Date of Award

Spring 1999

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Humanities

Committee Director

Carolyn J. Lawes

Committee Member

Anita Fellman

Committee Member

Jeffery Richards

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.H85 M338

Abstract

This study calls into question common assumptions about the limited public role of Catholic women during the antebellum period of American history. To understand the roles Protestant women played during this era, it is important to understand Catholic women's roles. Through primary and secondary source documents, the similarities and differences relating to church structure and theology will be documented. The study will also examine reasons why Protestant women converted to Catholicism during a profoundly anti-Catholic era.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, women, both Catholic and Protestant, played an increasingly public role through organized benevolence and other activities. In a time when there was insufficient social welfare, the roles women played were important as poverty, sickness, and death began to reach crisis proportions. Women's benevolent and other activities were often organized through churches. This thesis suggests that Catholicism and Protestantism both supported and subverted traditional gender roles, and aided the emergence of a new feminine ideal. This ideal was an extension of the more activist components of the traditional female roles of mother and wife.

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In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/0j8c-2e65

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