blog #8 CLOSE READING OF 2 JOURNAL ARTICLES

Married Women’s Property and Male Coercion: United States’ Courts and the Privy Examination, 1864-1887

Stacy Lorraine Braukman and Michael A. Ross

This is one of the most interesting review article based on the fact that women have evolved and know their rights.Any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field..

 I do take consolation in one fact: since the home was women’s domain when advertising began to play an influential role in American culture, women were targeted as the ultimate consumers. Often mocked or stereotyped for shopping, women are constantly bombarded with pressure to “buy this” or “wear that” in order to improve their lives.

I would agree with the author, that staying at home to raise children can be a beautiful and fufilling choice. However, I would extend that to both sexes. That women feel more pressure to be the primary caregiver -regardless of whether or not that is their wish– is not good; Neither is it healthy that men feel added pressure to be the breadwinners, even if they’d rather be the stay-at-home parent.  That ad, however, did not empower men or their choices. It made them seem like a bunch of whiny misogynists who needed a car to validate their manhood.

The mortgage became a subject for litigation when Thomas Foster’s business venture failed and the couple defaulted. The lender attempted to foreclose on Mrs. Foster’s property. When she refused to relinquish her land, the lender sued. In her defense, Mrs. Foster claimed that the mortgage was not valid because her privy examination had been faulty.

In the United States, changes in married women’s property laws took place over a number of decades, but, during the twenty years after the Civil War, the pace quickened. The shift from a small-scale agricultural economy to one more modern, industrial, and urban drove many of these changes. During these years, for example, a majority of men and women in the workforce became wage laborers, a transformation with profound implications for the economics of marriage.

ARTICLE 2

African Women: A Modern History

Publication Information: Book Title: African Women: A Modern History. Contributors: Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch – author, Beth Gillian Raps – transltr. Publisher: Westview Press. Place of Publication: Boulder, CO. Publication Year: 1997. Page Number: viii.

chapter 1

To understand women’s place in ancient African societies, we must of course examine their place in the family as just defined. But the African continent, with its vast expanses and its multitude of historical-social-cultural or “ethnic” groups, spans a broad spectrum of types of familial communities.

The marriage pattern described earlier applied to free women, but some societies also captured women from other tribes or bought slaves for marriage.

From at least as early as the nineteenth century they had high mortality rates that threatened their survival and their productive ca-
pacity. The genealogies of the dominant lineages reveal that succession was often a problem because of a lack of survivors. Seeking slave women through force or purchase was considered worthwhile both to increase reproductive capacity (although it did not always do so) and,especiallyin matrilineal societies, to strengthen the father’s line.

Women’s situations varied by region and society. Whereas the central and eastern areas of Africa were particularly ravaged by the slave trade, in West Africa some women enjoyed a certain autonomy because, in addition to working the land, they produced handicrafts and sold goods in the market.

QUESTIONS

1.What is the difference between the introduction and the lit review… ? The introduction gives the main idea about the topic being discused.It just introduce the main topic while literature review summerizes the main idea for the whole article.

2.In what ways did the authors attempt to hook the reader’s interest? by having some quotes from famous women feminist. Inarticle 2 . the author tries to create suspicion so that he/she can attract the readers attention.

Advertisement