From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

The Home-Maker

Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Start date: November 1, 2025

Finish date: November 30, 2025

Discussion: Lesser Know/Wilderness Classics

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of -2 topics — 2,726 comments total

Lesser Know/Wilderness Classics

* 2025 Must Read Lesser Known Classics: Scheduled Reads
By Lesle , Appalachain Bibliophile · 72 posts · 191 views

last updated Sep 06, 2025 07:14AM

2025 September: Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
By Lesle , Appalachain Bibliophile · 6 posts · 11 views

last updated Sep 06, 2025 07:21AM

showing 1 of 1 topics view all »

What Members Thought

May 28, 2023 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, hf, 2023-read, philo-psychol, usa, audible-uk, feminism, medical, education

I like this book a lot for two reasons—for the messages conveyed and the small details that make the story convincing, that make the messages hit home with a punch. Some writers tell you things. This writer shows you things through how people behave and speak. There are people of widely different personality types. The world is richer for the existence of this variety. People are not meant to fit one mold—we’re all different and we are all valuable and each must live according to their way of be I like this book a lot for two reasons—for the messages conveyed and the small details that make the story convincing, that make the messages hit home with a punch. Some writers tell you things. This writer shows you things through how people behave and speak. There are people of widely different personality types. The world is richer for the existence of this variety. People are not meant to fit one mold—we’re all different and we are all valuable and each must live according to their way of being. This is best for society and the individual too. In this story, the husband is the homebody. Relating to kids comes naturally to him. The wife is better as the wage earner. The reverse of the traditional roles is accepted nowadays, but it wasn’t back in the 1920s when the book was written! Having read this book, I now understand why Eleanor Roosevelt claimed Dorothy Canfield Fisher, the author, to be one of the ten most influential American women of her time!

Let me repeat though, what makes the book special is how the story is told, not simply the message. A book can have a good message, but it must also be engaging. The story is well told.

I like that the book speaks out against materialism.
I like the focus upon Montessori teaching methods.
I like the ending—it’s much better than that of the silent film that ran in 1925.

The love that grows between the father and his children is movingly portrayed. I spoke of wonderful details. It is here they come in!

The audiobook is read by Anne Hancock. I liked the narration but didn’t love it. She puts herself between the listener and the author’s words. I prefer interpreting an author myself, without others getting involved. Hancock’s words are spoken clearly. Three stars for the narration.

This is better than I thought it would be! Wanting more from this talented author, I have immediately begun Understood Betsy. It’s considered a classic children’s book. I’m guessing and hoping it will be one of those books meant for all ages, the young and the old.

**********************

*The Home-Maker 4 stars
*Understood Betsy 4 stars ...more

36 likes · Like · see review

Jun 05, 2023 Manybooks rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-reviews, families, family-dysfunction, feminist, modern-for-1925

Dorothy Canfield Fisher published The Home Maker in 1924, and she opens her for the 1920s delightfully avant garde and forward thinking account of family dysfunction (and its opposite) by introducing and describing to us as readers the Knapp family (father, mother, and three children), all of whom are basically totally and utterly miserable and living lives of despair and often unrelenting discomfort and pain, are in fact just barely existing and not ever really and truly living (and for the two Dorothy Canfield Fisher published The Home Maker in 1924, and she opens her for the 1920s delightfully avant garde and forward thinking account of family dysfunction (and its opposite) by introducing and describing to us as readers the Knapp family (father, mother, and three children), all of whom are basically totally and utterly miserable and living lives of despair and often unrelenting discomfort and pain, are in fact just barely existing and not ever really and truly living (and for the two adults, for the parents stuck and glued into traditional gender prescribed spheres and roles totally and utterly unsuitable for them and for their respective temperaments). Now Lester Knapp, the father encountered in The Home Maker, he is presented by Canfield Fisher as being painfully and unhappily employed as a bookkeeper at department store (even though he would rather be writing poetry and not being out and about as the primary "breadwinner"), timidly shy daughter Helen is always fading into the background, whilst the eldest son Henry obviously suffers from stress and emotional torment based illnesses (and the youngest son Stephen, he lashes out angrily at everyone and at everything, and is basically shown in The Home Maker as absorbing all of negativity like some kind of monstrous sponge and then spewing forth what the rest of the family swallows and lets fester internally).

But while the mother, while Evangeline Knapp is shown in (or at least at the beginning of) The Home Maker to externally, to on the surface to be the perfect, the "golden standard" of a wife and mother and is praised by her friends and acquaintances for the efficiency and the energy with which she performs her multitude of domestic tasks, Evangeline herself is in fact massively, is absolutely unhappy and discontented with being just and simply a homemaker and finds her role as mother and as housekeeper anything totally fulfilling. And yes, this intense unhappiness, anger and sense of horrid and all encompassing family dysfunction, for me permeates every part of Dorothy Canfield Fisher's text for The Home Maker, that is until an accident leaves Lester Knapp injured and housebound (actually wheelchair bound) and forces a total change of parental roles, with Evangeline Knapp going to work and Lester becoming basically a so-called house husband, and with this basically representing the total and wonderful salvation of the Knapps' as both individuals and as a family, since Lester absolutely adores and appreciates being at home and responsible for the children and their welfare (and they, Helen, Henry and Stephen also really enjoy their father being at home with them and thrive magically and delightfully) and Evangeline equally and in her own right really enjoys going to work and no longer having the burden of being just a mother responsible for household chores and the children on her shoulders.

But of course (and sadly but for the 1920s and even still somewhat for today not surprisingly), when Dorothy Canfield Fisher describes in Home Maker that Lester Knapp might be on the road to recovery from his paralysis, friends, neighbours (and basically everyone) immediately expect that Lester should then go back to work and that Evangeline will go back to being a "just" a housewife. And even though Canfield Fisher clearly shows with The Home Maker that this state of affairs (Lester and Evangeline going back to the standard, the status quo) would be horrible, would be completely both physically and emotionally unhealthy for ALL of the Knapps, for both the parents and also for their children, the happy ending of The Home Maker can (in 1924) only happen through a bit of medical and almost deus ex machina like intervention, with Lester's physician simply claiming that any further treatment of Lester's paralysis could be dangerous, even fatal and that thus, the Knapps will now be left alone, with Evangeline going to work and Lester being at home. An ending for The Home Maker that some reviewers seem to consider morally problematic as it is in fact a falsehood that Lester cannot recover, but for me The Home Maker actually concludes with the doctor totally and superbly following the oh so important and often not anymore all that considered Hypocratic Oath of not doing harm, for it would indeed be very much harmful for the Knapps if Lester were forced to return to his job as a bookkeeper and if Evangeline would have to return to her role as being only a housewife and mother. ...more

22 likes · Like · see review

Jul 06, 2013 Diane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: art

I found this book oddly enough when I was looking up a
Clive Brook film (I just love old movies - they seem
to go hand in hand with reading). It was made into a
movie around 1924-5, what a confronting idea for 1924.
A woman who is completely oppressed with her role as
a wife and mother and literally making her family sick
with anxiety is given an opportunity to become the
"bread winner" when her husband, Lester, becomes
confined to a wheel chair through a life threatening
accident.
This is such a readabl ...more

3 likes · Like · see review