Feminism in Literature | Women in the 19th Century - Ann Douglas (Essay Date 1988)

ANN DOUGLAS (ESSAY DATE 1988)

SOURCE: Douglas, Ann. "The Legacy of American Victorianism." In The Feminization of American Culture, pp. 7-13. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1988.

In the following excerpt, Douglas argues that in the nineteenth century, the vacuum left by the demise of Calvinist theology in America was filled by a feminizing sentiment that did little to empower women.

… Between 1820 and 1875,¹ in the midst of the transformation of the American economy into the most powerfully aggressive capitalist system in the world, American culture seemed bent on establishing a perpetual Mother's Day. As the secular activities of American life were demonstrating their utter supremacy, religion became the message of America's official and conventional cultural life. This religion was hardly the Calvinism of the founders of the Bay Colony or that of New England's great eighteenth-century...

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