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

members of the women’s movement, including Rosa Mayreder, a leading crusader for a
loftier morality in women’s issues. She argued that the emerging promiscuity of the
1890s did not reflect gender equality but a step down to masculine morality, which was
ultimately a threat to women. 23
The “Woman Question” in American society at the turn of the century explored
these same stereotypes of moral degeneration in terms of emancipation. As early as
1871, Catharine Beecher addressed the Christian Women of America with an appeal for
mothers to influence their families and bring about a more moral nation. She opposed the
suffragist movement because she felt that it would expose women to the corruption of
contemporary politics and debase their character. 24 By the 1890s, the stereotype of
woman as a seductress became a social expectation. The previous glorification of
motherhood also had degenerated. In literature and opinion papers the mother was now
depicted as “overly protective and rigidly moralistic.” 25
The feminist of the 1890s was represented by Charles Dana Gibson’s illustrations
featured in Life magazine, the “Gibson Girl.” This “new woman” put aside the corsets of
Victorian dress and domestic expectations for a freer style of fashion and a civic sense of
family responsibility. The home was still the fortress of moral education and character,
but now women extended their influence beyond its sphere by implementing ideas of
reform in the public sphere through their husbands. The new market of women’s
23 Anderson, 128.
24 S. Jay Kleinberg, Women in the United States, 1830-1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1999), 178.
25 Lucy M. Freibert, “Images of Women in American Literature” in Women’s Studies
Encyclopedia, ed. Helen Tierney (Greenwood Press, 2002).
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