Whitney C. Russell
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1. Present a brief lecture on the history of Catharine Beecher and the Reform Era, or have students read photocopies of the material.
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2. Discuss with your students their views on Beecher’s cult of domesticity and its presence in our society.
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3. Give as in-class work or homework assignments some or all of the following passages from Beecher. Have your students write a one paragraph analysis of her central points. Have your students use selected quotations from these writings to validate their observations. The passages are on the next page.
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4. Consider a possible debate between Catharine Beecher, played by a student volunteer, and either Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton from New York. Most libraries will now have biographies on these women for those who wish to research their views.
KEY QUESTIONS: Covering a two or three day assignment.
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1. Can you recognize the decidedly conservative and traditional points of view in Catharine Beecher’s writings on the theory of domesticity? [Consider statements made by Kathryn Sklar in her book
Catharine Beecher; A Study in
American Domesticity
. Here she discusses the potential isolation that Beecher’s view could cause in the rapidly changing life styles of 19th-century America.]
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2. Knowing that Reverend Lyman Beecher was a strong and dynamic social leader, can you explain the influence such a parent might well have on a daughter as well as on a son? [Have students look at their own parental relationships, and consider research in the early chapters in Sklar’s book on
Catharine Beecher
.]
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3. Would your understanding that Beecher’s views found wide acceptance in antebellum Connecticut help to support the view that the state’s society was one that held very strong ties with the ways of the past? [Thus making Connecticut at least during the first half of the century a state “ruled” by the attitude of maintaining the “Steady Habits.”]
(figure available in print form)
(figure available in print form)
(figure available in print form)
(figure available in print form)