Hessinger, Rodney: Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle-class America, 1780-1850.(Book Review)

History: Review of New Books, September, 2005 by Deluzio, Crista

Hessinger, Rodney Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle-class America, 1780-1850 Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 255 pp., $45.00, ISBN 0-8122-3879-6 Publication Date: June 2005

In the decades following the American Revolution, the emergence of a new democratic and capitalist social order opened up unprecedented opportunities for young people to exert their independence from older forms of patriarchal authority. How middle-class adult moralists responded to the newfound freedoms of the young is the subject of Rodney Hessinger's carefully conceptualized and persuasively argued new book, Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn. Focusing on the city of Philadelphia, Hessinger explores the attempts of authors of seduction novels, moral...

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