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
The mistresses of American families, whether they like it or not, have
the duties of missionaries imposed upon them by that class from which
our supply of domestic servants is drawn. They may as well accept the
position cheerfully, and, as one raw, untrained hand after another
passes through their family, and is instructed by them in the mysteries
of good house-keeping, comfort themselves with the reflection that
they are doing something to form good wives and mothers for the
republic.
The complaints made of Irish girls are numerous and loud; the failings
of green Erin, alas! are but too open and manifest; yet, in arrest of
judgment, let us move this consideration: let us imagine our own
daughters between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, untaught and
inexperienced in domestic affairs as they commonly are, shipped to a
foreign shore to seek service in families. It may be questioned whether,
as a whole, they would do much better. The girls that fill our families
and do our house-work are often of the age of our own daughters,
standing for themselves, without mothers to guide them, in a foreign
country, not only bravely supporting themselves, but sending home in
every ship remittances to impoverished friends left behind. If our
daughters did as much for us, should we not be proud of their energy
and heroism?
When we go into the houses of our country, we find a majority of
well-kept, well-ordered, and even elegant establishments, where the
only hands employed are those of the daughters of Erin. True, American
women have been their instructors, and many a weary hour of care have
they had in the discharge of this office; but the result on the whole
is beautiful and good, and the end of it, doubtless, will be peace.
Instead, then, of complaining that we can not have our own peculiar
advantages and those of other nations too, or imagining how much better
off we should be if things were different from what they are, it is
much wiser and more Christian-like to strive cheerfully to conform to
actual circumstances; and, after remedying all that we can control,
patiently to submit to what is beyond our power. If domestics are found
to be incompetent, unstable, and unconfirmed to their station, it is
Perfect Wisdom which appoints these trials to teach us patience,
fortitude, and self-control; and if the discipline is met in a proper
spirit, it will prove a blessing rather than an evil.
But to judge correctly in regard to some of the evils involved in the
state of domestic service in this country, we should endeavor to
conceive ourselves placed in the situation of those of whom complaint
is made, that we may not expect from them any more than it would seem
right should be exacted from us in similar circumstances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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