Family and Divorce in California, 1850-1890 Victorian Illusions and Everyday Realities
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Robert L. Griswold - Author
Price: $55.50 Hardcover - 266 pages
Release Date: June 1983
ISBN10: 0-87395-633-8 ISBN13: 978-0-87395-633-8
Price: $28.95 Paperback - 266 pages
Release Date: June 1983
ISBN10: 0-87395-634-6 ISBN13: 978-0-87395-634-5
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Summary
Few of the men and women who came to California after the discovery of gold had the opportunity or the inclination to record their thoughts about family life. Their family experience, like that of most nineteenth-century Americans, is obscured by time and an absence of sources.
Family and Divorce in California succeeds in reconstructing the private world of farmers, laborers, small-town merchants tradesmen, and housewives through an examination of local newspapers, census data, legal documents, and, above all, divorce records during the years 1850 to 1890. Some 400 divorce cases from two rural counties form the core of the study.
Here we see how the compassionate ideal, the cult of true womanhood, and the work ethic actually affected the attitudes and behavior of working-class and rural as well as urban, middle-class people. A wide variety of topics is covered:
basic family values
women's health, work, sexuality, character, and independence
men's work, sexual conduct, and affective relations
the nature of parenthood, childhood, and marital companionship
domestic violence.
The book also explores the early years of the divorce crisis that began in the 1880s and answers the questions of how and why it developed.
Robert Griswold is a cell assistant professor history at the University of Oklahoma.
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: From Patriarchy to Companionship
2. Divorce Documents and Divorce Seekers
3. Ideal Womanhood in California
4. Dimensions of Womanhood: Domesticity, Chastity, and Independence
5. Ideal Manhood in California
6. Manhood and the Companionate Ideal
7. Parents and Children in Nineteenth-Century California
Afterword: The Family, Victorian Culture, and Twentieth-Century Developments
