In the 19th century, industrialization was growing ever more a part of American culture and along with it came new societal structures that were converting the country into a multifarious nation. New York City was an increasingly diverse metropolis with a growing number of classes and cultures within itself. As Irish and southeastern Europeans were arriving into the country’s northern ports, young American boys were also arriving from the country’s interior. The adolescents came to compete for work in the recently industrialized world. In New York the large influx of youths produced a new adolescent subculture that promoted deviant and licentious behavior throughout the city. The book “The Murder of Helen Jewett” by Patricia Cline Cohen discusses a community of business workers known as clerks. These young businessmen were one faction of the latest society and a representative of the urban adolescent culture of New York and the nation. In the 1830s, clerks were adolescent boys who traveled to New York to learn the business trade. Most clerks came from middle-class families who could not spare the expense to send all of their sons to college but could afford to release them into the world of work. The young boys clerked in assorted commercial businesses and shops “earning at most $4 per week” (Cohen, 111) and accumulated several hundred dollars a year. Clerks were aspiring to become journeymen who earned “$10 to $12 a week” (Cohen, 111) and possibly have their own shop or mercantile business one day. “By day they penned letters, measured cloth, swept stores, sold to customers, or perhaps kept the books” and by night the experienced their newfound independence on the city streets and in its saloons and brothels. B... ... middle of paper ... ... premarital and immoral sexual services that would be inappropriate for respectable courtships of the time. Under false names such as “Frank Rivers and Bill Easy” the young clerks experienced courtship “unburdened by… bourgeois courtship and free of the renunciations and monotony of lifelong marriage” (Cohen, 131) .The women also catered to the clerk’s feminine and domestic needs like repairing and sewing clothing “as a wife would do for a husband” (Cohen, 149). The culture of adolescent clerks that developed in the early 19th century was fostered by the lack of supervision from parents and masters like that of previous generations. Young boys were sent out into industrialized cities bursting with immoral attractions. Many adolescents of the period were led astray from their moral guidance and accepted the new sinful routines as a normal aspect of their lives.
Nineteenth century industrialism presented the United States with a unique and unprecedented set of problems, as illustrated through the works of Rebecca Harding Davis and Horatio Alger Jr. Although both authors felt compelled to address these problems in their writing, Rebecca Harding Davis’s grasp on the realities faced by the working poor and women was clearly stronger than Alger’s. Not only did Alger possess a naïve view on exactly how much control an individual has over their own circumstances, but he failed to address the struggles of women entirely. As a result, Alger conceived a rather romantic world where the old-fashioned American ideals of hard work, determination, and self-sacrifice enable a young boy to lift himself from poverty.
For the first time in history children were an important factor of the economic system, but at a terrible price. The master of the factories employed children for two reasons. One, because of their small body which can get inside the machines to clean it and use their nimble fingers. Second, the masters use to pay low wages to the children who could be easily manipulated. The average age for the parents to send their children to work was ten. Although, Conventional wisdom dictates that the age at which children started work was connected to the poverty of the family. Griffith presents two autobiographies to put across her point. Autobiography of Edward Davis who lacked even the basic necessities of life because of his father’s heavy drinking habit and was forced to join work at a small age of six, whereas the memoir of Richard Boswell tells the opposite. He was raised up in an affluent family who studied in a boarding school. He was taken out of school at the age of thirteen to become a draper’s apprentice. The author goes further and places child employees into three groups, according to the kind of jobs that were available in their neighbourhood. First group composed of children living in rural areas with no domestic industry to work in. Therefore, the average of a child to work in rural area was ten. Before that, farmers use to assign small jobs to the children such as scaring birds, keeping sheep
With the gradual advancements of society in the 1800’s came new conflicts to face. England, the leading country of technology at the time, seemed to be in good economic standing as it profited from such products the industrial revolution brought. This meant the need for workers increased which produced jobs but often resulted in the mistreatment of its laborers. Unfortunately the victims targeted were kids that were deprived of a happy childhood. A testimony by a sub-commissioner of mines in 1842 titled Women Miners in the English Coal Pits and The Sadler Report (1832), an interview of various kids, shows the deplorable conditions these kids were forced to face.
John Updike's short story “A&P,” centers on a young immature and morally ambitious teenager who faces down the generation gap and, rather than bending to the dictates of the elders, rebels against them, securing his rather insecure place as a young, unproven man. Sammy, the main character, describes the entrance of a group of young attractive girls into the supermarket, “In walk these three girls in nothing but bathing suits…They didn’t even have shoes on”.(864) Sammy is mesmerized by their presence that he cannot do his job. The supermarket manager, Lengel, scolds the visitors by exclaiming “Girls, this isn’t the beach”.(867) Within the few moments after Sammy dramatically quits his job in protest of the quite impolite treatment by Lengel he says to himself “…and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter”.(869) Because of his youth, and certainly because of the extremes of behavior that the young are prone to demonstrate, Sammy perceives that his life will forever be damaged by his actions. Though we certainly understand that this is not the case, that no one’s life is inexorably ‘ruined’ by the decision to do something momentous, it is certainly quite charming to transport ourselves into a time in our lives when such passions ruled us. This image awakens in us the expect...
In John Updike’s “A&P”, the revolution of the young people of the current age against authority is explored and explained. “A&P” reveals the shift from conservative and deferential to avant-garde and disrespectful. Through the observation of the behavior of the characters in the story, one can receive a clear picture of the evolution of the sexual revolution that has come in this age. Sammy is the first character that is introduced, he is the protagonist and narrator of the story. Stoksie and Lengel are next, Stoksie is a fellow store clerk with Sammy as well as a good friend and Lengel is the manager of the store. Finally, Queenie is introduced. “A&P” begins with Sammy noticing these three girls that come into the store in nothing but their bathing suits. Sammy then proceeds to analyze each of the girls bodies, finally coming to rest on the leader of the group, his favorite, who he affectionately names to himself, “Queenie”. Although Sammy and Stoksie joke back and forth about the girls sexiness, he is privately revolted by the butchers bluntly ogling the girls as they search for whatever they wish to purchase. Throughout this recounting of the experience, one begins to wonder, when did girls become pieces of meat to be observed and handled by men? They used to be cherished and protected as they should be. The sexual revolution of the past and current decades have changed all of that.
In his observation of the boys, he finds that these boys are criminalized by many social forces besides the police. “I found that schools pushed out boys who had been victimized.” (pg. 6). Many boys feel that their school system blames them for crimes that have occurred in their area, or as a danger to other students in the classroom. These boys think that these experiences of victimization are part of their street life. Rios says that if the institutions of social control believe that all young people follow the code of the street, then programs and interactions with margined youth’s will be based on this false information. This dishonest perception of youth is what leads to their
O’Donnell who was with his company for eleven years, would lose their jobs to a machine who could do the job quicker or to a worker who would work for a lower wage, like young boys or immigrants. O’Donnell described how men would gather to be picked for work in the mill and the men with young boys to serve as “back-boys” always got picked first because they could do the work faster and the young boys worked for $.30 or $.40 a day as opposed to the $1.50 O’Donnell usual took home for a day’s work. He also described how it didn’t take a skilled worker like himself to operate the new ring-spinners that expedited the cotton spinning process. But skilled workers and laborers weren’t the only ones who were “under the plating” of the Gilded Age. In Document 19-2, women described the struggles of working as domestic servants. Many women went to work during the late 19th century to help out their families in this time of financial anguish. Many took up jobs as domestic
In “Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South,” Jacquelyn Hall explains that future generations would need to grapple with the expenses of commercialization and to expound a dream that grasped financial equity and group unanimity and also women’s freedom. I determined the reasons for ladies ' insubordination neither reclassified sexual orientation parts nor overcame financial reliance. I recollected why their craving for the trappings of advancement could obscure into a self-constraining consumerism. I estimated how a belief system of sentiment could end in sexual peril or a wedded lady 's troublesome twofold day. None of that, in any case, should cloud a generation’s legacy. I understand requirements for a standard of female open work, another style of sexual expressiveness, the section of ladies into open space and political battles beforehand cornered by men all these pushed against conventional limitations even as they made new susceptibilities.
The "youth control complex" is one of the concepts presented by the author to analyze young people 's lives. As mentioned in the book, it is "a ubiquitous system if criminalization molded by the synchronized, systematic punishment meted out by socializing and social control institutions"(p.40). It is a person 's normal daily behavior become ubiquitously treated as deviant or even criminal behaviors. For example, schools in Oakland often treat problem students as potential criminals, and some staffs and teachers act as prison guards telling students they are will never be amount to anything and threaten to call the police for misbehaviors which should be dealt with on campus. Many young men are often called a thug and frisked by police. It damages the mind and future prospects of them. They feel outcast and just want to be acknowledged
In The Murder of Helen Jewett, Patricia Cohen uses one of the most trivial murders during the 1800’s to illustrate the sexiest society accommodations to the privileged, hypocritical tunneled views toward sexual behavior, and the exploitation of legal codes, use of tabloid journalism, and politics. Taking the fact that woman was made from taking a rib from man was more than biblical knowledge, but incorporated into the male belief that a woman’s place is determined by the man. Helen had the proper rearing a maid servant, but how did she fall so far from grace. Judge Weston properly takes credit for rearing her with the proper strictness and education. Was Helen seduced at an early age and introduced to sexual perversions that were more persuasive that the bible belt life that the Weston’s tried to live? Was Helen simply a woman who knew how to use what she had to get what she wanted? Through personal correspondence, legal documentation, census reports, paintings, and newspapers we are able to make our own determinations. Cohen provides more than enough background and history to allow any one to make their own opinion how the murder of a woman could be turned into a side show at a circus.
His annotation of the “women with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care less” (Updike 159) and “the sheep” (Updike 162) in the checkout lines are an illustration of his everyday repetitious life working at the A&P. He compares these women to animals showing his undeniable sophomoric juvenile behavior.
The article discusses the need for these early Chicago saloons as a neighborhood commune for those men who labor long hours only to come home to poverty and despair of a desolate household. Melendy focuses on the mental, physiological, and moral nature of these workingmen. He points out that this saloon culture allows it’s patrons to develop these traits by interacting with their peers—others facing the same despair. These establishments are described as the “workingman’s school. He is both scholar and teacher” (Melendy pg. 78). Patrons gather at the bar, around tables and in the next room amongst games of pool, cards, and darts to discuss political and social problems, sporting news, and other neighborhood gossip. Here men, native and immigrant, exchange opinions and views of patriotism, brotherhood, and lessons in civil government. Melendy describes this atmosphere as cosmopolitan, and articulates that these businesses advertise this issue in their names. For example one of the downtown saloons was entitled “Everybody’s Exchange.” The saloon’s customers experienced a buffet of nationalities upon which was not so for those of poverty in previous decades. Saloons also served as disguises of corruption as Melendy illustrates by declaring “...
males dealing with family, sexuality and the harsh reality of living in the urban ghetto. Young
In his research Jay Macleod, compares two groups of teenage boys, the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers. Both groups of teenagers live in a low income neighborhood in Clarendon Heights, but they are complete opposites of each other. The Hallway Hangers, composed of eight teenagers spend most of their time in the late afternoon or early evening hanging out in doorway number 13 until very late at night. The Brothers are a group of seven teenagers that have no aspirations to just hang out and cause problems, the Brothers enjoy active pastimes such as playing basketball. The Hallway Hangers all smoke, drink, and use drugs. Stereotyped as “hoodlums,” “punks,” or “burnouts” by outsiders, the Hallway Hangers are actually a varied group, and much can be learned from considering each member (Macleod p. 162). The Brothers attend high school on a regular basis and none of them participate in high-risk behaviors, such as smoke, drink, or do drugs.
Stated by John Ramsey, “As I was walking through the basement, I opened the door to a room, and knew immediately that I’d found her because there was a white blanket- her eyes were closed, I feared the worse but yet- I’d found her” (Bardesley, and Bellamy). On December 26, 1996, one of the most famous, unsolved murders took place in Boulder, Colorado (Christopher). The murder caused many events including accusations, interrogations, false claims, and examining of evidence. The case also caused the Ramsey family to go through a hard time. The murder of JonBenet Ramsey was very shocking and caused a huge investigation that is yet unsolved.