Full name: City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860

Author: Christine Stansell Year: 1986 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction, Feminism Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780252014819 0252014812

How women emerged as a distinctive class in the burgeoning society of New York City in the postCivil War era is explored from an original viewpoint in this interesting study. Female class relations, ``ladies'' and working women, were symbiotic. The laborers had their sexual and social demeanor regulated by their middle-class sisters, who had the leisure to act as ``self-appointed exemplars of virtue.'' The women of the working class come to life in Stansell's identification of their lot. Adrift from family ties, they entered the labor force, many resorting to prostitution and crime, which provoked the philanthropy of genteel bourgeois women, social reformers and the rise of the settlement house movement. The neighborhoods of the poor, the tenements and bawdy houses of 19th century New York are portrayed as important elements in women's history. Stansell teaches at Princeton University. Similar books: Cheap Amusements by Kathy Peiss Five Points by Tyler Anbinder Terrible Honesty by Ann Douglas The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler America's Women by Gail Collins Marriage, a History by Stephanie Coontz Imperial Leather by Anne McClintock Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May Seductress by Elizabeth Prioleau Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs by Kathleen M. Brown A History of Marriage by Elizabeth Abbott Born for Liberty by Sara M. Evans Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure by Nan Enstad The Plantation Mistress by Catherine Clinton The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury Low Life by Luc Sante Women of the Republic by Linda K. Kerber Gay New York by George Chauncey City of Eros by Timothy J. Gilfoyle Island of Vice by Richard Zacks