The American Revolutions Impact on Women

1
The American Revolutions Impact on Women

• A Brief Historiographical Overview

2
1980 A Landmark Year

• ary Beth Norton, Libertys Daughters

3
An Unexpected Start

• 1957 Edmund Morgans Article,
• The American Revolution Revisions in Need of
  Revising.
• Morgan, a prominent and respected American
  Historian fails to even use the word women in
  his article.
• Represents the silence on women and their role
  in the Revolution in the current scholarship of
  the time.

4
A Conversation Begins

• 1976 Joan Hoff-Wilson Article,
• The Illusion of Change Women and the American
  Revolution.
• Inspiration from Joan Kellys assessment of the
  Renaissance in Europe.
• Change for Women during the Revolution due to
  necessity and failed to last through 19th Century
  Industrialism.
• NO FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES IN WOMENS LIVES.
• Illusion of Change school of thought.

5
1980 A Landmark Year

• Mary Beth Norton,
• Libertys Daughters
• Linda Kerber,
• Women of the Republic
• Forms groundwork for new school of thought Myth
  of the golden age.

6
Similar Conclusions, Different Paths

• Norton A social historian, concerned with
  everyday lives of women (4 groups)
• Kerber Looks through an intellectual and
  political lens concerned with ideology, language
  and discourse
• Made the analogy that both looking at same glass
  of water Kerber half empty while Norton half
  full.

7
Kerbers Research

• Focus on public and legal sphere
• No radical change for women in public sphere
• However, more liberal view in public sphere than
  Norton
• More liberal divorce laws after Revolution
• Republican Motherhood
• Women educated to raise good republican sons.
• Reconciled politics and domesticity for women.

8
Nortons Research

• Focus on private and domestic sphere
• No reform of legal codes or change in public
  sphere
• Great change in womens private lives
• Family Organization
• Personal Aspirations
• Self-assessments

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Self-AssessmentsQuestioning Standard Beliefs in
Female Weakness

• Gained Confidence from managing estates while
  husbands at war
• Daughters watched their mothers handle the
  responsibility of the war (left impression)
• Began to defend themselves
• Men guilty of the same quality
• The quality was actually a positive one
• (eg. Curosity)

10
Family Organization

• Shift in household controlBecoming more
  egalitarian between men and women
• Daughters allowed more choice in marriage
• (e.g. Thomas Jeffersons quote)
• Decline in family size
• Quaker womens number of children decrease
• Republican Motherhood
• Women keepers of virtue, educate in order to
  raise good republican sons

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Revolution as Stepping Stone

• Nortons final analysis of the Revolution and its
  impact on women
• The war necessarily broke down the barrier which
  seemed to insulate women from the realm of
  politics.