The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1924)

By | On July 30, 2020 | Updated September 14, 2026 | Comments (2)
The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher - Quite Literally Books

A way ahead-of-its-time novel, The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (at the time known as Dorothy Canfield), published in 1924 by Harcourt, Brace & Co., imagined a domestic role-reversal.

A reversal of gender roles in the home was quite a bold idea to consider in the 1920s. As parents, the protagonists Evangeline (Eva) and Lester Knapp were unhappily going through the motions of their traditional roles. An accident forced them to reverse roles, and from that adversity, their family found strength and satisfaction.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879 – 1958) was an American author, educational reformer, and social activist based in New England and identified most closely with Vermont. She earned a Ph.D in 1905, was able to speak five languages, and worked for the cause of refugees in Europe.

Fisher’s body of work included some twenty-two novels and eighteen works of nonfiction. Some of her best known novels included The Brimming Cup, Rough-Hewn, Raw Material, Her Son’s Wife,The Deepening Stream, and Understood Betsy. She was also a prolific writer of nonfiction and essays. 

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The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher:
A contemporary edition

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher - Quite Literally Books

Having read an earlier edition of The Home-Maker, and recalling how fascinating I found Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s novel of domestic role reversal, I was delighted to learn about a contemporary edition published by Quite Literally Books in 2023. The crazy “Trad Wife” trend happening today makes The Home-Maker feel futuristic, rather than a story that took place more than one hundred years ago. From the publisher:

“It’s the 1920s and gender roles are set in stone—can it be anything but “unhappily ever after” for the hapless Knapps? Evangeline is quite possibly the best home-maker in town, but keeping her home and family in immaculate condition is killing her—and them.

Her husband, Lester, is suffering too—a poet and a dreamer trapped in the body of a bookkeeper, he’s professionally inadequate and personally disengaged.

Meanwhile, the Knapp children are chafing under the weight of their mother’s too-great expectations. But then, life (quite literally) knocks a man to the ground, and spouses (figuratively) swap shoes—can the Knapps have a second chance at domestic bliss when they throw social conventions out with the dishwater?”

Adding to the pleasure of re-reading this book are a terrific Foreword  and Afterword by Molly Brown and Christine Jacobson. The Foreword concludes with the book’s relevance to the present, when women in heteronormative unions still shoulder the brunt of domestic duties. 

“Through Lester and Eva Knapp’s renegotiation of their roles as husband and wife, Fisher invites women in particular to interrogate the myth of the one-size-fits-all marriage. This is an invitation as welcome today as when she first wrote it. ”

Learn more about the QLB edition of The Home-Maker.

What did reviewers think of The Home-maker when it came out in 1924? You might think it would have shocked the critics and public, but it was well-reviewd and one of the bestselling novels of that year. Apparently the reading public was ready for a fresh, sensitive view of women’s roles. Here is one such typical review:

 

A 1924 review of The Home-maker by Dorothy Canfield 

From the original review in the Austin-American Statesman, August 24, 1924: It would be unjust to dismiss Dorothy Canfield’s new novel, “The Home-maker,” with the bare statement that it is merely another novel about the dissatisfied modern woman.

Out of a flood of such novels, however, there is some satisfaction in discovering one that delves into the subject from an entirely new angle and brings to light a different opinion. 

Lester Knapp is an ordinary bookkeeper who hates his work, his associates, and the very air of commercialism. He is incompetent because he is a dreamer and has no interest whatsoever in his work. There was a time when he wrote poetry, and he still possesses that dreamer’s interest in aesthetic beauty.

He is a misfit, and simply doesn’t possess the prerequisites that might assist him to adjust to his environment. Dreaming of the luxury of having nothing to do but sit back and read poetry and be carried away by its beauty, he chafes at the lack opportunity to indulge these desires.

Through a change in the management and ownership of the establishment where he is employed, Lester sees the promotion of a man who is a sort of rival. Going home, he contemplates ending his life. His predicament is solved for him when a neighbor’s house catches fire. During the confusion, Lester falls from the roof and is carried home, hurt and helpless.

Eva Knapp, Lester’s wife, is equally dissatisfied with the trials of home life. Her husband’s accident opens the way for her to seek a means of livelihood in the world of business. She gets a position in the establishment where her husband was formerly employed, and her delight with the work, coupled with her unusual character, brings rapid promotion and satisfaction to her.

Now forced to stay home confined to a wheelchair, Lester becomes truly interested in the children. He studies them — their desires, their needs, and their interests. He strives to become a companion to them, and is surprised at the resulting revelations that unfold — not only about his children, but about himself.

He also makes a study of housekeeping. He prefers this new occupation, and for the first time since his college days finds time to enjoy poetry. Where he had been a failure, his wife proves herself a success And where she had been for the most part a failure, he had become a success.

The climax of these new circumstances comes when the family physician says that he can cure Lester of his malady. But Lester had already discovered that fact for himself and rebeled at the very thought of being cured. He knows it means he will have to go back to the world of commerce. Conventions, after all, must be satisfied; the man of the family must be the breadwinner.

Eva does not want him to be cured, for she knows that it would mean her return to the drudgery of home life. Even the children, Helen, Henry, and little Stephen, don’t want to lose the wonderful companionship of their father, which has come to mean so much to them.

The outcome of this entanglement is admirably and dramatically handled by Dorothy Canfield. The author has an uncanny way of making everything work out. That’s really the only disagreeable feature of the novel. By turning everything precisely around, all the difficulties of the Knapp family are too neatly, and completely, resolved.

For the rest, the novel is truly admirable. The characters are superbly drawn. Eva, as one female reader remarked, is exactly like dozens of women she knows. Anyone who understands the spirit of a poetic nature understands Lester Knapp. And, perhaps best of all, the author knows children and understands them. Her portrait of the Knapp children is admirable and touching.

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More about Dorothy Canfield Fisher