Soap and Water

Victoria Kelley teaches posgraduate students at the Royal College of Art, London, and the University for the Creative Arts, UK.

Introduction

Chapter One
Monday Washday
- class and the ideal organisation of cleanliness

1. Cleanliness, Dirt and Health
-Dirty cities
-Invisible germs

2. Cleanliness, Dirt and the Boundaries of Class
-Cleanliness and anthropology
-Observing the dirty poor
-Metaphors of purity and filth
-Other and unimaginable men
-Wives and mothers

3. Order and Repetition in the Work of Cleanliness
-Ordering the tasks of cleanliness in everyday life
-Regularity and order
-Rhythms, cycles and the myths of everyday life


Chapter Two
The Place Where My Mother Could Always be Found
- working-class domesticity, gender and cleanliness

1. The Material Practice of Cleanliness
-An anatomy of dirt
-Washing
-Bathing
-Cleaning

2. Mother and Home
-Home in everyday life
-The idealised mother
-For love and money
-Children helping
-Cleanliness, dirt and the spatial arrangement of the home

3. Cleanliness and Working-class Consumption

Chapter Three
No Rubbing, No Scrubbing
- cleanliness in commercial discourse

1. Soap
-Soap as a product of ‘universal consumption’
-Soap brands and advertising techniques

2. An Analysis of Soap Advertising, 1880-1914
-Advertising and the periodical
-Soap, the sea and invisible germs
-Thrift, regularity and pleasure
-Women’s work in soap advertisements
-The consuming wife and mother

3. A Sunlight Demonstration


Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index