Introduction: "As with a startling picture" : modernism and the domestic sphere
"For she asks forever only help" : the critique of maternalist reform discourse in Djuna Barnes's Ryder
Tortured bodies and twisted words : the antidomestic vision of Jean Toomer's Cane
Freaked : eastern European immigration and the "American home" in Edna Ferber's American beauty
"Not sentimental" : the double bind of white working-class femininity in Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio
Siren calls : consumer revolution and the body beautiful in Nathanael West's The day of the locust
"Not charity yet!" : state-supported capitalism and the secret life of god in Flannery O'Connor's Wise blood.