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The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America
Purses and bags have always been much more than a fashion accessory.
For generations of Americans, the purse has been an essential and highly adaptable object, used to achieve a host of social, cultural, and political objectives. In the early 1800s, when the slim fit of neoclassical dresses made interior pockets impractical, upper-class women began to carry small purses called reticules, which provided them with a private place in a world where they did not have equal access to public space. Although many items of apparel have long expressed their wearer's aspirations, only the purse has offered carriers privacy, pride, and pleasure. This privacy has been particularly important for those who have faced discrimination because of their gender, class, race, citizenship, or sexuality.
The Things She Carried reveals how bags, sacks, and purses provided the methods and materials for Americans' activism, allowing carriers to transgress critical boundaries at key moments. It explores how enslaved people used purses and bags when attempting to escape and immigrant factory workers fought to protect their purses in the workplace. It also probes the purse's nuanced functions for Black women in the civil rights movement and explores how LGBTQ people used purses to defend their bodies and make declarations about their sexuality.
Kathleen Casey closely examines a variety of sources—from vintage purses found in abandoned buildings and museum collections to advertisements, photograph albums, trade journals, newspaper columns, and trial transcripts. She finds purses in use at fraught historical moments, where they served strategic and symbolic functions for their users. The result is a thorough and surprising examination of an object that both ordinary and extraordinary Americans used to influence social, cultural, economic, and political change.
For generations of Americans, the purse has been an essential and highly adaptable object, used to achieve a host of social, cultural, and political objectives. In the early 1800s, when the slim fit of neoclassical dresses made interior pockets impractical, upper-class women began to carry small purses called reticules, which provided them with a private place in a world where they did not have equal access to public space. Although many items of apparel have long expressed their wearer's aspirations, only the purse has offered carriers privacy, pride, and pleasure. This privacy has been particularly important for those who have faced discrimination because of their gender, class, race, citizenship, or sexuality.
The Things She Carried reveals how bags, sacks, and purses provided the methods and materials for Americans' activism, allowing carriers to transgress critical boundaries at key moments. It explores how enslaved people used purses and bags when attempting to escape and immigrant factory workers fought to protect their purses in the workplace. It also probes the purse's nuanced functions for Black women in the civil rights movement and explores how LGBTQ people used purses to defend their bodies and make declarations about their sexuality.
Kathleen Casey closely examines a variety of sources—from vintage purses found in abandoned buildings and museum collections to advertisements, photograph albums, trade journals, newspaper columns, and trial transcripts. She finds purses in use at fraught historical moments, where they served strategic and symbolic functions for their users. The result is a thorough and surprising examination of an object that both ordinary and extraordinary Americans used to influence social, cultural, economic, and political change.
- GenresHistory
240 pages, Hardcover
Published August 4, 2025
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161 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 28, 2025
Reviewed for Library Journal; full review appears there
December 18, 2025
The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America is a fascinating and unexpectedly powerful cultural history that reclaims the purse as a serious historical object rather than a trivial accessory.
Kathleen B. Casey demonstrates that purses, bags, and sacks have long functioned as tools of privacy, resistance, and survival particularly for people denied full access to public power. From reticules that offered early American women a private space in restrictive social systems, to the bags used by enslaved people planning escape, immigrant factory workers defending bodily autonomy, and LGBTQ individuals asserting identity, the purse emerges as both symbolic and strategic.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its archival range. Casey draws meaning from museum artifacts, abandoned objects, advertisements, trial transcripts, and personal photographs, grounding theory in lived experience. These materials allow the reader to see purses not as fashion trends, but as extensions of agency objects that carried documents, money, food, identity, and sometimes hope.
The book is especially compelling in its attention to marginalized communities. The discussion of Black women during the civil rights movement and LGBTQ individuals navigating surveillance and violence is handled with care and historical rigor, making the purse a lens through which larger struggles for dignity and autonomy come into focus.
This is a thoughtful, well-researched work that will appeal to readers of cultural history, gender studies, material culture, and social justice offering a new way to understand how ordinary objects quietly shape extraordinary change.
Kathleen B. Casey demonstrates that purses, bags, and sacks have long functioned as tools of privacy, resistance, and survival particularly for people denied full access to public power. From reticules that offered early American women a private space in restrictive social systems, to the bags used by enslaved people planning escape, immigrant factory workers defending bodily autonomy, and LGBTQ individuals asserting identity, the purse emerges as both symbolic and strategic.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its archival range. Casey draws meaning from museum artifacts, abandoned objects, advertisements, trial transcripts, and personal photographs, grounding theory in lived experience. These materials allow the reader to see purses not as fashion trends, but as extensions of agency objects that carried documents, money, food, identity, and sometimes hope.
The book is especially compelling in its attention to marginalized communities. The discussion of Black women during the civil rights movement and LGBTQ individuals navigating surveillance and violence is handled with care and historical rigor, making the purse a lens through which larger struggles for dignity and autonomy come into focus.
This is a thoughtful, well-researched work that will appeal to readers of cultural history, gender studies, material culture, and social justice offering a new way to understand how ordinary objects quietly shape extraordinary change.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews