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Isaac and "Isabella": Courtship and Conflict in an Antebellum Circle of Youth

Isaac and "Isabella": Courtship and Conflict in an Antebellum Circle of Youth Isaac and ``Isabella'' Courtship and Conflict in an Antebellum Circle of Youth C. DALLETT HEMPHILL Ursinus College In their midteens, Isaac Mickle and his friends in Camden, New Jersey, got interested in girls. Because Isaac kept a diary between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two (1837­45) and copied down and preserved hundreds of letters to and from family members and friends, he kept open a door through which we, generations later, can watch them. Seeing this group in motion allows us to scrutinize more closely the intertwined dynamics of class, age, and gender relations at work in antebellum courtship practices. Mickle and his friends were all white and middle class, the young men preparing for life as artisans, small business owners, or professionals.1 Camden is situated directly across the river from and was greatly shaped by the city of Philadelphia. Mickle and his friends were thus part of the Northern middle-class group whose courtship habits were studied in pioneering works by Ellen Rothman and Karen Lystra. Rothman and Lystra effectively demolished old stereotypes of ``Victorian'' courtship as stiff and stilted, the stuff of separated spheres, chaperones, and corsets; instead, they characterized nineteenth-century middle-class courtship as the shared pursuit http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal University of Pennsylvania Press

Isaac and "Isabella": Courtship and Conflict in an Antebellum Circle of Youth

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Publisher
University of Pennsylvania Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 The McNeil Center for Early American Studies. All rights reserved.
ISSN
1559-0895
Publisher site
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Abstract

Isaac and ``Isabella'' Courtship and Conflict in an Antebellum Circle of Youth C. DALLETT HEMPHILL Ursinus College In their midteens, Isaac Mickle and his friends in Camden, New Jersey, got interested in girls. Because Isaac kept a diary between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two (1837­45) and copied down and preserved hundreds of letters to and from family members and friends, he kept open a door through which we, generations later, can watch them. Seeing this group in motion allows us to scrutinize more closely the intertwined dynamics of class, age, and gender relations at work in antebellum courtship practices. Mickle and his friends were all white and middle class, the young men preparing for life as artisans, small business owners, or professionals.1 Camden is situated directly across the river from and was greatly shaped by the city of Philadelphia. Mickle and his friends were thus part of the Northern middle-class group whose courtship habits were studied in pioneering works by Ellen Rothman and Karen Lystra. Rothman and Lystra effectively demolished old stereotypes of ``Victorian'' courtship as stiff and stilted, the stuff of separated spheres, chaperones, and corsets; instead, they characterized nineteenth-century middle-class courtship as the shared pursuit

Journal

Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal – University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: Oct 23, 2004

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