Women's Emancipation

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that men are suited for farming since its hard work, the hearth symbolises a woman nurturing the home with warmth. ‘Man for the sword and women for the needle’. The sword symbolises a man’s potency, aggression and war. The needle suggests that a woman’s nature makes her suitable for her domestic role and also rates her as having low strength. ‘Man with the lead and women with the heart’. This suggests that men think with their heads and women with their hearts. Men have the intellect and women are mild, gentle and pure. The language of the source shows gender stereotypes and in that sense is useful for giving evidence of how men and women were portrayed. Alfred Lord Tennyson was a poet, a painter, an architect and a lyric writer.

Since education opportunities for women were limited, they were seen as incapable of serious thought and making political decisions, so it was thought by men that their strength was in the home. Working-class women did not have time ...

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late 19th century.

Source from Unit E is an extract from a booklet produced for new wives in 1879 called ‘Woman as She is and Should Be’. It is primary evidence, although its provenance is not stated. It contains the essential rules on how women should behave in a marriage. The language sounds controlling, manipulative and discourages women - She must learn to adopt his taste, study his mood, bear his anger and irritability with grace and submit to his desires with all that grateful willingness which in a wife is the surest sign of a sound understanding. The source is evidence of how a woman was expected to submit to her spouse.

When a woman married, everything she owned ...

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