AMERICAN WOMEN AS SEEN BY EUROPEAN MEN (1850 – 1950)

Unfavorable judgements about American Women by European authors between 1850 and 1950 were dictated by superficiality, impulsiveness, dependance on outward appearances and a conspicuous uneasiness about the more advanced state of women's emancipation in the United States. Observers tended to judge the American average by the European ideal. Moreover, particularly dull, unattractive, and unsociable women were chosen as models for the typical Americaness. Ideologically conditioned hatred of women were projected on American women. They appear, in general, as soulless, difficult, dominating, shameless or undersexed luxury wives.