Tough Women

Everyone has pet peeves and I have mine. Occasionally I will have a discussion with other women in which they imply that somehow women had no real internal strength until the coming of 1960's feminism. Usually it is a young woman speaking and she expresses gratitude for being born in an era when she is allowed to be 'a strong woman."

Um...have these ladies never read books written by women prior to the 1960's or studied history? Simply because our fore mothers' daily lives were not written down in history books does not mean that they were weak, helpless creatures. In fact, I would imagine that our female ancestors had more internal fortitude then any modern young woman today.

The majority of our fore mothers were not sitting around bored, drinking tea and embroidering beautiful tapestries. They were resilient women who endured a lot of suffering without complaint. I dare say that they would be a bit contemptuous of their descendants for having become so weak and whiny.

Think logically for a moment about life before the twentieth century. Poverty was common. Not simply the belt tightening kind of poverty but intense suffering and hunger. Men and women both were expected to work hard for their bread. Even those women who did not have to work outside the home had to do household work without the appliances that we depend on today. There was no washing machine or bread maker. You couldn't just turn on the oven. You had to heat up a wood or coal stove. Your child needs winter clothes? Sister, you better know how to sew.

In 1853, chloroform was invented and it was administered to Queen Victoria for the birth of her seventh child. Up until that time, women often went without any pain medicine during labor. Pain was a fact of life and you simply endured it. By the way, Doctors did not understand that they should wash their hands before attending a birth until 1840! I remember my grandmother telling me that her mother-who was a midwife early in the twentieth century- told her that 'a woman in labor is a hair's breadth from death. '

Even if you did give birth safely, there was a real possibility that your child might not make it to adulthood. There were no antibiotics before the twentieth century. Imagine all the times that your child has needed antibiotics today. One of my own children suffered a bout of pneumonia as a toddler. If we had lived a hundred years ago, my son might not have reached his current age.

Due to the fact that hardships was common, you would not be aware at how difficult your life was. In fact, if you had shelter, adequate food and clothing, you would count yourself highly blessed no matter how hard you had to work. Society before our modern age seems to have disproved of excessive complaining and so you would probably not consider venting your problems out loud. You couldn't even complain that your life as a woman was harder then a man's because your husband's life would have been as difficult as you.

We tend to only appreciate those individuals who make it into the history books. Let's face it, before the modern era there were few women philosophers, painters, explorers or scientist. Some of this was no doubt caused by sexism but I think that females of long ago were simply too darned busy to do the types of activities that get one immortalized by history. That doesn't mean that they weren't tough, capable females who could probably whip the stuffing out of us modern women.

So the next time you hear a young woman say, "Women who were born long ago weren't allowed to be strong women." Or even worse "I wish that I lived long ago so I could have teas and sew quilts." Throw one of these books by women writers at her and tell her to actually learn something about the hardy women who came before us.