Story: “Domesticating History” is a well-researched exploration of the contexts in which the homes of four different prominent Americans (George Washington, Louisa May Alcott, Thomas Jefferson and Booker T. Washington) were turned into museums. Unfortunately, the book does not provide much in the way of description of the museums themselves, nor of the particular interpretations that visitors did in fact take away from their viewing of the exhibits – West seems most interested in providing intellectual biographies of the museum founders and discussions of the political maneuvering required to establish and fund these museums.
Review: It is all interesting and very readable material, yet in the end, the lack of depth regarding the museums themselves leaves me feeling as if, at the core of the study, there’s no “there” there.
The discussion of the movement to preserve Orchard House, Louisa May Alcott’s childhood home, is probably the clearest example of this trend. West spends a great deal of time exploring the schism in early-twentieth-century Concord’s affluent women’s population over the issue of suffrage, and how each side felt that restoring Alcott’s home could promote their agenda. But this discussion takes place almost entirely with regard to the general and abstract notion of “the home,” women’s place in it, and its place in society, along with the fond feelings women of several generations had for Alcott’s “Little Women.” Rarely do we get a sense of exactly what was in the house, how it was described, or how those descriptions fit a particular ideological agenda. At several points we leave the contests over Orchard House almost completely in order to focus on referendums and debates on suffrage, as well as a description of the general demographic trends in Massachusetts at the time.
That complaint aside, there is much worth reading in this book. West’s recounting of early support for the idea of home ownership (and against tenement or apartment living) shows the roots of the current car-and-highway-fueled suburban American dream. (Had West chosen to make the book longer than 162 pages, plus notes, this theme definitely could have benefited from further exploration, for while West shows that many people supported suburban home ownership, she leaves it very much to the reader to figure out whether or not this turned out to be the benefit its proponents expected.) The willingness to sacrifice historical accuracy in order to satisfy some notion of being sufficiently homelike is brought out in a number of small but telling details – a number of ladies associations had problems with the historical rigor used to restore Monticello, for example. And while West spends a great deal of time discussing the changing role of women and women’s associations in the house museum movement as university-educated-and-credentialed men took over, she avoids characterizing that transition as an overt act of sexism – again pointing to Monticello, where the historian in charge rebuffed the services of a well-meaning man while accepting considerable research assistance from his wife – and instead suggests that the receding role of women was due to inequities elsewhere in the system and not a deliberate play for power on the part of male historians. This bit of subtlety blunts the histrionic force of West’s arguments, which lets them stand on their own fairly considerable merits.
Year: 1999
Author: Patricia West
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press
Pages: 304