Among the enduring stereotypes of early American history has been
the colonial Goodwife, perpetually spinning, sewing, darning, and
quilting, answering all of her family's textile needs. But the
Goodwife of popular historical imagination obscures as much as she
reveals; the icon appears to explain early American women's labor
history, while at the same time allowing it to go unexplained.
Tensions of class and gender recede, and the largest artisanal
trade open to early American women is obscured in the guise of
domesticity. In this book, Marla R. Miller illuminates the
significance of women's work in the clothing trades of the early
Republic. Drawing on diaries, letters, reminiscences, ledgers, and
material culture, she explores the contours of working women's
lives in rural New England, offering a nuanced view of their varied
ranks and roles - skilled and unskilled, black and white, artisanal
and laboring - as producers and consumers, clients and
crafts-women, employers and employees. By plumbing hierarchies of
power and skill, Miller explains how needlework shaped and
reflected the circumstances of real women's lives, at once drawing
them together and setting them apart. The heart of the book brings
into focus the entwined experiences of six women who lived in and
around Hadley, Massachusetts, a thriving agricultural village
nestled in a bend in the Connecticut River about halfway between
the Connecticut and Vermont borders. Miller's examination of their
distinct yet overlapping worlds reveals the myriad ways that the
circumstances of everyday lives positioned women in relationship to
one another, enlarging and limiting opportunities and shaping the
trajectories of days, years, and lifetimes in ways both large and
small. ""The Needle's Eye"" reveals not only how these women
thought about their work, but how they thought about their world.
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