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For my final project, I am investigating how cookbooks in the antebellum period reflect the socially prescribed roles for women, and how writing by women reflects their beliefs about their positions in society. Cookbooks, like commonplace books, were a place where women could compile pieces of information (in this case, mainly recipes) of personal value to them. In these books, they also give advice to other women intended to improve their lives, which makes cookbooks a prime point of entry for my investigation of women’s expectations for their lives and the lives of other women.
My first primary source that I chose to analyze is a cookbook by Mary Hooker Cornelius called The Young Housekeeper’s Friend. Published in 1859, it aims to provide young women who find themselves in unfamiliar territory after marriage with information on how to manage a household. The book has a very simple structure, with no table of contents to provide a reference point for the chapters Mrs. Cornelius has written. Her first chapter, titled “Counsels and Suggestions,” describes the role of the housewife and the personality characteristics she is expected to have in order to run a successful household.
In this chapter, Cornelius describes housewives as the necessary base on which society is built and depends. On the surface, this appears to both praise women. However, upon closer examination I realized that this justifies blaming women for the failures of men. Cornelius writes that the “every woman is invested with a great degree of power over the happiness and virtue of others,” a power which “when rightly directed, [is] unsurpassed by any human instrumentality in its purifying and restoring efficacy” (9). One may read this as evidence that antebellum society valued women highly for their balancing, purifying power. However, Cornelius refers to the Bible for a definition of what personality traits and work habits define a virtuous woman, and the list takes up an entire page. Therefore, with expectations so high, it would not be hard for the average woman to fall short. The consequences of this failure, Cornelius writes, are disastrous. “Many a day-laborer, on his return at evening from his hard toil, is repelled by the sight of a disorderly house . . . and perhaps is met by a cold eye instead of ‘the thrifty wifie’s smile.’” As a result, Cornelius concludes, “he makes his escape to the grog-shop or the underground gambling room” (9). Here we see the woman’s shortcomings being identified as the cause of man’s vices and moral shortcomings.
In my final project, I intend to investigate other sources like The Young Housekeeper’s Friend to see how other women have written about the role of women in the home as well as its impact on society. Hopefully I can find sources in which women (or men) have disagreed with Mrs. Cornelius or presented other roles for women, and put these opposing arguments into conversation.
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