Laboring to Play

Home Entertainment and the Spectacle of Middle-Class Cultural Life, 1850-1920

Nonfiction, History, Americas, United States, 19th Century, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Cultural Studies, Popular Culture
Cover of the book Laboring to Play by Melanie Dawson, University of Alabama Press
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Author: Melanie Dawson ISBN: 9780817387334
Publisher: University of Alabama Press Publication: October 15, 2013
Imprint: University Alabama Press Language: English
Author: Melanie Dawson
ISBN: 9780817387334
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Publication: October 15, 2013
Imprint: University Alabama Press
Language: English

A compelling analysis of how "middling" Americans entertained themselves and how these entertainments changed over time.

The changing styles of middle-class home entertainments, Melanie Dawson argues, point to evolving ideas of class identity in U.S. culture. Drawing from 19th- and early-20th-century fiction, guidebooks on leisure, newspaper columns, and a polemical examination of class structures, Laboring to Play interrogates the ways that leisure performances (such as parlor games, charades, home dramas, and tableaux vivants) encouraged participants to test out the boundaries that were beginning to define middle-class lifestyles.

From 19th-century parlor games involving grotesque physical contortions to early-20th-century recitations of an idealized past, leisure employments mediated between domestic and public spheres, individuals and class-based affiliations, and ideals of egalitarian social life and visible hierarchies based on privilege. Negotiating these paradigms, home entertainments provided their participants with unique ways of performing displays of individual ambitions within a world of polite social interaction.

Laboring to Play deals with subjects as wide ranging as social performances, social history (etiquette and gentility), literary history, representations of childhood, and the history of the book.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

A compelling analysis of how "middling" Americans entertained themselves and how these entertainments changed over time.

The changing styles of middle-class home entertainments, Melanie Dawson argues, point to evolving ideas of class identity in U.S. culture. Drawing from 19th- and early-20th-century fiction, guidebooks on leisure, newspaper columns, and a polemical examination of class structures, Laboring to Play interrogates the ways that leisure performances (such as parlor games, charades, home dramas, and tableaux vivants) encouraged participants to test out the boundaries that were beginning to define middle-class lifestyles.

From 19th-century parlor games involving grotesque physical contortions to early-20th-century recitations of an idealized past, leisure employments mediated between domestic and public spheres, individuals and class-based affiliations, and ideals of egalitarian social life and visible hierarchies based on privilege. Negotiating these paradigms, home entertainments provided their participants with unique ways of performing displays of individual ambitions within a world of polite social interaction.

Laboring to Play deals with subjects as wide ranging as social performances, social history (etiquette and gentility), literary history, representations of childhood, and the history of the book.

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