Women In The Early Republic

Women were expected to marry, take care of their husbands and children, and complete other tasks needed for their families while staying in their place under men. The documents we read so far demonstrate the dependent nature of women in the early republic. We can look at a towering figure such as Thomas Jefferson to see the dependent status of women in the early republic. This notion that women were unequal to men was very prominent at the time and created a drastic divide. Thus, first we will examine Jefferson and then we will hear from Judith Sargent Murray who calls for equality within America regarding women’s rights.
Jefferson was the first to advocate publicly funded education. He believed that education would prepare the people for public duties as well as their private pursuits. His plan-incorporated girls attending elementary schools however did not …show more content…
Thomas Jefferson believed that women’s education was solely for the purpose to serve the home, including educating their own children, therefore elementary level education was enough for women’s domestic role. To Jefferson, women’s education was limited stating in his letter that it is essential to give women a solid education to prepare them for motherhood in order to "educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be lost, or incapable, or inattentive"(Norton 51). Clearly Jefferson believed that women were incompetent to have any political involvement and should only be educated for their children’s well-beings, nothing more.
Murray advocates women’s equality by illustrating why women are just as smart as men but are inhibited by ignorance in an eloquent,