Homosocial Society: Women in Isolation

                Leisure is something that is not a new concept, rather what we do during this leisure time is what has changed through the ages. According to Plato, the great Greek philosopher, “Leisure is the time free for self-development and expression. More than freedom from necessity; it is freedom for engagement…” (Freysinger 34). The Freysinger book also offers up a definition of leisure, which is difficult to do considering it is an ever changing thing. She said that leisure is “activity chosen in relative freedom for its qualities of satisfaction. An activity that is done primarily for the experience itself.” (Freysinger 5).  I feel as if this definition is a perfect way to describe women’s leisure during the homosocial culture of the late nineteenth century. Today relative freedom mainly means doing what you want within the confines of legality and finances, but back then women also had their womanhood to worry about. Even slight interactions with men could be viewed by society as blasphemous.

                These issues of womanhood were felt especially by married women who were involved in the public sphere. Drinking, a common social leisure activity for men was not something that was shared by women. In fact, Peiss says that many women never even entered a saloon. So what does all this tell us about consumerism at the time? Essentially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, just about all leisurely consumption was being done by men. Generally speaking, the men would work their twelve hour day at the factory while the women worked at home and occasionally ran errands, then the men would get off work and go down to the pub while the women stayed home taking care of children, and then the men would come home drunk while the women had been home all the while.

                So what’s missing? That would be any semblance of a relaxation time for the women. Peiss says “Many women spend their leisure sitting on the steps of the tenement gossiping…” (22), that doesn’t seem too relaxing to me. In some cases, it could definitely be argued that the twelve hour factory days of the men were much harsher and labor intensive than the women’s work. I believe, however, that the situation that the women were in was much worse. Falling into a constant routine of housework and chores and very rarely getting to do anything to relax would be unbelievably mentally exhausting, and it is for this reason that I believe that the heterosocial cultural structure began to come about. I theorize that people began to realize that they were only tapping into half of the consumers on the market for these leisure activities, and by including women they could see both a rise in profits and a rise in consumption. I believe that this is the reason for the slow, steady integration of women into leisure culture.

Sources used:

Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements. Philadephia: Temple University Press, 1986. Print.

Freysinger, Valeria, and John R. Kelly. 21^st Century Leisure. Pennsylvania: Venture Publishing Inc, 2004. Print.

By: Brandon Walter