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Comparison Of The 18 th And The 19 th Century Societies Throughout much of history, deep-seated cultural beliefs allowed women only limited roles in society. People in most countries in the world believed, and still do, that womens natural roles were as mothers and wives. These people considered women to be better suited for childbearing and homemaking rather than for involvement in the public life of business or politics. Widespread belief that women were intellectually inferior to men led most societies to limit womens education to learning domestic skills.
Well-educated, upper-class men controlled most positions of employment and power in society. In the 18 th century Britain women were held in the lowest esteem, had very few legal and economic rights (Swords, 76) and received little respect during their lives. A womans place was determined by her status as a wife, legally and economically subservient to her husband (Swords, 78). An example of the attitudes women in the eighteenth century faced can be shown by a 1770 statute that was passed by Parliament: All women of whatever age, rank, profession, or degree, whether virgin maid or widow, that shall from and after such Act impose upon, seduce, and betray into matrimony and of His Majesty's subjects by means of scent, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law now in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanors, and that the marriage upon conviction shall stand null and void (Swords, 77). Women were afforded very few rights in the eighteenth century.
They could not hold office or vote. Before her marriage a woman was in the care of her father and her legal rights were transferred to her husband after the marriage. Women were not allowed custody of their children unless their husbands had named her the legal guardian. Until 1839 women were not allowed to sue for custody of the children if she was separated or divorced (Swords 77). The economic rights of women in the 18 th century were also very limited. They were not allowed to own or inherit land.
If a woman had land or property before she got married it automatically became the property other husband. The daughters of wealthy fathers frequently became preys of fortune-seeking men (Swords 77). Also, women were not the ones who managed the money in households it was a typically mens task. Those women, who tried to work, were down upon because of the stigma attached to a woman who earned money through working (Swords 77). The only profession, which was acceptable for a woman in the 18 th century in Britain, was to become a writer. However, that occupation usually did not offer much income to the women, so the only proven way to find economic stability for a woman was to get married.
Marriage, at that time, was traditionally regarded as an alliance between families, a pairing on the basis of wealth or birth, or... an arrangement made by parents without regard to personal preferences of the young woman and young man (Swords 78). Later in the eighteenth century the attitude toward marriage started to change. People were now treating marriage as a lifetime, intimate, happy companionship based upon love, esteem, and compatibility, and both the woman and man were to have voice in choosing the spouse (Swords 78). Elizabeth and Darcy, Emma and Mr. Knightly, and Anne and Captain Wentworth are the examples of the more progressive attitudes towards marriage.
Womens education was also a controversial issue in Britain of the 19 th century. Society generally regarded only that education to be essential for a woman that would allow her to be a good wife (Swords 79). Nobody expected women to be able to understand mathematics, philosophy, or science. Some more advanced thinkers were convinced that women could learn everything that men could but this was not the prevalent thinking during the eighteenth century. The education that most women were offered included drawing, dancing, piano playing, penmanship, grammar, spelling, elementary arithmetic, and sometimes French (Swords 80). These few subjects were generally considered as the necessary education for women to be able to fulfill their roles.
Until the 19 th century, the denial of equal rights to women met with only occasional protest and drew little attention from most people. Because most women lacked the educational and economic resources that would enable them to challenge the prevailing social order, women generally accepted their inferior status as their only option (Clare, 35). At this time, women shared these disadvantages with the majority of working class men, as many social, economic, and political rights were restricted to the wealthy elite (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia). In the late 18 th century, in an attempt to remedy these inequalities among men, political theorists and philosophers asserted that all men were created equal and therefore were entitled to equal treatment under the law. In the 19 th century, as governments in Europe and North America began to draft new laws guaranteeing equality among men, significant numbers of women and some men began to demand that women be accorded equal rights as well (Clare, 39). In the 19 th century rich women were educated at home by tutors and learned pretty much the same as in the 18 th century, learn to play the piano, speak French, entertain quests, look attractive, and entertain guests.
After 1870 it was made compulsory for all women to have an education. However, girls did not learn the same subjects as boys, they learnt subjects like laundry, cookery, needlework and housewifery skills (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia). Rich women did work, but they still had to run their homes, bossing the servants around. After 1870 some women became teachers and after the typewriter was invented some became secretaries or clerks.
However, all women had to retire when they got married. A rich womans servant did all her domestic tasks at home. So all she needed to do at home was to look good and be attractive for her husband (Clare, 42). School was not made compulsory until 1870 until then poor people did not go to school because they could not afford it. Poor women had to work as well as bringing up her children. They had to work in coal mines and factories for long hours earning little money.
Children were also expected to work hard, and only in 1870 child labor in Britain was outlawed (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia). Despite the fact that most societies in the 18 th and the 19 th centuries viewed women and childrens roles similarly, difference from country to country, from continent to continent still existed. Cuba, in contrast to Britain, was not an industrialized country in the 19 th century. That had a huge impact on the society's structure. Men were a dominant social force in Cuba as well (Fernandez). Women, however, were treated much more inhumanly than they were in Britain.
Beautiful women were as trophies, as something essential all respectful men had to have. Question of race was another very important one in Cuba, whereas, it probably never even crossed minds of most British people at that time. The desire to preserve racial purity was less important, however, than a desire to control interracial sex on gender and class lines. Sexual relations between the races and consequent mixed-race offspring were accepted, but only as long as they did not take place between dark-skinned men and white (especially upper-class) women (Fernandez). Restrictive codes, closely related to the strict rules governing access to the social elite, applied to female behavior based on gender, class and color. This led to difficulties in the restricted world of wealthy Havanans.
When foreigners visited nineteenth-century Havana, they had to come to terms with the local customs concerning females on the street. Antonio Gallenga, an Italian writer with British citizenship, noticed in 1873 that any women who tried to break the rules of social conduct would face condemnation and even insult (Perez, 45). Visitors could wander about the city, finding novelties at every corner, but they would almost never meet an upper-class lady on foot. It was totally against the mores, because it might lead to an encounter with uncultivated blacks or other undesirables. Women of the lowest social status were able to enjoy a greater degree of freedom of movement in the city than highborn ladies. As a result, black and mulatto women were more accessible to men of all races and classes.
Elite white males were not concerned about the dangers of sexual relations with women of other races (Knight, 32). Gentlemen considered they had a right (even a duty in terms of macho ideology) to possess any woman they might desire. The culture was obsessed with sex, and this led to a further paradox: a gentleman's ideal wife must be good for marriage, but not necessarily for pleasure. Wives were selected above all to raise a family and to take care of the house; for pleasure, gentlemen could turn elsewhere (Perez, 47). As it can be concluded, the European societies and the societies of less industrialized countries in the 18 th and 19 th century were different. Their differences laid not only in the ways they led their everyday lives, but also in how the less powerful members of the society, e.
g. women, were treated. Even though women did not possess much social status and respect in both British and Cuban society, they were also deprived of their personal freedom in the latter culture. Women were almost non-humans for Cuban men: those who had a noble genealogy did not even have a freedom to go outside whenever and wherever they wanted to. Women with the lower social status were only good as sex objects and cheap labor force. References: Clare, John D. (1994), Industrial Revolution Harcourt Brace Fernandez, Miguel (October, 1997), Restricted lives of upper-class women in Havana, Cuba, during 19 th century, Journal of Social History Knight, Franklin W. (1977), Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century, University of Wisconsin Press Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (2000), Microsoft Corporation Perez, Louis A. (1992), Slaves, Sugar, and Colonial Society: Travels Accounts of Cuba, 1801 - 1899, Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc.
Swords, Barbara W. (1988), Womans Place in Jane Austen's England, Jane Austen Society of North America
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Research essay sample on Upper Class Women 19 Th Century
