Abstract
This study has explored whether middle-class and elite New York women, acting within the framework of contemporary American culture, contributed through their actions to the structural transformation that resulted in the division of this culture into man’s and woman’s spheres. In exploring this issue we have looked on the separation of the home and the workplace—the spatial expression of the division of the spheres—as a watershed. I have argued that, if we could see the social practices associated with woman’s sphere beginning in the combined homes and workplaces of these groups, this finding would indicate that the women, through their practices, actively contributed to the development of woman’s sphere and to the transformation itself. If we could not see these changes beginning before the home separated from the workplace, this finding would suggest that women simply reacted or adapted to changes that were initiated in the larger society. The evidence presented in this study indicates that many of these changes did indeed begin before the separation of the home and the workplace and therefore suggests that women must be regarded as active agents in the redefinition of gender and the transformation itself.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
[O]ur furniture was a bed and bedstead, one pine table (value of fifty cents), three Windsor chairs, a soup-pot, tea-kettle, six cups and saucers, a griddle, frying-pan and brander. It was enough—it was all we wanted.... Now we have carpets to shake, brasses to scour, stairs to scrub, mahogany to polish, china to break, servants to scold; and what does it all amount to?
Grant Thorburn (1834), comparing his household goods at the time of his marriage in 1797 with those of 1834
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
This perceptive distinction was made by Sklar (1973:211) and refers to American attitudes toward gender and race.
Halttunen (1982) and McDannell (1986) have provided complementary views of these aspects of women’s roles as the arbiters of fashion and morality, respectively
The 19th-century authors of the prescriptive literature were explicitly aware of the appropriateness of different styles of architecture and objects to convey different messages and to reinforce different kinds of behavior. Clark (1986) provided a good introduction to the prescriptive literature on architecture.
This irony was noted by Ortner (1984:157) for this kind of interpretation in general and by Ryan (1979) for the restructuring of the gender system in 19th-century America in particular.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wall, D.d. (1994). Conclusion. In: The Archaeology of Gender. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1210-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1210-7_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-1212-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-1210-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive