Clearly, the 1800's was a time a great atrocities, sorrow, and genocide. About 1854 the controversy over slavery was reaching a boiling point as the congressional debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Act was underway. "Appeal to the Women of the Free States" describes-quite accurately-the general consensus of women when referring to the choice of being a slave state or free state. The author(s) explains the genuine disapproval women have of slavery and how devastating it was for them, emotionally, to watch it continue. "Of the woes, the injustice, and the misery of slavery, it is not needful to speak. There is but one feeling and one opinion on this among us all. I do not think there is a mother among us all, who clasps her child to her breast, who could ever be made to feel it right that that child should be a slave; not a mother among us all who would not rather lay that child in its grave (UTC p 459)."
The author(s) also touches on women's rights in this essay, "However ambition and the love of political power may blind the stronger sex (UTC p459)." It goes on to say that women don't have a voice because they are being silenced by the men who have such political power. And the author(s) insist that women need to speak up and make their voices heard because that is their duty as a women-which brings up my next point. I do love how women are trying to make a change and get involved in political matters, besides doing housework and taking care of their husbands. However the excerpt shows how prevalent female oppression still was then-even when pushing the boundaries for women's rights. "What, then, is the duty of American women at this time? The first duty is for each woman, for herself thoroughly to understand the subject, and to feel that as mother, wife, sister, or member of society, she is bound to give her influence on the right side (UTC p 461)."
That particular statement-the way it is worded-along with this one, "I do not think believe there is a husband who would think it right that his wife should be considered, by law, the property of another man, and not his own (UTC p 459)." is still tainted with sexist undertones. The belief that a women is a man's property once they are married, and that a wife's duty is to gently influence her husband, is also seen in the actual novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Mrs. Shelby pleads with her husband not to sell Tom-she begs him to turn to religion and look internally for some shred of morals and values that they swear to live by in church every Sunday, but to no avail. She reacts much the same way the author of "Appeal to the Women of the Free States" claims she would-she is upset and refuses to take part in any of the trade, "I'll be in no sense accomplice or help in this cruel business. . . they shall see, at any rate, that their mistress can feel for and with them (UTC p32)!"
I think this essay helps us, as readers, understand some of the moral dilemmas being faced at this time in history. But, particularly, this article helps us see that-on a much smaller, but still severe scale-women were a minority much like people of non-Caucasian descent. No, they were not all being savagely beaten and tortured, but they were looked at as property, abused, given duties, seen as inferior and less intelligent, belittled, bound by the law, and so on. Basically, they were looked at as a child, maybe one step above if at all; suffice to say, the oppression of women largely resembled slavery.
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