Soren Kerk Sociology

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.

Spurned traditional women roles

Her personal story tells the story of her Sociology - hopefully you were in class the day we spoke of it -- or you can read the assigned pages in the book (the introduction to Gilman and the sections of Gilman)

Suicide - either Fatalistic (no point in living with cancer) or Egoic (no groups into which to be integrated)

nHer multidimensional theory of gender inequality combines:

1.a Marxist emphasis on economic & political basis for gender inequality: analyzed factors that produce and reproduce gender inequality.

2.a symbolic interactionist emphasis on how gender differences are reinforced and institutionalized through socialization

3.an emphasis on the sociobiological underpinnings of gender differences.

nbecause it makes women economically dependent on men. Gilman sought to show that the division of labor of traditional family (breadwinner husband/stay-at-home wife) was inherently problematic

Gilman maintained that from the earliest age,, iyoung girls were encouragedf not forced, to act, think, look, and talk differently from boys, though interests and capabilities at that age might be identical.

n…women and men, in general, have different biological “principles” to which they adhere.

n… women’s unique capabilities—particularly their love & concern for others—have tremendous social value, though they are grossly underappreciated.

nmaintained that, in contrast to men, women did not want to fight, take, oppress, but rather to love.

nWhen Gilman glorifies the female “instincts” of love and service, her radical feminist theory dissolves into a “sentimental worship of the status quo.”

nGilman’s particular theoretical approach is readily apparent in the passage on women’s corsets: a metaphor for the general constraints placed on women

nJust as the corset “chokes” the stomach, so, too, do the traditional institutional features of the family “choke” women. Just as “healthy muscles” resent the “pressure,” so, too, do healthy women.

nThe metaphor of the corset reflects that the constraints placed on women originate outside her; as such, Gilman views these as external pressures, thus pointing to the rationalist aspect of her theory.

nBut the person habitually wearing a corset does not feel these evils. They exist, assuredly, the facts are there, the body is not deceived; but the nerves have become accustomed to these disagreeable sensations, and no longer respond to them. The person “does not feel it.” In fact, the wearer becomes so used to the sensations that when they are removed,— with the corset,—there is a distinct sense of loss and discomfort. (ibid.)

nGilman’s metaphor of the corset is similar to Marx’s notion of false consciousness.

nIn both cases, “the facts are there”—the inequality is there—but the person “does not feel it”; he does not see or know of it. She has internalized the pressures and constraints as her own.

nThis view reflects Gilman’s incorporation of a more nonrationalist theoretical position.

The Yellow Wallpaper

nsemiautobiographical story about a woman’s descent into madness

The reader experiences the protagonist’s mental breakdown from the inside out.

Late 19th/early 20th century – women were expected to physically as well as intellectually be “childlike” and “fragile.”

these constraints placed on women drive healthy, independent women to insanity.

In the 1970s, “The Yellow Wallpaper” received a “second wave” of acclaim

…. it became a keystone in newly developing women’s studies programs.

The undergirding assumption is that women’s finely tuned emotions and sensibility prevent her from rational, scientific thought.

The problem w patriarchy is that, at the rational level, women are not able to do as they please. ... at the level of the nonrational: women are not encouraged to think.

Despite the assumption that women were “incapable” of rational, scientific, logical thought, women were not valued for their “feminine” ways of knowing either.

Women and Economics

…the traditional division of labor renders women economically dependent on men and necessarily strips women of their freedom.

The woman receives both her social status and her economic viability not through her own labor, but through that of her husband. This makes her labor not her “own,” but a property of the male.

Gilman compares the traditional position of the woman to the domesticated horse: Neither the horse nor the woman is “free.”

The horse, in his free natural condition, is economically independent. He gets his living by his own exertions irrespective of any other creature. The horse, in his present condition of slavery, is economically dependent. He gets his living at the hands of his master; and his exertions, though strenuous, bear no direct relation to his living. . . . The horse works, it is true; but what he gets to eat depends on the power and will of his master. His living comes through another. He is economically dependent

worn dress or flashing jewels, her low roof or her lordly one, her weary feet or her rich equipage,—these speak of the economic ability of the husband. The comfort, the luxury, the necessities of life itself, which the woman receives, are obtained by the husband and given her by him. And, when the woman, left alone with no man to “support” her, tries to meet her own economic necessities, the difficulties which confront her prove conclusively what the general economic status of the woman is.

Like a horse, women are subject to the “power and will of another” because their domestic labor, for which no wages are received in return, belongs not to themselves but to their husbands. Women are thus rendered economically dependent.

... if women were actually compensated for their work in the home, poor women with lots of children would get the most $$ (they are doing the most work), while women with no children and those who do no work in the home (i.e., they have nannies, maids, etc.) would get no compensation.

For those who argue that “a woman’s place is in the home” because of her childbearing responsibilities, Gilman argues that “women’s work” is actually mostly house service (cooking, cleaning, mending, etc.), not child service (bearing children, breastfeeding, etc.).

Thus, Gilman contends that the traditional division of labor is not biologically driven.

… rather than develop her own capabilities, women reduce themselves to attracting a viable life partner. Economically, this makes sense for women, because “their profit comes through the power of sex-attraction,” not through their own talents

n…with women’s economic dependence on men their energies are focused on “catching” a man rather than on being productive citizens.

n…spend their time and energy on grooming and “finding a man” rather than on intellectual concerns.

In denying her capabilities, she reduces herself to being, literally, the “weaker sex.” . . . THAT IS TRAGIC

nThe sociobiological tragedy:
. . . that women are not “underdeveloped men, but the feminine half of humanity in undeveloped form.”

n. . . Too much emphasis on their sex distinction. Rather than a healthy “survival of the fittest” in which women are taught to be strong and productive, bourgeois women are mandated to be soft and weak, dependent, emotional, and frail.

“We are the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food, the only animal species in which the sex-relation is also an economic relation. With us an entire sex lives in a relation of economic dependence upon the other sex, and the economic relation is combined with the sex-relation. The economic status of the human female is relative to the sex-relation.”

“…we are instantly confronted by the commonly received opinion that, although it must be admitted that men make and distribute the wealth of the world, yet women earn their share of it as wives. This assumes either that the husband is in the position of employer and the wife as employee, or that marriage is a ‘partnership,’ and the wife an equal factor with the husband in producing wealth.”

nAs long as what I get is obtained by what I give, I am economically independent. (247)

The comfort a man takes with his wife is not in the nature of a business partnership, nor are her frugality and industry.

Man, in supporting woman, has become her economic environment. Under natural selection, every creature is modified to its environment, developing perforce the qualities needed to obtain its livelihood under that environment. Man, as the feeder of woman, becomes the strongest modifying force in her economic condition.

nIt is not the normal sex-tendency, common to all creatures, but an abnormal sex-tendency, produced and maintained by the abnormal economic relation which makes one sex get its living from the other by the exercise of sex-functions. (255)

THE SMOTHERING "NO": Each woman born … live(s) over again the process of restriction, repression, denial; the smothering “no” which crushed down all her human desires to create, to discover, to learn, to express, to advance

Each woman has had … the same single avenue of expression and attainment; the same one way in which alone she might do what she could, get what she might. All other doors were shut, and this one always open; and the whole pressure of advancing humanity was upon her.

Wealth, power, social distinction, frame,—not only these, but home and happiness, reputation, ease and pleasure, her bread and butter,—all must come to her through a small gold ring