Women of Conscience: Reforming Danville and the World

Back in January, DACC authors Jan Cornelius and Martha Kay appeared on WILL-AM radio's Afternoon Magazine to discuss their recent book Women of Conscience: Social Reform in Danville, Illinois 1890-1930. If you missed it, you can catch the conversation as an mp3 podcast on WILL's archive. Cornelius and Kay's book explores the important role women's groups played in enacting significant social reform, using Danville's experience to exemplify the progressive role played by women's organizations across the country and colorfully reinvigorating the city's past in the process. If you'd like to get a further snapshot of Danville's more "colorful" past, courtesy of Jan Cornelius, come into the library and check out "Danville’s “Sin City” and Reform, 1900-1920," in the Journal of Illinois History 11.2. (Unfortunately the article is not available online.)

Another excellent example of the social role of women's organizations can be seen in the virtual exhibit: Bear Ye One Another's Burdens currently being presented by The Women's Library at the Metropolitan University in London. This exhibition examines the history of the Girls' Friendly Society from 1875 to 2005. The purpose of this girls' organization was to maintain purity and chastity among girls in the working classes. Just prior to the first World War, the group claimed a membership of more than 200,000 and declared itself to be the largest organized girls' group in England.

For a more comprehensive look at the role of club women in Progressive Era in the United States, take a look at this online exhibit on the subject at the National Women's History Museum.

The impact of women's socializing efforts on their respective communities continues to provide fascinating glimpses into human history. Lynda Nead offers a general examination of the role of Victorian women as "moralizing influences" in this BBC essay, neatly demonstrating the expectations and tensions such responsibilities placed upon women. An example that has received growing attention over the last several years has been the housekeeping manual. And probably the single most influential cookbook in the English speaking world was Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. Fundamentally, Mrs. Beeton's work is a cook book, and The Foody has adapted the recipes (adjusted the measurements, etc.) so that modern readers can give them a try if you'd like to sample a little Victorian cooking.

Modern readers looking into Mrs. Beeton's work for the first time should understand a couple of things. This Victorian Martha Stewart, much like the modern one, is creating an idealized vision of domesticity. Too often, twenty-first century readers confuse this imagined reality for the way in which "typical" Victorians, or at least "typical" middle-class Victorians, lived. Nothing could be further from the truth. Once you realize that Mrs. Beeton herself was only 28 when she died following the birth of her fourth child, it becomes even more apparent what discrepancies existed between the idealized world of the household management book and even its author's reality.

We have our own modern day Mrs Beeton, Martha Stewart. Her blog and the other elements of her media empire function in much the same way that Mrs. Beeton's manual did a couple of centuries ago. If you consider how closely your house matches that of Martha Stewart's televised depiction of her Connecticut farm, you'll have a better sense of the reality versus the ideal at work behind Mrs. Beeton's book, as well as better understanding the purpose for which the manual was created.