Fraiman, S. (2017). Extreme Domesticity: A View from the Margins. New York: Columbia University Press. Review by Yishi Pan

In her essay Professions for Women (1931), Virginia Woolf shares her ambition to kill ‘the Angel in the House,’ Coventry Patmore’s now infamous image of idealised nineteenth-century femininity. Serving as a symbol of purity and selflessness in the Victorian era, the Angel ‘never had a mind or a wish of her own’ but preferred to sacrifice herself for the well-being of domestic life (p. 141). Woolf thus calls for resistance against the Angel, whose haunting shadow always lurks around, waiting to deprive women of their own voice. In Extreme Domesticity (2017), Fraiman likewise denounces this iconic image when she begins a discussion on the relation between women and domesticity.