FFW (5 min): How does a person invent a product or service that has never existed before?
If you had to invent a new product or service in 24 hours, how would you approach this challenge?
What do you see?
William James Bennett, View of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York City, c. 1827, Metropolitan Museum
In the early years of the nineteenth century, Americans’ endless commercial ambition—what one Baltimore paper in 1815 called an “almost universal ambition to get forward”—remade the nation. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, an old subsistence world died and a new more-commercial nation was born. Americans integrated the technologies of the Industrial Revolution into a new commercial economy. Steam power, the technology that moved steamboats and railroads, fueled the rise of American industry by powering mills and sparking new national transportation networks.
A “market revolution” remade the nation.
The revolution reverberated across the country. More and more farmers grew crops for profit, not self-sufficiency. Vast factories and cities arose in the North. Enormous fortunes materialized. A new middle class ballooned. And as more men and women worked in the cash economy, they were freed from the bound dependence of servitude.
Culture of Domesticity
The Culture of Domesticity is a term used by historians to describe what they consider to have been a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the 19th century in the United States. This value system emphasized new ideas of femininity, the woman's role within the home and the dynamics of work and family.
"True women," according to this idea, were supposed to possess four cardinal virtues:
piety (being religious)
purity (free from immorality, especially of a sexual nature)
domesticity (cooking, needlework, making beds, and tending flowers were considered naturally feminine activities, whereas reading anything other than religious biographies was discouraged)
submissiveness (to be as submissive and obedient "as little children" because men were regarded as women's superiors "by God's appointment")
FFW (2 min): What do you see?
FFW (2 min): Do you think these ideals applied to all women? WHY or why not? Use evidence from the image to support your inference.
Caption: "'Crush in thy heart all pride—by pride the angels fell.' Engraved and printed expressly for Godey's Lady's Book by J. M. Butler."
FFW (2 min): What do you see? How do we see these ideals reflected in today's society?
FFW (2 min): WHY do you think home exercise illustrations were widely circulated?
Were such illustrations were promoted for all genders? WHY or why not?
Engraved illustrations for an article from Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 45 (July 1852): P. 65 (Philadelphia: Published by L. A. Godey). Clifton Waller Barrett Collection, University of Virginia.
Reflection: What do we understand about the early 19th century by analyzing visual primary sources?
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