Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks they Wrote by Janet Theophano provides an insightful and well documented survey to the potential knowledge found in non-traditional archives. Thanks to the modern study of material culture, the concept of turning to physical home-goods such as quilts, baskets, and other similar items is not an entirely new concept. What makes this book fresh and interesting is Theophano’s desire to provide her readers with the appropriate tools and context from which they may be able to better understand more specific characteristics of the marginalized women represented within these pages.
Theophano is a professor in the Center of Folklore and Ethnology at the University of Pennsylvania, where her
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Eat my Words provokes the idea that the book may provide more examples of historic recipes than it actually does. Though a great number of recipes are mentioned, Theophano only provides enough details to illustrate the specific theme she is discussing. For example, in Chapter One, “Cookbooks as Communities” Theophano mentions several different types of recipes but only shares with her readers certain aspects such as the title or the ingredients list. This is not because this information is unknown; it is because her focus for the chapter is how these recipes help to shape communities among women. In another example, Theophano speaks to how most women of the laboring class would already understand basic cooking techniques and therefore would not need directions when sharing their favorites with other women of the community. One of these instruction-less recipes is for a wedding cake in 1871; a Boston woman, Mrs. Johnson, shares this recipe with her friend, Mrs. Cain, by giving her only a detailed ingredients list. Theophano explains that in this example, what is missing in this correspondence is just as enlightening as the information that is given. Though we as the readers would appreciate the opportunity to learn the details of the historic recipe, Theophano only gives us the unique ingredients list because she is attempting to focus her audience on historical
The short story, The Laundry Basket, by Lee Maracle touches on many important themes and issues throughout text. In this short text Maracle manages to cover issues ranging from the daily struggles of an indigenous woman, to the power imbalance present between the white man and the indigenous people. The most pressing issue acknowledged in this excerpt, however, is the battle of a mother and wife against the idea of what she should be doing with her time versus what she wants to be doing and her aspirations.
Rappaport, Doreen. American Women, Their Lives in Their Words: Thomas Y. Crowell, New York 1990
American culture has defined the ideal dynamic for a family for many generations as one with a single, or perhaps multitude of dominant male figures, a submissive role or roles usually filled by the women in the household, and of course, children, who are deemed more acceptable if they are “seen and not heard”. Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping deconstructs and twists around what has grown to be custom in American Literature, and challenges the reader to feel uncomfortable about missing or swapped gender roles within the story itself. In Housekeeping, Ruthie and her sister Lucille have been transferred through several relatives after their mother’s death, and find themselves aching for a “normalcy” that they have never experienced, one that
Each of these letters provides details about the lives of middle-class married African American women living in the Upper South in the early twentieth century. By looking at these documents along with the finding aids that explain the collections they are a part of one could get a good sense of what life was like for a fictional woman of similar circumstances.
Prior to World War II women were expected to be housewives by cleaning, cooking, and taking care of children. Women were discouraged to work outside of the home and often judged by the rest of society. Bobbie Ann Mason gives great examples of the duties expected by women of the time period and her grandmother is a perfect model of domesticity. At one point Mason talk about a conversation between her grandmother and mom. Mason’s mom, Christy, decides to go back to work, but her grandmother disapproves and says she should be home taking care of her girls (Mason, 116). Christy on the other hand is an example of the modern woman. A woman willing to go to work outside of the home to help support her family when needed. Christy gets a job at a clothing company. Mason says that many women were leaving the farm and taking work in factories (Mason, 83). During and after World War II many women began to work outside of the home changing the idea of what it meant to be a women and the duties that accompanied.
“The Pastoralization of Housework” by Jeanne Boydston is a publication that demonstrates women’s roles during the antebellum period. Women during this period began to embrace housework and believed their responsibilities were to maintain the home, and produce contented and healthy families. As things progressed, housework no longer held monetary value, and as a result, womanhood slowly shifted from worker to nurturer. The roles that women once held in the household were slowly diminishing as the economy became more industrialized. Despite the discomfort of men, when women realized they could find decent employment, still maintain their household and have extra income, women began exploring their option.
The community of the American Colonies in the 16th to 17th century shared ideas and ways of life with one another. “The colonist came from many countries—England, France, Holland, Germany, and Spain. They brought with them their different customs and skills” (Corwin 7). Together they learned to formulate and develop items. Home crafts are gender specific; typically women became the ones who wove, sewed, embroidered, and quilted; while the men cleared land, farmed, cut wood, butchered and hunted animals. In colonial America, home crafts became not just decoration or a hobby, but a thrifty use of leftover resources, a way of life, rebellion, and a huge role in women’s history.
This ESSAY discusses the female Lowell factory worker as portrayed in the Offering. Although the magazine never expressed an overtly feminist view of the factory girls' condition, nor invoked a working-class consciousness similar to later labor expressions in Lowell, there is evidence of a narrative strategy and ideology speaking both to the factory women and the middle-class readership outside of the mill town. The paper's short stories, epistolary narratives and commentaries seek to legitimize an operatives' role within the feminine ideal of domesticity. In conforming to the norms of feminine literature, the Offering reconstructs the operatives' character. It subordinates the evidence for independence or autonomy to relate stories of familial or sentimental ties binding the factory girl to the world outside of factory life. The magazine sought to provide an answer to this question: given her new liberties, what kept the "factory girl" from losing contact with her moral sentiments?
In “Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South,” Jacquelyn Hall explains that future generations would need to grapple with the expenses of commercialization and to expound a dream that grasped financial equity and group unanimity and also women’s freedom. I determined the reasons for ladies ' insubordination neither reclassified sexual orientation parts nor overcame financial reliance. I recollected why their craving for the trappings of advancement could obscure into a self-constraining consumerism. I estimated how a belief system of sentiment could end in sexual peril or a wedded lady 's troublesome twofold day. None of that, in any case, should cloud a generation’s legacy. I understand requirements for a standard of female open work, another style of sexual expressiveness, the section of ladies into open space and political battles beforehand cornered by men all these pushed against conventional limitations even as they made new susceptibilities.
Hartmann, Susan M. The Home Front and Beyond: American women in the 1940s. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982
Food means different things to people in different countries of the world; pasta is common in Italy, hamburgers are a favorite in the US and tacos are a typical dish in Mexico. Human existence solely depends on this source of energy. A person’s fundamental need for food makes it a very important item, placing the people who control the food in a very high esteem. Consistency is also important in the delicate balance of life. Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet in the Western Front, and Elie Wiesel, author of Night, both use food in their novels to convey this idea. Many of their thoughts and “meanings” concerning food paralleled one another. Food, one of the quintessential elements of life, plays a significant role in wartime experiences around the world and even in different time periods.
Collins, Gail. America's Women: Four hundred years of dolls, drudges, helpmates, and heroines. New York: William Morrow, 2003. 556.
“I am a large, big boned woman with rough, man-working hands” Mama describes of herself in the short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker. Mama, who additionally takes the role of narrator, is a lady who comes from a wealth of heritage and tough roots. She is never vain, never boastful and most certainly never selfish. She speaks only of her two daughters who she cares deeply for. She analyzes the way she has raised them and how much she has cared too much or too little for them, yet most of all how much they value their family. Mama never speaks of herself, other than one paragraph where she describes what she does. “My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing” (Walker, 60). She does not need to tell readers who she is, for her descriptions of what she does and how her family interacts, denotes all the reader needs to know. Although Mama narrates this story rather bleakly, she gives readers a sense of love and sense of her inner strength to continue heritage through “Everyday Use”.
Many women in modern society make life altering decisions on a daily basis. Women today have prestigious and powerful careers unlike in earlier eras. It is more common for women to be full time employees than homemakers. In 1879, when Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, there was great controversy over the out come of the play. Nora’s walking out on her husband and children was appalling to many audiences centuries ago. Divorce was unspoken, and a very uncommon occurrence. As years go by, society’s opinions on family situations change. No longer do women have a “housewife” reputation to live by and there are all types of family situations. After many years of emotional neglect, and overwhelming control, Nora finds herself leaving her family. Today, it could be said that Nora’s decision is very rational and well overdue.
...important impact in Diana's life. However, for Diana the relationship with food is different from that of her father's. For Bud, food is a way to relate to the way he used to live, “… he cooks and croons in Arabic to the frying liver and onions songs about missing the one you love.” For her family, food was always a reason to make them feel better, and to relief life pressures. For Diana, it is a way to find herself. Moreover, for Diana, and despite all of the challenges that she encountered, food and cooking are used as a tool in which she expressed herself. A tool to share her good times, and bad times. She used food as comfort, a peace offering, and a way to find herself. Therefore, her simple and enjoyable to read stories came to be a wonderful mix between her life story, and food recipes. Especially for those who consider food to be more than something to eat.