Domestic Revolutions

Middle-class homes became showcases for technological progress. Gas stoves replaced coal ranges, promising cleaner, more controllable cooking. Early refrigerators—usually iceboxes with daily ice delivery—preserved food longer. Vacuum cleaners, imported from America, promised liberation from dust. Each innovation required instruction, maintenance, adjustment of household routines.

Jeanne Bonnefoy, writing in the magazine "La Vie Domestique," advised readers navigating technological change: "The modern housewife must be part engineer, part chemist, part economist. She must understand gas pressure for her stove, electrical currents for her lights, chemical reactions for her cleaning products. Progress demands new competencies."

But technology also deskilled traditional work. Laundresses lost customers to mechanical washing machines in public laundries. Seamstresses competed with sewing machines producing garments faster and cheaper. Ice cutters faced unemployment as artificial refrigeration spread. Every labor-saving device eliminated someone's labor.

Apartments themselves evolved. New buildings featured electrical wiring, telephone connections, central heating, indoor plumbing. The "modern comfort" apartment commanded premium rents. Older buildings retrofitted desperately—external wires snaking across facades, radiators blocking windows, bathrooms carved from bedrooms. Paris resembled a patient undergoing multiple simultaneous surgeries.