Women had very minimal rights in the 1800’s. The goal of the Seneca Falls Convention was to change that.
Being married should not be a punishment, but in the 1800’s if a woman was married it took away many of her rights. Her husband was in charge of everything she owned. According to Marylynn Salmon, “all personality a woman brought to her marriage or earned during her marriage, including wages, became her husband’s. He could manage it or give it away, as he chose, without consulting her,” (Legal Status of Women Article). At this time a wife was viewed as her husband’s property. A woman was seen in the private sphere because she was always in the home with the children or doing chores. A man on the other hand was seen in the public sphere, which was the world outside the home. The jobs men did were much more dangerous, and filled with “temptations”. During the 1800’s there was something called the Cult of Domesticity. It stated that the poor, weak woman needed to be kept in the house so they did not come in contact with the dangers of the outside world, and kept out of the public eye. A woman’s role was to stay in the private sphere and provide comfort and companionship to their husbands and children. A woman had many standards that they were held up to. There was four standards to ideal womanhood that any woman was held up to. They were Piety, Purity, Submissiveness, and Domesticity. Piety was their religious devotion to God. Purity was the fact that a woman was supposed to save herself for her husband and only have one lover her entire life. Submissiveness was that a woman needs to feel dependant on a man. In The Sphere and Duties of Woman it said, “She asks for wisdom, consistency, firmness, perseveredness, and she is willing to repay it all by the surrender of her affection,” (Lavender Article). A man was supposed to protect her from the harms of the world. Lastly, Domesticity came back to the fact that a woman’s place was the private sphere, and she should not need to leave the house very often. There are many problems with this view of woman. The biggest being the fact that women are capable of much more than just being trapped in the house all day, confined to house work.
The Seneca Falls Convention was a meeting that took place in New York in July 1848. During this time women decided to take a stand for their rights. The convention addressed the many problems they faced from day to day. Such as the abuse that many women had to face on a day to day basis from their husbands. At the convention the women came up with the Declaration of Sentiments and Rights. The Declaration stated, “That women is a man’s equal”. That would have been completely different than the laws at the time. A married a women was not allowed to make any decisions for herself. If she was able to do simple things like have a job in the public sphere, that could be a huge game changer. For lower income families, they would now be receiving two incomes. That could immediately give them extra money to buy nicer things to go around the house. The Declaration of Sentiments and Rights was most concerned with marital freedom, while the Declaration of Independance was more focused on political freedom. The only resolution that was not passed was number nine. That was the resolution of women’s suffrage. Political freedom? How can you have political freedom if you have no right to vote? In the eyes of the government giving a married women the right to vote would be like giving her husband two votes. That is ridiculous. Even though two people were married, they should be allowed to have different points of view. They should potentially be able to vote for different people. Although women’s suffrage was a controversial resolution, the rest of the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments was very successful in changing the way people view women’s rights.
During the Seneca Falls Convention only middle class white women were represented. All women needed more rights, but only one group was represented. No other group of representatives were even allowed to speak. How can they advocate for themselves if they can not even speak? In class we had our own Seneca Falls Convention. In our version, every group was represented. The resolutions we came up with were more focused on everyone, and less centered around white women. In our version giving the women the right to vote was not controversial at all, and easily made it on the list. The group I was assigned was African American Slave Women. Slaves were a huge part of the population, but all they wanted was for slavery to be abolished. That sounds simple enough right? Wrong. Slaves had no voice, and therefore no control about what the resolutions were going to be. The Seneca falls convention was successful in advocating for middle class white women’s rights, but the treatment among women was still unfair, and unequal.
Of all the resolutions discussed I believe that slavery being abolished is the most important. No human being should be owned by another. Think about that. It is morally inhumane. People now a days should realize how terrible slavery is, but it still exists! Human trafficking still goes on, and so does prostitution. Even though these have “fancy” names, they are still awful and just as wrong as slavery was at the beginning. Many of the other goals of the convention were accomplished like a woman's right to vote. That was very controversial, but there is no question whether or not a woman gets to vote now. Of course she does!
The women’s rights movement was overall very successful, although it did have some flaws. Especially when it came to fair treatment of every group of women at the Seneca Falls Convention.
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