“A women’s place is in the kitchen.” This trite saying harkens us back to stereotypical images of an older place and time when women’s opportunities were limited to the confines of the home, particularly the kitchen—where women were relegated to the task of preparing and serving their family and guest meals. Today, you occasionally hear ‘the kitchen’ being referred to as a symbol of women’s oppression. But a new exhibit at the William Clements Library, The Old Girl Network: Charity Cookbooks and the Empowerment of Women, offers us a more complex and nuanced perspective of the women behind the apron, and how they utilized their culinary tools and knowledge as a source of empowerment.
The exhibit features charity cookbooks from the mid-1800s to today. Charity cookbooks are cookbooks published and sold for the purpose of benefiting a certain philanthropic cause. Janice Longone, Curator of American Culinary History at the Clements Library, organized the exhibition. According to Longone, the first wave of the women’s movement was already active before mass media, communication, and transit via the most ordinary of objects—the lowly cookbook.
The above image is from the book Kritters of the Kitchen Kingdom and How to Make Them, a children’s how-to book published in 1922. On page 20, the “Militant Corn Ella Cob” is shown holding a sign that reads “Votes for women”.
This unique exhibition shows that the significance and practical purposes of cookbooks go far beyond teaching its readers how to prepare foods. Longone found that a common theme emerges from
Proceeds from a majority of charity cookbooks benefited churches, but very early on other societal and community problems were also addressed. The exhibition features cookbooks that were made to raise support and funds for the suffrage movement, the temperance movement, for the military during war time, and for women’s educational pursuits and career development.
The exhibition makes a convincing case that cookbooks are inseparable from politics. And it may precisely be the cookbook’s apolitical façade that made it an advantageous and effective political tool for women, according to Longone. Not only do they serve as warehouses of recipes, but the featured cookbooks are rich historical texts that gives today’s readers intimate glimpses of the lives of women—their conviction, anger, sense of humor, wit and political savvyness.
In these cookbooks you will find quotes, wry humor and in some causes song lyrics supporting political and altruistic causes interspersed between recipes. Some of the cookbooks have ads for academic tutors, women’s colleges and scholarship opportunities. Some have prologues that provide readers with some background on the particular issue at stake.
But no matter the charitable cause for which these cookbooks were raising funds for, they all collectively tell a story of “women helping women to help themselves, and then to help other women, which blossomed into women taking on the task of helping to solve other social ills,” Longone said. These charity cookbooks are products of women gathering together and employing the knowledge they already had to innovate new ways to get their views heard and their needs meant.
Though much has been written about the beginning of the women’s movement, there have been very few examinations of the role culinary matters and cookbooks played in that revolution. Whether or not you like to cook, The Old Girl Network is a rare exhibit that is guaranteed to intrigue.
The Old Girl Network: Charity Cookbooks and the Empowerment of Women
June 2—October 3, 2008
William Clements Library
For more information, call 734-764-2347 or email Janice Longone.
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The Washington Women’s Cookbook, published in 1909, is one of the first books featured in the exhibit. It is acclaimed as both a splendid cookbook and a milestone in the suffrage movement. It’s dedication is written out to “the first woman who realized that half of the human race were not getting a square deal…”. The book’s prologue gives a brief historical explanation of how the vote had been given to the women of Washington in 1883 through state legislation but then taken away three and a half years later. During the three and a half years Washington women were enfranchised, they came out to the voting booths in higher proportions than male voters.
The Woman Suffrage Cook Book was published in the 1890s.” It was among the first charity cookbook to be sold at suffrage-supporting fairs and bazaars. Within its pages are recipes from contributors such as Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth W. Stanton and Lucy Stone, all suffragettes. The book also contains this quote from John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the U.S.: “The correct principle is that women are not only justified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue when they enter on the concerns of their country, of humanity, and of their God.”
The Suffrage Cook Book was published in 1915 by The Equal Franchise Federation of Western Pennsylvania. The cover features Uncle Sam holding a balanced scale with a man sitting on side and a woman sitting on the other. The spokes of the wheel in the left corner contain the names of states and territories where women have won the vote. The spoke representing Illinois is broken, signifying that the women of Illinois only have the right to vote in school elections.