White Eve doesn't eat forbidden fruit, she bakes apple pies.
The white middle class home is a Garden of Eden.
I mostly write about how our cultural belief that the home is separate from the economy hurts everyone. And I’m finishing an edit on a project that makes that argument in a new and (I think) exciting way. But the home hurts people because of that false divide too. I’ve written about this before, it’s not a new subject for me. But this morning as I sit down to finally finish the last edits on this new (exciting!!) piece before I send it to an editor, I just feel the point bears repeating in this space.
When 19th century capitalists rhetorically removed production from the white middle class home, they were attempting to separate the home from the economy. They were also attempting to separate the white middle class home from accountability.
The white middle class home became a place of perpetual innocence. A Garden of Eden - never productive, always spontaneously, naturally reproductive. If the white middle class home is a Garden of Eden, that makes white middle class woman a kind of Eve. And that Eve is innocent; she’s baking apple pies, not eating forbidden fruit.
The southern belle was a white Eve - how could she be held accountable for what happened in the fields when she was inside her home? People still use plantation homes as wedding venues, because they think she was innocent and her home was too. The anti-CRT suburban mom is a white Eve, she ventures from the garden just long enough to exert the authority of innocence in the public sphere. She swears she’s just trying to protect the children while she spouts racist propaganda.
Then there’s the lean in white feminist seeking liberation in the market while outsourcing “care work without ensuring care rights.” She buys into the home as a Garden of Eden too. She thinks she’s subverting the Garden of Eden trope. She’s Eve venturing out into the greater world to found a company that sells apple-scented lip balm. But she still believes the home is a spontaneously fruitful place - what other explanation is there for her underpaid nanny’s under the table wages and lack of benefits?
White picket fences don’t actually cut the home off from the economy. They shouldn’t cut the home off from accountability. Gosh damn.
Here are a few of the pieces I’ve written about Home being used to harm.
My neighborhood’s fight for integration changed America. Now white neighbors are suing a Black pastor over his social justice work.
The Edenic Allure of Ballerinafarm
It’s no wonder that many LDS women have taken to Momfluencing and Homefluencing (and now Farmfluencing) like fish who finally found water.
White communists, socialists, feminists, and capitalists tried to engineer society using kitchen design.
Why was I embarrassed to tell people I rented my home?
I don’t know what has me all het up this morning. Maybe it’s the deadening thud of Don’t Worry Darling premiere day making me feel like I need to shout.
Another massively thought provoking, insightful piece.
First of all, I love your work and everything you do. But, I do want to say that I'm currently getting my degree in southern US history and I can tell you that from my research I believe that most, if not all, white women that are getting married at plantations do it for the architecture and beauty and aren't even remotely thinking about what happened there much less thinking that the southern belle was innocent and her home was too. They are so removed from that and I daresay it hasn't crossed their mind. It should cross their minds but it isn't.
I fully get that by dressing in hoop skirts it is attempting to portray a Southern ideal but all women wore hoop skirts no matter their race/culture. Mammies, prostitutes, poor, rich, etc. It would be like 150 years from now women wearing pantsuits and it being portrayed as a feminist costume when all women of all races/cultures in reality wear them.
Am I wrong about these points? What are your thoughts on my comments? I'm completely open to your feedback on them and being educated. :)