The momentum of the Revolution continued to carry women through the years of the early Republic. The change in American views of women was called Republican Motherhood. Republican Motherhood was a new way of viewing women and their role in society and signaled a move from the soft fragility of women to the new “model republican woman” who “was competent and competent . . . [and] rational, benevolent, independent, self-reliant” (Kerber 1980, 206).

Overview

The drastic change in the view of women and what defined them was directly related to the reevaluation of all aspects of American life. As Americans tried to determine what, exactly, their ideals and aspirations were, they also had to confront the way the new language they were developing conflicted with the traditional role of women. While “Republican thought did not require that each member of society give his (or her) consent to government . . . liberal thought” did and caused people to consider whether women could consent without a right to vote (Lewis 2002, 89). Efforts were made to mitigate this, remaking the American woman “as a political being,” if only in her political influence on her family (Kierner 1992, 407). Women’s rights were based on “duty and obligation, rather than on liberty and choice” which justified the division of women and men under the new language governing Americans (Zagarri 1998, 205). In congruence with this, men embraced the idea that women also had rights, although those rights were defined by their obligations to home and family (Zagarri 1998, 203).

Despite these efforts to constrain women’s rights to certain aspects within the newly defined liberty of the United States, a spark had been lit. Women were gaining rights, and were noticing the stark differences between the rights they were gaining compared to those of men. Women had also made considerable sacrifices in the war, which “led some women to expect equal treatment thereafter” because they had contributed significantly to the founding of the United States just as men had (Norton 1980, 225). Additionally, “once women had attained the status of rights bearers, no formal theory . . . could contain the radical power of rights talk” setting the stage for later pushes in favor of women’s rights, as well as moves made by women in the early republic (Zagarri 1998, 205).

The new embrace of women’s rights, no matter how different they were to men’s rights, required a rethinking of femininity in the new republic. Just as men had to fulfill the duty to the public, women did, too, and early Americans needed a new femininity that fit with the changing conception of women and liberty. Freedom and the pursuit of happiness was seen for women as “the fulfillment of the right to enjoy what was natural” which Americans believed to be “the performance of traditional gender roles” (Steele 2008, 22; Zagarri 1998, 221).

Despite the limits of their rights, femininity was changing. Women went from evaluated only in relation to their families to looked at “in the context of society as a whole” (Norton 1980, 297). The war had caused “a partial breakdown and reinterpretation of gender roles” that reformed the division between male and female, allowing women more leniency in previously masculine places (Norton 1980, 224-225). Most importantly, perceptions of femininity were changing. No longer were all feminine traits looked at so negatively as they had been before as women were held to much higher praise (Norton 1980, 228). Additionally, the majority of the women who craved greater rights and freedom, wanted their liberty without losing “their specifically feminine character” (Norton 1980, 249).

Regardless of these strides, women were still considered the feminine, docile sex in comparison to the masculine, bold men. Women didn’t gain political rights, which “were considered masculine” and retained their female domesticity, albeit with greater acknowledgement in the public realm (Zagarri 1998, 220).

The conflict over women’s rights and new liberal ideals was managed through the newfound idea of Republican Motherhood. Through Republican Motherhood, women were recognized for the importance of their domestic work and the role they played in raising the next generation of American citizens. It became the goal to which all (middle and upper class, white) women were meant to aspire to and become.

Republican Mothers were supposed to guide their children and husbands. Republicans believed that “it was in the family that men were trained for society” so it was critical that mothers could complete this training and fulfill their important role (Lewis 2002, 85). Women’s “influence on their children” was now broadly recognized and seen as the ultimate way to ready them for society by instilling in them “principles of morality and patriotism” (Norton 1980, 248). They were to use their newfound access to “education and intellect primarily to make themselves better wives and mothers” (Kierner 1992, 404).

This was the way women were meant to act in a political capacity, stepping back from the more liberal and male-like roles they had taken on during the Revolution. Women had still made incredible strides from their status before the war, as “society had at last formally recognized women’s work as valuable” (Norton 1980, 298). They managed to maintain political value, even as they returned completely to the domestic sphere since they were supposed “to use their innate goodness to benefit the new political order” (Kierner 1992, 389). Ultimately, “she was to guide her husband and children . . . She was to be teacher as well as mother” (Kerber 1980, 235)

Critical to the idea of Republican Motherhood was the guidance and teaching mothers would supply to their children. In order to provide this key aspect, “prospective mothers needed to be well informed and decently educated” prompting a surge in girls’ education (Kerber 1980, 200). Americans had come to see themselves as “republican citizens” who had certain obligations to their republic with idealized roles to fulfill these obligations. A woman, in this idealized role, was to be “an independent thinker and patriot, a virtuous wife, competent household manager, and knowledgeable mother” all of which “required formal instruction in a way that the earlier paragon, the notable housewife, did not” (Norton 1980, 256). Therefore, women’s education was deeply “tied to ideas about the sort of woman who could be of greatest service to the Republic” (Kerber 1980, 10).

The idea of women’s “service” and obligation to others provided the justification for educating them. Girls’ education was indeed meant to “steel girls to face adversity” as self-reliant republican citizens, but more importantly “to qualify her for a good marriage and for the proper training of children” (Kerber 1980, 272; Steele 2008, 27). Education was also justified against fears that “uneducated or frivolous women could too easily be seduced, while well-taught and sober women could keep men on the path of virtue” (Lewis 2002, 86). However, fears about educating women still persisted, as “some worried about the dangers of women who were too educated” (Lewis 2002, 86).

Despite some more conservative fears about women’s education, middle and upper class girls flooded into rapidly expanding schools, particularly in the northeast. In support of these changes, some, like Judith Sargent Murray, “went so far as to argue that women were men’s intellectual equals” and were held back by their lack of education, not a lack of intelligence (Lewis 2002, 85). With the overall embrace of girls’ education, these views were only bolstered.

The experience of school aged girls changed drastically following the Revolution. Girls went from having little to no education to being expected to be educated, and educated well (Norton 1980, 276). Girls especially embraced this change and “hardly needed parental injunctions to be studious” as they “understood that they had the chance for a better education than that available to any previous generation of female Americans, and they were determined to take full advantage of their favored position” (Norton 1980, 278).

Their newfound importance to the republic and education only bolstered the confidence women had gained from their roles in the Revolution. Women experienced vast changes during the Revolution and “no longer accepted unquestioningly the standard belief in feminine weakness, delicacy, and incapacity” (Norton 1980, 228).

Women became more outspoken, with an increased “willingness to question their husbands’ judgement” (Norton 1980, 124). They also began “to challenge the sexual double standard,” expressing their confidence and their voice (Norton 1980, 240). Women were ultimately finding themselves newly capable of strength in a world where the men had returned.

However, women still faced hurdles and “gained rights in theory but often not in practice” (Lewis 2002, 91). No sweeping change occurred to give women a true political voice, but small changes stemming from the confidence women had gained did occur. Women saw some legal rights improved in certain states, as well as practicing “more nearly egalitarian marital relationships” in some cases (Lewis 2002, 91; Norton 1980, 228). Mary Wollstonecraft’s outspoken feminism on the other side of the Atlantic also served to help women by popularizing “the language of rights–by which Americans could understand, refer to, and analyze women” and pave the way for future strides in women’s rights (Zagarri 1998, 210).

The end of the war and subsequent return of men to their usual political spheres did not reduce women’s interests in politics. In turn, “many American men were willing to allow women private political influence of the sort advocated and exercised by Abigail Adams” and promoted by the idea of Republican Motherhood (Norton 1980, 191). In an even more progressive move, New Jersey allowed women’s political opinions to be aired publicly, by giving them the right to vote (Norton 1980,193).

Women’s participation and importance in the Revolution along with the idea of Republican Motherhood spurred continued interest and engagement in politics, albeit most often through husbands. However, following the war, “political discussion and even activism was never to be as alien as it had been to women born before 1760,” setting a precedent for later activism by women and giving women faith in their own political abilities (Norton 1980, 194). Women may not have received rights equal to those of men, but they still expressed their political views to a much greater degree that before the war, when they weren’t expected to have any political views whatsoever.

Republican Motherhood and the limited rights that women gained following the Revolution arose from a conflict over beliefs about women and the rights of the governed. Despite strides women had made, they were still considered inherently different to men and held back by certain female traits, culminating in limited rights justified by their household influence. In fact, some historians even argue that “this new notion of women’s influence was a sop given women to appease them for not being accorded a direct role in government” (Lewis 2002, 90).

Clearly, women did indeed come out of the Revolution with more rights, but they were incomplete. The formulation of the rights women did receive and their household influence were the result of “Americans attempt[ing] to reconcile two conflicting principles: the equality of the sexes and the subordination of women to men” (Zagarri 1998, 204). Ultimately, women were afforded different rights than men in an effort to embrace both “the universality of rights for both men and women” while enacting those rights “differentially to the sex of the rights bearer” upholding republican and liberal beliefs while holding on to ideas about the nature of women (Zagarri 1998, 221).

Women were still primarily relegated to a subordinate status because the war had not succeeded in changing some long held beliefs about the nature of women. Even after the war “a folklore persisted that discounted women’s political behavior, assumed that women were incapable of making reasoned and unbiased political judgments, and emphasized the hesitancy of women to sacrifice their creature comforts for higher national purposes” (Kerber 1980, 36). Femininity, while diverging somewhat from pre-war beliefs, still characterized women as governed by their emotions and unfit learning and politics that might “‘unsex’ women” (Kerber 1980, 247; Norton 1980, 263). Therefore, while women had indeed made strides in the direction of equality, beliefs about them persisted that differentiated them from men.