Blog 4

Blog # 4

Textbook: Chapter 3
1. “True womanhood” was the ideology that men and women were complete opposites. Women were unable to run businesses, politics and physical labor, but were capable of running the family inside the home. Men on the hand, ran businesses, were political and tended to the physical hard labor. Women were the teachers of the home. “True womanhood” was a Protestant idea and therefore middle class women had a great hand in spreading this idea. Since more middle class women were able to work more at the home they were also able to preach the value of “true womanhood” to lower class women. The absence of the true woman values was what middle class thought made the poor poor ( 143).

2. The Lowell mill girls were a start of a progressive movement for women. Women working for wages was unthinkable at the time. The rise of factories that specialized in women's work made it almost destined for women. This also enabled women to provide for their families, unmarried women to provide for themselves, (just like Murray would have wanted), and for women all around to contribute to the economy. Working also gave women independence. Many young girls were able to move out and start their own lives apart from the conformity they had to face on the farms. Eventually women demanded high wages, leading to a greater opinion in the economy and an actual presence in the colonial system.

Source Interpretation
Textbook document
1. Sanger did not believe that women lacked morals, but had no other ways of support. He saw them with values and morals but those were not enough to keep them from the good money prostitution pays for. Sanger insisted that the high numbers of prostitution “reflected not the inherent lack of virtue” of the women but “rather the relentless financial pressure on poor urban women” (169). These women were succumbed to a lackluster life before entering prostitution with no love, no support and no money. They may have had virtue and morality, but reality got the best of them.

2. Sanger's thought about how women became prostitutes were that there was some force that drove them into prostitution, that women rarely did it for choice. Many women, 513 to be exact, choose to by inclination. That is only one fourth of the women surveyed, though. Most women led lives of harsh realities. Many were alcoholics and needed an outlet for their abuse problem, some were seduced and abandoned by men and couldn't support themselves. Families were also a cause of prostitution. One women's story tells of her father who accused her of being a whore while she was innocent and wouldn't give her proper treatment, and her mother was a raging alcoholic (173). She in turn fled her unloving home to find a better life. Women were not given proper wages that could possibly support them alone; they were abused and abandoned by the ones they were suppose to love and trust. Consequently, these women, trying to support themselves and their families, were publicly ridiculed and degraded. People of the day , mostly middle- and upper-class, could not possibly understand why a woman would choose a life of prostitution. And instead of trying to understand these women and help them, other women mocked and looked down upon these unfortunate souls. If wages were higher for women's work many of the women wouldn't have to prostitute themselves.

3. Sanger's conclusions mirrored the opposite values of his day. He shed light to prostitution and makes the women to be the victims and not the perpetrators. People of his day were unaware of the hardships that prostitutes were succumbed to before hand. Many saw these women as valueless and had a lack of spiritual awareness. Middle- and upper-class women saw them as lacking the “true womanhood” values. In actuality many did, but had no means of support. Sanger saw past the prostitute label and saw what was really the problem and tried to educate others on the problem. He saw not that it was a free willed choice, but a forced and involuntary one.