Use this book to answer the following discussions: Zinn, Howard. A Peoples History of the United States. NY: Harper-Collins, 2003. Plagarism free and number each discussion.
Discussion 1
This week we’ll focus on women’s history from the colonial era through the mid-nineteenth century. Let’s begin in the colonial era.
What was life like for women in the British colonies prior to the revolutionary era?
Discussion 2
What was the cult of domesticity (or the cult of true womanhood)? What purposes did it serve in nineteenth-century American society?
Discussion 3
How did women help spur the labor movement in the first half of the nineteenth century?
Respond to this in own opinion (Paige)
There were many factors that resulted in a “push backwards” of women in society in the British colonies. Women’s position as childbearer’s as well as their physical characteristics made them a convenience to men who could use, exploit, and cherish someone who was at the same time a servant, sex slave, companion, and teacher of his children (103). The conditions under which settlers came to America created various situations for women. Women were imported as sex slaves, and started out as indentured servants when the British colonies were first being established and starting out (104). Even free white women who were not brought as servants or slaves were faced with struggles, as childbirth and sickness allowed only four of the eighteen women to survive the voyage to the colonies (106). A best-selling book called “Advice to a Daughter” published in London was widely read in the colonies and it read “You must first lay it down for a Foundation in general, that there in inequality in sexes, and that for the better Oeconomy of the world; the men, who were to be the law givers, had the larger share of reason bestow’d upon them; by which means your sex is better prepar’d for the compliance that is necessary for the performance of those duties which seem’d to be most properly assign’d to it..” (108). Some women rebelled against these ideas however only fourty percent of women were literate, compared to ninety percent of males being literate, which meant working-class women had no means of writing their grievances they felt at their subordination in society (111).
