The Needle's Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution (review)

My grandfather, born 1875, often told that everything he wore before he left for college was processed and constructed by his mother, who carded, spun, wove, cut, assembled, and stitched to clothe her ten children, her husband, and herself. Had he been born even fifty years earlier, his recollection would have been less affectionate and more accurate. As Marla Miller demonstrates in this witty, highly readable, and meticulously documented study, by "the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a complex web of myth, nostalgia, and wonder had come to surround preindustrial women's labor" in general, and that of the needle trades in particular (p. 215). She proves this point through diaries, letters, account books, advertisements, and even instruction manuals, most of which were generated between 1740 and 1825 by female residents of the Connecticut River Valley. The text centers around six needlewomen and the familial, social, and occupational relationships they shared with one another and with their clients. Despite a wealth of biographical detail, they can be difficult to keep straight. Fortunately, it's not necessary to do so. Individual craftswomen and clients illustrate, they do not determine, Miller's thesis: our contemporary conviction that all our foremothers were seamstresses is just dead wrong.

Excerpts from Miller's primary sources reinforce how clothing signaled not only social and economic standing, as we might expect, but also socio-economic status within geographic areas. The equivalency of persona and (clothed) person is supported by letters and diaries whose passages cause us to wonder whether women were completely obsessed with apparel, whether any one of them could spell, and how they found time to write anything at all. The importance of the clothed appearance is further emphasized by ads for runaway slaves, which described what they were wearing when they disappeared rather than their physical attributes. Miller describes how individual dressmakers acquired their skills, and she depicts the process of clothing construction at a time when there were no printed patterns and measurements were recorded on paper strips. She thus reminds us that before clothing was an industry, it was a craft and, like any preindustrial craft, divided into discrete stages and skills, and often itinerant. Since a bad cutter could waste the fabric that was then more expensive than labor, it was not uncommon for a client—pressed for money or for time—to hire someone to cut out the pieces, and then seam up the garment herself, just as it was. Regardless of their area of expertise, needlewomen generally traveled from client to client, working in other people's homes rather than their own and sometimes becoming such familiar figures that they were given their own rooms during their stay.

Clothing construction is presented as a field in which men and women competed in roughly equal numbers, and so Miller explores the relationship (and rivalry) of tailors and "tailoresses," both of whom might construct clothing for either men or women. As occupational categories became increasingly differentiated by sex, however, male tailors lost prestige, and could be seen as effeminate, in part because the tools of their trade were largely the same as those used by seamstresses. Conversely, the standing of female tailors increased, in part because men's garments were more difficult to construct or (in the case of leathers) required greater strength; they do not seem to have been judged unfeminine, however.

Miller also sketches the industrialization of clothing construction, comments on female migration into factories, and debunks the myths that have since grown up around quilting, Betsy Ross (Miller's encounter with "Colonial Barbie" is quite funny), and the postindustrial assumption that the needle arts are more womanly and estimable when executed at home and for love. The illustrations are few, but informatively captioned; the excellent notes are equivalent to a review of the literature. Despite small imperfections—a glossary (or, at the least, more immediate definitions) would...