Our Watering Places--The Empty Sleeve at Newport

1865

This image accompanied a story in Harper’s Weekly in which a captain returns home from war to find that his wife has learned to drive a horse and buggy in his absence. One might expect the veteran, who lost an arm in battle, to be grateful for the new skills his wife has acquired out of necessity. Yet he struggles to accept her new independence. The palpable tension between husband and wife in this image is indicative of larger postwar concerns surrounding women’s roles in both public and private spheres.