Title: Mothers and Daughters in Nineteenth-Century America
First published: November 1995
Description: The feminine script of the early nineteenth century centered on women's role as patient, long-suffering mothers. By mid-century, however, their daughters faced a world very different in social and economic options and in the physical experiences surrounding their bodies.

In this groundbreaking study, Nancy Theriot turns to social and medical history, developmental psychology and feminist theory to explain the fundamental shift in women's concepts of femininity and gender identity during the course of the century - from an ideal of suffering womanhood to emphasis on female control of the physical self.

Theriot argues that social psychological theories, recent work in literary criticism, and new philosophical work on subjectivities provide helpful lenses for viewing mothers and children and for connecting socioeconomic change and ideological change.

Within this methodological perspective, she reads medical texts and woman-authored advice literature and autobiographies, relating the early nineteenth-century notion of "true womanhood" to the socioeconomic and somatic realities of middle-class women's lives, particularly to their experience of the new male obstetrics.
Subjects: History, Sociological aspects, Health and hygiene, Middle class women, United States, Femininity, Sex role, Mothers and daughters, Women, 19th century, Middle class, united states, Women, health and hygiene, Sociology, Gender Identity, Mother-Child Relations
Places: United States, 19th century, History
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: HQ1418 .T53 1996