Remarks from the curators
It is our hope that this exhibit gave you insight into the shifting gender roles in early nineteenth century white, middle-class America.
As a team, we worked to express some of the complexities of what American History calls the Progressive Era. Though women certainly achieved progress to some degree, the demographic included primarily white middle-to-upper-class women, and the ideology behind some of this progress reinforced past misogynistic stereotypes, as this exhibit hoped to prove.
This sample of artifacts only scratches the surface, and we encourage you to look at some of our suggested further reading to improve your understanding of the multifaceted shift in gender roles in the Progressive Era. Here are some questions you may consider with further research:
How did gender roles change (or to what extent did they remain the same) when men returned from WWI?
In what ways did Marriage and Etiquette, Patriotism and Labor, and Religion interact to influence gender roles in this period? Which of these aspects reflect more change?
The Progressive Era brought about changes for the roles of men and women, but also for people of color. In what ways did people of color see progress, and in what ways did these minorities remain suppressed?
We welcome any discussion, questions, comments or concerns via this Google Form. Thank you for visiting our exhibit!
Bibliography
Blum, Elizabeth D. . “Women, Environmental Rationale, and Activism During the Progressive Era”. In To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History, edited by Dianne D. Glave and Mark Stoll, 77–92. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.
Dickson, Maxcy. The Food Front. Washington DC: American Council on Public Affairs, 1944.
Dye, Nancy. Introduction to Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era, Edited by Noralee Frankel. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991.
Fass, Paula S. Introduction to The Damned and the Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Harding Susan F. “American Protestant Moralism and the Secular Imagination: From Temperance to the Moral Majority.” Social Research 76, no. 4 (2009): 1277-1306.
Kim, Tae. “Where Women Worked During World War 1.” Seattle General Strike Project. Accessed April 21, 2016. http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/kim.shtml
Lusk, Graham. Food in War Time. Pittsburgh: W.B. Saunders, 1918.
Mintz, S., & McNeil, S. “Digital History: 1920’s.” Accessed April 6, 2016.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraid=13.
Parker, Cornelia. Working With the Working Woman. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1922.
Tunc, Tanfer Emin. “Less Sugar, More Warships: Food as American Propaganda in the First World War.” War in History 19, no. 2 (2012): 193 - 216.
Wayne, Kenneth H. Building Your Boy:How to Do It How Not to Do It. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1910.
Wood-Allen, Mary. What a Young Woman Ought to Know. Philadelphia: The Vir Publishing Company , 1913.
Yuval-Davis, Nira. “Gender and Nation.” In Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism, edited by Robert E. Miller and Rick Wilford, 23-35. Florence: Routledge, 1998.
Zieger, Robert H. America’s Great War: World War I and the American Experience. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000.
Further Reading
Barrett, Nancy J. “The Struggles of Women Industrial Workers to Improve Work
Conditions in the Progressive Era,” OAH Magazine of History 13, no. 3 (1999): 43 - 49.
Chafe, William H. The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Evans, Sara. "Women in American Politics in the Twentieth Century" Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/womens-history/essays/women-american-politics-twentieth-century
Hughes, Gertrude Reif, “Subverting the Cult of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson's Critique of Women’s Work” Legacy 3, no. 1 (1986): 17-28.
"Family Life." Across the Generations: Exploring US History through Family Papers. Accessed March 30, 2016. https://www.smith.edu/library/libs/ssc/atg/familylife.html.
Simmons, Christina. Making Marriage Modern: Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Ridge, Martin. “The Life of an Idea: The Significance of Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 41, no. 1 (1991): 1-13.
“Social Awareness and Reform.”Across the Generations: Exploring US History through Family Papers. Accessed March 30, 2016 http://www.smith.edu/library/libs/ssc/atg/socialawareness.html