Well, as promised, I read Patty at Home by Carolyn Wells. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10268
I can relate in so many ways to little Patty. The desire to succeed, the joy in doing a job well, and the pleasure derived in making others comfortable are universally appealing to any station of life or situation.
The book begins with father and daughter seeking a house. Others pull this way and that to encourage their own ideas of what the pair need to have perfect domestic tranquility but their ideas tend to fall short of the mark. Eventually they settle on leasing a home near to the Elliot family and hire a cook and a house maid.
Patty’s father gives her the chance to be their housekeeper in spite of her lack of age and experience. Eager to do him credit, Patty hosts a New Year’s Day party for the Aunt and Uncle and cousins she last lived with. Unfortunately her lessons in proportion are quickly forgotten in her desire to impress the family with her culinary skills. She creates several elaborate desserts that were, expectedly so, inedible.
Optimistically she tries again for their Tea Club and the result is not only even more dismal, but holds further humiliation for her. Encouraged by her good start (after the infamous New Year’s mess) her father arrived with guest in hand for dinner only to find the dining room a mess, dinner not ordered, and nothing in the house for the weekend’s meals!
Patty does finally learn this lesson and we’re encouraged that she will master this thing we call housekeeping. At the end of the month, her first true trial awaits. Upon arriving home from school she discovers a stack of bills. Eager to prove herself diligent in the household accounts, Patty records each amount in her ledgers. She slowly becomes disheartened as the amounts grow to double and treble the originally expected amounts.
After dinner she brings the books immediately to her father. This is where I am just amazed. Had it been me, I would have been tempted to bring the bills and books and everything half done and given up in despair. If I’d overridden that impulse, I CERTAINLY would have been tempted to wait until ASKED about the accounts. But, instead she shows her father the mess and already has plans for future economy in order to do her part to correct her mistakes.
Now her ideas are both impractical and slightly foolish, but they show a heart for taking responsibility for her actions that I find incredibly admirable. Her father listens to her ideas and promptly dismisses them. His idea is to write the month of as a lesson in experience and says, “we know experience is an expensive teacher.”
I loved that. No elaborate plans to make it up and no unnecessary scolding. She knew her faults, he accepted blame where he should, and showed where the tradesmen may have padded the bills a bit due to her age and inexperience.
The rest of the book is a delightful account of the girl’s life in Vernondale and shows how she truly enjoys each moment. What I’d like to comment on is the end. The book was written somewhere around 1909. Her cousin and another young woman are discussing their ambitions. One wants to be an author. The other, a grand singer. When asked about her ambitions she says she doesn’t have one. Her cousin remarks that it would be housekeeping.
Later as she discussed the conversation with her father, Patty says she felt awkward in the discussion because she didn’t have grand plans or dreams. Her father comments that she just wants to be a good housekeeper. She agrees at first but then she says something to the effect of, “But that’s only part of it. My ambition is to be a real womanly woman like Aunt Alice. I don’t think she ever had any grand ambitions but she has a family she loves and delights to serve and I want to be like her.”
Isn’t it interesting, that even in 1909 or thereabout a girl felt a little inadequate because she ‘just’ wanted to be a ‘housekeeper’. Her housekeeping didn’t mean doing all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and things. It was the management of the household that she was referring to throughout the book. Yet even then it was already being looked down upon as something beneath her.
Why are we so surprised when our lives today are undervalued? For the last 100 years there have been subtle but deliberate messages instilled in our hearts that homemaking is simply what you do when you cannot do anything else. How very sad.
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