About

Early Modern Advice for the Modern Domestic

This blog is a space for me to share some intersecting interests. I love, love, love cooking, and I’m very proud of my home – I put a lot of work into the decorating and crafting; I nest wherever I land. Also, though, I’m an English PhD student, and my work focuses on Early Modern England (Renaissance England, some would call it). As such, I spend a lot of time reading a lot of really old things – and a lot of those really old things tell us all about how these people lived – how they cooked and crafted and nested.

Specifically, there is a certain kind of Early Modern text – a “huswife” book – that walks through the exact kinds of things that you’d expect to find on many modern blogs – recipes, decorating trips, plans for entertaining, even plans for educating children. The difference is that huswife books were generally written by men – oh, sure, they collected the recipes (both for food and medicine – and beer!) and the precepts and the tips from women – who they sometimes credited. But the name on that title page was going to belong to a man more than nine times out of ten. I can talk about some of the problems that created at length, but for here, just know that most of these men weren’t actually doing these things – they weren’t huswives, they just wrote about them.

Now, the blogs that exist for a similar purpose to those books are often written by women – and that’s grand. But I don’t love it when those blogs assume a female audience. I like it even less when they assume a stay-at-home mom audience. Lots of different kinds of people are domestic, and if that unspoken assumption is alienating for me, I can only imagine how alienating those sites can be for people who aren’t white 20-something women. You probably don’t need me to ever explain or expand on that subject, as better writers than I have talked all about the limitations of places like Pinterest (which I also kind of love, but it’s a complicated relationship). It’s a bummer to feel like if you write a blog with recipes, crafts,  and decorating tips, people will label you a “mommy blogger” -regardless of whether you have kids – or like you need to keep the academic stuff separate.

So, I decided to stop feeling that way. I’m going to share, here, crafts, plans for entertaining, DIY home projects, and recipes. And I’m going to share bits of those Early Modern texts, because I think there’s more there than a lot of people know about – and a lot more to interest people than some might think. And if you ever feel like I’m assuming anything about my audience – about their gender or sexuality or education or budget or religion or anything – please, please speak up. Because a modern huswife can be anybody.