The Work of the Heart:
Young Women and Emotion, 1780-1830 |
| |
| Martha Tomhave Blauvelt |
| 272 pages, 6 x 9 |
| 11 illustrations |
| Cloth 978-0-8139-2597-4 • $39.50 |
| Jeffersonian
America |
 |
How did young American women construct and express their emotions
between 1780 and 1830? Before Oprah and therapy, how did they
reconcile society's demanding and often contradictory expectations?
In The Work of the Heart: Young Women and Emotion, 1780-1830,
Martha Tomhave Blauvelt looks to the often spirited diaries written
by young women in America's early republic, arguing that the continuous,
demanding, and often unnoticed emotional labor of women exemplified
their uneasy position within society. Employing the concept of
"emotion work," Blauvelt argues that despite the fact
that the amount of physical labor may have declined for these
young women, the popularity of fiction, desire to display genteel
refinement, need to deflect criticism of women's academy education,
and resignation in marriage created multiple emotional tasks requiring
highly skilled labor. In her detailed examination of fifty young
northern women’s diaries during this time period, the author shows
that while this work entailed attempts at suppressing inappropriate
feeling, it also invited self-consciousness and a sense of competence
as these women addressed society's often contradictory expectations.
In a variety of settings, emotion work was the means through which
women constructed a fluid and negotiated self, while their diaries
provided a mirror and tool of this labor.
Showing work where none seemed to exist, The Work of the Heart
suggests emotion work as a key measure of women's status, whether
for the twenty-first century or the eighteenth, and offers an
analytical tool for historians exploring the self.
Martha Tomhave Blauvelt is Professor of
History at the College of Saint Benedict.
