NYC BOOK AWARD 1998
Displaying Women
Maureen E. Montgomery
Using numerous sources, such as contemporary etiquette manuals, society papers and columns, novels, magazines, private correspondence, and diaries, "Displaying Women" vividly depicts the custom and culture of New York "society" women from roughly 1870 to 1920.
"Maureen Montgomery works with debutantes' diaries, correspondence between spooning couples, obscure gossip periodicals, and successive editions of etiquette guides, to depict vividly the social customs and confines of upper-class New York women in Edith Wharton's time. At the same time, Dr. Montgomery has brought out opinions and attitudes that shaped the new metropolis, including the vulgarity of electric light, the "cold-heartedness" of Swedish servants, and the new glare of the media on formerly private lives in the late nineteenth century. This is a model for a microscope-like study of a special topic. "
- Christopher Gray
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