Abstract
When Grant Thorburn made this caustic comment in 1845, he was referring to some of the changes he had observed in the role of urban middle-class women in the half century that followed the American Revolution. During this period, American urban culture underwent a structural transformation that intimately affected the lives of its men, women, and children. This study examines some of the changes in women’s roles that were associated with this transformation in middle-class families in New York City. These changes led to the development of what we today think of as the “traditional” middle-class American family, with women confining their activities to domestic life in the home (or “woman’s sphere,” as it was called in the 19th century) and men participating in the economic and political arenas of the larger society.
But wives in those days were true yoke-fellows: they drew equal. Now, scores of them are worse than good for nothing
Grant Thorburn, nurseryman, New York, 1845
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Notes
The city’s population grew from 4,375 in 1703 to 21,863 in 1771, a fivefold increase. In 1746, 2,444 (21%) of its 11,717 inhabitants were either African or of African descent, and most of them were enslaved. The population figures are from Rosenwaike (1972); Wilentz described the immigrants (1984:109).
Blackmar (1989) provided the most comprehensive explication of the dynamics of the physical growth of the city; the quotation is from Haswell (1896:86).
Mills (1951) discussed the composition of the middle class in the early 19th century. Family strategies are discussed in Medick (1976) and Tilly and Scott (1978); the following discussion draws heavily on the work of Cott (1977), Degler (1980), Margolis (1985), Matthai (1982), and Ryan (1981, 1983).
Pessen (1973) is still the best source on the city’s elite.
Gilje (1987), Hodges (1986), Rock (1979), Rosenberg (1971), Stansell (1986), Walkowitz (1982), and Wilentz (1983, 1984) have all added to our understanding of the formation of the working class in New York.
Such writers include Cott (1977), Degler (1980), Lebsock (1985), D. S. Smith (1979); but see also Epstein (1981:158).
This discussion is adapted from J. W. Scott (1986). Welter (1968) provided an example of such a feminist approach.
Adapted from J. W. Scott (1986). Examples of such studies are those of Hayden (1982), Margolis (1985), Matthai (1982), Strasser (1982), and Zaretsky (1976).
Wallerstein (1980) described Great Britain as a hegemonic power in the 19th century; Hall (1964, 11:152) is quoted more extensively above.
This approach is adapted from the one that Sahlins (1981, 1985) used in examining the impact on the Hawaiians of the arrival of the first Europeans (Captain Cook and his fleet). He showed how the actions or practices of particular social groups (in this case, Hawaiian men, women, and chiefs) acting within the traditional framework of their culture in regard to a new event or phenomenon (in this case, the arrival of the Europeans) can effect a structural transformation. Many historians (including Foner, 1976, and Kerber, 1980) have taken the position that the Revolution opened America to numerous possibilities and opportunities and hastened the transformation to modernity.
This is the position taken by Cott (1977:2).
The exceptions referred to include Burley (1989), Deagan (1973, 1983), and Yentsch (1990, 1991a,b).
Antebellum New York City has received a great deal of attention from political, labor, social, and intellectual historians, especially in the last decade or two; see, for example, Bender (1988), Blackmar (1979, 1989), Bridges (1984), Gilje (1987), Hartog (1983), Hodges (1986), Pessen (1973), Rock (1979), Rosenberg (1971), Stansell (1983, 1986), Walkowitz (1982), Wilentz (1983, 1984), and Wilkenfeld (1978), as well as the earlier works of Ernst (1949), Gilchrist (1967), Pomerantz (1965), and Willis (1967).
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Wall, D.d. (1994). Introduction. In: The Archaeology of Gender. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1210-7_1
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