Blog 5

Harriet Martineau is an inspiring female. Since this is the first female sociologist we discussed I enjoyed reading about what she had accomplished and her insight on sociology. This sounds feminist but to know that women were under appreciated in the past gives me more of a reason to be. One of the concepts I enjoyed Martineau discussing was her view on human happiness. She states in the article that the most important law of social life is, "the great ends to human association, the grand one, the only general one is human happiness." Even though her thoughts on how to achieve happiness is quite vague I had my own personal explanation of how we could achieve happiness. this too sounds opinionated  but I think this could be a simple step to achieving greater happiness. Martineau also described this in her article and this is the idea that our society is losing our morals and manners. Morals she explains is "society's collective proscribed and prescribed behaviors." and manners is described as, "its patters of action and association." Our society has lost or weakened how to be proper in a sense. I am not singling out every individual but men are less manly and women are less womanly than what they were back then. There are many examples that I could describe here and the word I can think of to describe both sexes is sloppy. Men are not opening doors for women, pulling out chairs for women, or dressing appropriately for women. As for women, we too are not dressing appropriately, acting lady like, or taking care of the home as much as we used to. These are just some that came to mind. Notice even in the picture given in the article. Harriet's hair is nicely pulled back, her dress is not showing any cleavage, her make-up is not drastic, and her legs are covered. Women now and even men are not respecting their bodies like they used to. I believe this could be a start to societal happiness is to better our morals and values by simply acting like we have them. Below is a picture of dressing apparel in the 1800's compared to clothing in modern day society. Notice the difference in the amount of skin shown!