Woman’s Profession as Mother and Educator (1872)
AUTHOR: Beecher, Catharine Esther
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56090/56090-h/56090-h.htm
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Nichols, Thomas Low. Esperanza
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---. Unjust Laws Which Govern Woman
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SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen):
Beecher is in favor of women receiving a moderately scientific education, in the means of advancing their abilities as caretaker for the family. This involves better understanding of food and medicine, and how to cook properly for the better health of everyone: “A woman needs training and instruction in this department of her duties as much as her sons need similar instruction and training in agriculture or watch-making, when that is to be their profession” (24). Conversely, Beecher is concerned that little girls in boarding schools are unhealthy due to poor ventilation, too many bodies in one space, and the mental taxation due to excessive studying (94).
The text is a series of addresses to women’s audiences on Beecher’s concerns regarding the social movements (women’s rights) of the day and its effects on the household. The "Dedication" makes clear Beecher’s perspective and aims in the text:
This woman movement is one which is uniting by co-operating influences, all the antagonisms that are warring on the family state. Spiritualism, free-love, free divorce, the vicious indulgences consequent on unregulated civilization, the worldliness which tempts men and women to avoid large families, often by sinful methods, thus making the ignorant masses the chief supply of the future ruling majorities; and most powerful of all, the feeble constitution and poor health of women, causing them to dread maternity as—what it is fast becoming—an accumulation of mental and bodily tortures (n.pag.).