Estee Williams faced her TikTok followers and detractors head-on with full makeup, coiffed blonde waves, and a floral-printed puff sleeve peasant top cinched at the center with a tidy bow. She felt obligated to
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But Williams’ definition moved beyond the idyllic character of June Cleaver or even the Victorian-era presumptions of
Tradwives have not escaped the notice of journalists and social commentators who track their popular rise on various social media platforms. Some
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Although the use of social media and the power of tradwife “influencers” may be new, the use of media to reinforce conservative social norms is not. Women in 18th-century Anglo-America, for example, were inundated by “conduct literature”: writing in magazines, newspapers, and novels that dictated how they ought to behave, especially in their marriages.
Conduct literature provided women and men with pointed guidance about how to choose a spouse.
Women were ostensibly imbued with a significant
Social expectations for wives likewise filled the pages of novels like
Eighteenth and early 19th century American women’s submission was not merely suggested in prescriptive literature; it also had the force of law. Married women lived under the legal doctrine of coverture, in which their individual, legal identities were subsumed under those of their husbands. The oft-cited legal commentator, Sir William Blackstone—foreshadowing the refrain of tradwives today—asserted that wives’ submission to their husbands was “
In reality, coverture erased wives’ independent legal identities under the guise of protection and care from husbands. This legal framework dictated that a married woman owned no property in her own name; any wages she earned belonged to her husband.
Under coverture, wives had no clearly defined parental rights, and their bodies were not their own. Marital rape, for example, was not considered a crime in the 18th century (and did not become a crime in all 50 states until
Women’s access to divorce in early American history was likewise limited. Some colonies, and later states, permitted divorce under certain circumstances (and the number of states providing for access to marital separation would expand over time), though relatively few women availed themselves of this legal mechanism. Given the other stringencies of coverture, life as a single woman and a single mother likely proved a greater trial for many.
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Eighteenth- and 19th-century women did not possess rights as full citizens in the United States. Historically, citizenship rights have been linked to gender, wherein the
Coverture thus cast a long shadow over women’s rights in American history. Each generation of American women seemingly needed to be reminded—through the law, economic constraints, and even now in social media—of the “naturalness” of her submissive role. These constant reminders, however, suggest equally constant remonstrations from women, albeit with mixed results.
In the 19th century, for example, women’s organizations sought to change the law at the state level to allow married women to own property in certain circumstances, finding some success. But it was not until
The 19th Amendment’s passage in 1920—nearly a century and a half after this nation’s founding—granted some women suffrage, though it would be decades before all women could vote. Women could not serve on juries until the 1870s, although even the recent history of their inclusion has been
But their glorification of these views obscures the reality of the consequences of women’s submission and subordination to men, whether it is a “choice” or not.
Some do not want it to be a choice at all. Speaker Mike Johnson called for a return to “
Tradwives figure importantly in this movement. In many ways, they are exploited as pawns of the right, laundering extremist views and transforming them into ostensibly more palatable packaging. This was perhaps the intent behind Senator Katie Britt’s ill-received response to President Biden’s State of the Union address in early March; Senator Tommy Tuberville
Yet tradwives also entice their followers with soothing videos of
Jacqueline Beatty, Ph.D. is Assistant professor of history at York College of Pennsylvania and author of In Dependence: Women, Power, and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America.
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