DOC Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen by Deborah A. Harris; Patti Giuffre in History

Description

How did young American women construct and express their emotions between 1780 and 1830? Before Oprah and therapy; how did they reconcile society’s demanding and often contradictory expectations? In The Work of the Heart: Young Women and Emotion; 1780-1830; Martha Tomhave Blauvelt looks to the often spirited diaries written by young women in America’s early republic; arguing that the continuous; demanding; and often unnoticed emotional labor of women exemplified their uneasy position within society.Employing the concept of "emotion work;" Blauvelt argues that despite the fact that the amount of physical labor may have declined for these young women; the popularity of fiction; desire to display genteel refinement; need to deflect criticism of women’s academy education; and resignation in marriage created multiple emotional tasks requiring highly skilled labor. In her detailed examination of fifty young northern women’s diaries during this time period; the author shows that while this work entailed attempts at suppressing inappropriate feeling; it also invited self-consciousness and a sense of competence as these women addressed society’s often contradictory expectations. In a variety of settings; emotion work was the means through which women constructed a fluid and negotiated self; while their diaries provided a mirror and tool of this labor. Showing work where none seemed to exist; The Work of the Heart suggests emotion work as a key measure of women’s status; whether for the twenty-first century or the eighteenth; and offers an analytical tool for historians exploring the self.