SOURCE: Sklar, Kathryn Kish. “The Building of a Glorious Temple, 1843.” In Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity, pp. 151-67. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973.

In the following essay, Sklar examines Beecher's Treatise on Domestic Economy, a comprehensive handbook in which she discusses house-building, setting a table, cleaning, gardening, cooking, health and first aid, and childcare, and asserts that women are restricted to the domestic sphere because this promotes the stability of society.

Insofar as Catharine Beecher's career can be said to have had a widespread and immediate impact on her society, that effect was achieved through the publication of her Treatise on Domestic Economy. Even before Catharine Beecher set out for Chillicothe in 1843, her Treatise had entered its fourth printing since its publication by a small Boston firm in 1841. After polishing the text to solidify its confident, authoritative tone, Catharine had in 1842 negotiated a new contract...