Hearthstone, The.
A Late 19th Century Housekeeping Guide,
Written by an Author with a
Lasting Interest in Women’s Issues
[Domestic]. Holloway, Laura C[arter]. The Hearthstone; Or, Life At Home. A Household Manual. Containing Hints and Helps for Home Making; Home Furnishing; Decoration; Amusements; Health Directions; The Sick-Room; The Nursery; The Library; The Laundry; Etc. Together With A Complete Cookery Book. Chicago and Philadelphia: L.P. Miller & Company, 1887.
Large, thick 8vo.; black and white illustrated frontispiece depicting fireplace and mantle, heavily foxed; other black and white illustrations throughout; pages evenly yellowed throughout, not affecting text; light green floral endpapers, front endpaper occasionally offset, foxed; inner front hinge starting, but intact; dark green cloth boards, decoratively stamped in gilt and blind on covers and spine; covers lightly used, rear cover with small spot of soiling; head and heel of spine showing some light wear; tips lightly bumped; else, a handsome and sound copy.
First edition (?); though copyright 1883 there is no indication that this is not the first published edition. Apparently an extremely scarce title: the Library of Congress lists no holdings of this book whatsoever for any edition, although they do own several other Holloway titles.
A voluminous 582 page work that gives advice and guidance to women on nearly every aspect of their daily lives. Chapter headings include: “Homes, Ancient and Modern;” “Home-Making and Home-Management;” “Upstairs, Downstairs, In My Lady’s Chamber;” “Sports and Games for Ladies;” “The Library in the Home;” “Choice of Occupation;” “Medicinal and Hygenic Recipes;” “Economy in the Home;” “Life at Home;” and many others.
In many ways a strong case can be made for reading The Hearthstone…as a feminist text masquerading as a housekeeping manual. A major point supporting this argument is the fact that throughout the volume the author repeatedly stresses the need for all of society to attain a better understanding of the inherent real and material, as well as figurative and spiritual, value of what was then called “home-making” and what might today be characterized as all chores in the realm of traditional “women’s work”. The author’s preoccupation with this goal is evident even in the book’s preface:
Were I to dedicate this book, it would be to the Homesick; that class, which, above all others on earth, has suffered so hopelessly, been so little understood by those who have escaped this mind disease. How it eats out the hopes and aspirations and longings of its victims…
Were I to dedicate my book to the homesick, it would be consecrated to thousands upon thousands of little children, who among strangers pine to be at home, to whom the school is the prison-house, the distant home the heaven they long to reach; to the lonely orphans found in institutions where the charity of strangers gives them food and raiment [sic], but not a mother’s love, a father’s presence or a home’s liberty; to the over-worked men and women, who are exiles to home blessings through poverty; to the aged ones who have outlived their kindred, and have no abiding place at any hearthstone; to the greater part of all God’s creatures, in fact, for few, indeed, are so happy as to have lived, and not suffered from this cause…
…The noblest and best of the race have been and can only be products of happy homes...The happiness of a well-organized home is reflected in the lives of all men and women who come in contact with its inmates. We cannot, do not live unto ourselves alone; the world is the better or otherwise for our being in it. Home is the central point of all happiness; the pivot upon which depends the weal or woe of families and communities. What is so important as the right building of our earthly homes in all spiritual and practical ways? What subject so fraught with great consequences as the Hearthstone? (pp. iii-iv)
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