The Master’s House

Abstract Many nineteenth-century African American women writers argued that acquiring domestic habits was—for both men and women, but with the responsibility resting on women—crucial to the progress in America of those who had been previously enslaved. A good home and stable family, they said, was the best way for children to acquire an education that would enable them to take their rightful place at all levels of American society. At the same time, many of these writers were themselves itinerant lecturers who did not make it a priority to set up a home for their families. The contrast between the variations of the cult of domesticity gives us a better grasp on what is and is not at stake in the debate on the value of the home. Is having a home essential to human flourishing, and in particular to human beings’ participation in society? Or is it a way of helping some human beings (men) participate to the full by keeping others (women) working for them in the home? Are there ways for human beings to flourish that don’t involve a traditional domestic set up?