Women in U.S. History have always been a crucial component to the development of Colonial America whether one wants to believe it or not.\u00a0Countless primary sources rise up and provide us with essential details about our ancestors and how life used to be.\u00a0 Unfortunately for us today, there aren\u2019t many pieces of evidence from females because men dominated in every facet of life during Colonial America.\u00a0 In Susan Klepp\u2019s \u201cRevolutionary Bodies\u201d and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich\u2019s \u201cHow Betsy Ross Became Famous\u201d we see a glimpse of how women were viewed and treated by the mass society during Colonial America.<\/p>\n
In Klepp\u2019s \u201cRevolutionary Bodies\u201d, she talks about the metaphoric language that was used to describe a pregnant woman as \u201cfruitful\u201d and how these descriptions disappeared with the declining birth rate.\u00a0 There were common themes during this time, mostly originating from Europe, that reflected certain motives for a family to reproduce at such a large scale.\u00a0 The idea of marriage was directly connected to complex deals for economic survival.\u00a0 There were cases where spouses were selected based on whose family had a nearby plot of land or farming tools needed for their crops.\u00a0 The idea of marriage and reproduction was a political and economic institution that served important functions in society.\u00a0 The power of the church also played a significant role in influencing the relationship between a man and woman.\u00a0 The relationship between God and man proved to be a stronger bond than between the couple.\u00a0 The idea of free choice in marriage only served to reinforce the wife\u2019s duty to serve her husband.\u00a0 John Winthrop once said, \u201cThe woman\u2019s own choice makes such a man her husband; yet being so chosen, he is her lord, and she is to be subject to him\u201d (Winthrop 1853).\u00a0 There was a correlation between fertility rates and education.\u00a0 Klepp mentions, \u201cthe higher the educational attainment of women, the lower fertility rates\u201d (Klepp, 915).\u00a0 Perhaps this suggests that as more and more women became educated on the matters of mass fertility and personal human choice, it contributed to the steady decline from the average seven children to an average of two today.\u00a0 There was an incentive to having boys over girls.\u00a0 The oldest son would naturally inherit the family home or farm.\u00a0 Women during this time, once married, any property that a woman brought to the marriage would be directly inherited by her husband.\u00a0 Klepp\u2019s essay provides insight to the transition of the feminist mindset and where the modern family today stems from.<\/p>\n
Betsy Ross plays into the same narrative of women establishing a voice for themselves.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to think of women that stand out like the men who built the country we know of today.\u00a0 The fact of the matter is there were women just as important as these men and contributed a great deal to our country.\u00a0 When I think of women like Betsy Ross, I can\u2019t help but think of the movements that were created by the Grimke sisters.\u00a0 Angelina and Sarah Grimke hailed from the South when the institution of slavery was nearing the peak of its time.\u00a0 They both declared themselves abolitionists and desired equality for men and women.\u00a0 They were the first to push the boundaries of women\u2019s public speech towards women\u2019s rights and question African American rights.\u00a0 However, when you think of famous abolitionists you quickly think of names like Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.\u00a0 However, women were very much involved in the abolitionist ideas like men were.\u00a0 Like Ulrich says, \u201cBetsy became famous, not because of what she did or did not do in the 1770s, but because her story embodied nineteenth-century ideas about the place of women\u201d (Ulrich, \u201cHow Betsy Ross Became Famous\u201d).\u00a0 Betsy Ross\u2019s contribution to the American flag helped challenge the notion that only men created the new nation thus becoming a product of recognition for women in our country.<\/p>\n
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The Grimke sisters lived to see the end of slavery and the beginning of the women\u2019s rights movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Women in U.S. History have always been a crucial component to the development of Colonial America whether one wants to believe it or not.\u00a0Countless primary sources rise up and provide us with essential details about our ancestors and how life … Continue reading