Decomposition: Mrs Beeton and the Non-Linear Text

Abstract

Although, on the one hand, it sometimes seems that nineteenth-century novels were overflowing with details, there are limits to how much stuff a novel can describe without threatening the integrity of the narrative. A domestic manual like Beeton’s Book of Household Management, on the other hand, is much less limited in its scope for detail. From a focus on narrative, plot and story in the first three chapters, Time, Domesticity and Print Culture now turns to a wholly different way of telling time. As I explain in this chapter, the Book of Household Management conceptualizes domestic time not primarily through narrative, but through the organization of information. Part of that organization relates to its serial publication. It was compiled by Isabella Beeton, and published in 24 monthly numbers (1859–61) by Isabella’s publisher husband, Samuel Beeton. Beeton’s Book of Household Management can marshal a multiplicity of genres, differentiate between them with different fonts, font sizes and chapter divisions, and administer specific information on foodstuffs, cleaning, behaviour, natural history and the material environments of the mid-nineteenth-century home. Given these features, the book has no need for an overall narrative progression. Instead, the high level of organization invites the reader to pick his or her own way through the printed text.