Reinterpretation of True Womanhood in the Washingtonian Temperance Movement

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  • 1840年代初頭のアメリカにおける禁酒運動とジェンダー : マーサ・ワシントニアン運動の事例から
  • 1840ネンダイ ショトウ ノ アメリカ ニオケル キンシュ ウンドウ ト ジェンダー : マーサ ワシントニアン ウンドウ ノ ジレイ カラ

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This study examines how working-class women who participated in the Temperance Movement in the early 1840s reinterpreted the ideology of “true womanhood." In the United States, exalcoholic artisans and workingmen launched a total abstinence movement called the Washingtonian Movement in 1840. Working-class and lower-middle-class women actively supported the Washingtonian Movement by establishing auxiliary societies called the Martha Washington Societies. These Martha Washingtonians challenged the widespread assumption that women would never acquire intemperante habits owing to their innate moral superiority. Instead, they claimed that women could be intemperate as per their home-visit records and attempted to prove that those “degraded" women could be reformed. Washingtonian women also criticized existing benevolent societies for the exclusion of confirmed drunkards and their families from their rescue efforts. They claimed that material aids were necessary for reforming the inebriate, denying the belief that charity would induce degradation. By engaging in benevolent activities using their limited resources, Martha Washingtonians also challenged the class-specific understanding of “true womanhood" that only respectable women were endowed with morality and sympathy.

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