"Old-fashioned ways which no longer apply to changed conditions are a snare in which the feet of women have always become readily entangled"
About this Quote
Addams doesn’t romanticize “tradition” as a comforting inheritance; she frames it as a trap with a history and a target. The key move is her choice of mechanics: “changed conditions” versus “old-fashioned ways.” She’s not arguing that women are naturally unsuited to the old rules. She’s arguing the rules are structurally outdated, kept in place after the world that produced them has shifted. That’s a surgical kind of critique: if the conditions have changed, insisting on the same customs isn’t virtue, it’s negligence.
“Snare” is doing heavy moral work. It suggests intention without needing to allege a single villain. A snare can be set by institutions, by family expectations, by law, by etiquette, by a labor market built around male breadwinning. Addams also understands how social constraint becomes self-policing: “readily entangled” acknowledges how habituation and dependence make escape feel like personal failure rather than a rigged situation. The subtext is bracingly modern: oppression doesn’t always arrive as force; it arrives as norms that present themselves as common sense.
Context matters. Addams is writing out of Progressive Era turbulence, when industrialization and urban life were rewriting work, family, and public space. Women’s labor outside the home, immigration, poverty, and political organizing (including suffrage) made “separate spheres” ideology increasingly unlivable. Her intent isn’t merely to scold the past; it’s to authorize reform by making inertia look dangerous. Tradition, in her hands, becomes not a refuge but a liability women are asked to pay for with their freedom.
“Snare” is doing heavy moral work. It suggests intention without needing to allege a single villain. A snare can be set by institutions, by family expectations, by law, by etiquette, by a labor market built around male breadwinning. Addams also understands how social constraint becomes self-policing: “readily entangled” acknowledges how habituation and dependence make escape feel like personal failure rather than a rigged situation. The subtext is bracingly modern: oppression doesn’t always arrive as force; it arrives as norms that present themselves as common sense.
Context matters. Addams is writing out of Progressive Era turbulence, when industrialization and urban life were rewriting work, family, and public space. Women’s labor outside the home, immigration, poverty, and political organizing (including suffrage) made “separate spheres” ideology increasingly unlivable. Her intent isn’t merely to scold the past; it’s to authorize reform by making inertia look dangerous. Tradition, in her hands, becomes not a refuge but a liability women are asked to pay for with their freedom.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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