Martha Washington Goes Shopping
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MARTHA WASHINGTON GOES SHOPPING: MASS CULTURE’S GENDERING OF HISTORY, 1910-1950 by EMILY M. WESTKAEMPER A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History written under the direction of Nancy Hewitt and T. J. Jackson Lears and approved by Dr. T. J. Jackson Lears Dr. Nancy Hewitt Dr. Bonnie G. Smith Dr. Jennifer Scanlon New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2009 2009 Emily Westkaemper ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Martha Washington Goes Shopping: Mass Culture’s Gendering of History, 1910-1950 By EMILY M. WESTKAEMPER Dissertation Directors: Nancy Hewitt and T. J. Jackson Lears This dissertation expands the definition of women’s social activism to include the innovative work of activists, intellectuals, and corporations creating popular historical narratives. As twentieth century American women assumed new social, political, and economic roles, popular media sentimentalized historical figures like Martha Washington as models for present-day domesticity, constructing colonial and antebellum womanhood as historical precedents for contemporary gendered and racialized divisions of labor. Magazines, advertisements, radio programs, films, and product packaging idealized the middle-class female consumer’s domestic role as a timeless contribution to American democracy, encouraging contemporary women to continue privileging familial over political roles. At the same time, women advertisers, magazine editors, department store executives, radio writers, and popular historians responded, constructing more dynamic narratives of progress in women’s status, both in their own work and in their collective efforts on behalf of women’s professional rights. Recent scholarship identifies amateur writing and historical preservation as alternative careers forged by twentieth century ii women excluded from the academic profession. This dissertation reveals that popular media also narrated the history of women as key players in political and economic change. In the late 1930s, the Philadelphia Club of Advertising Women, a prominent professional group, produced a series of local radio programs dramatizing the lives of transgressive female historical figures. Simultaneously, historian Mary Ritter Beard and journalist Eva vom Baur Hansl collaborated with the U. S. Office of Education to produce national radio programs dramatizing women’s roles as “co-makers” of history and promoting Beard’s development of the World Center for Women’s Archives. These constructions of the past made claims for women’s professional capabilities and historical significance, but they also drew on the dominant culture’s pre-existing cultural scripts for gender, racial, and national differences. Celebrations of business women’s histories often assumed white middle-class cultural superiority. As second wave feminists in the 1960s and 1970s strove to reclaim women’s history as a route to feminist consciousness, reception of their efforts was shaped by these complex constructions of women’s history that had become central to mass media. This dissertation thus reveals the integral role of popular culture in defining “women’s history” for public audiences. iii Acknowledgements Archival research for this dissertation was generously supported by funding from the Smithsonian Institution, Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Hagley Museum and Library, and the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center. I am grateful to archivists, faculty, and staff at each of these institutions, as well as at Bryn Mawr College Special Collections; the Virginia Historical Society; the Wisconsin State Historical Society; Duke University Special Collections; the Minnesota Historical Society; the Library of Congress Recorded Sound Reference Center; the National Archives at College Park; the D.C. Community Archives at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library; the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri, Columbia; and the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland, College Park. Many individuals have assisted my research process. Thank you to Marianne Hansen and Eric Pumroy for providing access to the Philadelphia Club of Advertising Women records at the Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections. At the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, discussions with Larry Bird and Fath Davis Ruffins brought research plans and hypotheses into focus. Larry very generously shared his research materials on Cavalcade of America. John Fleckner, David Haberstich, Reuben Jackson, Frank Robinson, Vanessa Broussard Simmons, Wendy Shay, and Susan Strange offered special assistance and suggestions at the NMAH Archives Center, where I also benefitted from the work of Cathy Keen, Craig Orr, Alison iv Oswald, Kay Peterson, and Deborra Richardson. Kirsten Van Der Veen and Daria Wingreen-Mason enabled my access to Dibner Library materials during the NMAH renovation. At the Library of Congress Jan McKee, Bryan Cornell, and Karen J. Fishman provided access to radio files and recordings. At the Schlesinger Library, Ellen Shea provided insightful guidance. Sherrill Redmon and Amy Hague assisted me at Smith College. I am also indebted to Jim Green, Connie King, and Wendy Woloson (the Library Company of Philadelphia); Carol Lockman and Marjorie McNinch (Hagley); Shannon Bowen, Carol Bowers, and Ginny Kilander (the University of Wyoming); L. Susan Tolbert and Suzanne McLaughlin (Smithsonian); and Jacqueline Reid and Lynn Eaton (Duke). Generous input from Pete Daniel, David Gilbert, Alison Isenberg, Temma Kaplan, and Grace Palladino improved my research. Throughout my research and writing, I benefitted from the insight and encouragement of colleagues, friends, and family members, including Melanie Farrell, Ann D. Gordon, Elizabeth Hageman, Sarah Henry, Allen Howard, Abigail Lewis, Jennifer Miller, Nancy Newell, Dawn Ruskai, Melissa Stein, Peter JosephWestkaemper, Richard Barwise Westkaemper, Sunya Westkaemper, and Timothy Westkaemper. I appreciate feedback on portions of this work from participants in the 2008 Berkshire Conference “Object-Centered Histories” panel, the 2007 American Studies Association Annual Meeting, the 2007 Graduate Symposium on Women’s and Gender History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the 2004 Warren Susman Graduate Conference at Rutgers. Bonnie G. Smith’s research seminar provided a crucial opportunity to define this topic, through discussions with Jessica Cook, Sandra Mendiola Garcia, Oksana Kis, Melissa Stein, and Terry Younghwa. v I first researched and wrote about popular culture’s use of the past for an undergraduate thesis directed by Grace Hale at the University of Virginia. Her mentorship and insight played central roles in the completion of this dissertation. Franny Nudelman’s American Studies courses guided my thinking at this early stage, as did my undergraduate studies with Cindy Aron, Alon Confino, Alan B. Howard, Elisabeth Ladenson, and Michael Levenson. At Rutgers University in New Brunswick, grants and fellowships from the history department and Graduate School supported research and writing. My co-advisors Nancy Hewitt and Jackson Lears have been essential guides throughout graduate school and the development of this dissertation. I am honored to be supported by committee members Nancy, Jackson, Bonnie Smith, and Jennifer Scanlon, scholars whose work I so admire. My interest in the past is driven by my admiration for my family and by my gratitude for the support they have given me. My grandmother Margaret Paradise Hogan sparked my earliest fascination with cultural history. Although my grandfather Richard Benedict Westkaemper did not live to see me complete this process, the memories of his pride in my education will sustain me throughout my lifetime. My words can not describe all that my mother Kathleen Hogan Westkaemper has done for me or the extent to which she inspires me. Methodical archivists, hyperbolic copywriters, and Hollywood choreographers would all fall short in trying to capture that history. vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv List of Illustrations viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Martha Washington (Would Have) Shopped Here: Print Culture’s Gendered Histories 16 Chapter 2 “The Quaker Girl Turns Modern”: Advertising Women’s Activism 66 Chapter 3 Gallant American Women on the Airwaves 107 Chapter 4 “Wonder Women” of History: Popular and Academic Narratives 150 Chapter 5 Betsy Ross Red: Products as Links with the Past 192 Epilogue 244 Bibliography 252 Curriculum Vitae 263 vii List of Illustrations Chapter 1 Figure 1: Liquid Veneer advertisement (1924) 65 Chapter 2 Figure 2.1: Philadelphia Club of Advertising Women emblem (n.d.) 105 Figure 2.2: “La Danse Moderne” program (1930) 106 Chapter 3 Figure 3.1: “Egyptian Holiday” invitation (1930) 147 Figure 3.2: “Southern Serenade” photograph (1940) 148 Figure 3.3: A Woman of America sketch 149 Chapter 4 Figure 4: “Wonder Women of History”: Susan B. Anthony (1943) 191 Chapter 5 Figure 5: Photograph, Salem “Petit Point” decal tableware (n.d.) 243 viii 1 Introduction During the twentieth century, magazines, advertisements, film, and musical theater regularly deployed sentimentalized visions of the