Book Review:
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. New York: Vintage Books, 2001. 501 pp.
The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth is one of the more interesting explorations of material rhetoric that I have read…which may not have been the intent of its author, Harvard-based historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Her basic aim in this work, simply put, is to explode the nostalgic mythos of the bucolic “age of homespun” by revealing the complex and important role played by textiles and other domestic goods in early New England. She does this through a thorough exploration of the circumstances around the creation and use of fourteen domestic items, ranging from a woven basket given to early settlers by Native Americans to an unfinished stocking that was abandoned by its maker in the early 1800s. The examination of material culture and historical research that results can, I believe, be most clearly described as a historically focused, subtly feminist, rhetorical analysis of material objects.
The work is organized chronologically, using each item or pairing of items as an entry point to the issues around it, which are multiple and intertwined. A niddy-noddy, a tool used for winding skeins of yarn, marked with the inscriptions “PW” and “MWH 1783” leads to both an overview of women’s role as patriotic domestic laborers and a look at moral codes. A cupboard painted with the name “Hannah Barnard” is the basis for an overview of class standards and a discussion of women’s inheritance rights, which were chiefly based in “movables” or movable household goods. Throughout, there are multiple aspects of the subject area that intermingle in the text.
However, there are a few main threads running throughout the work. The first, which is the closest thing to a unifying notion that the book has, is the mystique of “the age of homespun.” This thread is begun with an 1851 speech given in Litchfield, Connecticut by Reverend Horace Bushnell. In it, he discussed the history of textile making in New England, using it as a celebration of earthy labor and cooperation between the sexes. He painted an idealized image that “provided an ideological haven from the artificiality of Europe and the rudeness of the American landscape” (413). This image is still with us today, Ulrich points out: “The age of homespun haunts public discourse in debates over family farms, anxieties about the deterioration of family values, and invocations of lost community….The mythology of homespun persists not only because it is adaptable to so many political persuasions, but because it allows us to forget that greed and war were so much a part of the American past” (414). This persuasive argument gives her entire work additional relevancy and urgency, particularly in the political landscape of 2007.
The second is the value of and dependence upon women’s labor in early New England. Ulrich presents a variety of examples of women and men working together in the manufacture of textiles, as well as of women working in a separate sphere on other occasions. Also, she shows the popularity of labor trading among women; women would often trade their labor directly for goods, or trade labor with other women to ensure that they would have the help they needed during busy seasons. Because this was not part of a typical open market economy, this labor has been missed by historians over the years, making women’s role seem trivial. In fact, this work shows that it was nothing of the kind.
The last major theme is the meaning of textiles, both through their making and their use. One particularly illuminating example comes from the book’s first chapter, when Ulrich is quoting the memoirs of an early settler who was kidnapped by hostile native tribes. This settler describes a set of dancing garments worn by Narraganset leader Quinnapin: “He was dressed in his Holland shirt with great laces sewed at the tail of it; he had his silver buttons, his white stockings, his garters were hung round with shillings, and he had girdles of wampum upon his head and shoulders” (49). This alteration of Western costume by a Native of rank, a man who was the leader of a tribe who was engaged in hostilities with settlers at that time, was clearly rhetorically loaded; just as the Narraganset tribe was engaged in the taking of hostages at that time, these Western clothes had been taken and made to serve Native purposes.
There are many things about this work that are deeply deserving of praise. Given Ulrich’s strong credentials in the area of early American history, it is hardly surprising that this work has truly impressive breadth, examining issues of gender, race, colonialism, commerce, and industrialization with equal comfort. There is equal depth in several areas, particularly in the work’s exploration of the textile arts. Realizing, no doubt, that many readers may not have a textile-specific background, Ulrich gives a great deal of background on this area. This background is definitely beginner-friendly, in that someone with no textile knowledge could certainly gain a basic understanding of historical fiber arts and technologies through this work. While accomplishing both of these goals, Ulrich often simultaneously brings the people who she is studying to life with surprising vividness, particularly in “A Bed Rug and a Silk Embroidery.” In this chapter, she compares the needlework—and, thus, the lives—of two young girls whose families were on separate sides of the Revolutionary War. While reading the chapter, it is difficult for the readers to avoid becoming emotionally invested in the fates of these two historical figures, which is a rare feat in a scholarly work.
That said, there are definitely some problems with this work; often, in fact, the problems are in the same places that are worthy of praise. The breadth of the discussion is so wide that the reader, particularly if not a historian, can get completely buried in detail. Also, the way in which different narrative threads are woven together can result in the reader losing the overall point that Ulrich is trying to make within a particular chapter. When a chapter starts with an examination of a material object, then moves back and forth between the details of its making, its use, its maker, its owner, and the political, social, and spiritual currents of the time, particularly when all of these areas of investigation are examined in detail, it is extremely difficult not to become overwhelmed. However, this does not invalidate the earlier praise of the text; it simply means that this is a text with which readers should be prepared to take their time.
The other major problem with the paperback edition of the text is the lack of color photographs. This may seem like a trivial complaint, but when the raison d’etre of a chapter is a multicolored, heavily patterned pocketbook woven of hemp and moose hair using Algonkian twining techniques, giving readers only one or two low-quality images to consider while reading is much like reading a gourmet menu to diners and then presenting them with a hamburger. Considering that the focus of the text is on material objects, it is somewhat difficult to believe that any publishing house would let it go into the world with only grayscale images—and poor ones, at that. Considering Ulrich’s status within this field, not to mention her previous Pulitzer Prize for similar work, Vintage would be well advised to handle the images in the text with more care in later editions.
A wide variety of audiences could benefit from this book, particularly as it is written at a fairly accessible level, although readers should most certainly be ready to annotate, reread, and deal with a great deal of detail. Most obviously, those who are interested in rhetorically-motivated research on historical textiles should certainly have this in their collections. Those who do work on women’s rhetorical practices in early America should probably purchase this piece as well. However, it is also well worth a read for any rhetorician of any level who wants to understand more about the ways in which everyday items are invested with meaning.
Potential Journal for Publication: Rhetoric Review
Rationale: Rhetoric Review publishes many articles on historical women’s rhetorical practices. They’ve also reviewed several books in this area. Since that’s the way in which I’m looking at this text, they would seem to be the clear choice. Also, unlike many other journals I considered, they accept reviews of individual books, and they seem to be fairly friendly to material and visual rhetorics.
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