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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
In five pages this paper contrasts the public role and legal status of colonial women with the primary text cited being Julia Cherry Spruill’s Women’s Life and Work in the Southern Colonies. Two sources are listed in the bibliography.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TG15_TGfemsouth.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
America, there was nothing in the way of gender equality or social identity. Just as the color of their skin oppressed the slaves in the Southern colonies, gender enslaved
the women everywhere. Opportunities to extend beyond strictly defined societal parameters were rare. However, the women of the colonial era made the most of what was available to
them at the time, and the contrasts that existed between their public role and legal status are noteworthy. Colonial women were expected to be wives and mothers.
This was "the purpose of her being, and home was the sphere of all her actions" (Spruill 232). Whatever public role these women would perform would be based largely
upon the domestic sphere and their marital status. While they were predominantly homemakers kept quite busy maintaining home and hearth through cooking, cleaning, having babies, and helping their husbands
to plant and harvest crops, this was not their sole means of employment (Spruill 232). Anything that would take women out of the domestic sphere would increase their public
persona. Initially, education was a luxury reserved exclusively for men, but in jobs that did not require either any type of formal education or technical training, women would be
hired. The obvious vocational choices were extensions of their housekeeping and caregiver roles. According to Rita J. Simon and Gloria Danziger, authors of Womens Movements in America: Their
Successes, Disappointments, and Aspirations, "In general, women were confined to professions that were associated with their supposedly natural inclinations--caring and nurturing for the young, sick, and disabled, as well as
educating children and wayward women" (42). They could also be teachers or schoolmistresses at least at the public education level, but again only men were deemed qualified for any
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