The handbag has long doubled as a private site of autonomy, identity and feminist resistance.
With a global market worth of over $56 billion, handbags are one of the main drivers of the fashion industry.
However, as Kathleen B. Casey shows in her latest book, The Things She Carried: The Social History of the Purse in America, they are more than just a fashionable accessory: Women’s purses are an important marker of identity and social status. They are a statement of power, of resilience, of defiance and even protection. Indeed, you can tell a lot about a person from their handbag and what’s in it.
Purses have not received a lot of attention from fashion scholars, but Casey’s book is not a fashion history of bags. Instead, Casey, a professor of history and the director of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Program at Furman University, focuses on their development as a gendered item mostly connected with women.
While both women and men have carried bags in the past, it was the evolution of pockets (and lack thereof in women’s clothes) that led to the purse being specifically marked as a feminine accessory, often associated with the female body and particularly the womb.
With pockets becoming a symbol of functionality and masculinity, it is not a coincidence that utilitarian pockets became a feminist demand. Feminists have long argued for their right to free hands and movement, while keeping their possessions secure and concealed. Pockets were often equated to votes during the suffrage campaign, as activists criticized the lack of both in hindering women’s independence.
At times when women had little control over their bodies, the privacy of their purse offered them an autonomy they could not otherwise gain.
But bags or purses are more than just a female version of the pocket. Serving as containers for essential things like money and phones, or necessities like tampons and a piece of gum, bags also carry with them immense social and political meanings. The Things She Carried offers a compelling history of the important role that purses played in (mostly) women’s lives, focusing specifically on their ability to provide privacy in public spaces and a sense of ownership.
Despite being a conspicuous item, one that could be snatched or stolen, Casey is careful to show the power of the purse (pun intended) in offering women the ability to gain visibility in public as equal to men. Women could not only carry with them money, sanitary pads and birth control pills that allowed them freedom of movement and independence, but their bags enabled them to do it while maintaining their respectability and status. At times when women had little control over their bodies, the privacy of their purse offered them an autonomy they could not otherwise gain.
The book moves from the time of slavery in the 19th century, when the boundaries between pockets, sacks and bags were more blurred, to the 20th and 21st centuries when the handbag got the shape we recognize today.
From facilitating the escape of enslaved people, to symbolizing independence and mobility of young women during the Great Migration, to enabling Black domestic workers to challenge their white employers by wearing their own clothes while carrying their uniforms in their bags, the concept of “freedom bags” provides a throughline that runs throughout the book.
Most compelling is the discussion of the function of handbags in the Civil Rights Movement. For activists like Rosa Parks, Mary Laney Hodges and Fannie Lou Hamer, the purse offered protection, both symbolically—as a token of fashionable Black respectability—and literally, as discrete carriers of weapons and other essentials that could become handy in a case of violence or an arrest.
Casey’s keen eye allows her to interpret familiar images with a fresh perspective. Hamer’s white purse becomes the focal point in her famous image while testifying at the Democratic National Committee.
But even more interesting is an analysis of SNCC activist Joan Trumpauer’s handbag on a counter during a sit-in protest. Brining a bag to a sit-in might seem frivolous, until you learn that she used it to smuggle items to sustain her and her friends in jail.
As purses became completely feminized by the 1960s, carrying one could be seen as an act of defiance, especially by the LGBTQ community. Because of their association with women’s bodies, purses functioned as a potent symbol of sexuality. Trans women like Marsha P. Johnson claimed the purse as a public marker of their femininity, while butch lesbians often chose to forgo them, for the same reason.
A woman holds her entire life in her handbag, the saying goes, and Casey’s book certainly makes the case that we should pay more attention to ”the things [women] carried.” As Casey reminds us, “when our bodies fail and get buried in the ground, what remains are our objects.” Whether someone owns multiple bags or is sticking to a favorite purse until it is no longer usable, our bags offer clues to our identities and, as such, are also part of our history.
You can read an excerpt of The Things She Carried here.
