Home Economics: 19th Century's GE Course

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli was born on May 23, 1810 and passed away on July 19, 1850. She was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts to her father, Tim Fuller, who was upset at the time because he wanted a boy. But that didn’t stop him from teaching Margaret and having her going to school at 14. In 1847, Margaret met Giovanni Angelo, the Marchese d’Ossoli in Italy. They fell in love with one another, had a son, and married a year later. Both had to move to Florence in 1849 to escape the Roman Revolution of 1848. A year later, they sailed for the United States, but the ship ran aground in a storm off Fire Island, New York and their bodies were never found. Margaret Fuller was a journalist, critic, and women’s rights activist associated with the American transcendental movement. She was the first full-time female book reviewer in journalism and her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

Elaine Fortin writes in her paper, “Early Nineteenth Century Attitudes Toward Women and Their Roles,” that women should be given some kind of education, but not academic subject. Women should be going to school to learn how to manage a house and be able to find a husband to take care of. This relates to the argument Margaret Fuller made in her book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century that, “So much is said of women being better educated, that they may become better companions and mothers to men” (50-51). Fortin continues on that men did not want woman to be educated in academic studies because that will keep them away from the house and “home life would suffer.” If a woman was academically trained, they will not keep up and manage the house and marriages will be in trouble. With this notion, we are given the stereotype of the stay-at-home wife and mother who very well knows home economics, but not much academics in the late 19th Century to the mid 20th Century.

http://www.biography.com/articles/Margaret-Fuller-9303889#

Fortin, Elaine. "Early Nineteenth Century Attitudes Toward Women and Their Roles." Teach US History. Old Sturbridge Inc. , Web. 21 Oct 2009. .

Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Mineola, NY: Dover Pulbications, INC., 1999. Print.