Housekeeping, Citizenship, and Nationhood in Good Housekeeping and Modern Home

Abstract

This chapter interrogates the framing of women as citizens through domestic work in two interwar service magazines: Modern Home and Good Housekeeping. It examines their treatment of housekeeping as a skilled occupation, contrasting Modern Home’s portrayal of homemaking as woman’s chief role and service to the nation with Good Housekeeping’s insistence on women’s citizenship within and outside the home. It argues that while both magazines presented nostalgic views of England and Englishness in keeping with a broader middle-class turn towards family and nation in the interwar period, Good Housekeeping also urged its readers to consider their role and responsibilities as homemaker citizens in international terms. This chapter demonstrates the danger of homogenising accounts of interwar service magazines and counters the belief that the home represented a straightforward retreat from society and politics at this time.