Maybe: A Thought on the Suppression of Women

    While reading the context section of "The Place of Women in Society",  I was struck by a thought. That maybe the reason women were so suppressed for so long is because men were, on some level, afraid of them. Going back to the Bible, (and excuse me if I get any of this wrong, I am not very educated about the Bible)  I believe the whole thing with Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit involved Eve being convinced to eat the fruit and then convincing Adam to eat it as well. So going off of this, maybe men were afraid that if Eve could convince Adam to do something that they were specifically told not to do by God, that something just as awful could happen again with women convincing men to do something. So they're only solution was to make women think they could not make an active decision (like Eve did when eating the fruit first) so that they could avoid making such a mistake again. In the first excerpt by Sarah Stickney Ellis "The Daughters of England: Their Position in Society, Characters and Responsibilities" she goes on and on about how wonderful it is to be a woman in the household. Every time she describes a women's role, it is a passive one. Ellis talks about how women are able to exert such an influence over men. She explains this more, but it is always about a woman being able to influence a decision, but never actively decide. Then in the next excerpt "Hints on the Modern Governess System" by the Anonymous author, he or she mentions the Adam and Eve scene, and says, "Thenceforth, man wreaked his vengeance upon woman, for the loss of ease and plenty, by keeping her ignorant, and, consequently, helpless"(606). This supports my point for why women were suppressed. And since that's all they knew, of course many women such as Ellis would believe that the rightful place for a woman was an inferior position in the household and be against women having any rights. But what Ellis doesn't realize, is that the reason she believes that is all so lovely is only because men want her and all women to think that. Because if women think that their ultimate, best place is an inferior one, then men will never have to worry about a repeat of what happened with Adam and Eve and the Forbidden Fruit.

Horrified

    After reading the passages assigned for tomorrow, I am just horrified. I think I have always heard the more fantasized, glamorized versions of the working-class during this time period. What comes to mind are movies like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and "Mary Poppins". Of course these are fiction, but that is the extent of my knowledge on this subject. These readings were very eye-opening and grossly fascinating.  Specifically the excerpts from "Contexts: Work and Poverty".
     The section from Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844  was so descriptive, I felt like I could actually smell the horrific smells of the filth and destitution. All of the accounts about how awful the lives of these poor people were struck me as even worse when compared to the excerpt from Andrew Ure's, The Philosophy of Manufactures. His observations and accounts made it sound like it was a privilege for the working people to work in the mills and live in "apartments more airy and salubrious than those of the metropolis"(p.574) is just astounding! It strikes me as so sad and horrendous that these people are being overlooked so blatantly. Engels account goes into detail about the placement of the working-classes housing situation and it is anything  but "airy" (Engels makes it very evident that any spare inch of space was built on to accommodate the poor) and "salubrious" (Engels also describes the filth and how there was excrement and disgusting chemicals and substances everywhere.) The fact the Ure could so blatantly lie about conditions like that is inhumane.
     This inhumanity of Ure, and I'm sure he was not the only one to try to convinve the public that the working conditions really weren't all that bad, makes me think of the slave of accounts and Mary Prince's personal account of what it was like being in slavery. This does not make me think very much of people who administered such horrible treatments to fellow people, and especially children! That I cannot wrap my head around and makes no sense how someone has it in them to do that.
    So basically these readings put things into perspective of what life was really like for the working class in England during this time.