Home Is Where the Art Is: Rose Macaulay’s Resistance to Domesticity

Abstract

This article draws on the writing of Rose Macaulay (1881–1958), to examine how this notable British feminist journalist and public intellectual addressed domesticity for her public’s entertainment and instruction. In the 1920s, when Macaulay was consolidating her literary celebrity, she constructed her public persona from her life as an unattached woman, stressing her social independence and her intellectual freedom in her journalism. Yet she made her home the centre of her art, on her own terms. This article argues that Macaulay repudiated the assumption that as a woman she should be interested in or even expert in the domestic arts, and shows how she articulated resistance to social conventions around domesticity.

Keywords:

• Rose Macaulay
• feminism
• home
• domesticity
• journalism

Acknowledgements

Some paragraphs in this article draw on Kate Macdonald (2017a: 118–36).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).