New Architectures of Domestic Power

Abstract This chapter looks at the role of the home in nineteenth-century America from the point of view of three white women social philosophers, Angelina Grimké, Catharine Beecher, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. All three reacted to the Cult of True or Real Womanhood that was popular at the time and portrayed women as the “angel in the house” bound to her domestic work and incapable of living a more politically active life. While both Beecher and Perkins Gilman were critical of that picture, Beecher thought it could be defended, provided women were given the right kind of education: she was the first to propose that domestic science be taught in schools. Her thought is usefully contrasted to that of her abolitionist and suffragist contemporary, Angelina Grimké. Perkins Gilman argued that with the best education women could not and should not be confined to domestic work. We will look at her arguments for a reform of the home and ask whether these reforms could in fact achieve social progress for all women.