“It is as futile to argue with a bridge club maniac as with an opium eater or an inebriate. The habit has outreached all rational discussion. Duty, common sense, reputation have become meaningless words before the victim’s devastated conscience.” So said the pseudonymous “Fra[...]
Posts Tagged ‘Women’
June 21st, 2010 - 7:00 am § in Fashion
Lane Bryant and Maternity Wear
The late nineteenth century saw a revolution in the way pregnancy and expectant mothers were viewed by society. We were now far from the days when pregnant women were bundled away once they began to show, and when the actual concept of pregnancy was discussed in a hushed, euphemistic manner.[...]
May 5th, 2010 - 7:30 am § in Arts
American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity
Introduction The spring 2010 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity, the first drawn from the newly established Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Met. The exhibition, on view from May 5 through August [...]
The Souls of Black Folk: Arts & Literature
Literature Paul Laurence Dunbar James Weldon Johnson Frances E. W. Harper Pauline Hopkins Alice Dunbar Nelson Art Edmonia Lewis Meta Vaux Warrick Henry O. Tanner E. M. Bannister May Howard Jackson Music Harry T. Burleigh E. Azalia Hackley Thomas G. Bethune Scott Joplin James Reese Europe Will Marion[...]
Fascinating Women: Sissieretta Jones
Opera singers were the world’s first pop stars, and the nineteenth century saw the apex of diva and divo worship, with hundreds of thousands left spellbound by the heavenly voices of Jenny Lind, Nelli Melba, Enrico Caruso, and Jean de Rezke, to name a few stars. Since this was before radio, an[...]
January 21st, 2010 - 7:55 pm § in Amusements
Smoking Etiquette
Smoking in the nineteenth century underwent many amusing changes, per the advice of etiquette books. Where once guides to modern behavior stressed how vulgar it was to smoke, when ladies took up the habit, it behooved these arbiters of social instruction to catch up with the times. From 1844′s[...]
