Womens roles in early 19th century New England evolved through increased opportunities

in the family, workplace, and society.

Womens roles in the workplace changed dramatically during the Market Revolution
a. While some factories employed entire families, the early New England textile
mills relied largely on female and child labor.
b. But this was the first time in history that large numbers of women left their
homes to participate in the public world.
c. The constant supervision of the workers private lives seems impossibly
restrictive from a modern point of view.
In the 19th century, women began to start their families later in life because of their new roles
in society and the workplace.
a. At Lowell, the most famous center of early textile manufacturing, young
unmarried women from Yankee farm families dominated the workforce that
tended the spinning machines.
b. They typically remained in the factories for only a few years, after which they
left to return home, marry, or move west.
c. But women like Larcom did not become a permanent class of factory workers.
Women began to take a more active role in society in the 1800s.
a. They also established lecture halls, churches, and even a periodical edited by
factory workers, the Lowell Offering, to occupy the womens free time.
b. Its the freedom that we want when the days work is done, one Irish woman
explained. Our day is ten hours long, but when the days work is done its
done[].
c. Homelife, Lucy Larcom later recalled, was narrow and confining, while living
and working at Lowell gave the mill girls a larger, firmer idea of womanhood,
teaching them to go out of themselves and enter into the lives of others.It was
like a young mans pleasure in entering upon business for himself.