Working-Class Women in NYC: Illuminating Cultural Economy Changes - Essay Sample

Introduction

Enstad imaginative reading of the various consumed services and goods currently being consumed by the women who are currently working in New York City have resulted in constant change and illumination and change of the general work and leisure understanding. Working-class women represent essential immigration, labor contributor, and the overall history of ladies, which is based on a broad economy build on the cultural economy at the century turn. Enstad's multidisciplinary and skillful working women rendering life should play a significant role in helping us in ree-assessing the various ways in which we define and teach popular politics and culture in American history. The paper focuses on giving a brief book review of working women within the gilded century.

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By assessing aa collection of materials dating the early novel dime about how an ordinary woman who marries a millionaire or inherits property from them, the Enstad book carries significant analyses on such issues. The author also bases the arguments on women within the working class are likely to woe specific fashion, and some of the popular narratives towards achieving a self- sense as ladies (Enstad). Other aspects, such as readiness to wear clothing that helps them resit and deny any form of mistreatment in their working environment as well as being inexpensive aspects, are also explored. The author also carries an-in-depth examination of the earlier personal notion of being a lady who had significantly impacted the New York strike in early 1909-1910.

Enstad also shows the relationship of the consumer culture in playing the primary role in labor life in regulating individual aspects such as the women's styles on picketing, over 20,000 workers' workout, and women's grievances. At a later stage, the author stages a motion on the specific traits of ladyhood, such as being daring, independence, and having the heroine's strength in defining female serials' adventures. According to the author's argument, contemporary historians highly misunderstand the relationship of women to some of the popularly known cultures through a perception od frivolous labor distraction to serious politics union. However, the author argues that the shaping of some common culture on personal dignity is achieved by the beliefs upheld by the working women regarding themselves as workers ladies and especially being Americans.

The author's discussion on dignification is initiated by a discussion on rationalization and mechanization of labor, encouraging the middle-class worker to classify fiction and rank fashion. There is a disparity in both the middle class and the working class. Most middle classes had a significant belief in the design of the product for them dreaming of these products to be tasteful, sincere, and moral; they, however, perceive the working class as being cheap and inferior.

Historian Nan Enstad examines how the working-class women forged their culture and identity to fit in as workers, Americans, and as respectable ladies. She incorporates Michael Dennings discussion concerning working-class women's identities and dime novel plots. She was able to do this by analyzing how they looked at, purchased, and read novels. Nan Enstad speaks about working women's imagined fiction.

In her book, Enstad explains how foreign-born women proudly disguised themselves as Americans through reading books in the English language. She comments on work accomplished by Christine Stansell, Kathy Preiss, and Susan Glenn o how working-class fashion helped the women to create their culture as workers (Enstad). She says how they were purchasing, wearing, and imagining clothes helped them to set their culture right, both as workers, as ladies and as Americans. The working class ladies invented their styles and clothing fashion. They wore large hats, brightly colored clothes, and French heels.

Enstads contributes to labor history through her novel by speaking on popular culture present during the shirtwaist strike of 1909. She accomplishes this by looking at what the newspapers spoke about working-class women. She speaks on how the striking women were portrayed as fashion hounds who were not seeking for higher wages as disreputable ladies. She also describes that the Middle-class supporters portrayed them differently. She argues that the middle-class supporters depicted them as charity cases of deserving poor. According to Enstad, the description made by the middle-class supporters deprived the striking women of political agency.

She further describes how working women use their popular culture as a resource during the strike. She describes how they saw themselves as fighters after they picketed, which could be related to the dime store heroines. She illustrates that the strikers followed the women as literate role models by showing their aggressiveness. Enstads describes how they throw eggs and ripped their clothe buttons off. Enstad describes that popular culture did not promote women in political positions. She illustrates the use of popular culture to be radicalism and conservatism.

The book speaks on how films were among the resources used by the working women to maintain their dignity alongside shaping their identities. Nan Enstad explains that films were the perfect resource that the women used to claim public space. Films allowed women to identify themselves with screen heroines. Enstad says fans became "movie stuck" in terms of dressing, language and they went to the extent of imaging themselves as actresses.

While looking at all the criticisms, Nan Enstad's book is an outstanding artwork. She has breathed life into the history of working women by describing the reality behind it. Her book is essential in the perceptive that it shows how the working women embraced and used popular culture. It is a priceless accomplishment that every writer should be happy about. Thus, it would best if labor historians observed her steps in their field of work as they would be able to revive class together with labor history.

Work Cited

Enstad, Nan. Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Columbia, 1999.