Currents of Thought

1. Currents of Thought Women and Children during the Nineteenth Century

2. Womenand Children in the Labor Force • Early century, women spinners work at home, may even earn more than husband • Married women are expected to take a domestic role • In mid 1820's, spinning and weaving were put into factories, work to be done by women and children • English Factory Act of 1833: shortens children's work hours, breaks family ties. • Women in France worked the land, England more domestic work • Conditions for all were harsh Child Working in Textile Mills

3. Women & Children in the Labor Force (CTD.) • Exploited sexually and monetarily • Low wages for women lead to increase in prostitution • During Second Industrial Revolution there was a large scale expansion of jobs available to women • Worked in bureaucracies, stores, as teachers, etc. • Women attempting to support themselves rarely get adequate income • While some women work to supplement husband's income, most leave the work force when they get married

4. Family and Reproductive Trends • At first, family worked at textiles in the home as a family unit • Early factory owners allow men to employ wife and children as assistants • Increase in machinery that requires only unskilled attendants leads to men for the first time supervising people who are not his family European family changing from chief unit of production and consumption to becoming the chief unit of consumption alone

5. Family & Reproductive Trends (CTD) • Because wages can be sent farther distances, children can move farther away • Urbanization leads to a wider possibility for marriages • Increase in birth earlier in century because children workers are economic assets • Smaller families become acceptable in mid 1870's as most naturally become smaller due to the dangers of childbirth and the creation of contraceptives. • Men are supposed to chief financial income of the family Nineteenth Century Family Portrait

6. Women’s Experiences Based on Class • All women have the responsibility to home life—cooking, cleaning, children • Higher up on the social ladder, more time spent at home • Lower class women consistently = working class • 1800’s-1850’s, usually work as clerks alongside husbands/fathers in business. After, women are pushed back into gender roles.

7. Women’s Experiences Based on Class Lower/ Working Class Middle/Upper Class • exploited economically • 17 hour work days for less pay than men •  textile workers • 1/3 of women worked as servants •  not valued because they abandon their gender roles. Nurses raise their children • young women in prostitution •  generally did not go to work, income of male family members sufficed • domestic roles-- raising children and instructing servants in household chores •  consumers of manufactured fineries •  spent most of their daily life inside the home

8. Women’s Experiences Based on Class Lower Class Working Mother Upper Class Victorian Women

9. Women in Modernism • Modernism-a tendency in theology to accommodate traditional religious teaching to contemporary thought and especially to devalue supernatural elements • 1870s- Modernism is marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition. Driven by the desire to break away from established social and political ideas. • Post WWI (1914-1918)- society is more inclined to modernistic views

10. Women in Modernism Virginia Woolf 1882-1941 • Mrs. Dalloway (1925) To the Lighthouse(1927) • Stream of Consciousness • work focuses on the independence of women in literature and art Gertrude Stein • Composition as Explanation (1926) The Making of Americans (1925) • translation of abstractism into literary prose Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) • painter, sister of Virginia Woolf • helped to direct the art movement from Post-Impressionism to Modernism • Still Life on a Mantelpiece, 1914 “Still Life on a Mantel Piece”

11. The Rise of Political Feminism Political Feminism- “The doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to men.” • Many obstacles to achieving equality • Challenged by middle class liberals • The Subjection of Women- Harriet Taylor • Suffrage in England= Europe’s most advanced women’s movement • Millicent Fawcett- National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies • Emmeline Pankhurst- Women’s Social and Political Union, followers earned nickname “suffragettes” • Did not receive the vote until after WWI, women could not vote until 3o, as opposed to men who could vote at 21 • Throughout the rest of Europe, women demanded rights widely, yet little progress was made before WWI

12. Anti-Feminism • Stereotyped views of women • Backlash to modern feminist thought • Result of both society’s interest in science and non-rational thought • Science: • Both Charles Darwin and T.H. Huxley held women in traditional gender roles. • Freud saw rearing sons as women’s greatest accomplishment • Auguste Comte portrayed women as biologically and intellectually inferior to men.

13. Education for Women and Children • Women had less access to Education then men • More illiterate men then women • University education remained “men only” until the third quarter of the century • Absence of secondary education prevented women from going to Universities • Educated male elite feared the challenge of educated women • Because education was limited, jobs were limited

14. Typical 19th century secondary academy. Often times boy’s only, girls admitted in extenuating circumstances. Structure differs from that of American “school house”.

15. Timeline 1820's • Spinning and weaving put into factories. • Unmarried workers are the majority. 1833 • English Factory Act of 1833 shortens children's work hours and provides for education. Mid 1840's • - In the British textile industry, men were seen as the sole breadwinners. 1847 • British Parliament mandates 10-hour workday. 1850 • When, in general, women begin to be pushed back into traditional gender roles. • Decrease in textile jobs begin. 1870's • Modernism is marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition. Driven by the desire to break away from established social and political ideas. • Birthrate drop in France, leading to the acceptance of smaller families. 1878 • - University of London admits women. 1882 • Great Britain- Married Woman's Property Act allows married women to own property. 1884 • - France allows divorce. 1903 • Women's Social and Political Union founded. 1910 • Suffragettes begin to use violence. 1914 • Russian women begin to attend universities. 1918 • - British women over thirty receive right to vote. 1925 • - Gertrude Stein's Composition as Explanation 1926 • - Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans 1929 • Virginia Woolf publishes A Room of One's Own.

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