Extreme Domesticity: A View From The Margins

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Domesticity gets a bad rap. We associate it with stasis, bourgeois accumulation, banality, and conservative family values. Yet in Extreme Domesticity, Susan Fraiman reminds us that keeping house is just as likely to involve dislocation, economic insecurity, creative improvisation, and queered notions of family. Her book links terms often seen as antithetical: domestic knowledge coinciding with female masculinity, feminism, and divorce; domestic routines elaborated in the context of Victorian poverty, twentieth-century immigration, and new millennial homelessness. Far from being exclusively middle-class, domestic concerns are shown to be all the more urgent and ongoing when shelter is precarious. Fraiman's reformulation frees domesticity from associations with conformity and sentimentality. Ranging across periods and genres, and diversifying the archive of domestic depictions, Fraiman's readings include novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, Sandra Cisneros, Jamaica Kincaid, Leslie Feinberg, and Lois-Ann Yamanaka; Edith Wharton's classic decorating guide; popular women's magazines; and ethnographic studies of homeless subcultures. Recognizing the labor and know-how needed to produce the space we call "home," Extreme Domesticity vindicates domestic practices and appreciates their centrality to everyday life. At the same time, it remains well aware of domesticity's dark side. Neither a romance of artisanal housewifery nor an apology for conservative notions of home, Extreme Domesticity stresses the heterogeneity of households and probes the multiplicity of domestic meanings.

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EXTREME DOMESTICITY A VIEW from the MARGINS S U S A N F R A I M A N EXTREME DOMESTICITY G E N D E R A N D C U LT U R E G E N D E R A N D C U LT U R E A SERIES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Nancy K. Miller and Victoria Rosner, Series Editors Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1926–2003) and Nancy K. Miller, Founding Editors In Dora’s Case: Freud, Hysteria, Feminism Edited by Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist Fiction Naomi Schor Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Romantic Imprisonment: Women and Other Glorified Outcasts Nina Auerbach The Poetics of Gender Edited by Nancy K. Miller Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism Mary Jacobus Honey-Mad Women: Emancipatory Strategies in Women’s Writing Patricia Yaeger Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing Nancy K. Miller Thinking Through the Body Jane Gallop Gender and the Politics of History Joan Wallach Scott For a complete list of titles see page 261 EXTREME DOMESTICITY A VIEW from the MARGINS SUSAN FRAIMAN Columbia University Press New York Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Fraiman, Susan, author. Title: Extreme domesticity : a view from the margins / Susan Fraiman. Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2016. | Series: Gender and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016022755 (print) | LCCN 2016040222 (e-book) | ISBN 9780231166348 (cloth : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780231543750 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: American literature—20th century—History and criticism. | English literature—20th century—History and criticism. | Women and literature. | Domestic relations in literature. | American literature—Women authors—History and criticism. | English literature—Women authors— History and criticism. | Home in literature. Classification: LCC PS228.W65 F73 2016 (print) | LCC PS228.W65 (e-book) | DDC 810.9/9287—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022755 Columbia University