A nosedive into the American obsession with cleanliness that
explains how this middle-class attitude was formed. Although social
reformers had crusaded for better sanitation in the first half of
the 19th century, it was the Civil War that impelled America on the
road to cleanliness, asserts Hoy, coauthor of From Dublin to New
Orleans (not reviewed). Quoting liberally from contemporary sources
to give a sense of time and place, she concludes that it was the
desire to cut death rates in army camps that spurred creation of
the US Sanitary Commission. British experience in the Crimean War
had strongly suggested that sanitation was essential to the
survival of troops, and by the Civil War's end military personnel
and civilians alike had absorbed the lesson that dirt was linked to
sickness. In subsequent decades, periodic outbreaks of cholera,
yellow fever, and typhoid drove home the message. Hoy depicts
settlement workers in the big cities teaching immigrants - the
"great unwashed" from the European countryside - that cleanliness
was the American way. Middle-class social reformers directed
similar efforts at African-Americans moving to northern cities from
the rural south; cleanliness was seen as the way to assimilation
and acceptance. In the 20th century, soap manufacturers and their
advertising agents joined with educators and health officials in
promoting hygiene as the key to success, and according to Hoy the
message was irresistible. The author sees America's quest for
cleanliness as peaking in the 1950s, when women still had the time
and the means to pursue it. Today, she states, the dirt theory of
disease has been replaced by more scientific explanations, busy
working women care less about spotless households, and factors
other than a whiter-than-white shirt are seen as essential to
financial success. Occasionally repetitious and overly detailed,
but in toto a spirited account of changing American mores. (Kirkus
Reviews)
0he American pursuit of cleanliness has often been described as a national obsession. Hoy traces how Americans became this way. She stresses the influence of women, the recognition of the need to fight disease, and the way cleanliness became an American middle class obsession in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
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