Difference between revisions of "426--Week 4 Questions/Comments--Thursday"
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'''Reliance''' One thing that the relationship between families in these cities seemed to create was a network for working class women. It almost, as Joe sort of mentions, creates this expectation that you have someone to go to when you need help. It's almost the same sort of reliance women had on one another in farming communities, just in a different way because of the situations these women are in. -Kelly W. | '''Reliance''' One thing that the relationship between families in these cities seemed to create was a network for working class women. It almost, as Joe sort of mentions, creates this expectation that you have someone to go to when you need help. It's almost the same sort of reliance women had on one another in farming communities, just in a different way because of the situations these women are in. -Kelly W. | ||
| − | '''Middle Class:''' I wonder how much of our understanding of the poor working class is shaped by the development of the middle class at this time. We have touched on this idea before in class, but I think this reading really highlighted it. For example, poor women were seen as depraved because they did not have a clear division between domestic spheres and public spheres. But the notion that a home was a private refuge was actually a new middle class idea. | + | '''Middle Class:''' I wonder how much of our understanding of the poor working class is shaped by the development of the middle class at this time. We have touched on this idea before in class, but I think this reading really highlighted it. For example, poor women were seen as depraved because they did not have a clear division between domestic spheres and public spheres. But the notion that a home was a private refuge was actually a new middle class idea. -- Rebecca |
| − | '''Sources:''' How might the available sources skew our understanding of poor working class families? Most of the sources in this book seem to be court cases and personal accounts, which is probably all we have available to us, but these sources were probably all written by middle or upper class people. I wonder if the descriptions of filth and squalor of the tenements and the raucous inhabitants are at all skewed because they come from outside observers. I think Stansell speaks to this a bit when she talks about how the "home visits" (and the resulting tracts) from the evangelical middle class were in large part about the self-definition of the middle class. | + | '''Sources:''' How might the available sources skew our understanding of poor working class families? Most of the sources in this book seem to be court cases and personal accounts, which is probably all we have available to us, but these sources were probably all written by middle or upper class people. I wonder if the descriptions of filth and squalor of the tenements and the raucous inhabitants are at all skewed because they come from outside observers. I think Stansell speaks to this a bit when she talks about how the "home visits" (and the resulting tracts) from the evangelical middle class were in large part about the self-definition of the middle class. -- Rebecca |
