Self-help & gender
Gendered reading
- Hannah: men/women motivations
- Jocelyn: masculinity
Gender by topics
[Euthenics is] The betterment of living conditions, through conscious endeavor, for the purpose of securing efficient human beings. (Richards 1910, p. vii)
Eugenics deals with race improvement through heredity. Euthenics deals with race improvement through environment. (Richards 1910, p. viii)
Euthenics is to be developed: 1. Through sanitary science. 2. Through education. 3. Through relating science and education to life. (Richards 1910, p. ix)
Right living conditions comprise pure food and a safe water supply, a clean and disease-free atmosphere in which to live and work, proper shelter, and the adjustment of work, rest, and amusement. (Richards 1910, p. x)
“Vassar girls to study home-making as career; new course in Euthenics, the science of human betterment, will adjust women to the needs of today and act as a check on spread of divorce”
Why do parents fail to understand their children? Why do women think housekeeping more important than home-making? Why do women fail to apply the same efficiency in the home that men find successful in business? (Feld 1926)
⟗
What do you think of her folding technique; her treatment of books, etc.?
[among heterosexual couples] the woman expresses how she feels that the “mess” is her responsibility to fix. The men, on the other hand, don’t come across as apologetic, nor do they take accountability for how the home got to its untidy state. (Ali 2019)
e.g., women guilty about laundry service, sentimental items, clutter of spices in kitchen, and too many scarves; Kondo assigns ambivalent men to tidy garage
Choose a quote from the reading you appreciated and we’ll share in a go-around.
They were originally without cushions, as they should have been, so that dinner guests were left with savage criss-cross lines on their bottoms, as if they had spent the evening with a particularly savage dominatrix. (Sayle 2001, p. 96)
A conventional staircase would have destroyed the sense of lightness and space which he was trying to achieve. (Sayle 2001, p. 86)
once it had been decided that Helen his wife needed to get out of the house and play her part in his rise he would, day and night, go on at her. He would point out successful women in magazines and say how good they looked, he would point out younger, more successful women at parties and imply he might fuck and then marry them if she didn’t pull herself together. She got the message. (Sayle 2001, p. 79)
