Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press

Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press

During the Civil War, the United States Treasury began hiring female clerks to work within its departments, a decision that would lead to the federal government becoming, according to historian Cindy Sondik Aron, “the first large, sexually integrated, white-collar bureaucracy in America.” By 1864, a...

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Publicado en:URI:https://journals.openedition.org/belphegor,
Autor Principal: Green, Midori V.
Formato: Article ou chapitre numérique
Idioma:Anglais
Publicado: Belphégor 2015
Sujets:
illustration
art
histoire culturelle
émancipation féminine
culture populaire
États-Unis
Acceso en liña:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
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spelling openedition-oai:revues.org:belphegor_593 https://doi.org/10.4000/belphegor.593 urn:doi:10.4000/belphegor.593 en https://journals.openedition.org/belphegor/593 2015-07-12T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/d8nr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press Belphégor LPCM info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/1499-7185 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/belphegor Green, Midori V. illustration art histoire culturelle émancipation féminine culture populaire États-Unis During the Civil War, the United States Treasury began hiring female clerks to work within its departments, a decision that would lead to the federal government becoming, according to historian Cindy Sondik Aron, “the first large, sexually integrated, white-collar bureaucracy in America.” By 1864, a congressional committee had already begun looking into accusations that some of the women were mistresses of government officials and that the Treasury Department had been turned into a harem. A second scandal, this time playing out in the press in 1869, renewed the old imagery of the harem. This article looks at how female Treasury clerks were portrayed in the two most popular illustrated weeklies at the time, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and Harper’s Weekly, as well as The Days’ Doings and Harper’s Bazar, and the use of misleading visual tropes that called women’s characters into question. The employment of these pernicious “visual fictions” aided in the creation of stereotypes of working women that continued well into the twentieth century, which, in turn, contributed to the devaluation of white-collar women and their work.
collection OpenEdition Journal
language Anglais
format Article ou chapitre numérique
building 0/Bibliothèque numérique/
1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/
topic illustration
art
histoire culturelle
émancipation féminine
culture populaire
États-Unis
spellingShingle illustration
art
histoire culturelle
émancipation féminine
culture populaire
États-Unis
Green, Midori V.
Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press
description During the Civil War, the United States Treasury began hiring female clerks to work within its departments, a decision that would lead to the federal government becoming, according to historian Cindy Sondik Aron, “the first large, sexually integrated, white-collar bureaucracy in America.” By 1864, a congressional committee had already begun looking into accusations that some of the women were mistresses of government officials and that the Treasury Department had been turned into a harem. A second scandal, this time playing out in the press in 1869, renewed the old imagery of the harem. This article looks at how female Treasury clerks were portrayed in the two most popular illustrated weeklies at the time, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and Harper’s Weekly, as well as The Days’ Doings and Harper’s Bazar, and the use of misleading visual tropes that called women’s characters into question. The employment of these pernicious “visual fictions” aided in the creation of stereotypes of working women that continued well into the twentieth century, which, in turn, contributed to the devaluation of white-collar women and their work.
author Green, Midori V.
author_facet Green, Midori V.
author_sort Green, Midori V.
title Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press
title_short Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press
title_full Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press
title_fullStr Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press
title_full_unstemmed Visual Fictions and the U.S. Treasury Courtesans: Images of 19th-Century Female Clerks in the Illustrated Press
title_sort visual fictions and the u.s. treasury courtesans: images of 19th-century female clerks in the illustrated press
publisher Belphégor
publishDate 2015
container_title URI:https://journals.openedition.org/belphegor
url https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/belphegor.593
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/belphegor/593
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