Women History Chapter 4: Pedestal, Loom, and Auction Block

The life of Lucy Larcom, the poet and writer, was significantly shaped by the interaction of what two major historical forces?

Industrialization and the increased differentiation of gender roles.

How did the widespread belief in a true woman's special moral vocation affect women's life?

It legitimized certain kinds of spiritual of spiritual activities for women outside the home.

How did the increasing use of immigrant workers in textile factories change American attitudes?

It made wage earning seem disreputable for women.

What problem stood in the way of the plan for the Lowell textile factories to hire New England farm girls?

Parents worried about their daughters living far from home and without their supervision.

Why did immigrant women prefer to be factory workers rather than domestic servants?

When the workday was over at the factory, a woman's time was her own.

For American women caught up in the Second Great Awakening, the revivals often served as

an opportunity to express themselves outside the home in ways usually not permitted.

By the 1830s, Protestant women's organizations were sending money to

church missions throughout Asia and Africa.

Starting in the 1820s, pious women began forming benevolent associations that sponsored

missionary efforts to bring Christianity to unbelievers at home and abroad.

The lives of female slaved differed from those of slave men in that slave women were

often sexually exploited by slaveowners.

Unlike southern elite white women and northern middle-class women, southern non-elite women continued to

produce goods mainly for their family's consumption.

Most agricultural labor on southern plantations before the Civil War was done by

slave men and women.

How do historians define the Cult of True Womanhood?

It treated men and women as complete opposites with no common traits.

How did the participation of married women and unmarried women in the industrial workforce differ in the early 1880s?

Married women remained home-based industrial workers much longer because they had to raise children.

How did the end of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808 impact slave women's lives?

More slaves were at risk of being sold in the U.S. internal market.

How did the Lowell factory system change after the Panic of 1837?

Factory owners increased the pace of work, cut wages, and began to hire immigrants to replace the farm girls.

What work id the majority of slave women in the South do?

Field work.

What was the most influential woman's magazine of the mid-nineteenth century?

Godey's Lady's Book

How do the characters in this account reject and resist the white assumptions about black people fundamental to the slave system?

How William and Ellen Craft reject and resist the white assumptions about black people importance to the slave system was they both fled together instead of alone. They both knew that because of the laws in the South they were both seen as property instead of individuals. Ellen was able to pass as white because of her father and grandfather. Because of that she also disguised herself as a male slave-owner and William impersonated as her slave. Ellen wrapped up her arm to get out of signing her name and covered her face too. They both wanted to be free together so they fooled everyone to get to their freedom.

What was one important impact of the end of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808?

It spurred a massive internal commerce in slaves in the United States.

What was unique about the mid-nineteenth-century magazine Godey's Lady's Book?

Its female editor promoted the ideology of True Womenhood.

What was the most burdensome domestic chore in middle-class antebellum households?

Laundry

According to proponents of True Womanhood, what was women's most important vocation, from which flowered her other special qualities.

Motherhood.

One reason Native peoples in the South were displaced in the early nineteenth century was that

Native lands were valuable for growing cotton and tobacco.

The early nineteenth-century notion that a true woman was pure meant that she was inherently uninterested in what aspect of life?

Sexual expression.

Why is Catherine Beecher notable?

She was a strong promoter of the Cult of True Womanhood.

Which of the following ideologies best reflects southern society in the antebellum period?

Southern white women were supposed to be submissive to their husband, who defended their honor and virtue.

What was one way women were affected by changing social and economic conditions in the years before the Civil War?

Spinning and weaving were displaced to factories, reducing middle-class women's home-based textile production.

What was one reason textile manufacturers hired women?

Spinning fiber for cloth had been traditional work of women.

Which occupation became overwhelmingly female in the nineteenth century?

Teaching

Why did the Lowell idyll decline?

The country experienced an economic depression and increased immigration.

Who managed household slave work and the feeding, clothing, and doctoring of the entire labor force on southern plantations?

The plantation mistriss.

How was southern plantation family life different from northern middle-class family life?

Unlike in in the industrial north, southern men presided over both business and the houshold.

Why did white southerners widely support the removal of southern Native American tribes?

White southerners wanted Native American land to expand cotton and tobacco production.

What was a unique feature of the Lowell system?

Young farm girls were employed as factory workers and lodged in company boardinghouses.

The first charity organized by women for women was founded to

help widows who were too poor to support themselves.

With the rise of the market economy in the early nineteenth century, men's work moved outside the home, and women's domestic work became

less visible due to the increased perception that only remunerated labor had value.

The Irish were one of the few immigrant groups in American history in which

the number of women roughly equaled that of men.

The complex relationship between gender and slavery in the South before the Civil War involved

the perception that white women's refined status was enhanced by the presence of slaves, who took on the hard labor of maintaining household and farm.

Catherine Beecher's book A Treatise on Domestic Economy taught that

the woman's sphere was equal in importance to any task a man might perform.

The nineteenth century ideology of True Womanhood

was considered universal despite class and regional differences.