Synopses & Reviews
From nineteenth-century romantic friendships to childhood best friends and idealistic versions of feminist sisterhood, female friendship has been seen as an essential, sustaining influence on women's lives. Women are thought to have a special aptitude for making and keeping friends.
But notions of friendship are not constant-and neither are women's experiences of this fundamental form of connection. In Another Self, Linda W. Rosenzweig sheds light on the changing nature of white middle-class American women's relationships during the coming of age of modern America.
As the middle-class domesticity of the nineteenth century waned, a new emotional culture arose in the twentieth century and the intensely affectionate bonds between women of earlier decades were supplanted by new priorities: autonomy, careers, participation in an expanding consumer culture, and the expectation of fulfillment and companionship in marriage. An increased emphasis on heterosexual interactions and a growing stigmatization of close same-sex relationships fostered new friendship styles and patterns.
Drawing on a wide range of primary sources including diaries, journals, correspondence, and popular periodicals, Rosenzweig uncovers the complex and intricate links between social and cultural developments and women's personal experiences of friendship.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-220) and index.
About the Author
Linda W. Rosenzweig is Professor of History at Chatham College. She is the author of The Anchor of My Life: Middle-Class American Mothers and Daughters, 1880-1920. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
"The sister of my heart": female friends before 1900 -- "The other's facsimile": young women's friendships, 1900-1920 -- "Boys in particular": young women's friendships after 1920 -- "The staunchness of female friendship": adult friends, 1900-1960 -- "Partner and I": twentieth-century romantic friendships -- "The most straining of all experiences": friendships with men after 1900 -- Another self? The fabric of friendship after 1960.