IN DEFENCE OF AMERICAN WOMEN

Otago Witness, Issue 3912, 5 March 1929, Page 6

IN DEFENCE OF AMERICAN WOMEN

“American women are so spoiled,” is a common saying, and the usual remark in articles of which the only theme seems

to be the price, of their pearls, their desire for change, their nervous tension, their dazzling parties, and their preoccupation with themselves to the utter

exclusion of- other people. But these are the wives of the millionaires, and even then only the frivolous of the species. Now the Inillionaires of America, though much in the public eye, are in a microscopic minority, and it is no fairer to judge by the wives of millionaires than it would be, for example, to generalise about Englishwomen from the riders in the Row, or the owners of boxes at the Opera. And, even then, one could write of the wives of those other millionaires, who take their wealth seriously, look upon it as a trust, and spend most of their time in personally superintending the charities which interest them.

Are they spoiled? Do the writers know that there are many towns in America without one single, solitary servant, towns where all the women have to do their own housework, cooking, most of the washing, and usually the gardening? They do it cheerfully, competently, and swiftly. The American woman’s standard of housekeeping is the highest I have seen (at close quarters) in any part of the world; comfort, cleanliness, light, food, and warmth are made matters of thought, and she brings to her problems her fresh, eager mind anxious to do the best for her family in every way. Her standard of warmth is a trifle high in some parts of America, I admit, for my British lungs, but otherwise her housekeeping, with its balanced meals, is delightful. Naturally, she has every mechanical contrivance to help her, but, however many buttons she has had installed in her house, she has to be there to push them in and out. Houses do not run themselves, though the competent American woman sometimes makes me think they do. Moreover, these labour-savers are costly, and when they are installed in small houses, those little houses belonging to professional men with fixed and unexpanding salaries, each of them has been bought after years of saving. A good deal of “ doing without ” could be

written into the history of every new comfort.

For the ordinary American is not rich, and I wish to say this very clearly. Salary or income may be larger than that of his opposite in England, but his expenses are bigger; and that is why, were he living in England, his wife could have one servant, possibly two of them. The wife of the ordinary middle-class American cannot, then, in the nature of things, be spoiled. Certainly her children are a help to her very soon. That rather terrifying young citizen with the weird garments, coatless and hatless, who rushes past you on the side-walk on his scooter, defying the law and yelling at the top of his voice, has washed his own face and has brushed his hair since he was three years old. By the time he is seven years old he is a handy man in the house, with chores to do, ’which he rpally does. Then, take the little girls with wise mothers. (I am not thinking of the children of badly assorted parents, who have miserable homes, and who spend all the time they have money for in the movie-talkies; in England we know all about them, just as we know about the number of divorces in America. I am talking about the children in welladjusted homes, with decent, happy parents, where there is a home life, and where there is a background. Such homes exist by the million, though to read the newspapers one might not think so.) At the age when her little English cousin is having her hands washed for her, and her frock buttoned, Maunie is promoted—note the word—to setting the table and tidying away the odds and ends after meals. Just last

week a little friend of mine, aged eight, whose mother was called to a sick-bed out of town, cooked and served dinner for herself and her professor father. Her father lifted the pots from the gas range to the table; honesty compels me to add that they dined in the kitehen, and ate their steak stew and vegetables out of the dish it was cooked in. But she served a three-course dinner and between them they made coffee. And that is why American women do their housekeeping so deftly and with so little fuss. They have always known how. They have grown up without servants, and it has never occurred to them that there is-anything derogatory—or splendid about housework or cooking. Everybody does it. When they are ill, they have to go to hospital, to get the care that an ordinary Englishwoman in the same station of life would get from her servant as a matter of course: or else they have to be ill as best they can at home. Neighbours are very good and kind. In fact, one of the surprising things about home illness in America to me at first was the way that friends cooked and took in dainties to the sick. When we lived in England, if any of my friends brought me in a jug of soup, and a sweetbread stewed in milk, my feelings would have been mixed. The meal would have been flavoured too highly by My Lady Bountiful for my palate. But here, where a woman is dependent on her husband’s cooking, or on her children’s, she is only too glad

of the custards and cream soups that her friends arrange among themselves to bring her at stated intervals. Besides, after a few days -of a mother’s illness, the husband and children have enough to do to get the meals for themselves, without cooking dainties for the sufferer. If anybody has ever seen an American woman of the professional classes ill at home, with nobody to change sheets, answer the telephone, give her a cup of tea—or the American equivalent—until the children come home, that person will never again think of the bulk of American women as being spoiled. The American woman, a well-dressed and gracious hostess, sitting at a perfectly appointed table, dispensing delicious food to her friends, with apparently everything she wants, talking of her trips abroad, past and future, gives the visiting Englishman or woman a feeling that she really has too much, and she is therefore to a certain extent responsible for this misrepresentation. Her overseas guests—especially English lecturers who only see the bright side of the picture—do not realise that she has cooked the meal herself, has set the table, and that the woman who waits so deftly is there at so much the hour, and that when the hostess excuses herself for a moment it is for the prosaic reason that she has gone to pay her, so as to let her go the moment the last fork is washed. And, of course, if she has a daughter big enough to wait, and one competent to dish up, there will be no outside help employed. The reason the ordinary housekeeping American woman talks so much about the good time she has abroad is surely that she works so hard at home.—A. A. Adams, in the Spectator.