The Old Morality

Let us turn back to the America of almost a hundred years ago. One of the most interesting pictures of this country at that time was done Frances M. Trollope, who in the last twenty-six years of her life dedicated her talent to the composition of one hundred and fourteen books, of which the overwhelming majority were novels, lived in the United States during the early years of Jackson's first administration. Her stay in America extended over a period of three years. It was in her book The Domestic Manners of the Americans that she gathered together her impressions of this country and its people. It was in the depiction of American manners and social life that she excelled. In this picture of American ladies of the last century, she has given us a humorous and yet not distorted description of the old morality:

"At Cincinnati there is a garden where the people go to to look at roses. For the preservation of the flowers, there is placed at the end of one of the walks a signpost, representing a Swiss peasant girl, holding in her hand a scroll, requesting that the roses might not be gathered. Unhappily, the petticoat of this figure was so short as to show her ankles. The ladies saw, and shuddered; and it was formally intimated to the proprietor that if he wished for the patronage of the ladies of Cincinnati, he must have the petticoat of this figure lengthened. The affrighted purveyor sent off an express for the artist and his paint pot. He came, but unluckily not provided with any color that would match the petticoat; the necessity, however, was too urgent for delay, and a flounce of blue was added to the petticoat of red, giving bright and shining evidence before all men, of the immaculate delicacy of the Cincinnati ladies."

Again, in suggesting a picnic to a young American lady, Mrs. Trollope records the reply as typical:

"I fear you will not succeed; we are not used to such sort of things here, and I know it is considered very indelicate for ladies and gentlemen to sit down together on the grass."

Mrs. A. J. Graves’ book, Woman in America, which appeared under the imprint of Harper Brothers in 1858, purported to be "an examination into the moral and intellectual condition of American female society." Her words are expressive of the attitude that prevailed:

"The supremacy of the husband as the head of the family institution is similar to the supremacy of the governing power in a state, and there is the like obligation to obedience in both. 

"She is required, therefore, not only to submit to man as her head in the marriage relation but she must not assume to herself any rights of participation with him in the management or control of civil or political affairs.

"She (a good woman) has no desire to rule where she feels it to be her duty, as it is her highest pleasure 'to love, honor and obey'; and she submits with cheerful acquiescence to that order in the conjugal relation which God and nature have established.

"Woman feels she is not made for command, and finds her truest happiness in submitting to those who wield a rightful sceptre in justice, mercy and love."

Revered but without rights, this nineteenth century woman was dependent upon her husband for her existence. "The actual bond-servant of her husband, no less so far as legal obligations (go) than slaves so called," John Stuart Mill wrote, "she owed a life-long obedience to him at the altar, and is held to it all through her life by law." The husband could sell, lease, or mortgage without his wife's consent any property he received from her at marriage. The husband could appropriate any balance standing in her name at her banker's. The husband could get a complete divorce and remarry if he proved his wife unfaithful, but for the wife to secure a divorce, adultery was insufficient. Other elements, cruelty, desertion, or the like were needed in addition to adultery to justify the woman's case. And in all matters concerning the children the father was in the eyes of the English law the rightful guardian who could take them out of the woman's care at his own discretion.

To leave this society, with such conventions and standards, and enter our own, is to many a plunge from order into chaos. Where before woman's place was definite and limited to certain bounds, it is now indefinite and well-nigh boundless. At one time woman knew her place, as the reactionary is wont to contend, and that place, being sharply circumscribed, assured a certain orderliness in feminine behavior.

Woman's emergence into this wider world has meant, thus, a rapid change in her entire outlook upon life. The revolt has been at once volcanic and profound. Beginning with change in her economic existence, it changed her dress, her manners, her morals, her ideals. 

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