The Education of Jane Addams, and: Diva Julia: The Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe, and: Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters (review)

Abstract

difference, the correspondence business simply would not exist, at least not in its present form. American men are aware of this reality and, for the most part, are as defensive about the pragmatic aspects of their relationships as they are about the market analogy that underlies the very notion of a mail-order bride. Their desire for wanting to enter into some kind of long-term emotional relationship suggests, however, that it is a yearning for intimacy with a nubile female and not erotica that is the more paramount motivation. In sum, this is a solid ethnographic critique that starts with the participants’ native point of view and discovers it at odds with prevalent popular and scholarly American and European interpretation. Constable’s analysis of mail-order correspondences is one of the first ethnographic efforts to focus on both men and women to understand the motivational force that guides human yearning for intimacy. In focusing on this motive, she provides a conceptual model and methodological tool that other researchers will find useful as the field addresses the messy, imprecise, and ultimately more rewarding domain of human intimacy.