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From the “ornamental and evanescent” to “good, useful things”: Redesigning the Gift in Progressive America1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
Abstract
This article examines the transformation of American gift giving in the early twentieth century, using prescriptive and trade literature, as well as individual stories. This transformation occurred within the context of the transition from a Victorian to a modernist ethos and from a production to a consumption orientation. Changes in gift-giving practices were shaped by Progressive Era hygiene and home economics reformers and by aesthetic movements such as Arts and Crafts and interior decoration. Gift reformers divorced the gift from the Victorian ideal of ornamental and sentimental items, asserting that a gift's beauty lay in its functionality. This transformation fostered a second shift in the ideology of the gift. Rather than the giver's knowledge of and sentiment toward the recipient determining gift selection, the recipient's needs and desires increasingly dictated the choice. The gift thereby became more consumer-oriented. This change paved the way for the gift registry, which provided a commercial forum where prospective gift recipients could list their preferences.
- Type
- Essay
- Information
- The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 467 - 505
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2011
Footnotes
1
The author would like to thank Bill Graebner, Dorothy Ross, and the anonymous readers for the journal for their helpful critiques of various drafts of this article. Early versions of this work were presented at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in 2002 and the American Historical Association in 2003. The author thanks those who participated in those sessions for their comments, particularly Elizabeth Pleck and Jennifer Scanlon.
References
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3 Ibid.
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92 Hotpoint advertisement, Ladies' Home Journal, June 1919, 78.
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