Historical Analysis Of Cheap Amusements: Working Women And Leisure Essay Samples

In Turn-of-the-Century New York

In Kathy Peiss’ Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, several overarching themes can be found. First, there is the advancement of public leisure as commercialized by the working class: prior to the movement in this book, the upper class often had to arrange public leisure themselves through industry and investment. However, with the rise of working girls, the working classes could create their own market for public leisure that is borne through public spaces. Furthermore, the book explores the way working-class women were able to assert their own autonomy, influencing market forces and popular culture through their own presences (i.e. establishing a new cultural model all on their own). The book also shows the creation of the working class through mass consumption and materialism, tying the development of working women to the new spend-heavy economy that would involve the working-class more intimately with the free market. However, this all ties in to Peiss’ major theme of working-class women attempting to find a sense of agency in an increasingly patriarchal society that had little use for them otherwise.
Throughout the book, Peiss makes clear the social class stratification that pits a power elite against the rest of society, with the former group holding all of the power. From the specifically feminist perspective of this book, the group in question is upper-class white men, a group that has consolidated all of its available power to leave little for the working-class women of 19th century New York. That group, consequently, has to find ways to assert themselves and carve out a niche within these constrained social roles – it is only when their work pays off that market forces swing more in their favor and the rise of common public leisure allows the working class more opportunities for entertainment and commerce.
Public amusements like saloons and dance palaces are said to be almost exclusively for the working class, as they “appealed more to factory and office workers than to middle-class and elite amusement-seekers, who flocked to Gotham’s cabarets and restaurants.” In this way, the development of working-class public leisure is shown to be a segregated escape from the duldrums of working-class life, that is decidedly different than the elegant amenities enjoyed by the upper-class. (That being said, she does hope to express some give and take between the classes, as the book advocates neither a “trickle down” or “trickle up” theory, but that “the lines of cultural transmission travel in both directions.”
In her exploration of the way business and leisure changed because of the impact of women, Peiss subsequently also uplifts the roles of women in American society as a result of their greater involvement in leisure. In this way, change in society is shown to be, at least in some instances, due to an element of unplanned consequences and societal structures shifting to accommodate new audiences. Certainly, the saloon and the dance palace were not strictly intended for working-class women to enjoy, but when they started to take the time out to enjoy it, the culture shifted to fit that new audience in many ways. Prior to the arrival of women in public leisure, nightlife was a homosocial activity, in which men were just expected to spend time together in solidarity.
Once women arrived on the nightlife scene, however, it became a heterosocial activity, as women felt freer to express their sexuality and turn these activities into social or romantic endeavors. In these new activities, “young women experimented with new cultural forms that articulate gender in terms of sexual expressiveness and social interaction with men, linking heterosocial culture to a new sense of modernity, individuality, and personal style.” This was not a specifically calculated effect, but a product of the culture that allowed working-class women the time and money to enjoy these activities.
In her work, Peiss places her specific story within the larger canvas of both American history and the history of New York City as a specific metropolis, as well as women’s history in particular. Because of the commercialization and expansion of New York City and America in the late nineteenth century, working-class women were finally given the ability to assert themselves and seek leisure in these newfound locations. The placing of this book specifically within feminist scholarship allows Peiss to add women’s contribution to leisure to the existing efforts to “restore working-class women to history, establishing the significance of their activities in the household, workplace, and political arena.”
In her overall effort to show the impact of women on the way public leisure and social mores changed in the late nineteenth century in New York City, Peiss establishes her work firmly in the greater context of women’s history, as well as the history of American commerce. By illustrating the ways women’s insertion into leisure activities of various kinds changed how they were innovated and structured, women were shown to inadvertently advance their own sense of autonomy and agency. Peiss’ approach to this work allows this clear sense of shifting cultural norms, still firmly entrenched within a strict class system that nonetheless has some room to maneuver, to be comprehensively expressed and studied.

Works Cited

Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986).