ABSTRACT

In the November 1868 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, in the fi rst of a series of articles propounding domestic reform, Melusina Fay Peirce posed this direct query: “In these days of strain and struggle and desire, who of us is there that understands how to live? Who is it that possesses a domestic machinery so perfectly balanced, so nicely adjusted, so exquisitely oiled and polished, that every duty and every pleasure glide from it noiseless and complete as the separate marvels that fall from the crafty wheels and lathes of this modern era?” (33). Peirce emphasizes the communal conundrum of domestic comportment, its philosophical and psychological challenges unable to be solved by the burgeoning machines of industry and modernity. Because there are, as Peirce suggests, myriad understandings of how to live, there are wide-ranging portrayals of domesticity and its discontents.