This research provides a history of women's domestic duties in the care of the dead prior to its transformation into a male-dominated market activity. The author presents data on the position of importance women held in the premarket care of the dead as well as on the knowledge necessary to prepare the body for burial. Both the positions and the knowledge women held were later appropriated into the more “advanced” practices by the newly developing funeral industry in the mid-19th century; moreover, the position women held as “shrouding women” was largely unacknowledged by the emerging funeral industry.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Barthel, Diane.
1988. Putting on appearances: Gender and advertising.Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
2.
Berger, John.
1977. Ways of seeing.London: Penguin Books.
3.
Bloch, Ruth H.1978. American feminine ideals in transition: The rise of the moral mother, 1785-1815.Feminist Studies4(June): 101-26.
4.
Boyd Grave Vaults
[advertisement]. 1883. The Casket8, no. 12: 26.
5.
Burns, Stanley B.
1990. Sleeping beauty: Memorial photography in America.Altadena, CA: Twelvetrees.
6.
Chefitz, Darlene. 1992. Personal communication.
7.
Cintio
and DeGage [advertisement]. 1912. The Casket37, no. 11: 17.
8.
Coffin, Margaret M.
1976. Death in early America.Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.
9.
Crouch, Ben Michael. 1971. “Professionalism in funeral service: A study of work orientations.” Unpublished dissertation, Southern Illinois University, Department of Sociology.
10.
Dolge, C. B.1899. Women embalmers.The Sunnyside29, no. 3: 24.
11.
Douglas, Ann.
1977. The feminization of culture.New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
12.
Earle, Alice Morse.
1899. Customs and fashions in old New England.New York: Scribner.
13.
Ehrenreich, Barbara
, and Deirdre English. 1973. Witches, midwives, and nurses: A history of women healers.New York: Anchor Books.
14.
Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs.
1971. Woman's place: Options and limits in professional careers.Berkeley: University of California Press.
15.
Evans, Sara M.
1989. Born for liberty: A history of women in America.New York: Free Press.
16.
Farrell, James Joseph. 1980a. “The dying of death: The meaning and management of death in America.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana, Department of History.
17.
Farrell, James Joseph
1980b. Inventing the American way of death, 1830-1920.Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
18.
Five more lady embalmers.1894. The Casket19, no. 9: 1.
19.
Foucault, Michel.
1972. The archaeology of knowledge and the discourses on knowledge.New York: Harper Torchbooks.
20.
Foucault, Michel.
1977. Language, counter-memory, practice, edited by Donald F. Bouchard. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
21.
Foucault, Michel.
1980. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books.
22.
Foucault, Michel.
1982. Afterward: The subject and power. In Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, edited by Hurbert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
23.
Garrett, Elisabeth Donaghy.
1990. At home: The American family, 1750-1870.New York: Harry N. Adrams.
24.
Glazer, Penina Migdal
, and Miriam Slater. 1987. Unequal colleagues: The entrance of women into the professions, 1890-1940.New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Habenstein, Robert W. 1954. “The American funeral director: A study in the sociology of work.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, Department of Sociology.
27.
Habenstein, Robert W.
, and William M. Lamers. 1981. The history of American funeral directing.Rev. ed.Milwaukee, WI: Bulfin Printers.
28.
Hall, Stuart.1983. The narrative construction of reality: An interview with Stuart Hall.English Literary History2, no. 3: 3-17.
29.
Harmer, Ruth M.
1963. The high cost of dying.New York: Crowell-Collier.
30.
Hausmann, C. Stewart.
1976. Who are we—what are we—why do we do what we do? In Acute grief and the funeral, edited by Vanderlyn Pine et al.Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas.
31.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel.
1932. The American notebooks.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
32.
Hays, Samuel P.
1957. The response to industrialism: 1855-1914.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
33.
Hughes, Everett C.
1971. The sociological eye: Selected papers.New York: Aldine-Atherton.
34.
Huntington, Richard
, and Peter Metcalf. 1979. Celebrations of death: The anthropology of mortality ritual.London: Cambridge University Press.
35.
Hurston, Zora Neale.
1970. Dust tracks on the road.Rev. ed.Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
36.
Kerber, Linda K.
, and Jane Sherron de Hart. 1991. Women's America: Refocusing the past.New York: Oxford University Press.
37.
Kytle, Elizabeth.
1958. Willie Mae.New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
38.
Lerner, Gerda.
1977. The female experience: An American documentary.Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
39.
Matthaei, Julie A.
1982. An economic history of women in America: Women's work, the sexual division of labor, and the development of capitalism.New York: Schocken Books.
40.
National Funeral Directors Association.
1916. Proceedings from the 35th annual convention. Chicago: Embalmers' Monthly.
41.
On Christian care of the dead.1876. The Casket1, no. 2: 3.
42.
Osterud, Nancy Grey.
1991. Bonds of community: The lives of farm women in nineteenth-century New York.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
43.
Our biographical sketches.1877. The Casket2, no. 7: 2.
44.
Our new series.1886. The Casket11, no. 1: 1.
45.
Ruble, S. S.1908. The need of lady embalmers.The Western Undertaker31, no. 7: 19.
46.
Rundblad, Georganne. 1993. “From `shrouding woman' to lady assistant: An analysis of occupational sex-typing in the funeral industry, 1870's to 1920's.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana, Department of Sociology.
47.
S., O. D.1926. The evolution of the mortician.The Casket and Sunnyside55, no. 1: 33.
48.
Salutory! [sic]. 1876. The Casket1, no. 1: 1.
49.
Says women were first undertakers.1914. The Western Undertaker37, no. 3: 47.
50.
Smith, Dorothy E.
1987. The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology.Boston: Northeastern University Press.
51.
Stewart, Elinor Pruitt.
1988. Letters of a women homesteader, rev. ed.Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
52.
Stratton, Joanna L.
1981. Pioneer women: Voices from the Kansas frontier.New York: Simon & Schuster.
53.
Success of a lady embalmer.1897. The Western Undertaker18, no. 1: 25.
54.
Taylor & Co. Fine Funeral Furnishings
[advertisment]. 1883. The Casket.8, no. 12: 4.
55.
Tells why she is an undertaker.1919. The American Funeral Director42, no. 8: 315.
56.
Thorsell, Walter.
1975. The funeral director as grief counselor. In Grief and the meaning of the funeral, edited by Otto S. Margolis, Howard C. Raether, Austin H. Kutscher, Robert J. Volk, Ivan K. Goldberg, and Daniel J. Cherico. New York: MSS Information.
57.
Tilly, Louise A.
, and Joan W. Scott. 1989. Women, work and family.New York: Routledge.
58.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher.
1982. Good wives: A study in role definition in northern New England, 1650-1750.Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.
59.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher.
1990. A midwife's tale: The life of Martha Ballard, based on her diary, 1785-1812.New York: Vintage Books.
60.
W., L. G.1909. Thrilling experiences of a lady embalmer.The Western Undertaker32, no. 12: 3.
61.
Walsh, John P.1989. Technological change and the division of labor.Work and Occupations16, no. 2: 165-83.
62.
Welter, Barbara.
1976. Dimity convictions: The American woman in the nineteenth century.Athens: Ohio University Press.
63.
Wertz, Richard W.
, and Dorothy C. Wertz. 1981. Notes on the decline of midwives and the rise of medical obstetricians. In The sociology of health and illness: Critical perspectives, edited by Peter Conrad and Rochelle Kern. New York: St. Martin.
64.
Witz, Anne.
1988. Patriarchal relations and patterns of sex segregation in the medical division of labor. In Gender segregation at work, edited by Sylvia Wably. Milton Keynes, England: Open University Press.
65.
Women as embalmers.1899. New York Herald, 29January, sec. 6, p. 5.
