Work of the Heart

"How did young American women construct and express their emotions between 1780 and 1830? Before Oprah and therapy, how did they reconcile society's demanding and often contradictory expectations? In The Work of the Heart: Young Women and Emotion, 1780-1830, Martha Tomhave Blauvelt looks to the often spirited diaries written by young women in America's early republic, arguing that the continuous, demanding, and often unnoticed emotional labor of women exemplified their, uneasy position within society." "Showing work where none seemed to exist, The Work of the Heart suggests emotion work as a key measure of women's status, whether for the twenty-first century or the eighteenth, and offers an analytical tool for historians exploring the self."--BOOK JACKET.