American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian HomesStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
She has a husband, to whose peculiar tastes and habits she must
accommodate herself; she has children whose health she must guard,
whose physical constitutions she must study and develop, whose temper
and habits she must regulate, whose principles she must form, whose
pursuits she must guide. She has constantly changing domestics, with
all varieties of temper and habits, whom she must govern, instruct,
and direct; she is required to regulate the finances of the domestic
state, and constantly to adapt expenditures to the means and to the
relative claims of each department. She has the direction of the
kitchen, where ignorance, forgetfulness, and awkwardness are to be so
regulated that the various operations shall each start at the right
time, and all be in completeness at the same given hour. She has the
claims of society to meet, visits to receive and return, and the duties
of hospitality to sustain. She has the poor to relieve; benevolent
societies to aid; the schools of her children to inquire and decide
about; the care of the sick and the aged; the nursing of infancy; and
the endless miscellany of odd items, constantly recurring in a large
family.
Surely, it is a pernicious and mistaken idea, that the duties which
tax a woman's mind are petty, trivial, or unworthy of the highest grade
of intellect and moral worth. Instead of allowing this feeling, every
woman should imbibe, from early youth, the impression that she is in
training for the discharge of the most important, the most difficult,
and the most sacred and interesting duties that can possibly employ
the highest intellect. She ought to feel that her station and
responsibilities in the great drama of life are second to none, either
as viewed by her Maker, or in the estimation of all minds whose judgment
is most worthy of respect.
She who is the mother and housekeeper in a large family is the sovereign
of an empire, demanding more varied cares, and involving more difficult
duties, than are really exacted of her who wears a crown and professedly
regulates the interests of the greatest nation on earth.
There is no one thing more necessary to a housekeeper in performing
her varied duties, than _a habit of system and order_; and yet,
the peculiarly desultory nature of women's pursuits, and the
embarrassments resulting from the state of domestic service in this
country, render it very difficult to form such a habit. But it is
sometimes the case that women who could and would carry forward a
systematic plan of domestic economy do not attempt it, simply from a
want of knowledge of the various modes of introducing it. It is with
reference to such, that various modes of securing system and order,
which the writer has seen adopted, will be pointed out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account