10. Toward a Framework for Understanding Activism among Poor and Working-Class Women in Twentieth-Century America

2019 ◽  
pp. 214-248 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
Twentieth Century America

Experts in Womanhood

2018 ◽  
pp. 14-40
Author(s):  
Samantha Caslin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
World War ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Gender Ideals ◽  
Women Police ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
The City ◽  
First World

This chapter examines the development of some of Liverpool’s most significant moral welfare organisations between the late-Victorian period and the end of the First World War. It unpacks the early historical trajectories of the House of Help, the Liverpool Vigilance Association, the Liverpool Catholic Women’s League and the Liverpool Women Police Patrols, and it argues that these organisations continued to view women’s relationship to the city through the lens of Victorian gender ideals. Moreover, the chapter examines how the pioneering and well-intended efforts of these organisations to craft a ‘respectable’ form of public womanhood during the first two decades of the twentieth century were still steeped in presumptions about the immorality of the working class, and working-class women in particular.

Coercion and Choice

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-507
Author(s):  
Elisa Camiscioli
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
White Slavery ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
Police Investigations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Working Class Women

Abstract This article employs police investigations of the “traffic in women” between France and Argentina in the first three decades of the twentieth century to highlight the multiple narratives in play when contemporaries talked about trafficking and relayed their experiences of it. While the dominant narrative of “white slavery” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emphasized coercion, sexual exploitation, and victimization, many young working-class women described the journey to Argentina in terms of perceived opportunity, whether for money, travel, or freedom. This is not to downplay the social and economic vulnerability of these women and the precarious lives they led in French and Argentine cities. Instead, the article emphasizes the inadequacy of many existing frameworks for discussing sex trafficking, and prostitution more generally, as they rely too heavily on a stark division between coercion and choice. Cet article repose sur une analyse d'enquêtes de police portant sur la « traite des femmes » entre la France et l'Argentine durant le premier tiers du vingtième siècle. Il met l'accent sur la multiplicité des discours évoquant la traite, et l'expérience des femmes impliquées. Si, à la fin du dix-neuvième et au début du vingtième siècle, le discours dominant à propos de la « traite des blanches » souligne la coercition, l'exploitation sexuelle et la victimisation, de nombreuses femmes appartenant à la classe ouvrière décrivent leur périple en Argentine comme une opportunité de gagner plus d'argent, de voyager, ou de saisir leur liberté. Cet article ne vise cependant à minimiser ni le rôle de la vulnérabilité économique et sociale de ces femmes, ni leur vie précaire dans les villes de France et d'Argentine. Il cherche plutôt à mettre en évidence le caractère inadapté des différents paradigmes existants pour aborder le sujet du trafic sexuel, et plus généralement de la prostitution, ainsi que la manière dont ces paradigmes reposent sur une division trop marquée entre le choix et la contrainte.

The Ideal Christmas Dinner

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
cathy kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
First Time ◽  
Twentieth Century America ◽  
The Ideal

Christmas dinner emerged for the first time as an important and distinctive meal in mid-nineteenth century America, fueled by changing attitudes towards the Christmas holiday, changing meal patterns, and the need to unify Americans after the Civil War and to assimilate waves of immigrants. Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol provided an ideal template for meals centering on turkey and plum pudding, and that model has continued to inform many middle and working class tables. But by the end of the nineteenth century, cookery writers for the more affluent market began to disdain turkey at Christmas, and the uniform tapestry of Christmas foods began to unravel. Christmas dinner in twentieth-century America became more a statement of class than of national identity.

scholarly journals Bourgeois women in the early twentieth-century Dominican national discourse

2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 65-88
Author(s):  
Teresita Martínez Vergne
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
National Discourse ◽  
National Project ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class Women

Argues that in the early 20th c. a male elite in the Dominican Republic, in formulating a national project toward modernization and economic progress, projected on upper- and middle-class women prescribed roles as subordinate to men. She argues that working-class women were totally seen as unimportant to nation building. She describes how in different writings of the time bourgeois women were depicted as incapable to contribute to the desired progress independently, i.e. other than serving men.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 210-216
Author(s):  
Samantha Caslin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Class Woman ◽  
The Law ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
Post War ◽  
Moral Weakness ◽  
Safe Working

While historians have examined how prostitution and promiscuity were frequently conflated by social purists and philanthropists in the late Victorian period and early twentieth century, this book examines the persistence of these ideas well into the latter half of the twentieth century. The notion that the respectable, young, working-class woman could be distinguished from the supposedly disreputable and corrupting prostitute produced a highly gendered understanding of urban space. Working-class women, and especially immigrant working-class women, were monitored for signs of apparent moral weakness. Moreover, even as social purity organisations went into decline in the post-war years, their ideas persisted in legislative efforts to control prostitution. Women who worked as prostitutes were increasingly regulated and pushed out of sight into less safe working spaces. As such, it is argued here that the law increasingly mirrored the sort of social purity thinking which considered prostitution to be a form of moral contagion which needed to be eradicated.

The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Jason Pierceson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century America

Reviewed by Jason Pierceson

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Powers
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Twentieth Century America

The Introduction begins by providing a brief overview of the reception of Greek drama by under-represented communities in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America. After situating the book’s topic within this historical timeline, it proceeds to explain the development of the project, the focus on live theatre, the choice of productions, and the reasons for them. It defines terms, provides disclaimers, explains the methodology used, clarifies the topic, situates it within its historical moment, summarizes each of the chapters, describes the development of the ‘democratic turn’ in Greek drama, and finally speculates on the reasons for the appeal of Greek drama to artists working with under-represented communities.

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