No Place Like Home : Women Philosophers' Struggles with Domesticity

Why should we think about the home? Most would agree that it is central to children's development-a healthy, stable, and hopefully loving environment where they can prepare for adulthood. But for women, the duties and expectations bound up with life at home have historically often meant stunted development, confinement to the home and domestic work, subordination to a man who goes in and out of the home freely. While societal advancements have helped to close this gap for some, these problems endure for many. The writings of women philosophers, some going back many centuries, reveal insights on these challenges that deserve close study. In No Place Like Home, Sandrine Bergès calls attention to women philosophers' ideas and arguments, starting in antiquity and continuing into the twenty-first century. Through their writings, she examines the concept of the home in all its historical richness and variety, thus reinstating the home as a philosophical problem, worthy of deep inquiry. Bergès examines writings about domesticity from numerous female thinkers and writers across history, including but not limited to, Perictione, Angelina Grimké, Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Beecher, Sojourner Truth, Margaret Cavendish, Simone de Beauvoir, and Marie Kondo. Through their perspectives, she reveals the rich and varied history of philosophical reflections on the home, from which we are given the tools to draw our own conclusions about its place in our modern lives.