Understanding Cultural Context: Femininity in the Late Nineteenth Century
Group 1
(2 examples)
Credit: Ferris’ Good Sense Corset Waists, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, January 1899.
Credit: Braided Wire Bustles and Forms, Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1899.
Group 2
(2 examples)
Credit: LaBlache Face Powder, Ladies’ Home Journal, August 1899.
Credit: The Whitely Exerciser, Ladies’ Home Journal, December 1896.
Group 3
(Excerpts from articles published by Helen Watterson Moody in Ladies Home Journal in 1899)
From What It Means to Be a Wife
When a woman marries she assumes two new sets of relations—those of sentiment, through which she becomes the loving, faithful companion of one man and the mother of his children, and the economic relation, through which she becomes one of the great conserving and distributing agents of the world. Since I shall speak of these last two conditions later, I will now only consider that one sentimental relation whose beauty and holiness, if rightly assumed, give foundation to all the rest—that of wifehood.
Marriage is, or should be, primarily a relation of sentiment, yet the happiness of married life is decided by quite other things than sentiment—sturdy and steady moral qualities, good sense and fair executive ability. I think the recognition of the fact that, though love is the supreme thing in married life, love alone is not enough, always comes to a newly married couple with a sense of surprise.
From The Only Way to Keep Love Secure
In the first months of married life, love is so sufficient, and loving so simple, that there seems no other need in life. But by–and–by, when care begins to shadow them, when duties present themselves, and, strangely enough, conflict with each other, when convictions clash and tastes differ, then both husband and wife begin to realize that back of love must stand what I have called “steady and sturdy moral qualities”—justice, patience, honesty, sincerity and magnanimity. Indeed, on these depends the very continuance of love in marriage, for it is not possible to go on loving unless that is found which is worthy of love. I say this advisedly. I know the world is full of men and women who think, either because they like to think so, or sadly, because they must, that one can love where one does not respect. It seems to me that this does not ennoble one’s idea of love. One may pity, may have an infinite yearning tenderness over what one cannot respect, but love is of royal birth and recognizes only what is as royal as itself. The way, then, to keep love secure in married life is not so much to be anxiously watching and guarding lest it should escape, or crying that love has spread its wings because the first holiday romance is replaced by graver feeling, but by living along simply and honestly and frankly together, on a high plane, looking most and always toward “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.” Then Love will not be a captive, but a most willing guest.
Group 4
(Excerpts from articles published by Helen Watterson Moody in Ladies Home Journal in 1899)
From Marriage Is a Serious and Steady Occupation
That is why I say that the real happiness of married life depends largely upon the personal character that is put into it. Next in importance I place sound, good sense; and I mean by this that underlying sense of proportion by which one is able to discriminate the insignificant, the passing, the unimportant, from the grave, the permanent, the important—that capacity for steady, balancing thought which keeps one from impulsive words and rash deeds. A woman who is blessed with good sense does not consider at the start that marriage is a role to be skillfully and successfully enacted, or a grand frolic of which she is to be the admired and indulged centre, or a mere incident in a life crowded with other activities. She knows that marriage is a serious and steady vocation, and that the true wife is one who enters marriage not thinking how much she can get out of it, but how much she can put into it. It is this larger conception of marriage which makes women dwell by their own firesides in sweet content with what is commonly called the “narrow limits of home,” knowing well that no true home is narrow since it must give cover to “the whole primal mysteries of life—food, raiment and work to earn them withal: love and marriage, birth and death, right–doing and wrong–doing—all these commonplaces of humanity which are most divine because they are most commonplace.”
The way to make a home a wide place to dwell in, is to bring a wide personality to dwell in it. Any home is just as wide as the maker, and can be no wider. When a woman understands this she is able to keep her head steady and her heart undisturbed over newspaper sketches about other women, in which each of them is made to do the most remarkable and entirely unnecessary combination of things.
From Married Women Can Find Time If They Will
When I hear a married woman lament the lack of wide opportunities in her life I find myself wondering, in a kind of daze, what she means. If I inquire particularly, I usually discover that by lack of opportunities she means either the time for study and self–cultivation which she deeply desires, or else an opportunity for public activity and recognition. Well, both of these are good in their proper places, and there are few wives who will not be able to find some hours in the week to give to either one or the other. I suspect that in the case of those women who say they actually do not get time for study or music, or for an occasional club meeting, the trouble lies in the fact that they do not want to enough. For be sure of this, that in the long run a man or a woman usually finds time in life to do the thing that he or she wants to do most. A woman may not desire the opportunity for self–culture and growth, but if she in her heart really prefers an hour of neighborhood gossip, or a piece of drawn linen for her luncheon table, or a vulgar profusion in the menu she offers her guests, she will have these and not the study. If, on the other hand, the intellectual quickening that comes from communion with big and earnest minds be the one thing in life that she feels she must have, be sure that in some degree she will have it—not enough of it, possibly, to satisfy her, but enough to make her life richer, because she will make her living less complex in order that she may have it.
Group 5
excerpt from Commonplace Book by Kate Chopin
Chopin was an astute observer of social life, and her views often went against the grain. In “The Story of an Hour,” the thoughts of her character Louise Mallard most likely made her late–nineteenth–century audience uncomfortable, but Chopin was quite used to putting these kinds of thoughts down on paper, as her diaries suggest. This excerpt, from her private collection later published as Commonplace Book (1867-70), is an example of how her ideas were far from commonplace.
I feel as though I should like to run away and hide myself; but there is no escaping—I am invited to a ball and I go.—I dance with people I despise; amuse myself with men whose only talent lies in their feet; gain the disapprobation of people I honor and respect; return home at day break with my brain in a state which was never intended for it; and arise in the middle of the next day feeling infinitely more, in spirit and flesh like a Liliputian, than a woman with body and soul.—I am diametrically opposed to parties and balls; and yet when I broach the subject—they either laugh at me—imagining that I wish to perpetrate a joke; or look very serious, shake their heads and tell ’em not to encourage such silly notions.
I am a creature who loves amusements; I love brightness and gaiety and life and sunshine. But is it a rational amusement, I ask myself, to destroy one’s health, and turn night into day? I look about me, though, and see persons so much better than my self, and so much more pious engaging in the self same pleasures—however I fancy it cannot have the same effect upon them as it does upon me.—Heigh ho! I wish this were the only subject I have doubts upon. One does become so tired—reasoning, reasoning, reasoning, from morning till night and coming to no conclusions—it is to say the least slightly unsatisfactory.
A friend who knows me as well as anyone is capable of knowing me—a gentleman of course—told me that I had a way in conversation of discovering a person's characteristics—opinions—and private feelings—while they knew no more about me at the end than they knew at the beginning of the conversation. Is this laudable? Bah! I’ll not reason it, for whatever my conclusion I’ll be sure to follow my inclination.
What a dear good confident my book is. If it does not clear my doubts it at least does not contradict and oppose my opinions.—You are the only one, my book, with whom I take the liberty of talking about my self. I must tell you a discovery I have made—the art of making oneself agreeable in conversation. Strange as it may appear it is not necessary to possess the faculty of speech; a dumb person, provided they be not deaf, can practice it as well as the most voluble. All [that is] required of you is to have control over the muscles of your face—to look pleased and chagrined, surprised [and] indignant and under every circumstance—interested and entertained. Lead your antagonist to talk about himself—he will not enter reluctantly upon the subject I assure you—and twenty to one—he will report you as one of the most entertaining and intelligent persons,—although the whole extent of your conversation was but an occasional "What did you say—" "What did you do—" "What do you think"—On that principal you see, my friend you are very entertaining; but I must admit that for want of a sympathizing countenance tu es non peu ennuyant (what I would never dare tell a mortal).