{ "item_title" : "Shadows and sunbeams", "item_author" : [" Fanny Fern "], "item_description" : "Behind respectable doors, marriage can conceal authority, dependence and exhausting labour. These essays, sketches, comic monologues and short narratives expose the distance between public virtue and private conduct, examining women's domestic life with sharp humour and sympathy for those constrained by poverty, convention or economic reliance. Courtship, motherhood, employment and household duty become occasions for pointed questions about who holds power, who performs the work and who pays the price. New York supplies a restless public stage of streets, shops, hotels, boarding houses, churches, newspapers and charitable institutions. Against this urban life stand rural homes, farms and villages, where social expectations remain no less exacting. Seamstresses, housemaids, wives, mothers and children appear beside merchants and ministers, while satirical soliloquies puncture vanity, hypocrisy and easy moral judgement. The changing forms allow a private grievance, a public spectacle or a brief encounter to reveal the pressures of gender and class without settling into a single narrative. Hardship is repeatedly set beside affection, nature and humane conduct: the shadows of women's poverty and restricted independence are answered by sunbeams of kindness and fellow feeling. Lively observation gives ordinary experience its force, whether the subject is fashion, journalism, charity, religion or the treatment of vulnerable people. The collection's shifts between comedy and social criticism create a varied portrait of household labour and public life, attentive to both cruelty and compassion. This book was out of print for decades and is now republished by Alpha Editions. It has been restored for today's and future generations. This edition is not just a reprint - it's a collector's item and a cultural treasure.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/30/933/802/9309338024_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "26.99", "online_price" : "26.99", "our_price" : "26.99", "club_price" : "26.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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