SPEAKING AS A HOUSEKEEPER

Evening Star, Issue 22631, 24 April 1937, Page 2

SPEAKING AS A HOUSEKEEPER

[Written by M.uiy Scott, lor the ‘ Evening Star.’]

What’s in a name? Shakespeare should certainly be brought up to date and shown that there is a great deal. A rose by any other name may nave smelled as sweet in Juliet’s day, but times have changed. As witness or the fact, we note that an effort.is to be made to call all those engaged in domestic work “ domesticians,” in the hopes that the occupation may prove moi'o attractive when dignified by that quasr-P'l-ofessioual termination. Will it do the trick? , I very much doubt it. “ What is the matter with the young women of this age that they will not do housework ? ” So the men ask fretfully, to receive the nonchalant reply: “ But—why should we?” Not being in Nazi Germany, the girls are not slapped and sent back to the kitchen; on the contrary, they continue to pour in a steady stream from the scullery to the shop and office. You have only to study the “ Domestic Wanted ” columns of any of our daily papers to see that abundantly proved. Girls will do anything to-day rather than housework, will cheerily tackle work that is much harder and heavier, that often takes a severe toll of nervous and physical strength, and which, allowance having been made for board and todging, is often considerably worse paid.. Then why not housework? The argument is used that they consider domestic work belittling, that they find their standing inferior to that of their sisters in- shop and factory; hence the introduction of the name “ domestician.”

But, if the real truth he told, there is far more in it than that. Girls are not nearly so foolish as we of the older generation would like to make out. They are not afraid of a name—or why do so many prefer to enter domestic service as housemaids or cooks, rather than as lady helps P The status of those engaged in housework might well be raised, and that for the sake of the mistress’s dignity as much as the maid’s; but’it is the conditions of the service rather than its names that are wrong. The help in a private family is still accorded few rights, though, if she is Iqcky, she may have plenty of privileges. There is the world of difference between the two; in. a “ bad place ” girls will tell you that their “ wort is never done”; in a good one they have ample .-leisure, but are expected to be grateful for the fact. Whoever expected a girl in an office or factory to he grateful because she was not asked to work after five or before nine? What shop girl has to bow herself meekly and reverently before her employers because she has stated hours and.- puts on her hat the moment they are finished? The fact that it is not the work they dislike is proved by the preference everywhere exhibited for work in , institutions as against that in private houses; in an institution a girl has her rights and can stand upon them. Possibly the difficulty of service in private families to-day has something to do with the fundamental uncertainty and anomaly of woman’s position in the economic and social world in 1937. How greatly experimental her so-called emancipation yet remains is abundantly-illus-trated by glancing at her_ position today; first m - Soviet Russia and then in Nazi Germany. Russia is at the moment the Mecca of all ardent femi nists, for there, and there alone, woman: seems able to attain to the highest intellectual and administrative posts, and to work very happily side by side with men, handicapped by no such apologetic sense of her innate inferiority as is too often the case in other countries. Whether she is going ultimately to be the gainer - by this complete equality, whether- it may not take too heavy' a toll of her physical strength and nervous energy, is a question that cannot be satisfactorily answered yet. Meantime she is very happy and very busy in the fulfilment of her destiny, whether that, be domestic, industrial, or intellectual.

In Germany, of course, they manage things quite differently. Herr Hitler has disposed once and for all of that foolish idea that woman has brains; the cry is unanimously “ Back to the home,” and particularly “ Back to the nursery,” where, in abundant proof of her intellectual inferiority, woman is expected meekly to bear sons for the Fatherland in order that her rulers may never rqn short of cannon fodder. If occasionally some awkward situation crops up, owing to some tactless woman, daring to prove that she does possess brains or initiative, the matter is decided just as simply as the Deutsche-Englischer Kultur Austausch dealt the other day with the tiresome case of Miss Celia Haynes. This improving little story, its facts vouched for by the lady’s sister, the well-known essayist, Miss lienee Haynes, may serve to illustrate, better than anything ese, the Nazi point of view about women This Institution for Encouraging Cultural Relationships between England and Germany recently offered a prize for an essay upon ‘ The Englishman and His England,’ the reward being a fortnight’s holiday in the town of Halle. This competition Miss Celia Haynes had the temerity' to win, having entered under the name of C. Haynes, owing to private warnings not to allow the secret of her inferior sex to be known. She was notified that she would receive her prize at a certain gathering, and unwisely thought this the moment to divulge her sex, with the natural result that the first prize_ was given to a man, and that' she received, as second prize winner, a very prettily illustrated book. In answer' to her protests she could receive no further information than that there had been “ a dreadful muddle,” but that she should have “ her picture in all the papers and a free fortnight in Hallo'in any case.” But not, of course, the honour of having dared to beat a Jnan. Such is the justice that a mere woman may expect in Nazi Germany to-day. Somewhere between these two ' extremes of treatment lies the Eldorado of the average sensible woman in democratic countries; each sex allowed equal but not the same powers, and to each his own kingdom. And this naturally brings us back to the subject of housework ; why exactly is it so entirely arrogated to woman as her own particular littleprovince P There is something sublime in the attitude of some men towards housework and the care of babies. “ That’s a woman’s work ” ; yes, but why? Men make excellent chefs; sailors make perfect housemaids; men doctors usher ' millions of babies into the world every year; then, why cannot the average man clean a nouse, cook a dinner, or bath a baby ? Annoying though his boasted helplessness may be at times, I cannot help admiring the success with which he has imposed this fetish upon his womenkind. “ Poor dear John doesn’t understand a thing about the house or the children”; and they like the idiot all the better for his helplessness. Idiot, did I say? Nay, rather the subtle and cunning schemer. Perhaps nothing would raise the status of domestic work more than by compelling men to do their bit. Girls would develop no inferiority complex if they knew they were doing a man’s job; and-possibly women would prove less exacting mistresses if their husbands had more real understanding of the work involved in running an ordi-

nary house. No man-servant, at least in the colonies, would consent to bo at the beck and call of either a master or a mistress all day long; their invasion of the domestic sphere would at one© necessitate the introduction of union rules, of a normal attitude towards “ the help ” as a person of dignity, of rights, of established status. If it could be arranged that our boys should serve a brief apprenticeship, also, in Karitane homes, married life would bo a much simpler affair. Imagine a husband with knowledge equal to your own in handling that tiresome first-born. It is a beautiful ideal, though whether, if put into practice, it would have the result of sending the birth rate rocketing satisfac-i orily is, I fear, an open question.