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Feminism and Classical Sociology: Conclusion and Life sketches

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Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802-1876)
  3. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935)
  4. MARIANNE WEBER (1870-1954)

Introduction

Women are typically condemned for being left out of traditional sociology's social analysis. The assessments primarily focus on an exclusively masculine world, primarily the public sphere, which was regarded as being the preserve of men. Women were restricted to the home and the family, and they had little influence over the economy or politics. At this time, women were not even legally recognised as citizens.

Despite the differences in their conceptions of what made up the social world, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim all believed that the private realm was unimportant to study. They studied things like politics, economics, and religion, but they didn't think it was important to understand the context of the family or the society where women carried out their work.

The distinctions between women and men were seen as natural by traditional sociologists since they were thought to be based on nature. They also thought that men and women had different natures; males were more in tune with society, while women were more in tune with nature. While all three of the classic sociologists studied inequality in some capacity, none of them addressed the inequities that existed between the sexes.

Three female sociologists who worked at the same era as the classical sociologists are profiled briefly in this piece. We want you to study these and consider why these women's writings are not studied or taught in traditional sociology courses. You be the judge.

HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802-1876)

Thomas and Elizabeth Martineau raised eight children in their upper middle class English home, with Harriet Martineau being the sixth. While her mother was smart and intellectual but had no formal education, her father was a merchant and trader. Martineau had a difficult childhood, which she called "burdensome" in her 1849 book "Household Education." Although Martineau did not receive a formal education (women were not then allowed to enrol in a university), she taught herself a number of subjects in industries where men were the only ones allowed to work. She gave her studies her whole attention.

Martineau moved away from home to live with her uncle and aunt at the age of 15, as her deafness became more severe. It was under her uncle's tutelage that she first learned about the writings of Locke, Hartley, and other authors. Despite being engaged, Harriet Martineau never wed. She continued to be autonomous and unmarried, sustaining herself through her work. She published books, essays, reviews, novels, journal articles, travelogues, biographies, newspaper columns, children's stories, and sociological non-fiction in addition to her other writings.

Martineau, a devoted Unitarian, was influenced by religion in her work, but she turned her attention to social theory about 1934, starting with a book that utilised fiction to illustrate the newly growing field of political economy. Martineau was a prominent writer who resided in London during this time, along with Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, Thomas Malthus, George Eliot, William Wordsworth, Charles Darwin, and Charlotte Bronte.

Martineau, though frequently disregarded, is one of the first sociologists to write, and she is frequently referred to as the first woman in the discipline. Before Marx and Weber, she wrote about themes like as class, religion, women's status, children's rights, and inter- and intra-racial relations. She departed for the United States in 1834 and settled there for the following two years. She characterised North American conduct, life, and institutions in her two publications, "Society in America," published in 1834, and "Retrospect of Western Travel," published in 1838. She also talked about racial issues, saying that the arguments in favour of slavery at the time mocked the principles of freedom that the American people fought for.

Unlike what was typical at the period, her criticism was full of sarcasm rather than fury, yet it was nevertheless scathing. Her 1838 publication, How to Observe Morals and Manners, outlined the foundational ideas and procedures of empirical social research. Martineau made Auguste Comte's sociological work, "Cours de philosophie," written in French, available to American thinkers by translating it into English.

Martineau was very ill in 1839, became housebound in 1955, and eventually left London to live in the tranquil Lake District. She persisted in writing for the goal of ending slavery in the US. Although it is claimed that Harriet Martineau authored over 1500 columns and conducted methodological investigations in what is now known as sociology, there is no conclusive bibliography of her work. Due to the male-dominated academic system that marginalised women academics, she is rarely mentioned and her contribution is hardly taken into account. She had, in keeping with her usual practise, prepared her own obituary when she passed away in 1876.

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935)

Frederick Beecher Perkins and Mary Fitch Westcott welcomed Charlotte Perkins Gilman into the world in 1860. Her parents came from wealthy households and had very different outlooks on the world. Her father came from the radical Beecher family, which included suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Fitches, who made up her mother's family, were Conservatives. Gilman must have found it extremely difficult to decide whether she wanted to be an assertive and daring woman or one who was more traditional and feminine because of the stark differences in ideas of womanhood between her mother and father's sides.

Her father, Frederick Perkins, abandoned the family in 1859 and only occasionally provided for them after that. She was now dependent on her mother Mary for all of her emotional and physical needs. Mary worked whenever and wherever she could to support her family, and they also depended on the generosity of family members to get by. Mary denied Gilman affection and kept her under constant control because she had learned from her own experience and wanted her daughter to be resilient in a cruel world.

Gilman completed four years of education at seven different schools by the time she was 15; however, she was able to support herself while attending the Rhode Island School of Design from 1078 to 1883 by teaching drawing courses, selling watercolours, and doing soap advertisement paintings. After much internal debate, Charlotte decided to wed Charles Walter Stetson in May 1884 after falling in love with him. She struggled between the traditional role of a married lady and the Beecher family legacy of service to humanity, women's rights, and reform. She was concerned that getting married had ended her job aspirations.

Gilman gave birth to Katherine Beecher Stetson in March 1885, and afterward she focused solely on raising her child, leaving no time for her career aspirations. Gilman left his house shortly after to recover in a sanatorium outside of Philadelphia due to depression. She was given the medication rest cure, which involves constant relaxation and abstaining from career-related thoughts and activities. After leaving, she tried to continue living this way of life but gave up after nine months. She attributed her sadness to her responsibilities as a wife and mother to her daughter, which prompted her to leave Charles and relocate to California, where she started living with a friend in Oakland.

Gilman published "The Yellow Wallpaper," a fictional short novel on her experience with rest cure at the sanatorium, in 1892, following her separation and ultimate divorce. In addition to finishing "Women and Economics" during this time, she also published her first book, "In This Our World," in 1893. She developed a reputation as a renowned lecturer and developed a passion for politics.

Gilman had maintained a strong relationship with Charles, her friend's spouse and ex-husband. Being well-known, she received a lot of backlash from the media for leaving her daughter in the care of a different lady, and even Katherine, as she got older, appeared to resent her for it. They weren't the only ones to criticise her; even she struggled to accept that she couldn't be a decent mother to her child. Charlotte Perkins remarried in 1900, this time to George Houghton Gilman. She continued to teach and write after she got married since he was supportive of her goals.

In 1909, she founded the one-woman publication "The Forerunner," and in 1925, she finished the autobiography "The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman," which would be released after her passing. She fought for a woman's right to be freed from the financial reliance that results from playing unpaid roles such as wife and mother. She dedicated her entire life to improving the quality of life for women. To create a more compassionate world, she used sociology, history, biology, ethics, and philosophy in her work. Despite not having a background in the social sciences, Gilman's keen observations of the underlying societal processes give her work value. Her husband George passed away in 1934, the same year she received a breast cancer diagnosis. She used a cloth soaked in chloroform to hide her face before killing herself in 1935.

MARIANNE WEBER (1870-1954)

Marianne Weber was a sociologist and the grandniece of Max Weber. She was born in 1870 in Oerlinghausen, Germany. Max Weber Sr. and Karl Weber, her grandfather, were brothers. Marianne's mother, Anna Weber, defied her in-laws' wishes and wed Eduard Schnitger, a country doctor. Soon after her parents wed, Marianne was born, and a year later her mother died giving delivery. Marianne had a challenging upbringing. She had only the most fundamental schooling, and her family was impoverished. Both her father and two of her living with her uncles became insane. Marianne was taught how to rely on herself and her skills because she was forced to deal with these challenging situations at a young age. In contrast to her dysfunctional family, she aspired to appear normal.

After being reared by her grandmother and aunt, she was finally sent to finishing school in Hanover by her grandfather Karl when she was 16 years old. Even though Marianne felt awkward at her new school and knew she wanted to be important, she made an effort to fit in and even picked up French and English. When she came back home at the age of 19, she moved in with Alwine, the sister of her mother. She moved in with Max Weber Sr. and Helene in 1891 and grew particularly close to them as well as to her cousin Max Jr. Marianne agreed to Max Jr.'s final marriage proposal, and the two were wed in 1893.

Max Weber Jr. began teaching economics at the University of Freiburg and later served as a professor of political science at the University of Heidelberg during this time. He was a scholar with doctorates in both history and law at the time. While studying and working alongside Max Jr. in Freiburg, Marianne developed an interest in feminism and oversaw a group that promoted its values. She started going to lectures on politics and philosophy, including those given by her husband, and she and Max Jr. eventually succeeded in getting the institution to accept a small number of female researchers.

Max recommenced his academic career in 1904. Along with Marianne, they had a friend, and he had an affair and fell in love with her, but their lives went on as usual. They travelled to the US for a tour and met several feminists there. She wrote a few pieces and was inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman's work. She published a book titled "Marriage, Motherhood, and Law" in 1907.

By 1908, Marianne was well recognised as a feminist in intellectual circles after she and Max founded an intellectual salon with participants including Simmel and Baum. She battled uncertainties about her marriage in her personal life, but her career as an academic and reputation both grew. Authority and Autonomy in Marriage and Objective Culture is what she wrote.

Germany was destroyed during World War I, and Max took part in the peace negotiations. In 1920, Marianne became the first woman to be elected to the state assembly and produced feminism-related writings. Marianne was having difficulties in her personal life, though; the deaths of Helene, Max's sister, Lili, and Lili's mother, in addition to the devastation caused by the war and her husband's adultery, were all too much for her to bear. Marianne experienced despair for four years when Max tragically passes away from pneumonia. She then started writing her husband's biography and preparing his work for publication. This made it so much easier for her to deal with his passing.

In the end, Marianne received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Heidelberg for her contributions to the field of women's studies and her editing of her husband's writing. Along with her friends and coworkers, the four children she adopted from Lili served as solace to her in her later years. Marianne Weber She away at the age of 84 in 1954.

References

  1. Abbott, P., Wallace, C., & Tyler, M. (2005). Introduction: feminism and the sociological imagination. In An Introduction to Sociology Feminist Perspectives (3rd ed., pp. 1-15). Oxon, UK: Routledge. 
  2. American Sociological Association: What is Sociology? (n.d.). Retrieved July 14, 2015, from http://www.asanet.org/about/sociology.cfm 
  3. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilman.html 
  4. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilman2.html 
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