From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal in AmericaPriscilla J. Brewer examines the development and history of the first American appliance—the cast iron stove—that created a quiet, but culturally contested transformation of domestic life and sparked many important debates about the role of women, industrialization, the definition of social class, and the development of a consumer economy. Brewer explores the shift from fireplaces to stoves for cooking and heating in American homes, and sheds new light on the supposedly "separate spheres" of home and world of nineteenth- century America. She also considers the changing responses to technological development, the emergence of a consumption ethic, and the attempt to define and preserve distinct Anglo-American middle class culture. There are few works that treat this significant subject, and Brewer covers impressive new ground. Extensively documented—based on letters, diaries, probate inventories, census records, sales figures, advertisements, fiction, and advice literature-this book will be valuable to scholars of American history and women's studies. |
Contents
Good Living for Those That Love Good Fires | 1 |
So Much of the Comfort of Our Lives Depends on Fire | 15 |
The Art of Economizing Fuel | 38 |
A Great Variety of Stoves Just Received | 63 |
Near a Stove the Heart Builds No Altars | 95 |
We Have Got a Very Good Cooking Stove | 118 |
This Necessary EvilThe Cooking Stove | 153 |
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advertisement American Antiquarian Society Anglo-Americans appliances ashes bake Barnstable County Beecher boiling Boston brick oven burn century Charlotte Perkins Gilman chimney Colonial comfort concluded consumers Cookery Cooking Stove cookstove cost County Courtesy damper Diary domestic early economy Edgerton electric Elizabeth England equipment firebox fireplace firewood Franklin Institute Franklin stoves fuel Furnace gas stoves George Harper Harriet Beecher Stowe hearth heating stoves Historical Society History Housekeeping housework illus improved installed iron James John Journal kettle labor letter living Mary Mass Massachusetts Miller models oil stove open fire parlor Patent Pennsylvania Philadelphia plates Press probate inventories Providence reprint reservoir roast rural Ruth Schwartz Cowan Samuel Samuel Pierce Scientific American smoke stove manufacturers stovepipe Susan Susan Warner ten-plate Thomas Timothy Shay Arthur Univ vols warm William winter woman women wood and coal wood cookstove wood stove Woodstove Worcester wrote York