Nikki Ford
Gender Roles, Subject
and Power
Throughout history
women have lived their lives in enslavement to men, regarded as second class
citizens. Throughout the centuries a woman’s role in society had traditionally
been taking care of her family and home. A women’s scope was the domestic
setting. From the early 1800’s to the
early 1900’s women struggled for equality and
to move out of the domestic setting, however their role of slavery was reiterated
by political leaders and writers of the 18th and 19th
centuries. One of the notable reform in 19th century that changed
the history and face of America was the women rights movement. The movement was started at 19th
century and it became one of the largest organized group in the following
years. Even though it had many objectives during its initial stages, it later
concentrated solely on securing the franchise for women.
“Nineteenth-
century reform movements were part of a growing middle-class response to
widespread social and economic changes following the Industrial Revolution. As
aristocratic and mercantile capitalism evolved into industrial capitalism, the
middle class emerged as the dominant political political and social force.” (Chadwick, 175) As at 19th
century, some women took effort to fight for their rights. Some of these rights
included ownership of property that were left behind by their husbands who had
passed on. As the movement grew bigger enormous changes was noticed throughout
the United States, which transformed the lives of women at all levels of the
society. The changes were also noted in the way slavery was carried out.
Slavery would later be outlawed in the United States. “The 19th
Century saw the war to abolish slavery in the United States and the beginning
of women’s long struggle for equality. At the same time, male painters began to
obsess over and objectify the naked female body as never before.” (Girls, 47). “Women artists existed in a contradictory relationship to
the prevailing middle class ideals of femininity. They were caught between a
social ideology that prohibited the individual competition and public visibility
necessary for success in the arts, and the educational and social reform
movements that made the nineteenth century the greatest period of female social
progress in history.” (Chadwick, 176-177) Adding on to that,
women were not only criticized by art critics but by their significant others. It
is completely unjust for the women to have to limit themselves not only to
other artists but that even when creating this limitation for themselves, it
still did not necessarily work out because of the male artist’s ego hurting due
to feelings of inferiority to their women counterparts. In a way this could
have been a deterrent for many women artist throughout history. The Guerrilla
Girls have been fighting back against the Patriarchal system by using art as an
expressive form to get their message across regarding female
under representation in the art world. The Guerrilla Girls and Whitney Chadwick
used their canvases and other art forms to express themselves and push back
against society. All these forms have been forms of women continuously
advocating for the same recognition that male artists earn, and quite easily by
comparison.
Women were striped
from the leading academy and could not participate. Furthermore, there were moral and social humiliations
that prevented women from total participation in the artistic circles. There were taboos that
limited the participation of women in public without being accompanied by a chaperone. This narrowed the
range of subjects they could depict in their artworks. These
social and institutional obstacles prevented women from developing careers in the arts. However, a group of women artistes
emerged during the impressionism movement of the 1980's and prevailed the social and
institutional obstacles to change the perception of art history. These women artist will show
how social and institutional challenges that women faced during the impressionism art of the nineteenth-century
and how they overcame these challenges and changed the perception of art history. During the nineteenth-century
there were gender based social restrictions that limited women’s opportunities and potential. Women were
supposed to stay at home and could only venture out in few public
spaces accompanies by a male chaperone. Due to these restrictions, women artists’ had few experiences to use in their art as
compared to their male equals. Women had a narrower range of ideas to
draw from in their artworks because they had little access to artistic ideas
due to restricted mobility. “Elizabeth Thompson was the best known woman producing
historical paintings on a grand scale, a number of other women turned to the
writings of women and to history’s heroic women for subjects that would enable
them to enter the field of history painting. While women artists were seldom,
if ever given public commissions for history paintings, they nevertheless produced
large and important works which proposed new readings of historical events.” (Chadwick, 203)
In conclusion, women reforms in the society in 19th
century made a positive impact as seen above. It is through the efforts of few
women who took the initial stages to go against the odds to come up with these
rights. In today's’ society, these rights are celebrated annually in remembrance
of their devotion. Women now enjoy worldwide freedom to lead, to vote, to
choose for themselves who to marry and even the religion they wish to attend.
In the United States for example, women now allowed to show their art work
freely and express how they feel.
was not included in essay
Harriet Powers, Pictorial Quilt 1895
was not included in essay
Anne Lea Merrit 1844
was not included in essay
Margaretta Burr interior 19th century
work cited
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Print.
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print
links that relate to the artwork
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Print.
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print
links that relate to the artwork
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