Women's issues became transplanted into reform issues during this time period because slavery was coming to its end, and women saw this as an opportunity to get their voices heard. "Long before they could vote, women circulated petitions, attended meetings, marched in parades, and delivered public lectures. They became active in the temperance movement, the building of asylums, and other reform activities" (Liberty 448). Women were similar as to slaves in the sense they did not have all the freedoms that white men had, but they also had freedoms that slaves did not have. They were for the most part socially accepted but still oppressed by men.
"Catharine Beecher reprimanded the sisters (Grimkes) for stepping outside "the domestic and social sphere," urging them to accept the fact that "heaven" had designated men "the superior" and women "the subordinate" (Liberty 450). Beecher felt that a woman's place was with her husband, and that they should obey the husband no matter what. Women aren't exactly property in her words, but should be respectful to their husbands.
Angelia Grimke's response to Beecher was, "Instead of women being a help meet to man, in the highest, noblest sense of the term, as a companion, a co- worker, an equal; she has been a mere appendage of his being, and instrument of his convenience and pleasure, the pretty toy, with which he willed away his leisure moments, or the pet animal whom he humored into playfulness and submission. Women, instead of being regarded as the equal of man, has uniformly been looked down upon as his inferior, a mere gift to fill up the measure of his happiness" (Freedom 259). Women should be able to exercise the same rights as men, that for no reason should they be looked down upon. Grimke felt that their was no difference between man and woman which clashed with Beecher's view that women should respect their roles and obey their husbands and keep the few rights they had.
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3 comments:
Grimke's point of view was absolutely correct women could be benficial in so many ways when they were considered equal to men, their thinking on certain situaitions could make better decisions. Women like Beecher were to content on the norm that they did not see these things, if we had women like that today, I don't know how life would be. GREAT POST!
It's amazing how two people's views can be totally different on the same topic.
Although i agree with Grimke for the most part, I don't like that she kind of warped the Christian perspective. I assume she was a Christian, or at least knew about the Bible and what it taught. But the Bible does speak of the woman being made to be submissive to man because she was made from man. It was the man who came first, and the man should remain dominant (though "loving the woman as Christ loved the church"). Anyways, just my opinion of her view, IF she was a Christian, or came from a Christian perspective.
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