The Radical Potential of Traditional Femininity 

In the 1700s and 1800s in the U.S., women were presumed to be subordinate to men: naturally helpless, emotional, vulnerable.

Reading through the thousands of petitions submitted by revolutionary-era women to the state, one might get the impression that all women accepted their subordinate status to men with humility and grace.

But what if they didn’t? What if their engagement with the discourse of feminine dependence was merely a shrewd tool, effectively deployed to cater to precisely what their readers—white, male elites—wanted to hear? What if the radical act of seeking a divorce in the 18th century contradicted the conservative language they employed?

In most cases, we’ll never be able to deduce these women petitioners’ true feelings on their social and legal status. Many women petitioners in the revolutionary era left no trail for the historian to follow.

What we can know is that the employment of this discourse of dependence, cunningly constructed in a sympathetic narrative neatly packaged for a patriarchal audience, was immensely effective. For the most part, women who engaged with these tropes of feminine subordination saw their petitions granted. Those that did not—including those who rebuked men—largely saw their pleas rejected or ignored.

(This essay is part of the FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists series, marking the 250th anniversary of America by reclaiming the revolution through the women and gender-expansive people whose ideas, labor and resistance shaped U.S. democracy.)

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