George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals and American Culture, 1876-1986

For those readers unfamiliar with Karal Ann Marling, this book is as good an introduction as any. A professor of Art History and American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Marling, in "George Washington Slept Here" gives us a well-researched and amusing account of how Americans have used the image of the "Father of our Country" for a variety of social, economic, and political purposes. Washington has always been one of the most enigmatic of Revolutionary heroes and Presidents, which has rendered his image amenable to packaging and repackaging according to the needs of the times. His reputation for honesty, probity, and dignity (among other virtues) has appealed to Americans across the generations. We, as a culture, have placed him in an imaginary colonial past--simpler, less complicated--a past that we can look to, and find comfort in, as a palliative for our own hurried and complicated lives.Marling takes us through the development of Washington the "icon", beginning in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. She shows us how our fascintation with the hero of Valley Forge helped to spur a general, wide-spread interest in things colonial--the Colonial Revival movement--that continues to this day (her book ends in the 1980s); witness the vast quantities of colonial revival furnishings, house designs, and other "artifacts" produced over the decades. Apart from Washington's "influence" on the colonial revival, his image has been used to sell everything from soup to nuts to politicians, a phenomenon that Marling examines in amusing detail. Her analysis of Warren G. Harding's use of Washington iconography is wonderful, as is her examination of the symbolic use of Washington and the "colonial" by the artist Grant Wood.In sum, for anyone interested in American popular culture and the way that we make use of the past, "George Washington Slept Here" should find space on your bookshelf.