The role of women in nineteenth-century society was largely subordinate to the male and was also limited to the household to a very great degree. Middle- and upper-class women had an ideal for women, and the perfect woman was one who was devoted to the care and attention of her husband and children. For the unmarried woman, such devotion was to be directed toward a good cause serving the community. Some women were paid for work and had to work to make ends meet, but generally it was considered improper for women of a certain class to earn a living. Women could not vote, involve themselves in politics, or argue with their husbands, and they had no legal rights to possessions or their own children (Bartley and Loxton 29).
By the latter part of the nineteenth century, this ideal was beginning to disintegrate for many woman as they involved themselves in a variety of causes to change society. There was a steady rise in the number of women working in factories from 1850 to 1870, making items such as clothes, cigars, umbrellas, and shoes (Bartley and Loxton 41). The suffrage movement started at the end of the century in an attempt to bring the vote to women, and it was believed that women had to have the vote in order to have the means to improve their conditions and to grain greater equality. Mrs. Cady Stanton and Mrs. Lucretia Mott organized a conference to discuss women's rights as early as 1848. Once the slaves were freed by the Civil War, women saw a chance to push their claim for suffrage. At the same time, the issue of race divided the women's movement because the proposed 15th Amendment to the Constitution gave black men the vote and excluded women. One group of women was willing to compromise on this issue while another was not. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, and this group involved itself in a number of issues such as divorce and the organization ...