Life in Western Europe during the Nineteenth Century

In the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a second Industrial Revolution in Western Europe that brought new industries, sources of energy, and goods. This changed the entire human environment and Europeans believed that this material progress was a sign of human progress; they thought that the new scientific and technological accomplishments would improve humanity and solve all of their human problems. Western Europeans’ views began to change; there were new concepts and ideas that altered their society and they gained a new image of themselves, their country, and the world. Gender roles were shaped by the Domesticity and Private Spheres Ideology which said that women should devote themselves to their homes, their husbands, and their children while men were to go out and get jobs, take part in politics, and other aspects of the outside world. It was said that men and women had different functions to perform under God. Society’s peace depended on these roles and if women began taking part in men’s activities there would be crisis. Young girls were to be under the supervision of their fathers, or brothers in some cases, until they were married and then they belonged to their husbands. Married women were considered legal incompetents because they did not have a sufficient brain to participate in legal affairs. For a while people did not have a problem with this arrangement because it portrayed women as noble and superior. Around the 1850s church attendance became very low and many more women than men begin attending services. Women took over the church in a sense because while men had world affairs and politics, women did not have such commitments and so they adopted the church to have a place of their own in society.
After the Second Industrial Revolution there were new job openings for women and they began to stray from their traditional roles. John Stuart Mill, a British philosopher, brought about the idea of feminism. Mill argued that