Separate Spheres
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Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History Author(s): Linda K. Kerber Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Jun., 1988), pp. 9-39 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1889653 Accessed: 29/09/2010 18:25 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oah. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American History. http://www.jstor.org SeparateSpheres,FemaleWorlds, Woman'sPlace: The Rhetoricof Women'sHistory LindaK. Kerber to tracetwo In no country carebeentakenas in America hassuchconstant linesofactionforthetwosexesand to makethemkeeppace clearly distinct onewiththeother,butin twopathways different. thatarealways -Alexisde Tocqueville, 1835 The SphereofWomanand Manas moralbeings[is]thesame. 1838 -AngelinaGrimke, sphere. aboutwoman's Toomuchhasalready beensaidandwritten -LucyStone,1855 ofhis account A century ofAlexisde Tocqueville's thepublication anda halfafter systemvisit thathemayhavebeenthefirst totheUnitedStates, a modeofbehavior ofanalysis waves andattack. toidentify hasundergone extraordinary aticsocialcritic in In fourbriefchapters in thethirdbookofthesecondvolumeofDemocracy ofwomen.Hisobin 1840,Tocqueville thesituation addressed America, published in makingbroad habitualcharm,hisfearlessness servations displayTocqueville's inAmerica wasrediscooflanguage. WhenDemocracy hismastery generalizations, were intheyears vered andwidely after WorldWarII, hischapters among reprinted that ofAmerican history thefew-perhaps theonly-classic textsreadbystudents Whenhistorians society. ofwomeninAmerican examined thesituation seriously or BettyFriedan or EleanorFlexner whether inspired bySimonede Beauvoir forevidence women's history, theycouldpointtoTocqueville beganagaintostudy oftheir hadconceded thesignificance subject. thatatleastoneclassic, GreatAuthor "Influence entitled onwomentoa section hisobservations restricted Tocqueville ofmale ofDemocracy onManners So Called."He alludedtotheseparation Properly of in thecourseofhiscontrasting andimpressionistic andfemale portraits spheres of Iowa. at theUniversity ofhistory in theLiberalArtsand professor LindaK. Kerberis MayBrodbeckProfessor ofthisessaybyDorothyRoss,TomHaskell, forthegoodcounselprovidedon earlierversions I amdeeplygrateful BrumMaryRyan,BruceGronbeck,DrewFaust,CindyAron,JoanJacobs AliceKessler-Harris, BarbaraSicherman, Project and themembersoftheTransformation berg,EvelynBrooks,AllanMegill,GerdaLerner,SusanArmeny, to keepme fromerrorand surely ofthePhiladelphiaCenterforEarlyAmericanStudies,all ofwhomtriedvaliantly of Iowa. House, University did not fullysucceed.I am also gratefulforthe supportprovidedbyUniversity 10 TheJournal ofAmerican History of aristocratic Americanwomen.The breakdown government, youngmiddle-class forfamilylifein thatpatriarchal he argued,had important authority implications which was impaired,leavingyoungwomenwitha highdegreeof independence, encourageda highdegreeof self-confidence. Yet whenone of thosesame young womenmarried, Tocquevillereported,"theinexorableopinionofthepubliccareand duties fullycircumscribes [her]withinthe narrowcircleof domesticinterests and forbidsherto stepbeyondit."In thissentencehe providedthephysicalimage (thecircle)and theinterpretation (thatitwasa limitingboundaryon choices)that American wouldcontinueto characterize themetaphor.He ended bycontrasting womenwithEuropeanfeminists who,he thought,wishedto erasetheboundaries both.Tocqueville conbetweenthespheresofwomenand ofmen,thus"degrading" I do nothesitate cludedwithwhathe thoughtwasa compliment:"Asformyself, to avowthatalthoughthe womenof the United Statesare confinedwithinthe one ofextreme narrow circleofdomesticlife,and theirsituationis in somerespects a loftier position;and ifI were dependence,I havenowhereseenwomenoccupying of the [American] and growingstrength asked,to whatthe singularprosperity I shouldreply:To the superiority of their people oughtmainlyto be attributed, women."1 beganto searchfor When,morethana hundredyearslater,anothergeneration no more of seemed than Tocpromising explanations women'slives, concept queville's.He had urgedthatthe"circleofdomesticlife"be searchedforthedistinof Americanwomen,and once we looked,the separation guishingcharacteristics ofspheresseemedeverywhere fromcrocheted pillowsreadingWoman's underfoot, ofwomenfromhighereducaPlaceIs in theHome tojustifications fortheexclusion tion,to arguments againstbirthcontroland abortion.Womenweresaid to livein a distinct"world,"engagedin nurturant focusedon children,husbands, activities, and familydependents. The metaphorof the "sphere"was the figureof speech,the trope,on which historians cameto relywhentheydescribedwomen'spartin Americanculture.Exploringthe traditionsof historicaldiscourse,historiansfound that notionsof women'sspherepermeatedthelanguage;theyin turnused themetaphorin their I Alexisde Tocqueville, Democracyin America(2 vols.,New York,1945),II, bk. 3, ch. 9-12, esp. 201, 211, 214.Justas EdwardPessenhas taughtus to distrust Tocqueville's observations on socialmobility, it is nowlong past timeto disposeof Tocqueville'sobservations on the conditionof Americanwomen.EdwardPessen,"The EgalitarianMythand the AmericanSocial Reality:Wealth,Mobility, and Equalityin the 'Era of the Common Man,"'AmericanHistoricalReview,76 (Oct. 1971),989-1034.GeorgeWilsonPierson'scarefullistofTocqueville's encounters withAmericansincludesfewwomenand none as primaryinformants. GeorgeWilsonPierson,Tocquevilleand Beaumontin America(New York,1938),782-86. Tocqueville's womenare stereotypes. Tocqueville claims,forexample,"American womennevermanagetheoutwardconcernsof the familyor conducta business or takea partin politicallife;norare they,on theotherhand,evercompelledto perform theroughlaborofthe fieldsor to makeanyofthoselaboriousefforts whichdemandtheexertionofphysicalstrength." Tocqueville, Democracyin America,II, 212. In Democracywe meetno adult singlewomen,no widows.We learnnothingof women'srelations witheachotheroroftherevolutions in childnurture, women'seducation,andwomen'sorganizationallifeoccurring at theverytimeofTocqueville's visit.AlthoughhiscompanionBeaumontwrotea wholenovel about thesituationofa whitewomenwho lovesa blackman,Tocquevillemade no commentaboutwomenwho soughtto crossthebarrier betweentheraces.GustaveAugustede Beaumontde la Bonniniere, Marie;or,Slavery in the UnitedStates:A Novel ofJacksonian America,trans.BarbaraChapman(Stanford,1958). SeparateSpheres 11 owndescriptions. Thus therelationship betweenthename- sphere- and thepercenceptionofwhatit namedwas reciprocal;widespreadusagein thenineteenth historians aboutwhatto study turydirectedthechoicesmade bytwentieth-century on readers The tropehad an effect andhowtotellthestoriesthattheyreconstructed. as well,predisposing themto findarguments thatmade use of familiarlanguage Geertz,"is notwhatthemindcleared persuasive. "Commonsense,"writesClifford ofcantspontaneously apprehends;it is whatthemindfilledwithpresuppositions ... concludes." One ofourculture's has beenthatmenand women presuppositions mayhavebeen at workin the livein separatespheres.The powerofpresupposition ofErikH. Erikson,whichgavethetropeofseparatespheresa psychoformulations on play patternsof children,Eriksonoblogicalfoundation.In 1964,reporting bounded,interior spaces,whilelittle servedthatlittlegirlsused blocksto construct bescenes.He concludedthatthedifferences boysusedblocksto construct exterior to the male and femaleprinciplesin tween"Innerand OuterSpace" "correspond to psychological and to socialbehavior.Fortheirpart, bodyconstruction," identity, the metaphorof separatespheres historians werenot immuneto tropicpressures; and how to reportwhattheyfound.2 helpedhistorians selectwhatto study in themid-1960s, reinforced of thecentrality threehistorians substantially Writing themetaphorof separatespheres.BarbaraWelter,Aileen S. Kraditor,and Gerda in theclimate Lerner, all influenced to somedegreebyBettyFriedanand all writing createdbythe popularsuccessof The FeminineMystique,arguedthatAmerican a prism women'shistory had to be understood notonlybywayofeventsbutthrough ofwomen'slivesimpinged ofideologyas well.Betweenthehistorians and thereality a pervasivedescriptivelanguage that imposed a "complex of virtues. . . by which a woman judged herselfand was judged by . . . society."3 Welter's1966essaywas a frankattemptto do forthe nineteenth centurywhat sourcesresemblingFriedan'sFriedanhad done forthe twentieth.Retrieving women'sfictionand popular prescriptive literature-andreadingthemfreshly, Welteridentifieda nineteenth-century whichshe called the "Cult of stereotype, Among TrueWomanhood"and forwhichshesaid a synonym mightbe "mystique." the cardinalvirtuesWelterfound associatedwithwomenwas domesticity (the to as women's otherswerepiety,purity,and submissiveness); home was referred ''propersphere."She quoted a woman'srevealingdefenseof thatchoiceofsphere: St.Paulknewwhatwasbestforwomenwhenhe advisedthemto be domestic. inthedutieswhich home Thereiscomposure athome;there issomething sedative anderrors involves. Itaffords notonlyfrom theworld, delusions butfrom security ofevery kind. 2 Clifford Geertz,Local Knowledge:FurtherEssaysin Interpretive Anthropology (New York,1983),84. Erik H. Erikson, "Innerand OuterSpace:Reflections on Womanhood," in TheWomaninAmerica,ed. RobertJay Lifton (Boston,1965),1-26.Thesepapers,originally readat a 1963conference, includeAliceS. Rossi,"Equalitybetween theSexes:An ImmodestProposal,"ibid., 98-143,and offer important evidenceof thestateofacademicthinking about sex rolesin the early1960s. 3 BarbaraWelter, "The Cult of TrueWomanhood:1820-1860,"AmericanQuarterly,18 (Summer 1966), 151-74,esp. 152; BettyFriedan,The FeminineMystique(New York,1963). 12 ofAmerican TheJournal History And WelterconcludedthatAmericanwomenof the nineteenth century, saddled so encouraging and yetso constraining, "guiltand witha stereotype experiencing had been as muchbemusedbyideology confusionin the midstof opportunity," UnlikeTocqueville's, Welter's as Friedan's(and Welter's)troubledcontemporaries.4 judgmentoftheseparatespherewasa negativeone. Separationdenigrated women, kept themsubordinate.The choiceof the word"cult"was pejorative.Welter's thephrase essay-thoughtful, subtle,witty-wasmuchcitedand oftenreprinted; ofwomen's "cultof truewomanhood"becamean essentialpartof thevocabulary history. Lessthantwoyearslater,Kraditor publishedUpfromthePedestal,stilla striking ofdocuments.Considering anthology whatKraditorcalled"theprimitive stateof in 1968,herintroduction In it she identified historiography" was pathbreaking. whatshecalled"thequestionof'spheres"'as centralto an understanding ofAmericanfeminism. She contrasted "autonomy" with"women'spropersphere":"Strictly shewrote,"menhaveneverhad a 'propersphere,'sincetheirspherehas speaking," She proposedthatthe separationof spheres been theworldand all itsactivities." which"broadenedthe distincwas somehowlinkedto the IndustrialRevolution, tionsbetweenmen'sand women'soccupations and certainly newthinking provoked oftheirrespective aboutthesignificance and permanence 'spheres."'And shenoted thepersistent ofhomeas refugein antifeminist a refugethat description literature, had somehowbecomevulnerablelongbeforeChristopher Laschcoinedthephrase "havenin a heartlessworld."5 Threeyearslater,Lernerusedthesocialhistory ofwomenas a baseforhypotheses about generalpoliticaland economicquestionsin an important essay,"The Lady and theMillGirl."Introducing classintotheanalysisand extending thelinkto the IndustrialRevolution, Lernerarguedthat"Americanindustrialization, whichoccurredin an underdeveloped economywitha shortageoflabor,dependedon the wasin inlaborofwomenand children"and thatone "resultof industrialization in life stylesbetween women of different classes. . creasingdifferences . . As class distinctions sharpened,socialattitudestowardwomenbecamepolarized."Welter's of "cult truewomanhood"wasinterpreted byLerneras a vehiclebywhichmiddleclasswomenelevatedtheirown status."It is no accident,"Lernerwrotein 1969, "thattheslogan'woman'splaceis in thehome'tookon a certainaggressiveness and shrillness at thetimewhenincreasing precisely numbersofpoorerwomenlefttheir homesto becomefactory workers."6 Welter,"Cult of TrueWomanhood,"162, 174. 5Aileen S. Kraditor,ed., Up fromthe Pedestal:SelectedWritings in the Historyof AmericanFeminism (Chicago, 1968), 9, 14, 10; Christopher Lasch,Haven in a HeartlessWorld.The FamilyBesieged(New York, 1977). 6 GerdaLerner, "TheLadyand theMillGirl:Changesin theStatusofWomenin theAgeofJackson," MidcontinentAmericanStudiesJournal, 10 (Spring1969),5-15,esp. 10-12.Lerneralso observedthatFriedan's"feminine mystique" is thecontinuation oftheold mythofwoman'spropersphere.Withno reference to Lerner, Neil McKendrickmade muchthesameargument forEngland:theliterature ofseparatesphereswasan effort ofmiddle-class womento maintainthe difference betweenthemselves and working-class women.McKendrick also notedmen's resentment ofthenewpurchasing powerofworking women;thelanguageofseparatespheresexpressed theirview ofthenewearnings "asa threattomaleauthority, a temptation tofemaleluxuryand indulgence, and an incitement Separate Spheres 13 The carefulreaderof Kraditorand Lernercould hardlyfailto noticethattheir of women'ssphereas separatefrom,and subordinateto,thatof men description withMarxistargument.ForLernerand Kraditor,themetaphorof wascongruent Engels'sconceptualization sphererelatednotonlyto Tocqueville,but to Friedrich ofa dichotomy betweenpublicand privatemodesoflife.Tracingthedevelopment defeatof thefeofgenderrelations, Engelshad arguedthatthe "world-historical malesex"had beenaccompaniedbya shiftin controlofspace:"Themantookcomtotheconceptofa public/primandinthehomealso."Engelsgaveclassicexpression vate split, a split in whichthe most importantpsychiclocus was the home, controlledbyman. "With. . . understoodto be a woman'splace, but ultimately lostitspubliccharacter. thesinglemonogamous family. .. householdmanagement . .It becamea privateservice."7 a psychological and legalshift(frommatrilocality Rhetorically, Engelsidentified home.(Perhaps to patrilocality) and gaveit a physicalcontext:thenuclearfamily's longbeforehisowntimeand had becausethisculturalshifthad beenaccomplished Engelsdid notfeeltheneed alreadycometo seemthecommonsenseofthematter, His strategy wasto link to makeexplicitor defendtheequivalencieshe identified.) in of could to the triad anypart and then speak synecdoche; private-home-woman thatthe home standforanyotherpart.He did so despitehis explicitstatement wasalso a locusofmen'sbehavior;indeedforEngelsand forKarlMarx,thehome is the locus of strugglebetweenthe sexes. divisionbetweenpublicand private,often ofthesociallyconstructed Awareness expressedthroughthe image of sphere,gave energyto much Marxist-feminist wrote family," writingin the late sixtiesand earlyseventies."The contemporary and socializatory ofsexual,reproductive JulietMitchell,"can be seen as a triptych functions(the woman'sworld) embracedby production(the man's world)The bytheeconomy. whichin thefinalinstanceis determined a structure precisely social exclusion ofwomenfromproduction ... istherootcauseofthecontemporary definitionof womenas naturalbeings."At the end of her powerfully argued thatthecentralproblemforwomenwastheir Woman'sEstate,Mitchellreiterated years,"theperiodofadultpsychic tothehomeduringtheirchild-bearing relegation womenalikeweredeprived Bourgeoisand working-class and politicalformation." "Thespider's oftheopportunity to learnfromanybutthemostlimitedexperience. . . . comeintomyparlourand be a truewoman," webis denseas wellas intricate Mitchellconcludes."In the home the socialfunctionand the psychicidentityof womenas a groupis found."8 * Neil McKendrick, "Home Demand and EconomicGrowth:A New ViewoftheRoleof offemaleindependence." in HistoricalPerspectives: Studiesin EnglishThoughtand Womenand Childrenin the IndustrialRevolution," (London, 1974), 152-210, esp., 164-67. Societyin HonourofJ.H. Plumb,ed. Neil McKendrick 7 Friedrich and theState,ed. EleanorBurkeLeacock(New Engels,The OriginoftheFamily,PrivateProperty York,1972), 120, 137. 8 Juliet Women, Mitchell,Woman'sEstate(NewYork,1971),148,182.See alsoKarenSacks,"EngelsRevisited: in Woman,Culture,and Society,ed. MichelleZimbalist and PrivateProperty," theOrganization of Production, "PlacingWomen'sHistory Rosaldoand LouiseLamphere(Stanford,1974),207-22; and ElizabethFox-Genovese, 1982), 5-29. in History," New LeftReview(May-June 14 TheJournal ofAmerican History The greatpowerof the Marxistinterpretation was thatit not onlydescribeda an explanation ofthewayin whichthatsepaseparation ofspheres,butalsooffered of thedominantclasses.Separatespheresweredue neirationservedtheinterests Theyweresocialconstructherto culturalaccidentnorto biologicaldeterminism. tions,camouflaging social and economicservice,a servicewhose benefitswere unequallyshared. The idea of separatespheres,as enunciatedby Welter,Kraditor,Lerner,and of the mid-1960shad inMitchell,tookon a lifeof its own. Women'shistorians descriptive heriteda subjectthathad been,withonlyfewconspicuousexceptions, and anecdotal.BookslikeAlice MorseEarle'sHome Lifein ColonialDays loomed ofwomenhad turnedtopolitics,a Whiggishprogreslarge.9 Whenearlierhistorians sivismhad infusedmuch of theirwork,suggestingthat the centraltheme in The conceptsofsepawomen'shistory marchtowardthesuffrage. wasan inexorable women's dichotomy offered waysofaddressing ratespheresand of a public/private history thatemployedsocialand cultural,as wellas political,material.Historians deeplyindebtedto as Marxists werenevertheless who did not thinkof themselves to introducecategories, Marxistanalysis.Social theoryenabledwomen'shistorians ofacand analyticaldevicesbywhichtheycouldescapetheconfines hypotheticals, ofwomen."Still-whetherhandledby countsof "greatladies"or of "theprogress Erikson, whogroundedtheseparationofspheresin whathe tookto be permanent (inpsychological verities; Welter,whogroundedit in culture;orsocialistfeminists -in theearly relations cludingLernerand Kraditor),whogroundedit in property deteriorating status, associatedwithsubordination, 1970sseparationwasgenerally of womenbymen.10 and the victimization In 1975CarrollSmith-Rosenberg reinterpretation ofthepossioffered a striking bilitiesof separationin her pathbreaking essay"The FemaleWorldof Love and Ritual."Severalyearslatersherecalled:"I beganwitha question.Howcanweunderstand the nature of the emotionallyintenseand eroticfriendshipsbetween marriedwomenand society'sbenignapproval eighteenthand nineteenth-century of such relationships?" maintainedthatseparationcould make Smith-Rosenberg relationships amongwomen. sustaining and strengthening possiblepsychologically and Victorians did notmakerigiddistinctions, as we do, betweenheterosexuality A cultureof separatesphereswas not simplyan ancestralculture homosexuality. in theextentof industrialization; it was,Smithfromourownprimarily differing inwhichboundaries weredifferently different culture Rosenberg argued,a dramatically womenhad available expressed.Nineteenth-century marked,anxietiesdifferently sourcesofpsychological supportthathad erodedin ourownday.Smith-Rosenberg's workimpliedthattherehad existeda distinctive women'sculture,in whichwomen 9 Alice MorseEarle,Home Lifein ColonialDays (New York,1898). 10See BarbaraSichermanet al., RecentUnitedStatesScholarshipon the Historyof Women(Washington, 1980). Separate Spheres 15 assistedeachotherin childbirth, nurtured eachother'schildren,and sharedemotionaland oftenerotictiesstronger thanthosewiththeirhusbands.1Otherworkof the 1970sfilledin detailsof thedistinctive women'sculturethat and PoliticalActiSmith-Rosenberg had identified. In "FemaleSupportNetworks political vism,"BlancheWiesenCook focusedon fourwomenwhohad significant careersin the late nineteenthand earlytwentieth centuries.Cook dealtwiththe probability ofhomosexualrelationships amongsomeofhersubjects,arguingthat friendships with politically activist womenweresustainedbycomplexand powerful otherwomen. She maintainedthat such friendships werepart of the history themas irrelevant, historians historians soughttotraceand that,insteadofignoring ofwhichso many shouldaddressthemfrankly, understanding thatthe"sisterhood" womenspokeincludedfemalefriendships thatran thegamutfromacquaintance ofCatharine to long-sustained KishSklar'sbiography sexualrelationships. Kathryn of thetradiBeecheranalyzedthewomanwhodid mostto definetheingredients tionalwomen'ssphere:domesticity, nurture, and education.Beechertookthepositionthatwomen'sspheredid not encompasspolitics,notablyin exchangeswith AngelinaGrimke.Significantly, Beecheraddressedextensively theelementsofthe like"theclassroom" physical locationofthewomen'ssphere,notonlyinabstractions or "thehome" but also in explicitand originalphysicalplans forTheAmerican Woman'sHome.12 In TheBondsofWomanhood, NancyE Cottexploredthewayin which"thedocin earlynineteenth-century trineofwoman'ssphere"actuallywaspracticed NewEn"orientagland.Cottfoundin middle-class women'sdiariesand lettersa distinctive ofwork.She foundin those tiontowardgender"thatderivedfromsharedpatterns ofdomesticity an understanding thatplacedit in directoppositionto onwritings going"socialand economictransformation" and thatemphasizedthe complexity oftheroleofmotherhood. Organizedchurchgroupsbecameone ofthefewinstituin whichwomencould "connectpurposefully" to the community, tionalcontexts foremoand suchgroups,in turn,seta "patternofrelianceon femalefriendships tionalexpression and security." ofthenineteenth Cottendedbyproposingthatthefeminist politicalmovement of of taken its distinctive had grownout theseparation spheresand shape century andinterestsfrom ForCottthe"ideologyofwoman'ssphereformed thatseparation. a necessarystage in . . . softeningthe hierarchicalrelationshipof marriage."Al- domesticity thoughtheidea ofwomen'sspherewasnot necessarily protofeminist, 11 Carroll "The FemaleWorldofLoveand Ritual:RelationsbetweenWomenin NineteenthSmith-Rosenberg, appearedin CarrollSmith-Rosenberg, CenturyAmerica," Signs,1 (Autumn1975), 1-29. Her laterobservations FeministStudies,6 (Spring, 1980),55-64, esp. 60. See "Politicsand Culturein Women'sHistory:A Symposium," also hercollectedessays,CarrollSmith-Rosenberg, DisorderlyConduct:Visionsof Genderin Victorian America (New York,1985). 12 BlancheWiesenCook, "FemaleSupportNetworks LillianWald, Chrystal and PoliticalActivism: Eastman, EmmaGoldman,"Chrysalis (no. 3, 1977),43-61; KathrynKish Sklar,CatharineBeecher:A Studyin American A Treatise on DomesticEconomy(Boston,1842),26-36, Domesticity (NewHaven,1973).In CatharineE. Beecher, Beecherquoted Tocquevilleat lengthand withadmiration. 16 History TheJournal of American and feminismwerelinkedby "women'sperceptionof 'womanhood"'as an allCottarand ofsisterhood as implicitin it. Thatconsciousness, sufficient definition eventhoughinopeningup certain precondition forfeminism, gued,wasa necessary avenuesto womenbecauseof theirsex it barricadedall others.13 Likeothersbeforeher,Cottsoughtan economicbase forthesocialtransformachange tionshediscerned. E. P.Thompsonhad arguedthatthecrucialpsychological wasa shiftfromthetaskorientation oftheearlystagesoftheIndustrial Revolution oftraditional artisanworkpatterns tothetimedisciplineassociatedwithmodernity. Cott added the thoughtthatmarriedwomen'sworkbecameless likemen'swork in the earlynineteenth century, as men'sworkwassubjectedto moderntimediscipline while women'sworkremainedtask oriented.Workpatternsreinforced frommen's.Domesticity women'ssense thattheirlivesweredefineddifferently "a and pecuniary advance of exploitation could evenembody protestagainstthat values. . . . by upholding a 'separate sphere' of comfortand compensation. ... The literatureof domesticity. . . enlistedwomen in theirdomesticroles to absorb, palliate,and evento redeemthe strainof social and economictransformation."'14 Perhapsthe historianto use the conceptof separatespheresmostenergetically wasCarlN. Degler,whosebookAt Odds: Womenand theFamilyin Americafrom of theRevolutionto thePresentwaspublishedin 1980.ForDegler,thedefinition thataccompanineteenth-century development separatesphereswasan important bycomfamilyrelationships ofpatriarchal niedand madepossiblethereplacement the of Daniel he that suggested ones. on work Scott Smith, Drawing panionate women'spoliticalautonomyin the publicworldhad been precededbya formof or at leastassertiveness, in the privateworld,and he pointedto sexualautonomy, thedecliningbirthratein thenineteenth as evidencethatwomenwereable century offered to exercisea growing degreeofcontrolin theirsexualrelations.Domesticity thewayto popularaccepas wellas disadvantages towomen,smoothing advantages the tanceofextrafamilial activities conflict; bywomen."Separatespheres"deflected verylanguageanticipatednegotiation.The metaphorof separatesphereshelped and literacy, Deglerestablishorderamongissuesas disparateas abortion,suffrage, Reference to theomnipresent ideologybecamea usefulguide,enabling friendship. thehistorian to anticipatewhichchangesAmericanscould be expectedto support and whichthey (forexample,the entryof womeninto the teachingprofession) wouldresist(forexample,suffrage, becauseit could not be accommodatedto the fluent,and thoughtful conceptof separatespheres).At Odds, a wide-ranging, 13 NancyF. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood:"Woman's Sphere"in New England,1780-1835(New Haven, 1977), 200, 125, 70, 173, 197, 200, 205. 14 and IndustrialCapitalism," Pastand Present(Dec. 1967),56-97; E. P. Thompson,"Time,Work-Discipline, beCott,Bondsof Womanhood,58, 68-70. In 1964,David M. Potterhad observed,"The profounddifferences tweenthe patternsofmen'sworkand women'sworkare seldomunderstoodbymostmen,and perhapsevenby deep intothetwentieth women'slivesremainedtask-oriented century. mostwomen."He notedthatmiddle-class in Historyand AmericanSociety:Essaysof David M. Potter,"AmericanWomenand the AmericanCharacter," (New York,1973), 277-303, esp. 287. David M. Potter,ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher Separate Spheres 17 ofwomen'shistory survey and family history maywellrepresent thehigh-water mark of relianceon separatespheresas an organizingdevice.15 - in the late 1960sand early The firststageof the development of the metaphor 1970s-was markedbyan effort to identify separatespheresas a themecentralto women'shistorical experience, locatingthe ideologyin the contextof antebellum Americansociety.The secondstage- in thelater1970s- encompassedan effort to refine thedefinition and identify complexities, introducing theliberating possibilitiesofa "women'sculture."By 1980historians had deviseda prismthroughwhich toviewthediaries,letters, records andorganization thathad beenfreshly discovered and whoseanalyticalpotentialwas freshly appreciated. But thelanguageofseparatesphereswasvulnerableto sloppyuse. Aboveall, it waslooselymetaphorical. Thosewhospokeof"cult"did not,afterall,meana voluntaryorganization basedon commitment toexplicitideologicalortheological tenets; all pointsofwhichare by"sphere"theydid notmeana three-dimensional surface, equidistantfroma fixedpoint.Whentheyused themetaphorofseparatespheres, to an ideologyimposedon women,a culhistorians ofteninterchangeably, referred, turecreatedby women,a set of boundariesexpectedto be observedbywomen. themetaphorhelpedhistorians avoidthinkingabout race;virtually all Moreover, ofwhite discussionofthesubjectuntilveryrecently has focusedon theexperience women,mostlyof the middleclass.16 In responseto thisproblem,FeministStudiespublishedan exchangein which TemmaKaplan,MariJoBuhle,and Ellen fivehistorians -Lerner, Smith-Rosenberg, in theterms"women'ssphere" DuBois-discussed theproblemsofusageinherent and "women'sculture."The FeministStudiessymposiumof 1980 conveniently have soughtto embed marksthe openingof a thirdstage,in whichhistorians in themaincourseofhumandevelopment and to unpackthe women'sexperience In thisstage,historians of"separatespheres." a conscious haveundertaken metaphor criticism of theirown rhetorical The commentsof the symposium constructions. showedthattheword"cult"had virtually contributors droppedout ofprofessional its allocate howmuchwasprescribed historians' that we usage,although challenge forwomenandhowmuchcreatedbywomen remained.DuBois warnedthatpride in thepossibilities to thefacts ofa distinct women'sculturemightblindhistorians the ofwomen'soppression.Her respondents tendedto cautionagainstconflating terms"women'ssphere,"whichtheytook to expressa limitingideology,and 15 CarlN. Degler,At Odds: Women to thePresent(NewYork, andtheFamilyin AmericafromtheRevolution 1980),9, 298. See alsoibid.,26-29, 50-54, 189,283-98,302-8, 317,429. Daniel ScottSmith,"FamilyLimitation, Raised,ed. MaryS. Sexual Control,and DomesticFeminismin VictorianAmerica,"in Clio's Consciousness Hartmanand Lois W. Banner(New York,1974), 119-36. 16 Note,however, ElizabethFox-Genovese, WithinthePlantationHousehold:Blackand WhiteWomenofthe ofthespheresofslaveholding whichaddresses withsubtlety theintersection OldSouth(ChapelHill,forthcoming), and enslavedwomen;and see Deborah GrayWhite,Arn't I a Woman?FemaleSlavesin thePlantationSouth (New York,1985); and JacquelineJones,Labor ofLove,Labor of Sorrow:Black Women,Work,and the Family fromSlaveryto the Present(New York,1985). 18 TheJournal ofAmerican History "women's culture," a termwhichembracedcreativity in thedomesticarts,distinctive formsoflabor,and particular patternsof socialrelationships.17 The need to break out oftherestrictive dualismof an oppressiveterm(women'ssphere)and a liberatingterm(women'sculture)haspropelledwhatI thinkis a thirdstagein thedevelopmentof the metaphorof separatespheres.Takingan interactive viewof social processes, historians nowseekto showhowwomen'sallegedly"separatesphere"was affected bywhatmendid,and howactivities definedbywomenin theirownsphere influenced and evensetconstraints and limitations on whatmen mightchooseto do-how, in short,thatspherewas sociallyconstructed bothfor and by women. The first majorcharacteristic ofthethirdstageofunderstanding is theapplication of the conceptto the entirechronology of humanexperience, ratherthanto the discussion ofantebellumsocietywhere,perhapsbyaccident,perhapsthanksto Tocqueville,historians first encountered it.A greatdeal ofrecentworkhasmade itclear thattheseparation ofsphereswasnotlimitedto a singlegeneration ora singlecivilization. Surveysof the historyof politicalthoughthave shownthatthe habit of conthe "worlds"ofmen and ofwomen,the allocationof thepublicsectorto trasting menand theprivate sector(stillundermen'scontrol)towomenisolderthanwestern civilization.In The CreationofPatriarchy, Lernerlocatesthe crucialmomentin a prehistoric shiftfromhuntingand gathering societiesto agricultural ones and an accompanying intertribal "exchangeof women"in the Neolithicperiod."Women themselves becamea resource, acquiredbymenmuchas theland wasacquiredby men. . . . It wasonlyaftermen had learnedhowto enslavethe womenofgroups whocould be definedas strangers, thattheylearnedhowto enslavemen ofthose groupsand, later,subordinates fromwithintheirown societies."'18 The distinction betweentheprivateand thepublicwasdeeplyembeddedin classical Greekthought.As Hannah Arendtlucidlyexplained,the Greeksdistinguishedbetweentheprivaterealm,definedbythe"limitation[s] imposedupon us bytheneedsofbiologicallife,"whichprecludechoice,and thepublicrealmofactionand choice.Women,"whowiththeirbodiesguaranteethephysicalsurvival of the species,"wereunderstoodto livewhollyon the privatesector;in Greecethey wereconfinedto the largefamilyhouseholdand did not mingle,promiscuously, withpeople on the streets.Theywereunderstoodto lackthe civicvirtuethatenabled men to functionas independentmoralbeings.Men wereadvantaged;they livedin boththeprivateand thepublicmode; menrealizedthemselves mostfully in theactivities of thepolis. ForAristotle, "thesophrosyne (strength of character) 17 Ellen DuBois,Marijo Buhle,TemmaKaplan,GerdaLerner, and CarrollSmith-Rosenberg, "Politicsand Culturein Women'sHistory:A Symposium," FeministStudies,6 (Spring1980), 26-64. 18 GerdaLerner,TheCreationofPatriarchy (New York,1986),212-13.Italicsadded. "Fornearlyfourthousand yearswomenhaveshapedtheirlivesand actedundertheumbrellaofpatriarchy," Lernercontinues."The dominated exchangesubmission forprotection, unpaidlaborformaintenance.... It wasa rationalchoiceforwomen,under conditions ofpublicpowerlessness and economicdependency, to choosestrongprotectors forthemselves and their children." Ibid., 217-18.See also ibid., 27-28. Spheres Separate 19 of a man and of a woman,or the courageand justiceof a man and of a woman ofa woman arenot . .. thesame;thecourageofa man is shownin commanding, in obeying."In theancientformulation, theseparateworldofwomenwaslocated abouttheapproClassicalassumptions socialcontext. securely ina largerpatriarchal betweenmenand womenhavebeen attackedonlysporadically priaterelationship Westernpoliticaltheoristshave until recenttimes.Exceptforsocialistwriters, mode,which treatedwomenin whatSusanMollerOkinhascalleda "functionalist" assumesthatwomencannotbe dissociatedfromtheirfunctionin the family.19 to theNewWorld,theybroughtwiththemthelongWhenEuropeansventured about women'sseparateworld.ColonialAmerican standingWesternassumptions aboutwhatwasappropriate culturemade firmdistinctions fpoeach sexto dq and ofwomen.Whetherviewedskeptically or symtookforgrantedthesubordination pathetically, Englishcolonistsin NorthAmericaappearto have done littlequcsroledefinitions. Fromnorthern to theCarolinas New En~gland tioningofinherited therestretched a societyin whicha womanwasdefinedbyhprfamilylifeand acted faithoftheimclaimson her.The Christian and neighbors' in responseto relatives' rolesand a subordinate statusforwomen."Of all migrants ratified bothdistinctive minister SamuelWillard, theOrderswhichareunequals,"wrotetheCongregational it... [husbandand wife]do comenearestto an Equality,and in severalrespects theystand upon even ground.... Nevertheless,God hath also made an imparity in His Word,and forthatreasonthereis betweenthem,in the Orderprescribed a Subordination, and theyarerankedamongunecuals."Recentstudiesofwitchcraft havesuggestedthatwomenat riskforaccusationincludedthosewhopressedat the One of orunintentionally. boundariesofexpectedwomen'sbehavior, intentionally in the colonists'perceptionofIndianaas uncivilizedwasthe Inthemajorfactors thandid Europeans.Eurodians'tendencyto definegenderrelationsdifferently dismayedwhenIndianwomenplayedrolesthatwerenot peanswereparticularly orwhenIndiansocietiesdid notdisplaya separationofspheresas Eusubordinate indeciropeansunderstoodthem.(For example,Europeansfoundmatriloc~lity pherable.)20 19 HannahArendt, Politics,trans.BenTheHuman Condition(NewYork,1958),22-78,esp. 24, 72. Aristotle, SusanMollerOkin, (NewYork,1943),77 (1260a).I am grateful jaminJowett toJqdithF. Hallettforthisreference. PoliticalThought(Princeton,1979), 9-11, 233. Jear BethkeElshtain,Poblic Alan,Private Womenin Western althoughElWoman:Womenin Social and PoliticalThought(Princeton,198k),buildson a similardichotomy, ofpoliticsintotheprivatesector.See theintrusion forpermitting feminists contemporary shtainendsbydecrying also RuthH. Bloch,"UntanglingtheRootsofModernSex Roles:A Surveyof FourCenttriesof(c ange,"Signs, 4 (Winter1978), 237-52. Lectures(Boston,1726), in TwoHundredandFifty A CompleteBodyofDivinity 20 SamuelWillard, ATxpository 609-12, quoted in Laurel ThatcherUlrich,"VertuousWpmenFound: New England MinisterialLiterature, views,see LyleIophler,A Search 28 (Spring1976),20-40, esp. 30. Forskeptical AmericanQuarterly, 1688-1735," New England (Urbana, 1980), LaurelThatchprUlrich for Power: The "WeakerSex" in Seventeenth-Century in the however, distinct, describesa socialorderin whichmen'sand women'sliferoleswereSharply overlapping, roleof"deputyhusband,"whichenabledwomento actin thepublicsectorifauthorizedhyhusbapds4ndfathers. See LaurelThatcherUlrich,Good Wives:Imageand Realityin theLivesof Womenin NorthernNew England, aboutearly ofthegeneralizations a drasticrevision represents 1650-1750(New York,1982).EvenUlrich,however, The ColonialExperience(New York, Americanlifemade in the 1950s.See Daniel J. Boorstin,TheAmericawn: and Satan: Witchcraft seeJohnPutnamDemos, Entertaining 1958), 186-87. Forthe boundariesof witchcraft, betweenallegedwitches the CultureofEarlyNew England(New York,1982),281-83(the mapsofrelationships 20 TheJournal ofAmerican History As the AmericanRevolutionbeganto impingeon whitemiddle-class women, whatMaryBethNortonhas calledthe"circleofdomesticconcerns"boundedtheir decisionin a virtually lives:thechoiceofhusband(an especiallyimportant divorcelesssociety),thenurtureofchildren, themanagement orserviceofthehousehold. The Revolution shookold assumptions aboutwomen'splaceand suggested newpossibilities;guerrilla warmade fewconcessions to allegedfrailty, and manywomen, orPatriot, wereinvoluntarily whether Loyalist coursein politics givenan accelerated and independence.By the end of thewar,the domesticrolesof womencould no longerbe takenforgranted;suchrolesnowrequireddefensive ideologicalarticulation.Thusemergedtheantebellumprescriptive literature wehavecometo know.21 As I havearguedelsewhere, theideologyofrepublicanwomanhoodwasan effort to bringtheolderversionoftheseparationofspheresintoroughconformity with the newpoliticsthatvaluedautonomyand individualism. Issuesof sexualasymmetrydominatedpublicdiscourseto an unprecedented extentas people triedto definea placeforwomenin postrevolutionary society.Evenas Americans enlarged thescope,resonance,and powerofrepublicanism theysimultaneously discounted and weakenedtheforceofpatriarchy. Theyrecodedthevaluesofwomen'ssphere, on theirhusbandsand lovers,ascribing women'smoralinfluence worldvalidating historical to women'smaternalrole,and claimingforwomena nature importance lesssexualand moreself-controlled thanthenatureofmen.The ideologyofrepublican womanhoodrecognizedthatwomen'schoicesand women'sworkdid serve largesocialand politicalpurposes,and thatrecognition was enoughto drawthe traditional women's"sphere"somewhatcloserto men's"world."But to use thelanwasalsotomakea conservative guageofdomesticity politicalchoiceamongalternative options,rejectingthe frankly feministoption, articulatedby MaryWollin Englandand Etta Palm in France,thatclaimedforwomendirect stonecraft connection withreplublican politicallife.Indeed,I believethattheAmerican Revolutionwaskeptfromspinningon an outwardly expansiveand radicaltrackin part therelationship bythegeneralrefusalto entertain between proposalsforredefining womenand theRepublic.Bycontrast, majorchangesin women'spoliticallifewere associatedwiththe radicalstagesof the FrenchRevolution, and erasureof those changeswas associatedwiththe retreatfromradicalism.22 and theiraccusers);and CarolF Karlsen,TheDevil in theShapeofa Woman:Witchcraft in ColonialNewEngland (New York,1987). On Europeanattitudestowardsex rolesin Indian societies,see JamesAxtell,The Invasion Within:TheContestofCulturesin ColonialNorthAmerica(New York,1985).Foran exampleofEuropeanswho observedintensely, but rarelyunderstood, Indianculture,see Paul LeJeune,Relationof WhatOccurredin New Francein the Year1633in TheJesuitRelationsandAlliedDocuments,ed. ReubenGold Thwaites(73 vols.,Cleveland, 1896-1901),V-VI.WilliamPennwas a majorexceptionto thisrule. See, forexample,"Letterto the Free SocietyofTraders," Aug. 16,1683,in WilliamPennandtheFoundingofPennsylvania, 1680-1684:A Documentary History,ed. JeanR. Soderlund(Philadelphia,1983), 308-19. 21 MaryBeth Norton,Liberty's Daughters:The Revolutionary Experienceof AmericanWomen,1750-1800 (Boston,1980),298. Nortonfoundreference to women'sspherein thelatecolonialperiod.SamuelQuincywrote to RobertTreatPainein 1756,fearingthatwomenwant"to obtaintheother'sSphereofAction,& becomeMen," but hoped "theywillagainreturnto thewontedPathsof truePoliteness,& shinemostin the properSphereof domestick Life."Ibid., 8. See also LindaK. Kerber,"DaughtersofColumbia:EducatingWomenfortheRepublic, 1787-1805," in TheHofstadterAegis: A Memorial,ed. StanleyElkinsand EricMcKitrick (New York,1974),36-59. 22 LindaK. Kerber,Womenof theRepublic:Intellectand Ideologyin Revolutionary America(Chapel Hill, Spheres Separate 21 is thatwe stageofunderstanding ofthecurrent The secondmajorcharacteristic are givingmoreattentionto questionsabout the socialrelationsof the sexesand that construction treatingthe languageof separatespheresitselfas a rhetorical visitoccurredat Tocqueville's respondedto changingsocialand economicreality. duringwhichone variantoftheseparationof theend ofmorethana halfcentury cultureinwhichitwasembeddedhad beenundermined spheresand thepatriarchal Adam Smithhad givenvoice revolutions. political,and industrial bycommercial, thefoundersat Philadelphiahad articuto thegreatcommercial transformation, one. In each embodiedtheindustrial latedthepoliticalone, and newtechnology decision ofsuccessive realmtheworldmaintaineditselfbythespinninggyroscope anew.In a world and choice.Politicalrules,likeeconomicones,had been written had to be fromwhichfamiliarboundarieshad been erased,new relationships defined,new turfhad to be measured,and in ThomasL. Haskell'sphrase,new oflaissez-faire, which aligned.In a system had tobe freshly ofcompetition" "spheres in commerce and in politics,the"sphere reliedon thedynamicforceofself-interest In a Tocquevillean worldofequality,whereall the ofcompetition" waseverywhere. MarvinMeyers old barriers littlewasleftthatwasnotvulnerable. had beenremoved, discernedmanyyearsago thatTocqueville'sAmericanMan was characteristically anxious,as wellhe mightbe in a worldin whichso littleseemedreliablyfixed.23 forwomen.As implications The capitalistrevolution also had deeplyunsettling negotiating freely eroded,socialrealityinvolvedunattachedindividuals, patriarchy variantofseparatespheres witheachotherin an expansive market.The patriarchal socialrelations; requiredthatmen'sand wasnotcongruent withcapitalist capitalism A capitalistsystemtendedto underwomen'seconomicrelationsbe renegotiated. relationsthat,bykeepinga woman'sproperty minean olderschemeof property could also keep it out underthecontrolof themen to whomshe was entrusted, wasshieldedfromseizure of themarketplace, forexample,whendowerproperty fordebt. Capitalismhad thepotentialto enhancethepositionofwomenbylooseningpafromthe thatshieldedproperty factors and removing triarchal controlofproperty between oftherelationship Therevisedunderstanding ofthemarketplace. pressures wasembodiedin themarriedwomen'sproperty acts, womenand themarketplace Suchstatutes century. devisedstatebystatein themiddledecadesofthenineteenth andpropwomentherighttoholdand manipulatetheirownearnings gavemarried butunenfranchised, Thestatutes createda vastnewgroupofproperty-holding, erty. createdan butinexorably actsunintentionally citizens;marriedwomen'sproperty Amer1980),185-231.See also LindaK. Kerber,"The RepublicanMother:Womenand theEnlightenment-An 28 (Summer1976), 187-205. ForFrance,see DarlineGay Levy,Harriet AmericanQuarterly, ican Perspective," Paris,1789-1795:SelectedDocuments WomeninRevolutionary and MaryDurhamJohnson, BransonApplewhite, An Insee NancyF. Cott,"Passionlessness: (Urbana,1979).On sexuality, Translated withNotesand Commentary of of VictorianSexualIdeology,1790-1850,"Signs,4 (Winter1978), 219-36. For the implications terpretation republicanideologyfortherelationsbetweenwomenand men,seeJanLewis,"The RepublicanWife:Virtueand 44 (Oct. 1987),689-721. Seductionin the EarlyRepublic,"Williamand MaryQuarterly, 23 Marvin 1957),45. ThomasL. Haskellused Politicsand Belief(Stanford, Persuasion: TheJacksonian Meyers, thephrasein a letterto me in May 1984. 22 TheJournal ofAmerican History situationthat was ultimatelyresolvedby grantingthe internally contradictory to hold publicoffice. The vote-and withit,serviceon juriesand theopportunity to thepoliticalcommunity as thelaw women'sconnection franchise acknowledged theirentryintothemarketplace. had acknowledged As thepatriarchal ofproperty versionof theseparatespherewas corporate economybrokedown,thetraditional defensesof separate destabilized.One plausiblewayto read nineteenth-century is to singleout the themeof breakspheres,not leastamongthemTocqueville's, of an old down;the noisewe hearabout separatespheresmaybe the shattering of itsfragments.24 orderand the realignment But the old order,likethe parson'sone-horseshay,tooka long timebreaking it continuedto rattlealongfora longtime. down.Patchedup and reconstructed, actsdid notseemto usherin a newera; The first waveofmarriedwomen'sproperty fathers' distrust givenorwilledto women,expressing theyprotected onlyproperty ofirresponsible In protecting fromseizurefordebtscongiftproperty sons-in-law. actsweredebtorreliefactsthat tractedby husbands,marriedwomen'sproperty between actsexpresseda relationship directlybenefitedmen. The new property men-as wellas a revisedrelationship amongmen,women,and themarketplace. Only at the stageof revision-1855in Michigan,1860 in New York,laterelsemarried women'searnings and their where- did thenewstatutes specifically protect Not until1911did Michiganlawpermita marrighttomanagetheirownproperty. riedwomanto definethefulluse ofherownearnings;untilthenherhusbandhad the rightto decide whetheror not a womancould workforwages.25 Thus the olderproperty relationsbetweenhusbandsand wivespersistedlong afterlimitedelementsof thoserelationshad been modifiedbystatute.Studying FerrisMotzhas arMarilyn Michiganwomen'scorrespondence, nineteenth-century of the separatefemalesphereas usefulness gued forthe continuinginstrumental "a systemof human relations"thatprovideda "cushion"againsta legal system whoserulesprivileged theauthority overmarriedwomen's ofhusbandsand fathers transitional period.Becausethe earlyversions property relationsduringa lengthy ofmarriedwomen'sproperty they actsprotectedonlyinheritedand giftproperty, she muchmorecontroloverproperty createda paradoxin whicha womanexercised shehad helpedbuild-on a farmor inherited fromherparentsthanoverproperty in a familybusiness -in thecourseofhermarriage. In sucha legalcontext,Motz toestablish argues,therewasgoodeconomicreasonforwomentoworkenergetically and maintainnetworks offemalekin."Womenattemptedto balancetheirlackof withinthenuclearfamilywiththecollective moral,social,and financial authority 24 On fathers in commercial see TobyL. Ditz, Property and Kinship: settings willingrealestateto daughters, Inheritance in EarlyConnecticut, 1750-1820(Princeton,1986).Fortheanomaliesof theimpactofcapitalismon the statusof women,see ElizabethFox-Genovese and EugeneD. Genovese,Fruitsof MerchantCapital:Slavery and BourgeoisProperty in theRiseand Expansionof Capitalism(New York,1983),esp. 299-336. Fora succinct reviewof thesedevelopments, see NormaBasch,"Equityvs. Equality:EmergingConceptsof Women'sPolitical Statusin the Age ofJackson," Journalof the EarlyRepublic,3 (Fall 1983),297-318,esp. 305. 25 Basch,"Equityvs.Equality." See alsoNormaBasch,In theEyesoftheLaw: Women,Marriage,and Property in Nineteenth-Century New York(Ithaca,1982);and Suzanne0. Lebsock,"RadicalReconstruction and thePropertyRightsof SouthernWomen," Journalof SouthernHistory,43 (May 1977), 195-216. Spheres Separate 23 " . . . fromwhom[they]couldinherit Motzobserves, pressure oftheirkinnetworks," support."In an era whenalimony and to whom[they]could turnforalternative wasrare,womenwho wishedto divorcetheirhusbandsleaned on femalekinfor countedon hersistersto support.A womanwho facedearlydeathin childbirth Young by possiblefuturestepmothers. protecther childrenfrommistreatment widows widowsturnedtotheirfemalekintosustainthemand theirchildren;elderly for to nursethemin reciprocity countedon theirdaughtersand daughters-in-law thatsustainedthe earliercare.Motzdrawsan analogybetweenthesocialdynamics nineteenth-century Michiganwomenand thepatseparatesphereofmiddle-class tracedbyCarolB. Stackamongtwentieth-century ternsof serviceand reciprocity that the "women'sculture"and women. She argues forcefully working-class economicand psycho"women'svalues"oftheseparatesphererestedon long-term logicalself-interest.26 ofmendeviated In Motz'sMichigan,as in Cott'sNewEngland,theworkpatterns the need to maintainthe fromthoseof women,perhapsreinforcing everfarther boundariesoftheseparatewomen'ssphere.But as TamaraK. Harevenobservedin rates. 1976,membersof familiesmightbe drawnintocapitalistwaysat different and taughtin schools,theirworkwasmodernized Whenwomenworkedin factories matrixto whichE. P. and forcedinto the new time-bound,clock-measured substantial Forthefirst timein history, Thompsonhas givenclassicalformulation. In amountsofcash. a carefulreadingof numbersofwomencould earnsubstantial the olderassumption the lettersofLowellmillwomen,ThomasDublin criticizes "Workin familyeconomy. thatmillwomenremainedembeddedin thetraditional did foryoung forwomenratherlikemigration the mills,"he writes,"functioned Perhapstheclearestexpression men.... themillsoffered individualself-support." ofthatpositioncomesin a letterwritten bya fatheron a farmto a fosterdaughter to yourownabilityto in themills:"You nowfeel& enjoyindependencetrusting youwant,leaningon no one no one dependingon you."27 procurewhatever someoflocal idiosyncrasy, How arewe to findourwaythroughtheconfusions timesprovidingdependence,sometimesindependence?Two importantbooks, and studiesbuilton demographic publishedin the early1980s,bothcommunity offer in documents economicrelationships, complex research revealing quantitative to thedramaticforceofcapinuancedanalyses.Together butcarefully theytestify on women'ssphere. talistpressures 26 Marilyn MichiganWomenand TheirKin,1820-1920(Albany,1983),29, 33-35, Ferris Motz,TrueSisterhood, (NewYork,1974). Survivalina BlackCommunity 121-25,155-56,168;CarolB. Stack,All OurKin: Strategiesfor 27 TamaraK. Hareven, on SocialChange" Signs,2 (Autumn and FamilyHistory:Perspectives "Modernization 164-67;ThomasDublin, ed., FromFarm "Home Demand and EconomicGrowth," 1976),190-206;McKendrick, location,and time to Factory:Women'sLetters,1830-1860(New York,1981),22-23, 166. Class,race,ethnicity, women impactofworkoutsidethehome.LeslieWoodcockTentlerfoundthatfactory thepsychological all affected Boston,NewYork,Philadelphia,and Chicagonotonlycontinuedto thinkofthemselves in earlytwentieth-century this as embeddedin the familyeconomy,but also foundin the workplaceotheryoungwomenwho reinforced Women:IndustrialWorkand FamilyLifein LeslieWoodcockTentler,Wage-Earning understanding. traditional the UnitedStates,1900-1930(New York,1979).See alsoJacquelynDowd Hall et al., Likea Family:TheMaking of a SouthernCottonMill World(Chapel Hill, 1987). 24 TheJournal ofAmerican History In antebellumPetersburg, Virginia, thelanguageofdomesticity and thedeferential separationof spheresescapedexplicitpublicchallenge.But SuzanneLebsock can unambivalently concludefromher intensiveanalysisof public recordsthat "womenin Petersburg experienced increasing autonomy, autonomyin thesenseof freedomfromutterdependenceon particularmen. Relativelyspeaking,fewer morewomenfoundworkforwages,and moremarried womenweremarried, women acquiredseparateestates."The changesoccurredlargelywithoutthe assistanceof a politically orienteddiscourse.Separateestates- a legaldevicethatdeflected covertureand assuredmarriedwomencontroloverproperty-provided a shelteragainst and an apoliticalresponseto repeatedeconomicpanics. "It familybankruptcy standsto reason,"Lebsockwrites,"thatan ideologythattriedto fixtheboundaries ofwomen'ssphereshouldhavebecomepervasive and urgentjustas womenbegan to exercisea fewchoices. . . . As women acquired new degrees of power and au- in theprivatesphere,theywereconfronted withnewforms tonomy ofsubordination in the publicsphere.28 The character ofthewomen'ssphereofthemid-nineteenth century as distinctive socialconstruction is elaborately developedand richly arguedin MaryP. Ryan'simportantstudyofOneida County,New York,CradleoftheMiddle Class.Stressing theconnections betweenpublicand privaterealms,Ryanbeginsbydescribing the patriarchal ofthetraditional assumptions earlymoderndomesticeconomy.In her reading,manyaspectsof patriarchy brokedownin the earlynineteenthcentury, underblowsfroman increasingly commercialeconomythatmade unentailedestatesand liquid inheritance to heirs.Insteadofthelanguageofsepaadvantageous ratespheres, Ryanspeaksofthechanginginterests offamiliesas a whole.Ryaninterpretsthe retreatto the privateconjugalfamilyas a wayof mobilizingprivate forupwardsocialmobility. resources Overa halfcentury, from1810to 1855,the numberofchildrenperfamilydroppedsharply, from5.8 to 3.6, permitting more attentionto eachchild.At thesametime,thelanguageofdomesticity, whichemphasizedtheroleofmothers in raisingchildren, wascongruent withincreasedpsyin childnurtureand educationand, mostimportant, chologicalinvestment with keepingsonsout oftheworkforcein orderto extendtheireducationand improve theirchancesforupwardmobility. is Ryan'sfindingthatas boys One majorsurprise werekeptout of theworkforce,middle-class womenand daughterswereincreasinglyapt to workfor pay-for example,by keeping boarders,or servingas domestics.Women'senergywasused "to maintainor advancethestatusofmenin theirfamilies."29 In Ryan'saccount,women's"separatesphere"wasdeeplyparadoxical.The conceptclearlyservedthe interests of themen withwhomwomenlived.Yet,women also claimedit fortheirown,defining theirowninterests as inextricably linkedto the upwardmobilityof theirfamilies,repressing claimsfortheirown autonomy. 28 SuzanneLebsock, TheFreeW'omen ofPetersburg: Statusand Culturein a SouthernTown,1784-1860(New York,1984),xv,234. 29 MaryP. Ryan,CradleoftheMiddleClass:TheFamily in Oneida County,New York,1790-1865(Cambridge, Eng., 1981),esp. 56, 185. SeparateSpheres 25 A HAPPY FAMILY theideology ofdomesticity andseparate spheres Authorities promoted to southernblacks,evenwhenmoststilllivedin slavecabins. theFreedmen (1866). fromClintonB. Fisk,PlainCounselfor Reproduced Courtesy Library ofCongress. workforce Whenwomenwentto workforpay,theyentereda severely segregated The fortheirsonsand brothers). jobs ofclerkswerestillreserved (thewhite-collar in a worldofwomen.The logic showthemcirculating diariesof theirfriendships oftheirsituationdrovea veryfewto politicalfeminism, butformost,the"female to explain thatpurported worldofloveand ritual"and theideologyofdomesticity it remainedpowerfuland persuasive. Blackfamilieswerenotimmuneto theideologyofseparatespheres,and recent 26 TheJournal of American History workbyJamesOliverHortonand Lois E. Horton,DorothySterling, Jacqueline theiramshrewd in tracing Gray White has been particularly Jones,and Deborah bivalentresponsesto it.30The Americanideologywasto somelimitedextentconofwomen'sclearresponsibilities for ofmatrilocality, gruentwithAfricantraditions divisionforchildsupportand childsupportand childraising,and ofa sex-linked childraising,and of a sex-linked divisionof labor.Enslavedmen lackedthe economicpowerthatwhitemenexercisedovertheirfamilies;thenuancesofrelationships betweenslave men and womenare debated by historians.It is clearthat aftertheCivilWar,prescriptive literature freedslaves, addressedto recently directly counseleddelicacyamongwomenand a clear peoplelivingin hovelswithdirtfloors, divisionof theirworkfrommen'swork,implicitly promising thatadoptionof the ideologywould ensureelevationto the middleclass.31 and prescriptive; The ideologyof separatespherescould be bothinstrumental forhistorians has made it difficult to workwith.In the first its double character sustaining,a famode, it was an ideologywomenfoundusefuland emotionally cultureand thenewbourgeoisexperience. miliarlinkbetweentheolderpatriarchal welcomeas a hedgeagainstsecularization; religious Thisaspectcouldbe particularly all persuasions bothin their sustaineda patternofseparateness womenofvirtually It could also,as GerdaLernerdisreligiousactivismand in theirownreligiosity.32 of one of class womenin a timeofchange.But in its cerned,protectthe interests prescriptive mode,the ideologyof separatespheresrequiredconstantattentionif it wereto be maintained. In BeyondSeparateSpheres,RosalindRosenberghas locatedthe beginningsof ofbrilliant in theProgressive Era.Twogenerations modernstudiesofsexdifferences socialscientists, amongthemHelen Thompson,JessieTaft,W. I. Thomas,Franz shift Boas,and ElsieClewsParsons,establishedthefoundationfora "fundamental and theirplace in society." By thattookplacein thewaywomenviewedthemselves and anthropoloat leastsomepsychologists, theearlytwentieth sociologists, century weretheresultofsocialithatmanysexdifferences gistswerecomingto understand zation,not biology.Finallyit becamepossibleto imaginea culturethatwas not stillrelyheavily dividedintoseparatespheres.Our ownideasaboutsexdifferences on theirwork.33 Yetthe realworldtookitstimecatchingup withwhatacademicsbelievedthey 30 Strugglein the JamesOliverHortonand Lois E. Horton,BlackBostonians:FamilyLifeand Community ed., WeAre YourSisters:BlackWomenin theNineteenth AntebellumNorth(NewYork,1979);DorothySterling, Century(New York,1984);Jones,LaborofLove,Laborof Sorrow;White,Ar'n'tI A Woman?I am indebtedto in RadicalEndsand Impossible ofEvelynBrooks,"The ProblemofRace in Women'sHistory," theinterpretations ed. ElizabethWeed (forthcoming). Means: Feminism/Theory/Politics, 31 Sterling, WeAre YourSisters,319-20. 32 Tamara formenand womenevenwithin maybe different K. Hareven'spointthattherateofmodernization AmericanProtestant womensustaineda patas well.Nineteenth-century thesamefamilyappliesto secularization See BarbaraWelter,DimityConvictions: in theirreligiousactivism and in theirownreligiosity. ternofseparateness "Zenanas TheAmericanWomanin theNineteenthCentury(Athens,1976),83-102;andJoanJacobsBrumberg, ofAmericanHistory, ofAmericanEvangelicalWomen,1870-1910,"Journal and GirllessVillages:The Ethnology 69 (Sept. 1982), 347-71. 33 RosalindRosenberg, BeyondSeparateSpheres:IntellectualRootsofModernFeminism(New Haven,1982) xlv. Separate Spheres 27 knew.Quite as muchenergy, male and female,has gone to maintainboundaries as to breakthemdown.One resultofthetraditional assumptionthatwhatwomen havedoneis trivialis thathistorians haveseverely underestimated theextentofthe energy-psychological, political,and legal-thus expended.Writingofruralcommunitiesin thenineteenth-century Midwest, JohnMackFaragher describesthedynamicsoftheprocess:"theregulationof thesexualdivisionof laborwas achieved of a hierarchical and male-dominant throughthe perpetuation familystructure, linked to a public worldfromwhich women were excluded. . . . Men werefreeto pursuetheworkof the publicworldpreciselybecausethe inequitabledivisionof laborat home made themthe beneficiaries of women'sand children's labor."34 Examplesof the energyput intomaintainingboundariesabound. Thus Mary Kelley'sPrivateWoman,PublicStageis in partan extendedaccounting oftheprice paid in pain and anguishbythefirst generation ofprofessional womenwriters who soughtto breaktheirtraditional intellectualisolation,and the "deprivation and towhichthetradition ofspirit," the"subversion ofintellect," ofseparate devastation that sphereshad consignedthem.Deglerand Kraditorhaveemphasizedtheenergy the boundariesof theseparatespheresas dedicatedto maintaining antisuffragists theyknewthem.CindySondikAron'simportant studyofthecontinuing negotiationofmannersand reciprocal civilserobligationsin themid-nineteenth-century mixedin gender,showsthat vice,thefirst large-scale laborforcethatwasgenuinely theideologyofseparatespheres-like all ideology-is notfrozenin timebut is in a constantstateof refinement untilit fitsrealityso badlythata paradigmshiftin is Scientistsin unavoidable. conceptualization MargaretW. Rossiter'sWTomen of Americaprovides,among manyotherthings,a case studyin the strategies As womenscientists metthe maintenance and renegotiation. boundary successfully thestandards themselves were traditional markers ofprofessional accomplishment, redefined so as to enclosea sectorof the populationthatwas male.35 oftheProgressive Era havebeen particularly sensitive to the Feministhistorians The years forceofoppositionthatwomenmetwhentheysoughtpublicinfluence. markof women'spublic influence:through 1870-1920may be the high-water tradeunions,professional voluntary organizations, lobbying, education,andprofesthat But womenalso met unprecedented and resistance sional activity. hostility evenin theno-holds-barred seemsdisproportionate, politicalarena:Whensheopin WorldWarI,JaneAddamswasattackedas "'a posedUnitedStatesintervention to the men." old maid' who had betterleavethe fighting silly,vain,impertinent AmerofWomenin RuralAmerica," theHistory "History fromtheInside-Out:Writing 34JohnMackFaragher, the thatdemonstrated proceededto writea history 33 (Winter1981),537-57,esp. 550. Faragher ican Quarterly, and theunevenallocationofworkand power.SeeJohnMackFaragher, formation genderednatureofcommunity SugarCreek:Lifeon the IllinoisPrairie(New Haven, 1986). 35 MaryKelley, America(NewYork, inNineteenth-Century Domesticity PrivateWoman,PublicStage:Literary Victorian Workersin CivilService:Middle-Class 1984),187,100;CindySondikAron,LadiesandGentlemenofthe to 1940 and Strategies in America:Struggles WomenScientists W. Rossiter, America(New York,1987);Margaret whileotherbarmetsevereresistance (Baltimore,1982).CarlDeglerpointedto theparadoxthatwomansuffrage formen-were beingremoved.He suggestedthattheresistance and racerequirements riersto suffrage-property thatmanywomen,as wellas men,had in thestatusquo. Degler, investment wasin partdue to thepsychological At Odds, 340-61. 28 ofAmerican History TheJournal BarbaraSichermanasks,"Whydid theAnti-SaloonLeaguereplacetheWCTU as especially Whywerewomen'sorganizations theleadingtemperance organization? in the 1920s?"We mightadd otherexamplesfromthe 1920s subjectto red-baiting oftheAmericanMedicalAssociation's camand later:theextraordinary bitterness Act;the bitof the Sheppard-Towner paignagainstthemodestrecommendations herlife;themarthroughout terlyvindictive, personalattackson EleanorRoosevelt ginalizationand isolationofpoliticalwomenlikeOvetaCulp Hobbyin the 1950s; of advertising the richresources used in the 1920sto redefinethe housewifeand The evidencethatthewoman'ssphere againin the 1950sto sustainthatdefinition. is a socialconstruction liesin partin thehardand constantworkrequiredto build and repairits boundaries.36 In the lastdecade historians ofworking womenhavemade it abundantlyclear thatthephrase"separatespheres"is a metaphorforcomplexpowerrelationsin socencial and economiccontexts. fromthelateeighteenth Capitalistsocialrelations rather now on the fictions that women "help" turyuntil havebalancedprecariously thanwork,thattheirtrue"place"is in thehome,thatwhentheyventure"out"of housework. Suchwork thehometheyare bestsuitedto doingworkthatreplicates and appropriately rewardedprimarily by nurturing, is "unskilled," interruptible, valueswomen's thatconsistently marketplace loveand secondarily bya segregated is segregated worklessthanmen's.The pointis not onlythatthe marketplace by has been constantly undernegotiationand gender;it is also thatthe segregation reaffirmed. That thesebroadpatternsare worldwideand cross-cultural constantly was made clearin a specialissueof Signsin 1977.37 oftheAmericanexperience havebeen thetargetofsustainedinThe particulars feminist whohavedevelopeda powerful critiqueof vestigation bysocialhistorians men and of thesituationand interests ofworking-class Marxismforitsconflation women.In Out to Work,publishedin 1982, Alice Kessler-Harris working-class offeredan importanthistoryof women'slabor forceparticipation.For Kesslerofthemarketplace and theideologyofseparatesphereswere Harris,thedynamics whileforcing workplace, interdependent, togetherdefininga gender-segregated in theirsituation ironiesinherent womento livewiththedepressing working-class whowereregardedas not reallyat work.MaryH. exhaustedworkers as physically in preindustrial New England Blewett'sstudiesof theworkcultureof shoemakers revealthatwomenwereassignedthesingletaskofbindingtheuppersoftheshoes, isolatedfromtheshop,in a settingthatdedid in theirkitchens, a taskhousewives nied themaccessto otheraspectsof the craftor to the collectiveexperienceof workcultureofthenineteenth withcolleagues.Thustheindustrial century working formaleartisans [that]madeitdifficult inherited, writes Blewett,"gendercategories 36 BarbaraSicherman, "SeparateSpheresas HistoricalParadigm:LimitingMetaphoror UsefulConstruct?" Los Angeles,April1984 commentdeliveredat the annualmeetingof the Organizationof AmericanHistorians, (in BarbaraSicherman'spossession);CynthiaHarrison,On Accountof Sex: The Politicsof Women'sIssues, 1945-1968(Berkeley, 1988). Elaine TylerMay,HomewardBound. AmericanFamiliesin the Cold WarEra (New York,forthcoming). 37 "Womenand NationalDevelopment: The Complexities of Change,"Signs,3 (Autumn1977), 1-338. 29 SeparateSpheres -~~~~~ .. e bygender. segregated Newtechnologies werealmostimmediately CortlandExchange,c. 1890. Switchboards, CourtesyLibrary Company of Philadelphia. includethemin theideologyand politicsbased to regardwomenas fellowworkers, womenwhatawaitedall ofworking on theirworkculture,or see in theexperience workers underindustrialization."38 organized In thelatenineteenth century, groupsas disparateas thecarpetweavers studiedbyMari bytheKnightsofLabor,studiedbySusanLevine;womensocialists, JoBuhle;and theWomen'sTradeUnionLeague,studiedbyNancyShromDye and to "equal RobinJacobyweretornin variouswaysbysimultaneouscommitments rights"in the publicsector,to a futurein whichwomenwould "return"to their womenla"natural"sphereofthe home,and to an uglyrealityin whichworking boredin the publicsectorbyday and returnedto domesticchoresbynight.The feature ofwomenin unskilledjobs a permanent resultwasto makethesegregation 38 AliceKessler-Harris, Womenin theUnitedStates(NewYork,1982). ofWage-Earning A History Outto Work: in Alice Kessler-Harris, "TheJustPrice,theFreeMarketand theValueof The argumentis developedforcefully Mass.,June on theHistoryofWomen,Wellesley, Conference Women,"paperdeliveredat the SeventhBerkshire possession).MaryH. Blewett,"The SexualDivisionofLaborand theArtisanTradi1987(in AliceKessler-Harris's tionin EarlyIndustrialCapitalism:The Case ofNew EnglandShoemaking,1780-1860,'in "ToToiltheLivelong Day": America'sWomenAt Work,1780-1980,ed. CarolGronemanand MaryBethNorton(Ithaca,1987),35-46, esp. 36. 30 TheJournal ofAmerican History oftheAmericanindustrial scene.The boundariesofgendersegregation weremainundertakenby elite ownersof factories, middle-class tainedby enormousefforts and unionizedmaleworkers. managers, JudithMcGawhasrecently pressedtheiroofwomen'sindustrial niesfurther, arguingthatthe"unskilled"character workwas itselfa fictionthatensureda steadysupplyof cheap labor.The fictiondevalued women'sworkbecauseit was unmechanized,obscuringthe extentto whichunmechanizedworkcouldrequirea degreeofskilltoohighformachinesto replicate, and the fact that unmechanizedworkfulfilledfunctionsessentialto factory production.39 The dynamics havepersisted.SheilaTobiasestablishedmale tradeunionists'insistenceon the exclusionof Rosie the Riveterfrompost-World War II factories, denyingwomenwhohad joinedtheskilledworkforceduringthewarnotonlythe jobs promisedto returning veteransbut theirownearnedseniority and thrusting a generation ofworking womenintoa pink-collar ghetto.RuthMilkmanhasshown in convincingdetail how even duringWorldWar II, unions and management cooperatedto ensurethattheworkRosiedid wasdefinedand redefined as women's workevenif it involvedskillsand physicalcapacitiespreviously understoodto be male.MyraH. Strober has beendemonstrating howin ourowntime,thenewcomputertechnology was quicklyand emphatically assigneda genderedidentity.40 Historians ofworking womenhavethushad especially goodreasontounderstand thatthelanguageofseparatesphereshas beena languageenablingcontemporaries to explainto themselves the social situation-withall its ironiesand contradictions-in whichtheyunderstoodthemselves to be living."Separatespheres"was a tropethathid itsinstrumentality evenfromthosewhoemployedit; in thatsense it was deeplyambiguous.In the ambiguity, perhaps,lay its appeal.41 A thirdmajorcharacteristic ofrecentwork,one whosepotentialis at lastbeing 39SusanLevine,Labor'sTrueWoman:CarpetWeavers, Industrialization, andLaborReformin theGildedAge (Philadelphia,1984),10, 148;MariJoBuhle,WomenandAmericanSocialism,1870-1920(Urbana,1981);Nancy SchromDye,As Equals and As Sisters:Feminism,theLaborMovement,and the Women'sTradeUnionLeague ofNew York(Columbia,1980);RobinMillerJacoby, "TheWomen'sTradeUnionLeagueand AmericanFeminism," FeministStudies,3 (Fall 1975), 126-40;JudithA. McGaw,Most Wonderful Machine:Mechanization and Social Changein Berkshire PaperMaking,1801-1885(Princeton,1987),335-74.JudithA. McGaw,"No PassiveVictims, No SeparateSpheres:A FeministPerspective on Technology's in In Context:Historyand theHistoryof History," Technology -Essaysin HonorofMel Kranzberg, ed. StephenCutliffe and RobertW. Post(Bethlehem,Pa., 1988), ofhousework Revolution and mademanyofitscharacteristics arguesthata transformation precededtheIndustrial possible. 40 SheilaTobiasand RuthMilkman, Genderat Work:TheDynamicsofJobSegregation bySex duringWorld II (Urbana,1987); MyraStroberand CarolynL. Arnold,"Integrated Woar Labor:Womenin Circuits/Segregated Computer-Related in ComputerChips and Paper Clips: Technology Occupationsand High-TechIndustries," and Women'sEmployment, ed. Heidi Hartmann,RobertE. Kraut,and LouiseTilly(Washington, 1986),136-82. Forimportant studiesof the "tipping"of an occupationfrommale to female,see MyraH. Strober,"Towarda GeneralTheoryofOccupationalSex Segregation: The Case ofPublicSchoolTeaching," in Sex Segregation in the Workplace:Trends,Explanations,Remedies,ed. BarbaraF. Reskin(Washington,1984), 144-56; and MyraH. Stroberand David Tyack,"WhyDo WomenTeachand Men Manage?A Reporton Researchon Schools,"Signs 5 (Spring1980),494-503. 41 "Whenwe seekto makesenseof suchproblematical topicsas humannature,culture,society, and history, we neversayprecisely whatwe wishto sayor mean precisely whatwe say,"warnsHaydenWhite."Our discourse alwaystendsto slipawayfromourdata towardsthestructures ofconsciousness withwhichwe are trying to grasp them... thedataalwaysresistthecoherency oftheimagewhichwearetrying to fashionofthem."HaydenWhite, Tropicsof Discourse:Essaysin CulturalCriticism(Baltimore,1978), 1. Separate Spheres 31 arepayingconvigorously tapped,is theuseof"sphere"in a literalsense.Historians siderableattentionto thephysicalspacesto whichwomenwereassigned,thosein the interplay beStressing whichtheylived,and thosetheychoseforthemselves. in the 1980smaybe on theirway and theliteral,historians tweenthemetaphorical culturewithwhich oftheparadoxesofwomen'spolitics/women's towarda resolution thesymposiasts ofFeministStudieswrestled.Historiansare findingit worthwhile to use it to referto to treat"sphere"not onlyas metaphorbut also as descriptor, domainin the mostobviousand explicitsense. havelearnedmuchfromanthropologists, In adoptingthatapproachhistorians who have long understoodthe need to scrutinizeseparatemen's and women's womenwereoftenexspaces.Men'splaceswereoftenclearlydefined;menstruating meeting includedthecentralcommunity cludedfromthem.Men'sspacenormally place and the fields;thatis, as LucienneRoubinwrites,the villagegovernment "tendsto juxtaposeand to fusemale spacewithpublicspace."Women'sspace,by historians gardens.In themid-1970s is whatis left:sleepingenclosures, definition, found Woman,Culture,and Society,an anthologyedited by anthropologists MichelleZimbalistRosaldoand LouiseLamphere,deeplyresonantforitsanalyses of the significance of women'sbehaviorin domesticsettings.42 As we haveseen,historians who examinedsexroleswerelikelyto linkphysical of trueforhistorians That was particularly separationwithsocial subordination. earlyAmerica:as LyleKoehlerobserved,"Puritansocietywas organizedin a way the beliefin sex segregation as a reminderof men'sand thatexplicitly affirmed thearguIn a 1978essay,MaryMaplesDunn reversed women'sdifferent destinies." of thewaycontrolof physicalspace could affect ment.In a brilliantexamination public behavior,Dunn arguedthatthe spiritualequalitythatQuakertheology bythedeviceofseparatewomen's and authenticated offered womenwasconfirmed meetings.Women'smeetingsenabledwomento controltheirownagenda,to allocontrolovertheirmembers,especatetheirownfunds,and to exercise disciplinary byQuakerwomen'sconmarriages. Thoseroleswerereinforced ciallybyvalidating in thecenter trolovertheirphysicalspace,in meetinghouses withslidingpartitions thatprovided"womenand menwithseparatespacesfortheconductoftheirsepaclaimedsuchcontrolovertheir ratebusiness."Womenof no otherdenomination space and theirrecordkeeping,and Dunn suggeststhatthe elementsof physical controlwerecentraltowomen'smoreautonomousspiritual rolein theQuakercommunity.43 42 LucienneRoubin,"Male Space and FemaleSpace withinthe in RuralSocietyin Community," Provinpal and OrestRanum, ed. RobertForster France:Selectionsfromthe Annales:Economies,Societies,Civilisations, trans.ElborgForsterand PatriciaM. Ranum(Baltimore,1977), 152-80,esp. 155. See also MichelleZimbalist in Women,Culture,and Society,ed. Rosaldo Rosaldo,"Women,Culture,and Society:A TheoreticalOverview," and Lamphere,17-42; SherryB. Ortner,"Is Femaleto Male As NatureIs to Culture?"ibid., 67-87; and Louise is Rayna Cooperation,and Conflictin DomesticGroups,"ibid., 97-112.Also important Lamphere,"Strategies, ownessay,RaynaR. Reiter, ofWomen(NewYork,1975),especiallyReiter's R. Reiter, ed., Towardan Anthropology of the "Men and Womenin the South of France:Publicand PrivateDomains,"ibid., 252-82 (her description of a village). "sexualgeography" 43 Koehler,SearchforPower,41; MaryMaplesDunn, "Saintsand Sisters: and QuakerWomen Congregational in the EarlyColonial Period,"in Womenin AmericanReligion,ed. JanetWilsonJames(Philadelphia,1980), 32 TheJournal History ofAmerican essay,"Separatism as Strategy: In 1979,EstelleFreedmanpublishedan important FemaleInstitution Buildingand AmericanFeminism,1870-1930."In itshesought ofthetraditional hierthesimplifications male-public/female-private to overcome thatbridgedthetwocategories: the"publicfemalesphere." archybya construction to the"'femaleinstitution building'whichemergedfromthe Bythatshe referred women'scultureofthenineteenth century." She had in mindwomen's middle-class clubs (like Sorosis,whichwas initiatedwhenthe New YorkPressClub excluded womenjournalistsin 1868); women'scolleges;women'ssettlement houses,most women'stradeunions;even notablyHull House; women'spoliticalorganizations; thewomen'sbuildingsat theInternational CentennialExpositionin 1876and the World'sColumbianExpositionin 1892. In each case, the refusalto mergetheir groupsintomale-dominated institutions gavewomennotonlycrucialpracticaland politicalexperience butalsoa placewheretheycouldresttheleverswithwhichthey socialchange.The space thatFreedmanended byrecommending hoped to effect to womenwasin partmetaphorical: and they womenneededtheirownnetworks, wasalso the neededto nurturetheirownculture.Embeddedin heressay,however, had beenmostsuccessful whentheyhad commandedacobservation thatfeminists tual physicalspace of theirown,whichtheycould defineand control.44 IfweimagineFreedmanas stakingoutan emptyshelfin thebookcaseofwomen's in 1979,we couldnowsaythattheshelfis crowdedwithbooksand articles history ofdomesticity haveunderstood thatillustrate herpoint.New studiesofthehistory is thephysical to be an ideologywhoseobjectivecorrelative spaceofthe domesticity of Dolores Hayden'sThe Grand household.The "materialfeminist"reformers DomesticRevolution,who flourishedbetween1870 and 1930, soughtto reappropriate thatspaceand to redesignit to socializedomesticwork.Centralkitchens, to reconhome cleaning,and otherefforts cookedfooddelivery, professionalized structwomen'sworkwithinthedomesticsphereseverely challengedthetraditional interestgroupscountered socialorder.Such inventions weresquelched.Powerful them with home mortgagepolicies that privilegedmale-headedhouseholds, and urban highwayconstruction thatencourageddiffusesuburbandevelopment, homeslackingcentralservices. Hayden'sbookwas designthatstressed single-family followedbydetailedhistoriesbySusan Strasser and RuthSchwartzCowan,which of housework trackedthe development and householdtechnology. Cowanargued thatthe definition of the homeas women'sspherewas accompaniedbya change in householdtechnology withtheresultthatmen-excused fromchoppingwood forfire,poundingmeal, and otherhouseholdtasks-foundthe home a place of as a place of leisure,a "havenin a heartlessworld"whileit retaineditscharacter 27-46, esp.45; originally publishedinAmericanQuarterly, 30 (Winter1978),582-601,esp. 600. Aboutthemost clearlyboundedwomen'sreligioussocialspace-the convent-weknowlittle.In thecolonialperiodtherewasa conventin Montreal, butwehaveno studiesofitsinternaldynamics, thoughweknowthatsomeAmericanwomen captiveschose to staythereratherthan be repatriated.See Axtell,InvasionWithin302-27. On the general problem,see ElizabethKolmer,"CatholicWomenReligiousand Women'sHistory:A Surveyof the Literature," in Womenin AmericanReligion,ed. James,127-39. 44 Estelle Freedman,"Separatismas Strategy:Female InstitutionBuilding and AmericanFeminism, 1870-1930,"FeministStudies5 (Fall 1979), 512-29,esp. 513. SeparateSpheres 33 1-A ...........~~... I . ....' __ JaneAddamsin HullHousediningroomwithstaff andguests, c. 1930. Menareinvited to women's space.Facingcamera:Ida Lovett a cigarette), (smoking RobertMorssLovett, AliceHamilton (facehidden),Addams;backto camera: Edithde Nancrede, Rachelle I am grateful Yarros. to MaryLynnMcCreeBryan fortheidentifications. Swarthmore Courtesy CollegePeaceCollection. laborforwomen.The workof FayeE. Dudden on householdserviceshowsthat women'sdomesticspacewaspervadedbyclassconsiderations; thehomewasa theofthehouseclaimedherspaceand assignedtotheservant ater,inwhichthemistress thespace she mightoccupy.45 The philosophyand ideologyof otherinstitutions are increasingly understood to be embeddedin theirarrangement ofphysicalspace.Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz has tracedthe complexrelationships betweenthe visionsthat women'scollege 45 Dolores Hayden,The GrandDomesticRevolution: A Historyof FeministDesignsforAmericanHomes, and Cities(Cambridge,Mass.,1981);SusanStrasser, Neighborhoods NeverDone: A HistoryofAmericanHousework(New York,1982);RuthSchwartz Cowan,MoreWork from forMother:TheIroniesofHouseholdTechnology the Open Hearthto the Microwave(New York,1983); FayeE. Dudden, ServingWomen:HouseholdServicein Nineteenth-Century America(Middletown,1983). 34 The Journalof AmericanHistory HaistedStreetviewof Hull House, c. 1915.Althoughits name suggested the cozyfamilyhome thatwas its originalcore,at its heightHull House includedtwelvebuildingsand filledtwocityblocks. Courtesy JaneAddamsMemorialCollection,Special Collections, University Library,University of Illinoi'sat Chicago. founders had fortheirinstitutions and thearchitecture In thattheycommissioned. herwork,evenintellectual is understood to be its affected history deeply by physical context.And a richoutpouringofworkon thewomenoftheHull House commuclearthathavingcontrolof the physicalinstitution nityhas made it increasingly of Hull House-which at itsheightincludedthirteenlargestructures spacedover twosquareblocks- providedan institutional womenreformers, basepermitting in KathrynKish Sklar'swords,to "enterrealmsof realitydominatedbymen,where, forbetteror forworse,theycompetedwithmen forcontroloverthe distribution ofsocialresources." Hull House wasmanythings,notleastamongthema physical in which FlorenceKelleycould findhousing,community, the divorced and space childcarewhileshe wentto law school.Hull House'scommunaldiningroomwas an innovativesolutionto the practicalproblemsof self-maintenance forsingle 35 SeparateSpheres I ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~I m~~~~~~~~l 3 . . :t: |~~~~~~~~W '1.* .z..3.,. .......... . . .. .......... .... ~" ~4' .. ......... .....~'g 4..... .4... . ip.; ' .......... . .4....'.... .4. , .. ;. . . - - ' ...4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..'@"'.'.........: j; 4 4''. .. ......... .. .... ..d44 whose ... .. *,..... ;....... .......... . work . M............. i. ie was 5. c *............ .. } l by ;;'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ i ii " ............ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~ .4 ... 4 . Plan of the Hull House buildings,c. 1963. Courtesy JaneAddamsMemorialCollection,Special Collections University Library,University of Illinoisat Chicago to the adviceof the materialfeminists women,a vigoroustestimony professional whoseworkwas chronicledbyHayden." 46 Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz,Alma Mater:Design and Experiencein the Women'sCollegesfrom Their Beginningsto the 1930s(New York1984); KathrynKish Sklar,"Hull House in the 1890s:A Ninteenth-Century Signs,10 (Summer1985),658-77, esp. 659. Communityof WomenReformers," 36 TheJournal ofAmerican History Hull Housewasalso a physical spacein whichwomenwhoseclosestrelationships in a worldthatincreasingly scorned werewithotherwomencouldlivecomfortably and theirvalues.In thisaspectof itsservices, thewallsof Hull theirrelationships in marking House wereofenormoussignificance an enclosure withinwhichwomen and defendthemselves could definethe termsof theirmostprivaterelationships In hermemoirofherearlydaysat Hull House,Kelleyemagainstsocialcriticism. of crossingthe thresholdintoHull House- a threshold phasizedthe significance no lessmetaphorical becauseitwasalsoliteral.JaneAddamswasreticent aboutthe foritsresidents; in Twenty serviceHull Houseperformed YearsatHull psychological withapology,herclassicessayon "The SubjectiveNecessity House she reprinted, forSocial Settlements" and thenturnedalmostexclusively to an accountof what the residentsdid for theirneighbors.Only occasionally"the fine old house respondedkindlyto repairs" did hersenseofthehouseas havinga lifeofitsown slip throughhercarefulprose.47 The residents ofHull House understood thata citywasnota single,unifiedentity.It was not merelythata citywasperceiveddifferently by each observer;the constructed. singlecitywas manycities,selectively Theywould have understood Christine Stansell'scoinage"CityofWomen,"a phraseevokinghervisionofpublic termsbymenand bywomen,"a cityofwomenwith spaceas inhabitedon different itsowneconomicrelationsand culturalforms,a femalecityconcealedwithinthe The first largermetropolis." majorpublicationprojectofHull House,afterall, was thatplotted Hull-HouseMaps and Papers,an innovative studyin socialgeography theneighborhood aroundHull House to makeitplainthattheChicagoappearing on theusual mapswasnottheChicagoHull House residents knew.In remapping theirneighborhood,theylocated the philosophicalconstruction thatwas Hull House squarelyin physicalspace.Moreover, theresidents understoodthatthe exvulnerperienceofthecityvariedwithgender,thatworking girlswereparticularly able in itspublicspaces.One of the earliestHull House projectswas a smallbut effort to claimcityspaceforsinglewomenbyestablishing significant a cooperative residenceforworking girls.Byestablishing theJaneClub,Hull House residents announcedtheirrecognition thatthephysicalspacesofthecitywereinhospitableto thatspace.48 singlewomenand suggesteda practicalmodel forredrawing In Cityof Women,Stansellhas givenvoiceto a sweepingreformulation ofsocial in urbanplaces;thestoryshetellsis ofantebellumNewYork,butitspoint relations ofviewand itsunderstanding ofhowgeography can servesocialanalysisareofforThe cityofwomenhas itsownpoliticaleconomy, its midablybroadapplicability. ownpatternsofsociability, itsownusesof the streets.It variesbyclass:theworld ofworking-class women womenhas notbeenthesameas theworldofmiddle-class but neitherhas it been the same as the worldof working-class men. 47 Florence Kelley,"I Go to Work," Survey, June1, 1927,pp. 271-74,301;JaneAddams,Twenty Yearsat Hull House, withAutobiographical Notes (New York,1910),93. 48 Christine Stansell,Cityof Wlomen: Sex and Classin New York,1789-1860(New York,1986),xi; Residents ofHull-House,Hull-HouseMapsandPapers(NewYork,1895).FortheJaneClub, see MaryKenny'sreminiscence in Allen F. Davis and MaryLynnMcCree,eds., EightyYearsat-Hull-House(Chicago,1969), 34-35. Separate Spheres 37 In Stansell'swork,inJoanneMeyerowitz's studyoftheconstruction ofspacefor working womenin Progressive EraChicago,and in workinprogress byPatriciaCline Cohen on efforts to assurewomen'ssafetyin traveland in otherpublicspacesin thenineteenth century, and byMaryRyanon thenineteenth-century urbancreation offormalpublicspheres,one assignedto women,theotherto men,whoseboundariesshiftedand overlapped,our understanding of the "separatesphere"is becomingboth simplerand more complex.49It is simplerbecause the separate women'sspherecan be understoodto denotethephysicalspace in whichwomen lived,but morecomplexbecauseeventhatapparently simplephysicalspace was complexly structured byan ideologyofgender,as wellas byclassand race.Courtroomsinwhichwomenappearsinglyas plaintiffs, defendants, orwitnesses aremale on whichwomenareafraidto walkaremale spaces;universities spaces;streets that womenenteronlyat male invitation aremale spaces.When SusanB. Anthony led a delegationofwoman'srightsactivists to disruptthepublicceremonies celebrating thecentennial oftheDeclarationofIndependencein Philadelphia,theychallenged ofAmerbothmale controlofpublicspaceand an anthropocentric interpretation icanrightsand values.When thedelegationofwomenmarchedto theotherside of Carpenters' Hall, thereto hearAnthonydeclaimherown centennialaddress, of government whichcalledforthe impeachment of all officers becausetheyhad "no taxationwithoutrepresentabeenfalsetothevaluesofthedeclaration (notably, tion"),theybothassertedtheirownclaimto publicspace and implicitly rejected a politicsbased on the separationof spheres.50 linesofaction"forthetwosexes.AcTocquevillehad discerned"twoclearlydistinct thediscourseofseparatespheres,whichin his daywasintuallyhe wasreporting of genderrelationsthen creasingin shrillness, perhapsto coverthe renegotiation is to commenton historians But the taskof the historiographer more underway. than to evaluateactual phenomena,and fromthe historiographer's perspective to move thatenabledhistorians "separatespheres"was at leastin parta strategy ofwomenout oftherealmofthetrivialand anecdotalintotherealm thehistory ofanalytic socialhistory. MakingitpossibletoproceedpastMaryR. Beard'sgeneralthe conceptof separatespheres izationthatwomenhave been a forcein history, proposeda dynamicbywhichthatforcewas manifest.51 But if our predecessors wereconstrainedby dualisms-home versusmarket, householdversusstate-we need no longerbe so constrained. publicversusprivate, In an important late in hertragically abbreviated essaywritten life,MichelleZimbetweenthe balistRosaldo,who had made herreputationexploringthecontrasts it nature and that was timeto and the public private, culture,arguedforcefully Earnersin Chicago,1880-1930(Chicago,1988); WomenAdrift:IndependentWoage 49JoanneJ.Meyerowitz, of Genderin ThreeAmericanCities,1825-1880,"forthcoming; MaryP. Ryan,"Womenin Public:Explorations PatriciaCline Cohen, "Safetyand Danger:SexualPerilin Public, 1790-1850"forthcoming. 50 ElizabethCady Stanton,Susan B. Anthony, (6 and MatildaJoslyn Gage, eds. Historyof WomanSuffrage 1881-1922),III, 3-56. vols.,Rochester, 51 Tocqueville, A StudyofTraditions Democracy in America,II, 212;MaryR. Beard,Womanas ForceinHistory: and Realities(New York,1946). The Journalof AmericanHistory 38 .~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..... Z...Y~~~~~~~~~~~~~~b. .. ,..X....... .......... ;; s^^ .. ...... ........4 .. ............. .. : '.;'.......... .. ...... ..... .!.'.. ~~ ~ ~ ~ 4,>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~N .... ....i.... ... .. . ! ..g,"l~l, Po - ~..A. A..... Men and womensit separatelyin a physicslectureroom of Michigan,c. 1890. at the University of MichiganMedicalSchool Collection,Michigan CourtesyUniversity HistoricalCollections,BentleyHistoricalLibrary. ofa model based moveon to morecomplexanalyses."The mostseriousdeficiency .. in itsalliancewiththedualisms upon twoopposedspheres,shewrote,"tappears notin terms whichteachthatwomenmustbe understood ofthepast,dichotomies and apart-withotherwomenand withmen -but of difference of relationship a in domain "women's locate to apart. ness."Approachesthatattempt 'problem' howmenand womenbothparticipatein and help . . .fail to help us understand formsthat may oppress,liberate,join or divide to reproducethe institutional them."'2To continueto use the language of separatespheresis to deny the betweengenderand society,and to imposea staticmodelon dynamic reciprocity relationships 52 M. Z. Rosaldo,"The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Underon Feminismand Cross-cultural Reflections JoanKelly,"The Doubled essay, standing:'Signs,5 (Spring1980),389-417,esp. 409, 417. See also theimportant Feminist Studies,5 (Spring1979), to the'Womanand Power'Conference:' Theory:A Postscript VisionofFeminist generbuta positionwithinsocialexistence 216-27."Woman'splaceis nota separatesphereordomainofexistence thispoint.See JeanneBoydston,"To EarnHer ally."Ibid., 221.JeanneBoydstonis a historianwho understands Subsistence:'RadicalHistoryReview,(no. 35, 1986), Daily Bread: Houseworkand AntebellumWorking-Class United of Houseworkin theNortheastern 7-25; andJeanneBoydston,"Home and Work:The Industrialization 1984). Statesfromthe Colonial Periodto the CivilWar"(Ph.D. diss.,Yale University, Spheres Separate 39 As we discusstheconceptofseparatespheres,we aretiptoeingon theboundary We haveenteredthe betweenpoliticsand ideology,betweensociologyand rhetoric. our task-insofaras it involvesthe analysisand demysrealmof hermeneutics; What one ofdeconstruction. ofa seriesofbinaryopposites-is essentially tification betweenthehouseholdand theworld,an opposition arewetomakeofthispolarity as theoppositionbetweentherawand thecooked,thedayand the as fundamental ofevery whyfeminists night,thesunand themoon?We do notyetfullyunderstand generation-the1830s,the 1880s,the 1960s-have needed to definetheirenemy way.Whyspeakofworlds,ofspheres,orofrealms geographical in thisdistinctively in Mary thinkofthemselves, at all?Whatis itin ourculturethathasmadefeminists words,"as immuredin theirhouseholds,gropingin the dark"?53 Wollstonecraft's For vitality. The metaphorremainsresonantbecauseit retainssomesuperficial forall thatmen's"spheres"and women's"spheres"now all ourvauntedmodernity, do not overlap.The overlap,vastareas of our experienceand our consciousness boundariesmaybe fuzzier,but our privatespacesand our publicspacesare still and of ofgenderrelations, sensesgendered.The reconstruction in manyimportant thespacesthatmenand womenmayclaim,is one ofthemostcompellingcontemofpovporarysocialtasks.It is relatedto majorsocialquestions:thefeminization relationsof powerand abuses erty,equal accessto educationand theprofessions, On a widerstage,thereconstruction ofpowerin thepublicsectorand in thefamily. is relatedtomajorissuesofpower,forwelivein a worldin which ofgenderrelations validateditselfby its distancefromthe feminineand has traditionally authority fromwhatis understoodto be effeminate.54 Littleis leftof Tocquevilleexceptwhat he leftto implication:thatpolitical The pursocialconstructions. arereciprocal ofgenderrelations and systems systems pose of constantanalysisof languageis to assurethatwe givepowerno place to not of "separatespheres"thatstillpersistaresymptoms, hide.55But theremnants One daywewillunderlocatedgendersystem. and historically cause,ofa particular a trope,employedbypeople in the standtheidea ofseparatespheresas primarily forwhichtheyhad no otherwordsand thatthey powerrelations pasttocharacterize in ourown becausetheycouldnotname,and byhistorians couldnotacknowledge timesas theygropedfora devicethatmightdispeltheconfusionofanecdoteand and analyticalorderon the anarchyof inheritedevidence,the imposenarrative betterto comprehendthe worldin whichwe live. '3 (Harmondsworth, ed. MiriamBrodyKramnick oftheRightsof WVoman, A Vindication MaryWollstonecraft, Eng.,1975),87. 54 On gender and MarionA. Kaplan,WhenBiology AtinaGrossman, see RenateBridenthal, in Nazi ideology, (NewYork,1984).On genderedlanguageand birthimages BecameDestiny:Womenin WeimarandNaziGermany see CarolCohn,"Sexand Death in theRationalWorldofDefenseIntellectuals," analysis, strategic incontemporary Signs,12 (Summer1987),687-718. of politicaland gendersystemsis developedfarmoreexplicitlythroughout 55 The reciprocal relationship Eng. 1973), CharlesLouisde Secondat,Baronde Montesquieu,PersianLetters,trans.C. J. Betts(Harmondsworth, esp.270-81;and Baronde Montesquieu,TheSpiritoftheLaws,trans.ThomasNugent(New York,1949),94-108. AmericanHistorical Analysis," ofHistorical seeJoanW. Scott,"Gender:A UsefulCategory analysis, Fora brilliant of the Scholar,"in Review,91 (Dec. 1986), 1053-75. And see MichaelJ. Shapiro,"The PoliticalResponsibilities ed.JohnNelson, andPublicAffairs, in Scholarship oftheHumanSciences:LanguageandArgument TheRhetoric Allan Megill,and Donald N. McCloskey(Madison,1988),380.
