by Derek Viger

Created on: September 23, 2008

The Gilded Age was not considered a period in American history worth studying for some time. The Reconstruction before it and the Progressive and World War 1 era after it received more attention for scholars. Some frankly thought the period was boring. The Gilded Age was an exciting time. Monumental changes in American society had their roots during this time. Great uprisings in culture and labor occurred. Rebecca Edwards, Alan Trachtenberg, and Gunther Barth have each explored the Gilded Age. They each examine similar aspects from the age with differing perspectives. Comparing their interpretations of the events that shaped the Gilded Age, we can achieve a better picture of turbulent era.

Edwards's book New Spirits (2006) places the Gilded Age between the years of 1865 and 1905. Most historians state that 1865 to 1890 is the Gilded Age. Edwards seeks to challenge that notion. In New Spirits a greater emphasis is placed on the whole period. "one could consider the years between 1865 and 1905 a seedbed of ideas that achieved full growth in later decades."Edwards p7. Edwards uses the metaphor of fire to explain the Gilded age.

The fires of economic and social transformation kindled conflicts over political power in the South and land in the West, while fierce clashes also broke out between labor and capitaland among laborers themselvesEdwards p7.

Here she highlights what she sees as the violent changes of the Gilded Age. With fire comes destruction, but it also brings a chance to rebuild better than what was before. Edwards is also pointing to the duality of the period. She sights poet Walt Whitman here.
"His United States combined modern technology with race hatred, eager consumerism with grinding poverty, greed with goodwill, humanitarian impulses with designs for economic empire." Edwards p6.
Gunther Barth takes a slightly different approach from Edwards and, as we will see, Trachtenberg. City People (1980) looks at the Gilded Age through the experiences of Urban life. Barth categorizes the modern city of the Gilded Age as beginning during the 1830s and ending around the 1910s. Like Edwards, Barth speaks of the duality of the Gilded Age.

Throughout the ages big cities have fascinated people because they concentrate many ways of life, displaying splendor and misery on a stage for the entire world. In nineteenth-century America the drama of the scene increased when intensified urbanization and rapid industrialization exposed people to modern life. Barth p3.

Alan

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