Selling Mrs. Consumer : Christine Frederick and the rise of household efficiency / Janice Williams Rutherford.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rutherford, Janice Williams, 1942-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Frederick, Christine, 1883-1970.

Frederick, Christine.

Home economics.

Home economists--Biography.

Home economists.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (316 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, c2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This first book-length treatment of the life and work of Christine Frederick (1883-1970) reveals an important dilemma that faced educated women of the early twentieth century. Contrary to her professional role as home efficiency expert, advertising consultant, and consumer advocate, Christine Frederick espoused the nineteenth-century ideal of preserving the virtuous home-and a woman's place in it. In an effort to reconcile her desire to succeed in the public sphere of modernization and consumerism with the knowledge that most middle-class Americans still held traditional beliefs about gender roles, Frederick fashioned a career for herself that encouraged other women to remain at home. With the rise of home economics and scientific management, Frederick-college-educated but confined to the drudgery of housework-devised a plan for bringing the public sphere into the domestic. Her home would become her factory. She learned how to standardize tasks by observing labor-saving devices in industry and then applied this knowledge to housework. She standardized dishwashing, for example, by breaking the job into three separate operations: scraping and stacking, washing, and drying and putting away. Determined to train women to become proficient homemakers and efficient managers, Frederick secured a job writing articles for the Ladies' Home Journal. A professional career as home efficiency expert later expanded to include advertising consultant and consumer advocate. Frederick assured male advertisers that she knew women well and promised to help them sell to "Mrs. Consumer." While Frederick sought the power and influence available only to men, she promoted a division of labor by gender and therefore served the fall of the early-twentieth-century wave of feminism. Rutherford's engaging account of Christine Frederick's life reflects a dilemma that continues to affect women today-whether to seek professional gratification or adhere to traditional family values.

Contents:

1. Only a girl

2. Drudgifying housework

3. The rise of home economics and scientific management

4. Conceiving a career

5. Promoting industry to save the home

6. Expounding the business ethic

7. Accommodating progressivism

8. A world wide lecturer

9. Reframing women's role in the twenties

10. Becoming Mrs. Consumer

11. Private life

12. Selling out Mrs. Consumer

13. The twilight of a career

14. Re-creation and legacy.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612726040

9780820324807

0820324809

9781282726048

1282726048

9780820327273

0820327271

OCLC:

680620637