Women of the Commonwealth: Work, Family and Social Change in Nineteenth-century Massachusetts

These essays reflect the complexity and richness of current scholarship in women’s history. Informed by a variety of source materials and methodologies, the ten chapters break down a generalized construct of womanhood to explore the dynamics between gender, race, ethnicity, and class. The first section of the book focuses on women’s work, paid and unpaid, and the effects of class, ethnicity, and gender on the structure of the job market and on power relations within the family. The second section revisits the concept of sisterhood by looking at women in relation to their families, social and cultural networks, and civic and private institutions. The editor’s introduction sets the essays in the current historiographical context of women’s studies and provides a bibliographical essay for the nonspecialist reader.