Love and the working class

• Verfasst von: Lystra, Karen [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Love and the working class
• Titelzusatz: the inner worlds of 19th century Americans
• Verf.angabe: Karen Lystra
• Verlagsort: New York, NY
• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• E-Jahr: 2024
• Jahr: [2024]
• Umfang: 1 online resource (348 Seiten)
• Illustrationen: Illustrationen
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: Oxford scholarship online
• Fussnoten: Also issued in print: 2024. - Includes bibliographical references and index. - Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on February 8, 2024)
• ISBN: 978-0-19-751425-2
• DOI: doi:10.1093/oso/9780197514221.001.0001
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Druck-Ausgabe: Lystra, Karen, 1948 - : Love and the working class. - New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, 2024. - 348 Seiten
• Sach-SW: Society
• Sach-SW: Society & culture: general
• K10plus-PPN: 189227115X
• K10plus-PPN:
  Universitätsbibliothek
• Lokale URL UB: Zum Volltext

Abstract

'Love and the Working Class' takes a unique look at the emotions of hard-living, nineteenth-century Americans who were often on the cusp of literacy. These labouring folk highly valued letters and, however difficult it was, wrote to stay connected to those they loved. This book displays the personal expression of factory hands, manual labourers, peddlers, coopers, carpenters, lumbermen, miners, tanners, haulers, tailors, seamstresses, laundresses, domestics, sharecroppers, independent farmers, and common soldiers and their wives. Entering the 'anonymous corners' of these people's lives through letters, we can see their humour, grit, hope, heartache, and endurance, and grasp what they believed and felt about themselves, their kinfolk, and their friends.

Abstract

"Based on over 5,000 letters written by both black and white working-class Americans in the period 1830-1880, Love and the Working Class features the personal expression of ordinary Americans as they find a mate, joke or boast about sex, argue with their spouse, and express their feelings of attachment in both prose and poetry. Most of the letter-writers had no more than a third or fourth grade education and some of them were illiterate. Yet they or their scribe took pen and pencil in hand, often sounding out words as they wrote. Readers can 'hear' them speak to each other as they expressed their sense of intimacy within the collective relationships of their local community or tribe. Their sense of community included an almost universally accepted yet unspoken demand for racial homogeneity in courtship and marriage. Love and the Working Class makes an innovative and distinctive contribution to the history of emotions as well as American social and cultural history. The focus on courtship and marriage includes an original analysis of nonromantic love. Poetry, letter-writing, and the range of emotions surrounding death are also featured. Working-class feelings are interpreted in response to a wide-range of nineteenth-century experiences, including the Civil War. It is through the lens of personal letters that poor, unschooled Americans show us how they felt about love and how they created meaningful attachments in their uncertain lives"--