Republican Motherhood and Women\'s Role

Republican Motherhood and Women's Role In Moral Reform Movements

In this paper I will argue that the women who helped change the world in the early to mid-19th Century were extraordinary and are under-appreciated by those who write and report the history of the United States. The theme of this paper will posit that 19th Century women ably, adroitly used their skills, emotions, energy, passion and experiences to truly form a more moral union. The women who are highlighted in this paper struggled and were often stifled, but they learned how to launch and sustain reform movements; they did it not through formal training in most cases, but through the manifold processes of their maturation as daughters, sisters, wives - and most of all, as mothers.

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before."

Addressing the Phrase "Republican Motherhood": A scholarly article titled, "Rethinking Republican Motherhood..." By Margaret a. Nash sets the tone and the stage for the discussion that is germane to this research. Nash states that the original phrase "republican motherhood" was coined by writer Linda Kerber; and by doing so "...[Kerber] altered the historiography of female education." The leaders of this brand new democratic nation - following the Revolution - wanted to offer more educational opportunities to females, Kerber explained. And Nash argues that Kerber - greatly influenced by a Benjamin Rush essay - put forth a theory that the reason the nation's leaders wanted women to be educated was not to necessarily give women equal chances for social advancement, but rather it was so they could "...raise good republican sons."

That particular somewhat cynical view of republican motherhood is overstated, according to Nash, and it has subsequently been amended with other factors that led to women being offered better opportunities to participate in formal education. For one, there were progressive beliefs about the intellectual abilities of women - fostered during and through the Enlightenment - that opened some men's eyes, Nash asserts. Further, visionary men in post-revolutionary America could see the "absolute value of knowledge" (Nash 171); and also, there were pragmatic needs in the emerging new society for skills, literacy, and knowledge, and women were given a chance to gain those skills and competencies simply due to the great need for the nation to evolve intelligently and thoroughly.

There was an interest in promoting education that extended beyond the above-mentioned reasons, according to author Sara Delamont; she argues that the feminist "pioneers" of the early 19th Century were indeed well served by their emerging political and social beliefs about "class and family." But left out of that enlightening female period of change was the "working-class girl and the less able," who were restricted by the existing domestic system. And hence, there was a growing sense of urgency for public education both in the UK and in America, not just because the male powers controlling government wanted to see bright, eager women carrying their books to school. But because, Delamont asserts on page 165, the political establishment was fearful of what could happen if indeed citizens - including women - were ignorant of history and of political ideology entirely.

To wit, Delamont asserts that while concern over the "ignorance of the masses" in some political quarters was purely "benevolent," among other political leaders - along with the upper and middle classes - there was great fear brought on by the vision of "cities seething with unchristian, illiterate proletarians." Those very proletarians just might be swayed "to revolution as the French peasants had been," Delamont continues, and hence education was seen as a way of "acculturating the negro and the immigrant..." Working class women, who did not of course have the right to vote, nonetheless were believed to be worthy of an education, Delamont explains, simply because "...their homes would be civilized by a basic education." And that education would "prevent rebellion" among the slaves plus, have the added impact of enabling the "whites" to "control and direct the slave labor" (Delamont 165). How an education would help a woman in post-Revolutionary America to control slaves is not pointed out, but Delamont notes that in Britain "female illiteracy was linked to crime," and by educating women in America that threat would be wiped out before it had a chance to materialize.

Both boys and girls should then receiving elementary educations, the ruling male politicians believed, and the "only concession to sex was sewing for the girls." In terms of secondary and higher education, there was also a battle going on early in the 19th Century as to which courses would be most beneficial for male students (Science? Math? History? Latin or Greek?); the push for women's education, "and the arguments about its content, were but a small part of the wider shifts," Delamont explains on page 168. Nevertheless, for the various reasons mentioned in this portion of the paper, women began to realize opportunities for learning that hadn't been available earlier.

Meanwhile, returning to the essay by Nash, she makes a highly cogent point about republican motherhood on page 172 of her essay; she paraphrases Kerber in saying that post-revolutionary women "...adopted republican motherhood as an ideology" that allowed them to carve out "a political niche for themselves." Nash goes on to explain that according to Kerber's narrative, a "virtuous citizenry" was the best defense against failure for the new nation, and those needed virtues were to be found in churches, schools, and of course, in families. And in the context of families, since the mother's role was far and away the most "crucial" the concept of "motherhood" came to assume nearly as much importance as "a fourth branch of government."

And so an understanding emerges through the literature that the concept of "republican motherhood" was both the seed for 19th Century women awakening as political and moral movements and the soil in which those movements would take hold. If indeed the sources that Nash alludes to and cites are correct, male political leaders began to realize that the home was pivotal to the ultimate success or failure of the republic. "Political virtue became domesticated," Nash goes on, "and the republican mother became the 'custodian of civic morality'."

After all, from a practical standpoint, it was high time women were dealt a fair hand in the political systems and strategies of the day; indeed, women had played a substantial role in the success of the American Revolution. Nash lists the significant contributions that women made during the Revolutionary War: a) women en masse boycotted imported goods, which was key to the resistance when unfair British taxes were levied; b) women produced quality home-made items to replace those imported items that were being boycotted; c) women "fed and clothed" the armies that won the war; d) women ran the businesses and farms - and raised the kids with high moral standards - while their husbands were away fighting the battles against the British.

It is pertinent and appropriate to introduce historical references from author Kerber at this point in the paper, in particular her comments in the Introduction to the hitherto mentioned book in which she notes, "...For many women the Revolution had been a strongly politicizing experience." but, Kerber goes on, the new nation - now having freshly broken away from the old laws and politics of the British Empire - "made little room for [women] as political beings." Kerber goes so far as to say on page 11-12 that the "language" identified with Republican Motherhood actually "provided the justification of women's political behavior." It bridged "the gap between idiocy and the polis," writes Kerber, not one to pull punches or couch her feelings in cliches and platitudes.

Again, when Kerber speaks of women becoming political at this point, right after the Revolution, she's speaking of women playing out their political hand "in the home" (Kerber 12). In later chapters of her book, Kerber reflects back on what the Revolution meant to women, and indeed as Abigail Adams said to her husband John, "to be an adept in the art of Government is a prerogative to which your Sex lay almost exclusive claim." Although much of Kerber's book deals with the plight of and the challenge to women in the post-Revolutionary period, she does paint a picture of how women in the late 18th Century used skills honed at home to later go out and reform where changes were needed. There was, after the Revolution, an emphasis on the "efficient management of domestic responsibilities," Kerber writes on page 253. The notion that "domestic work is a woman's business, has a curiously modern ring," Kerber continues.

Kerber profiles numerous women, most in the post-Revolution period, who struggled with domestic matters and an attempt at careers, but who paved the way and opened the door for later women to get out of the house and roll up sleeves in reform and political movements. Mercy Otis Warren "wrestled valiantly throughout her life with the problem of finding time for writing and reflection," Kerber explains on page 256. Warren had four children and a "large, elegant household," and while recognizing that the claims on her time - verses her own desire to write - presented no simple answer for her. That said, Kerber claims that Warren took the issues of republican motherhood "more seriously" than "virtually any other woman of her generation."

What are some of those republican motherhood issues that Warren took so seriously? For one thing, Warren envied unmarried women who, she said, were "...free from those constant interruptions that necessarily occupy the mind of the wife, the mother, and the mistress" (Kerber 256). That said, it was apparent that not only did Warren spend a bit of time being envious of those who didn't have as much domestic work to do as she did, she also took the time to make a pact with herself, a plan if you will, to make a "double life" possible. That double life plan would permit the "model woman" to be both intellectual and learned, and be a good mother and wife as well. On page 256 Kerber quotes Warren as saying that a smart plan of conduct "united with an industrious mind," would and could open the door to that double life she wished for. The point being made here is that there was a balance needed in the lives of republican mothers in this era, and Warren was said to be "scornful" of women who "swim on the surface of pleasure" - and also scornful, on the other side of the corn, of the woman who is "wholly immersed" with her domestic duties and has "no higher ideas than those which confine her to the narrow circle of domestic attention."

It is interesting how Kerber quotes Warren in this book, even though Warren was just a writer and mother who noted things with poignancy, but never led any parade of feminine demands for changes. That's not to suggest Warren is not worthy of the attention; it's an observation on Kerber's literary priorities. Meantime, Warren wrote that a woman is to be "pitied" who had "both genius and taste for literary enquiry" and yet could not leave those pursuits to tend to the needs of her children and her household.

On page 80, 82, and 83-84, Kerber goes to great lengths to portray Warren as a special woman who had foresight and wisdom, which no doubt was true, but again, Kerber's attention to Warren's work did not seem to lead to building a fire under future women to go out and make the world a more livable, just place. Warren's writings were more philosophical than directly political, and some of her material seemed almost like "Dear Abby" would write to a woman who was drowning in domestic chores but had a vision that she could do more with her intellect if she would only branch out. That said, it is true that Warren's diaries and journal postings are good reading, even today; to wit, Warren argued that, according to Kerber's paraphrasing of Warren, "Women's hearts and minds responded as accurately and as sensitively to public challenge as did men's." Warren did take a firm stand on a mother's duty to bring her children up as informed citizens; "...Women's duty to their own families," Warren wrote (Kerber 84), "required them to sort out public information accurately and to take a political position." Those political positions to be taken by women would be "arrived at by informed discussion with men and women outside their families." And after the political positions were solidified outside of the family, the positions could then be presented "within the family" and would be "justified in terms of service to and protection of husbands and sons." It always came back to the men in the family,

With a vast amount of proven skill, ambition, resourcefulness, staying power, and family-based clout, women weren't about to "return happily to a life devoid of political dimension..." And indeed, immediately following the war, American communities began providing education for girls in a new form; rather than receive an "education for marriage" (Nash, 173), which included learning needlework domestic kinds of skills, girls were now, the author insists, being taught grammar, geography, arithmetic and other scholarly pursuits hitherto reserved for male students. The times were changing, and women were to benefit from those changes, not due to the sudden illumination of the males that held power, but because the nation had just been through a horrifically bloody war and needed to cultivate all the resources that were available - women certainly being among those vital resources.

Linda Kerber weighs in on the reluctance for society to bring to fruition an educational movement for women; writing on page 196-199 of her book Women of the Republic, which was referenced earlier in this paper and covers a time frame after the Revolutionary War, Kerber quotes a Philadelphia woman named Gertrude Meredith, writing in the Port Folio: "Tell me, do you imagine, from your knowledge of the young men in this city, that ladies are valued according to their mental acquirements?" And would men in Philadelphia "not titter...at her expense, if a woman made a Latin quotation, or spoke with enthusiasm of Classical learning?" (Kerber 196). Newspapers of that era often insisted through their editorial departments that "intellectual accomplishment was inappropriate for a woman," and that an intellectual female was not only an "invader of a male province, but also somehow a masculine being," and for a woman to take on masculine traits or habits in that era was degrading (Kerber 198).

Notwithstanding those social and editorial obstacles, Kerber writes, women who had been brought up in the Republican motherhood mode eventually saw improvements in education. The beginnings of the closing of the literacy gap between men and women was part of the social dynamic in the 1790-1830 time frame, particularly in the North. Why in the North? Kerber suggests the reasons for this are tied to the political revolution and to the industrial revolution. Indeed, revolutionary leaders wanted to have confidence that the virtue of knowledge - closely related to moral character - would be carried out into the future by both women and men, in order to protect the republic.

While playing out the role of a woman who has been trained in the Republican motherhood mode and has emerged from that Republican motherhood experience, many American women during the first half of the 19th Century seemed "abnormally pale" to the visitor from Europe. The pale American woman was not in a position to become part of any reform movement, and this portion of the paper describes some of the medical issues women had, and how male doctors responded to those problems.

And not only was the American woman seen as pale, she was inferior medically, at least that was what the young male doctors were instructed in medical schools. Yes, the woman with her Republican motherhood experience was supposed to bring "comfort and beauty into a man's life" and also to "combat his more sensual nature and the materialism of business," and if perchance the republic should falter from it's intended place in the world, "achieving less than its high promise," the fault for that failure might be attached by society to its "seed-bearers - the too frail wives and mothers of its struggling statesmen and entrepreneurs." Those "seed-bearers" were more virtuous than men, and each woman during that era was "worthy of the respect a man would give his own mother," Welter explained on page 58.

And that respect also translated into extreme caution in the examining room of a doctor's office. The male doctor (there were practically no female doctors) was urged in medical school to "...maintain the most rigorous standards of propriety and gentlemanly behavior," which included having a third person in the room, making sure the female patient was "lightly clothed," and keeping the light "dim" so as not to allow her bare skin to receive too much attention. But though she was respected from a medical standpoint, she was also seen as "thinner, smaller, and more pliant; and the space destined to be filled with the brain is smaller."

This narrative of Welter's leads up to the fact that many women were kept away from activism and political involvement because of physical ailments for which male doctors had no cure, and often no clue. Female complaints were common, Welter writes on page 59; she was diagnosed as having "hysteria" when nothing else would seem to fit. When she complained about physical aliments doctors instead treated her as though she were having emotional issues. One particular illness ascribed to women was "greensickness," Welter mentions on page 63. Many younger women suffered from "greensickness" and it kept them from reaching their full intellectual and social / political potential. It was described as being brought on "by circumstances that depress the mind, and keep the feelings in a state of painful suspense." The factors that led to a woman having "greensickness" included "unrequited affection, separation from family and friends," or the burden of caring for an elderly or sick relative or neighbor. The greensickness tended to spawn menstrual inconsistencies, anemia, and a green-tinged complexion that gave medical professionals the idea for the name of the malady in the first place.

Meanwhile, Barbara Welter's essay "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860" - written ten years prior to the book referenced just above this portion of the paper - profiles the history of women and identifies the American woman during that period as trying hard to "fulfill her dual feminine function - beauty and usefulness." Moreover, Welter's descriptive narrative builds a case for how women were actually fine-tuning their alert sense of humanity and morality in the home. Those fine-tuned skills, values and strategies would later be taken out into the street as a part of moral crusades. But it is worthy to review how women learned those skills - sometimes by the seat of the pants and other times out of necessity.

It is worth noting that Welter's tome was penned 31 years prior to the publishing of Nash's piece, and the alert reader can readily discern that Welter's writing does not give women of that era the due credit that Nash does, in terms of what women actually were able to accomplish and why they were able to do so. But in fairness, what Welter writes is excellent background for the investigative researcher who follows up with other readings of significance, to learn what women in the early 19th Century actually did out on the political and social stage with all those domestic tools, values and virtues that they honed at home.

Welter writes that the woman of that era was "...the hostage in the home." As a "hostage" the woman of the early 19th Century was a comforter and a nurse. When children became ill or had fever her home could quickly become a "sickroom" (Welter 163) and this called for "...the exercise of her higher qualities of patience, mercy and gentleness as well as for her housewifely arts." Nursing the sick, especially sick males, not only made a woman of that era "feel useful and accomplished," Welter insists, but it also "increased her influence."

On page 159 of her essay in American Quarterly, Welter quotes from the Young Lady's Book: "It is...certain, that in whatever situation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to her grave, a spirit of obedience and submission, pliability of temper, and humility of mind, are required from her." A wife should be concerned only "with domestic affairs - wait till your husband confides to you those of a high importance - and do not give your advice until he asks for it."