Christine Stansell describes and outlines the lives and culture of urban working-class women in New York City from the end of the Revolutionary War to the start of the Civil War. This period represents (at least the urban area of New York) the shift from the small city economics to the beginnings of the urban industrialization. However, these were the nameless individuals (reminiscent of the Many Headed Hydra in its use of the New Left rhetoric) who basically became entirely, a female “motley crew.” These were the individuals who left no mark on society or diaries extolling their life and their aspirations. They lived, sweated on temporary jobs, were reduced to abject poverty with no sustained means of life and quietly died in a back room
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Whether they privately owned or publically funded as today; they have retained the cultural ghetto of America. Tenements, wherever in time created this subclass of working poor in American society. “Tenement life overrode distinctions between ethnic and occupational groups and played an important role in the creation of a metropolitan working class culture.” However, while the author sees this a working class culture, I see it as the intentional mass warehousing of a society incapable of reaching higher due to constraints imposed by …show more content…
I have to judge Stansell in that she developed an impressive history with a seldom explored area. Stansell’s sketches or drawings of “Bowery Girls” and the other subclasses is good. But, I believe that she did provide “overwhelming” evidence of a true social caste division. We now see the world of the poor through a lens of moralistic tones and social dominance/subservice. We are treated with hardships and resiliency – a good historical mix.
I can see this text along with the “Many Headed Hydra” and “Revolutionary Mothers” as a continuance in a Women’s Studies Program. There would need to be a third and fourth text cover post World War I and World War II of women in the workforce as well as the last text covering the Viet Nam era. What would be seen as women in a set piece of pre-Revolution era with little or no economic focus or rights to the rise of the “pink collar” to the assembly lines at Willow Creek to the their rise in the corporate
Whether they privately owned or publically funded as today; they have retained the cultural ghetto of America. Tenements, wherever in time created this subclass of working poor in American society. “Tenement life overrode distinctions between ethnic and occupational groups and played an important role in the creation of a metropolitan working class culture.” However, while the author sees this a working class culture, I see it as the intentional mass warehousing of a society incapable of reaching higher due to constraints imposed by …show more content…
I have to judge Stansell in that she developed an impressive history with a seldom explored area. Stansell’s sketches or drawings of “Bowery Girls” and the other subclasses is good. But, I believe that she did provide “overwhelming” evidence of a true social caste division. We now see the world of the poor through a lens of moralistic tones and social dominance/subservice. We are treated with hardships and resiliency – a good historical mix.
I can see this text along with the “Many Headed Hydra” and “Revolutionary Mothers” as a continuance in a Women’s Studies Program. There would need to be a third and fourth text cover post World War I and World War II of women in the workforce as well as the last text covering the Viet Nam era. What would be seen as women in a set piece of pre-Revolution era with little or no economic focus or rights to the rise of the “pink collar” to the assembly lines at Willow Creek to the their rise in the corporate