AP Success - AP US History: Gender Roles in the Mid 19th Century

In this Country, it is established, both by opinion and by practice, that woman has an equal interest in all social and civil concerns; and that no domestic, civil, or political, institution, is right, which sacrifices her interest to promote that of the other sex... in the domestic relation, she take a subordinate station, and that, in civil and political concerns, her interests be intrusted to the other sex, without her taking any part in voting, or in making and administering laws... There are people in Europe, who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman, beings not only equal, but alike... It may readily be conceived, that, by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded... The Americans have, applied to the sexes the great principle of political economy, which governs the manufactories of our age by carefully dividing the duties of man from those of woman, in order that the great work of society may be the better carried on... In no country has such constant care been taken, as in America, to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes, and to make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways which are always different. American women never manage the outward concerns of the family, or conduct a business, or take a part in political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor of the fields, or to make any of those laborious exertions, which demand the exertion of physical strength.