Introduction Option 1

Today, modern scientific and religious ideologies are often seen as contradicting each other. Has it always been this way? A look back to the 1800s reveals that the influence of religion persisted even during the advent of new scientific discoveries. This is especially true when it comes to notions of gender. This exhibition uses the lens of gender roles in order to explore how the influence of scientific and medical popular thought combined with existing Christian religious ideas from the 1830s–1890s contributed to the reinforcement and reformulation of gender roles and sexual freedom. An examination of biographies, pamphlets, medical manuals, and etiquette books, during four major time periods—Age of Reform, Antebellum Era, Health Movement and Gilded Age—shed light on the progressive and conversely, stagnant, gender expectations. Beginning with the Antebellum period (1812–1860), professionals and nonprofessionals published an influx of religious etiquette books in an effort to retain the morality of a public increasingly trending towards secular lifestyles. During the Age of Reform reform-minded individuals further utilized Christian religious ideas to reinforce “traditional” gender roles. Overlapping with both, the Health Movement (1820–1850) introduced medical texts that brought to the public a discussion of sexual health. Despite new medical knowledge, older notions of sexual morality even within the pages of medical manuals. Collectively, these three major historical moments uncover the expectations of nineteenth-century gender roles illustrating that both science and religion reiterated conservative gender ideologies. It would take women’s own agency during the Gilded Age (1870–1890), to create a fundamental change in the gender dynamics of the previous decades.