女性の労働とロウェルの女工たち

概要

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By reexamining The Lowell Offering, the magazine published by the Lowell mill girls, together with A New England Girlhood and Loom and Spindle, the autobiographies respectively written by Lucy Larcom and Harriet Robinson, both one-time Lowell operatives, we can take a fresh look at the cultural work of the Lowell mill girls that has long been severely criticized and dismissed as naive or unrealistic. Though their writings were often regarded as nostalgic evocations of the republican values and virtues, they aimed to gain their own independence and strengthen their bonds with other working women so that they could transcend the boundaries of the traditional women's sphere. We can define the Lowell mill girls as pioneer workers who voiced their claim to be freed from patriarchal constraint before the Civil War and played an important role as the harbingers of the women's rights movement.