Housework Wages, And The Ideology Of Women In Anteellum America

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Boydston, Jeanne. Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Thesis: Boydston argues that women in Antebellum America, along with the society surrounding them, believed that there was little to no economic value to the work they did in the home (xii). Boydston in her text seeks understand the "the intimate relationship between the gender and labor systems that characterized industrializing America (xii).

Themes: One of the main themes of the text is gender roles. According to Boydston, gender spheres were put into place in response to chaotic changes occurring in society (143). Work outside of the home (man 's work) was very seasonal and inconsistent and therefore a man 's "manhood" was always being challenged. Women were placed into their specific roles in order to offset that challenge to manhood, and when a women entered the wage-earning world (and worked for less than a man at that) she was challenging the manhood. Women also faced challenges to their roles as time went on. Household roles changed and women 's work became less valued over time, and …show more content…

The introduction is followed by seven chapters that describe the manner in which women from Colonial to Antebellum lived and how their work in the home changed and was valued: "An Economical Society," "A New Source of Profit and Support," "How Strangely Metamorphosed," "All the In-Doors Work," "The True Economy of Housekeeping," "The Political Economy of Housework," and "The Pastoralization of Housework." The last chapter acts as the conclusion where she states how the Antebellum woman felt devalued in her role as housewife and that women today are still devalued in the home

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