"... an American woman is always mistress of herself; she indulges in all permitted pleasures, without yielding herself up to any of them; and her reason never allows the reins of self-guidance to drop, though it often seems to hold them loosely."
Due to the requirements of surviving along the lines of the American frontier, work was naturally split up into two different types of work. 1) the strenuous, more physical type such as chopping wood, chopping trees down and up into firewood, sawing logs, holding a 50lb hunting rifle and carrying a 300 lb piece of meat back to a house, and 2) the more domestic type such as cooking, babysitting, knitting, and house-hold cleaning.
Men didn't look down on their wives thinking they were inferior and women didn't hold hard feelings towards the differences in their work because they worked as a team.
One last quote from Knoebel I'd like to share talks about how confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes in Europe causes problems:
"They would give to both [men and women] the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them them in all things - their occupations, their pleasures, their business... both are degraded, and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature nothing could ever result but weak men and disorderly women."
Imagine a world or life where the traditional roles of men/women are reversed. How would our political structure be different and how would the nature of the family as a unit change?
1 comment:
It sounds like "The Family: A Proclamation to the World". I think we see some "weak men and disorderly women" in the modern spotlight of Hollywood. When I see todays actors they may be ripped, but they don't have the self-discipline that would help them father a traditional family. Actresses are seen on tabloids and magazines personifying disorderly behavior. We see a break from the traditional family of our ancestors. I know it's an generalization, but generally the masses have followed closely after the society of seen, for better or for worse, but usually for worse.
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