<P> Zagarri (2007) argues the Revolution created an ongoing debate on the rights of women and created an environment favorable to women's participation in politics . She asserts that for a brief decades, a "comprehensive transformation in women's rights, roles, and responsibilities seemed not only possible but perhaps inevitable" (p. 8) However the opening of possibilities also engendered a backlash that actually set back the cause of women's rights and led to a greater rigidity that marginalized women from political life . </P> <P> During the building of the new republic, American women were able to gain a limited political voice in what is known as republican motherhood . Under this philosophy, as promoted by leaders such as Abigail Adams, women were seen as the protectors of liberty and republicanism . Mothers were charged with passing down these ideals to their children through instruction of patriotic thoughts and feelings . During the 1830s and 1840s, many of the changes in the status of women that occurred in the post-Revolutionary period--such as the belief in love between spouses and the role of women in the home--continued at an accelerated pace . This was an age of reform movements, in which Americans sought to improve the moral fiber of themselves and of their nation in unprecedented numbers . The wife's role in this process was important because she was seen as the cultivator of morality in her husband and children . Besides domesticity, women were also expected to be pious, pure, and submissive to men . These four components were considered by many at the time to be "the natural state" of womanhood, echoes of this ideology still existing today . The view that the wife should find fulfillment in these values is called the Cult of True Womanhood or the Cult of Domesticity . </P> <P> In the South, tradition still abounded with society women on the pedestal and dedicated to entertaining and hosting others . This phenomenon is reflected in the 1965 book, The Inevitable Guest, based on a collection of letters by friends and relatives in North and South Carolina to Miss Jemima Darby, a distant relative of the author . </P> <P> Under the doctrine of two spheres, women were to exist in the "domestic sphere" at home while their husbands operated in the "public sphere" of politics and business . Women took on the new role of "softening" their husbands and instructing their children in piety and not republican values, while men handled the business and financial affairs of the family . Some doctors of this period even went so far as to suggest that women should not get an education, lest they divert blood away from the uterus to the brain and produce weak children . The coverture laws ensured that men would hold political power over their wives . </P>

How did the events in europe affect the united states in the early 1800s