Disorderly conduct : visions of gender in Victorian America / Carroll Smith-Rosenberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Galaxy book

A Galaxy book ; GB 820

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States.

Women--United States--History--19th century.

Women.

Women--United States--Social conditions.

Middle class--United States--History.

Middle class.

Sex role--United States--History.

Sex role.

Women--Social conditions.

Gender identity.

Gender roles.

Role behavior.

Women--United States--Social conditions--19th century.

Middle class--United States--History--19th century.

Sex role--United States--History--19th century.

Genre:

History

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

viii, 357 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1986, ©1985.

Summary:

This first collection of essays by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, one of the leading historians of women, is a landmark in women's studies. Focusing on the "disorderly conduct" women and some men used to break away from the Victorian Era's rigid class and sex roles, it examines the dramatic changes in male-female relations, family structure, sex, social custom, and ritual that occurred as colonial America was transformed by rapid industrialization. Included are two now classic essays on gender relations in 19th-century America, "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America" and "The New Woman as Androgyne: Social Order and Gender Crisis, 1870-1936," as well as Smith-Rosenberg's more recent work, on abortion, homosexuality, religious fanatics, and revisionist history. - Publisher

"This first collection of essays by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, one of the leading historians of women, is a landmark in women's studies and in cultural history in general. Focusing on the "disorderly conduct" women and some men used to break loose of the Victorian Era's rigid class and sex roles, it examines the dramatic changes in male-female relations, family structure, sex, social custom, and ritual that occurred as America was transformed by rapid industrialization. Throughout 'Disorderly Conduct,' Smith-Rosenberg startles and convinces, making us re-evaluate a society we thought we understood, a society whose outward behavior and inner emotional life now take on a new meaning." -- Back cover

Contents:

Hearing women's words : a feminist reconstruction of history ; The female world of love and ritual : relations between women in nineteenth-century America

Bourgeois discourse and the age of Jackson : an introduction ; Davy Crockett as trickster : pornography, liminality, and symbolic inversion in Victorian America ; Beauty, the beast, and the militant woman : a case study in sex roles and social stress in Jacksonian America ; The cross and the pedestal : women, anti-ritualism, and the emergence of the American Bourgeoisie

Bourgeois discourse and the progressive era : an introduction ; Puberty to menopause : the cycle of femininity in nineteenth-century America ; The hysterical woman : sex roles and role conflict in nineteenth-century America ; The abortion movement and the AMA, 1850-1880 ; The new woman as androgyne : social disorder and gender crisis, 1870-1936.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-349) and index.

ISBN:

0195040392

9780195040395

OCLC:

14151702