|
LITR 4232: American Renaissance  |
Final Exam Essays 2013 Sample answers for
|
 |
Britini Pond
A Window into our Past
As I believe I have stated before, the influence that history
has on literature, and the ability of literature to accurately and vividly
portray history is one of the things I love most about being a literature major.
Becoming a history major was something I heavily contemplated; my love of the
past and how we became all that we are today lead me to consider history as one
of my first possible majors when I entered college. However, it was when I
realized that I loved history from what I read and how it was depicted in my
fiction novels that I realized that perhaps literature was more for me.
Literature allows readers to get so much more of the whole picture of our
history when we are not confined to the pages of a text book. The laws passed
and important dates and who lost what war etc. are definitely significant and
worthy of recognition—but the emotions, feelings, understandings and situations
that the people were truly feeling and facing is so much more extraordinary to
me that I cannot imagine learning about the past in a better, more complete way,
than through literature and the works produced during the respective times in
our nation’s past.
By reading works by authors during the time period of the
American Renaissance, and truly becoming engaged in the words and emotions of
the characters, I have gained a much larger understanding of the culture that
the people were living in—a culture that has had so much of an influence on the
life I lead today in terms of the freedoms and privileges that I take for
granted on a day to day basis. The slave narratives read this semester gave me
much more of an insight into the heart of the slaves themselves than any
textbook in a history class could have possibly made available to me. The
Antebellum women’s movement and works produced during this time really intrigued
me and allowed me to look into the history of the rights and freedoms I enjoy.
It also gave me more of an insight into the heart of the women vying for women’s
rights. It is because of literature and its ability to capture the past in so
much more intimate of a way than history does, that I have grown more
knowledgeable of not just the events that took place, but of the people who were
going through it and how it has come to affect my life.
During the American Renaissance women did not have the same
rights and freedom as did their male counterparts. They were not allowed to
vote, could not own or inherit property and really had no protection under the
laws of the time. The Antebellum Women’s movement was a time when women stood up
for themselves and for the equality that was theirs by right, but not given to
them by choice. Women were tired of being controlled by their husbands and their
actions and movements restricted. In Margaret Fuller’s
The Great Lawsuit she charges at men
for asserting that they know what makes their woman happy and that the decisions
are theirs to make and not for the women to question. Fuller writes, “But
men cannot be deaf. It is inevitable that an external freedom, such as has been
achieved for the nation, should be so also for every member of it” (Fuller 4).
Fuller believes that if the nation as a whole has gained its freedom from
oppression then so should every individual inhabiting it – whites, blacks, men
and women, no one should be left out without their freedom.
Fuller goes on
to say that she wants to determine if women are truly happy in their roles and
place within society or if they just go along with it. The trader says to Fuller
“take my wife away
from the cradle, and the kitchen hearth, to vote at polls, and preach from a
pulpit! Of course, if she does such things, she cannot attend to those of her
own sphere” (Fuller 7). The “sphere” is the womanly duties of the household as
he mentions earlier, taking care of the children and doing the cooking and
cleaning. This man cannot even fathom a woman voting at the polls or preaching a
sermon. This many truly believes that a woman’s place is in the house and that
it is up to him whether she does anything else with her time. It is this kind of
belief that Fuller is speaking out against, she says “’Consent’—you!
It is not consent from you that is in question, it is assent from your wife”
(Fuller 10). She wanted men to understand that they might have been head of the
house but they were not the head and master of their wife and that she was given
her own mind to think with because they did not need a man to think for them.
It is hard for me to even consider a
time where my husband could control my every action and made all decisions for
me. Although there are still abusive and controlling relationships today where
men attempt to suppress their wives will, women are not without protection under
the law, we are not without rights and freedoms that guarantee us equality in
society and the workplace. We are not without support and understanding from the
majority. The women of the American Renaissance were without all these things.
They were seen as the property of their husband, not one half of the whole that
made the marriage. A woman’s decisions were made for her, as Elizabeth Stanton
asserts in her The Declaration of
Sentiments when she says “He has
compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which
she had no voice” (Stanton 5). These women
did not have a say and were not to be in the public
eye—her place was at home tending to the children and running the house. It
truly is hard for me to wrap my head around such a way of living and such a
belief that women were not individuals with minds, ideas and thoughts of their
own but rather commodities to be governed by their husbands, as is seen when
Stanton says “she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming,
to all intents and purposes, her master—the
law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty,
and to administer chastisement” (Stanton 10). Women were their husband’s
property, and when they got married everything that was the woman’s becomes the
man, and in the case of a divorce anything the wife brought to the marriage,
remains with her husband – including her children.
I live in a culture where a woman can usually (not in all
cases but it is something I have heard throughout my life) determine how a man
will treat her based on how he treats his own mother—but I guess this was not
the case during the American Renaissance. Men did not respect women as equal
partners, even though it is women who bear them, raise them, run the house they
grow up in, kiss their cuts and scrapes and tuck them in at night. No matter all
this, these young men are raised to view themselves as superior. They are raised
to view the little sister they played with, explored with and grew up with as
inferior and not worthy of their respect. I cannot understand such beliefs and
how they came about to be the norm of this era, and so much more, of our
country’s history. Reading these accounts from a woman who lived during the time
really brought the reality of women’s oppression to life, and made it more real
than I had previously given it credit for. I always knew that women were not as
free as we are today, but what really came to life was the emotions that these
women were feeling. They were so determined to be equals that they did whatever
was necessary to make their voices heard. To go against the norms that had been
in place in this country since its conception took strength and bravery and
makes these women who were brave enough to make a stand for themselves and all
women, so worthy of women’s respect because the credit for the life I lead today
is in part due to their dedication to achieving equality.
1865 flag of the USA