This text explores the importance of work and its role in defining and developing the self. Carolyn R. Maibor illustrates the connection between the construction of a substantive self and the call for women to have increased access to the professions and higher education. According to Maibor, the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott demonstrate that valorizing the importance of work also validates the need for equality. Labour Pains challenges the traditional view of Emerson as being unconcerned with societal issues, and as growing more conservative over...