Social Context
Using her own needlework skills to construct a trousseau and stock her glory-box "was for the working girl the equivalent of planning and saving for marriage on the part of the provident and ambitious young man." The collection of a trousseau was a common coming-of-age rite until approximately the 1950s; it was typically a step on the road to marriage between courting a man and engagement. It wasn't always collected in a special chest, hence the alternative UK term bottom drawer, which refers to putting aside one drawer in a chest of drawers for collecting the trousseau undisturbed, but such a chest was an acceptable gift for a girl approaching a marriageable age. They may have been inherited from a mother or female relatives and are still a popular gift from woodworking fathers.
Contents of a "hope chest" or "glory box" included typical dowry items such as clothing (especially a special dress), table linens, towels, bed linens, quilts and occasionally dishware. As a bride would typically leave home on marriage, hope chests were sometimes made with an eye to portability, albeit infrequently. Examples of hand-made items made between 1916 and 1918 for a trousseau by a prospective bride are on display in the National Museum of Australia. In this case, the trousseau - never used because its creator's fiancé was killed in World War I before the marriage took place - was stored in calico bags rather than in a chest.
A 'bridal chest' was given to a bride at her wedding, by her husband, and so is not a 'hope chest' in this sense.
Read more about this topic: Hope Chest
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or context:
“Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn’t want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The dropout can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of—career, ambition, conspicuous consumption. The effects of hippie sanctimony can only be felt in the context of others who plunder his lifestyle for what they find good or profitable, a process known as rip-off by the hippie, who will not see how savagely he has pillaged intricate and demanding civilizations for his own parodic lifestyle.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)