Never Done: A History of American Housework

by Susan Strasser

Overview

Never Done is the first history of American housework. Beginning with a description of household chores of the nineteenth century--cooking at fireplaces and on cast-iron stoves, laundry done with wash boilers and flatirons, endless water hauling and fire tending--Susan Strasser demonstrates how industrialization transformed the nature of women's work. Lightening some tasks and eliminating the need for others, new commercial processes inexorably altered women's daily lives and relationships--with each other and with the people they served.

In this lively and authoritative book, Strasser weaves together the history of material advances and discussions of domestic service, "women's separate sphere" and the impact of advertising, home economics and women's entry into the workforce.

Hailed as pathbreaking when originally published, Never Done remains an eye-opening examination of daily life in the American past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466847569
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/18/2013
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Susan Strasser is the author of Waste and Want and Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation. A professor of history at the University of Delaware, she lives near Washington, D.C.

Susan Strasser is the author of the award-winning Never Done: A History of American Housework, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market and Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation. A professor of history at the University of Delaware, she lives near Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Prologue: Never Done	3
1	Daily Bread	11
2	Out of the Frying Pan	32
3	The Home Fires	50
4	At the Flick of A Switch	67
5	Fetch a Pail of Water	85
6	Blue Monday	104
7	A Stitch in Time	125
8	The Boarder	145
9	Mistress and Maid	162
10	Redeeming Woman's Profession	180
11	The Business of Housekeeping	202
12	When the Bough Breaks	224
13	Selling Mrs. Consumer	242
14	Quick and Easy	263
15	You Deserve a Break	282
16	Life on the Market	300
	Source Notes	313
	Picture Credits	352
	Index	353

Editorial Reviews

Next time you feel like griping because there are dishes in the sink or the rug needs to be vacuumed, pick up this book. It is truly an eye-opening perspective on housework, not to mention a history of the tools of the trade. What is startlingly apparent is that the daily job of maintaining a home was incredibly hard work which became relegated to women as men increasingly defined their roles outside the home. This was physically intensive labor that did not leave women much time for anything else. We like to think that we are self-sufficient, but most of us are so ultimately dependent on the gadgets of our modern, industrialized society, from pre-packaged food to running water, that we don't realize how much it has changed work in the home. In part a history of housework, Susan Strasser also reveals how women's lives were shaped by these activities. As the trend toward moving work back into the home gains momentum, it will intersting to see what divisions and unity of labor occur, and how this will change the way we think about the space we inhabit or how it inhabits us.
—Ilene Rosoff

WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women

"A work of genius. . . marvelous to read."—Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Lively and provocative. . . a wonderful book. For bringing housework into the light of historical scholarship, Strasser deserves to have her name become a household word."—Jacqueline Jones, author of American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor

"Remarkable, rich and acute"—The New Yorker

From the Publisher