Assignment 1: Archive(s)
Accessible
Archives Inc.: Access online http://www.accessible-archives.com/
Internet
Archive: Access online: https://archive.org/
Assignment 2: Primary Source Bibliography
(a)
Prescriptive literature (e.g. home, marriage and child-rearing manuals)
1)
William Alcott, The Young
Husband, or Duties of Man in the Marriage Relation (1840) and Familiar letters to young men on various subjects: Designed
as a companion to The young man's guide (1850)
Dr.
William Alcott was a widely-read writer of marital advice in the mid-nineteenth
century who was considered an advocate of greater family intimacy. Both The Young Husband as well as Familiar letters were intended to “elevate and reform” young men. Alcott criticized men (like himself) who threw “the whole or
almost the whole responsibility of forming character, upon woman—upon the
mother,” but believed there was room for improvement or “repentance”. (The Young Husband)
Access
Familiar letters online: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=miun.ajf2317.0001.001;view=1up;seq=6
2)
Catherine Beecher, A Treatise
on Domestic Economy (1841)
A Treatise on Domestic
Economy
was one of the first complete guides to
house-keeping published in America, in which Beecher argued not only that women
should remain in the domestic sphere, but also that the domestic sphere was
crucial to the well-being of American society. Beecher supported a rigid
partition of family (breadwinning and domestic) roles between men and women,
and her Treatise represented the most
persuasive articulation of the theory of domesticity. In fact, Beecher
confronted the contradictions of a democratic society that was not only
inegalitarian but also constantly “moving and changing”, by maximizing gender
differences while minimizing those of class, race, and ethnicity. Catherine
Beecher’s advice will be useful for comparison to advice given by men (like
William Alcott), as well as for understanding the prevalence of the cultural
idealization of the ‘traditional’ American family, in which husband and wife
operated in separate spheres.
Access
online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=VjYEAAAAYAAJ&dq=catherine%20beecher%20stowe%20treatise%20on%20domestic%20economy&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q&f=false
3)
Henry Ward Beecher, Lectures
to Young Men (1849) and John Angell James, The Young Man’s Friend (1860)
Henry Ward Beecher and John Angell
Adams epitomized the male advice-writers of the mid-nineteenth-century who
emphasized economic and social mobility, rather than domesticity. Both male
writers urged their younger counterparts to develop the qualities of sobriety,
honesty, and hard work precisely because these qualities were essential to
economic success. Although both Adams and Beecher painted lurid pictures of
urban corruption (e.g. prostitutes, gambling dens, and the other questionable pleasures of
urban life), they did not urge their young male
readers to embrace “the decent monotony” of domesticity. (Beecher) In fact,
neither writer offered young men with advice on life as a husband or father operating
in the home.
Access Lectures
to Young Men online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=TjvDnwWDLREC&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false
Access
The Young Man’s Friend online via
Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=chRhAAAAcAAJ&lpg=PR1&ots=9PbgKeQpDf&dq=john%20angell%20adams%20%22the%20young%20man's%20friend%22&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q=john%20angell%20adams%20%22the%20young%20man's%20friend%22&f=false
4)
Lydia Maria Child
Selected Letters (1870s)
According to the letters of abolitionist
and domestic writer Lydia Maria Child, her husband, David Lee Child, failed at
being the effectual provider he was supposed to be as a husband. Her letters
illustrate her resentment over her having to take over and retain the role of
breadwinner. On the one hand, the case of David Lee Child indicates that at
least a few middle-class men were ‘able’ to abandon the breadwinner role and be
supported by their wives (usually writers). On the other hand, Lydia Maria
Child’s exasperation with regards to her husband suggests the precarious nature
of the couple’s middle-class status. More broadly, her letters hint at the
contradictions of the late nineteenth-century for middle-class husband and
wife.
Access
online via Internet Archive: PDF downloaded
5)
Harriet Beecher Stowe, My Wife
and I (1870)
In My
Wife and I, Harriet Beecher Stowe ridiculed patriarchal pretensions and
praised domestic men. The generational contrast between the father and husband
of the heroine, Eva, reflected the cultural chasm of masculine domestic
involvement between the ideology of separate spheres in the mid-nineteenth
century and that of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, in which,
supposedly, men could be referred to as ‘homemakers’ without condescendence. On
the one hand, Eva’s father, Mr. Van Arsdell (a well-to-do businessman)
“considered the household and all its works and ways as an insoluble mystery
which he was well-pleased to leave to his wife”; his role was “to enlarge his
means of satisfying the desires and aspirations of his family,” the domestic
facet of which “he know little and cared less.” On the other hand, Eva’s
husband, Harry Henderson, insisted that “there is no earthly reason which
requires a man, in order to be manly, to be unhandy and clumsy in regard to the
minutiae of domestic life.” For Harry, domestic life was always on his mind: “I
think of [the house]... when I’m at work in my office, and am always wanting to
come home and see it again.” Not only did Harry spend his evenings planning
home decorations and improvements with his wife, but he also prized the
opinions of his wife and sisters over the views “of all the doctors of
divinity”. Indeed, Stowe wrote that “sooner or later the true wife becomes a
mother to her husband; she guides him, cares for him, teaches him, and
catechizes him in the nicest way possible.” However, even Stowe’s views about
the proper role for husbands in there home were contradictory, for she too
believed that “something to be said on
the importance of training men to be husbands.” The fictional example of Harry
Henderson as male homemaker suggests the existence of real-life counterparts
(e.g. Charles Cumings, an insurance company executive), or at least that some
middle-class women hoped for greater domestic involvement on the part of their
husbands.
Access online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=ZiD7ilAFQ58C&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false
6)
Abby Morton Diaz, A Domestic
Problem (1875)
Abby Morton Diaz was a widely read author
of juvenile fiction as well as a prominent Boston feminist, who tried to
persuade men that egalitarians marriages were in their best interests. On the
one hand, Diaz
argued that women would have to be granted the
rights of education and citizenship before there could be truly happy
marriages. On the other hand, Diaz remarked that people were always asking her
why, if women needed education for motherhood, men did not need similar
training for fatherhood. To which she responded: “If men feel this need, there
is nothing to prevent them from assembling… to inquire how they shall best
qualify themselves to fulfill the duties of fatherhood. [I am]… under the
impression that men’s clubs do not meet especially with a view to such
discussion.” Diaz’s statements in A Domestic Problem suggest the extent to
which greater masculine domestic involvement and women’s rights were not
mutually exclusive for late nineteenth-century feminists, like Diaz.
Access
online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=QHIqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false
7)
Albert Beveridge, The Young
Man and the World (1905)
In The
Young Man and the World, Albert Beveridge
considered the implications of masculine domesticity for ‘manliness’. A senator
from Indiana, historian and leading figure during the Progressive Era,
Beveridge devoted much of his later life to advising young men to cultivate
domestic habits and to do so in the suburbs. Although Beveridge criticized the
popular argument that masculine domesticity would inevitably effeminize
American culture, his belief that urban life was a direct threat to family
happiness epitomized the escapist suburban flow that characterized middle-class
aspirations at the turn of the twentieth century.
Access
online via Internet Archive: PDF downloaded
8)
Martha and Robert Bruère, Increasing
Home Efficiency (1912)
In Increasing
Home Efficiency, Martha Bruère, an
influential Progressive Era home economist, and her economist husband Robert,
examined middle-class households of early twentieth-century America, using
actual case studies of urban, suburban and farm families. They concluded: “the
home is man’s affair as much as woman’s… When God made homemakers, male and
female created He them!” The Bruères insisted that “a knowledge of housekeeping
is not a matter of sex, but science,” so “all ought to know [it], men and women
alike.” Although it is not clear that the average middle-class man was induced
to take home economics courses on the advice of the Bruères, the very existence
and popularity of their study suggests that middle-class men and women were
giving thought to the notion of masculine domesticity, and that men were
becoming more involved in the internal workings of the household.
Access online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=ouRjz8KFKT4C&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false
9)
Bernarr Macfadden, Manhood and
Marriage (1916)
Manhood and Marriage reflects the
connections between the cult of masculinity and
masculine domesticity made by male advice-givers in the late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century. Macfadden was a major figure in the mass culture of
the early to mid-twentieth century, amassing a publishing empire based on his
ownership of The New York Daily News
and the magazines True Story and True Romance. Macfadden published books
on health and fitness, in which he claimed that just as women should develop
physical strength, men should develop their “nurturant capacities”. In Manhood and Marriage, Macfadden
insisted that husbands should be present at childbirth, and that innate
fatherly love was, in fact, natural. Like Albert Beveridge, Bernarr Macfadden also
believed that the suburbs were the natural habitat of domestic man. Macfadden argued
that the purchase of a “modest little home”, away from urban temptations, would
endow young married men with a sense of stability.
Access
online via Internet Archive: PDF downloaded
(b)
Magazine articles
10)
“A Father’s View of the Home,” The
Independent 61 (1906)
The article was an anonymous “man,
husband and father” response to a debate, in The Independent, between Charlotte Perkins Gilman and L. H. Harris on
the “future of the family”. The author asserted that good fathers did not send
their children away from home—ergo their parent’s “natural love,” and that the family
as well as the larger society benefitted when “father and son… take their
social enjoyments en famille.” The
author wrote: “the family is the instrument, not the end… [that is] destined to
some modification which will better enable it to fulfill its mission in our
day.” On the one hand, the author pointed out the discrepancy between America’s
“democratic system based on individual liberty” and the gendered hierarchy
still characteristic of American family ideology. (See Diaz) On the other, the author predicted that economic and
industrial transformations would “powerfully” alter the family, especially as
women’s earning power and economic independence increased. The author concluded
that, “the school, the Church, the discipline of work must supplement the home”
which was the “ fulcrum from which power” over public life could be exerted. If
society was an extension of the family unit, transformations in the family
would no doubt reflect those in society at large. The author explained that his
views were based on his experience (of being married to a woman who had gone
abroad to study medicine after a year of marriage, of working in the same field
as his wife, and of bringing their baby to work—thus, of bringing the epitome
of the private into the public sphere), suggesting the interdependence between
the culture and conduct of fatherhood. (Although all other domestic
duties—namely cleaning and food preparation—continued to fall on his wife.)
Access
online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=9m87AQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA911&ots=CXMSFN1_Qo&dq=%22A%20Father's%20View%20of%20the%20HOme%22%20The%20independent&pg=PA911#v=onepage&q=%22A%20Father's%20View%20of%20the%20HOme%22%20The%20independent&f=false
11)
James canfield, “The Philosophy of Staying in Harness,” Cosmopolitan 39 (1905)
In this article, James Canfield delineated
“the three controlling desires of every normal man,” listing male domestic
needs in first place: “His home must be more than a mere shelter… He must be
able to make his house a home by adding a hearth—and there is not hearth for a
man but the heart of a woman.” (10)
Access online via Google Books:
12) T.S. Arthur, “Model Husbands” in Godey’s
Lady Book (1858)
The
temperance author, T.S. Arthur was one of the first men to question the
middle-class ideology of separate spheres. Arthur wrote a three-part series on
“Model Husbands” (“A Bad Model,” “A Better Specimen,” and “A Good Model”) for Godey’s Lady’s Book—a magazine read
primarily by women—in which he illustrated the correlation between a husband’s
temperament and domestic happiness. Arthur insisted that men had domestic
obligations, particularly in times of emergencies, which included but were not
limited to soothing a crying baby if the mother was preparing the meal, and
even cooking if neither the wife nor the cook were available to do the job. Yet,
Arthur’s manifesto for masculine domestic generosity did not eschew the assumption
of male superiority inherent in the ideology of domesticity.
Below
you will find (an abridged version of) the third installment in Arthur’s series.
According to Arthur, the good husband not only took pleasure in spending time with
his family, but also acknowledged that his ire had the power to upset the
entire domestic equilibrium for which his wife had “so bravely struggle[ed].”
Unlike, the “better specimen” in the second installment of Arthur’s series, a
good husband reevaluated his frustrations before they had time to turn to
anger, and actually improved his wife’s domestic performance by ‘selflessly’
crossing into his wife’s domestic sphere. Arthur pointed out that while a man’s
work had definite temporal borders, “a woman’s… work was never done.” Yet far
from “trespassing an inch on [his wife’s domestic’ prerogative,” a husband,
like Henry Peterkin, acknowledged his wife’s inability to simultaneously
prepare a meal and soothe their crying baby, and let “calmness” rather than
“annoyance” fall “upon the slightly [if unusually] troubled
waters of his pleasant household.”
However, while Arthur believed it was “never too late” for a man to learn how
to be useful in the home, women would always be naturally “gentler and more skillful” in the domestic arena.
Given
Arthur’s attempt at redefining masculine domesticity, it is curious that so few
historians have reevaluated the salience of private (i.e. domestic), middle-class
life on late nineteenth-century American masculinity. To be sure, the ideology
of separate spheres emerged as part of the nineteenth-century consolidation of
middle-class identity (see Catherine Beecher’s A Treatise on Domestic Economy). Yet, Arthur’s model for a good husband indicates the transformation,
if not in practice then at least in cultural aspiration, of the
nineteenth-century, middle-class American family; a transformation that was
somewhat dependent on the predictability of Henry Peterkin’s supposedly secure
corporate or bureaucratic working day. In fact, fatherhood and masculine domesticity was
not the same as motherhood and feminine domesticity. Although Arthur seems to have rejected the absolute
dichotomy between masculinity and domesticity promulgated by the ideology of
separate spheres, the metalanguage of gender, nonetheless, permeated the wages
of Henry Peterkin’s fatherhood. Arthur’s series on model husbands begs the
question: did there exist a discrepancy between the conduct (or social reality)
and the cultural construct of fatherhood?
If the way in which men,
like T.S. Arthur, thought about fatherhood can help us understand how they
thought about themselves as men, can the latter knowledge, in turn, help us
understand the structure of male dominance in the nineteenth-century?
Access
online via Accessible Archive Inc.:
“MODEL HUSBANDS. NO. I.—
A BAD MODEL.”
“NO. II.— A BETTER
SPECIMEN.”
http://www.accessible.com/accessible/docButton?AAWhat=gotoJSP&AAWhere=1&AABeanName=toc1&AANextPage=/printerFriendlyDoc.jsp&AACheck=2.3.1.0.0
“NO. III.— A GOOD MODEL.”
(c) Wish
List
1)
Advertisements (e.g. selling products and services to the new
‘affectionate couple’)
a.
See Barbara Penner, “The Commercialization of Nineteenth-Century
American Weddings”
i. Advertisement for
Domestic Sewing Machine (1882)
ii. Advertisement for Reed
& Barton, from Frank Leslie’s
Illustrated Newspaper (1877)
iii. “The Diamond Wedding”,
from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper
(1859)
iv. Spoon patterns. From
T. Steele and Son, What Shall I Buy as a
Present?: A Manual (1877)
2)
Parents Magazine (as
well as other magazines like Woman’s Home
Companion, Outlook)
3)
Angelo Patri
Papers (Library of Congress)
4)
Legal and religious tracts (e.g. regarding implementation of
welfare)
Assignment 3: T.S. Arthur, “MODEL HUSBANDS. NO. III— A GOOD MODEL” (1855)
"ANOTHER day's work
done, thank fortune!" said Mr. Peterkin, throwing himself, with an air of
careless satisfaction, in a reclining attitude on a bench…
Rising up quickly, as a
thought crossed his mind, he added— "Woman's work, it is truly said, is never
done. I must hurry off home, and see how poor Mary is getting along. She did
not seem at all well when I left her at dinner-time."
"You don't expect to cook your supper, do you?" remarked an employee in the establishment where Mr. Peterkin was engaged, speaking with a slightly sneering expression.
"If cook should happen to be out, and wifey sick," was the smiling answer, "the kettle will not fail to reach the boiling point through my neglect or indifference. That's a fact."
"… I suppose you could dress the baby, on a pinch?"
"Haven't tried it yet; but we are never too old to learn, you know. Shouldn't object to an experiment in that line— for I love babies— if there was no woman's gentler and more skillful hand ready to do the work," cheerfully returned Peterkin….
"You don't despise women also, I hope?" said Peterkin….
"They are well enough in their place, and exceedingly useful… I leave to my wife the entire management of the kitchen and nursery, and never trespass an inch on her prerogative. It's as much as I can do to maintain the household. Her department is entirely distinct from mine. She never interferes with me, and I award to her a like immunity."
"How is it if a meal is late or badly cooked?" asked Peterkin.
"I grumble, of course— perhaps scold," said the other. "If I find the money to buy good food, and it is spoiled in cooking, I think I've a right to grumble. I should like to know what you do under similar circumstances?"
"You don't expect to cook your supper, do you?" remarked an employee in the establishment where Mr. Peterkin was engaged, speaking with a slightly sneering expression.
"If cook should happen to be out, and wifey sick," was the smiling answer, "the kettle will not fail to reach the boiling point through my neglect or indifference. That's a fact."
"… I suppose you could dress the baby, on a pinch?"
"Haven't tried it yet; but we are never too old to learn, you know. Shouldn't object to an experiment in that line— for I love babies— if there was no woman's gentler and more skillful hand ready to do the work," cheerfully returned Peterkin….
"You don't despise women also, I hope?" said Peterkin….
"They are well enough in their place, and exceedingly useful… I leave to my wife the entire management of the kitchen and nursery, and never trespass an inch on her prerogative. It's as much as I can do to maintain the household. Her department is entirely distinct from mine. She never interferes with me, and I award to her a like immunity."
"How is it if a meal is late or badly cooked?" asked Peterkin.
"I grumble, of course— perhaps scold," said the other. "If I find the money to buy good food, and it is spoiled in cooking, I think I've a right to grumble. I should like to know what you do under similar circumstances?"
…
"Oh, dear, dear!" exclaimed the mother, whose nerves were already so excited that she only maintained exterior composure through the most earnest effort. "What is to be done? I can't bear to hear that poor sick child's cries; and, if I leave here, there's no telling when tea will be ready."
It only needed an impatient word from her husband to destroy the equilibrium for which Mrs. Peterkin was so bravely struggling. With him, at that moment, rested the happiness or unhappiness of his little household. He was depressed in body from weariness and hunger. He had looked forward to the evening meal with pleasure, and had expected to find it, as usual, on the table. Instead of this, he found his wife in a slightly worried state, and the supper he was so fully prepared to enjoy far from being ready. It had cost him a little effort to hide his disappointment on discovering the aspect of affairs, when he first came in; but he gave utterance to cheerful words, and these restored cheerful feelings.
Left alone, after his wife had gone to see after the evening meal, and his little daughter to quiet the baby, Mr. Peterkin's thoughts diverged into rather unusual channel for him, and he was actually saying to himself, "A little forecast on wifey's part would have prevented this," when the baby's loud screams disturbed him. It was rarely that he suffered anything to annoy him at home. Now, however, he did feel worried. An exhausted body left an exhausted mind... Then he arose, and was about passing into the kitchen to say, half impatiently, "Do let supper alone, and go up to the baby," when a better thought was born of a better purpose; and, instead of doing as at first inclined, he ascended to the chamber, and, taking the child, quickly soothed it with gentle tones and loving words.
… The good and the evil impulse were for a moment or two evenly balanced, but good preponderated, and a calmness fell upon the slightly troubled waters of his pleasant household. And such power every husband and father possesses; yet how few use their influence, at all times, well and wisely!
So interested did Mr. Peterkin soon become in the now quiet and happy babe, that he forgot all about his hunger and weariness.
"Oh, dear, dear!" exclaimed the mother, whose nerves were already so excited that she only maintained exterior composure through the most earnest effort. "What is to be done? I can't bear to hear that poor sick child's cries; and, if I leave here, there's no telling when tea will be ready."
It only needed an impatient word from her husband to destroy the equilibrium for which Mrs. Peterkin was so bravely struggling. With him, at that moment, rested the happiness or unhappiness of his little household. He was depressed in body from weariness and hunger. He had looked forward to the evening meal with pleasure, and had expected to find it, as usual, on the table. Instead of this, he found his wife in a slightly worried state, and the supper he was so fully prepared to enjoy far from being ready. It had cost him a little effort to hide his disappointment on discovering the aspect of affairs, when he first came in; but he gave utterance to cheerful words, and these restored cheerful feelings.
Left alone, after his wife had gone to see after the evening meal, and his little daughter to quiet the baby, Mr. Peterkin's thoughts diverged into rather unusual channel for him, and he was actually saying to himself, "A little forecast on wifey's part would have prevented this," when the baby's loud screams disturbed him. It was rarely that he suffered anything to annoy him at home. Now, however, he did feel worried. An exhausted body left an exhausted mind... Then he arose, and was about passing into the kitchen to say, half impatiently, "Do let supper alone, and go up to the baby," when a better thought was born of a better purpose; and, instead of doing as at first inclined, he ascended to the chamber, and, taking the child, quickly soothed it with gentle tones and loving words.
… The good and the evil impulse were for a moment or two evenly balanced, but good preponderated, and a calmness fell upon the slightly troubled waters of his pleasant household. And such power every husband and father possesses; yet how few use their influence, at all times, well and wisely!
So interested did Mr. Peterkin soon become in the now quiet and happy babe, that he forgot all about his hunger and weariness.
…Peace drew that night
around this humble family the curtains of repose….
'"And this is your 'good model' of a husband!" we hear some fine young lady, or "accomplished" gentleman, say, with a captious toss of the head. "So a man must nurse the baby, and stay at home and read to his wife every night while she darns the stockings, or else he is not a good husband, according to your wonderfully elevated standard!"
'"And this is your 'good model' of a husband!" we hear some fine young lady, or "accomplished" gentleman, say, with a captious toss of the head. "So a man must nurse the baby, and stay at home and read to his wife every night while she darns the stockings, or else he is not a good husband, according to your wonderfully elevated standard!"
Here is a
"model;" we have called it a good one. It is taken from humble life.
If all husbands in every social grade, from the highest to the lowliest, will
bear towards their wives the same unselfish regard that Mr. Peterkin bore
towards his, there will be light in many dwellings where all now is darkness
and discontent.
