Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity (Gender and American Culture)

Richter, Amy G.

ISBN 10: 080785591X / ISBN 13: 9780807855911

Published by The University of North Carolina Press (edition New edition), 2005

It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting. Seller Inventory # 080785591X-11-1

Synopsis:

Recognizing the railroad’s importance as both symbol and experience in Victorian America, Amy G. Richter follows women travelers onto trains and considers the consequences of their presence there.

For a time, Richter argues, nineteenth-century Americans imagined the public realm as a chaotic and dangerous place full of potential, where various groups came together, collided, and influenced one another, for better or worse. The example of the American railroad reveals how, by the beginning of the twentieth century, this image was replaced by one of a domesticated public realm — a public space in which both women and men increasingly strove to make themselves “at home.”

Through efforts that ranged from the homey touches of railroad car décor to advertising images celebrating female travelers and legal cases sanctioning gender-segregated spaces, travelers and railroad companies transformed the railroad from a place of risk and almost unlimited social mixing into one in which white men and women alleviated the stress of unpleasant social contact. Making themselves “at home” aboard the trains, white men and women domesticated the railroad for themselves and paved the way for a racially segregated and class-stratified public space that freed women from the home yet still preserved the railroad as a masculine domain.

About the Author: Amy G. Richter is assistant professor of history at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. The dissertation on which this book is based won the 2001 Lerner-Scott Prize from the Organization of American Historians.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and ...
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (edition New edition)
Publication Date: 2005
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Very Good
Edition: New edition.