Beliefs on the Fragility of Ruling Class Women in and Around the 18th and 19th Centuries
score:2
Although focused on the United States and a little bit later in the 19th century then the novels you mention, Nancy M. Theriot has a relevant book, Mothers and Daughters in Nineteenth-century America: The Biosocial Construction of Femininity. On the one hand she quotes physicians like Edward Clarke who argued in the 1870s that women were biologically frail and needed to be sheltered from exertion. On the other hand, there were many reformers who argued that this apparent frailty all came from their upbringing and environment and that if "girls were given a different sort of education... they would grow in to strong women." An interesting primary source Theriot gives to support this is a book called Health and Strength For Girls published in 1884. Clearly socioeconomic class would have been a factor in such attitudes, since only upper and middle class women had the luxury of avoiding physical exertion in the first place.
Upvote:0
In 19th century, influenza and especially pneumonia were much deadlier than they are now (there were no antibiotics). Several examples come to my mind from reading biographies of famous scientists. Sofia Kowalevska died at the age of 41 when she walked under rain from a train station, and caught an influenza, which caused a pneumonia. This applies not only to women, though. Many 19th century famous middle class people died early (by modern standards), at the age of 40-50. A trivial bruise or sore could also cause death from sepsis (composer Alexander Skriabin, for example died of sepsis in 1915 at the age of 43.) Most of such deaths are prevented now due to antibiotics and vaccination.
More post
- 📝 Horses.. goats... evolution
- 📝 Did airports have security checks before the 1970s?
- 📝 Are there any known instances of sub-Saharan African democracy before European colonialism?
- 📝 Has anyone (other than Churchill) indicated that the Germans might have won a negotiated peace in World War II?
- 📝 Can anyone verify this story about the President's driver?
- 📝 Why did US annex Hawaii?
- 📝 How accurately could ancient astronomers find latitude and longitude?
- 📝 Was Colonel Thomas Butler actually arrested?
- 📝 How were taxes collected for traveling merchants in the middle ages?
- 📝 Fish/Shark skin sandpaper
- 📝 What was the output of a Bessemer Converter?
- 📝 Why was the Bay of Pigs invasion unsuccessful?
- 📝 Scholar-farmer-artisan-merchant social ordering in ancient/medieval China
- 📝 Why did the Ballahoo and Cuckoo-class schooners earn a bad reputation?
- 📝 Did Great Britain benefit economically from the loss of America?
- 📝 How old was the youngest white person sentenced to death in the U.S.A?
- 📝 Are there any records of Charlemagne's baptismal (ie. Christian) name?
- 📝 Was there really a labor shortage in the USA until 1970?
- 📝 Did anyone use pikes wielded by multiple people?
- 📝 How did slavery become permissible in the French West Indies when it was forbidden in France?
- 📝 Where can I find clean maps of colonial America?
- 📝 What was the rate of premarital conceptions in England from 1850 to 1890?
- 📝 Was Rudolph Hess a moderating influence on Hitler?
- 📝 How did people acquire things in the pre-Roman Celtic world?
- 📝 How did recognition by Morocco influence the history of the USA?
- 📝 Were cities that enacted lockdowns during the 1918 flu pandemic successful in preventing any infections?
- 📝 Were blue-tinted glasses prevalent in Victorian England and, if so, why?
- 📝 Did Emperor Gaozu of Han allow people he conquered to keep their cultural identities?
- 📝 Is there any evidence that the fall of the Tibetan empire led to an increase in Buddhism?
- 📝 Which year was the first leap year?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Beliefs on the Fragility of Ruling Class Women in and Around the 18th and 19th Centuries
- 📝 How did the ruling class in the Muslim world react to the discovery and colonization of the Americas?
- 📝 Where and how did scientists of the 18th and 19th century learn foreign languages?
- 📝 Was the enclosure responsible for the supply of factory workers in 18th and 19th Century England?
- 📝 Was there a military practice of reloading while marching/running, in Europe or America during the 18th and 19th centuries?
- 📝 How accurate was rocket artillery in the 18th and 19th centuries?
- 📝 Why has the 18th and not the 19th century come to be called „the age of reason“?
- 📝 Why were British ships not of the same quality as French and Spanish ships until the latter part of the 18th century?
- 📝 When and why was the samurai class abolished?
- 📝 Why did piracy thrive in the late 17th and early 18th centuries?
- 📝 What were the demographics and economics of South-East Asian islands around year 1400?
- 📝 Were bookshops 'common' in the late 19th century, and how did they differ from modern ones?
- 📝 In what ways did the rise of a true middle class in Europe during the late 19th century become apparent?
- 📝 Is the steel pan the only acoustic musical instrument to be invented in the 20th century and used widely around the world?
- 📝 Why do some 17th and 18th century maps depict Ottoman sanjaks north of the Danube in Wallachia?
- 📝 Typical fortifications around major cities in the 18th century
- 📝 What is a "Johnsonian world of clubs and coffee houses" in the context of 18th century England?
- 📝 Were people buried in the 19th century with a cloth around their head if so why?
- 📝 What was the typical range of travel of a Pennsylvanian resident for everyday life in the late 18th early 19th Century Pennsylvania?
- 📝 What caused women to lose their access to resources and become a part of men's possessions with the start of the agriculture era?
- 📝 Time to travel around Europe in the 18th century
- 📝 What's the difference between Country Born and Mulatto people in the 18th century New England?
- 📝 Is there evidence that scrubbing floors on one's hands and knees was a commonplace drudgery for women in the past?
- 📝 Was it widespread during the 17th and 18th Century for British country people to be evicted and replaced with more profitable agriculture?
- 📝 Why did Germany have so many important scientists and thinkers around the turn of the 20th century?
- 📝 What were the needs of the US Navy that resulted in the production of both the Arleigh Burke class and Ticonderoga class in the 1980s?
- 📝 Which ship sank and made the news for its chaotic evacuation around the year 1912?
- 📝 What was the condition of women in "primitive societies" around the world?
- 📝 Other than coffee and tobacco what major product became Cuba's source of wealth in the 18th century?
- 📝 How effective were siege guns and gun boats compared to field artillery in the 19th century?