Eve's Eaves

In my last post, I talked about John Stanford's sermon as an artifact, but did not explore the content or its relationship to early American women. In fact, you might be wondering what a sermon to the Society of House Carpenters in 1792 has to do with early American women at all.

A better question, though, is why wouldn't a sermon addressing men who build homes have anything to do with women? In the late 1700's, the home was the nucleus of the woman's sphere of influence. After the Revolutionary War, women began to have greater access to education and involvement in politics (if not the right to vote, certainly the right to voice), and were expected to take part in civic community. But the home remained the center of their domain. Women were called to a new patriotism that involved preparing their children to become good citizens. They were to have worldly knowledge and heavenly virtue and demonstrate this in dutiful wifely activity and in the civic education of their children. The home became a microcosm of the new nation.

Yet the spaces women inhabited, influenced, and labored in most - their homes - were designed and constructed by men. The Society of House Carpenters specifically focused on homebuilding, but the vague alusions to women that Stanford employed in his sermon do not laud the women who would preside over these domestic realms.

In fact, he states that although architecture is the most "useful and ornamental" of the mechanical arts, it is necessary because of the introduction of sin into the world. After "sin pierced and impregnated the human breast," Stanford says the air became polluted and the "artillary of Heaven" - inclement weather and other catastrophes - were loosed against people. These unfortunate consequences resulted in the need for houses.

So architecture, according to Stanford, is useful, noble, and the result of Eve's great transgression. He uses feminized language to describe the introduction of sin into the world, reminding his audience that the women for whom they build are decendents of the woman who made toil their punishment.

As I progress through this research project, I plan to look at a variety of texts that focus on the material and social culture of women and their relationships to the home in the early Republic. I will be exploring sermons, dedications, sociological writings by women of the time, and a variety of critical texts that examine these items. Here are some of the readings I endeavor to include.

Preliminary Bibliography

Earle, Alice Morse. Home Life In Colonial Days. USA: ReadaClassic.com, 2009. Print.

Hawke, David Freeman. Everyday Life in Early America. Ed. Richard Balkin. New York:

            Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1988. Print.

Herman, Bernard L. Town House: Architecture and Material Life in the Early American City,

1780-1830. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Print.

Kelley, Mary. Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s

Republic. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Print.

Kimball, Fiske. Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic.

USA: Dover, 2001. Print.

Lewis, Adam. The Great Lady Decorators: The Women Who Defined Interior Design, 1870-

1955. New York: Rizzoli, 2010. Print.

Price, Edward T. Dividing the Land: Early American Beginnings of Our Private Property

Mosaic (University of Chicago Research Papers). Illinois: University of Chicago Press,

1995. Print.

Ogden, John Cosens. Address delivered at the Opening of Portsmouth Academy, on Easter

            Monday, AD 1791. New Hampshire, Portsmouth: George Jerry Osborne, Jun. Spy

            Printing-Office, 1791. Early American Imprints, Series 1: Evans, no. 23649. Web.

Stabile, Susan. Memory’s Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-

Century America. New York: Cornell University Press, 2004. Print.

Stanford, Rev. John, M.A. Sacred Architecture; or the Design of Jehovah in Building the Temple

of Solomon: A Sermon. New York: T. & J. Swords, 1793. Early American Imprints,

Series 1: Evans, no 26201. Web.

Trollope, Frances. Domestic Manners of the Americans. USA: Dover, 2003. Print.