week ten (3/23 – 3/27)
by Prof. Hangen - March 21st, 2009
23. Mon 3/23 – Separate Spheres and Didactic Literature
Reading: Joan Wolloch Scott, “Gender: An Important Category of Historical Analysis”
24. Wed 3/25 – Separate Spheres and the “Canon” or “Cult” of Domesticity
Reading: Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in 19th Century America” and John S. Abbot, “The Mother At Home” (1833) – focus on Chapter I and II (either read in page image view or as a transcript – pp. 1 through 40).
Discussion questions:
Our reading this week introduces you to feminist analysis of early 19th century prescriptive literature (or “didactic literature”) aimed at women. This genre of literature, including sermons, tracts, instruction manuals, instructed middle-class white women how to behave, how to run their homes, and helps us understand how women’s roles were defined in antebellum America (1800-1860). For more on the genre, see here. The Abbot tract “The Mother at Home” is an example of this kind of literature. Both Smith-Rosenberg’s and Scott’s articles are examples of how feminist historians have approached these kinds of sources as a window into women’s lives in this period.
What ideas about gender were prevalent in antebellum America? Can you identify some of these ideas in Abbot’s tract?
To whom did these definitions apply? And who was excluded from them? Who was defined as “not woman” or “unwomanly”?
One of the major themes in scholarship on separate spheres is the difference between what women were told to do and what they actually did. How does Smith-Rosenberg go about investigating whether women followed this literature’s prescriptions in their own lives?
Can you think of contemporary examples of prescriptive literature in our own time?
25. Fri 3/27 – Presentation Day #4
(don’t forget: if you’re not presenting this week, it is a perfect opportunity to write a response paper!)
For the presenters this week (Cummings, Adreani, Clark):
Please read and use the PDF of Barbara Welter’s groundbreaking article “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860” (American Quarterly, 1966). Use it to investigate additional examples of prescriptive literature such as:
- The rest of Abbot’s tract, i.e. Chapters 3-8.
- Catharine Beecher, “Treatise on Domestic Economy” (1856)
- The New England Primer, one of the most popular and widely-used schoolbooks in America. The 1807 edition is online here.
- The Young Lady’s Book: A Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises and Pursuits (this
1830 work is cited on Welter, p. 152) – full text online at Assumption College’s Women’s History Workshop - Or choose another tract, besides the Abbot, written prior to 1865 from the Michigan State University digital database “Shaping the Values of Youth: Sunday School Books in 19th Century America” (This database can be searched by category, such as “advice books,” “moral tales,” “immigrants” or “hymnals”). A text with a date of 18–? is okay.
