INTRODUCTION: Swept Away: The Truth about Dirt; I: HOUSEKEEPING BY THE BOOK; ONE: Housekeeping by the Book: From Hints to Home Economics; TWO: Making Home, Making Nation: Catharine Beecher's Domestic Economy; THREE: Tayloring the Home: The Fantasy of Domestic Engineering; II: HOUSEKEEPING IN HOLLYWOOD; FOUR: Silent Film, Silent Work: Early Cinema and the Domestic Melodramas of D.W. Griffith; FIVE: Lessons in Labor and Love: The Melodramatic Imperatives of Hollywood Housekeeping; SIX: The Labor of Maternal Melodramas: Converting Angels to Icons; III: HOUSEKEEPING AGAINST THE GRAIN
Summary
This work considers American representations of domesticity and domestic labour over the last two centuries in historical, popular and feminist texts. The author asserts that the political power and effectivity of the idea of "normative domestic femininity" cannot be overestimated
