Crafting agency: evaluating the decorative role of the nineteenth-century French housewife

The nineteenth-century French home was a significant space for decoration. Every facet of the domestic interior was adorned and filled with decorative objects and furnishing that reflected upon a family’s wealth, cultural class understanding and taste. This process of home management and decoration became the housewife’s responsibility. By systematically and meticulously accumulating decorative objects and furnishings the housewife fashioned a highly constructed identity for her family and herself. The bourgeois housewife’s decorative processes are evaluated through the manuals, ladies magazines, and salon imagery, which helped her to create an elaborate and sophisticated household. Through this decorative role the housewife could take pleasure in a creativity process, but more importantly she could establish autonomy within the domestic sphere.