February 16, 2009 to syllabus Paper Topic Instructions and Options

New: questions on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women's rights

History 350: American Radicalism

I. Women's Roles in Nineteenth-Century America
    A. Demographic and family trends

    B. "Separate Spheres"

“In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes and to make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways that are always different. American women never manage the outward concerns of the family or conduct a business or take a part in political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor of the fields or to make any of those laborious efforts which demand the exertion of physical strength. No families are so poor as to form an exception to this rule. If, on the one hand, an American woman cannot escape from the quiet circle of domestic employments, she is never forced, on the other, to go beyond it.”--Alexis de Tocqueville

    C. The "Cult of True Womanhood": piety, purity, domesticity and submissiveness

II. Sources of Nineteenth-Century Women's Rights Movement

    A. Religious Revivalism

    B. "Moral Reform"

    C. "Domestic Feminism"

    D. A Sense of Sisterhood

III. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

    A. Privilege and Limitations

    B. Marriage, Family and Activism    (PBS website on Stanton and Susan B. Anthony)
(Stanton-Anthony Papers Online) (Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions)

  Elizabeth Cady Family Home, Upstate New York                    Cady Stanton with Daughter, 1856

Cady Stanton in her Later Years                                        Susan B. Anthony