Evolving Illustrations: Louis A. Godey and the Home Library in Godey's Lady's Book

Abstract

abstract: Godey's Lady's Book illustrations regularly depicted women in direct relation to books in the nineteenth century. For the first two and a half decades, images with women and bookcases also included a male presence. Female education was seen as necessary in order to create generations of good citizens, but the idea that women could be too educated also persisted. However, by the late 1850s, Godey's Lady's Book began to feature pictures of middle-class white women and a bookcase (or home library), without men. When the debate over what women should read had begun to diminish, Godey 's popular fashion plates began in 1859 to include bookcases for the first time. The addition of the bookcase motif demonstrates how the magazine visually engaged with the debate over women's education and also implies a change in Louis A. Godey's personal views as he was directly involved in the production of the magazine's artwork.