"A man was considered out of the question:" Midwives, Lady Embalmers, and the Forgotten Roles of Women in Deathcare from 1720-1930

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In Folder: History & Archives Management, MA & MS

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"A man was considered out of the question:" Midwives, Lady Embalmers, and the Forgotten Roles of Women in Deathcare from 1720-1930

Bryan, Ashley - Thesis

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title: "A man was considered out of the question:" Midwives, Lady Embalmers, and the Forgotten Roles of Women in Deathcare from 1720-1930

creator: Bryan, Ashley

subject: Academic theses

description: Historically, deathcare was a purely feminine pursuit. Women controlled death culture in eighteenth and early nineteenth century America. This thesis shows that women publicly cared for the dead and dying as a byproduct of motherhood and midwifery. Midwives were the morticians of their communities before the terms existed. The Civil War caused mass death and is used in this thesis as a turning point in American deathcare. The necessity to care for the influx of deceased bodies was one of the main factors in the creation of the modern American funerary industry. This thesis argues against the popular narrative that women had little to no role in deathcare after the creation and subsequent masculinization of the modern American funeral industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The diaries of midwives, female homesteaders, funerary trade journals, and other newspaper advertisements show a continuous, active involvement of women in American deathcare from 1720-1930.

publisher: Simmons University (Boston, Mass.)

contributor:

date: 2021

type: Text

format: 1 PDF (100 Pages)

identifier: td_ha_2021_abr

source:

language: English

relation:

coverage:

rights: Material from the Simmons University Archives collections are made available for study purposes only. For more information, or to request rights to reproduce or reuse any material, contact the University Archives at archives@simmons.edu.

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