Living clean and shopping green: Environmental domesticity and the nineteenth-century roots of ecoconsumption

“Living Clean and Shopping Green: Environmental Domesticity and the Nineteenth- Century Roots of Ecoconsumption,” traces current ideas of green capitalism—specifically “eco” or “green” consumption—back to nineteenth-century domestic manuals and domestic fiction. Emerging alongside the Market Revolution, these literary forms defined the model American woman as a white, middle-class domestic sentry, responsible for controlling the purity of the American domicile in its many forms. Using the concept “environmental domesticity”(a collection of ideologies and practices that treat domestic space as an environment in and of itself) as an analytical lens, this project illustrates how classist and racist theories of personal and environmental purity merged with consumer practices over the course of the nineteenth century to form a new kind of home economics based on purchasing, rather than production. This fusion helped establish the myth that white femininity—and the environmental power and perfection it promised—could be achieved by purchasing specific products. But as vocal critics of white femininity like Harriet Jacobs advertised, this power was fundamentally unattainable for the majority of American women. This was, in fact, white femininity’s selling point. By portraying the impossible standards of white femininity as always only just out of reach—just one more act or purchase away—nineteenth-century domestic authors kept it alluringly exclusive. In limiting its supply, they increased the demand, trapping women shoppers in a self-perpetuating cycle of consumption and shame that is mirrored in ecoconsumption today. By establishing this prehistory of ecoconsumption, “Living Clean and Shopping Green” explodes the scholarly binary between environmental studies and domesticity studies, illustrating domestic literature’s ability to inform and disrupt extractive capitalism’s seemingly endless loop of production and consumption.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Becker, Leah Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Murison, Justine S
• Barnard, John L
• Foote, Stephanie
• Jones, Jamie L
• Spires, Derrick R

• Domesticity
• Environmental Humanities
• Eco Consumption
• Green Consumption
• Whiteness
• White Women
• Nineteenth-century American
• Nineteenth-century Women
• Infrastructure Studies

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Leah Marie Becker

Language dc:language

eng, en

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124657

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/124657