Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-class Culture in America, 1830-1870Yale University Press, 1982 M01 1 - 262 pages Karen Halttunen draws a vivid picture of the social and cultural development of the upwardly mobile middle class, basing her study on a survey of the conduct manuals and fashion magazines of mid-nineteenth-century America. "An ingenious book: original, inventive, resourceful, and exciting. ... This book adds immeasurably to the current work on sentimental culture and American cultural history and brings to its task an inquisitive, fresh, and intelligent perspective. ... Essential reading for historians, literary critics, feminists, and cultural commentators who wish to study mid-nineteenth-century American culture and its relation to contemporary values."--Dianne F. Sadoff, American Quarterly "A compelling and beautifully developed study. ... Halttunen provides us with a subtle book that gently unfolds from her mastery of the subject and intelligent prose."--Paula S. Fass, Journal of Social History "Halttunen has done her homework--the research has been tremendous, the notes and bibliography are impressive, and the text is peppered with hundreds of quotes--and gives some real insight into an area of American culture and history where we might have never bothered to look."--John Hopkins, Times Literary Supplement "The kind of imaginative history that opens up new questions, that challenges conventional historical understanding, and demonstrates how provocative and exciting cultural history can be."--William R. Leach, The New England Quarterly "A stunning contribution to American cultural history."--Alan Trachtenberg |
Contents
Sentimental Culture and the Problem of Fashion | 56 |
Sentimental Culture and the Problem of Etiquette | 92 |
A Study in Sentimental Ritual | 124 |
The Confidence Man in Corporate America | 198 |
Notes | 211 |
| 239 | |
Common terms and phrases
advice literature advice manuals advice writers Alcott American middle classes American society antebellum advice appearance back regions beauty Beecher bereavement bonnet bourgeois Catharine Beecher century chap character charade Christian classes confidence game consolation Costume cultivate Cunnington death demanded Dick disguise eighteenth-century etiquette manuals evil expression fashion Fatal Cosmetic feelings formal friends funeral genteel performance gentility gentleman Godey's Lady's Book grief hair heart Henry Ward Beecher Horatio Alger hostess hypocrites Ibid inner Jacksonian lady liminal manners middle middle-class Americans middle-class culture moral mourner mourning nineteenth nineteenth-century offered outward P. T. Barnum parlor theatricals polite social popular problem of hypocrisy Puritan Ragged Dick readers republican ritual romantic sentimental culture sentimental dress sentimental ideal sentimental literature sentimental typology sentimentalists simply sincere ideal social conduct social forms stage style success sympathy Tableaux tableaux vivants tion transparent trickster true urban Victorian virtue woman women world of strangers York