Selling Mrs. Consumer: Christine Frederick and the Rise of Household Efficiency

This first book-length treatment of the life and work of Christine Frederick (1883-1970) reveals an important dilemma that faced educated women of the early twentieth century. Contrary to her professional role as home efficiency expert, advertising consultant, and consumer advocate, Christine Frederick espoused the nineteenth-century ideal of preserving the virtuous home—and a woman's place in it. In an effort to reconcile her desire to succeed in the public sphere of modernization and cons...