| Popis: |
Was Jane Addams a feminist? Scholars of many disciplines have chosen various adjectives to capture the kind or kinds of feminist she was. This chapter uses a biographical approach. It explores the experiences that led her to probe the tensions between the ideals of patriarchy and democracy. It also establishes when she first adopted the language of “patriarchy” and “feminism.” When she was young, she struggled with her father’s expectations of a daughter’s duty to family because those expectations set limits on her ambition. Eventually, after her father’s death, she resolved the contradiction by deciding she was like her father. That was the moment she became a reformer and made it her life’s goal to advance what she called “social democracy.” Beginning with the founding of Hull House in 1889, she increasingly sought for women of all classes and backgrounds to have an equal voice in the family and in the nation’s civic life. At the same time, under the influence of contemporary, intellectual debates and her experiences with the labor union movement—especially the Pullman Strike—the suffrage movement, and the peace movement, her understanding deepened of the challenges involved in achieving such a revolution. In time she embraced the language of “patriarchy” and “feminism” as useful when interpreting the struggles women faced to stand as men’s equals at home, in politics, and in history. |
