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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
In the 1830's and 40's America was experiencing basic and far-reaching social change derived to a large extent from the revolution wrought by industrialization. One significant area of change, the reformulation of woman's status and capabilities, has been recognized, but is too often ascribed to liberation through her possible or real role as a factory worker. A closer look, however, reveals that the woman who went into the factory as a worker was not liberated but simply shifted her work from home to factory. Her labor had always been absolutely necessary to keep her family economically solvent; where she had woven cloth and produced the necessary family goods at home, she now wove cloth in a factory and used her income to purchase the necessities. This woman lost neither function nor focus in her life. It was rather the middle-class woman who was most seriously affected by industrialization. Machine-produced goods replaced the goods she had once provided for her family and perhaps even deprived her of a pin money sideline “job.” Unlike her working-class sister, she could not take a job because incipient social standards demanded her idleness as a status symbol for her husband. As desire for status increased, a man who could afford it even relieved his wife of household duties by hiring domestic servants. All of this increased her financial dependence on her husband, took away her feeling of usefulness to the family, and gave her increased leisure time to reflect on her problems and needs.
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