ABSTRACT
In her files, Lange kept a Shakespeare quotation that idealized women’s traditional caretaking role. “Good grows with her; in her days every man shall eat in safety, under his own vine, what he plants, and sing the merry songs of peace to all his neighbors.” Economic traumas shaped Lange’s intimate life, as with many Americans. Marriage rates “fell drastically” in this era, and the age at which women married rose. State-sanctioned love was unaffordable. Unlike Lange and Dixon who divorced, many couples could not afford legal fees, so desertion rates rose. Gender shaped Lange’s most crucial photographic subject. She made visible the invisible, women’s poverty. In LeSueur’s view, women could make no demands of their families or of the state. Lange’s photo, in a few feet of a woman’s legs, articulates the gendering of poverty, the misery that was uniquely female, the stockings that could not be mended.
