Imaginaries of Domesticity and Women's Work in Germany around 1800

<b>Examines a variety of texts from late Enlightenment Germany to provide a nuanced rethinking of women's roles as wives mothers and housekeepers creators of the cultural spaces of the home.</b><br><br>Domesticity a set of practices emotions and values culminating in a nourishing emotional and physical ambience - the feel of being at home and belonging - connects one's subjective experience to the material environment. In late Enlightenment Germany writers from Joachim Heinrich Campe and Theodor von Hippel to Sophie La Roche imagined the home as a space where true humanity would be realized. The high-stakes cultural formation of domesticity was part of a complex discourse on the pursuit of happiness as a life well lived. As domesticity became a surrogate for the lost religious certainties of the vanishing pre-modern world an obsessive anxiety concerning its delineation in discourse suggested its importance but also its fragility and the consequences of its failure.<br><br>Karin A. Wurst examines didactic novels by female authors autobiographical texts popular philosophy advice literature periodicals pedagogical tracts and household manuals in pursuit of a nuanced rethinking of the relationship between women's roles as wives mothers and housekeepers and as creators of the cultural spaces of the home. She finds that the high-value imaginary of domesticity encouraged women's agency insofar as they were tasked with turning theoretical ideals into everyday practice. At the same time her book shows the under-illuminated contribution of women's work to social and political change from within the patriarchal structures of eighteenth-century Germany.