University/Organization
California State University, Fullerton
Title
Stealing Their Pantaloons
Synopsis
In many ways, the coming of the Civil War challenged the ideology of Victorian domesticity that had defined the lives of women in the antebellum era. The Civil War changed that as American women turned their attention to the world outside the home. Some women took this as a sign to compete with men of the press who cried “they’re stealing our pantaloons.” This paper presents a typology of those women.