Suggested Research Topics - Woman to Woman: Female Communication In Nineteenth Century Michigan

The author of a recent University of Michigan doctoral dissertation in American Culture states that in nineteenth-century Michigan there was a special feminine style of written communication which gives evidence, even proof, of a female kinship allegiance. The author, Marilyn Motz, relies upon thirty Bentley Library collections of personal letters between women to illustrate her point. She argues that these letters, unlike letters between genders or between men, became part of the "cult of domesticity," which characterized the lifestyle of nineteenth-century women and their unique relationship to one another.

The validity of this doctoral thesis, published as True Sisterhood: Michigan Women and Their Kin, 1820-1920, could be considered in part by a reexamination of the thirty collections chosen as Motz's sample. The following questions could be considered in doing so: Do female correspondents in fact communicate an exclusively female bond? Is this bond consistent throughout the nineteenth century, as Motz suggests? Do geographical location and distance of correspondents affect this bond as it is expressed in letters? Can one find any general gender characteristics of male correspondence, to support Motz's suggestion that men relied on a direct, matter-of-fact tone in their correspondence? Beyond a review of the Motz thesis, this paper could test even further the notion of gender-related communication patterns, through a Bentley Library sample of other nineteenth-century collections of personal correspondence generated by women and men.

Examples of Primary Source Collections and other Resources:


In an effort to encourage creative thinking about possible research topics for students unfamiliar with archives and their inevitable complexities, archivists and student employees of the Bentley Historical Library have authored "suggested research topics ." The purpose of these is not to define a topic but rather to stimulate thinking about a topic where the holdings of the Bentley Library are particularly strong.