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Household Words and Catherine Beecher- PART THREE

© Sandra Linville

PART THREE

Also, in the section "Social Reform in the United States", it was noted that "the cookbook writers - Catherine Beecher and Marion Harland, among others - and cooking school teachers such as Mary Lincoln and Maria Parloa used women's journals, novels, and household manuals, as well as lecture tours, to broaden their debates on food, diet, and health to encompass larger societal issues. Because women were expected to care for children, the sick, and the poor, and to engage in charitable activity, women's domain was extended beyond home to include so-called public affairs. Likewise, the education of young citizens combined concerns about extra-domestic institutions such as schools and churches with women's education, status, and rights."

Catharine Beecher also spoke out about women's health issues. She railed against corsets which she believed deformed women's bodies and prevented healthful exercise. She designed and produced drawings of appropriate exercises for young men and women. She also promoted a school curriculum that included calisthenics

Along with exercise, she believed that fresh air and healthful food would improve the quality of life for everyone.

Noting a connection between poor air quality in European slums and the spread of disease, she said that "the first and most indispensable requisite for health is pure air, both by day and night." She thought resistance to disease was aided by opening windows and keeping bed chambers cold.

She also commented on mental health. She is listed in the website, Psychology in America where it is stated that "Beecher wrote and anonymously printed Elements of Mental and Moral Philosophy, Founded Upon Experience, Reason, and the Bible Seeking an answer to the question "What must we do to be saved" and a guide to the interpretation of the Bible in the laws of the mind, Catherine Beecher became one of if not the first to apply psychological analysis directly to theological topics. Unsure of the reception that her work would receive, she had the book printed, bound, and sent to the leading theological lights of the day for their critical commentary. Unfortunately, her fears were justified and the reaction (perhaps prompted as much by the book's female authorship as by its content) was sufficiently critical that Beecher withdrew her book from circulation. Never actually published or sold, Beecher's Elements is one of the very rarest books in the history of American psychology."

Cookbooks and nonfiction treatises were not the only writing about domestic life. The web site, Domestic Goddesses: AKA Scribbling Women, features Domestic Goddesses such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Willa Cather, Kate Chopin, and Edith Wharton, all women from between 1830 to 1920 who wrote domestic novels about "the home, the hearth, children, and relationship between women."