‘Every family might be its own Economical Housekeeping Company (Limited)’: managing the middle-class home in nineteenth-century England

Abstract

The management techniques that supported success in commerce, manufacturing, and the professions in nineteenth-century England were also encouraged in the domestic space, where women negotiated their practice. Household guides show how metaphors of mechanization and professionalism were applied to domestic labour, while the management of time, things, and money in the home called for rationalized planning on the part of the mistress. Although the prescriptive literature was not always slavishly followed, principles of order and efficiency, both at work and at home, helped secure status by reinforcing societal power relations. Women balanced competing gender ideals in the context of a potent but often precarious class system. Industrial capitalism and professionalization changed attitudes toward the home and its operation, penetrating this private social space.