Women Rights

Womens Roles in the 19th Century

Today in society, women are about as equal to men as you can get. They have all of the same rights, including rights that women were once deprived of. Some of those rights are voting, working, and being government officials.

In the play A Dolls House by Ibsen, the main character it Nora, the wife of Torvald Helmer. Torvald belittles her and treats her as if she were a child because he thinks that as a woman she is incapable of making her own wise decisions. This play is a prime example of how women were looked down upon during the late nineteenth century. Although very few of these issues were portrayed in dramas or put out in the open at all during the late nineteenth century, they were among the most common issues with women. Most relationships were not nearly as bad as Torvald and Noras, however, women were still looked down upon and deprived of many rights.

Some women stood up for themselves, stood out, and accomplished things that only en were allowed to do in the nineteenth century. Margaret Fuller lived from the year 1810 until 1850 when she was forty years old. She became a well renowned author and journalist, and was on of the first female authors in the United States (Colliers, 1991). Fuller wrote the first book about women's

rights in the United States. Also, the year before she died, she directed a hospital for the soldiers during the siege of Rome by the French (Colliers, 1991). Margaret Fullers image is the exact opposite of the typical woman of her day.