Vine and oak: wives and husbands cope with the financial panic of 1857

Exploring Washington Irving's vine and oak metaphor regarding gendered responses to financial failure, this case study analyzes couples' strategies to cope with the financial panic of 1857 in Nininger City, Minnesota, a boom-town that went bust. Just as Irving's fictional couple in 'The Wife' dealt with the husband's financial failure in culturally defined, gender appropriate ways, Nininger families attempted to withstand business failures and mortgage foreclosures even as they strove to display a middle-class lifestyle. Evidence from letters, diaries, court records, and census data demonstrates that some husbands left Nininger seeking new opportunities to preserve their property and support their families, while wives attempted to represent the family's financial stability by staying in the town and keeping up appearances. Women did this through their insistence on a comfortable house to protect the family not only from harsh winters but also from those judging the family's precarious financial circumstances. In some marriages, gendered responses were transgressed by wives adopting husband's strategies temporarily, as in the case of Katherine and Ignatius Donnelly, or by divorce proceedings resulting from husbands' improper use of wives' property; the latter in particular challenged the mutual dependence of the husband/oak and wife/vine in weathering the financial crisis.
As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, [...]