Difference between revisions of "325--2011--Week 12 Questions/Comments"
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I thought it was very interesting to learn how when electrical appliances were first introduced into American homes, it was believed that the roles of women were also going to drastically change. At first, men like Thomas Edison raved about the positives of electrical appliances. Edison believed that the appliances would train a woman’s mind to be more like that of an engineer, and not of a housewife, stating “the woman of the future would become rather a domestic engineer than domestic laborer, with the greatest of all handmaidens, electricity, at her service” (Nye, Page 242). Men like Edison believed that with the help of new electrical appliances, women would no longer have to spend the majority of their days performing labor-filled tasks around the house. While certain electrical appliances definitely did make back-breaking labor easier, they in no way decreased the amount of work that a woman had to do within the confines of her own home. Because the electrical appliances enabled tasks around the house to be done so much more efficiently and quickly, women were then expected to do more around the house each day. While an appliance like the electric washing machine was originally intended to help shorten the amount of time a woman spent washing and drying clothes, it actually did the opposite. Husbands thought, “Well if you can do one day’s laundry so quickly, why don’t you two more days of laundry as well?” It seems to me that these appliances intended for home use were very deceiving in terms of how they were supposed to make the lives of housewives easier; yes, they made the actual physical labor more manageable, but they failed to decrease the amount of time a woman had to spend each day performing tasks around the house. So at the end of the day, as women spent just as much time on housework as they had in the past (if not more), did electrical appliances really make their lives any easier? ~Kevin Gottschalk | I thought it was very interesting to learn how when electrical appliances were first introduced into American homes, it was believed that the roles of women were also going to drastically change. At first, men like Thomas Edison raved about the positives of electrical appliances. Edison believed that the appliances would train a woman’s mind to be more like that of an engineer, and not of a housewife, stating “the woman of the future would become rather a domestic engineer than domestic laborer, with the greatest of all handmaidens, electricity, at her service” (Nye, Page 242). Men like Edison believed that with the help of new electrical appliances, women would no longer have to spend the majority of their days performing labor-filled tasks around the house. While certain electrical appliances definitely did make back-breaking labor easier, they in no way decreased the amount of work that a woman had to do within the confines of her own home. Because the electrical appliances enabled tasks around the house to be done so much more efficiently and quickly, women were then expected to do more around the house each day. While an appliance like the electric washing machine was originally intended to help shorten the amount of time a woman spent washing and drying clothes, it actually did the opposite. Husbands thought, “Well if you can do one day’s laundry so quickly, why don’t you two more days of laundry as well?” It seems to me that these appliances intended for home use were very deceiving in terms of how they were supposed to make the lives of housewives easier; yes, they made the actual physical labor more manageable, but they failed to decrease the amount of time a woman had to spend each day performing tasks around the house. So at the end of the day, as women spent just as much time on housework as they had in the past (if not more), did electrical appliances really make their lives any easier? ~Kevin Gottschalk | ||
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| + | Nye pointed out the difference between the girls and boys electric toys. I feel like this was a key point where toys got significantly more gendered. The boys’ toys, as Nye said, worked more with the production of electricity and learning how they worked. However, the girls’ toys used electricity but did not expect them to want or need to know how the electricity worked. –Megan Mc. | ||
== Pursell reading == | == Pursell reading == | ||
