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Dissertation Information for Peg A. Lamphier

NAME:
- Peg A. Lamphier

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Arizona State University (USA) (2000)

ADVISORS:
- Brooks D. Simpson

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Vicki L. Ruiz
- Susan E. Gray

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Kate Chase and William Sprague: Politics and gender in a Civil War marriage

Abstract: No modern historian has analyzed Kate Chase's and William Sprague's marriage with an eye to the cultural, social, gendered and political components of Victorian marriage. This dissertation takes a biographical approach to explore that space where two people came together, in a social milieu charged with politics, both personal and public. The unhappy marriage challenges leading tenets of romantic love and companionate marriage, illustrating that the increased demands placed upon nineteenth-century pairings could result in family violence and even divorce. The Spragues' greatest ideological differences may be located in their expectations and applications of power. William wielded power in its most negative manifestations, not because he was an evil man, but because he confused power with control and manliness. Kate, who experienced her early life as the eldest and motherless daughter of Salmon P. Chase, thought of herself as a political woman--a model somewhat at odds with prescriptive womanhood. Kate's behavior during various political campaigns, her affair with Roscoe Conkling and her decision to divorce her husband, all demonstrate the power of Republican ideology in her life. Kate's life also illustrates that not only were women integral to party politics, but that gender played a central role in America's partisan ideologies. Gendered discourses also affected William. His personal notion of manhood was a melding of Northern and Southern prescriptions, mediated by partisan definitions of masculinity. William's biography also suggests that men made use of multiple notions of manhood, shifting from one to another as life-courses and individual situations altered. Last, William's repeated exaggerated and failed attempts to conform to any of these prescriptive models allows the opportunity to posit a kind of heterosexual "camp masculinity." Thus both William's and Kate's life stories defy neat analytical boxes and levels, while at the same time suggesting the richness of nineteenth-century gender and political ideology.


MPACT Scores for Peg A. Lamphier

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-05-04 19:36:51

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Students under Peg A. Lamphier

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None