| Summary: | Historian Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor traces the lives of urban women in early America to reveal how they used the ties of residence, work, credit, and money to shape consumer culture at a time when the politics of the marketplace was gaining national significance. Covering the period 1750-1820, the book analyzes how women used and were used by shifting forms of credit and cash in an economy transitioning between neighborly exchanges and investment-oriented transactions. At the hearths of multifamily homes, renters, lodgers, and recent acquaintances lived together and struck financial deals for survival. A new economic practice in America--shopping--mobilized hierarchical and friendly relationships into wide-ranging consumer networks that depended on these same market connections. Rhetoric emerging after the Revolution downplayed the significance of female economic life, but women were quintessential market participants, with fluid occupational identities, cross-class social and economic connections, and a firm investment in cash and commercial goods for power and meaning.--From publisher description.
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