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Children at Play: An American History (review)

piety, compassion, chastity—and did not recognize or appreciate the emotional work necessary to cultivate and sustain these characteristics. Thus, the emotional work at the core of middle-class identity was obscured, and not considered actual work. While Blauvelt provides a compelling explanation for why married women tended to be less emotionally expressive in their diaries than their single selves, one wonders where married women’s emotional turmoil found expression? Was it more evident in the letter writing of married women? How did married women resist or subvert societal expectations regarding their emotional work? Such questions encourage further research into the emotional lives of married women and mothers. Blauvelt insists that her study is primarily a “history of emotions that has implications for women’s history” (p. 2). But it is much more than this. The Work of the Heart underscores the complex emotional landscape that informed the construction of personal, social, gender, and class identity during the critical years of nation building. Blauvelt’s history of emotional work provides a compelling framework through which to examine larger issues about the construction of private/public and female/male identities. Scholars interested in gender, class, labor, cultural, and emotional history will profit from this engaging and insightful book.