The Journals of Martha E. McMillan

Christopher Crowfield’s study. Christopher Crowfield’s daughters and wife have so bedecked the parlor during the course of the essays that the Crowfield family have to close the formal parlor in order to protect the carpets, furniture, and accessories from every day wear and tear. The family convenes in Crowfield’s study and uses the room as he suggests a sensible parlor should be used. Though one could suggest that by shutting the door on the antebellum parlor, Stowe reimagines antebellum parlor morality, she still keeps religion in the home. In the last chapter, Crowfield emphasizes the fact that families must make comfortable spaces that invite family members and others to participate in family life, whether that be the parlor or a more comfortable space, such as Crowfield’s study. Crowfield demonstrates how this warm, informal gathering on Sundays contributes to “home religion.” It was Sunday evening, and our little circle were convened by my study-fireside, where a crackling hickory fire proclaimed the fall of the year to be coming on, and cold weather impending. Sunday evenings, my married boys and girls are fond of coming home and gathering round the old hearthstone, and “making believe” that they are children again. We get out the old-fashioned music-books, and sing old hymns to very old tunes, and my wife and her matron daughters talk about the babies in the intervals; and we discourse of the sermon, and of the choir, and all the general outworks of good pious things which Sunday suggests. (Stowe 309) Home Religion implied family devotions, keeping the Sabbath, and representing the hope of heaven in the home. House and Home Papers brings together savvy consumerism, good taste, practicality, hospitality, and religion. At the same time, the text warns pious housekeepers at the century’s mid-point to consider seriously the fact that while parlor furnishings might be 31