Maxine Van de Wetering is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812. She wishes to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington D.C. and the Grants Committee of the University of Montana for their support of the research for this article.

¹ Erikson, Erik H., Childhood and Society (New York, 1963), p. 16Google Scholar.

² Ibid., pp. 277–80, 283.

³ Ibid., pp. 247–74.

⁴ Ibid., pp. 250.

⁵ Ibid., pp. 250, 251, 278–79.

⁶ Erikson, Erik H., Identity and the Life Cycle (New York, 1980), p. 66Google Scholar.

⁷ Erikson, , Childhood, p. 249Google Scholar.

⁸ Erikson, , Identity, pp. 66–67Google Scholar.

⁹ Erikson, Erik H., Young Man Luther (New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Childhood, pp. 248–50.

¹⁰ Haroutunian, Joseph, Piety vs. Moralism: the Passing of the New Theology (New York, 1932), pp. xviii–xxvGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Mead, Sidney E., The Lively Experiment (New York, 1963), pp. 52–54, 103–44Google Scholar; Smith, H. Shelton, Handy, Robert T. and Loetscher, Lefferts A., American Christianity, 1 (New York, 1960), 419–29Google Scholar; Ahlstrom, Sydney E., Religious History of the American People (New Haven, 1972), pp. 474–75Google Scholar.

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¹³ Ahlstrom, Sydney E., “Theology in America,” in Smith, James Ward and Jamison, E. Leland, The Shaping of American Religion (Princeton, 1961), p. 285Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Shipton, Clifford, “The New England Clergy in the Glacial Age,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts Publications, 32 (1933), 24–54Google Scholar; Bumstead, J. M. & Van de Wetering, J. E., What Must I Do To Be Saved? (Hinsdale, 1976), p. 84Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Ahlstrom, , Religious History, pp. 417, 435–39, 442–69, 474Google Scholar; Handy, Robert, The Protestant Quest for a Christian America, 1830–1930 (Philadelphia, 1967), p. 15Google Scholar; Cross, Whitney, The Burned-Over District (New York, 1965), pp. 252–67Google Scholar.

¹⁶ In the last years of the eighteenth century, the expanding missionary spirit of Christianity resulted in a series of sponsored Protestant missions abroad “to evangelize the world” by taking the gospel to “the far corners of the Earth where six hundred millions of heathens lived in darkness.” See Handy, Smith, and Loetscher, , American Christianity, 1, 547Google Scholar. A great many of these “heathen” sinners were the large numbers of German and Irish Catholics who had made their way west after 1830. See Goodykoontz, Colin B., Home Missions on the American Frontier (Caldwell, 1939), p. 31Google Scholar. For early and rare examples of “recruiting” sermons among the Puritans, see Morgan, Edmund S., The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England (New York, 1966), p. 180Google Scholar.

¹⁷ “When a New England minister preached the gospel,” Edmund Morgan observed, “he spoke either to the church members, who had already had grace, or else to their children.” Puritan Family, pp. 174, 175, 182.

¹⁸ This was a Constant concern for Horace Bushnell. See his Arguments for Discourses on Christian Nurture (New York, 1847), pp. 18–22, 94, 148, 186–209Google Scholar, in which he recommended organic growth as a model for the development of Christian piety in place of cataclysmic conversions.

¹⁹ Mead, , Experiment, pp. 125–26Google Scholar; See also Kett, Joseph, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present (New York, 1977), pp. 120–21Google Scholar.

²⁰ Industrial modes of production, licensing in the professions, and even broad-based, well-organized reform movements along with all manner of attempts at centralization undermined notions of individualism and personal self-sufficiency, favoring instead models of greater efficiency that came with corporation, cooperation, and consolidation.

²¹ Higham, John articulated this paradox in From Boundlessness to Consolidation: the Transformation of American Culture, 1848–1860 (Ann Arbor, 1969)Google Scholar, by interpreting the vigor of Jacksonian culture as an oscillation between a “rampant individualism” and a perceived need for disciplining energy into consolidated models.

²² In the example of Charles Kingsley's use as “selfish individualism” in “Hours with the Mystics,” Miscellanies, 1 (London, 1860), 351Google Scholar. See also Harriet Beecher Stowe's instructive story, “The Cathedral,” in “Household Papers and Stories,” The Writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Cambridge, Mass., 1896), Vol. 8Google Scholar.

²³ Riesman, David, Individualism Reconsidered (New York, 1954) p. 15, passimGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Perry Miller remarked that as early as the first Great Awakening in the 1740s, revivalism brought forth a “mass purgation of conscience” in public, “something totally foreign to the private soul-searching of Puritanism.” Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1959), pp. 134–35Google Scholar. See also his Life of the Mind in America: from the Revolution to the Civil War (New York, 1965), p. 11Google Scholar.

²⁵ After the first phase of the Second Great Awakening, which was characterized by a reformation of morals and behavior through quiet reflectiveness in New England, a “New School” theology, primarily Baptist and Methodist, gained in strength. This wave of revivalism became a “major mode of church expansion” and was characterized by camp meetings and itinerant ministries. See Ahlstrom, , Religious History, pp. 417, 432–39Google Scholar.

²⁶ As quoted in Miller, Perry, Life of the Mind, p. 11Google Scholar. See also Kett, Joseph's discussion of mass conversions in Sunday schools, Rites, pp. 117–18Google Scholar.

²⁷ Handlin, David, The American Home: Architecture and Society, 1815–1915 (Boston, 1979), pp. 14–25Google Scholar.

²⁸ Between roughly 1845 and 1890, the advancing romantic sensibility in America expressed itself architecturally as the Gothic Picturesque, a style that stressed not only the rooted, fixed forms of the countryside, especially the forest, but also represented a return to the perceived solidity and unity of the medieval church. See Hitchcock, Henry Russell, American Architectural Books (3rd rev. edn., Minneapolis, 1946)Google Scholar, preface, passim; Downing, Andrew Jackson, The Architecture of Country Houses (New York, 1851), pp. 251–53Google Scholar; Vaux, Calvert, “Hints for Country House Builders,” Harpers, 11 (1851)Google Scholar. See also Lovejoy, Arthur O., “The First Gothic Revival and the Return to Nature,” Essays in the History of Ideas (New York, 1955), pp. 136–55Google Scholar; Wright, Gwendolyn, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (New York, 1981), pp. 86–9Google Scholar; Handlin, David, American Home, pp. 62–73Google Scholar.

²⁹ Even among the middle class, few could afford such houses. Yet the aspiration was sufficient to make this “model” home sought after.

³⁰ Clark, Clifford, “Domestic Architecture as an Index to Social History: The Romantic Revival and the Cult of Domesticity in America, 1840–1870,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 7 (1976), 33–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Ibid., pp. 44, 45.

³² “The sainted mother” wrote the Reverend Mr. Samuel Phillips in 1860, “is the angel-spirit of home”, by which he meant that not only was she angelic, but also that she was eternally placed in her temple-home. The Christian Home (Springfield, 1860), p. 18Google Scholar; see also pp. 17, 35. Godey's Lady's Book, as early as 1837, had begun using what would become the classic expression of mother as “angel in the house,” p. 578. See also Ware, John F. W., Home Life in America: What it is and What it Needs (Boston, 1864), p. 85Google Scholar, who remarked, “…home is the peculiar sphere of woman. With the world at large she has little to do. Her influence begins, centers and ends in her home,” reflecting the typical sentiment.

³³ Demos, John emphasized the contrast between colonial and nineteenth-century family life in A Little Commonwealth (New York, 1970)Google Scholar, and “Images of the American Family, Then and Now,” in Tufte, Virginia and Myerhoff, Barbara (eds.), Changing Images of the Family (New Haven, 1979), p. 51Google Scholar. See also Handlin, American Home, Chapter 1, and John F. W. Ware, Home Life, passim.

³⁴ Cotton, John, A Briefe Exposition with Practicall Observations Upon the Whole Book of Ecclesiastes (London, 1654), p. 18Google Scholar.

³⁵ Cotton Mather had called the home the “nursery” of the commonwealth. See Todd, Margo, “Humanists, Puritans, and the Spiritualized Household,” Church History, 49 (1980), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both Edmund Morgan and John Demos elaborated on the seminal and the integral character of the colonial home in Demos, A Little Commonwealth, and Morgan, Puritan Family.

³⁶ A typical composite picture of this tension between domestic traditionalism and “outside” commerce-oriented heathenism may be found in the widespread prescriptive literature of the mid-nineteenth century. See, for example, the works of Sedgwick, Catherine, Home (New York, 1835)Google Scholar and New England Tales (New York, 1837)Google Scholar; Hale, Sarah Josepha, Sketches of American Character (Boston, 1831)Google Scholar; Beecher, Henry Ward, Norwood; Or Village Life in New England (New York, 1868), especially pp. 6–13, 28–30, 61–77, 107–110Google Scholar; Savery, Lillie, Home Comforts (New York, 1855)Google Scholar.

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³⁸ L. E., , “Home,” Ladies' Magazine, 3, (1830), 218Google Scholar.

³⁹ For discussion of this kind of “loneliness” see Riesman, David, Glazer, Nathan, and Denney, Reuel, The Lonely Crowd (New York, 1950)Google Scholar; Erikson, , Identity, p. 77Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Gertrude Himmelfarb spoke of the Victorian “penchant for bold antitheses” in “Defense of the Two Cultures,” American Scholar, 50 (1981), 458Google Scholar. See also Jeffrey, Kirk, “The Family as Utopian Retreat from the City,” Soundings, 55 (1972), 21–39Google Scholar, who spoke of the family as an idealized Eden, a concept that produced frustrations and pressures on individuals, who tried to find paradise in the home, in contrast to the hellish city. McIntosh, Maria J. in Woman in America: Her Work and Her Rewards (Philadelphia, 1850)Google Scholar, used the contrasting personalities of “Flirtilla,” the worldly, and “Egeria,” the heavenly, most effectively to illustrate the polarity between “outside” artificiality and domestic honesty and virtue, pp. 71–81.

⁴¹ Emerson, Ralph Waldo, “Culture”, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 6 (Boston, 1904), 153Google Scholar.

⁴² Todd, Sereno Edwards, Country Homes (New York, 1870), p. 33Google Scholar.

⁴³ Ware, , Home Life, pp. 23–24Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ “Home,” p. 218.

⁴⁵ “The Home and the Flag,” Harper's, 26, No. 155 (1862/1863), 665Google Scholar. See also Downing, Architecture, preface.

⁴⁶ Although the Victorian home featured large windows, seemingly an “outdoors” look, with its bays, bows, cross-ventilation, and the admission of sunshine and views, nevertheless, the out-of-doors was carefully controlled by elaborate entrances, porches, verandas, foyers, and specified landscaping. The out-of-doors in such cases was a bringing-in of a controlled landscape to enhance the inside, so that the view was part of the inner room. Outdoor furniture was another such control of the outside so that it was really an extension of the inside. See Wright, Gwendolyn, Moralism and the Model Home (Chicago, 1980), pp. 28–29Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Sargent, Charles E., Our Home, or the Key to a Nobler Life (Springfield, 1885), p. 26Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ As quoted in Flaherty, David, Privacy in Colonial New England (Charlottesville, 1972), p. 75Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Demos, “Images,”, p. 51.

⁵⁰ As quoted in Flaherty, , Privacy, pp. 91–92Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Ware, , Home Life, pp. 17–18Google Scholar. Kohut

⁵² Recent interesting work bearing upon concepts of the self as an inquiry fruitful for historical analyses has been forthcoming from psychiatrists. See particularly Kohut, Heinz M.D., Analysis of the Self (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Wolf, Ernest M.D., “Recent Advances in the Psychology of the Self: an Outline of Basic Concepts,” paper presented at the regional meeting of the Chicago Psychoanalytical Society,March 1974Google Scholar, and the annual meeting of the American Historical Association,December 1974,both at Chicago, Illinois.Google Scholar See also Lasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism (New York, 1979)Google Scholar.

⁵³ See Bloomer, Kent C. and Moore, Charles W., Body, Memory, and Architecture (New Haven, 1979)Google Scholar; Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane (New York, 1959), pp. 32–34, 55–57Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Marc, Olivier, Psychology of the House (London, 1977), p. 14Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Ware, , Home Life, p. 23Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ “Ik. Marvel”, pseud., Reveries of a Bachelor, or a Book of the Heart (Philadelphia, 2nd edn, 1893), pp. 83–84Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Woman's disinterestedness was considered to be a “primary element of her nature.” “Woman,” Ladies' Magazine, 3 (1830), 444Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ See, for example, the characterization of the stern husband in “The Young Wife,” by MrsSmith, Harrison, Godey's Lady's Book (05 1837)Google Scholar. An alternative type who was affectionate and devoted, but weak and therefore not suited to provide nurture dependably, was usually cast as doomed to bankruptcy and/or early death, leaving the wife or daughter with a chance to dominate the household. See a typical tale, “The Broken Hearted,” Godey's Lady's Book (04, 1837), pp. 29–33Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Samuel Phillips, who said, “The mother in her office, holds the key of the soul,” was typical. Phillips, , Christian Home, p. 35Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ “Woman,” p. 442.

⁶¹ Ibid., p. 444. See also “Editor's Table,” Godey's Lady's Book (05, 1837), p. 177Google Scholar.

⁶² See Cott, Nancy F., The Bonds of Womanhood: Woman's Sphere in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, 1977), pp. 160–196Google Scholar; Lasch, Christopher and Taylor, Wm., “Two ‘Kindred Spirits’: Sorority and Family in New England,” New England Quarterly, 36 (1963), 23–41Google Scholar; Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth Century America,” Signs, 1 (1975), 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ In this regard see Dorothy Dinnerstein's treatment of mother-as-non-self in The Mermaid and the Minotaur (New York, 1977), pp. 110–14Google Scholar. See also “The Vicar's Daughter: A Sketch,” Godey's Lady's Book (1837), pp. 13–16Google Scholar, as well as numerous serialized stories in Lady's Book (1837), pp. 13–16Google Scholar, as well as numerous serialized stories in Lady's Friend between 1870 and 1872. See especially Moulton, Louis C., “Did He Forget Her?”, Lady's Friend (04 1870)Google Scholar, and Brunch, Mary L. Bolles, “Statira,” Lady's Friend (03 1872)Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ MrsSmith, Harrison, “The Young Wife” Godey's Lady's Book (1837), p. 197Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Lynne, Lizzie, “Cookery as an Essential to Domestic Happiness,” Lady's Friend (08 1868), 553Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Sargent, Charles, Our Home, p. 26Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Herbert, H. W., “The Woodman's Daughter”, Godey's Lady's Book, 23 (1843), 127Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ See, for example, Ware, , Home Life, p. 5Google Scholar; Todd, Sereno Edwards, Country Homes, pp. 41–45Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ “The Farmer's Daughter,” Godey's Lady's Book (1837), p. 12Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ See, for example, Douglas, Amanda, “John Parker's Wife”, Lady's Friend, 7 (1870), 43Google Scholar.