Hemkulturens makt

Abstract

During the interwar period in the 1920's and 1930's, the general opinion on domestic life was that it should be run in an efficient and rational way. In her book A New Spirit in the Home, Miep van Rooy spöke about the functional use of space in the home. She explained how movements create space and depicted the activities of the housewife in such terms. It was the housewife who should decide about the use of the available space in the home and rationalise the domestic chores so that she could devote more time to her children and family. Her main duty was apparently to be at home. Guidebooks 011 home furnishing and interiör decoration can tell us a good deal about the prevailing views on lifestyle, morality and consumption. When reading Van Rooy and her contemporaries, one discovers that the women were entangled in the nets that had been knit by domestic science and well-meaning architects. The scientists and the architects based their knowledge on empirical facts about domestic life, and their descriptions of household functions were more or less impartial. Household duties could be done by anyone, they said. But they still remained with the women. The power of the prevailing home culture had thus been underestimated. The famous foundation of Goed Wonen, (Good Housing), had a more existential approach to domestic life. It is apparent in books like the guide to interiör decoration written by Cora Nicolai in the 1960's. She emphasized the various activities in the home and described family life in terms of togetherness, intimacy and perconal contact. Space was seen as stemming from and exisiting by human interaction. This is why there are people present in most of the pictures of interiörs in her book. They remind us strongly of 19th century pictures of the happy family. Father is seen reading or talking to bis friends, sometimes playing with bis son. Mother is serving tea or doing needlework, the daughter is reading a book. These pictures do not only show how family life should be, but also what activities constitute the idea of the family home. Not even the architects of Goed Wonewwere able to go beyond the traditional view on the division of work with respect to gender. In this way, the women were caged in their homes, being at the same time "place" and "movement".