REVIEW: The Age of Homespun:Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth

By Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Pp. 501. $35

The Age of Homespun chronicles the myths associated with various museum objects from New England's colonial period. By examining the stories accompanying the objects on the tombstones, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich mines the museums to challenge nineteenth-century values assessed onto objects from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that persist in current collection catalogs. As each chapter unfolds, she challenges the information brought to the curators by looking through historical records, inventories, court proceedings, letters, and diaries to find the truth through the hazy accounts of the romanticized colonial period. By choosing material culture that each dealt with textile production and design, Ulrich unravels how women's central role in the economy, technological advancement, slavery, and ultimately labor contrasts the vision of the mid-to-late nineteenth-century

A professor of history at Harvard University and deeply knowledgeable about the colonial period of American history about women's history, Ulrich has written two other texts on the topic: Good Wives: Image and Reality of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (1982) and A Midwife's tale: The Life of Martha Ballad Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1991). Bridging the gap between the momentous task of unraveling the myth from the truth in a century of women's history and the deep textual analysis of an autobiography, Ulrich uses objects as her guiding light in this project. Throughout the book, the reader is introduced to eleven specified objects ranging from spinning wheels to tablecloths, bed linens to baskets, each challenging pastoral fantasy. The research is framed by disentangling colonial objects from this myth of homespun brought forth by an 1851 speech given by Horace Bushnell, the American Congregational minister who influenced the idealization of the past during a time of significant socio-economic growth as the Industrial Revolution. 

The speech in Litchfield, Connecticut, revitalized interest in antiques from 1670 to 1840. The argument that needs to be included in the text that is subliminally worked throughout is the importance of these objects in their museum contexts. Cabinets of Curiosity have existed for millennia along with private collections; they make up the early renditions of museum collections. However, the major outputs of museums as public educational tools happen alongside this newfound interest in preserving colonial history and distilling, changing, and airbrushing the roots of objects before they can be archived. Ulrich looks into the tombstone information offered for each object; much of the objects' catalog information has yet to be updated since their initial premiere in the collection. It is important to note that these objects each reside in small-scale museums around New England, such as historic homesteads, visitor centers, and family collections. As a result of lower funding, lack of resource libraries, and personal ties within the community, the objects within the collection do not receive the attention they deserve.  

New Englanders have been ingrained in believing the stories of these objects in the homespun context as a form of civic pride toward their hardworking past and less-than-brazen grandmothers. However, Ulrich finds a different story behind each object. Baskets that initially tell the story of colonial contact with indigenous peoples bring forth the notions of expropriation and slaughter of the latter; a highly decorated cupboard puts into question the rights of women's inheritance, ownership, and their roles within the domestic sphere; a seemingly ubiquitous tool in the weaving process challenges the north's enmeshment with mainland and island slavery. Each of these microhistories rubs up against colonial Americans' desire for freedom against British rule but never leaves out those who were left out of self-sovereignty.  

Through probate letters, diaries, inventories, and court proceedings, Ulrich's text is a masterclass of profound academic research. The book illuminates the objects by giving details about their function, materiality, and life within the economic sphere of womanhood. As Ulrich finds, women were less soft than Bushnell initially noted. His Victorian idealism of the 'Angel in the House' archetype was completely unfounded during the colonial period. Women played an essential role in the socio-economic domain by spinning yarn, creating textiles, and passing down knowledge of weaving and ownership. It would not shock me if the rekindled interest in textiles of the colonial period ignited honest conversations of genealogy, the past, production, and outrage toward the current status quo of womanhood in the factories is what led toward women's suffrage to become a political topic during the mid-to-late nineteenth century.