A mighty princess, forged in the heat of housework.
Remember when Belle had a pony? —Well, now she’s had a cow: an all too common and all too necessary cow, that too often sits in the living room with the dam’ elephant:
“Adrock”: Men seem to care less about certain chores. For example, in general, I think they’d rather just let the bathtub get grimy and deal with it than put a little time and elbow grease to clean it up. Is it a matter of priorities? Brain wiring? Societal influences? I don’t know.
Damn, why didn’t anyone ever consider that? Now that I consider this revelatory idea for the first time, I have to think it’s probably because “back in the day”, proto-human females liked to “tidy up” their area of the veldt in order to occupy their copious free time, while the males hunted big game. Makes sense to me! I mean, it’s obviously inconceivable that men in our society could learn that if they just flake out long enough, some woman will clean up their shit, and then they can be all “hey—you wanted to do that!”
It is brilliant, and hereby commended to your attention. —My only contribution is to violate a little copyright: in my ideal universe, we would all have copies of I Hate to Housekeep Book, with the delightfully frazzled Hilary Knight cartoons. (We might keep it next to The I Hate to Cook Book, and the Appendix to same. Our copy is apparently a first edition, ©1962 by Peg Bracken, ©1958 by The Curtis Publishing Company. It’s signed by Ms. Bracken (“Greetings!”) and inscribed: “From Mrs. Whittington, May 11, 1963.” Why, it’s only five years older than me.) —We would keep copies on hand so that when someone said something like, oh,
Wow, here’s a radical concept—men are generally sloppier/messier than woman and are better able to live with mess, women generally like a cleaner house, so it makes sense that women (unfairly) end up doing more cleaning.
I’m not sure how housework got to be elevated to some leftist cause, but it all sounds a bit petty.
well, we could sit them down with a copy and have them read for a spell, and they might could cop a clue or two as to how much of this earth-thing called “cleaning” is due to nurture, is a learned response, is all-too-terribly cultural, is easy enough to pick up for themselves. (I’d especially recommend the chapters entitled “How to Remember and How to Remember to Remember” and “How to be Happy When You’re Miserable.”) Heck, they might even glimmer to some of the reasons why it’s learned the way it’s been learned; might even muse aloud as to as well-meaning as these books are, they’re pretty clear indictments of just how thin and awful the tactic of going along to get along can be; might see just that even though women in this culture and this society have come as far as they have since then, it’s outrageous that Betty Friedan is dead of old age and they’re still in the aggregate expected to cover 70 of the cooking and cleaning at home. —But let’s not hold out too much hope. There’s nothing so self-righteous as a man explaining why he didn’t think to pick up his socks, and I say this as someone who’s a degree or two more slovenly than his Spouse.
The copyright violation? Well, I thought I might give you a taste of the foreword, here, along with a cartoon, and then close with a moral. And it’s not like anyone should care too terribly much about piracy; the dam’ book’s no longer in print.
For a number of long years, through no fault of my own, I have been shin-deep in the business of giving advice on Housewifery. This is a better name for it, I think, than Homemaking, which is rather too pretty, like Nuisance Abatement Officer for Dogcatcher. Housewifery is more honest and more inclusive.
Housewifery isn’t among the Seven Lively Arts, though it can certainly be regarded as the Eighth. It is lively indeed, in the same way sand-hogging is. They both take courage, muscle, and endurance. The main difference between a sand hog and a housewife is that he has a nice clean tunnel later to show for his efforts, and it stays put, while she has it all to do over again the next day. She must simply keep tunneling.
She is faced constantly with mute but persistent supplicants for attention. There are several choices; move it, clean it, shine it, brush it, wash it. Or hide it.
I have been doing all this myself for about twenty years, and I find it hard on the manicure. I’ve found, too, that none of the books about it does me much good. The household experts hand out cures that are worse than the ailment. They expect you to do things that depress you merely to think about, let alone do. They think you’ll actually keep an orderly file of all the washing instructions that come with the family clothes, once you’ve been told to. The efficiently organized expert makes the mistake of assuming that you, too, want to be one.
My own goals are more modest. I only want to make it around the clock, that’s all, and I don’t want to think about it too much, either, because I’m thinking about something else. If you’re a bit nervous in the service anyway, and your mind is on raising the African violet or running an office or painting a picture, reorganizing yourself into an efficient housewife is a giant step you’re not about to take. You want an aspirin, not radical surgery.
So, though I admit hastily and gratefully that many of the things in this book were discovered or invented by experts (even the experts slip up once in a while and recommend something you’d consider doing), just as many of them weren’t.
Indeed, some of the wee nuggets herein are ones that I mined, all by myself.
Take the matter of diapers. I had often heard, from wiser folk than I, that a soft, old, much-laundered diaper makes as nice a dish towel as any girl could want. When my child outgrew the diaper stage, I learned that this was true.
However, as one runs out of babies, one tends to run out of diapers. This happened to me, and for at least three months I was wiping the dishes on anything handy. Then, one day, with the lightning-swift grasp of fundamentals that has long marked my slightest move in the household arts, I realized that you don’t have to have another baby in order to buy more diapers. You just go buy some, that’s all. If you don’t have a wedding ring, let alone a baby, and if this sort of thing bothers you, you can always have the diapers gift-wrapped.
A note here, about language. I suppose it was inevitable that around so old a business as housekeeping—surely the second-oldest profession—a special vocabulary should have evolved.
It has. All the housekeeping experts say “food preparation area” when they mean “kitchen,” and “soiled spots” when they mean “dirty places,” and so forth.
In this book I prefer to call things by their right names, if they will let me. (Sometimes they don’t let you. Once, when I wrote a book about having a baby, I wanted to use the word “pain,” having come to a point in the proceedings where that seemed to be the only word that said what I meant. But they changed it to “discomfort.” These are things the writer can’t do a thing about, and he shouldn’t be blamed for them.)
One more point: the housewifery manuals I have seen pay little attention to certain aspects I consider pertinent; for instance, how to make yourself do things you don’t like to do, and how to remember to do them. Some of these techniques are included here. There are some swift recipes, too, for days when you shouldn’t have got up in the first place but still must go that last long mile and cook dinner. And there are some slightly slower recipes for company. And there is the matter of keeping up a good front—
Indeed, there is a small mountain of miscellany here—and naturally enough, in a book about the most miscellaneous of all miscellaneous businesses. Putting the scraps together was like sorting confetti in a wind tunnel, and you should have seen the ones that blew away. Catch them as they sail past, if you can. And meanwhile, here are the rest, in a book by a nonexpert for nonexperts, with warm good wishes, and best of luck to the African violet.
The moral?
Last night, we wanted a nice quiet evening at home, the Spouse and I, since the past couple of nights I’ve elsewhere or she has, and so we settled down together with some leftover risotto from a couple nights before, since I do the cooking and I didn’t want to cook, though I did stop on the way home to pick up a loaf of ciabatta and a bottle of plonk and another bottle of port, and after we’d supped and sipped and sat back from our empty plates, she said, did you get any chocolate? And I had to say, um, well, no. Hadn’t thought of it.
From which one can only conclude: there in the African veldt, while our male ancestors were out hunting giraffes, our female ancestors were sitting around sweeping and gossping and chewing on cocoa beans, which hardwired their neurochemistry (something to do with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, I think you’ll find) to damn well expect the stuff, and they’ve been nagging us about it ever since.
—cross-posted to Sisyphus Shrugged.
I used to love Peg Bracken; I should go reread!. I have “I Hate To Cook” somewhere, and the recipes are downright scary.
My mother had a well-thumbed copy of the I Hate to Cook Book, and it was years before I realized the bitter humor involved.
She had had seven children (seven!) and had to feed ‘em all every day. She carefully taught all her kids to do as much of the housework as we could and would do – I was washing my own bedsheets (in a washing machine, thank goodness) before I was out of elementary school.
It is remarkable, in a grim and depressing way, how many men in today’s modern world of the future just d o n o t
g e t i t.
Thanks for sharing this.