Research Catalog

Title

The anchor of my life : middle-class American mothers and daughters, 1880-1920 / Linda W. Rosenzweig.

Author

Rosenzweig, Linda W.

Publication

New York : New York University Press, [1993], ©1993.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiii, 293 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

• The relationship between mothers and daughters has been the subject of much research and study, in such fields as psychoanalysis, sociology, and women's studies. But rarely has the history and evolution of this relationship been examined.
• In The Anchor of My Life Linda W. Rosenzweig draws on a wide range of primary sources - letters, diaries, autobiographies, prescriptive advice or "self-help" literature, and fiction - to reveal the historical nuances of this pivotal relationship.
• Rosenzweig's distinctive approach focuses on the interaction between mothers and daughters of the American middle class at the turn of the century, revealing that mothers and daughters managed to sustain close, nurturing relationships in an era marked by a major female generation gap in terms of aspirations and opportunities.
• Illustrated with photographs and portraits of the time, The Anchor of My Life provocatively challenges the facile, late twentieth-century assumption that the mother-daughter relationship is necessarily defined by hostility, guilt, and antagonism.

Series Statement

The History of emotions series

Uniform Title

History of emotion series.

Subjects

• Middle class women > United States > History
• Mothers and daughters > United States > History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-287) and index.

Contents

1. "The Central Problem of Female Experience": Introduction -- 2. "My Girls' Mothers": The Emotionology of Mother-Daughter Relationships, 1880-1920 -- 3. "Cultural Work": Mother-Daughter Relationships in Novels -- 4. "A Girl's Best Friend": Adolescent Daughters and Their Mothers -- 5. "I Am So Glad You Could Go to College": The "New Woman" and Her Mother -- 6. "We Need Each Other": Adult Daughters and Their Mothers -- 7. "The Revolt of the Daughters": Middle-Class English Mothers and Daughters -- 8. "Mother Drove Us in the Studebaker": American Mothers and Daughters after 1920 -- 9. "The Anchor of My Life": Toward a History of Mother-Daughter Relationships.

ISBN

0814774385 (acid-free paper) :

LCCN

92044560

OCLC

ocm27173422

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries