The American Woman's Home: Or, Principles Of Domestic Science; Being A Guide To The Formation And Maintenance Of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, And Christian Homes.
By Catherine E. Beecher And Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1869.
Catherine Beecher and her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe collaborated on this book, which aims to improve the status of housekeeping women by increasing their knowledge.
( Read more... ) This was a pretty big call – to set up their book as the equivalent of universities and libraries and closed fraternities.
To be fair, the book is a mammoth tome, ranging from house design, to descriptions of common household pests and poisons, to tips on which foods contain the least carbon, a chapter on recycling poop as fertiliser, notes on the excellence of the ‘Chinese character’, diatribes about the difficulties of Irish servants, a guide to child care, notes on how to teach girls to sew, hints on how the American character was developed and much, much more.
Catherine Beecher herself was neither a mother nor a homemaker. She never married after her fiancé perished at sea and lived mostly in various institutions after founding her own, pioneering female academy, one of the first in America to offer a full curriculum to girls. But Catherine Beecher had the massive confidence that Lyman Beecher instilled in all his children. He was one of the foremost Calvinists of his generation; all six of his sons became preachers (though two killed themselves in response to this pressure); Harriet Beecher Stowe was a prominent abolitionist and possibly the most famous American novelist of the nineteenth century; Henry Beecher was the most famous preacher of his generation and the star attraction at a specially built mega-church; Isabella Beecher Hooker was a leading suffragette. Only one of his four daughters refused the limelight and stubbornly chose to spend her time as a conventional housewife.
Catherine Beecher’s interests and arguments were pre-eminent in this book. She notes that she thinks suffragettes were wrong in seeking the vote – the true place for women was the home.
So much has been said of the higher sphere of woman, and so much has been done to find some better work for her that, insensibly, almost every body begins to feel that it is rather degrading for a woman in good society to be much tied down to family affairs; especially since in these Woman's Rights Conventions there is so much dissatisfaction expressed at those who would confine her ideas to the kitchen and nursery.
She barely mentions slavery or the very existence of African Americans (in a book co-authored by HBS and published in 1869!). The only comment I noted was this slighting one:
Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into New England, but it never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root or spread so as to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were opposed to it from conscientious principle—many from far-sighted thrift, and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated, and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery.
And although Christianity suffuses this book, it is certainly not Lyman Beecher’s strict Calvinism. She even points out the Christian virtues of laughter:
All medical men unite in declaring that nothing is more beneficial to health than hearty laughter; and surely our benevolent Creator would not have provided risibles, and made it a source of health and enjoyment to use them, if it were a sin so to do. There has been a tendency to asceticism, on this subject, which needs to be removed.
In short, this is a great, big, rambling book covering pretty much everything that women did in households in the nineteenth century. You want to know about the private sphere? Here is Catherine Beecher, bursting into the public sphere to tell you about it.
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