{"id":25785,"date":"2024-08-26T21:03:25","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T21:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=25785"},"modified":"2026-03-13T16:58:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T16:58:30","slug":"labors-of-love-and-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2024\/08\/labors-of-love-and-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Labors of Love and Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ashli Cean Landa \/ Featured image by David J. Turner<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When English professor Andrea Kaston Tange announced to her nineteenth-century British literature class that they would be sewing mourning dresses for two fifteen-inch dolls, she was pleased to discover that most of her students were excited by the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So she was surprised by how quickly the enthusiasm faded once needles were in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter one day of working, there was kind of a rebellion,\u201d she says. \u201cThey were like, \u2018this is hard! We don\u2019t want to do it!\u2019 and I was like, \u2018hard is the point!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cLadies and Monsters\u201d class was studying Mary Barton, an 1840s novel set in the textile-industrial north of England. Tange wanted the project to help \u201cmake the past less of a foreign country\u201d by having students participate in common labor of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re talking about a time before sewing machines, it\u2019s almost impossible to get your head around the actual labor of living unless you try your hand at it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the book, a character is tasked with sewing four (human-sized) mourning dresses in roughly thirty-six hours. Tange estimates that it took the class forty to fifty hours to finish the two doll-sized recreations, which included a quilted petticoat, skirt, and bodice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two
Here, the two dolls pose in their hand-stitched mourning dresses.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019d be sitting in discussion talking about the book, and people kept raising their hands and [Tange] would say, \u2018Book question or sewing question?\u2019 and they\u2019d sheepishly say \u2018Sewing\u2026\u2019 and we\u2019d all giggle because we had no idea what we were doing,\u201d Gavia Boyden \u201926 (Seattle) says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tange also designed the project to encourage students\u2019 engagement with the novel through a contextually comprehensive lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThinking about material processes and day-today lives is crucial for understanding the conditions in which these books were written,\u201d she says. \u201cThe conditions in which they would have been originally read\u2014who has the luxury of reading them and who doesn\u2019t, who\u2019s represented and who\u2019s not\u2014it changes how you read.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tange\u2019s students say the lessons were received loud and clear. Peyton Williamson \u201827 (Austin, Texas) was \u201ccompletely baffled\u201d by the amount of work a character her age was expected to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt really puts into perspective how much technology we have at our disposal now to do hard labor,\u201d she says. \u201cSewing is easier talked about than done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As difficult as learning to sew and discussing literature at the same time was, students and professor both say the final product\u2014and the shared experience of creating it\u2014was well worth the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen they suddenly had the whole doll in their hands and were able to look at the layers, the finished edges, the teeny little stitches on teeny tiny hems\u2014 there was this quiet that went around the room,\u201d Tange shares. \u201cThey all looked a bit in awe by what they\u2019d accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy favorite aspect was getting to know and connect with my classmates as we sat in a circle, pricked our fingers, and laughed as we struggled to thread a needle,\u201d says Boyden. \u201cIt amazed me how possible it is to form a community over even a small labor of love.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English professor Andrea Kaston Tange’s nineteenth-century British literature class took a trip back to the days of sewing by hand.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":881,"featured_media":25831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[667],"class_list":["post-25785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-life","tag-english-and-creative-writing","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/881"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25785"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29629,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25785\/revisions\/29629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}