Purses and bags have always been much more than a fashion accessory. For generations of Americans, the purse has been an essential and highly adaptable object, used to achieve a host of social, cultural, and political objectives over the last two centuries. In the early 1800s, when the slim fit of neoclassical dresses made interior pockets impractical, upper-class women began to carry small purses called reticules, providing them with a private, controlled pouch in a world where they rarely occupied public space on equal terms with men. Although other items of apparel that are placed directly on the body, such as hats or shoes, have long expressed a person's aspirations, only the purse provides an opportunity for privacy while in public, which has been particularly important for those who have faced discrimination because of their gender, class, race, citizenship, or sexuality. The Things She Carried reveals how bags, sacks, and purses provided the methods and materials for Americans' activism and allowed them to transgress boundaries. It explores how enslaved people used purses and bags when attempting to escape slavery and early suffragists utilized them in their fight for civil rights. It also probes the purse's nuanced function for working- and middle-class women as they navigated crowded urban settings where the opportunity for privacy was often critical. Kathleen Casey closely examines a variety of sources--from vintage purses found in old houses to advertisements, photograph albums, trade journals, newspaper columns, and trial transcripts--and finds purses in use at fraught historical moments, where they served important symbolic, psychological, or economic functions for their users.

The result is a thorough and surprising examination of an object that both ordinary and extraordinary Americans used to influence social, cultural, economic, and political change.