Hello there. Hope you're feeling well.
When I downloaded to my Kindle Catherine Beecher's 1841 book for free A Treatise On Domestic Economy For Use Of Young Ladies At Home And At School I thought I was going to poke gentle fun at the sort of book which taught women which knives to put at what angle at dinner time whilst cooking a three course meal and darning twelve pairs of socks.
Ladies after all, as my wife never ceases to tell me, can multitask.
What surprised me was how polemical this book (popular in it's time) turns out to be. By the end of chapter one I learnt that Ms Beecher she was one of those insane right wing American Conservatives and consequently she would have definitely voted for Trump.
For example no woman should be forced to obey a husband other than the one she chose and therefore with whom she accepts to be her superior. I must remember in our next wedding anniversary to thank my wife for picking me as her superior. I'm sure it will be appreciated.
Similarly people should pick their employer and then becomes subordinate to them. Yet really most people don't choose their employer more just accept when a job is offered to them.
And of course being 1841 America the group of people not mentioned by Ms Beecher are slaves. They of course having no choice in the matter of their employer. Ms Beecher in a later chapter actually describes them as "shiftless". And a lot of them probably were, given the fear of being caught should they try to escape their oppressors and of course the last time many of them did move it was unwillingly from their home country before being shipped to the United States.
America whilst not without it's problems is in Ms Beecher's eyes the best country to live in with the best society. This is of course Conservative cobblers, which history shows up simply by there being the civil war a couple of decades later.
Women, even if they think and act like men must look pretty. But it gets even worse. On the matter of conjugal rites (sex) according to Ms Beccher they need to acquiesce to what the husband demands. Essentially then at best she's basically telling women to lie back and think of America and at worst there's the acceptance of rape.
Now I know what some of you are thinking here. That I'm putting my year 2020 vision with the past when attitudes were different. This is akin to the right wing argument on the question of statues. However let's compare a near contemporary to Ms Beecher. the writer Louisa M Alcott. No radical feminist she and yet the writer of Little Women comes across as Rosa Luxemburg in comparison.
Ms Beecher states that in Europe a man submits to "the despotic sway of women". Just where in Europe in such volume was this the case? And indeed how exactly did women at that time hold such power when they didn't have the vote?
No matter. Foreigners are ignorant. America is the best.
American women according to Ms Beecher take no interest in politics, says the woman who has spent the first chapter taking an insane Conservative position.
But at least America in 1841 is a place where a woman could travel alone without fear. When I read that two words entered my head. "Yeah right"
Where American women (and let's just mark down here that for American women in this book read White women born in America) do fail apparently is that they age and are frailer quicker than their ignorant foreign counterparts. Part of the problem might just be that a lot of them live in the sort of wild terrain that makes life tough. Maybe but wouldn't that affect men as well?
Part of the solution to this in the author's eyes is that despite saying American women more educational than other nations (really?) they should be taught more on matters to do with their domestic duties. Those other subjects are to be left to men.
And wait for it....excessive learning makes you ill. And we're not talking about cramming for exams here
An interesting sidetrack to me was that this was the second book I've read in two years which suggests that tea is bad for you. That it would cause "suffering" to the health of women. The first was William Cobbett book on farming. Two guidebooks (on different subjects) coming to this conclusion without any evidence to back it up.
(Ms Beecher also says this about coffee but I'll let Lavazza/Starbucks defend the bean)
To go back to the Trump analogy Mexicans have bad teeth because they drink hot drinks. That is Trump there and then. Make a derogatory statement and then make a laughable one trying to prove it.
If you don't want to drink a hot drink? Simple. Eat a cracker. For me that would have made me turn the kettle on immediately to make a cup of tea. Oh yes I'm a rebel in the eyes of Ms Beecher I'm sure.
Amazingly given what we've already chatted about the author praises boys who know domestic skills and does seem to suggest that surgeons should be paid a living wage but that's no mitigation for what's been said previously.
Eventually this book does turn into what I thought it would be when downloading. However I'd gone beyond caring by then.
If you want a book on Housekeeping written by a Conservative fool then this is the book for you. Otherwise best avoided.
Until the next time.