What was life like for women in the 1800s?

Question

this is for a school project for women of today and yesterday it is to see what women were and were not able to have in the 1800s.

Answer 1

Well, the position of women varied great depending on what part of the 1800s you are thinking of, what class of women, and what country.

In the USA, the early 1800s was the era when the notion of 'seperate spheres' really gained popularity.  The home and workplace had become seperated as a result of industiralisation, and it was increasingly thought that women should stay at home with the children, while men went out to work.  Women were supposed to be too delicate to have anything to do with the rough world of business and politics.

Of course, this was an idealised view perpetuated by the middle classes.  Poor women usually had to work, and in the early 1800s factor work became the occupation of large numbers of single women.  It was preferable to domestic service for many women because it gave them a degree of independence.  The other main options for work were domestic service, and piecework (sewing) or laundry work.

Because of a shortage of male teacher, teaching became a respectable occupation for single educated women, and many were glad to be able to earn an independent living (though they were paid a lot less than male teachers).Many women went out west as teachers, and often found themselves teaching in very primitive conditions.

A considerable number of women made a living by writing.  Nathaniel Hawthorne refered bitterly to a 'd...d mob of scribbling women'.  He was jealous because 'The Lamplighter' a novel by Marian Cummins sold four times as many copies in the first month as 'the Scarlet letter' did in Hawthorne's lifetime.  The biggest literary success by a woman of course was Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', which caused a sensation on its release.  She had hoped to make enough money from it to buy a new dress, she ended up with a mansion and an orange plantation in florida.

an enormously succesful career woman of the early 19th century was Sarah Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's book, a magazine for women.  In her magazine, she lectured women about the importance of sticking to home and hearth, and she promised them that if they performed their role well, they would be able to influence and ennoble, the whole world. "Our men are sufficiently money-making.  Let us keep our women and children from contagion as long as possible." she wrote. (When she noticed that Godey's fashion plates were being tinted by an army of female workers, she announced that any job done indoors qualified as a domestic occupation).

Married women who stayed at home were expected to lead very domestic lives and not venture out much.  Unmarried girls, by contrast, had lots of freedom and went out all the time.  A Spaniard, domingo Sarmiento, wrote in 1847 that 'The unmarried woman....is as free as a butterfly until marriage.  She travels alone, wanders about the streets of the city, carries on several chaste and public love affairs under the indifferent eyes of her parents, receives visits from persons who have not been presented to her family, and returns home from a dance at two o'clock in the morning accompained by the young man with whom she has waltzed or polkaed exclusively all night."

The percentage of nonimmigrant women who never married was beginning to rise, and althoughit would get much higher later in the century, women were no longer all seeing spinsterhood as the worst possible fate. In the 1840s, the Young Ladies Association of Oberlin College conducted debates on the topic "Is married life more conducive to a woman's happiness than single?"  Magazines urged women not to marry for money or social position "Better single than miserably married" was one of the aphorisms of the era.

Many American women got involved in the Abolitionist movement.  They circulated petitions, raised money through anti-slavery fairs, and often risked attack by angry mobs.  It was when women were refused the right to speak at the anti-slavery convention in London, in 1840, that two of the delegates, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, decided to form a convention to discuss rights for women.  Eight years later the Seneca Falls convention was held, which was the beginning of the campaign for women's suffrage.

1850 was the year Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the USA to qualify as a physician.  It was the beginning of an era of expanding opportunities for women's employment.

During the Civil War, many women on both sides worked as nurses, which had become a respectable occupation for women due to the reforms of florence Nightingale.  A lot of women did vital work in organising supplies and delivering them to the troops.  There were women doctors too, Mary Walker, a surgeon with the Union Army, became the first and only woman to win the Congressional Medal of Honour, for bravery at Gettysburg and other battles.

Women on both sides in the war were employed by the Treasury Department, in clerical jobs, and after the war many women continued to do clerical work.  More women were employed in business, especially after the invention of the typewriter in the 1880s. Women began to be employed as telephone operators. The new department stores led to a lot of women being employed as salesclerks.

a lot of women went out west, and some of them found it possible to make a lot of money from cooking, there was a shortage of good food, and women set up restaurants and boarding houses. It was possible for women to set up in business as doctors, lawyers, and real estate agents.  Nellie Pooler Chapman took over her husband's dental practice in Nevada City.  "A smart woman can do very well in this country" wrote one young woman to a friend back east "It is the only country I was ever in where women received anything like a just compensation for work." For women who wanted to marry, there were plenty of single men available. Despite the rough manners of the early western men, a woman with any claim to repsectability could expect to be treated with great deference, if not outright awe. Some women found it lonely out west though.  In Wyoming, the chances for socialising were so rare that girls would ride forty miles on horseback to go to a dance.

Women began to go to college from about 1870, by 1880 there were 40,000 female college students, about a third of the entire student population.  College education for women became so popular that in 1890 the Ladies Home Journal held a contest to sell subscriptions, the prize was a scholarship to Vasser.

After the Civil War, married women were no longer expected to stay quietly at home, family entertainments became popular, and families would go out to theatres, circuses, and other amusements.  Women's clubs became very popular, women of all kinds, but especially housewives, would meet to discuss literature, history, and current affairs.It was a sort of informal, do-it-yourself junior college system.  In Lemoore, California, where 600 residents were spread over a huge territory, humble farmers' wives and the spouses of the wealthiest professional men all belonged to the same club, which they often attended with babies in arm, driving in wagons from their far-flung households.

During the second half of the 19th century, many women were active in the Women's Suffrage movement.  Women in some states got the vote before the end of the century, beginning with Wyoming in 1869.  Far more women though were involved in the Temperence Movement, believing that alcahol was the root of all evil, causing misery to poor women, who suffered abuse from drunken husbands.

Answer 2

It was much like today's ladies. Those with money lived anyway they wanted and were not held back by men. The poor do as poor always do what ever it takes to live.

Answer 3

we rule

Answer 4

Well feminists have taught me that women in the "old days" lived under the floor boards of a man's lush and exravagant mansion.

The men would let them out for about a 1/2 hour a day to beat them & then it was "back to the cave."

The men would attend parties every day at work where there was never any danger of losing their lives to provide for their families.

Some critics of feminism argue that both men and women were oppressed during that time given the fact that men could be pulled from their homes and forced to fight in wars and they were in a rigid social role of "breadwinner."   Men had no other choice but to work according to them...

But we all know the feminists are the only people we should listen to... especially when we realize that there is no bias or self-centrism with a movement intended on helping only women.

Men LOVED working.  Every single one of them.  Like I said... the work men had to do back then was basically a party.   The "lies" about death/injury rates need not be discussed.

So, the short answer is... Life was unbearable.  They couldn't socialize with friends while their husbands were off "partying" and were beaten severely every day.

I'm glad feminists set me straight on that.

Answer 5

It was pretty awesome.  No need to mindlessly worry about Policing Thought and such, just normal behaviour.

Answer 6

most women in the 1800s were not embowerd or they didnt know they were embowerd and lived thier lives without this knowledge.

Answer 7

it was hard work to be a woman in the 1800's.

Answer 8

I used to reenact women in the 1700's and 1800's at a log village. I can say that life was hard then because everything had to be done by hand. Food had to be made from scratch. The fire had to be kept up throughout the night as well as through the day if a lot of cooking was to be done. Many had to help their husbands in the field if there were no older sons. There was always work to be done. One good thing about their homes then, is that everything was kept simple. There was no big messes to have to pick up. It is very releaving to be able to be in a simple surrounding. The noise was kept to a minimum and it was a lot more peacful than our lives today. One bad thing was that most children never made it to adulthood. Also many women never made it to their 30th birthday. There were not many medicines for diseases or if there were, they were most likely doing worst for the sick person that the sickness. To stop gunshot wounds from bleeding for soldiers, they would give them a medicine that would stop the bleeding. The problem was that they didn't know that the reason it was stopping the bleeding was because it was causing blood clots and killing the men. Life was harder then, but it was just how things were. They were used to it.

Answer 9

Lets see, their was a huge divide between upper class woman and lower class woman and the emerging middle class women.

Upper class woman were expected to learn educate and manners, to entertain people, have kids and be political bargaining tools to marry off to create stronger family alliances, It was fashionable at the time to sleep in till very late, be pasty white and a little plump, and stay up very late attending parties and balls, they had servants do everything for them and had little to no power compared to their male counterparts, couldn't own property or vote, were at times viewed as "the angle of the house"

Lower class woman on the other hand worked like dogs to keep the house clean, and the children raised. Some of them had to work in dangerous factories or on the farms with thier husbands to make ends meet, they didn't own property or vote either and were not protected from abuse by thier husbands They were incharge of the household and its running because thier husbands were always away working the farm or working in factory, or on the railroad or coal mine etc for long shifts everyday, often thier husbands didn't own property either and, in some countries, couldn't vote if they didn't own property

Middle class women were kinda a mix between the two classes, they didn't get the same easy life as upper class woman but they usualy didn't star or work as hard as lower class woman. They may have had a servent or two and may have worked in thier husband's shop/business or ran the household Much like all woman, they couldn't own property or vote