Catherine Gilman's 1834 work provides a picture of domestic life and manners in New England. Claiming to take as her source the mingled results of observation and experience, Gilman's work provides insight into the life of a homemaker in nineteenth-century New England and is the precursor to her later Recollections of a Southern Matron. Taken as a pair, the two works provide insight into the regional differences in domestic economy between the North and the South in antebellum America.