Paulette Bernège was a French journalist, author specialising in home economics. She was a pioneer in the application of scientific principles to the study of domestic science.

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) was an american writer et poet. She opened a path for poetry about feminime topics like abortion, periods, masturbation, adultery, domesticity.

“Some women marry houses. It's another kind of skin; it has a heart, a mouth, a liver and bowel movements. The walls are permanent and pink. See how she sits on her knees all day, faithfully washing herself down. Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah into their fleshy mothers. A woman is her mother. That's the main thing.”

Anne Sexton, Housewife, undated.

Marguerite Duras bought her house in Neauphle-le-Château in 1958, and her son Jean Mascolo took photos of this place so dear to the writer.

Les guides pratiques de la Redoute, n°1, “La vie quotidienne” (Practical guide about daily life, produced by a famous distance selling french compagny).

Sandra Ogel, “Ironing”, from Womanhouse. Performance about the role of women in domestic space : Ironing endless sheets.

Miriam Chapiro, Expode, 1972.

“Mierle Laderman Ukeles (b. 1939) is a maintenance artist. Since 1969, the year she wrote Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969!, later published in the pages of Artforum, she has devoted her practice to demystifying the invisible labor that undergirds society. ‘Maintenance is a drag,’ she wrote in the manifesto, ‘it takes all the fucking time (lit.) The mind boggles and chafes at the boredom. The culture confers lousy status on maintenance jobs = minimum wages, housewives = no pay.’ In 1978, Ukeles became the artist-in-residence at the New York City Sanitation Department, a position she continues to hold.”

“ Conversation : Mierle Laderman Ukeles with Maya Harakawa”,The Brooklyn Rail, October 4th, 2016.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Hartford Wash: Washing, Tracks, Maintenance — Outside and Inside, Wadsworth Atheneum.

Les cahier du GRIF, “Faire le ménage c'est travailler” [to clean is to work], n°2, February 1974.

Cathy Bernheim, Feminist meeting at Delphine Seyrig's place: Ioanna Wieder, Claire Delpech, Claire Etcherelli, Delphine Seyrig, Carole Roussopoulos.

Birgit Jürgenssen, “Hausfrauen – Küchenschürze” (Housewives’ Kitchen Apron). The artist describes the imprisoned housewife, who finally melts into the objects she uses every day.

“Quand une femme se met à écrire, ça lui colle à la peau. Pour se séparer de son texte autrement que comme d’un morceau de son corps, il faut qu’elle fasse un détour, qu’elle se demande où ça « s’arrime », cet acte d’écrire ; qu’est-ce qu’elle en fait, de ce système de théories, de connaissances, déjà constitué.”

“When a woman starts writing, it sticks to her. To separate herself from her text other than as a piece of her body, she has to make a detour, she has to ask herself where this act of writing "fits in"; what does she do with it, with this system of theories, of knowledge, already constituted.”

Claude Boukobza-Hajlblum, “Sorcières… nos traversées” [Witches... Our Journeys], Sorcières, n°7, “Ecritures” [Writings], Paris: Albatros, p. 7-8.

“Le jour où il nous sera accordé une 'écriture féminine', elle risque fort de se retrouver du côté de la dentelle et de la tapisserie.”

“The day when we will be granted a 'feminine writing', she is likely to find herself on the side of lace and tapestry.”

Anne Rivière, “Sorcières… nos traversées” [Witches... Our Journeys], Sorcières, n°7, “Ecritures” [Writings], Paris: Albatros, p. 7-8.

“Le concret c'est de l'abstrait rendu familier par l'usage", Sorcière, n°12, " Un jour peut-être, un(e) étudiant(e) aura un coup de foudre pour une théorie, sans se souvenir du jeu qui l'intriguait enfant. Et si cela n'est pas, du moins ces jeux auront-ils permis d'entretenir une prescience latente, merveilleusement exprimée par les miniatures, décors de palais, parquets et jusque dans les milieux les plus modestes par les filets, broderies, tissages, vanneries, cannages, carrelages, que ce soit en Chine, Egypte, France, Roumanie, Perou ou dans le monde musulman.”

“One day perhaps, a student will fall in love at first sight with a theory, without remembering the game that intrigued him as a child. And if not, at least these games will have made it possible to maintain a latent prescience, wonderfully expressed by miniatures, palace decorations, parquet floors and even in the most modest environments by nets, embroidery, weaving, basketry, wickerwork, tiles, whether in China, Egypt, France, Romania, Peru or in the Muslim world.”

Maryvonne Daguenet-Teissier, “Le concret c'est de l'abstrait rendu familier par l'usage” [Concrete is the abstract made familiar by use], Sorcière, n°12.

“Dans l'ethnologie (française) tout se passe 'comme' (?) s'il y avait une spécificité du travail féminin, une répartition des thèmes en fonction des sexes, bref un cantonnement partiel de la quasi généralité des femmes chercheurs dans certains domaines ou jardins considérés comme mineurs (femmes, enfants, traditions orales, sous groupes sociaux..), parfois dans certains espaces conceptuels (mais là l'exemple est britannique, la souillure étudiée par Mary Douglas) et dans certaines pratiques (empirisme forcené, art de la description, micro -analyse ...). Cette maniaquerie quasiment ménagère a été productrice de travaux d'une remarquable précision au plan des données, d'une vigilante rigueur quant à l'analyse de celles-ci et d'une incroyable prudence pour ce qui est de leur interprétation, toutes qualités que l'on souhaiterait rencontrer plus fréquemment dans des recherches dont les résultats font loi. Les pratiques étant les garants de l' "objectivité", ces ouvrages féminins et leurs auteurs sont ainsi repliés à l'abri des perspectives théoriques qui s'affrontent avec fracas.”

“In (French) ethnology, everything happens 'as if' (?) if there were a specificity of female work, a distribution of themes according to gender, in short a partial confinement of almost all women researchers in certain fields or gardens considered as minor (women, children, oral traditions, social subgroups...), sometimes in certain conceptual spaces (but here the example is British, the defilement studied by Mary Douglas) and in certain practices (frantic empiricism, the art of description, micro-analysis...). This almost domestic mania has produced work of remarkable precision in terms of data, vigilant rigour in the analysis of the data and incredible caution in the interpretation of the data, all qualities that one would wish to see more frequently in research whose results are the law. Practices being the guarantors of "objectivity", these women's books and their authors are thus sheltered from the theoretical perspectives that clash with each other in such a way as to make the research more objective.”

Nicole Echard, “Anecdote interdite” [Forbidden anecdote], Sorcière, n°12.

“Il y a trois langages possibles : la poésie [...], le langage théorique et l'autre langage, le langage de l'impossibilité de travailler l'écriture et d'en faire une oeuvre d'art parce que c'est le cri élémentaire, brut, immédiat qui sort”

“There are three possible languages: poetry [...], theoretical language and the other language, the language of the impossibility of working on the writing and making it a work of art because it is the elementary, raw, immediate cry that comes out.”

Chantal Chawaf, Sorcière, n°12, interview by Françoise T. Clédat.

Le Monde, “Un style Sorcières” [A Witches Style], June 1979.

Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Cathy Bernheim, preparation of the magazine Parole!, Annette Lévy-Willard, Hélène Rouch, Liliane Kandel, Françoise Picq, Pascaline Cuvelier.

“Frances Gabe, tired of cleaning the jam that her children spread with malicious pleasure on the walls, one day lost her composure, held up the garden hose and hosed down her entire house. She never believed Mr. Muscle's short-term promises. In fact, it was after she threw her husband out of the house that she had, as a divine revelation, the idea of a self-cleaning house.”

Tony Côme, “Habiter le lave-vaisselle. Un rêve de Frances Gabe”, Strabic, April 23, 2019.

Frances Gabe'sself-cleaning house goes on sale for $50,000. She filed a patent, available here.

Frances Gabe about her self cleaning house[Vidéo]

“You can talk all you like about women’s liberation, but houses are still designed so women have to spend half their time on their knees or hanging their head in a hole.”

“Plus qu’à l’écrit interdit, c’est au monde muet et permis des choses que les femmes confient leur mémoire. Non aux prestigieux objets de collection, affaire d’hommes soucieux de conquérir par l’accumulation de tableaux ou de livres la légitimité du goût. Au XIXe siècle, la collection, plus encore la bibliophilie, sont des activités masculines. Les femmes se rabattent sur plus humble matière : le linge ». L’historienne et militante féministe précise : « Le trousseau, soigneusement préparé dans les milieux populaires, ruraux surtout, est "une longue histoire entre mère et fille". La confection du trousseau, c’est un legs de savoir-faire et de secrets, du corps et du cœur, longuement distillés. L’armoire à linge est à la fois coffre-fort et reliquaire. L’épaisseur des draps, la finesse des nappes, le marquage des serviettes, la qualité des torchons prennent sens dans une chaîne de gestes répétés et festonnés.”

“More than the forbidden written word, it is to the mute and permissive world of things that women entrust their memory. No to prestigious collector's items, the business of men anxious to conquer the legitimacy of taste through the accumulation of paintings or books. In the 19th century, collecting, and even more so bibliophily, were male activities. Women fell back on a more humble material: linen". The historian and feminist activist explains: "The trousseau, carefully prepared in working class circles, especially in rural areas, is "a long history between mother and daughter". The making of the trousseau is a legacy of know-how and secrets, of the body and the heart, distilled over a long period of time. The linen cupboard is both a safe and a reliquary. The thickness of the sheets, the fineness of the tablecloths, the marking of the napkins, the quality of the tea towels make sense in a chain of repeated and scalloped gestures.”

Michelle Perrot, Traverses, n°40, April 1987.

More about the trousseau here.

“Souvent les provisions étaient là, achetées du matin, alors il n’y avait plus qu’à éplucher les légumes, mettre la soupe à cuire et écrire.”

“Often the provisions were there, bought in the morning, so all that had to be done was to peel the vegetables, put the soup to cook and write.”

Marguerite Duras, “La maison” [“The House”], in: La vie matérielle, 1987.

“Out of her womb of pain my mother spat me
into her ill-fitting harness of despair
into her deceits
where anger re-conceived me
piercing my eyes like arrows
pointed by her nightmare
of who I was not
becoming.
Going away
she left in her place
iron maidens to protect me
and for my food
the wrinkled milk of legend
where I wandered through the lonely rooms of
afternoon
wrapped in nightmares
from the Orange and Red and Yellow
Purple and Blue and Green
Fairy Books
where White witches ruled
over the empty kitchen table
and never wept
or offered gold
nor any kind enchantment
for the vanished mother
of a black girl.”

Audre Lorde, “Story Books on a Kitchen Table” [1976], in: Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, New York/London: W. W. Norton & Company.

“In The Knitting Sutra, Susan Lydon describes the labor of knitting as a freely chosen craft that enhances her awareness of the value of right livelihood, sharing: 'What I found in this tiny domestic world of knitting is endless; it runs broader and deeper than anyone might imagine. It is infinite and seemingly inexhaustible in its capacity to inspire, excite, and provoke creative insight.' Lydon sees the world that we have traditionally thought of as 'woman’s work” as a place to discover godliness through the act of creating domestic bliss. A blissful household is one where love can flourish.”

bell hooks, All About Love : New Visions, New York: Harper & Row.

Rachel Whiteread, Modern Chess Set, 2005.

Sara Ahmed about the movie The Hours (dir. Stephen Daldry, 2002), where Laura is an unhappy housewife in the 1950s:

“What happens when domestic bliss does not create bliss? Laura tries to bake a cake. She cracks an egg. The cracking of the egg becomes a common gesture throughout the film, connecting the domestic labor of women over time. To bake a cake ought to be a happy activity, a labor of love. Instead, the film reveals a sense of oppression that lingers in the very act of breaking the eggs.
Not only do such objects not make you happy; they embody a feeling of disappointment. The bowl in which you crack the eggs waits for you. You can feel the pressure of its wait. The empty bowl feels like an accusation. Feminist archives are full of scenes of domesticity, in which domestic objects become strange, almost menacing. An empty bowl that feels like an accusation can be the beginning of a feminist life.”

Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, Durham: Duke University Press, p. 63.