The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities

Dolores Hayden

The M IT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England First M IT Press paperback edition, 1982 © 1981 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any infor­ mation storage and retrieval system, with­ out permission in writing from the pub­ lisher.

This book was set in Fototronic Baskerville by The Colonial Press, Inc., and printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publica­ tion Data

Hayden, Dolores. The grand domestic revolution.

Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Feminism—United States—Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Division of labor— Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Housewives— United States—Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Home —United States— Addresses, essays, lectures. 5. Women and —United States—Addresses, essays, lectures. 6. Architecture, Domestic—United States—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title. HQ1426.H33 305.4'2 80-18917

ISBN-10: 0-262-08108-3 (hard) 0-262-58055-1 (paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-262-08108-5 (hard) 978-0-262-58055-7 (paper)

14 13 12 11 10 09 Contents

I Acknowledgments Introduction

1 The Grand Domestic Revolution 2

II Communitarian Socialism and Domestic Feminism

2 Socialism in Model Villages 32

3 Feminism in Model Households 54

III Cooperative Housekeeping

4 Housewives in Harvard Square 66

5 Free Lovers, Individual Sovereigns, and Integral Cooperators 90

6 Suffragists, Philanthropists, and Temperance Workers 114 IV VI Widening Circles of Reform Backlash

7 13 Domestic Space in Madame Kollontai Fictional Socialist Cities and Mrs. Consumer 134 280

8 14 Public Kitchens, Feminist Politics Social Settlements, and Domestic Life and the Cooperative Ideal 290 150 Bibliographical Note V 306 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Her Influence Notes 310 9 Domestic Evolution Appendix or Domestic Revolution? 182 Table A.l Cooked Food Delivery Services, 10 Founded 1869-1921 Community Kitchens 346 and Cooked Food Services 206 Table A.2 Cooperative Dining Clubs, 11 Founded 1885-1907 Homes without Kitchens 352 and Towns without Housework 228 Index 356 12 Coordinating Women’s Interests 266 Shaker kitchen, 1873

The extension of the privileges of women is the fundamental cause of all social progress. — , 1808

. . . The isolated household is a source of innu­ merable evils, which Association alone can remedy. . . . — Fourierist communard, 1844

Let me tell you, my good friend, that things have indeed changed with woman. . . . True, we do not live in the ‘phalanx, ’ but you have noticed the various houses for eating which accommodate the city. . . . You would hardly recognize the process of cooking in one of our large establishments. . . . —Jane Sophia Appleton, 1848 2 Socialism in Model Villages

The Domestic Critique in Scotland between 1800 and The earliest campaigns against traditional 1824 included the Institute for the Forma­ domestic life in the United States and Eu­ tion of Character (2.1), an early attem pt at rope were launched by com munitarian so­ developmental education for the children cialists committed to building model com­ of working mothers. As Owen described it, munities as a strategy for achieving social “the Institution has been devised to afford reform. Such reformers believed that the the means of receiving your children at an construction of an ideal community would early age, as soon almost as they can walk. transform the world through the power of By this means, many of you, mothers of its example. They often described the families, will be enabled to earn a better model communal household as a world in maintenance or support for your children; miniature, a concept which at once domes­ you will have less care and anxiety about ticated and politicized them; while the children will be prevented domestic economy. Their campaigns from acquiring any bad habits and gradu­ against the isolated household were only ally prepared to learn the best.” 1 Since part of their larger social and economic this institute was intended to support goals. However, their conviction that the Owen’s claim that environment and not built environment must be transformed to heredity shaped character decisively, fash­ reflect more egalitarian systems of produc­ ionable visitors in top hats and bonnets tion and consumption persuaded them of came to observe the experiment. In 1825 the importance of making a full critique of Owen’s architect, Stedman Whitwell, pro­ conventional housing and domestic life. duced a model of an ideal community (2.2) While communitarian socialists con­ to be built on the land Owen had pur­ ducted hundreds of experiments in the chased from a German religious commu­ United States during the late eighteenth nity in New Harmony, . He called and nineteenth centuries, the theory be­ it a “parallelogram,” and it is one of the hind these experiments was first developed earliest designs for structured, multi-family in Europe. Among nonsectarian utopian housing with community facilities to be socialists, both English and French built in the United States. Although it was theorists advocated collective housework never erected, Owen’s experiment at New and child care to support equality between Harmony did include the establishment of men and women. In England, beginning community kitchens, a child care center, about 1813, Robert Owen published the and an early women’s association in the ex­ first of several plans for ideal communities isting buildings there. including collective kitchens, dining rooms, Other English radicals in the Owenite and nurseries. Owen’s experiments as man­ movement shared Owen’s goals for women ager and then as owner of textile mills at and even went beyond them. In 1825 John 34 Communitarian Socialism and Domestic Feminism

2.1 Robert Owen’s Institute for the Formation of Character, New Lanark, Scotland

2.2 Stedman Whitwell, detail from a rendering of Robert Owen’s ideal community, or parallel- logram, 1825, showing suites of private rooms under peaked roofs and collective facilities at comers and in center 35 Socialism in M odel Villages

Gray offered A Lecture on Human Happiness gree of emancipation of women is the nat­ to a cooperative society in London, with an ural measure of general emancipation” and appendix proposing a community with stated that “the extension of the privileges freedom from domestic drudgery for all, of women is the fundamental cause of all stating that household jobs such as cooking, social progress.” 4 Therefore he argued that laundry, and building fires to heat rooms a society which condemned women to do­ should be handled by “scientific princi­ mestic drudgery was inferior to one where ples.” 2 In 1826 the Friendly Association men and women shared equally in human for Mutual Interests, a community located activities, and women enjoyed economic at Valley Forge, , republished independence. Fourier identified the pri­ his lecture with their constitution. In the vate dwelling as one of the greatest obsta­ same year as Gray’s lecture, William cles to improving the position of women in Thompson, with the help of Anna civilization; for him, improved housing de­ Wheeler, made his celebrated Appeal to one sign was as essential to women’s rights as half of the Human Race, Women, against the improved settlement design was to the re­ pretensions of the other Half, Men, to retain them form of industrial workers’ lives. He hoped in Civil and Domestic Slavery. He criticized to introduce structured housing with col­ the home as an “eternal prison house lective facilities which would make the for the wife” and an institution “chiefly for most elegant conventional private home the drillings of a superstition to render her appear “a place of exile, a residence wor­ more submissive.” He called for economic thy of fools, who after three thousand years independence for women, communal up­ of architectural studies, have not yet bringing of children, and recognition of the learned to build themselves healthy and right of women to work outside the home comfortable lodgings.” 5 The phalanstery, and to receive support during pregnancy.3 or “unitary dwelling,” Fourier believed, In the next decade Owenite women or­ was an architectural invention to overcome ganized the first women’s cooperative asso­ the conflicts between city and country, rich ciation in England around these demands, and poor, men and women, by an hoping to raise funds to create “associated enlightened arrangement of economic and homes.” social resources. Robert Owen and his followers de­ In the United States, Owen inspired manded “a new moral world”; his French about fifteen experiments in model com­ contemporary, Charles Fourier, proposed munity building beginning in the ; “a new industrial world” and “a new amo­ Fourier inspired about thirty Associations, rous world.” The Owenites had a strong or Phalanxes, based on his ideas, beginning feminist theoretical position, but the fol­ in the 1840s. (A smaller number of experi­ lowers of Charles Fourier were even more ments of both types were conducted in Eu­ adamant. Fourier claimed that “The de­ rope as well.) The Fourierists or Associa- 36 Communitarian Socialism and Domestic Feminism

tionists in America usually preceded their fortunes to any man.” He believed that attempts to build the perfect phalanstery • “Woman will never be free, save in the with polemics against the isolated house­ large home, the varied and attractive in­ hold. As one communard explained in a dustry of the Phalanx, where she has her Fourierist journal in 1844, “The isolated choice of all the departments of domestic, household is wasteful in economy, is untrue mechanical, and agricultural labors and to the human heart, and is not the design arts. . . . There the real charms of mater­ of God, and therefore it must disappear.” nity will be enjoyed, because there, in the This author asserted that the phalanstery unitary nurseries and miniature workshops would increase the residents’ privacy as children can be safely and happily pro­ well as their collective advantages: vided for, either in the presence or absence . . . When we say the isolated household of the mother; and the children mutually is a source of innumerable evils, which As­ amuse each other, without requiring, each sociation alone can remedy, the mind of of them, the continued attention of one or the hearer sometimes rushes to the conclu­ more adults.” Associationist women shared sion that we mean to destroy the home re­ Longley’s and Lazarus’s desire to hasten lations entirely. . . . The privacy of do­ mestic life, Association aims to render more the disappearance of the isolated house­ sacred, as well as to extend it to all hold. In 1847 the women of the Trumbull men. . . ,6 Phalanx in Ohio wrote to the Union of Another Fourierist communard agreed: in­ Women for Association, formed in Boston, stead of sacrificing individuality and inde­ “Could all the women fitted to engage in pendence, the combined household may be Social Reform be located on one domain, so conducted that “the members shall have one cannot imagine the immense changes more privileges and privacy than can be that would there ensue. We pray that we, obtained in isolation.” or at least our children, may live to see the Writing from an experimental commu­ day when kindred souls shall be permitted nity near Cincinnati, Alcander Longley ex­ to co-operate in a sphere sufficiently exten­ plained: “The combined household is the sive to call forth all our powers.” 8 most glorious feature in a co-operative so­ Although nonsectarian Associationists ciety, because it frees woman from the led this critical response to the isolated household drudgery which is unavoidable household, many reformers involved with in separable households.” 7 The goals in sectarian communistic societies also criti­ the phalanstery were collective child care cized private home life as wasteful and op­ and employment for women. Marx Edge- pressive to women and men. Mary An­ worth Lazarus, a prominent intellectual in toinette Doolittle, a Shaker eldress, claimed the movement, stated: “The industrial in­ that she preferred a collective, celibate life dependence of woman will emancipate her of prayer and work to the destiny of a farm from the necessity of attaching her life and wife whose chief duty would be to “rock 37 Socialism in Model Villages

the cradle and sing lullabye” in addition to spaces. Usually families occupied private doing housework.9 John Humphrey Noyes, apartments and had access to the shared founder of the Oneida Community, com­ kitchens, dining rooms, and nurseries. plained of the “gloom and dullness of ex­ (Even when Fourierist communities called cessive family isolation,” or the “little man- their housing a unitary dwelling, such a and-wife circle,” where one suffered “the structure contained many private spaces.) discomfort and waste attendant on the If a unitary dwelling was impossible, a net­ domestic economy of our separate work of related buildings, including private households.” 10 family houses or apartment houses and In contrast to the private household, various shared housekeeping facilities, which all these reformers denounced as iso­ might serve the same purpose. lated, wasteful, and oppressive, the com­ Although the Owenites did not build munitarians hoped to build communal or any major structure in the United States, cooperative facilities for domestic tasks, the Associationists erected many phalanste­ tangible, architectural demonstrations of ries. At the North American Phalanx, a the workings of a more egalitarian society. community of about one hundred and The architectural form of model villages twenty-five members established in New was determined by the economic and social Jersey in 1843, a communal kitchen, laun­ structure of the communities they served, dry, and bakery were contained in the so that the problems of mechanizing and same building as private apartments (with­ measuring domestic work were solved in a out kitchens) and dormitories, but mem­ great variety of ingenious ways. At least bers were also permitted to build private two types of economic and social organiza­ houses (with kitchens) on the domain." tion among communitarian socialists must The community in West Rox- be distinguished: the community contain­ bury, Massachusetts, also built a large pha­ ing nuclear families within it, who retained lanstery, but it was destroyed by fire before some degree of private family life, and the the members could occupy it; the Raritan community functioning as one large “fam­ Bay Union in New Jersey erected an elabo­ ily” engaged in communal living. rate structure of this type as well. As about thirty American Associationist experiments The Community Organization developed between 1840 and 1860, their Including Families architecture became a popular topic of dis­ Following the manifestos of the Owenites cussion, but by far the most impressive and Associationists, communities which buildings were erected for the Familistćre contained nuclear families within them or Social Palace, at Guise, France, by the offered collective housekeeping and child­ Fourierist Jean-Baptiste-Andrć Godin, be­ care arrangements, but emphasized the ginning in 1859, to provide innovative provision of private as well as community housing for several hundred iron foundry 38 Communitarian Socialism and Domestic Feminism

workers and their families. These apart­ The Communal Family ments included private kitchens, but the While communities including families most Guise complex also contained a large din­ closely resembled the larger society in their ing hall, cafe, and child-care center (2.3, housing needs, communities organized as 2.4, 2.5). one very large family often produced spec­ In contrast to the nonsectarian tacularly efficient collective domestic serv­ Fourierists’ “unitary dwellings,” some sec­ ices. Almost all of the communities or­ tarian groups built villages composed of ganized as one family were religious groups small, private apartment houses and collec­ practicing economic . They of­ tive housekeeping facilities. The Harmony ten wished to abolish the nuclear family in Society, a German religious group led by order to promote greater attachment to a , built three towns in the shared faith and a shared communal ideol­ United States between 1805 and 1824. ogy. Total economic communism and a Nine hundred members at Economy, commitment to celibacy or Pennsylvania, lived in such houses and (viewed as the sexual counterpart of eco­ dormitories, each with its own kitchen, but nomic communism) were frequently re­ they also had a large communal kitchen quired by such groups, and they often and feast hall used on special occasions. built large dwellings where members were The Amana Inspirationists built fifty-two housed in rooms or dormitories connected communal kitchen houses, each serving to one large kitchen, dining room, and about fifty people, in the seven communal nursery. villages which these German and Swiss im­ Some communal families and their ar­ migrants established in beginning in chitecture are well known. The Oneida 1855. Residents dwelt in private family Perfectionists, led by John Humphrey apartments (usually four apartments to a Noyes and Erastus Hamilton, the house) and in dormitories.12 Schools, kin­ community’s architect, built a very sub­ dergartens, and other workshops were lo­ stantial communal home in central New cated near the residences and kitchens (2.6, York State for two hundred members, be­ 2.7). Similar arrangements prevail in the ginning in 1847 (2.8). The masthead of Bruderhof and Hutterian communities that their newspaper, The American Socialist, pro­ are still active in the United States and moted “the enlargement and improvement Canada: small buildings containing several of home,” and in 1862, with the dedication family apartments, some with minimal pri­ of their Second Mansion House, they vate kitchens, are served by communal claimed that “Communism in our society cooking and dining facilities. has built itself a house.” 13 Views of Perfec­ tionist communal housekeeping facilities were published in several popular illus­ trated magazines between 1850 and 1875 39 Socialism in Model Villages

(2.11). The Shakers, led by Ann Lee, built and industrial workers. This was the ideal; nineteen celibate communistic settlements the reality for female workers often in­ between 1774 and 1826, located from cluded improved work environments but Maine to Kentucky. Their ingenious com­ rarely equal pay, and only occasionally an munal housekeeping arrangements also end to confinement in domestic industries. received wide publicity; usually their “fam­ From a feminist viewpoint, the major ily” dwellings housed thirty to one hun­ achievement of most communitarian ex­ dred people (2.9, 2.10). periments was ending the isolation of the housewife. Domestic work became social Socialized Domestic Work labor. Shaker women sang humorous songs This brief review of housing arrangements about cooking and cleaning while they designed for com munitarian socialists’ worked. Workers in the fifty-two kitchen model villages can only begin to suggest houses which were built by the Amana the variety of plans for domestic reform community claimed that they were the devised in hundreds of sectarian and non- “dynamic centers of the villages.” Besides sectarian experiments. It is difficult to as­ being places for village celebrations, the sess the effect of such unorthodox domestic Amana kitchen houses, with eight or ten architecture on the female and male do­ women working under a Kuchenbas, became mestic workers who participated in these centers of news and information. A resi­ innovative projects. Nevertheless, one can dent described going to the kitchen house examine evidence from various experi­ “for the only social life we knew, for ments concerning the efficient performance snatches of gossip and legitimate news, and of domestic work and the degree of wom­ just ordinary companionship.” 14 en’s confinement to domestic industries. A second achievement was the division Most communitarian socialists hoped to and specialization of household labor. seize economic initiative in three areas: Kitchens became shops serving the entire agriculture, industry, and domestic work. community, like other facilities. Gardening, By combining the labor of many workers, preserving, cleaning, baking, cooking, iron­ male and female, they proposed to end the ing, gathering herbs, and caring for chil­ isolation of the individual farmer, indus­ dren were all skills required within the trial worker, and housewife, improving effi­ communal economy which could be ciency through some division of labor learned. Domestic work took its place on while keeping all individuals involved with organizational charts parallel to agri­ these three areas of work. Improved work cultural or industrial production. All mem­ environments and equal wages were often bers, male and female, were required to advertised to make such communities at­ put in a certain number of hours per day, tractive to both men and women, farmers and all work areas were designed to a cer­ tain standard.

2.3 The Familistere, or Social Palace, Guise, France, begun in 1859, detail of view showing housing at left rear; bakery, cafe, schools, the­ ater, restaurant, and butcher shop at left front. Iron foundry on right not shown. The nursery is at the rear of the central apartment block. From Harper’s Monthly, April 1872.

2.4 Section and partial plan of an apartment block at the Familistere, showing collective serv­ ices such as refuse ćhut«.:, piped water, heating and ventilating systems; the collective spaces, such as the central courtyard, galleries at each floor, and water closets on each landing; and the built-in wardrobes in each lodging room. Dwell­ ing units for families might be made up of one, two, three, or five adjacent rooms. From Harper’s Monthly, April 1872.

2.5 Festival of Labor, held in the glass-roofed central courtyard of an apartment block at the Familistere, showing galleries and entrances to private dwelling units, from Harper’s Monthly, April 1872. T his is the social space, filled with people, idealized by every Fourierist group. 2.6 Plans of small apartment house, Amana, Iowa, 1855, showing small apartm ents of parlor and bedroom 2.8 Plan of first floor of the communal dwelling built by Oneida Community, Kenwood, , 1861-1878: 1, office and cloakroom; 2, re­ ception room; 3, library; 4, lower sitting room; 5, single bedroom; 6, shared bedroom; 7, bath­ room; 8, lounge or workshop; 9, workshop; 10, diningroom ; 11, dining addition; 13, 14, sitting rooms; 15, nursery kitchen; 17, nursery; 18, 21, 22, corridors; 19, vestibule; 23, porch, 24, tower. 2.9 Basement plan, first floor plan, and view of communal dwelling built by Shaker community, Church Family, Hancock, Massachusetts, 1830

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2.10 Collective domestic work in a Shaker com­ munity: Shaker women cooking, sewing, mend­ ing, and serving food, as shown in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Septem ber 13, 1873 2.11 Collective child raising at the Oneida Community, the “Children’s Hour,” and the school, as shown in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News­ paper, April 9, 1870. W om en are wearing the Bloomer dresses developed by dress reform advo­ cates in the 1840s. 48 Communitarian Socialism and Domestic Feminism

The socialization of domestic labor pro­ fort.” 16 Lists of domestic inventions pro­ vided an obvious justification for better de­ duced by members of various communities sign and equipment: fifty private families are equaled only by the lists of inventions might need fifty kitchens and fifty stoves, in their other industries. The Shakers have but a communal family, with one large to their credit an improved washing ma­ kitchen and one large stove, had the re­ chine; the common clothespin; a double sources to invest in additional, more rolling pin for faster pastry making; a coni­ sophisticated labor-saving devices. Com­ cal stove to heat flatirons; the flat broom; munitarian socialists took pride in provid­ removable window sash, for easy washing; ing themselves with the latest in heating, a window-sash balance; a round oven for lighting, and sanitation devices, designed more even cooking; a rotating oven shelf to ensure the health of their members and for removing items more easily; a butter lighten domestic labor. And what they worker; a cheese press; a pea sheller; an didn’t acquire, the women and men of the apple peeler; and an apple parer which group might invent. quartered and cored the fruit. Members of The devised special in­ the Oneida Community produced a lazy- sulation and ventilation for its houses. The susan dining-table center, an improved Oneida Perfectionists installed gas light, mop wringer, an improved washing ma­ steam baths, and steam heat in their com­ chine, and an institutional-scale potato munal Mansion House in the 1860s. This peeler. (Their community policy was to ro­ last comfort caused almost hysterical ex­ tate jobs every few months, so that skills citement: “Good-bye wood sheds, good-bye learned in one community shop might be stoves, good-bye coal scuttles, good-bye the source of inventions to speed another pokers, good-bye ash sifters, good-bye stove sort of task.) dust, and good-bye coal gas. Hail to the Inventiveness also extended to develop­ one fire millennium!” 13 Yet, significantly, ing equipment and spaces for child care. the Oneidans retained one wood-burning For their kindergartens, the Amana In­ stove in a small room they called their spirationists built large cradles which could “Pocket Kitchen.” The warmth of a direct hold as many as six children. Other com­ heat source in a small space was appre­ munes had specially designed furniture at ciated as having nurturing qualities which child scale, a novelty not to be found in couldn’t be improved upon. Here was the most nineteenth-century homes. One early community medicine chest and a place for twentieth-century , the Bru­ telling one’s troubles. derhof, still supports itself today by manu­ Charles Nordhoff, a traveling journalist facturing Community Playthings. Outdoor who visited many American in spaces might be designed with children in the 1870s, commented that “a communist’s mind as well: the Oneida Community had life is full of devices for ease and com­ an extensive landscaped playspace; the 49 Socialism in Model Villages

Shakers created model farms and gardens saving devices, women’s overall hours of for their boys and girls. work were limited. Rather than being on Communitarian socialists often found it call day and night, like the average wife profitable to manufacture and market their and mother, many communitarian women domestic inventions, such as the Shakers’ had leisure to develop their other interests improved washing , their window- such as reading, writing, participating in sash balance, and the Bruderhofs toys, but musical or theatrical performances, devel­ these inventions were not the only com­ oping friendships, enjoying amorous rela­ mercial extension of their domestic life. tionships. This gave them a degree of free­ Once “women’s” work was officially recog­ dom unimaginable in the larger society, nized, timed, and costed it might become a especially if their community provided day source of revenue to extend domestic serv­ care facilities. ices to customers outside the community. Although most experiments managed to Thus a communal sewing room might be­ limit the hours of work for women, domes­ gin to sell clothes, or a communal kitchen tic work was not always as highly paid as might also function as a restaurant. Among other communal industries, and women the Shakers, well-equipped facilities for were not always encouraged to enter other spinning, dyeing, , sewing, and areas of work. The celibate Shakers kept ironing made it possible to fill a demand all areas of work restricted by sex; men among outsiders for warm Shaker cloaks. and women never worked together. Other And the Oneidans, by the 1870s, were serv­ communes, like Oneida and the North ing hundreds of meals to visitors every American Phalanx, made gestures toward week. Members of the Woman’s Common­ encouraging women to enter administra­ wealth, a community in Belton, Texas, ac­ tion, factory work, and other nondomestic tually made hotel and laundry manage­ jobs. Consciousness of the problems of so­ ment their major source of income, taking cialization for women’s work was high at over a hotel in their town as both a com­ Oneida, where young girls were told to get munal residence and a profit-making rid of their dolls lest they learn to be venture. mothers before they had learned to be per­ If the first goal of many communitarians sons.17 Consciousness was not enough, was efficiency in domestic industries, the however, for although some Oneida second was ending the confinement of women worked in the community factory, women to domestic work. In most of the most worked in domestic industries, appar­ experiments described, cooking, cleaning, ently by choice, and the situation was the and child care remained women’s work, same in most other experimental com­ despite some limited participation by men. munities, especially those which encour­ But, because of the division and specializa­ aged women to perfect domestic skills. One tion of labor and the introduction of labor- old photograph of a sewing class at a 50 Communitarian Socialism and Domestic Feminism

Fourierist community showing only young created in experimental socialist communi­ women in attendance suggests the kind of ties had a lasting effect on the American community pressures which countered people. They made it very clear that do­ some groups’ official proclamations on mestic space was a social product. women’s work. In particular Fourier’s phalanstery influenced the development of Victorian A Lasting Influence buildings for many different social reform What influence did all these attempts to programs — including asylums, peniten­ develop convincing domestic alternatives tiaries, settlement houses, model corporate actually exert? Communitarian socialist ex­ towns, and model tenement houses. periments often produced plans suitable Fourier’s most important influence, how­ only for a socialist, feminist society, the like ever, was among feminist reformers who of which American citizens had not yet hoped to reorganize the domestic economy, seen. In the most consistent experiments, Nineteenth-century American feminists there is a sense of unreality: they seem too who appreciated his ideas were even more perfect, with round ovens, clever tables, numerous than the twentieth-century Bol­ and ingenious cradles. Everyone has been sheviks who were fond of quoting Fourier’s so busy working out the details of the new feminist aphorisms.18 arrangements that they have had no time to think about the world outside the ex­ Seneca Falls periment. Nevertheless, communitarians Elizabeth Cady Stanton spent two days developed a domestic architecture on a with the Associationists at the Brook Farm collective rather than a private basis, in community in the 1840s, finding them “a workable and complex forms, as well as in charming family of intelligent men and fantastic and unrealistic ones. women.” 19 As followers of Charles Fourier, This collective domestic world did not, they believed that the isolated household as some communitarians had hoped,, could never represent the best development totally transform the economic and politi­ of human sociability, talent, and culture, a cal realities of women’s situation within theme that Stanton would repeat through­ these communities. It was no more possible out her career. A few years later, Stanton to insert people of both sexes into a pha­ moved to Seneca Falls, New York. There lanstery with a single kitchen, and end role she was at the heart of upstate New York’s stereotyping, than it was to insert people of “burned-over” district, a haven for reli­ all classes into such a structure, let “pas­ gious revivalists which was also heavily col­ sional attraction” go to work, and watch a onized by communitarian socialists. In ad­ evolve. Nevertheless, the dition to the Oneida Community, founded communitarian socialists’ polemics about in 1847, two Shaker villages had been design and the new architectural forms founded at Groveland and Sonyea, and no 51 Socialism in Model Villages

fewer than eight Fourierist Phalanxes were Stanton’s colleague from Seneca Falls, launched there in the mid-1840s. Amelia Bloomer, also campaigned against In her rousing speech at the Seneca Falls the isolated home. In the late 1850s, when Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, Stan­ she had moved from New York to Council ton revealed that in addition to her experi­ Bluffs, Iowa, Bloomer gave an address to a ences in the Abolitionist movement, her local women’s association, “On Housekeep­ own domestic isolation in a district of com­ ing — Woman’s Burdens.” She asked “Is munal experiments had sparked her protest there not some way of relief from this on behalf of women. As a housewife, she drudging, weary work over the cookstove, said, “my duties were too numerous and washtub, and sewing ; from this varied, and none sufficiently exhilarating load of labor and care?” She believed that or intellectual to bring into play my one-fifth of all women could, by “some rea­ higher faculties. I suffered with mental sonable and just system of cooperation” re­ hunger. . . . I now fully understood the lieve the other four-fifths of their labors practical difficulties most women had to and “give them time for self-improvement contend with in the isolated household, and the care and culture of their chil­ and the impossibility of woman’s best de­ dren.” 22 She also advocated a common velopment if in contact, the chief part of playroom for children, according to one her life, with servants and children. journalist, who states that husbands ob­ Fourier’s phalansterie community life and jected to the project and refused to finance co-operative households had new it.23 significance for me.” 20 Stanton’s own political career, while Bangor conceived in reaction to the isolated home, In 1848, the same year that Stanton and dealt with suffrage and legal rights for Bloomer began to organize for women’s women, rather than improved housing. At rights in Seneca Falls, Jane Sophia Apple­ the same time, in her radical paper, The ton exploited the communitarian socialists’ Revolution, she and her associate editor, domestic critique to develop a proposal for Parker Pillsbury, ran several articles prais­ new forms of urban design. Appleton, a ing experiments in cooperative housekeep­ housewife in Bangor, Maine, decided to ing in 1868 and 1869. In 1899 she urged construct a fictional vision of her city in Susan B. Anthony to include cooperative the year 1978, which included a complete housekeeping on the agenda for the N a­ economic and environmental reorganiza­ tional American W om an’s Suffrage Asso­ tion of domestic work on Fourierist lines.24 ciation convention, arguing that “woman’s The narrator of Appleton’s story explains work can never be properly organized in her ideas to a time traveler from Victorian the isolated home.” 21 America: “The household arrangements of this age,” her narrator reports, “arc some­ 52 Communitarian Socialism and Domestic Feminism

what different from yours I imagine. At process of turning out a ton of bread, or this moment you may see an exem­ roasting an ox! — as much as the weaving plification of it, in the gay groups of people of a yard of cloth in one of your factories. No fuming, no fretting over the cooking which you notice yonder, just filling the stove, as of old! No “roasted lady” at the streets, as they go to their eating houses.” head of the dinner table! Steam machin­ Responds the time traveler, “Eating ery, division of labor, economy of material, houses! Ah! It seems to me that looks a lit­ make the whole as agreeable as any other tle like Fourierism, but the tall individual toil, while the expense to pocket is as much whom I met in the morning, told me that less to man as the wear of patience, time, bone and muscle to woman. . . . the community system ‘died out’ long ago, Ah, you did not begin to live in your and that people lived in families, and benighted nineteenth century! Just think of women cooked and scrubbed, baked and the absurdity of one hundred housekeepers, patched, as of old.” The narrator cuts in, every Saturday morning, striving to en­ “And so people do live in families, and al­ lighten one hundred girls in the process of making pies for one hundred little ovens! ways will, I reckon” but he adds, “Let me (Some of these remain to this day, to the tell you, my good friend, that things have great glee of antiquarians.) What fatigue! indeed changed with woman. . . . And W hat vexation! Why, ten of our cooks, in for this progress, we are mainly indebted to the turning of a few cranks, and an hour or the genius of Charles Fourier, who, by his so of placing materials, produce enough pies to supply the whole of this city, — profound insight into the evils of society, rather more than all your ladies could do induced such changes as gave due compen­ together, I fancy.26 sation to all industry, whether in man, Following this description of the large woman, or child.” 25 kitchens and an equally glowing account of True, we do not live in the phalanx, but a mechanical laundry on the Penobscot, you have noticed the various houses for the narrator concludes that women workers eating which accommodate the city. Cov­ ered passages in some of the streets, the ar­ in all these domestic industries and others, cade style of building generally adopted in “command as high remuneration as others, and carriages for the more isolate any. . . . In every station, pecuniary inde­ and wealthy residences, make this a per­ pendence is her own.” 27 fectly convenient custom, even in our cli­ How had this new domestic world come mate, and ’tis so generally adopted by our about? First cooperative stores were es­ people that only now and then a fidgetty man, or a peremptory woman, attempts any­ tablished in Bangor, where the poor “com­ thing like the system of housekeeping in bined to purchase their supplies at shops your day. . . . You would hardly recog­ established expressly for them, that their nize the process of cooking in one of our small parcels might come to them at large establishments. Quiet, order, pru­ wholesale prices.” Second came philan­ dence, certainty of success, govern the thropic benefactors who built “comfort­ 53 Socialism in Model Villages

able, cheap dwellings, with the privilege tivists would follow her lead, seeking fern: for each tenant of a certain right in a com­ nist theory and practice appropriate for mon bakery, school, etc.” Third, wise legis­ households in the cities and towns of the lation helped the poor and “taxed the United States, yet equal to the achieve­ hoarder, or rich man.” 28 ments of the earlier communitarian so­ As a result, the author claimed that cialists in their imaginative power. Bangor society in 1978 offered all the benefits of communitarian socialism with none of the problems of rural isolation or mandatory communal living. Bangor was prosperous, a city of urban arcaded streets and suburban residences, still showing some class distinctions but far more egali­ tarian than it had been in the nineteenth century. Women received equal pay for woman’s work, and the physical space of the city had been shaped to suit this new domestic system. Appleton wrote her “Sequel to the Vi­ sion of Bangor in the Twentieth Century” in 1848 in response to a short utopian sketch by Edward Kent, the Whig Gov­ ernor of Maine, who had predicted that the women of the twentieth century would be content in their domestic lives without the vote or political power.29 Provoked by his smug predictions, Appleton took the proposals of Fourier and Owen and her knowledge of a small Maine town, and re­ designed her domestic world. The contro­ versy between Appleton and Kent must have entertained Bangor society, since Ap­ pleton published both sketches in a volume for the benefit of the Bangor Female O r­ phan Asylum. Hers was a fictional proph­ ecy which many earnest feminists were to take up in the century to come. House­ wives, domestic scientists, and political ac­ 315 Notes to Pages 33-49

8 Chapter 2 Marx Edgeworth Lazarus, Love vs. Marriage (1852), reprinted in Taylor Stoehr, Free Love in 1 Robert Owen, A New View o f Society; or, Essays on America: A Documentary History (New York: AMS the Principle of the Formation o f the Human Character Press, 1979), 85; letter from the women of (London: Cadell and Davies, 1813); and, by the Trum bull Phalanx, July 15, 1847, published in same author, The Book of the New Moral World, The Harbinger, 5 (August 7, 1847), reprinted in Containing the Rational System o f Society, parts I—VII C ott, Root of Bitterness, 244. (London: E. Wilson, 1836-1845). On Owen’s 9 achievements, see John F. C. Harrison, Quest for Mary Antoinette Doolittle, Autobiography of Mary the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites Antoinette Doolittle (New Lebanon, N.Y.: 1880). in Britain and America (New York: Charles New work on Shaker women by D’Ann Camp­ Scribner’s Sons, 1969); A rthur Bestor, Backwoods bell and other scholars should provide many : The Sectarian Origins and the Owenite Phase more insights into their lives and roles. of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663-1829, 10 2d ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania John Humphrey Noyes, History of American Social Press, 1970); and M argaret Steinfels, Who’s isms (1870; New York: Dover Press, 1966), 23. Minding the Children? The History and Politics of 11 Day Care in America (New York: Simon and For an extensive discussion of the ideological Schuster, 1973), 35. and architectural history of the North American Phalanx, see Dolores Hayden, Seven American Uto 2 Sheila Rowbotham , Women, Resistance and Revolu­ pias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, tion (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1790-1975 (Cambridge, Mass.: M IT Press, 1972), 47. 1976), 148-185. 3 12 Quoted in Rowbotham, Women, Resistance, and Ibid., 224-259. Revolution, 49. See also B arbara T aylor, “T he 13 John Humphrey Noyes, address on “Dedication Men Are As Bad As T h eir M asters . . . ,” Femi­ of the New Community Mansion,” Oneida Circu­ nist Studies, 5 (Spring 1979), 7-40. 4 lar (O neida, N.Y.), February 27, 1862, 9. Also see Hayden, Seven American Utopias, 186-223. Charles Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvements (1808), quoted in Row botham , Women, Resistance 14 Barbara S. Yambura, with Eunice Bodine, A and Revolution, 51; Charles Fourier, Oeuvres Change and a Parting: My Story of Amana (Ames, completes, I, 131-33 (1846), trans, in Jonathan Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1960), 79. Beecher and Richard Bienvenu, eds., The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier (Boston: Beacon Press, 15 1971). Oneida Circular, February 14, 1870, 380. 5 16 Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the Charles Fourier, Traite d’association domestique- United States (1875; New York: Dover 1966), 401. agricole (1822), quoted in Beecher and Bienvenu, eds., Utopian Vision. 17 6 Judith Fryer, “American Eves in American Edens,” American Scholar, 44 (W inter 1974-1975), The Phalanx, I (February 8, 1844), 317-319, re­ 89. Louis J. Kem, “Ideology and Reality: Sexu­ printed in Nancy F. C ott, Root of Bitterness: Docu­ ality and Women’s Status in the Oneida Com­ ments of the Social History of American Women (New m unity,” Radical History Review 20 (Spring- York; E. P. D utton, 1972), 246-247. Sum m er 1979), 180-205, explains the campaign against dolls as part of a campaign against Alcander Longley, quoted in The Co-operator women’s “maternal instincts” in the community. (London), August 1, 1865. 87. 316 Notes to Pages 50-60

18 Beatrice Brodsky Farnsworth, “, the Chapter 3 Woman Question, and Aleksandra Kollontai,” 1 The American Historical Review, 81 (April 1976), Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in 292. American Domesticity (New Haven: Yale Univer­ 19 sity Press, 1973), 153. See also chapter 1, note 5, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More: for a definition of domestic feminism. Reminiscences 1815-1897 (New York: Schocken, 2 1971), 134. Ibid., 153; Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet 20 Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home Ibid., 147. (1869; Hartford, Conn.: Stowe-Day Foundation, 21 1975), 13. Beecher was the most influential ad­ The Revolution, 2 (D ecember 10, 1868), 362; 4 vocate of domestic feminism, but many other (July 15, 1869), 42; 4 (July 29, 1869), 57-58; writers on domestic economy, including Caroline Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, Howard Gilman, Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Jo- eds., Elizabeth Cady Stanton As Revealed in Her Let­ sepha Hale, and Marion Harland, followed this ters, Diary, and Reminiscences (New York: Harper, line. The contradictions the domestic feminist 1922), II, 346. strategies entailed are endless: the writers them­ 22 selves, for example, defied their own recommen­ D. C. Bloomer, Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer dations that women not venture beyond (Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1895), 273-277. domestic life. Ultimately the paradox of advo­ 23 cating women’s power but limiting it to house­ Charles Neilson Gattey, The Bloomer Girls (Lon­ hold affairs was one these authors passed on to don: Femina, 1967), 160. the home economists, or domestic scientists, who 24 attempted to make a recognized, paid profes­ Jane Sophia Appleton, “Sequel to the Vision of sional field out of “woman’s work" at the end of Bangor in the Twentieth Century,’’ in Jane the nineteenth century. Sophia Appleton and Cornelia Crosby Barrett, 3 eds., Voices from the Kenduskeag (Bangor: D. Bug- Catharine E. Beecher, “How to Redeem bee, 1848), republished in A rthur O rcutt Lewis, Woman’s Profession from Dishonor," Harper’s American Utopias: Selected Short Fiction (New York: New Monthly Magazine, 31 (November 1865), 710. Arno Press, 1971), 243-265. Beecher sometimes gives instructions about the 25 mistress-servant relationship, however, for those Appleton, "Sequel to the Vision of Bangor,” who have not taken her advice about eliminat­ 253-255. ing servants. 26 4 Ibid., 256-257. Ibid., 712. 27 5 Ibid., 258. Ibid., 716. 28 6 Ibid., 255-256. Catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Econ­ 29 omy, For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at Edward Kent, “A Vision of Bangor in the School, rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1846), 172. Twentieth Century,” in Lewis, American Utopias, 7 59-73. Beecher and Stowe, American Woman’s Home, 13. 8 Ibid., 334. This is first proposed in Christopher Crowfield (Harriet Beecher Stowe), House and Home Papers (Boston: Fields Osgood and Co., 18651. 223.