Open Collections Program - Student Dialogue

Open Collections Program > Women Working > Teachers > One Kitchen or Fifty > "Tivolia Beater"

Some Students Discuss the Pamphlet Use the Tivolia Beater

TEACHER: Carrie, going back to what you said just now about the beater being for the individual—can you say what made you think that about it?
CARRIE: [It says] that it’s easy enough, a child could do it, and you’d be free—that seemed to me household organization. . . . Well, that—the individual woman, I thought, in the home, being freed by her children—but—you really have posed a difficult question for me: where’s the clue to the individual woman here?
TEACHER: Does anyone agree with the idea that the beater has to do with the individual household and, if so, what do you see [that supports that idea]?
ELIZABETH: … And there’s “A Woman’s Invention” which—it seems to me it means for the woman.
JAMISON: And it says, in the example, “Will any housewife stir a cake.”
CARRIE: Oh, is that—?
ANA: It’s for [the] individual house—yeah.
CARRIE: Where is that?
JAMISON: It’s in the example section, on the third page.
ELIZABETH: And it wouldn’t make a big enough anything for—a mob.

CARRIE: A cake, they’re talking about. This is geared to a cake.

This exchange was part of the longer discussion below.

JAMISON: We—um—I was interested in what Daniel noticed on the third page about how the—the Tivolia—and the last sentence of the example paragraph, that the Tivolia Beater—any child can do a woman’s work easily and quickly—whether that was com—uh, a good thing or a bad thing being said about women’s work there.
TONI: Well, yeah. Either way there’s not much work to it though, right? Even a child could do it.
ELIZABETH: Freeing a woman to do more interesting work, though.
TONI: Oh, yeah.
JAMISON: Or that, heretofore, women’s work has been hard and difficult and—
ELIZABETH: Mm. Mm-hm.
JAMISON: —and requires some sort of effort.

HUNTER: We wondered if it was—was it a woman’s practical—
ELIZABETH: Was it an invention for a woman or by a woman?
HUNTER: Echoes her.
TONI: By a woman who cooks.
DENNIS: It’s both.

DENNIS: One thing I wonder is, like, given the emphasis on saving time and, you know, the speed of the machine, it seems to me that there’s a lot of words which evoke the kind of—the problem is that—or the solution is that we can save time by doing this kind of machine work, which is—so I wonder about, like, the time period and where this is taking place.

CARRIE: This text, “What It Is”—I think, whatever this time is, they loved knowing how things worked.
ELIZABETH: Laughs appreciatively.
LIDYA: Did you notice—I thought that it’s very complicated writing, the—I mean, how would—maybe women were smart—everybody was smart but, they were like—the whole [thing] was in one sentence, and it’s so long, and so complicated—it contains all these things and everything revolves—and other things—and it’s in a glass jar. I thought it was complicated. I had to read piece by piece.

TEACHER: Carrie, going back to what you said just now about the beater being for the individual—can you say what made you think that about it?
CARRIE: [It says] that it’s easy enough, a child could do it, and you’d be free—that seemed to me household organization. . . . Well, that—the individual woman, I thought, in the home, being freed by her children—but—you really have posed a difficult question for me: where’s the clue to the individual woman here?
TEACHER: Does anyone agree with the idea that the beater has to do with the individual household and, if so, what do you see [that supports that idea]?
ELIZABETH: … And there’s “A Woman’s Invention” which—it seems to me it means for the woman.
JAMISON: And it says, in the example, “Will any housewife stir a cake.”
CARRIE: Oh, is that—?
ANA: It’s for [the] individual house—yeah.
CARRIE: Where is that?
JAMISON: It’s in the example section, on the third page.
ELIZABETH: And it wouldn’t make a big enough anything for—a mob.

CARRIE: A cake, they’re talking about. This is geared to a cake.