Title In the New England fashion : reshaping women's lives in the nineteenth century / Catherine E. Kelly

Published Ithaca, N.Y. ; London : Cornell University Press, 2002

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Description 1 online resource : illustrations Contents 1. "It seems like a little paradise compared with the city" -- 2. "All the work of the family" -- 3. "Never was a separation so painful" -- 4. "With joy I bear his name and pay the duties which his virtue claims" -- 5. "Old people never believe in love" -- 6. "Simple ideals of living" -- 7. "All the artificial barriers which society sometimes erects, appeared to be thrown down" -- 8. "Joining anon in fashion's noisy din" -- 9. "An elevated tone to the whole town" Summary In the first half of the nineteenth century, rural New England society underwent a radical transformation as the traditional household economy gave way to an encroaching market culture. Drawing on a wide array of diaries, letters, and published writings by women in this society, Catherine E. Kelly describes their attempts to make sense of the changes in their world by elaborating values connected to rural life. In her hands, the narratives reveal the dramatic ways female lives were reshaped during the antebellum period and the women's own contribution to those developments. Equally important, she demonstrates how these writings afford a fuller understanding of the capitalist transformation of the countryside and the origins of the Northern middle class.Provincial women exalted rural life for its republican simplicity while condemning that of the city for its aristocratic pretension. The idyllic nature of the former was ascribed to the financial independence that the household economy had long provided those in the farming community. Kelly examines how the juxtaposition of rural virtue to urban vice served as a cautionary defense against the new realities of the capitalist market society. She finds that women responded to the transition to capitalism by upholding a set of values which point toward the creation of a provincial bourgeoisie Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Subject Women -- New England -- History Rural women -- New England -- History Rural women -- New England -- Social life and customs Rural women -- New England -- Sociological aspects Rural women -- Economic aspects -- New England Rural women -- Economic aspects -- New England -- History Middle class -- New England -- History Middle class Rural women Rural women -- Economic aspects. Rural women -- Social life and customs Women New England Genre/Form History Form Electronic book LC no. 98036485 ISBN 9781501731495 1501731491

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