The Girl's Own Book

Domestic Skills

Keeping house and raising children were the future toward which most little girls in the nineteenth century could reasonably look. Doll stories offered casual training in childcare, but other — mostly nonfiction — books and magazines covered plain sewing, dress making, fancy work, knitting, interior decoration and design, and cookery. The skills were made attractive with promises of future expe tise, patterns for pretty things for everyday use, and careful and cheerful instructions.

The Dolls’ Wash, meant for very young readers, introduces the technologies of washing, starching, and ironing clothes, but the real takeaways are that laundry is hard work for the servant and that little girls should take care not to get dirty. May’s Doll is a short course on fashion textiles, from the production of silk, wool, linen, and cotton, through manufacturing techniques for stockings, shoes, gloves, and lace. It ends with thirty pages of review questions and answers.

Practical books provided opportunities for girls to rehearse domestic arts, and announced the importance of doing so. The Girls’ Own Toy-Maker explains: “This is not only pleasant employment, but it is extremely useful; to be able to make your doll’s clothes you will acquire the knowledge of making your own dresses when you are older.” The Mary Frances Sewing Book includes both permanent and “flimsy” patterns for doll clothes, working up from handkerchiefs and capes to a wedding dress with a veil. The growth of home economics as a school subject is reflected in the textbook Food and Home Cookery, written by child welfare reformer Catherine Buckton.
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Ewing, Juliana Horatia, and R. André, illustrator. The Dolls’ Wash. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1883.

May’s Doll: Where Its Dress Came From: A Book for Little Girls. London: John and Charles Mozley, 6, Paternoster Row, 1851.

Landells, Ebenezer and Alice. The Girl’s Own Toy-Maker: And Book of Recreation. London: Griffith and Farran, Corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1860.

Fryer, Jane Eayre, and Jane Allen Boyer. The Mary Frances Sewing Book, or, Adventures Among the Thimble People. London: George G. Harrap and Company, c. 1914.

Buckton, Catherine M. Food and Home Cookery. A Course of Instruction in Practical Cookery and Cleaning, for Children in Elementary Schools. London, 1883.

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