Public Frugality? Political Domestic Economies of Waste and Labor

Cécile Roudeau’s exploration of domestic economies begins the panel’s examination of the possibilities inherent in recycling as a category of analysis. The injunction that nothing should go to waste underwrites works like... [ view full abstract ]

Cécile Roudeau’s exploration of domestic economies begins the panel’s examination of the possibilities inherent in recycling as a category of analysis. The injunction that nothing should go to waste underwrites works like Lydia Maria Child’s The American Frugal Housewife (1831), Catherine Beecher’s A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841), as well as regionalist tales of the 1890s. “The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost,” Child explains, the “fragments of time, as well as materials. Nothing should be thrown away so long as it is possible to make any use of it, however trifling that use may be.” Not just advice books for women at home, Roudeau will demonstrate how such texts were recycled in public political debates beyond the “woman’s sphere,” twisting the discourses of Republican motherhood or Evangelism to new ends. Her contribution follows these arguments, showing how the economies of what Beecher calls the “family state” have become state economies in which pragmatic state principles emerged through everyday practice.