The Saturated World: Aesthetic Meaning, Intimate Objects, Women's Lives, 1890-1940

by Gordon, Beverly

• ISBN13: 9781572335424
• ISBN10: 1572335424
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-30
• Publisher: Univ of Tennessee Pr

Summary

The Saturated World: Aesthetic Meaning, Intimate Objects, Women's Lives, 1890-1940 explores the way middle-class American women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries added meaning to their lives through their "domestic amusements"leisure pursuits that took place in and were largely focused on the home. This pathbreaking study by Beverly Gordon demonstrates that these women elaborated on their everyday tasks and responsibilities by transforming them into playful, emotionally satisfying amusements. In doing so, they cultivated a heightened, aesthetically charged "saturated" state and created self-contained, enchanted worlds. Gordon explores a variety of female leisure activities of the era, including scrap-booking (collage making) party giving, dress-up, dollmaking, and collecting. Each chapter serves as a case study, and taken as a whole, the chapters provide a holistic overview of late nineteenth and early twentieth century women's saturated worlds. In challenging the dismissal of domestic amusements, Gordon seeks to redress the assumption that women's domestic activities were of less value than work done out-side the home. In The Saturated World, Gordon seeks to restore women's agency--to defy the assumption that women were passive pawns who acted only out of a lack of choice or power. Women chose these pursuits on their own, Gordon argues. She contends that they were operating out of a different paradigm of culturally invested meaning, based on domestic rather than workplace values. This did not in any way diminish their achievements. Richly illustrated, The Saturated World is an unusual combination of women's history and material culture analysis that offersfascinating insight into women's leisure activities. It is an ideal book for students of American studies, women's studies, material culture, and popular culture.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
1 The Meaning of the Saturated World
Introduction: About This Book and the Saturated World	1	(10)
Previous Dismissals of Domestic Amusements and What We Can Learn from Them	11	(4)
A Deeper Look at the Qualities of the Saturated World	15	(19)
Saturation in Our Postmodern World	34	(3)
2 The Paper Doll House
Introduction	37	(2)
The Saturated World of the Paper Doll House	39	(12)
The Paper Doll House as Part of a Female Community	51	(6)
Commercial Book Houses	57	(2)
An Undervalued Artifact	59	(4)
3 Parties and Party Givers
Introduction	63	(9)
The Advice Literature	72	(4)
Qualities and Conventions	76	(23)
A Further Exploration of Announcement Parties and Showers	99	(5)
Summary: Saturated Entertainments	104	(3)
4 Dressing-Up as Embodied Amusement
Introduction: The Appeal of Dressing Up	107	(3)
Types of Dress-Up: Women and Children	110	(11)
Making Costumes	121	(2)
The Uses of Dress-Up	123	(5)
Costume at Parties: Specific Conventions	128	(2)
Staged Photographs as Domestic Amusements	130	(5)
Men's Dress-Up	135	(3)
Conclusions: Deep Saturation	138	(1)
5 Iconic Dolls and Household Helpers
Introduction	139	(1)
Embodied Fancywork and Dressed-Up Dolls	140	(4)
Nature Dolls and "The Garden Party of the Vegetable Folks"	144	(8)
Dolls as Household Helpers	152	(7)
Other Iconic Dolls	159	(2)
Interpretations	161	(6)
6 Collecting
Introduction	167	(1)
The Emergence of American Collecting and Children's Collecting Patterns	168	(4)
Collecting Patterns among Adult Men and Women	172	(5)
Women's Attitudes and Experiences: A Closer Look	177	(12)
Additional Collector Profiles	189	(8)
The Marginalization of Women's Vision	197	(6)
Parting Words	203	(4)
Notes	207	(46)
Selected Bibliography	253	(10)
Index	263