Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870-1950

Most contributions focus on workingclass homes. Here it is striking that the advice offered by women to other women (often via government committees) was frequently impractical. For example, the Women's Co-operative Guild advised the wartime government that women wanted hot water, central heating, electricity, fridges and stoves, and tiled kitchens. Clearly, not all of this could be achieved because of the expense alone. The Dud- ley Report recommended electricity and hot water, but ruled out fridges and cen- tral heating. In other instances aesthetic recommendations betray a lack of deep understanding of the day-to-day lives of working-class women. [Elizabeth Darling] describes "the House that is a Woman's Book Come True." Displayed at the 1939 Ideal Home Exhibit and designed by a team of women, it featured light colours such as oyster-coloured walls at a time when dark colours for paint and floor- ing prevailed. Darling notes that both the press and upper-class observers praised the new designs. But to historians of the home, the designs present an obvious dilemma. Although the designers took care to include surfaces that were easy to clean, they appeared not to appreci- ate the reasons women usually opted for dark colours. Aesthetics had nothing to do with it. Coal-fired heating produced grey soot which was a ubiquitous prob- lem for housewives. Thus advice books for middle-class housewives typically cautioned women not to place the table- cloth for dinner on the table after clear- ing the breakfast dishes lest the cloth turn grey by 5 o'clock. Pale colours for the working-class home, however cheer- ful, would have added to the household work. It was a problem not truly rectified until the Clean Air Act of 1956. Similarly, Karen Hunt's "Gendering the Politics of the Working Woman's Home" highlights the impracticality of some advice offered to women. Hunt looks at the suggestions of socialist women such as Katherine Bruce Glasier in the Edwardian period.