Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880

214 Pages·1989·29.323 MB·English

by  Mary P. Ryan

Women in Public
THE JOHNS
The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History are occa-
HOPKINS sional volumes sponsored by the Department of History at
the Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Uni-
SYMPOSIA IN
versity Press comprising original essays by leading scholars in
COMPARATIVE
the United States and other countries. Each volume considers,
HISTORY from a comparative perspective, an important topic of current
historical interest. The present volume is the sixteenth. Its
preparation has been assisted by the James S. Schouler
Lecture Fund.
Women
in Public
Between Banners and
Ballots, 1825-1880
Mary P Ryan
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore and London
© 1990 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 1990
Printed in the United States of America
Johns Hopkins Paperbacks edition, 1992
The Johns Hopkins University Press
701 West 40th Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21211-2190
The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Ryan, Mary P.
Woman in public : between banners and ballots, 1825-1880 / Mary P. Ryan.
p. cm.—(The Johns Hopkins symposia in comparative history; 16th]
Bibliography: p.
Includes index. ,
ISBN 0-8018-3908-4 (alk. paper] ISBN 0-8018-4401-0 (pbk.|
1. Women in public life—Louisiana—New Orleans—History—19th century.
Z. Women in public life—California—San Francisco—History—19th century.
3. Women in public life—New York (N.Y.)—History—19th century. I. Title.
II. Series.
HQ1391.U5R9 1990
305.4'2'0973—dc20 89-32863
For Rick
BLANK PAGE
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: In Search of the Public 3
Ceremonial Space: Public Celebration and
Private Women 19
Everyday Space: Gender and the Geography
of the Public 58
Political Space: Of Prostitutes and
Politicians 95
The Public Sphere: Of Handkerchiefs,
Brickbats, and Women's Rights 130
Epilogue 172
Notes 181
Index 195
BLANK PAGE
Preface and
Acknowledgments
he first reckless steps that led to this book were taken half-
consciously and quite a number of years ago. Motivated by
questions left in suspension by my previous work, which fo-
cused on the family context of women's history, and by a certain
impatience with developments in American social history, I formu-
lated a hopelessly ambitious research agenda, to search out the mean-
ing of ‘’the public’ in the last century. The inestimable value of the
new social history—its inclusion of neglected populations, its culti-
vation of local sites of social life, its revelation of social processes
once veiled in privacy—had inevitably created lacunae in the trans-
formed historical landscape: uncharted relationships between differ-
ent social groups, gaps between insulated communities, unmapped
pathways between social life and political institutions. The concept
of the public harbored promises of linking the dispersed elements of
social history and bringing its powerful but diffused insights into
contact with one another on the plane of politics.
I had no intention of jettisoning the concerns or the methods of
social history. My goal was to bring the substance of social history—
its attention to the formation of and relationships between social
groups, its sensitivity to social change and social stratification, its
respect for social differences—to a larger and centering plane of both
behavior and analysis. Most certainly I did not intend to retreat from
the history of women, but rather to bring female subjects and the
representation of gender into the center of a social history of the
public. This goal of placing gender in the public domain rested awk-
wardly within my comprehensive and pluralistic formulation of the
xX Preface and Acknowledgments
history of the public. The uneasy historical relationship between
women and the public presented too many complications, quanda-
ries, and mystifications for women to be swiftly and smoothly incor-
porated into a narrative of public life. This relationship required
concerted, central attention in its own right and on its own terms.
I was delivered from this scholarly predicament by the invitation
from the Johns Hopkins University to deliver the James S. Schouler
lectures. The Schouler lectures offered me the freedom to write a
speculative version of the second book that resided so uncomfortably
in my original and foolishly ambitious project. This may well be a
perversely backwards approach: to insert women and gender into the
historical space of ‘'the public,’’ whose overall contours have yet to
be mapped. Although I find a certain perverse attraction in a proce-
dure that inverts the customary order of historiography by starting
with women and then proceeding on to what is usually perceived as
the center and the whole, I put these essays before you in a spirit of
exploration. The formality of my prose and the covers of a book
should not disguise my speculative posture, my intention to plod on
toward my original quixotic goal, and my confidence that even as I
write others are clarifying and correcting this tentative picture of
women in public.
The serpentine path of my explorations has rambled across the
country and left a trail of intellectual and personal debts. It started
on the coast of California, first at the University of California, Irvine,
where the world’s best colleagues fed me ideas and encouragement
while the university and the American Council of Learned Societies
financed the first stages of the research. My movement northward
began with a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences in Stanford (financed in part by the National
Endowment for the Humanities). The combination of quiet and con-
versation and the luxurious library services at the Center made my
research possible and pleasant.
With my move to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986,
my debts mounted up. The university supplied essential funds for
the completion of the manuscript, and graduate assistants Sharon
Ullman and Lisa Cody perfected my text and footnotes with energy,
intelligence, and good-humored tolerance of the author's scatter-
brained work habits. The brunt of my absent-mindedness was borne
by the staff of the Berkeley's Women's Studies Program, Eli Coppola,
Sara Luria, and Carla Atkins. To Carla I owe nothing less than my
sanity, preserved by her constant efficiency and the warm ripples of
her laughter. I am especially indebted to the scores of Women’s
Studies faculty who for three years have given me unfailing support