The Children's Object Book

1491 Words6 Pages
From the cradle to the grave, parents in the Victorian era were not only living up to the Victorian ethos bestowed upon them, but also bestowing those ethos upon their children. These were embodied by a strict moral code that regulated every facet of life, from segregated gender roles and a rigid class system all the way down to the dress code and traditional home setup. While the era of Victorianism in America may have its origins in its mother country’s lifestyle changes, it could only be perpetuated by teaching children of the time period how to behave and think. F. Ware & Co’s 1880s picture book, “The Children’s Object Book,” accomplished that goal: it illustrated the picturesque life of an upper class family during the Victorian Era. How…show more content…
With the advent of railroad travel, the country was unified in a way unimaginable before: people could travel between faraway cities, municipal governments could synchronize their clocks to the railroad companies’ times, and families could pull up their roots and resettle in a new region of the country. The railroad station became an important portal into and out of the city, linking it to the rest of the newly accessible United States, and people respected it as such. On pages 12 and 13 of the “Object Book” are illustrations of the station itself and inside the rail car. Though it was relatively cheap, the riders were still primarily of the upper and middle classes. The porters and other railway employees wore identical uniform suits and porter hats, identifying their status as staff whose job it is to assist customers. Those customers would wear a uniform of a different kind as they rode the rails: fancy attire and hats, as they were sharing a public space with other people and had to demonstrate their place/class in society. Being a public space frequented by upper and middle class patrons, the stations were decorated as lavishly as the public spaces of one’s home, such ornate designs on the walls of the station and on the street lamps. As the upper and middle classes moved further out into the countryside, they became more heavily reliant on trains and…show more content…
It illustrates what jobs there are in the garden, in the fields, and on the farm, and then tasks during each of the four seasons. While the work did split based on gender roles in the book, it interestingly did not bring in domestic servants or other lower class workers employed by the wealthy family: instead, there was an apparent focus on the entire family pitching in to do all these chores. This supports Booker T. Washington’s idea of hard-working morals to be self-sufficient and self-made, more so than the trend of industrializing labor and moving work into the big cities. According to Washington, his goal was to teach people “not only utility in labour, but beauty and dignity; …how to lift labour up from mere drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for its own sake”. These images showed men and boys working together in the fields plowing crops, tending to farm animals, and hunting game; women and girls were caring for the garden, feeding the chickens, and doing some light fieldwork with the men. With everyone working together to keep the estate running, the family could work closer and closer to achieving the American Dream and controlling their destiny. Of course, for the true upper class, these images would not hold
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