In 1886 Philadelphia, Hanna Willer begins employment as a maid-of-all-work for Isabelle Martin, the pregnant wife of a prosperous shopkeeper. Hanna, fresh from her rural home, is a quietly observant and practical young woman. Isabelle is lonely and restless, dangerously disconted with her life and obsessed with her reckless pursuit of happiness. Yet despite their differences, the two forge an unconventional friendship. But when Mr. Martin dies under suspicious circumstances, and the evidence points to Isabelle, Hanna finds herself thrust into the midst of a murder trial that becomes a touchstone for the shifting values of modern society. As she wrestles with her role, she confronts the attitudes that city life has bred in her--attitudes about what is possible between men and women; what is fair and not fair in the lives of her immigrant friends; and what one person can do in the face of large, powerful forces like the press, public opinion, and accepted wisdom. From the rippling effects of the advent of electricity to labor strikes to the very beginnings of the women's movement, Noelle Sickels delivers an enthralling glimpse of the birthing of modern America and the lives that are forever changed in its wake.

Reproduction of the original.

Reproduction of the original: The Burgomaster ́s Wife by Georg Ebers

The history textbook had a paragraph like this: "Yuan Zhen, one hundred thirty-six years, Li Jinsi will ascend to the throne and change the country's name, 'Qing'. It also symbolizes the birth of the first female emperor in history." However, compared to all of these, what people were more interested in was this empress' love history. Many wild histories did not tell the same story about this empress's past. It was about the empress's wife, the crown prince's wife, and even the royal consort of the king of Pbang ...

This book provides new insights into how theatre responded to changing economic practices and structures. It reviews discourses on household management and commerce to create a rich context for the discussion of socio-economic actions and transactions in Macbeth, Othello, and Timon of Athens, as well as in city comedies by Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton. By approaching discourses on economy and commerce as complementary, the book opens up a diverse field of socio-economic practices, including the gendered division of duties in the household, new modes of valuation, and evolving credit instruments. Theatre provides unique access to this field. In contrast to practical and policy-oriented discourses, it addresses socio-economic change and its vicissitudes in a spirit of experimentation, testing the ethical limits of socio-economic action and accustoming audiences to the demands of a changing socio-economic reality. Theatre thus offers a vital contribution to the prehistory of political economy. On the London stages, self-interest emerges as a key motive of socio-economic action, and theatre playfully explores its ambiguous status as a partly rational and partly excessive force that has a new ordering function but also creates social conflict. At the same time, by staging the contradictory demands of ethics and efficiency in economic decision-making, early modern plays offer access to a changing understanding of prudence that has a Machiavellian touch: by aligning with the pursuit of private interest, prudence sheds some of its ethical content and becomes foremost an instrumental faculty.

As the first in-depth study of women's experience of work in Scotland before 1800, this book draws on a wide variety of hitherto unexplored sources to throw light on the everyday working activities of women, married and single, successful and deprived, and their role in the urban community. While focusing on Edinburgh, the capital and premier service town of Eighteenth-century Scotland, Dr Sanderson's findings are important in the British context and beyond.