{"id":347,"date":"2019-04-21T14:48:23","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T14:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/?p=347"},"modified":"2019-04-21T14:48:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-21T14:48:23","slug":"book-review-tasteful-domesticity-by-sarah-walden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/21\/book-review-tasteful-domesticity-by-sarah-walden\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review \u2013 Tasteful Domesticity by Sarah Walden"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In Tasteful Domesticity, Sarah Walden explores the scholarship on cookbooks and how they\u2019ve served as a rhetorical space for women in nineteenth-century America. She claims that Tasteful Domesticity is the first book-length study of women\u2019s rhetoric in American cookbooks (13). Walden posits that cookbooks not only \u201csatisfy Aristotle\u2019s famous definition of rhetoric as \u2018locating the available mans of persuasion\u2019\u201d, but also allow women to engage in the cultural discourse that they were previously denied (4). Walden shows how the American cookbook has served as a rhetorical device that contributed to defining the ideal American body (both physically and ideologically) and social structure. While cookbooks are often assumed to be a collection of recipes with a simple list of ingredients and instructions, she argues that they are much more, articulating domestic philosophies and providing a platform for the author to establish an authoritative ethos. The book is organized into sections to focus on various components of rhetoric in American cookbooks, focusing on taste rhetoric in virtue, morality, regions, science, and race. Walden examines a variety of scholar\u2019s work on rhetoric and cookbooks while adding her own empirical research, perspective, and rhetorical analysis.<\/p>\n

Since women have historically had less education than men, the \u2018training\u2019 they did receive was given to cultivate \u2018epistolary skills\u2019, resulting in \u2018parlor rhetoric\u2019. Parlor rhetoric is a metaphor introduced by Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) for the \u201cunending conversation that is going on at the point in history when we are born\u201d (Nordquist, 2018). This parlor rhetoric was common in cookbooks and domestic manuals, where not only many of them were written by women, but they were written specifically for women. The cookbook was a space in which women could have an authoritative voice and communicate intellectual and physical standards. Embedded in this messaging was cultural hierarchies of race, class, and gender.<\/p>\n

Walden explains in the first chapter \u201cTaste and Virtue: Domestic Citizenship and the New Republic\u201d that the first cookbooks helped define the character of American women and linked their domestic roles to their new national identity (28). The first cookbook written and published on American soil was American Cookery in 1796. There were specific, ideologic characteristics communicated to American wives and mothers, defined as \u201crepublican motherhood\u201d, which is defined as \u201cthe relegation of women\u2019s authority to the \u2018private\u2019 sphere\u201d (29). A key component of this was the common understanding \u201cthat one\u2019s passions and preferences must be regulated for the good of the republic\u201d (29). Walden uses the examples of the most prominent early American cookery texts, American Cookery (1796), Frugal Housewife (1829) and Virginia Housewife (1824) to illustrate this point. All three of these cookbooks use \u2018good taste\u2019 to promote the public virtue of a republican economy and society. They do this by communicating that one must regulate their tastes to the cultural norm and not give in to individual passions. It was from these cookbooks that \u2018American taste\u2019 was born. The cookbook authors included local ingredients, such as cornmeal, which held rhetorical significance, creating the ideal of American taste, while avoiding the use of British goods, such as tea.<\/p>\n

The first American cookbooks were written by women for women, thereby allowing women to enter a rhetorical space of power typically reserved for men. And while Child, author of The Frugal Housewife, claims she wrote for the poor, her audience was more likely middle class, specifically middle-class white women. Randolph, author of The Virginia Housewife, attempts to build her ethos by stating she came from nothing and wrote this book for the common housewife with information she wished that she had when she was starting out. However, Walden points out that this is a fabrication or at best an exaggeration, as she grew up wealthy and most likely had domestic education.
\nWalden uses several examples of how these cookbooks served to define the role of the housewife, including the fact that these books often centered on the trope that the husband would bring home a friend from work and she would need to have the skill necessary to whip up a meal at a moment\u2019s notice. These cookbooks also reinforced standards of women still held today, as Walden states, \u201cEarly republican society rhetorically cast women as rational beings with the ability to self-regulate,\u201d (34). This demonstrates the continued notion that reinforces the notion that women should be viewed as beautiful objects meant for the male gaze.<\/p>\n

Prior to reading this text, I had never thought of how cookbooks held rhetorical significance in defining \u201cgood taste\u201d. But Walden provides plenty of research and evidence of how the early American cookbooks defined \u201cgood taste\u201d through the use of specific ingredients, an indication of moral character and values. Early American cookbooks described bourgeois middle class tastes as \u201cnatural\u201d while working class tastes were rarely described, but rather fictionalized or critiqued.<\/p>\n

In the second chapter, \u201cTaste and Morality: Motherhood and the Making of a National Body\u201d, Walden outlines how American cookbooks participated in the rhetorical construction of ideal motherhood (55). Beecher, co-author of The American Women\u2019s Home, \u201cwas the first American domestic expert to synthesize the many duties of a domestic woman \u2013 \u201cheath, child care, housebuilding, and cooking,\u201d (56). Her book even served as a textbook in women\u2019s seminaries and as a handbook for domestic education. Walden points out that because society tied women\u2019s roles to morality and the church, many of these domestic handbooks took on the sacred significance and states, \u201cMary Kelley calls the domestic advice literature written between 1830 and 1860 the \u2018liturgy of a cult of domesticity\u201d (56). The taste discourse in American cookbooks implied that womanhood in America was white, Protestant and middle class. Women were treated as a homogenous group. Given that women were grouped into this homogenous group, they were also all told what a \u2018good housekeeper\u2019, \u2018mother\u2019 and \u2018wife\u2019 should do. Domestic texts constructed a moral motherhood who exemplified American tastes. Hale, author of The Good Housekeeper (1839) defines ideal motherhood: \u201cThe mother appears more in relation to her children than in any other position: therefore, here mind and thoughts should chiefly be given to there are and training\u201d (65).<\/p>\n

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The role of the \u2018moral mother\u2019 was to ensure to nurture her children and her role was defined more through her character than her financial state. From a morality perspective, Walden furthers her argument that ideal motherhood is defined by these texts when she quotes child-rearing advice in Mother\u2019s Magazine, \u201cthe tastes and habits of children are usually formed from what they see and hear from their mother, they copy her likes and dislikes, and when very young, will often do and suffer much to win her smile of approbation\u201d (67). Walden explains that both Beecher and Mother Magazine rely upon Protestant context to describe women\u2019s work. What I find interesting is that not much has changed on this perspective today. If one is to look in a parenting magazine today, one would find many of the same perceptions and attitudes about motherhood, which further demonstrates the power of the early rhetoric on motherhood in America.<\/p>\n

In the third chapter, \u201cTaste and Religion: The Constitutive Function of Southern Cookbooks\u201d, Walden argues that \u201csouthern cookbooks in part constitute, rather than merely represent, southern identity (82-83). Few southern cookbooks were published prior to the Civil War. Walden states, \u201ccooking literature not only reflects a culture; it also marks its boundaries or produces that culture\u201d (86). Using Kenneth Burke\u2019s (1897-1993) persuasive process theory that shared meaning and value are attached to \u201ccommon sensations, concepts, images, ideas, [and] attitudes\u201d (57) Walden posits that audiences can \u201cembody a discourse\u201d. As the southern public emerged, there were limited educational opportunities for anyone outside of the wealthiest of the population, couple that with the lack of printing technology and unequal social structure and the southern cookbook was slow to emerge. Southern cookbooks were less likely than their northern counterparts to emphasize the moral implications of taste. Rutledge published the first southern cookbook, originally titled Carolina Housewife or House and Home: By a Lady of Charleston (95). Walden notes that she had to carefully negotiate her domestic authority with the expectations of a \u2018southern lady\u2019, which is why Rutledge states there are no names in the book, explaining, \u201ca true Carolina lady\u2019s name appeared in print only three times in her life: when born, when married and when buried \u2013 the legal necessities\u201d (95).<\/p>\n

In the fourth chapter, \u201cTaste and Science: Cooking Schools, Home Economics, and the Progressive Impulse\u201d (113) Walden posits that women used taste discourse in cookbooks to contribute to public reform. Walden builds on three arguments in relationship to taste, race, class and morality in domestic writings, including 1) domestic science caused the downfall of the American palate 2) 19th and 20th centuries sparked a new interest in the science of taste and chemical composition of food and 3) even though taste is variable, it didn\u2019t increase the categories of people who can use it to promote their goals. Walden states that American cooking schools set out to rebrand cooking and housework as a characterization of a woman\u2019s love for her family, as until the end of the nineteenth century, servants performed domestic labor. I thought this was a thought-provoking assertion, as I had never thought of how America managed the shift from servants and slaves performing domestic duties to non-hired help, the housewife. Previously, I did not think critically about how or why cooking contributed to the associations of a woman\u2019s maternal identity. In the 1890s, there was an emergence of nutritional science, including the discovery of taste buds contributed to a sensory experience. The discovery of the four basic tastes of sweet, sour, salty and bitter led to the use of taste to contribute to a cultural standard. The concept of \u201cgood taste\u201d became correlated with class. Walden states, \u201cRhetorically, taste now indicates rational food choices based on modern science, while the palate connotes uneducated food choices based on tradition and emotion. In either application, the message is clear: Americans need an intellectual understanding of food and the body to promote good taste and cultural betterment,\u201d (124). This particularly hit a chord with me, as I see how this is still true today. There are certain foods associated with class structures. Walden also correlates the old adage, \u201cthe way to a man\u2019s heart is through his stomach\u201d with taste, using the example of rhetorical blending in women\u2019s magazines such as Good Housekeeping and Redbook referencing taste and love. These magazines reinforced that good taste is an intellectual ability that should transcend physical appetite.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is a common theme in Walden\u2019s research, as she mentions several studies that evaluate the rhetoric of taste, valuing intellect, science and self-control over taste, enjoyment and emotional experience. The American middle-class diet was formed as a result of dietary adaptations to better fulfill American Progressive ideals of productivity, efficiency and hygiene (138). Walden says the key term was \u201csimplicity\u201d and was grounded in \u201cNew England staples\u201d such as meat, wheat and boiled vegetables (138). Walden encourages us to notice the difference between this \u201csimple\u201d diet and the rich sauces associated with the wealthy or mixed dishes that use beans, grains and vegetables to compensate for a lack of meat, which were correlated with the poor. She uses these examples to posit that taste is cultivated rather than inborn.
\nIn the fifth chapter, \u201cRevisions of Labor and Domestic Literacy in the Early Twentieth Century\u201d (143). Walden explores the narratives of \u2018mammy cookbooks\u2019. \u2018Mammy cookbooks\u2019 were written by white women who were creating a narrative around the plantation mythology, reinforcing the \u2018mammy\u2019 archetype. \u201cMammy\u201d is a stereotype in America of the southern, black woman who worked for a white family, taking care of the kids and working in the kitchen. She was often portrayed an older, overweight, dark-skinned, loyal, obedient and submissive, the most well-known example being Aunt Jemima, who was introduced at the Chicago\u2019s World Fair of 1893 and came to represent \u201cantebellum romanticism\u201d (154). \u201cMammy cookbooks\u201d were introduced in the late 1890s, were written entirely in dialect by the 1920s and continued with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. White domestic writers capitalized on the marketability of the southern mammy. Walden explains that these cookbooks served several purposes, including romanticizing the image of the Old South, continuing to impede racial progress and defining a southern community based on print representation (154). The \u201cmammy cookbooks\u201d served to further divide the classes between white and black Americans as the cookbooks removed white women from \u201cculinary \u201clabor\u201d.<\/p>\n

In later years, when African American women wrote domestic texts, it served to bridge the divide between classes and races. Walden explains this in regards to the fact that white Americans withheld literacy education, even making it a crime to teach a slave to read. Literacy marked a class distinction and \u201cbecame imbued with a capitalist sense of possession\u201d (154). By authoring a text, an African American woman could demonstrate that she not only had literacy skill, but she also portrayed authority.
\nIn conclusion, Walden makes a compelling argument regarding how women have used the cookbook as a rhetorical space. Walden guides us through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, providing examples of how the rhetoric used in cooking and domestic manuals has contributed to societal expectations. By organizing the book around different components of taste discourse, Walden is able to present research from other scholars on taste discourse and contribute her additions to their assertions. She makes an excellent argument for how women, who have typically been excluded from public forums, have used the domestic space of cookbooks to contribute powerful rhetoric that has formed cultural norms in America. The issue of the rhetoric of body image and weight in cookbooks is one that Walden could have explored further. She touches on the morality of taste and how cookbooks have contributed to the rhetoric that promotes \u201cgood taste\u201d relating to ones\u2019 ability to self-re
\n<\/a>gulate. The notion being that a woman can demonstrated her strong self-regulation through weight management and prioritizing how she looks over giving in to her individual temptations. Walden\u2019s research is critical to the field of food, rhetoric and feminism.<\/p>\n

Works cited<\/strong>
\nNordquist, R. (2018, Aug. 10). What is Burkean Parlor? ThoughCo. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.thoughtco.com\/what-is-burkean-parlor-1689042 on January 2, 2019.<\/p>\n

Walden, Sarah. Tasteful Domesticity Women\u2019s Rhetoric & the American Cookbook 1790-1940. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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