Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900-1920 by Paula M. Kane (review)

BOOK REVIEWS115 action. Additionally, Culbertson briefly but clearly analyzes Rose's ill-fated marriage to George Lathrop and the legacy of her New England heritage (particularly the influence of her fadier, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and, less well known but probably as significant, her mother, Sophia Peabody). Shaping the account is familiarity with not only recent scholarship on nineteenth-century American Catholicism, but also that of social and women's history. The remainder ofthe volume consists of examples and excerpts ofLathrop's writings, divided into three categories: letters, diary entries, and essays (most of them from Christ's Poor, the magazine Lathrop edited for the Servants of Relief). While all of this material is well chosen, it may not present as full a picture of Ladirop and her spirituality as might have been achieved. It might have been helpful, for example, had additional categories of Lathrop's writing been included here, such as talks she must have given to her Dominican sisters, or verse. (It should be noted that more pieces of Lathrop's writing, including some ofher poetry but not talks to her community, are incorporated into die biographical essay.) Also, the primary source material might have benefited from more of Culbertson's editorial commentary; in particular, it would have been helpful to know more explicitly than we can here how typical or atypical Lathrop's diought and writing were, compared to that bodi of her Catholic contemporaries and of other female reformers of die era. Nonetheless, it may be unfair to expect all this in a volume of relative brevity, intended to meet the needs of scholars as well as general readers. In the end, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop: Selected Writings is a valuable and accessible resource for both clienteles, and a welcome addition to the growing body ofwork on this important figure in late nineteenth) and early twentiethcentury American Catholicism. Margaret Susan Thompson Syracuse University Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900-1920. By Paula M. Kane. (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press. 1994. Pp. xiv, 415. $49.95.) In 1900 most of Boston's Catholics lived apart from their Protestant fellowcitizens in ethnic enclaves. They were poor, undereducated, lacking ambition, and reviled in anti-Catholic propaganda. But by the end ofWorld War I enough of them had risen in the worlds of business, medicine, law, journalism, and police work to create a "lace-curtain," home-owning middle class. Ostentatiously Catholic, nominally averse to capitalist values, diey were actually wellattuned to American business life. Leaving behind die isolation of ethnic ghettos as they moved to Boston's streetcar suburbs, they built a subculture, distinct from but closely related to the "hegemonic" Yankee culture around 116BOOK REVIEWS it. Refining and applying some of R. Laurence Moore's ideas about "insiders and outsiders," Paula Kane shows that "a sense of being excluded [was] a useful stimulus for the formation of an autonomous, separatist subculture, providing Cadiolics with an outgroup communal identity" (p. 2). Her fascinating and detailed book shows how Boston's Catholic subculture developed. Kane does not attempt a narrative history, and the reader has to dodge back and forth through the first two or three decades of this century in following her examples. Instead she offers "diick description," building up a dense and convincing picture of Boston Catholics from all walks of life. She follows institutional and architectural developments closely, showing how Cardinal William O'Connell built Neo-Gothic churches and colleges as massive apologetic statements in stone, making a bold physical impression on die city landscape. But, blending die best in the old and the new styles of Catholic historiography, she devotes as much space to the laity as to the clergy, and shows that they could often get dieir own way, even against the will of an imperious cardinal. She describes Catholics at work in politics, education, business, entertainment, labor, and in the home, pointing to the ways in which diey fell in with current American habits while trying to avoid their philosophical implications. Kane's liveliest pages address gender. She shows that the ideal Catholic man, as drawn in sermons and Pilot articles, helped his wife at home, avoided too much fraternal boozing with his chums, and did...