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It is the end of the nineteenth century; a small group of women, facing unfathomable opposition, are attempting to reverse a belief and lifestyle thousands of years old. A seemingly impossible task, yet that is exactly what the feminists that emerged in the late 1800s decided to do. From the beginning of human civilization to only recently, women were considered to be less than men and denied the same opportunities, their place was at the home, not running around in a "man's world", and any women who were seen "upon the streets devoted to business were regarded with dark suspicion" (Matthews 4). They were scorned and their efforts laughed at. The main obstacles that feminists had to face in the advancement of equal rights was not the lack of legal standing they had nor their lack of respect, but the impossibility of trying to change the long withstanding belief that women were less than men. The attitudes varied, ranging from the scandalized housewives who felt the feminists were actually sacrificing their own feminism, to those, women and men alike, who laughed at the movement, calling it a fad. Yet others could not even find it within themselves to care of the movement. Unable to see it as a problem, they ignored it. The pressure against feminists was compounded by one of the most influential authoritative forces of the time, religion.

This long pervading belief that women were weaker than men exists in many philosophies during the ear. One of these was the idea of "romantic paternalism", an idea that would even leak into the legal system of the United States. This was a romanticized notion that women were the weaker or gentler sex and required protection from the man and that should be granted extra measures of protection from the law (Cushman 1). They were expected to perform specific functions, mainly domestic chores such as raising the children, cooking, or cleaning and claimed to be "sheltered against the harshness of life" by being inside the house (Cushman 1). Due to this overprotective attitude, the woman of the eighteenth and nineteenth century was usually looked down upon as unfit to participate in civic life, denied economic rights and subjected to a male dominant family. In society, they held fewer rights, they were not allowed to vote, hold office or sit in juries, and were considered the property of their husbands after marriage. The idea of legal submissiveness is defined under the principle of "coverture", defined by British jurist William

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