Biting the Dust: The Joys of Housework [Paperback]

Margaret Horsfield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1999

In this witty look at our obsession with cleaning, Margaret Horsfield confronts her own dirt demons and scours the social, historical, literary and psychological nooks and crannies of the world of household chores. Through historical research, countless interviews with people and an analysis of characters from novels and advertising, Horsfield presents such memorable personalities as the woman who sends her small daughter to walk around other people’s houses in white tights to check for dirt and the mother who, upon her son’s suicide, sheds not a tear but stays up all night frantically polishing her already gleaming hardwood floors. From demented television housewives to the redoubtable Mrs. Beeton, Biting the Dust runs the gamut of ideas and emotions.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When is a house clean? Like politics and religion, it's one of those questions that tends to bring out peoples' hardwired beliefs. Horsfield, a reporter for BBC, CBC, the Guardian and the Independent, uses her journalistic skills to investigate not only how, but why, we clean. Using historical, literary, psychological and personal sources, she traces the long and tangled evolution. From the beginning, cleaning transcended mere physical implications. It was linked to spiritual and moral cleansing?the ancient battle between good and evil played out between grime and elbow grease. The romantic ideal of the housewife was born, and it was her duty to protect her family from dirt. In the late 19th century, the germ theory of disease scared women onto a new plane of anxiety about the cleanliness of their households. With the introduction of soap around the same time, the media turned method to madness by establishing standards of cleanliness that were suffocating, imprisoning and impossible to live up to. Bringing her subject up to the present, Horsfield blames people like Martha Stewart for perpetuating a kind of "domestic pornography" that encourages women to fight a losing battle by creating yet another impossible, media-fueled ideal. Horsfield couldn't take a more ordinary subject and make it more interesting. In a thought-provoking, informative, yet endlessly entertaining way, she proves housecleaning to be an intensely personal, irrational and self-defining activity, while giving important insight into why a woman's work is never done. B&w illustrations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“A spiffy book . . .” —The New York Times Book Review

“An often fascinating history that by turns will have you flailing under the beds for dust devils and laughing until your sides ache.” —The Chicago Tribune

“An entertaining combination of literary tidbits, social history, and personal recollections . . . wise and witty.” —The Boston Globe

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (April 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312220839
• ISBN-13: 978-0312220839
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,394,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A riveting read, June 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Biting the Dust: The Joys of Housework (Paperback)

I picked up this book thinking it might be interesting historically but I had no idea what an absolute page-turner it would be. Margaret Horsfield is a natural storyteller and scholar. I hope she is better-known in her home country (Canada) than she is here, and that accolades here will catch up now that this book is in paperback. It was a fascinating treatment of a rarely discusssed subject, nearly prurient in its intrigue. The often surprising historical information is interspersed with her own clever commentary and glimpses into the private lives of women she interviewed for the book. An extremely solid and rewarding book, one of the best works of nonfiction I've read. The fact that Horsfield is (justly) critical of much twentieth-century literature about housekeeping but seems to enjoy cleaning herself enriches the humor and observations found throughout this book. Highly recommended!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly interesting, November 23, 2003

By 

"idioteqnician" (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Biting the Dust: The Joys of Housework (Paperback)

I thought this book was pretty good. Horsfield never gets preachy and remains amusing, which is probably what makes the book work. Whenever someone saw me reading this book, they kind of turned their nose up and asked, "What's there to say about cleaning your house?" Surprisingly a lot. Horsfield really approaches the issue from all different angles so it doesn't get boring. Admittedly, in some places the examples were a bit too exhaustive, but that was fine - I just skipped a few paragraphs and then carried on. I particularly liked her critique of others' books on housework, both historical and contemporary, mocking how "experts" have tried to declare from above how we should maintain our homes. Horsfield admits to being halfway between a lazy housekeeper and a crazed cleaner and her autobiographical anecdotes, as well as those from the outer edges of the spectrum were pretty amusing. Twice while reading I had to put the book down and go clean something - the first time to bleach my countertops, the second time to scrub my toilet. The rest of the time, however, I enjoyed reading this book while willfully ignoring my barely maintained apartment. Shows what kind of cleaner I am.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing, July 22, 2002

By 

Shawna Lanne "Shawna" (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Biting the Dust: The Joys of Housework (Hardcover)

The best non-fiction that I have read this year. Biting the dust is a tongue-in-cheek look at the social history of cleaning. It traces the path that lead to our obsession (whether we clean or not) with cleaning; explaining how marketers and self appointed moral police made a clean home to not just be something to strive for, but women's moral duty to achieve. Horsefield explains how marketers and proponents of home economics (itself a misogynistic and idiotic construct) used the idea of teeny-tiny germs to enslave a couple of generations of women.

All right, that last bit was a tad over dramatic, but you get this picture. The narrative is fascinating and informative. It was great fun to read, and I highly recommend it.