The Sexual Politics of Widowhood: the Virgin Rebirth in the Social Construction of Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Feminine Reality

Abstract

This article explores the social construction of widowhood at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. It seeks to understand this role and its importance for women, and to explore the relationship of widowhood to social maintenance and change in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American life. Widowhood lies at the juncture of three crucial aspects of Victorian life and society: the family as a social institution, the idealization of women, and the caste relationship of women to men. The authors believe that widowhood, a premodern, private, family-based social institution, played an important part in the transition of roles for women into modern opportunities for public careers of shared responsibility and institutional leadership with men.