The Sick Room Exhibit: The Responsibilities and Struggles of Childrearing and Housekeeping

This is the Wylie House Museum's Three Wylie Women: A Generation of Late Nineteenth-Century Mothers exhibit space in the Sick Room (part of the "Upstairs" portion of the tour). The Sick Room examines mothers in the role of “family nurse”. In the late nineteenth century, small rooms like this one were used to quarantine sick family members. However, this room may have also been used to house student boarders.  Both a space a familial caretaking and outsider inhabitance, the space reveals the “woman’s sphere” as simultaneously of the family and of the public. 

For more information contact the Wylie House Museum and for more information about the collections at the museum visit Wylie House Museum: Collections Overview.