Industrial Revolution vs. Marital Bliss.

Photo source.

Even with modernity’s promise of universality and the industrial revolution’s advances in industry, women still struggled to have an equal role as men in early modern society. In this essay, I will argue that the changing role of women due to mechanization - and the resulting transformation of the familial domestic platform - disrupted traditional home life and resulted directly in discord within marital relationships: the residual effects of which still exist, today. Beginning with Sarah Gordon’s study of women’s domestic sewing practices at the turn of the twentieth century, Make It Yourself, I will research traditional gender roles, the move to factory jobs, effect on family tensions, and men’s criticism of - and often unwillingness to accept - women’s progression beyond a purely home-based role. I aim to recognize this history, and gauge whether residual male perceptions are - and can be - naturally resolved with further progression and education on the level they continue to exist at, today, by way of studying current domestic issues.

Works Cited:

Baxter, Janine, Hewitt, Belinda, and Haynes, Michele. ‘’Life Courses Transitions and Housework: Marriage, Parenthood, and Time on Housework’’. Journal of Marriage and Family 70. May 2008: 259-272. http://empower-daphne.psy.unipd.it/userfiles/file/pdf/BAXTER_2008.pdf

In this recent study on domestic housework in various situations of cohabitation, it’s concluded that women spend approximately 3 times as much time on housework as men: supporting the idea that an inequality in domestic work still exists today. It was also found that the amount of housework done increases when a woman goes from cohabiting to being married, whereas for men marriage has no change in the number of hours they contribute - and it’s only shown that the time men spend doing housework increases when, and if, they go from being married to separated from the wife: supporting my thesis on continuance of domestic inequality.

Gordon, Sarah A. Make It Yourself: Home Sewing, Gender, and Culture, 1890-1930. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

In Make It Yourself, Gordon examines domestic sewing practices in the home at the turn of the century, and how they were affected by factory-produced garments and jobs for women. In chapter one, she argues that - while working women found buying clothing necessary due to newfound time constraints with factory jobs, sewing at home continued on a large scale due to social standards and stigmas: even if households could afford manufactured clothing, it was an expected act in a woman’s ability to run and care for a household, to be a ‘good wife’, and to appease her husband by saving money, and was looked down upon if it wasn’t done. Gordon also delves into how sewing eventually earned women cottage-industry independence by way of earning their own incomes, and - though she remains objective - factually states how men believed that a woman earning money diminished his dignity, in this era, with detrimental effect.

Hansen, Thomas and Slagsvold, Britt. Home Equality. NOVA Rapport 8/2012. Nova - Norwegian Institute for Research on Adolescence, Welfare and Aging. 223. http://nova.no/asset/5912/1/5912_1.pdf

This European study examines how cohabiting or married men and women divide housework: it reinforces the typical statistics that in the majority of unions women do more housework, but also delves into the role of gender stereotypical traits in the division of chores: finding that men and women with less stereotypical ideas about gender are more likely to equally divide housework, and vice versa - and that younger couples are more apt to think this way, as opposed to older generations, in which these gender stereotypes of men’s and women’s roles in the home are highly integrated. It also reveals that women tend to be more open to gender equality ideas than men, and the correlation between the amount of housework done and the opposite partner’s resulting relationship satisfaction.

Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. Markham, Ontario: Penguin Books Canada, 1986.

In this feminist study of Motherhood and feminine strength, originally written in 1976, Rich openly opposes society’s ‘higher intrinsic human value to men than to women’: declaring resistance to the traditionally oppressed role of the woman as the housewife and mother, and the man as the sole wage-earner. She argues that men fundamentally oppose the idea of strong women - stemming from feelings of inadequacy, due to the power of women in harnessing all life on the planet - at a subconscious, profound level, and therefore oppression stems from men’s fear, resentment, and harbored anxiety - and that it has an economic cause and solution.

Wosk, Julie. Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

In this text, the fine line between gender stereotypes and the liberation of the working girl in the industrial ‘domain of men’ is examined (with a celebratory undertone) as Wosk overviews women’s role in many facets of industry, from Bicycles to Wartime - all the while proving the contradictory push and pull between how women were working in industry, and how it’s was perceived in an opposite light by men. She also explores, in chapter seven, how men’s stereotypical views failed to change and progress with time, and how machines helped women reconfigure their roles and redefine their identities in the beginning of the twentieth century, and in the face of ever-present male criticism and doubt.

Zlotnick, Susan. A ‘’World Turned Upside Downwards’’: Men, Dematerialization, and the Disposition-of-England Question. JHU Press, 2001. Google Book. <books.google.ca/books?isbn=0801866499>

In this examination of written work in the era of Britain’s industrial revolution - with an objective but ‘turn of the century men are ludicrous’ stance – Zlotnick examines case studies and testimonials cited in critical and fictional men’s writing of the new industrial era. She identifies the underlying issues in these written pieces in the early chapters to be men’s unyielding fear of the changing gender roles of the time, throughout: citing proof that the liberation of women as the factory worker was seen as a threat to the male role, and therefore it was openly criticized by the majority of men in written literature as a degrading ‘perversion of nature’ that signified the breakdown of patriarchal traditions in Britain: complete with case studies of the ‘abandoned’ man who’s unable to manage and care for his kids while his wife works at the factory, at a time when this is genuinely seen as the woman’s downfall, not the man’s blatant inadequacy.