| As the industrial revolution separated dwelling and
workplace in the 1800s, the home became a female-oriented sanctuary from the
harsher masculine world of business and trade. Parents felt the need to protect their
children from the world outside the home. Romantic ideas of innocence resulted in children
being seen as "angelic," and great care was taken to shield them from the
sinful, dangerous world. Charles Dickens' character Oliver Twist and Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s angelic Little Eva personified the 19th century ideal of the
spiritually chaste child. Children did not always turn out so well, however. Even innocent
babes could be tainted by any bad trait that had run in the family, even generations
before. Children who were deformed, retarded, or who exhibited other socially unacceptable
characteristics attributable to inheritance were often hidden from the world to maintain
the family’s reputation. Parents’ desire to maintain childhood innocence
extended to ignoring physical gender differences for as long as possible. About 1830
androgynous clothing for young children became fashionable, and remained so until after
1900. Boys and girls wore a loose dress or belted smock to the knee and pantelettes
(drawers) to the ankles. For boys, this replaced the tight little suit with pants and
small jacket called the "skeleton suit." This was the first time girls wore a
bifurcated garment (Pants!) and many adults thought it shocking. For the first time girls
were able to play actively (and comfortably) alongside their brothers. For boys, this
replaced the tight little suit with pants and small jacket called the "skeleton
suit." This was the first time girls wore a bifurcated garment (Pants!) and many
adults thought it shocking. For the first time girls were able to play actively (and
comfortably) alongside their brothers.
| Jumping rope became a game for girls in the mid 19th century.
And though many toys remained gender-specific, lively girls did enter into active games.
In her memoir noted above, Laura Russell remembered that her white drawers came down
"to her heels," and complained that her slipper-like shoes did not hold up
nearly as well as her older brother’s sturdy ones during a game of football (played
with a blown-up pig’s bladder!). |
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"Jumping Rope" in Mrs. L. Maria Child, The
Girls’ Own Book, (New York: Clark Austin & Co., 1838, p. 103.) |
Highchairs with trays, nurseries with cribs and other child-sized furniture
became common after the 1860s. Life became a bit more comfortable as cold baths were
discarded in favor of warm ones. Perambulators appeared with the increased incidence of
paved sidewalks. These symbols of contented domesticity provided occasions for family
outings that served to display both baby and the family’s prosperity.
Material culture exploded in the later 19th century. In almost every sphere
of life, people simply had more "stuff" than ever before. Children’s rooms
and nurseries began to be filled with toys. Dolls continued to be imported from European
porcelain factories but began to be made in the form of children and, later, babies,
instead of the "lady" dolls of earlier days. Other inexpensive toys were
imported from China. By the 1830s, however, the American toy industry was launched and
began its tireless campaign to establish markets, especially for Christmas and New
Year’s toys and gifts. Paper dolls were popular, and in 1859, Godey’s became the
first magazine to publish paper dolls within its pages for its readers.
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Paper doll with 25 costumes, Boston Sunday Herald,
1890-1900, polychrome paper, (h. 9 ½ in.), Gift of Marjorie Belcher, 1980 (PHM 1505).
The paper doll in this set is a dark-haired adult dressed in an elegant black
chemise. The doll was published in the Sunday edition of the paper with the promise of a
new costume in every Sunday paper thereafter. |
Though refined manners and social skills remained crucial in making
one’s way in life, organized public schools and academic subjects grew to be a larger
part of more middle and upper class children’s lives in the 1800s. Other young lives
were spent in long hours of labor on farms or in urban factories. A few progressive states
began to place some limits on child labor. Massachusetts passed legislation in 1842 that
limited factory work for children less than twelve years of age to ten hours a day. As in
1620, 1730, (and still today) much depended on where you lived, and who your parents were.
Photograph, c.1900
Picking Cranberries on Cape Cod,"
Pilgrim Hall Museum Archives.
Everyone is needed to bring in the harvest. |
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