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Domestic Fictions
One of my favorite holiday-themed movies is Christmas in Connecticut, a clever picture from 1945 starring Barbara Stanwyck and Sydney Greenstreet, a fabulous set of characters and a likable if somewhat forgettable leading man.
Stanwyck plays a food writer for Smart Housekeeping magazine, and her wartime readers- civilians and soldiers alike- thrill to the Martha Stewart-y perfect stories of food, family and farm life that she describes each month. The lie, of course is that she's a hard-boiled career girl living in Manhattan whose delicious recipes have been told to her by the restaurateur (Uncle Felix- played by S.Z. Sakall, who is so fabulous in everything, Casablanca especially) around the corner. Of course, she finds herself having to live the lie, appropriate a farm, borrow a baby and play hostess to a war hero while hoping that she can put one over on everyone and not reveal that she's never changed a diaper or coddled an egg in her life.
Everything about this movie is charming and I really do sleep better at night knowing that Nora Ephron hasn't decided to rediscover it and shoehorn Meg Ryan into another misguided, politically questionable remake.
And one of the things I love about the picture is how it portrays domesticity as something that doesn't really come easily, that it is something men can be better at than women, that it can be weird and foreign, terrifying and funny.
So it was with great interest that I read a review* of a new biography of the famous Mrs. Beeton, the doyenne of housekeeping in the second half of the 19th century. I read a lot of Beeton at one point and found all those details of daily life fascinating. (The biography is out in the UK now, and I am itching to get a copy. I may just have to break down and place an order from Amazon UK. I would really love to see the author's fictional account of what a day in the life of a family living the Beeton style must have been like.)Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management made Beeton the "domestic goddess" of her times. It might be best said that Martha Stewart is the modern Isabella Beeton since Beeton made her name synonymous with an empire of domestic intelligence and organization that can easily be compared to Stewart's.
At the same time, Beeton wasn't exactly a 19th century Hestia. A reprint shows the incredible range of topics covered in the Book of Household Management, but the biography points out that Beeton was chiefly an excellent journalist and clever editor, gathering recipes and information from many other authors. Her magic was not in creating but presentation (though at least one person accused Beeton of plagiarism). Even the greatest homemaker of her age wasn't entirely what she seemed to be. While her image was that of a plump, middle aged learned authority, the real Mrs Beeton published her domestic bible in serial form between the ages of 21 and 25, and died at 28 (from puerperal fever after childbirth).
The super-competent domestic diva is always a marvelous invention. Really, she's a mermaid. People claim to have seen her but she's really something more wished for than real. Martha Stewart herself is hardly a happy model, and I'm not even talking about the jail time. She's kind of interesting because she's a bit of a monster. The silky smoothness of domestic perfection is the mask the disguises work- the sweat that goes into the quotidian. I'm frankly more interested in seeing what is going on underneath than trying to assume the shining mantle myself. And it'sa good thing no one expects me to be a Beeton because the results would have less in common with romantic comedy than one of Douglas Sirk's Technicolor nightmares.
*Unfortunately, I can't link to the review because it is in the Times Literary Supplement, which offers its content only to its print subscribers.
posted by Elise at 8:14 AM
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Sugarmama said...
Hmmmm, I'll have to think on the mermaid analogy. I agree that Martha is somewhat monster-ish, but she is awfully compelling to people, no? (I struggle monthly not to embarrass myself by purchasing one of her magazines in the grocery store check-out line. And I'm not even sure why I'd be embarrassed!) The question to ask is why is she such a runaway success NOW? I don't know much about late-19th century life, but it would be interesting to read about why such books were so successful THEN, too. The domestic diva does go in and out of fashion.
11/07/2005 12:57 PM
Elise said...
Well, I think there is a constant interest - and particularly since life became more industrialized there has been considerable attention paid in print to the way things can be done. I'm not diminishing the fascination of Stewart, but I do wonder if she is this perfect machine of domesticity.
11/07/2005 1:02 PM
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Sugarmama said...