The Woman's Influence: Moments of Heroism and Future Prospects

Women during the Civil War experienced a break of the acceptable norms, particularly in the South. The women took over the farms, plantations, businesses and household while their husbands were away fighting. They also became unusually involved in politics.[1]  Some women even followed their husbands or sons to the battle field and took part in war affairs in a way that would have not been allowed in normal conditions.[2] The Gilded Age also provided women with new opportunities in the public realm, giving them more job opportunities, women’s clubs, means to become icons and celebrities and the ability to make a public statement.[3] In which era were women more influential? Women from both eras had a great impact, some for that moment in history while others affected the very fibers of our nation.

When it comes to immediate influences, the Civil War let the brave, courageous, and commanding leadership attributes of women shine forth at a heroic level. Dorothea Dix stepped in as the master organizer of voluntary nurses wanting to give aide to the Union soldiers. Nursing would have been otherwise unacceptable.[4] Mary Ann  Bickerdyke volunteered herself to put in order the overcrowded military hospital in Illinois. People followed her orders to the point that an army surgeon was told that what she said “outranked everybody, even Lincoln.” She even yelled out a command to a marching brigade in opposition to the command of their officer, they obeyed her. [5] Other women took jobs that would have otherwise been closed to them, such as clerical work, and took advantage of the “liberation” they were experiencing.[6] Some women even became outwardly violent and aggressive--an attribute that was less likely found in ladies preceding the war.[7]

When it comes to far reaching effects the women of the Gilded Age, such as Susan B. Anthony other reformers, worked their entire lives to change society and did not live to see the full fruits of their labors. Susan B. Anthony labored her entire life to change the image of women in society’s eyes. She went so far as to even dress less lady-like and wear the humiliating “trousers,” of which she exclaimed, “Women can never compete successfully with men in various industrial vocations in long skirts.”[8] She did all that she could to “relieve the miseries of the afflicted and improve in every way possible the condition of man,” yet she was often ridiculed and treated harshly for her efforts. [9] To this day Anthony is remembered as one of the leading suffragists for the rights of American women. Her efforts, along with other women of her time such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, do not go unnoticed. Her influence paved the way for the rights of women, and had far-reaching effects. From this point of view, it appears that the woman from Gilded Age changed the lives of Americans from their time and onward, thus having a stronger influence overall.

Here is a site created by the Library of Congress that houses photographs and prints of women's suffrage between the years 1850 and 1920: Click Here

1.       Gail Collins, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, (Harper Perennial, New York, 2003),188-190.

2.       Collins, 202.

3.       Collins, 238.

4.       Collins, 198.

5.       Collins, 201.

6.       Collins, 195

7.       Collins, 192.

8.       Jean H. Baker, Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists, (Hill and Wang, New York, 2005), 53.

9.       Baker, 59.