Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...

unhealthy, sub-human environments. Hired based on gender stereotypes rather than
abilities or intellect, women were given little chance to improve their employment level.
The “Woman Question”
As women began to speak out against the injustices of the factory system and
inherent inequalities of legal protection in the separate spheres, a universal debate began
that involved philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders throughout the late nineteenth
century and into the early decades of the twentieth century. This debate, known as the
“Woman Question” or the “Woman Problem,” centered on the status of woman as a
member of human society in terms of biological, sexual, psychological, and intellectual
characteristics. Early commentary on the American “Woman Question” is found in
Harriet Martineau’s Society in America (1837), Sarah Grimké’s Letters on the Equality of
the Sexes and the Condition of Women (1838), and Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nine-
teenth Century (1845). 17 Each of these authors protested the hegemonic perpetuation of
woman as a subordinate object or property. This type of discourse on woman’s social
status and biological traits has, of course, been debated since the Middle Ages. But for
the first time, woman as Other became equated with pathology in her demands for
emancipation and reform.
Even though the term “feminist” was not coined until 1910, the feminist move-
ment began as early as 1848 with its first manifesto by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Her
17 Martineau (London, 1837; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1966); Grimké (Boston, 1838;
reprint, ed. Elizabeth Ann Bartlett, New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1988); Fuller (New York, 1845;
reprint, New York: Norton, 1971). The opinions of these writers are summarized in Ann Shapiro’s book,
Unlikely Heroines: Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Woman Question (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1987).
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