Perpetuating Domestic Ambivalence A Duality of Gender Role Advice in American Women’s Prescriptive Literature 1920-1960

Abstract

Ever since America's inception, prescriptive literature has been continuously used for guidance and advice relating to suitable conduct and gender roles. This type of literature points to middle-class ideals and the belief that social mobility can be achieved through propriety and adherence to socio-gender norms. While previous scholarship has focused primarily on nineteenth century etiquette and conduct literature written by religious men under edifying pretexts or popular literature in consumer driven twentieth century magazines and advertisements, this thesis examines women's prescriptive literature books between 1920 and 1960. Prescriptive literature published during this period was authored by middle-class women and was intended to be didactic in nature. However, women authors of prescriptive literature, who functioned outside of traditional gender roles and norms were not only subjective in their advice, but perpetuated a duality of roles for women, often advising against the very social mobility they had achieved. Women authors of prescriptive literature consistently gave advice that helped to encourage and facilitate women's agency through autonomy and gender role expansion while simultaneously reinscribing women into domestic themes and redefining boundaries in their public and private lives. This thesis examines numerous prescriptive books and their authors, arguing that this literature's content, like women's lives, became diversified while maintaining ambivalence about domesticity and roles derived from the home that transferred into the public domain. Prescriptive books written between 1920 and 1960 perpetuated contradictions in gender discourse, and conflated female ideals with stereotypes and gender double standards in their education and work.