Introduction:
Despite the growth of industry, urban centers and immigration, America in the late 19th
century was still predominantly rural. Seven out of ten people in the United States lived in
small towns with populations under 2500 or on farms in 1870. In Indiana, the 1880 census
reported a population of almost 2 million residents, about 55 per square mile, 1,010,000
men and 968,000 woman. About three out of four people lived in rural areas. Although
much of the study done on womans roles during this period looks at the roles of the
emerging urban middle class or those of immigrant women, the changes that occurred
affected rural women, too.
The “Cult of Domesticity, ” first named and identified in the early part of the century, was
solidly entrenched by late nineteenth century, especially in rural environments. The beliefs
embodied in this Cult gave women a central, if outwardly passive, role in the family.
Womens God-given role, it stated, was as wife and mother, keeper of the household,
guardian of the moral purity of all who lived therein. The Victorian home was to be a
haven of comfort and quiet, sheltered from the harsh realities of the working world.
Housework took on a scientific quality, efficiency being the watchword. Children were to
be cherished and nurtured. Morality was protected through the promulgation of Protestant
beliefs and social protest against alcohol, poverty and the decay of urban living.
Pulling against these traditions was the sense of urgency, movement and progress so
evident in the geographical, industrial, technological and political changes affecting the
country. Womens roles were meant to steady all this uncertainty, but women could not help
but see opportunities for themselves in this growth. Jobs opened up in factories, retail
establishments and offices, giving single women new options. Education became
mandatory for both genders in many states. Women sought higher education, too, first in
all female institutions and then in co-ed environments. The push for womens rights, with
suffrage in the forefront, also gathered momentum. Regardless of these changes,
throughout the nineteenth century, 95% of married women remained “at home.”
The proliferation of popular literature and the expansion of communications through the
press and other means could not have helped but enlighten rural women to the
opportunities opening up for their gender. Their lives, however, were tied to house and
children, endlessly unacknowledged work, little opportunity for outside contact or variety
of experience, and little relief from everyday triviality. The extent to which farm women
felt any fulfillment or larger meaning may indeed have been tied to how well they could
balance the tensions between the expectations of the culture and the day-to-day,
unrelenting tasks of housekeeping, child rearing and farm life.
Keeping the Home
” A really good housekeeper is almost always unhappy. While she does so much for the
comfort of others, she nearly ruins her own health and life. It is because she cannot be easy
and comfortable when there is the least disorder or dirt to be seen.” The Household,
January 1884
“…some one said that womans best work is that which is unseen by mortal eye…that this
work is the steady uplifting and upholding of a higher standard of living; it is the reaching
forward and upward, both for ourselves and others, towards a loftier life… Yes, it is hard.
But, sisters, it is work that belongs to us. It is work that, if not done by us, will never be
done at all. For man cannot do it – as far as the family is concerned…For as a rule, and it is
a rule that has few exceptions, woman creates the atmosphere of the home.” Mrs. Julia
C.R. Dorr, The Household, Vol. V, 1872
Womens popular literature of the period is full of advice about and encouragement for
proper housekeeping. Implicit in this advice is the notion that by keeping a clean, neat,
pious home and filling it with warmth and inviting smells, women are achieving their
highest calling. The movement to elevate the status of housework found an early voice in
the writings of Catherine Beecher. Beecher devoted much effort to glorifying
housekeepingand attempting to convince her readers that their daily duties, however
tedious or distressing, constituted important works assigned to them by Nature and God.
Beecher was one of the early proponents of scientific housekeeping, believing that a good
housekeeper should be a jack-of-all-sciences, and use those sciences to run the household
efficiently. She went so far as to suggest a explicit weekly schedules and rational designs
for the kitchen and cooking areas. Her many manuals and cookbooks offered not only a
philosophy for housekeeping, but practical methods for accomplishing those philosophical
ends.
A review of the popular literature of the time provides unique insights into the expectations
for womens lives and the realities of their existence. In his book, So Sweet to Labor,
author Norton Juster looked at the advice given and the responses received in a few
publications of the time. He notes that the term drudgery appears again and again as a
descriptive term. Women wrote letters that described the endless, repetitive work
undertaken week by week. Not that it was all woe – many reported about the joys of
fulfilling their womanly role as keeper of the house, or wrote to chastise their complaining
sisters.
The weekly schedule of “drudge” likely included laundry on Monday, ironing and mending
on Tuesday, baking on Wednesday and Saturday, daily tidying of kitchen and parlor, and
thorough cleaning on Thursday and again on Saturday. This was in addition to childcare,
three meals a day, hauling water and keeping the fire burning in the stove, a chore that in
itself took at least one hour each day. Then there was making the family garments and
seasonal preserving of fruits, vegetables and meat. Often, too, the scope of work extended
to the farm itself. Women had charge of the farm garden, livestock and poultry and work
related to “civilizing” the farm. During planting and harvest, if she did not work in the
fields herself, she provided room and board for the extra help that did.
It is evident from the conflicting opinions offered in literature of the period that womens
lives were fraught with tensions. How-to manuals, magazine and newspaper articles set
high, if not impossible, standards for moral rectitude, cleanliness and cheerfulness. The
realities posed by the sheer number of tasks to be completed daily, monthly and yearly
stressed even the hardiest of women. Even so, many women responded to the challenges
place before them with humor and pride.
Health and Childbearing
“None of the many mysteries displayed by the study of life has been to mankind more
unintelligible than that of disease, and nothing is more striking about this than the terribly
disproportionate amount of suffering which falls to the lot of women. All my life I have
been engaged in the study of their specia ailments, and no conclusion is more firmly rooted
in my mind than a devout thankfulness that I belong to the other sex.” Sir Lawton Tait,
1890
Much was written in the closing years of the nineteenth century about the innate health – or
lack of it – of the female. The middle and upper class ideal of woman was that of an
invalid. Professional medical theories at the time stated that womans normal condition was
to be sick. Corresponding to the idea of separate spheres” for women and men in society,
the idea that women were, by their nature, sickly, complemented the idea that men were
robust, aggressive, healthy and thus naturally predisposed to the harsh, competitive world
of work while women were more suited to the quiet, sanctified life of the home. This is not
to say that the illness which did afflict women were inconsequential. For example, for
every 100 women who were twenty in 1865, more than 5 would die of tuberculosis by age
30, more than 8 by age 50. Disease was real, and devastating.
Rural women were required, by the nature of their work, to be healthy and strong. But that
was often not the case. Beset by long days of labor, they were often exhausted, mentally
and physically. It was generally accepted, however, that the prevalence of sickness and
decline was the result of the “peculiarity” of her anatomy – woman as a natural invalid.
Contemporary writings often noted the preponderance of nervous disorders and
“fretfulness.”
Middle and upper class women could and did seek medical care from (male) doctors.
Working class women sought help in patent medicines and an increasing number of
self-help books and magazines. Cures calling for eggs, tar, soot, herbal extracts and other
household ingredients illuminated the pages of popular magazines. For example, a recipe
for a cure for rheumatism states,
“To a handful of blue flag root add a pint of good spirits; let stand for a week. Dose, a
spoon full three times a day, and increase by degrees to three tablespoons full a day. Or,
apply a poultice of hot potatoes; renew as often as it becomes hard or cool. It is said to be a
very excellent remedy.”
Similar concoctions were proposed for the cure of bleeding lungs, cancer, shortness of
