When I started this post, I intended to ruminate on something more personal. As I continued to put thoughts down, I had meandered toward a larger contemplation of history and the work of historians. This is something that is uppermost in my mind lately as I strive this semester to make my students understand what it means to be historians. It is my hope that if they do not have an interest in the field itself (I teach a requirement, and few take my course because they are eager women's historians), they will learn to think critically and write with a degree of proficiency. Since that was the direction of the post, I junked the first draft and proceeded with what follows. (This is ultimately better, as excessive personal whining was declared a no-no at the outset of this endeavor with the founding of this blog.)
Is history cyclical or linear? Do we evolve and progress over time, or does humanity constantly repeat itself? I know there are people who study such things and have excellent theories supporting various points of view. I do not have much of an official opinion on the matter. I do not study long periods of history. Or at least I did not until this project. My current project covers well over a 100 years of history. For me, that is a lot, as prior to this I concentrated on at most thirty to forty year periods in local studies. It is a big period of time and I am not without concerns as to how I will bring it all together into one manageable volume.
In the course of my work, I have had to consider how I work as an historian. What is my methodology? How do I think of the past and women's place in it? (I am a women's historian after all. Best if I think in that way.) I have been influenced by some recent scholarship but in many ways, I have not traveled far from how I think about the past. In many ways, it is how I think about the larger world. I probably suffer from a tendency to think that people have not changed much throughout the centuries at their core. Society evolves, changes, and people change how they behave with it, but at their nature, are they much different in terms of what motivates them? I think people have always considered what is most immediate to them: family, work, survival. Throw some culture and belief system in their and we have some fun.
How are the women of my current study different in the nineteenth century than they are in the twentieth century? Is there something fundamentally changed? Can we say they are the same, but with different dresses? What difference does changing some of the Rules of their existence make to who they are and how they see the world?
These are simplistic questions, but I need to ask them, because my findings show change. Somewhat. It is important to know that women's available choices shift from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century, that they change from the 1930s to the 1970s. If women participated in that change, that is also significant. Mindsets change. There are women in both the nineteenth and twentieth century who strove for equality, both civil and social.; and women who have worked to use their talents and gifts for the benefit of their communities. Women have in one century accepted a world view that placed them soundly within a subservient position within a larger Church, but would not accept that position 100 years later. I have found documentation which involves women who wished to remain within said Church, but wanted to adapt it to broaden their place in it. Some women religious of the 1960s and 1970s are said to be more independent, influenced by their social and political age and inspired by the Second Vatican Council. Yet, how are they different from the "spirited" women religious of the nineteenth century who gave their lives (some at quite a young age) to serve God, their Church, and build the American Catholic infrastructure? If we look at the core of women religious and what they chose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is it the same? Why did women choose this life and the life that the specific community I study offered?
There are more questions than answers here. I can only interpret the documents I have; I cannot make conclusions based upon some larger desire to show progress over time or the constancy of humanity, for good or ill. What are the documents telling me? What does the established history tell me? Uh oh. More questions, even fewer answers.
Is history cyclical or linear? Do we evolve and progress over time, or does humanity constantly repeat itself? I know there are people who study such things and have excellent theories supporting various points of view. I do not have much of an official opinion on the matter. I do not study long periods of history. Or at least I did not until this project. My current project covers well over a 100 years of history. For me, that is a lot, as prior to this I concentrated on at most thirty to forty year periods in local studies. It is a big period of time and I am not without concerns as to how I will bring it all together into one manageable volume.
In the course of my work, I have had to consider how I work as an historian. What is my methodology? How do I think of the past and women's place in it? (I am a women's historian after all. Best if I think in that way.) I have been influenced by some recent scholarship but in many ways, I have not traveled far from how I think about the past. In many ways, it is how I think about the larger world. I probably suffer from a tendency to think that people have not changed much throughout the centuries at their core. Society evolves, changes, and people change how they behave with it, but at their nature, are they much different in terms of what motivates them? I think people have always considered what is most immediate to them: family, work, survival. Throw some culture and belief system in their and we have some fun.
How are the women of my current study different in the nineteenth century than they are in the twentieth century? Is there something fundamentally changed? Can we say they are the same, but with different dresses? What difference does changing some of the Rules of their existence make to who they are and how they see the world?
These are simplistic questions, but I need to ask them, because my findings show change. Somewhat. It is important to know that women's available choices shift from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century, that they change from the 1930s to the 1970s. If women participated in that change, that is also significant. Mindsets change. There are women in both the nineteenth and twentieth century who strove for equality, both civil and social.; and women who have worked to use their talents and gifts for the benefit of their communities. Women have in one century accepted a world view that placed them soundly within a subservient position within a larger Church, but would not accept that position 100 years later. I have found documentation which involves women who wished to remain within said Church, but wanted to adapt it to broaden their place in it. Some women religious of the 1960s and 1970s are said to be more independent, influenced by their social and political age and inspired by the Second Vatican Council. Yet, how are they different from the "spirited" women religious of the nineteenth century who gave their lives (some at quite a young age) to serve God, their Church, and build the American Catholic infrastructure? If we look at the core of women religious and what they chose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is it the same? Why did women choose this life and the life that the specific community I study offered?
There are more questions than answers here. I can only interpret the documents I have; I cannot make conclusions based upon some larger desire to show progress over time or the constancy of humanity, for good or ill. What are the documents telling me? What does the established history tell me? Uh oh. More questions, even fewer answers.
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