What Does Sewing Mean for Women?

Henry Moses’ The Sewing Circle. (1804)

by Grace Nichols

When embarking on this digital archive journey, I took inspiration from “On the Equality of the Sexes”. In Murray’s essay she questions, “is the needle and kitchen sufficient to employ the operations of a soul thus organized?” (773) Throughout her essay she argues that “the needle” is not adequate, and how instead the cultural practices in America limit women’s capabilities. Interestingly, I just read an academic article for another class, “These Threads Capture Shadows”, in which the author explains how engaging in the act of sewing for Jewish women during the Holocaust was not only an intrinsically feminist act but an act of rebellion. Obviously, these differing opinions on sewing have extremely different contexts, but this interplay of how sewing can be stifling and empowering depending on circumstance is what intrigued me.

I first went to the Digital Public Library of America. Ironically, against my intention of finding artifacts from women one of the first I came across was from a man. The archive showed a shoemaker’s account book where he had cataloged his work which entailed sewing and mending shoes. With this first stumble in my search, I moved on finding that a lot of the artifacts related to sewing were actual sewing boxes or tables. The pieces ranged some having high style furnishings such as gold paint and the others being more simple looking similar to an antique bed side table.

Anna Cleveland’s Sewing Case (front)

After searching I decided to settle on an artifact literally titled “Housewife”, a name given by the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database, which I found through the DPLA. This sewing case created by Anna Holmes Cleveland sometime between 1800-1836 served as a place to store needles, thread, and other sewing stables. The case achieves a similar purpose to sewing boxes or tables except for this homemade kit can be rolled up, and therefore is more suitable for traveling. What drew me to this besides the somewhat alarming name which equates being a housewife to merely a sewing kit was the different fabrics used to make the case. Cleveland’s piece has ten separate brightly patterned fabrics for the ten small pockets just on one side. The inside uses a solid black fabric as lining and on the back is one cohesive patterned fabric.

 

 

Cleveland’s Sewing Case (back)

When analyzing this artifact, I could not help but think of why Cleveland used so many fabrics. It seems so much more time consuming to pick out at least 12 different fabrics that somehow go together color scheme wise than to just use one. It is possible Cleveland was just using scrap fabrics, but to put that much effort into a case that not a lot of people will see because it ends up deep in a trunk when traveling suggests to me that Cleveland valued sewing greatly. This conclusion is not meant to undermine Murray’s argument that women are adept to more than the constraints placed on them, but rather is a testament to the cultural framework that Murray suggests.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *