Elizabeth Cady Stanton And Catherine Beecher's The Feminine Sphere

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Feniben Patel
“The Feminine Sphere” In the United States, today, women have the same legal rights as the opposite gender, but this was not always the case in history Women had to fight in a generally bloodless war to get their rights. Men were handed their basic rights, where women had to fight for equality to then thought superior man. Women’s activists and feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Catherine Beecher, were participants of the same movement but believed in different end goals. Feminism is the support of women 's rights in regards to political, social, and economic equality to men. Feminism was a byproduct of abolitionist movement, because many women compared their own lives to the life of an African Slave, because slaves and women
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Catharine Beecher and Elizabeth Cady Stanton both fought for the same movement, but believed in different roles for their fellow mates. Catharine Beecher wanted to educate women so their position in the family could be elevated (pg. 154). Catharine was born into an illustrious family, her father and brothers were all ministers (pg. 155). Beecher believed in educating women, so they can make better wives, mothers and better companions for their husbands, by aiding them in their economic, and/or social dilemma (pg 155). Beecher believed that women can be better teachers than men, because teaching was a career that required lots of patiences, and patience was the within the feminine sphere (pg.156). Women are more suited to create character, whether it be in schools or family (pg.157). Belonging, to a religious family, her feminist beliefs were influenced by religion. She said, “Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior, and to the other the subordinate station” (pg. 158). She meant men were the superior sex and women were the subordinate. She believed women would could be better teachers because they would endorse the traditional role rather than protest the idea (pg.158). Catharine …show more content…
Beecher wrote an essay in 1837, where she mentioned, “But if females, as they approach the other sex, in intellectual elevation, begin to claim, or to exercise in any manner, the peculiar prerogatives of the sex, education will prove a doubtful and dangerous blessing” (pg. 167). Catharine explained that if women tried to step out of the female sphere then, it would be detrimental to the society, as they wouldn 't be fulfilling their true duties for the feminine sphere. Notwithstanding with Beecher, Cady Stanton believed counter to that. In the address to Seneca Falls convention in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton stated, “ women stands by side of man, his equal, placed here by her God, to enjoy with him the beautiful earth, which is her home as it is his, having the same sense of right and wrong, and looking to the same being for guidance and support” (pg.169). Cady Stanton believed the world belong as much to a women as much as it belongs to a men, women knows from right and wrong as much as men know. Cady Stanton and Beecher both wanted women to have a higher place than they have , but one want that just the change within the home, and one wanted the shift within the home, as well as the outside of the

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