"Every Thing in its Place" Gender and Space on America's Railroads, 1830-1899

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dc.contributor.authorMcCall, R. Daviden
dc.contributor.committeechairJones, Kathleen W.en
dc.contributor.committeememberShumsky, Neil Larryen
dc.contributor.committeememberHirsh, Richard F.en
dc.contributor.departmentHistoryen
dc.date.accessioned2014-03-14T20:46:29Zen
dc.date.adate1999-10-21en
dc.date.available2014-03-14T20:46:29Zen
dc.date.issued1999-09-16en
dc.date.rdate2000-10-21en
dc.date.sdate1999-10-08en
dc.description.abstractGender was a critically important component of the rules and practices of railroading in the nineteenth century. While railroad passengers were initially composed of a homogenous group of middle-class men and women, increased use of trains very quickly led to separations by sex and class. Victorian understandings of respectability and gender roles and view of the world as being ordered and hierarchical strongly shaped how railroads treated their passengers. Like home and hotel parlors, railroad passenger cars constituted an intersection of the sacred private realm of the home and the less pure mundane arena of public life. Nineteenth-century middle-class Americans used space to define and maintain societal distinctions of gender and, especially, class. The definition and decoration of space in rail passenger service reinforced Victorian values and restricted and controlled behavior. Diverse gender and status roles distinguished white middle-class men and women from immigrants and members of other races as railroad passengers. Even white middle-class men and women did not have the same experience or expectations of nineteenth-century rail passenger service. Railroads in the nineteenth century were constructed by a mannered and hierarchical society, but they were also part of a capitalist consumer economy. In a conflict between taking care of business and upholding societal standards such as gender ideals, business generally took precedence.en
dc.description.degreeMaster of Artsen
dc.identifier.otheretd-100899-162340en
dc.identifier.sourceurlhttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-100899-162340/en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/35334en
dc.publisherVirginia Techen
dc.relation.haspartmccall.pdfen
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subjectrailroaden
dc.subject19then
dc.subjectpassengeren
dc.subjectspaceen
dc.subjectGenderen
dc.title"Every Thing in its Place" Gender and Space on America's Railroads, 1830-1899en
dc.typeThesisen
thesis.degree.disciplineHistoryen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.levelmastersen
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Artsen

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