ABSTRACT
Mourning practices provide insight into a culture's beliefs about what is valued in an individual, and about the landscape facing the individual as he or she crosses the border between life and death. Mourning offers a unique opportunity to observe how the bourgeois woman facilitated the links between private and public space. Anthropologist Mamphela Ramphele, although writing about South Africa, aptly characterizes the meaning that differential emblems of mourning have for women and men more generally. Mourning assumed a political valence during the period of the American Revolution. In 1764, Boston merchants agreed to forgo 'elaborate and expensive mourning rituals'. The material aspects of mourning – clothing, miniatures and more – joined with a powerful sentimental culture that defined the American bourgeoisie. Mourning jewellery offers a telling example of the weaving together of fashion, display and sentiment that characterized the cult of mourning. Jewellery was regulated as strictly as all other aspects of mourning.
