Introduction

Summary

Every story of Victorian domesticity must begin with John Ruskin's paean:

This is the true nature of home – it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home: so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love, – so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light, – shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea; so far it vindicates the name and fulfills the praise of Home.

Ruskin's home conjures the set of dichotomies most characteristic of what is understood as domestic ideology: it is a place of peace and not strife, rest and not labor, confidence and not anxiety, unity and not division. As secularized holy ground, it is most distinctly a state of mind: materially indistinguishable from “a part of that outer world which you have roofed over,” the home is only “true” if it can be correlated to psychological comfort.