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City of Women In the period from about 1820 to 1860 female associations proliferated with a wide variety of purposes, some more radical than others. Women justified their involvement in the activities of these associations in terms of their innate female moral authority and difference from men and the duty this put on them to safeguard the moral standards of society. As a number of historians have shown, their efforts were part of the wider process by which the emerging middle class sought to establish its cultural dominance in the rapidly changing world. Middle-class women participated in this process through their own organizations, which gave them independence from male authority and the ability to pursue their own gender-specific goals.
Women, in their independent benevolent associations, were an important force in providing charitable aid and demanding moral reform. In the ante-bellum years, middle-class women developed a reform tradition based upon a gendered discourse, which emphasized their moral authority and their ability to speak for the needs of women of other races and classes. This led them to become involved, sometimes as the female auxiliary societies to male reform organizations, in the agitation for reforms, which included temperance and moral reform and, more controversially, abolitionism. Some women even went so far as to demand rights for women. The majority of women involved in benevolent associations were, though, involved in projects on a less ambitious scale, mainly consisting of friendly visiting among the poor and attempts to reform society through moral suasion.
Most were expressly non-political, since involvement in politics was believed to undermine their specifically female mission. Between about 1820 and 1860, white middle-class women working within the parameters of their prescribed sphere built vital and autonomous associations heavily involved in grassroots social activism. The tradition of female voluntarism continued during the Civil War and afterwards. Many women volunteers, both North and South, raised funds for the opposing armies. In communities across the North, where there was a greater tradition of female organization and activism, women, trained in the ante-bellum female benevolent associations, became involved in Soldiers' Aid Societies. Many also participated in the work of a semi-public agency, the U.
S. Sanitary Commission. Women helped to organize and distribute supplies to the Union troops through the Sanitary Commission and played a large part in the Northern war effort as fund-raisers and volunteer workers. In the South, too, where the tradition of female associations was not as strong, women contributed to the Confederate war effort in sewing circles and through thousands of relief associations and Soldiers' Aid Societies. In the immediate post-war period, some Northern women participated directly in the reconstruction process in the South as teachers in schools for the children of the ex-slaves, while others helped through fund-raising activities in the North. For most middle-class women though, the end of the war meant a return to their pre-war voluntary activities.
The 1870 s and 1880 s saw a greater diversity of female organizations, with the creation of vast numbers of new women's agencies - cultural clubs, civic improvement associations, and even professional women's societies - not all directly related to voluntary activism. Many women were also attracted by the great moral crusades of the period, most notably the national temperance crusade of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which built upon the ante-bellum tradition of women's moral reform. A female reform tradition consequently developed during the nineteenth century, which arose out of certain perceptions of 'woman's place'. From the early nineteenth century onwards, it drew upon assumptions about female moral authority and superiority, together with the ability of middle-class white women to speak for other women. Though in theory such women were limited to the confines of their own homes, in practice many middle-class women were involved in social activism to varying degrees.
Grassroots female associations organized the raising of funds for charitable purposes, visited the poor, and generally attempted to improve society through moral suasion. There was, too, a more radical and controversial brand of women's activism which sought women's rights and a greater role for women in society, but which challenged established prescriptions for women's behavior. Yet this attracted only a small minority of women activists. For the most part, female social activism remained within the confines of women's sphere and utilized a discourse, which emphasized women's difference from men. Alongside this female tradition of social activism, large numbers of women became involved in clubs, which promoted 'self-culture' in the years after the Civil War.
The formal beginnings of the culture club movement may be dated from the founding of Sorosis in New York City in 1868. During the 1870 s and 1880 s, many literary and cultural clubs were formed across the United States, most of which were initially uninterested in reform causes. The majority of their members were married women with a considerable degree of education, who were looking for social company and an opportunity to refine their education in the growing cities. Again, they justified these cultural clubs in terms of women's special qualities and as an alternative to the commercialism and competitiveness of the world of men. By the end of the nineteenth century, many middle-class women had a tradition of constructing ideological justifications to explain their involvement in activities beyond the immediate confines of their own homes. Thus, they justified their involvement in community activism and cultural activities.
In the last years of the nineteenth century, a new discourse began to emerge which idealized woman's role as mother and which had considerable influence in dictating the kind of activism, which middle-class women undertook. The ideal of 'educated' or 'scientific' motherhood drew upon the older ideologies of 'Republican Motherhood' and domesticity, but also reflected the marked transformation in attitudes towards childhood and child rearing which had been occurring throughout the nineteenth century. Especially in New York City, the dominant idea influencing attitudes towards children had been that they were born innately sinful. It had consequently been the duty of parents to suppress their children's natural depravity and break their wills. There was also little recognition of childhood as a period of life distinct from adulthood.
As new emphasis was placed upon the special nature of childhood, the responsibility for the proper rearing of children was placed upon parents, but more particularly on mothers. Whereas previously any advice books on child rearing had been aimed at fathers, now large numbers of such books were published by clergymen, doctors and women writers, all aimed at mothers. Mothers were to cherish their children and carefully regulate their childhoods in preparation for adulthood. The primary purpose of child rearing became the internalization of moral prohibitions, behavioral standards, and a capacity for self-governance that would prepare the child for the outside world. Moreover, since childhood was seen by these advice writers as an important period in the formation of an adult's character, care had to be taken that children were subjected to the proper influences. Children were considered especially impressionable and therefore if they were not protected from evil influences they were likely to develop wayward tendencies.
Thus, motherhood was increasingly idealized, while at the same time there was a growing concern about those children who did not have the advantages of a mother trained in 'scientific motherhood'. It was this concern about the possible consequences to society of allowing children to grow up in ignorance of the 'proper's oil standards that prompted many middle-class women to seek means to ensure that all children should conform to their own ideals of childhood. In so doing, women reformers turned increasingly to legislative reform to validate their actions. For, as a number of recent historians have pointed out, women were much more willing and able to use the state to obtain social welfare reform than were men.
Bibliography: Kunzel, Regina (1993) Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work. Conn: Yale University Press.
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Research essay sample on Middle Class Women Nineteenth Century
