Domestic hygiene was fused with Christian virtue in respectability training.

Evidence

Burroughs referred to her school as the “School of the three B’s,” since the Bible, bathtub, and broom symbolized “righteous lives, clean bodies, and clean homes,” respectively. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1664

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘School of the three B’s’ — Bible, bathtub, broom — is a compact synecdoche for the respectability value cluster of righteousness, cleanliness, and domestic order.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the respectability-as-political-strategy argument and links dirt/cleanliness ordering to the earlier chapter-42 claim that dirt presupposes an ordering system.
• XREF: connects to: The yard-beautification campaign targeted segregationist justifications directly. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 1613