Synopsis
A portrait, based on the letters and diaries of Violet Blair, of her unconventional marriage to Albert Jardin. Albert and Violet were dedicated to one another over their 50-year marriage, but Violet did not live with her husband. Her financial independence enabled her to be far more autonomous than was the norm for women during the Gilded Age.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1998-05-01 | | Edition Description: | Illustrated |
| Size | | Length: | 169 pages | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 16.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
This fascinating biography of a Gilded Age marriage closely examines the dynamic flow of power, control, and love between Washington blue blood Violet Blair and New Orleans attorney Albert Janin. Based on their voluminous correspondence as well as Violet's extensive diaries, it offers a thoroughly intimate portrait of a fifty-four-year union which, in many ways, conformed to societal norms yet always redefined itself in order to fit the needs and willfulness of both husband and wife. With abundant documentary evidence to draw on, Laas ties this compelling story to broader themes of courtship behavior, domesticity, gender roles, extended family bonds, elitism, and societal stereotyping. Deeply researched and beautifully written, Love and Power in the Nineteenth Century has the dual virtue of making an important historical contribution while also appealing to a broad popular audience.
Industry Reviews
Violet Blair was born in 1848 to a prominent Washington political clan, whose family home on Washington's Lafayette Square, Blair House, is now the president's guest house for visiting heads of state. In this concise study, Laas, a historian and editor of Wartime Washington, a collection of Civil War letters written by Violet's aunt Elizabeth Blair Lee, uses Violet's extensive letters and diaries to tell the story of her unconventional 54-year marriage to Albert Janin. Violet grew up in an era when most women defined themselves as wives and mothers, submissive to and dependent upon men. But Violet was hardly typical. By her choice, she and Albert did not regularly live together; and she used her inherited wealth to provide for her own financial support. Although they were devoted to each other, their marriage was truly a partnership in which each retained practical autonomy while remaining emotionally dependent upon the other. An interesting portrait of a unique Gilded Age marriage, the book fails only by trying too hard to impose a feminist perspective that strips Blair of her uniqueness; in doing so, it downplays her profound (in fact, reactionary) political and social conservatism, and forces her into the mold of icon for women's rights, a social movement for which she evinced little support during her lifetime. 25 b&w photos. (May)
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