The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood

In May of 1955,  Housekeeping Monthly,  a magazine geared to housewives,ran an article called The Good Wife's Guide. The magazine cover depicts a cheerful woman in high heels and pearls taking cookies out of the oven while her husband, in a pin-striped suit, comes home from work looking for a friendly greeting. In 1957, the article was re-published in a male oriented magazine appropriately entitled, John Bull, with the same picture displayed on its cover.  The article consisted of a lengthy list of what the good wife needs to do to please her husband, and, just a few of the numerous suggestions:  

• Have dinner ready.  This is a way of letting him know  that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. 
• Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and Be happy to see him.  Be loving and attentive.  He's had a hard day.
• A good wife knows her place.

When I first saw this, it seemed like a joke, but then I realized these were the gold standards, the expectations of the Dominant Culture/Patriarchal household of the 1950's, not so different from The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood, written over 100 years earlier.  The doctrines of that era suggest:  piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity.  Fast forward to today, when I found an cleverly updated parody posted on the internet with suggestions for husbands, and appropriately named, The Good Husband's Guide.  Here are a few of those ideas: 

• Always make getting and keeping a full-time job with regular raises, benefits, bonuses and the potential for prestigious advancement your number one priority in life.  You have a family to take care of.  
• Always arrive home refreshed and happy - put your bad day or your confrontation with your boss, the traffic, or your exhaustion aside and try to arrive home as cheery as you possibly can.  Your wife has been struggling with the children and housework all day and does not need to hear how bad your day was.
• Be prepared to help with household chores when you get home - let your wife relax or talk on the phone since she has been dealing with these problems all day.

Barbara Erenreich, in Maid to Order, resonates..."the feminist perception of housework as one more way by which men exploit women or, more neutrally stated, as a 'symbolic enactment of gender relations'."

The visual brings to mind an excerpt from The Politics of Housework, where Pat Mainardi says, "women have been brainwashed more than even we can imagine. Probably too many years of seeing television women in ecstacy over their shiny waxed floors or breaking down over their dirty shirt collars.  Men have no such conditioning.  They recognize the essential fact of housework right from the very beginning.  Which is that it stinks."