A Contronym for Women: Bicentennial Examinations of the American Market Revolution in New England and Neighbouring States, 1790-1850

Abstract

The market revolution was a series of economic reforms most active between 1815 and 1846 whose many political, technological and structural implements that often predated the temporal historic consensus produced a holistic timeline ranging from 1790 to 1850. These technological and organisational variations, instituted toward the transition of the United States from a largely agrarian society to a market-capitalist economy, were particularly instrumental in moulding the lives of lower and middle-class White American women around the New England area, whose respective marital statuses, social substrata, and miscellaneous individual circumstances determined their socioeconomic experiences. To this end, the revolution’s effects on the socioeconomics of this female cohort are characterised by an interdependent mixture of the positive and the negative. By rendering the colonial economic model a testament of antiquity, the innovative solutions of the revolution - from sophisticated banking institutions to particular instruments of manufacturing - exposed working-class women to the liberties of the public sphere, challenging their socioeconomic productivity and generating industrial subcultures. It also indirectly engendered a new wave of middle-class domesticity. Ultimately, these changes finalised the United States’ departure from the organic, and its arrival to the artificial.