The Case of Servants : Part 3

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

(Page 28 of 47)

Our land is now full of motorpathic institutions to which women are sent at a great expense to have hired operators stretch and exercise their inactive muscles. They lie for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed and all the different muscles of the body worked for them, because they are so flaccid and torpid that the powers of life do not go on. Would it not be quite as cheerful and a less expensive process, if young girls from early life developed the muscles in sweeping, dusting, starching, ironing and all the multiplied domestic processes which our grandmothers knew of? A woman who did all these and diversified the intervals with spinning on the great and little wheel, did not need the gymnastics of Dio Lewis or of the Swedish Movement Cure, which really are a necessity now. Does it not seem poor economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow feeble and then to pay operators to exercise them for us? I will venture to say that our grandmothers in a week went over every movement that any gymnast has invented and went over them to some productive purpose too.

The first business of a housekeeper in America is that of a teacher. She can have a good table only by having practical knowledge and tact in imparting it. If she understands her business practically and experimentally, her eye detects at once the weak spot; it requires only a little tact, some patience, some clearness in giving directions and all comes right.

If we carry a watch to a watchmaker and undertake to show him how to regulate the machinery, he laughs and goes on his own way; but if a brother-machinist makes suggestions, he listens respectfully. So, when a woman who knows nothing of woman's work undertakes to instruct one who knows more than she does, she makes no impression; but a woman who has been trained experimentally and shows she understands the matter thoroughly, is listened to with respect.

Let a woman make her own bread for one month, and, simple as the process seems, it will take as long as that to get a thorough knowledge of all the possibilities in the case; but after that, she will be able to command good bread by the aid of all sorts of servants; in other words, will be a thoroughly prepared teacher.

Although bread-making seems a simple process, it yet requires delicate care and watchfulness. There are fifty ways to spoil good bread; There are a hundred little things to be considered and allowed for, that require accurate observation and experience. The same process that will raise good bread in cold weather will make sour bread in the heat of summer; different qualities of flour require variations in treatment as also different sorts and conditions of yeast; and when all is done, the baking presents another series of possibilities which require exact attention.

A well-trained mind, accustomed to reflect, analyze and generalize, has an advantage over uncultured minds even of double experience. Poor as your cook is, she now knows more of her business than you do. After a very brief period of attention and experiment, you will not only know more than she does, but you will convince her that you do, which is quite as much to the purpose.

In the same manner, lessons must be given on the washing of silver and the making of beds. Good servants do not often come to us; they must be made by patience and training; and if a girl has a good disposition and a reasonable degree of handiness and the housekeeper understands her profession, a good servant may be made out of an indifferent one. Some of the best girls have been those who came directly from the ship, with no preparation but docility and some natural quickness. The hardest cases to be managed are not of those who have been taught nothing, but of those who have been taught wrongly - who come self-opinionated, with ways which are distasteful and contrary to the genius of one's housekeeping. Such require that their mistress should understand at least so much of the actual conduct of affairs as to prove to the servant that there are better ways than those in which she has been trained.

So much has been said of the higher sphere of woman and so much has been done to find some better work for her that, insensibly, almost every body begins to feel that it is rather degrading for a woman in good society to be much tied down to family affairs; especially since in these Woman's Rights Conventions there is so much dissatisfaction expressed at those who would confine her ideas to the kitchen and nursery.

Yet these Woman's Rights Conventions are a protest against many former absurd, unreasonable ideas - the mere physical and culinary idea of womanhood as connected only with puddings and shirt-buttons, the unjust and unequal burdens which the laws of harsher ages had cast upon the gender. Many of the women connected with these movements are as superior in every thing properly womanly as they are in exceptional talent and culture. There is no manner of doubt that the sphere of woman is properly to be enlarged. Every woman has rights as a human being which belong to no gender and should to be as freely conceded to her as if she were a man, - and first and foremost, the great right of doing any thing which God and nature evidently have fitted her to excel in. If she be made a natural orator, like Miss Dickinson, or an astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use of her powers.

Still, per contra, there has been a great deal of crude, disagreeable talk in these conventions and too great tendency of the age to make the education of woman anti-domestic. It seems as if the world never could advance, except like ships under a head-wind, tacking and going too far, now in this direction and now in the opposite. Our common-school system now rejects sewing from the education of girls, which very properly used to occupy many hours daily in school a generation ago. The daughters of laborers and artisans are put through algebra, geometry, trigonometry and the higher mathematics, to the entire neglect of that learning which belongs distinctively to woman. A girl of ten can not keep pace with her class, if she gives any time to domestic matters; and accordingly she is excused from them all during the whole term of her education. The boy of a family, at an early age, is put to a trade, or the labors of a farm; the father becomes impatient of his support and requires of him to take care for himself. Hence an interrupted education - learning coming by snatches in the winter months or in the intervals of work.

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.