Women and the History of Their Behavior

Culture has taught us about how we are suppose to act as a women and to act otherwise would be unnatural. During our American History what kind of women were thought of as bad or evil? It's usually women who are in power or who act outside their sphere of the home.

How is a real woman suppose to act? According to society and history women should act delicate and weak. Women should be in the home and take care of their children and learn about housewifery. Women should be submissive towards their husband. There would be many ways that a woman would fail to be a true woman. If a woman never got married then there was something wrong with her because she wasn't fulfilling her duties in life as a proper wife. Even If she did get married and never had any children then there would be something wrong with her. As you can see there are many ways that a woman can appear inappropriate and some of these beliefs and expectations we still hold on to even today.

Anne Hutchinson was an ordinary puritan woman who started preaching about her own interpretations about religion. Her target audience was women but after awhile she became very popular and men started showing up to listen to her too. The strong leaders in her community started seeing her as a threat. A threat? The Puritans based their laws on the bible and they believed that men were closer to God and intellectually superior compared to women. Women were forever in debt because of what Eve did but here comes Ms. Anne Hutchinson preaching and letting her voice be heard like a man. It was ruining the balance of the beliefs of the puritan community.

The leaders tried to make her see the error of her ways and put a stop to her 'disruptive activities'. Hutchinson was eventually sent to trail for heresy in 1637. Her once close friend John Cotton preached to other women that Hutchinson "is but a Woman and many unsound and dangerous principles are held by her." probably meaning that because she's a woman that makes her morally inferior so there isn't any point in listening to her. During the trail she fought hard and calmly against the accusations of Governor Winthrop saying that the meetings she was holding was "a thing not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God, nor fitting for your sex," . The court voted to banish her from the colony because she was a woman that didn't fit in their society. She meet a not so happy ending when she was eventually killed by Indians in 1643.

In 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a book called Vindication of the Rights of Woman in which she stated that she believed society was making women behave in an way suited to benefit men and their pleasures. She believed that the only reason women acted the way they did was because they weren't given the right to education like men were. She wanted to change the beliefs of the society focusing on women, from education, to attitude to the kind relationship that a woman should have with her husband "the woman who strengthens her body and exercises her mind will, by managing her family and practicing various virtues, become the friend, and not the humble dependent of her husband." She also shared her ideas that children of different sexes should play together so that they could learn to treat each other equally. "Girls and boys, in short, would play harmlessly together, if the distinction of sex was not inculcated long before nature makes any difference."

Mary Wollstonecraft challenged a lot of social norms about how women should be and their common behavior. Having a women speak out and wanting change must of caused a lot of controversy. Many of her critics attacked her literature calling her "hyena in petticoats". She was also attack for the way that she lived her personal life. She helped her sister get away from a bad marriage and she didn't live in the same house as her husband because she wanted to work.

A few decades later two women made a lot of controversy with their active abolitionist ways. The Grimke sisters were two women who were strong abolitionist and eventually women's rights activist. Sarah was already an abolitionist from a young age, always treating her father slaves with kindness and teaching them how to read. Her younger sister Angelina looked up to Sarah more than just an older sister but also a mother figure. They would travel all over the north of America and Angelina would do speeches about slavery to the public.

Not everybody who went to see these sisters speeches were fans. They were attack for their radical ideas of anti-slavery. They came to understand that women were oppressed and without power women could not right the wrongs of society. Such an understanding made these women into seemingly eager feminists. "Men and women were CREATED EQUAL; they are both moral and accountable beings; and whatever is right for man to do, is right for a woman."

Sometime during 1837 the Congregational General Association had approved and issued a Pastoral Letter that put the focus on women who had disobeyed the boundaries of their "proper sphere." The Pastoral Letter pointed out the issue that the character of women was in danger and needed to stay in the way that the New Testament described it. Delicate and reliant on men. Being strong and independent was not natural. What were women to do if they didn't rely on men to take care of them? That would be too unnatural and not of moral character. Sarah Grimke wrote a reply to that letter describing that she didn't believe that women's character was in danger and she believe that the reason that some women shouldn't act so delicate is men abuse their power to hurt women. She quoted in the letter "'Her influence is the source of mighty power' Where, in all the sacred Scriptures, is this taught? Alas! She has too well learned the lesson, which MAN has labored to teach her." she believed that men were interpreting the bible in their own way since they were the only ones allowed to learn Greek and Latin. What they have been learning was to benefit men.

They continued to work as abolitionist and recruiting women. Things started to slow down for the sisters when Angelina got married and because of all the duties of being a wife and a mother she retired he from her work as an abolitionist. Which is such a waste. Eventually her sister Sarah came to live with Angelina family and not much is known after that part of their lives.

What did all these women have in common? Each of their lives had a lot of hardships because a large majority of their community didn't accept them and their off-beat attitudes. They are decades and centuries apart but time hasn't changed so much even to this day. We still expect women to fulfill certain duties when it comes to motherhood and marriage. We are expected to get married and have children. People have this idea that feminist are women who are angry and too stiff to attract a man, which is a bad thing. It seems that the only difference is that this time the media influences us the most by sending us all these messages combine with what we learned by our own life experiences. They are all influential women that have effected our history. Some of their endings weren't what most people would of want but they have influence many people and continue to do so. They thought out of the box or should I say 'sphere' that culture and society has put them in. These women saw no gender differences. These women broke out of the traditional female role and they consciously (or unconsciously) paved the way for many other women to do the same. Even though they were thought of as "bad" women their lives have been imprinted in history and seen as admirable figures. Maybe the "bad" women in our own time like Paris Hilton will be seen in the same light as these women are today in the future. Maybe.