“Why Is It Can a Woman Not Be Virtuous If She Does Mingle with the Toilers?”

Republican virtue, once vested in independent womanhood, now rested at the family hearth. But social prescription ran afoul of everyday reality: circumstances—family and work—made it impossible for many women to rest anywhere. For wage earners the gap between prescription and reality created conflict that transcended the harsh conditions of work. A self-described working woman expressed it best in a letter she wrote in 1874. She applauded men’s efforts to help women alleviate their conditions, she wrote, for “the world does not accord any privileges to women. If she was to fight for her interests, they would say how ‘rough’ and ‘coarse’ she is. Society would put her finger of scorn on her. Why is it can a woman not be virtuous if she does mingle with the toilers?” And yet this anonymous correspondent ended with a note of hope. “I think that it is among the possible that you find the virtuous,” she concluded.’ What was possible for wage-earning women in this period after the Civil War when they seemed beyond virtue? It turned out to be a fruitful time, for though the domestic code exposed women to particularly vicious forms of exploitation, the harsh conditions of their work led them to protest and to become militant in their own defense.

Militant · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Virtue · Wage · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law

• Edith Wharton joins the working classes

  Eileen Connell•Women s Studies•1997

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