Historical Significance

Industrialization affected middle-class women's lives in complex, often contradictory ways. On the one hand, poor factory workers' manufacture of cheap textiles and other goods that women had once toiled over in their homes freed up their time and talents for more engaging work.

Furthermore, the elaboration of home and domesticity as woman's special realm gave them, at least on paper, an enlarged sphere of influence. But the doctrine of separate spheres also emphasized that women were less fitted than men for public and intellectual life—even as more and more women had the time and inclination to take up such work.

One of the most influential dispensers of advice of his day, William Andrus Alcott authored dozens of books on health and education. Cousin to the noted novelist, Louisa May Alcott, he wrote the first edition of the Young Woman's Guide in the 1830s as a companion to his earlier guide for young men. Though much more sympathetic to women's rights than most men of the period, Alcott believed that they occupied a much different sphere from men.