For this week, we're reading three pieces:
1) "Review: On Citizenship" - This book review gives the broad context for citizenship and marriage
2) Jan Lewis, "The Republican Wife: Viritue and Seduction in the Early Republic"
3) Linda Kerber, "'No Political Relation to the State:' Conflicting Obligations in the Revolutionary Era."
All of them look at the place of marriage and women in particular when it comes to politics and citizenship. Lewis and Kerber both examine the late 1700s and early 1800s. They are interested in marriage and its political meaning, but they give a different reading than Nancy Cott's first chapter (go back and remind yourself if you've forgotten.)
There are also a lot of legal and political terms in these readings. What are liberalism, republicanism, ascriptive Americanism, consent, and contract? What do these things have to do with marriage? What do these ideas have to do with the American Revolution and the early Republic?
*Also: start to think about what topic you might want to consider for your first paper. The paper will be a historiography paper, asking you to consider how different historians have interpreted a particular topic. If you want to test out an idea on the blog, please do so! I'll make a post for ideas and comments.
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I think that the political theory practiced in any period has very much to do with marriage. Based on our first week's readings, we saw that an underlying concept in both marriage and government is the ability to consent to make a contract. The chapter from Kerber, speaks about how citizenship status makes it possible to forms contracts, and ultimately marriage. Ann Martin, while being a "citizen" of the state, was not a "member" of the state. Since she was not a "member" she could not be held responsible for actions that she did if she was coerced to do so by her husband. Does this change the meaning of "citizen" then? Typically we think of a citizen as a member of a state, but during this time period, it seems that a citizen is only a legal term for a resident, whereas "member" takes the place of our conventional thinking of the rights and responsiblities of a citizen. Sterett raises similar questions. The citizenship of women has always been highly dependent on their husbands, but even so this did not give them the same rights as their husbands, who would be "members" of the state. Only with the rise of liberalism (based on Sterett's definition on 779) do we see a merging of members and citizens into a single entity. Political definitions are then very important because the definitions and ideologies shape the policy, which includes marriage policy and citizenship in the context of marriage.
In the Lewis piece, I was very surprised at some of the sentiments expressed regarding women's place in society in the nineteenth century. I had, from previous study of the notion of separate spheres, assumed that women would not have been able to act outside of the home with much agency, and that they would have been confined to the home as much as possible.
However, I was shocked at some of the actions they justified as trying to make a "republican" out of the men. I would never have thought someone would have thought that "once she had seduced him into virtue, the married woman's task was to preserve her husband in the exalted state to which her influence had raised him" (Lewis, 701). I would never have thought that they would assume automatically that every woman is more virtuous than any man in the country at the time. And if they were to assume this, I would want to know why they then didn't include the women in the voting populace and as full citizens, because I would think that if the men needed their wives to teach them to be moral and virtuous, wouldn't their wives then be more knowledgable about certain situations than their husbands?
The only thing I could come up with, besides the traditional view of things, would be that they would have to completely give up the ties to the government being a larger reflection of people's family lives; if women were more powerful than men, they would usurp power, which the men in charge would not like, and they would change the government of the new republic; no matter if the changes were for good, they would not be well-received simply because they were stated by a woman.
The republican wife was ultimately the founding father's way of imposing their ideals for this new social structure unto men. It is quite true that women's influence over men's decisions is large and the new government sought to exploit that with the idea of a hrepublican wife. However this then allowed for women to be acknowledged by those making the political decisions. They sought to transform the seductive power of women, once considered to be their flaw, into the supporting foundation for the new republic. Women, if educated and well raised, would reform and turn their husbands and future sons into virtuous republican citizens. She as a woman would have no say in the government but was to be appeased by the knowledge that her sole duty was to be a republican wife and in that manner serve her country. Kerber's argument ties into Lewis' piece in which she talks about women's utter dependence on their husbands to be their sole political connection. Ann Martin was tagged as a mere inhabitant of the state of Massachusetts, not as a member. A member being someone who has a political relationship to the country. Ann Martin, as a woman had no more political relation to the state than an alien, even though she was a natural born citizen. In order for her son to receive her land, it must be stated that she did not have any independence to act of her own accord being that she was a married woman. I would imagine that the state could argue the assertion that as an adult woman Ann Martin had the ability to act of her own accord thereby being responsible for her actions. Yet the state upholds the assumption that women could not be responsible for the actions taken when done so with their husbands because as wives they were bound to their husbands legally. While Ann Martin was a legal citizen of the United States she was not considered a member of its political sphere and thus denied the rights we have come to associate with citizenship but also excempt from its laws. Sterett's article brings an interesting point, how does marriage define a woman's legal status? She has always been dependent of her husband's own legal status and yet is still not considered a 'member' as her husband is upon receiving citizenship. Liberalism begins to redefine the terms citizen and members, combining them. Perhaps then can the citizenships of women be the same as their husbands with the rights to the political sphere independently of their marital status.
In response to Gillian's question about women being included in the voting populace, I think that they most likely were not included because they were expected to guide their husbands about morality. Morality wasn't considered to be included in the political sphere. If a politician needed better morals, by logic of the times it may be that he needed a more virtuous wife to guide him, so it did not reflect upon his political character.
Interesting to me, however, is that love is being made political in this era. Love is "friendship raised to its highest pitch," and this kind of love in terms of friendship was expected in Republican marriages (Lewis 707). Consent seems to be encouraged in reality, rather than just in theory. Yet, though love was encouraged, passion was not. "Passion must be regulated by reason," with passion and emotions stemming from the woman and the reason stemming from the man (Lewis 708). This seems strange because it is also the women who are instructed to guide their men, and if these women are not reasonable, it seems an impossible task to ask of them.
This may be exemplified in the story of Adam and Eve. Eve may have lacked the reason needed to avoid temptation, therefore she could not be faulted for her actions. Incidentally, it is interesting how the characterization of Eve in the biblical story had evolved up to this point. Initially she was considered responsible for the Fall of humanity and forced into submission, but as the concept of republicanism began to emerge, the notion of a graceful, loving Eve as a perfect partner in marriage was created.
This idea of women's dependence on men is addressed in a different way in the Lewis article. Indeed the problem of a woman being conceived as less than a full citizen or member of society is problematic and immediately seems unfair and archaic. However, as Lewis explains, this idea emerged out of a deep desire for harmony within marraige and the republican ideals of appropriate spousal partners. Women were seen as necessary to shape and mold their spouses into appropriate citizens for the nation and were in turn seen as a kind of redeemer and moral light for the republic. However this often led to women being forced into unhappy marriage and they were often expected to sacrifice when disagreement arose. This vital and emphasized harmony depended on them. Harmonious marriages were seen as based on appropriate and suitable matched that would allow for minimum friction. This seemed to legitimate the idea of coverture in that the man and wife were so deeply connected and so ideologically aligned that there would never be any disagreement and thus forming two distinct persons was unnecessary and superfluous.
This seems to directly contradict the case of Anna Gordon Martin in which the court ruled that she was not responsible for leaving the nation becasue her status as a femme covert would make her unable to argue with her husband's desires to do what he wished and take her along with him. Women were not responsible for some actions done with their husbands because they were under his control. As ceh pointed out Sterett also examines and questions a woman's incomplete association into society. A woman's absolute moral authority, purity, and means of infusing manners and propriety into men as seen in Lewis is countered by Kerber in which a woman is often not held accountable for her own actions and responses because of her husband's authority over her. This contrast provides an interesting view of the way coverture and a woman's inferior status within marriage affects her legally and socially.
In order to define libralism Sterett seems to invest herself in a fairly broad definition of the word. She calls it the state in which we as americans are free to make our own contracts. She claims that this is more or less impossible for us to exist outside of an idea of suppression based on race and gender.
Its confusing but I suppose that part of this is related to the idea that coveture is a contract between a man and a woman in which the womans legal status is taken away from her. However, she has consented to the removal of her individual legal rights by consenting to marrige. Hence she has contracted herself into the domestic sphere.
When republicanism occurs there is a common belief that males have certian civic duties, these include ascribing to specific american mindset and values. Part of a womans contract would have been related to rearing children within these republican ideals. Her job was to rear males who were not nessecarilly invested in the individual but rather in being part of the pieces of a human and secular government of civic men.
A few things to add . . .
A number of you brought up the point that Lewis argues: men gave women an elevated moral status through which women were expected to exert an influence over their husbands. This was to "appease" women, perhaps (as Brenda says), but it also stemmed from the fact that women were seen as virtuous BECAUSE they didn't vote. They were "disinterested," in the language of the time.
Their virtue came from their separation from the "rat race," the competitive public sphere.
But as Gillian points out, this did not mean women were metaphorically or actually absent from politics in the 1800s, in spite of what the ideology of separate spheres would have us believe. Like all ideologies, separate spheres is prescriptive (an ideal) rather than a reality.
Claire and Bailey raise the question of liberal and republican definitions of citizenship.
According to Rogers Smith (the reviewed author of Civic Ideals), "liberalism" is based in natural rights. If a person is a rational being, he (or she?) deserves political rights and "personal independence from many repressive structures" (Smith 36).
*The pertinent question for us is: are married women "rational," or are they, as James Martin's lawyers contended, "infants?"
"Republicanism" according to Smith, "stress[es] political participation and community service" (37) and rejects "the claims of private religious, familial, and cultural groups" in the name of "common civic endeavors" (37).
*So what's the place of women who don't "serve" as military soldiers, as voters, as politicians? In the 1700s, you start to see some women claim their rights as taxpayers - claiming an economic relation to the state.
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