The Angel in the House

I love history.

And isn't it unnatural or eternal as it's often made out to be? In 1854, the English poet Coventry Patmore, P-A-T-M-O-R-E, published The Angel in the House, a long poem idealizing selfless, the selfless wife who lives only to serve her husband and family and became enormously popular as the modern Victorian womanhood.

In 18-- 1931, Virginia Woolf told an audience of professional women that killing the angel in the house was part of the occupation of a woman writer.

Yeah.

In 1989, the sociologist Arlie Hochschild documented what she called the second shift, women who worked a full day on the job and then came home to do most of the housework and childcare.