The Gilded Age
The foundations of industrialism (the social system that results from an economy based on large-scale industries) were established in the United States during the first wave of industri...
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In the following essay, Tomsich discusses the “genteel” authors of the Gilded Age, whose religious faith faded with the influence of evolutionary theory and gave way to a sometimes fatal...
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In the following excerpt, Blanchard argues that with the increased aestheticism of the Gilded Age came a more open acceptance of homosexuality and alternative definitions of manhood.
The aftermath of ...
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In the excerpt below, Cordery enumerates the limitations placed on women by the domestic ideologies of the Gilded Age and shows how, in spite of these, many women were influential activists.
Women wer...
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In this excerpt, Danziger describes the struggles of Native Americans in the face of post-Civil War white migrations westward that forced Indian accommodation to reservation life.
Long ago the Arapaho...
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In the following essay, Ickstadt argues that in response to the increasing fragmentation of American society in the Gilded Age, many authors attempted to create a sense of community through utopian sy...
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In the essay below, Kilmer discusses the popularity of the “rags-to-riches” success formula during the Gilded Age, suggesting that news items as well as bardic tales featuring these type...
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In the following essay, Falk characterizes the Gilded Age as a time of great literary change, largely due to a break from Romanticism and a movement toward increased realism.
The serious writers of an...
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In the essay below, Trachtenberg follows the development of Realism during the Gilded Age as a reaction against the sentimentalism of earlier romances and dime novels.
I
“Realism,” compl...
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In the following essay, Roberts reflects on the Gilded Age as an era of popular aesthetic interest, wherein high and low-brow culture interacted to create a distinctly American fiction, journalism, th...
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In the following essay, Twigg argues that, in the Gilded Age, middle-class Americans sought to express their individuality, while conforming to the aesthetic ideal, through “tasteful” ho...
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In the excerpt below, Dormon surveys the use of ethnic stereotypes in American cartoon periodicals of the Gilded Age. He argues that they express increasing levels of fear and ethnocentrism in respons...
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In the following essay, Dormon examines the popularity during the Gilded Age of ‘coon songs’ (songs about, and many times by, black Americans). Dormon suggests that the songs disseminate...
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There is an old proverb saying, "History repeats itself." This proverb has certainly proven itself true. Civilizations predictably collapse within 300 to 900 years after their inception, proven by cou...
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The "Gilded Age" is an accurate name for the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Gild refers to something that is gold plated, and in this case is a metaphor and ...
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As the troublesome doors of the Reconstruction period began to close, the more troublesome doors of the Gilded Age opened releasing corruptness and competitiveness that took over the United States gov...
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The Gilded Age
