Reconciling the Irreconcilable: Images of Paid and Unpaid Work for White, Middle-class Women in the Ladies' Home Journal, 1883-1895

by Nancy Dennis

Primary Advisor: Lois Rudnick
Second Reader: Judith Smith

Abstract:

I have investigated how fiction and non-fiction in the Ladies' Home Journal developed a work ethic for white, middle-class women between 1883 and 1895, a pivotal moment in middle-class women's work history. Building on studies by Daniel Rodgers and Jennifer Scanlon, I argued that the Journal's competing images of paid work for middle-class women reflected writers' attempts to reconcile two previously irreconcilable concepts: the ideology of the domestic sphere and the new economic and social realities that increased the need for (and possibility of) paid work.

Journal writer debated what work was, where it was done who should work, and how Thought some writers glorified the domestic sphere, others revealed that domestic toils were fraught with overwork, unappreciated husbands, disrespectful children, and insolent servants. Some columnists urged women to be homemakers, wives, and mothers, as others described womanly careers and an ethos for working outside the home. When the Journal encouraged women to prepare for self-support, it delineated which working circumstances and occupations were respectable, and sometimes promoted the ideas of the office as an extension of the domestics sphere.

While guest columnists, fiction writers, and readers sympathized with women who had to work outside, the conservative stance of Editor Edward Bok and monthly columnists prevailed. Across the fiction, advice columns, editorials, and responses to letters, the Journal insisted that women's place was in the home, but that in hard times. ladies might have to prepare themselves (or their daughters) for self-support. Second, if a woman had to work, she should conduct herself in a ladylike manner and only toil in approved professions. Third, middle-class women who stayed in the paid work force too long risked their social status. Finally, the work of white, middle -class women must remain separate from that of African American, ethnic and immigrant women. These four messages did not waiver over the period of this study.