TEXTiles: Women Tell Their Story
For nineteenth-century women, much of their lives were spent in strict conformity to specified gender roles. Society was largely patriarchal, with single women being disparaged as spinsters and married women being lauded for their powerlessness. Women were domestically focused and rarely moved (or were given opportunities to move) outside that sphere; authority lay solely with husbands and fathers.
Eventually, in the mid to late 1800s, women gained a voice through the Prohibition Movement and the fight for women's rights. However, many women found a sort of vocal platform in the production of their domestic wares, particularly in quilts, a medium that allowed for creativity and individuality. Such was the case with the popular family album quilts, which were unique to the designer and featured individual panels inspired by the people whose names they often bore. These essentially became family storybooks. Despite being legally nonexistent in a system which allowed them virtually no rights, women discovered small ways to declare their story to a world bent on keeping them silent.
Related sections will include:
- "Portrait of Remembrance" - A woman ensures that her granddaughter's life will not be forgotten.
- "Pictures of Faith" - A former slave uses her creativity to record religious lessons.
- "Paintings of Support" - A quiltmaker depicts messages of solidarity for the temperance movement.
Suggested Activity: Design a quilt for your own family, with each panel being uniquely inspired by a family member, friend, or even pet.
[Bibliography: Basch, Françoise. "Women's Rights and the Wrongs of Marriage in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America." History Workshop 22 (Autumn 1986): 18-40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288716.]
Below is a short video, produced by CrashCourse and hosted by author John Green, exploring the lives of 19th-century American women.