Republican Motherhood: Women and the Early American Republic

Linda Kerber’s Women of the Republic was not only revolutionary in its time, it is a fantastic and easy read. The heart of her argument revolves around women taking control of their own lives, and setting standards for themselves. It is about them finding their place in the newly formed United States of America.

In the beginning of the book, Kerber focuses very heavily on the ideas of coverture and femes covert. She stresses very heavily that prior to the Revolutionary War, women were pushed to the very fringes of society, and not granted a place at its center. During the Enlightenment, philosophes, such as Locke and Montesquieu, made the claim that women needed to be given more credence and position in society. Montesquieu even when so far to say that man’s “authority over women is absolutely tyrannical; they have allowed us to impose it only because they are more gentle than we are, and consequently more humane and reasonable” (20). They attempted to persuade the male population that women did not need to be controlled or forced to comply. Given the option, they were sure that women would choose to stand behind their men. Locke claimed, “the availability of divorce [was] the ultimate test of marital freedom” (20). He was positive that women would always do right by their husbands and follow their lead. They would never leave them to follow their own ideas and passions. That was theory at least. The Revolutionary War proved them wrong.

The problem came in the form of patriotism. Women wanted to express their patriotism, but were constantly being locked out the political realm that men buried themselves within. They were expected to bow down to the same political ideals that the men in their lives held, and to not worry their “pretty little heads” about anything. Their world was tossed into chaos, and they were expected to simply continue with their lives and obey the dictates of their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, and guardians. Margarget Livingston wrote, “You know that our Sex are doomed to be obedient in every stage of life so that we shant be great gainers by this contest” (35). They understood that unless something changed and they took a stand, they made a change for themselves, the war would nothing for them but trouble, hardship, and heartache. In an effort to be a more prominent force in the war, many women tried to join in the effort. They went door to door, collecting food, money, clothing, and jewelry for the war effort. They volunteered their services as nurses, cooks, and laundresses for the troops, though they were seen as little more than a “nuisance” (56). They boycotted. They signed petitions. They did everything they could to get their voices heard. In some instances, such as the tea boycott in 1774, they succeeded; however, in many others their voice was simply not loud enough to be heard above the divided shouts of the men.

While many of the men were divided by their loyalties, it was doubly worse for the women. Men needed to choose, whether they were with the patriots and willing to fight for everything they and their ancestors had built in the “new world” or if they were loyal to Great Britain and ready to sacrifice everything they had, stand up to their friends, family, and countrymen, to side with the King and Parliament. Women were simply expected to follow their men, regardless of their own views of the situation. The laws even stated that if a women followed her husband or father into exile as a loyalist, if and when she eventually returned, she was not to be punished for siding with the enemy as it was not her place to make that decision. However, she was, in many cases also not entitled to any of the things that she had been forced to leave behind; her home, land, or possessions. For instance, the law in South Carolina stated that “husbands are oftentimes influenced and governed by the sentiment and conduct of their wives. If, therefore they do not exert this influence, by example and dissuasion, they are considered in the law, as having incurred such a degree of guilt, as to forfeit every right or claim under their husbands” (129). They may not have been guilty of treason in the eyes of the law, but they were guilty of not using their “feminine wiles” to control their men. As if they could.

However, this was the role that women chose to assert themselves at the end of the war. When the fighting ended, they invented the role of the Republican Mother. This personage was an educated woman, who exerted her ideals and ideas in the home, by influencing her husband and children in all things political and religious. As we saw in Susan Klepp’s Revolutionary Conceptions, this was a time that women were actively attempting to control the number of children they were having. This was a part of Republican Motherhood, as less children allowed her to form stronger relationships with her children and spend more time seeing to their education and moral behavior.

While Kerber coined the term of Republican Mother, she fails to do it justice in this book. The entire book builds on the idea that women were seeking a way to leave the domestic sphere and make a place for themselves in society, yet she ends the discussion with a very brief chapter on the role they chose to wield – within the home! As we see in the posts by Sarah and Michelle on Branson’s Fiery Frenchified Dames, and Zagarri’s Revolutionary Backlash, women were not simply resigned to resuming their place in the home. They wanted more. They wanted a place in society. They wanted their voices heard. Though she spends most of the book showing how women wanted to make a place for themselves in the new revolutionized country, Kerber does not follow through. This book provides a great background to understanding why women felt abandoned by their country during the revolution, but it must be paired with Branson and/or Zagarri, to finalize the narrative.

Bullies in Petticoats

The title of These Fiery Frenchified Dames (2001) by Susan Branson is inspired by a quote from a flustered Philadelphia editor named William Cobbett. Adamantly anti-French, Cobbett ranted against women’s public political expression, stating, “of all the monsters in human shape, a bully in petticoats is the most completely odious and detestable” (qtd. in Branson, p. 72). Despite popular sentiment in the post-revolutionary eighteenth century that encouraged a society of the coined term “separate spheres,” Branson argues that (middle-class and elite) women were still able to form political identities through the outlets of print culture, political ceremonies, theater, and salons. Throughout this book, Branson explores the explosion of outlets for women to become politically public in this period. She points to the expansion of avenues of communication (such as print culture and women’s involvement in it), an increase in institutions of leisure (such as salons and theater), as well as the political culture created by partisanship of the Federalists and Democratic Republicans. In this way, Branson challenges traditional scholarship of early American women, which has generally come to place the status of women in this period within the confinement of the domestic private world and the ideal of Republican motherhood.

In this book, Branson explains, in particular, women and events in Philadelphia, which was the nation’s capital in the years 1791-1800. In this period, Branson explains, Philadelphia was a major commercial, social, and political center and the the largest American city, thus attracting wide varieties of people and providing an extraordinary outlet for political involvement and expression. For these reasons, the city of Philadelphia allows Branson to explore and complicate the picture of separate spheres, proving that not all women during this time were explicitly domestic, private, or mothers.

Because of my personal interests, I would like to focus the remainder of this post on Branson’s first chapter, “Women and the Development of Print Culture.” In this chapter, Branson describes the early Republic as a transformative period in print culture; increased literacy meant more people reading and writing contributions to newspapers and periodicals, including women. As evidenced by Branson, more women became contributors to these periodicals, and more periodicals featured subjects pertaining to female readers as well. While many of these subjects were domestic in nature, many also contained pieces on women’s physical and intellectual abilities. Carrying the majority of the chapter is Branson’s discussion on the importance of contributions made by Judith Sargent Murray and the English Mary Wollstonecraft on these topics, each of these women entertaining a massive readership in the early American nation. In Branson’s view, Murray’s essays and poems on female education and intellect “articulated succinctly and clearly many of the thoughts already current in the transatlantic world” (35). Wollstonecraft, however, became a much more controversial figure because of her aim at “tying feminism to political theory” by bringing together “all the various arguments for the social, familial, and political advancement of women…in one place” (35). While likely influenced by Murray, Wollstonecraft’s 1792 essay “A Vindication on the Rights of Women” invokes the political spirit of the French Revolution, taking Murray’s views farther by including the necessity of women’s possession of civil and legal protections. Wollstonecraft’s public popularity waned after knowledge of her private life (meaning her illegitimate child) was exposed; however, as Branson shows, Wollstonecraft’s ideas were nonetheless still shared and continued privately among women.

Had I located this book when completing my undergraduate thesis in English Literature, I would have found it to be immensely useful, for I had written on Judith Sargent Murray and her periodical contributions on women’s equality in the early Republic. Many of these themes are described in enlightening detail in this particular chapter of Branson’s book, and I have come to view the information and sources she uses as important for my future research as well. While I discuss the contents of only one impactful chapter from this book, I found each of them enlightening and convincing proof of Branson’s argument. Her examination of international implications (especially the French Revolution) and partisan politics is neither dry nor difficult to follow; rather, these complex issues are tackled in a way that necessarily drives the narrative (and readers’ eyes) forward. These Fiery Frenchified Dames is well-organized and compelling, providing a necessary glimpse into not only the past of Philadelphia, but the whole nation as well.

 

 

Deliberate Revolution or Obvious Aftermath?

In her book Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility, & Family Limitation in America, 1760-1820, Susan Klepp discusses the “revolution” women incited at the turn of the 18th century.  Feeling that they had no part in the American Revolution and the changes that were occuring in their world, women sought ways they could take a more active social and political role. Their solution was to join religious, reform, and abolition movements. The “cult of domesticity” was born from this change. This change brought a greater separation between gender roles, as we saw last week when reading Norling’s Captain Ahab had a Wife. Klepp’s argument is that because women were becoming more socially active in these various movements, they made the decision to reduce the number of children they bore. Instead they would focus more on their reformation movements and closer, intimate relationships with the people in their lives.

Klepp’s evidence for her argument is very convincing. Using the a variety of census and other historical archives containing familial information, in the first chapter of her book, Klepp shows how the birth rate began dropping around 1760 for the majority of populations. She shows many different studies based on age, race, class, religion, occupation of the husband, and location within the United States. All her evidence supports her conclusion that women were bearing less children than they previous had. The rest of her book is spent attempting to explain why and what the repercussions of their decision were. This is where her argument loses momentum.

Though Klepp has the quantitative evidence to substantiate her claim, she never quite fulfills her argument that sees a lowered conception rate as a deliberate “revolution.” In casting aside the theories of other historians, such as war and economics to explain the drop, she does not fully explore all of avenues of her argument. She presents letters and journals that show women writing about less children, she critiques pictures and speculates about how the position and accoutrements surrounding her illustrate a decreased emphasis on fertility, and she also gives a quite detailed history of birth control methods up to that point. What she fails to provide is any actual evidence that women were in a “rebellious revolution” to change their lives. Klepp’s work is definitely ground breaking and presents an interesting theory. However, it still needs research to determine if it was indeed a “revolution” or just a product of everything else that was happening from 1760-1820.

Maritime Wives in the Age of Sail

As I have been studying the age of sail, there is not much to be said about women. Sure, there are mentions to some of the more popular and well known sailing women, such as Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and even some women who sailed with their husbands. These mentions are few and far between, however. When most historians study maritime history they focus on men. What were the characteristics of the men who went to sea? What was life like on board a ship? Historians, such as W. Jeffery Bolster have looked specifically at race and ethnicity as it pertained to sailing in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Others, such as Nathan Perl-Rosenthal have written about citizenship, nationalism, and politics in relation to maritime studies. The one aspect very few historians have tackled is that of gender. That is the focus that Lisa Norling addresses in her book, Captain Ahab had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870.

In this book Norling does not focus on the life at sea, as many maritime studies do. The main focus of her book is on the ones who got left behind – the wives. This book is ground breaking in its field because not only does she question the characteristics of mariners that other historians have portrayed, she introduces us to another side of their story that has been mostly ignored by other historians. In addition, she also challenges the notion that women were satisfied with the change in gender roles from deputy husbands and help meets to those of emotional nurturer in the age of domesticity.

Most books tend to portray seamen as rugged manly men who sail the seas seeking independence, wealth, and freedom. In regards to racial and class distinctions, going to see was a way for many men to change their opportunities in life. On the sea, men were more equal than they were on land. They had to rely on one another and trust one another. There was no room for racial or class disputes. I’m not saying they didn’t happen; they did. However, it happened far less than it did on land. What these studies in the lives of seafaring men do not show is their relationships with their wives. How did they feel about leaving their wives at home? How did they feel about not being there to support their family? How did they feel when voyages lengthened from a few months to three to five years? Other historians have discussed this in terms of economic and social history. Men were able to make more money and they improved their relations with their shipmates, developed a world at sea, and explored and learned about different cultures from the various ports they landed in. Norling, on the other hand, discusses how the changing focus on more intimate marriage relations in the nineteenth century influenced husbands to take their wives with them to sea, and/or to attempt to write home more often. She does not go into great detail about their feelings, but through her use of primary source letters written by these men, it is clear to the reader that these men were not just “living it up at sea,” but rather they experienced some of the same depression and longing that their wives did.

During the eighteenth century, women tended to be seen more as deputy wives in their husbands absence. Gender roles of the time did not demote women to that frail, uneducated, property. They were helpmeets to their husbands. They were seen as weaker, and not able to accomplish as much as a man could in a day, but fully capable of attending to all the same duties that he could. As such, the lives of women living in these fishing villages, was fairly secure regardless of whether their husbands were home or away at sea. When their husbands were home, he was the head of the house and the wife was subordinate to him. When he was gone, she became the head of the house with the power to make all decisions and perform all financial, household, and community based decisions for her family. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, religious reform, revolution, and Romanticism changed the role of women within the family. Instead of being seen as a helpmeet, women’s roles became that of emotional supporter within the home. Domesticity focused more on the relationships wives had with the people in her family and community, especially between the husband and wife. Though Norling points out that the change was well suited to that of these whaling communities, she also points out that the change in gender roles made these “Cape Horn widows” less secure. As the focus of the female role shifted from helper to friend/lover/confidant, these wives became less in the eyes of society because they were not given the opportunity to form those relationships with their husbands. In the instances that wives went to sea with their husbands, they were forced to leave behind their children, kin, and friends and isolate themselves within a man’s world.

My associates are going to focus their posts on the argument and critique of this book, so I will simply end by saying that this is an amazingly well written book. Norling uses the letters and journals from 66 different people to highlight how these changing gender roles affected both the men and women in shipping communities. Her narrative has opened a discussion into a new category of maritime studies.