Essay on 19th Century and Women

Submitted By nena_ediith
Words: 940
Pages: 4

Woman in the
19th & 21st Century…
People weren’t always the same. People weren’t always as we are now. Men and women each had different roles in life. Women had different roles back then than what they have now a days. Things back then were much more different than how they are today. Each gender had their own things going on. Each gender had their responsibilities to take and had them done. They each had different roles. Now women’s and men’s roles are varying. Now it’s not the gender that tells what they can and can’t do.
Women’s role from the 19th century is different from the one now. Women back in the time weren’t allowed to do a lot of the things that women do now. A women’s place and only job was to take care of the house. What I mean is that women had to stay home while their husbands went to work. Women had to do the basics which were to cook, clean, and take care of their children. They were housewives in those days. Of course women in the low-class whether they were white or African Americans were to work for high class people. They were to cook for their masters, clean the houses, look after their master’s children, had to wash clothes and dishes. These women in low class were allowed to work to help their husbands bring money home for food, to care for their own family, too. Enslaved women did double the work. They were to not only do house work in their master’s house but were to get home and do their house’s cleaning. They were to get home and take care of their own children, cook, and eventually clean what they had to clean in their homes. Others still had to come home and also work not only in their house but were to work in the field. The highest working positions low class white women had were laundresses, seamstresses, dressmakers, and nurses. These positions required a lot of training and skills. Women weren’t just house wives. They were men’s property. Yes, even white women were because they were to listen, they were to OBEY men. Women weren’t dependent of themselves yet. Women didn’t have any political role in the 19th century. Back then women’s rights didn’t even exist. Women couldn’t even get an education and couldn’t choose to work certain professions. All professions were closed to women except for the ones that were for women which were low paid jobs (the ones I described above). They were banned from universities and could not get an education. Their main job was to just get married and have children. That was the one and only job a women was to have. Women that got married and had inherited some land or money were not to be hers’ anymore but her husband’s. A high class white woman was to marry and have children. She was vowed to obey her husband whether he was an adulterous man or not. They were highly dressed. Women were to be in these tight corsets and big fancy dresses. They were to always have these layers of clothes on no matter what. They were like some type of dolls dressing in these big, fancy, layered dresses, with their bodice real tight feeling uncomfortable, but eventually they got use to it.
Women in the 21st century have different roles. Now women are allowed to go to school. Women can get an education, they can go to any university they want and eventually get a good