Booklist
Advancement of women's rights and equality of women in the contemporary workplace could not have happened without consistent progress in the practice, science, and technology of domestic management in the U.S. McFeely traces the evolution of domestic management from the first nineteenth-century cooperative societies, led by such luminaries as Zina Peirce and Charlotte Gilman. These schemes failed, but they set the stage for technological advances that finally loosed the chains of drudgery. McFeely makes a compelling account of the evolution of American attitudes toward food and its preparation from the privations of the Depression through World War II and into the explosive growth of processed foods during the last half of the century. She notes the irony of how each "liberating" technology added further expectations from the household manager. For example, the food processor may have produced labor savings, but it also created a demand that every kitchen produce foods just like Julia Child's Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Kirkus Reviews
A cursory swipe at the herstory of the kitchen--from the days when women put summer fruit on the tin roof of a building for two days in order to make preserves to the advent of the TV chef. McFeely's thesis is that The woman who has to provide a hot dinner for her husband and family every night is effectively tethered to the stove and limited in how much she can accomplish in the outside world. Whether or not that is true is moot. But she takes us on a whirlwind tour--from the homesteader housewife in the mid-19th century (who kneaded her dough by the sweat of her brow) to the modern homemaker of 1955 (for whom Wonder Bread was a miracle) to the contemporary working woman (whose bread machine will be used, if at all, after a long day at the office). Fanny Farmer, we learn, was the mother of level measurements, before whose advent a pinch or a dash would have to do. Julia Child brought sophistication to the peons, who had been stirring up tuna noodle casserole in a postwar world where the mixing of packaged food had become an art form. In between came the granola people (and now the bean-sprout contingent). A whole chapter is devoted to the privations of rationing in America, which is somewhat obtuse insofar as there is no corresponding consideration of the far greater hardships endured in wartime Europe. In spite of her classically feminist thesis, McFeely does not discount the social importance of cuisine altogether, and she eventually concludes on a happier note that the one she began with: Creative cooking can be compatible with creative work. . . .We do not need to lose our kitchens to keep our freedom. Tasty, but somehow unsatisfying. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
