The Case of Servants : Part 1

American Woman's Home
by Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Page 26 of 47)

Although in earlier ages the highest born, wealthiest and proudest ladies were skilled in the simple labors of the household, the advance of society toward luxury has changed all that in lands of aristocracy and classes and at the present time America is the only country where there is a class of women who may be described as ladies who do their own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education, cultivation and refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without any very material additions or changes, would be recognized as a lady in any circle of the Old World or the New.

The existence of such a class is a fact peculiar to American society, a plain result of the new principles involved in the doctrine of universal equality.

When the colonists first came to this country, of however mixed ingredients their ranks might have been composed and however imbued with the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of the wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman felled the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the plowman and sinews rose in the market. "A man was deemed honorable in proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest." So in the interior domestic circle. Mistress and maid, living in a log-cabin together, became companions and sometimes the maid, as the one well-trained in domestic labor, took precedence of the mistress. It also became natural and unavoidable that children should begin to work as early as they were capable of it.

The result was a generation of intelligent people brought up to labor from necessity, but devoting to the problem of labor the acuteness of a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone in sinews and muscles by her maid, kept her superiority by skill and contrivance. If she could not lift a pail of water, she could invent methods which made lifting the pail unnecessary, - if she could not take a hundred steps without weariness, she could make twenty answer the purpose of a hundred.

Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into New England, but it never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root or spread so as to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were opposed to it from conscientious principle - many from far-sighted thrift and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery.

Therefore it came to pass that for many years the rural population of New-England, as a general rule, did their own work, both out-doors and in. If there were a black man or black woman or bound girl, they were emphatically only the helps, following humbly the steps of master and mistress and used by them as instruments of lightening certain portions of their toil. The master and mistress, with their children, were the head workers.

Great merriment has been excited in the old country because, years ago, the first English travelers found that the class of persons by them denominated servants, were in America denominated help, or helpers. But the term was the very best exponent of the state of society. There were few servants, in the European sense of the word; there was a society of educated workers, where all were practically equal and where, if there was a deficiency in one family and an excess in another, a helper, not a servant in the European sense, was hired. Mrs. Brown, who has several sons and no daughters, enters into agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has several daughters and no sons. She borrows a daughter and pays her good wages to help in her domestic toil and sends a son to help the labors of Mr. Jones. These two young people go into the families in which they are to be employed in all respects as equals and companions and so the work of the community is equalized. Hence arose and for many years continued, a state of society more nearly solving than any other ever did the problem of combining the highest culture of the mind with the highest culture of the muscles and the physical faculties.

Then were to be seen families of daughters, handsome, strong women, rising each day to their in-door work with cheerful alertness - one to sweep the room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared the breakfast for the father and brothers who were going out to manly labor: and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery; discussed the last new poem, or some historical topic started by graver reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off next week. They spun with the book tied to the distaff; they wove; they did all manner of fine needle-work; they made lace, painted flowers, and, in short, in the boundless consciousness of activity, invention and perfect health, set themselves to any work they had ever read or thought of. A bride in those days was married with sheets and tablecloths of her own weaving, with counterpanes and toilet-covers wrought in divers embroidery by her own and her sisters' hands. The amount of fancy-work done in our days by girls who have nothing else to do, will not equal what was done by these who performed, besides, among them, the whole work of the family.

In those former days most women were in good health, debility and disease being the exception. Then, too, was seen the economy of daylight and its pleasures. They were used to early rising and would not lie in bed, if they could. Long years of practice made them familiar with the shortest, neatest, most expeditious method of doing every household office, so that really for the greater part of the time in the house there seemed, to a looker-on, to be nothing to do. They rose in the morning and dispatched husband, father and brothers to the farm or woodlot; went sociably about, chatting with each other, skimmed the milk, made the butter and turned the cheeses. The forenoon was long; ten to one, all the so-called morning work over, they had leisure for an hour's sewing or reading before it was time to start the dinner preparations. By two o'clock the house-work was done and they had the long afternoon for books, needle-work, or drawing - for perhaps there was one with a gift at her pencil. Perhaps one read aloud while others sewed and managed in that way to keep up a great deal of reading.

It is said that women who have been accustomed to doing their own work become hard mistresses. They are certainly more sure of the ground they stand on - they are less open to imposition - they can spoke and act in their own houses more as those "having authority," and therefore are less afraid to exact what is justly their due and less willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. Their general error lies in expecting that any servant ever will do as well for them as they will do for themselves and that an untrained, undisciplined human being ever can do house-work, or any other work, with the neatness and perfection, that a person of trained intelligence can.

About the Author

Catharine Esther Beecher (1800 - 1878) was a noted educator, renowned for her forthright opinions on women's education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of a kindergarten into children's education.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896) was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain.