Domesticating History: the political origins of America's house museums

by Patricia West

Celebrating the lives of famous men and women, historic house museums showcase restored rooms and period furnishings, and portray in detail their former occupants' daily lives. But behind the gilded molding and curtain brocade lie the largely unknown, politically charged stories of how the homes were first established as museums. Focusing on George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and the Booker T. Washington National Monument, Patricia West shows how historic houses reflect less the lives and times of their famous inhabitants than the political pressures of the eras during which they were transformed into museums.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Grad School, American History, 19th Century, The United States Of America

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 1999

Reviews

[Anson Cassel Mills · Rating 2 out of 5]

Domesticating History contains a lot of dubious, theoretical musings about the “cult of domesticity” and such like written in fashionable academese. The interstices provide helpful information about the creation of Mount Vernon, Orchard House (the home of Louisa May Alcott), Monticello, and the Booker T. Washington National Monument.

One problem with West’s interpretation is that she isn’t critical enough of her sources. If they argue for something that’s not politically correct today, she pounces on them and takes them literally. Some of the author’s own pronouncements follow this sort of literalistic logic: “The fact that ‘the most beloved house in America’ was ‘falling to ruin’ tapped into the fear that traditional home life itself was under siege.” (67)

The author’s writing style, loaded with jargon, nominalizations, and “scare quotes,” makes for dreadful reading. Just two examples from a single page (93), which I often use as a bad example in my writing class: “Like Mount Vernon and Orchard House before it, Monticello was posited as a unifying influence for seemingly intractable political rifts.” “In the hypernationalistic postwar era, the utility of the house museum as patriotic medium and the desire to turn away from European aesthetics toward `Americana’ fostered a boom in both the creation of historic `shrines’ and the collection of American antiques.”

[Ishbel · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Enjoyable overview of women in historic preservation, focusing on historic house museums.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only skimmed through this, but I hope I can come back to it at some point. It deals with the origins of four house museums: Mt. Vernon, the Louisa May Alcott house, Monticello, and the Booker T. Washington birthplace museum. The point is that these museums come out of very particular moments in history, and we should understand that when we visit them. For example, the impetus to create a museum out of Mt. Vernon came out of the pre-Civil War period, when the country was divided and the cult of Washington was growing, and a group of wealthy Southern ladies were worried that Washington's home might fall into northern hands. In many ways they saw Washington as a paragon of Southern values and they wanted to promote that. A lot of times people (and I know I did this) visit these museums and simply assume that they have always been this way, or that they just kinda 'happened' when famous people died. But that's not the whole story, and getting these political backgrounds can be very illuminating in understanding what the museum is teaching its visitors.

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patricia West presents four case studies to argue that the founding of historic house museums are politically charged and nuanced. Although her study does not look deeply at interpretation, her thesis could be extended to argue that the political moments of museum founding shape individual museums as institutional entities. West looks at the role of women, the extension of the domestic sphere into the public sphere, and the fraying of national identity in the antebellum preservation of George Washington's Mt. Vernon. She follows this with an examination of the preservation of Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House in homage to "traditional" domestic values epitomized in "Little Women" midst Colonial Revival reaction against immigration and strife over the women's suffrage movement. The preservation of Monticello was influenced by New Deal politics and the professionalization of the preservation movement, while the Booker T. Washington birthplace was founded in the context of the civil rights movements, and issues of revisionist history and authenticity.

[Jessi · Rating 4 out of 5]

West gave some interesting case studies to back up her contention that house museums are often "politically charged". Tensions about racial and gender equality definitely influenced how many house museums came about. Orchard House, the family home of Louisa May Alcott, is one of places she does a case study about.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads as a dissertation, pictures are only black and white, very well notated. Interesting about the ladies' groups who were the motivating persons to maintain some of the houses.