Christine Stansell City Of Women Summary

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In City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789 – 1860, Christine Stansell describes and analyzes the lives of working-class women in late eighteenth century – early nineteenth century New York City. Stansell begins the journey with the antebellum republic – a time when the economy began shifting away from the family and towards urban industrialization. The destabilization of wage labor created a new balance in women’s relations and conditions. Women began going outside the house in order to support their family. Contrary to this shift, women continued to operate within the patriarchal economy and remained dependent on men. Between 1820-1850 Stansell shifts the narrative towards the tension rising between middle-class female reformers …show more content…

Stansell does this topic little justice as she brushes over the affects the “world’s oldest profession” had on New York City during the nineteenth century. Stansell briefly touches upon the topic while discussing the Bowery and the many guilty pleasures male patrons enjoyed. However, Stansell fails to dig deeper into the underworld and instead relegates her analysis to the already over studied and over analyzed female transition from housework to factory …show more content…

Today’s women struggle with the same issues as women of the early republic: dependence on a male driven economy coupled with expectations to neither be too masculine nor too poor. In not weaving the narrative into present day women’s issues, Stansell lost a valuable opportunity to illustrate and analyze the how and why of history repeating itself. Stansell also misses an opportunity to dissect the intra-hostility among middle-class female reformers. For centuries, even the most progressive of women have been less focused on creating universal sisterhood and more focused on mounting divisions that allow one group to get ahead of another. Thus, perhaps womankind’s greatest downfall – the gender’s seeming inability to support each other in endeavors that elevate the sex in the economic and social worlds – has extensive roots in the industrial revolution. The opportunistic patriarchy took advantage of what should have been a woman’s movement and instead turned it into one more advancement scheme of the white propertied

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