authors wanted to show women were strong
  and intelligent a radical view at this time.
• More women were going to college despite the
  belief at the time that intelligence would
  destroy a womans beauty.
• Domestic topics home, children, female
  friendship, religion, abolition, suffrage, and
  love.
• Early feminist writers Emily Dickinson,
  Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Sojourner
  Truth, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

7
Reaction to Women Writing
America is now wholly given over to a dd mob
of scribbling women, and I should have no chance
of success while the public taste is occupied
with their trash-and should be ashamed of myself
if I did.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
8
Difficulties for Women Writers

• Conflict over their desire to write and their
  role as mother/wife
• Work dismissed as unimportant
• Writing style criticized as too sentimental and
  didactic (preachy)
• Domestic topics not seen as universal

9
Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree)

• Freed from slavery when New York abolished
  slavery in 1827.
• Began to lecture to spread Gods message
• Spoke for abolitionist and suffragette movements
• Famous Aint I a Woman speech was given
  unprepared at a womens rights convention in 1851.

• I could work as much and eat as much as a
  manand aint I a woman?

10
Emily Dickinson

• First major American woman poet
• Completely unknown in her lifetime poems were
  found by her sister after her death
• Chose to live in seclusion
• Poetry famous for unusual imagery, slant rhyme,
  odd punctuation
• Wrote about love, death, hope, success, nature

11
Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• It is not that women are really smaller-minded,
  weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but
  that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a
  small, dark place, is always guarded, protected,
  directed and restrained, will become inevitably
  narrowed and weakened by it.

12
The Rest Cure

• After the birth of her daughter, Gilman suffered
  from postpartum depression which affects 10 of
  women who give birth
• Gilman was given the recommended treatment at
  that time, the rest cure sleep, avoid
  intellectual activity, avoid excitement, do
  nothing creative
• This cure almost destroyed her

13
A Prolific Career

• Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper to challenge the
  rest cure
• Also wrote novels, stories, essays and
  self-published a magazine
• All her work focused on womens suffrage,
  economic independence, and friendship between
  women

14
Important Quotations

• And woman should stand beside man as the comrade
  of his soul, not the servant of his body.
• There is no female mind. The brain is not an
  organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female
  liver.
• "A house does not need a wife any more than it
  needs a husband.

15
Kate Chopin

• Prolific writer two novels, over a hundred
  short stories, many poems and reviews.
• Began writing after the death of her husband she
  had 6 children to support.
• Lived in New Orleans and wrote popular stories
  about Creoles, Cajuns, African-Americans
• Very successful as a writer of local color
  stories published in some of the best
  publications of the time
• Master of irony surprise twist at the end of
  the story

16
Until.The Awakening

• Published in 1899
• The storys topic, adultery, and the heroines
  actions were viewed as scandalous.
• Heroine viewed as a bad mother, a fallen woman, a
  selfish human being
• Because the story questioned traditional views of
  women and their role, it ended Chopins career
• Her work was ignored until the resurgence of
  feminism in the 1970s