It's early in the week, but I have a feeling I won't finish Winifred Peck's House-Bound by the weekend. I'm only a couple of chapters in, and while I like what I've read I won't be able to speed through the story. Rose Fairlaw has come to the realization she won't be able to keep servants any longer--there are simply none to be had. Shall we listen in to a conversation she is having with a friend who is trying to talk her out of taking care of her own home?
"Dearest, be practical. You've never done any housework in your life. You can't keep Laws House clean yourself."
"But, Linda, it makes no difference to the war if our houses are clean and polished and shiny. Ought we to be house-proud in wartime, or isn't it more patriotic to be just reasonably dirty?"
"And who's going to cook for you--and Stuart? I know you can't Rose, because think what a mess we made when we had to take it on at the canteen, the night Miss Ross broke her wrist."
"One could learn. Think of the utter morons who are good plain cooks."
"Poor Stuart!" said Linda sarcastically "How he'll enjoy the early experiments. No, Rose darling, have sense. If you really can't get anyone you'll just have to go to a hotel till you can."
"But Stuart loathes hotels. We couldn't afford an expensive one right now--he's been pretty hard hit over some blitzed London property, you know. And he'd be so utterly miserable at one of those places with old hags at bamboo tables, catching you behind the aspidistras to tell you of their last operation. Linda, we've got to do something about it, and when you come to think of it were there ever a more utterly useless and helpless and--unproductive sort of women in the world like you and me?"
"Oh, but we're rather nice you know," protested Linda smiling. "And not as useless as all that. Think of the families we've had and brought up--"
"With the aid of nurses and governesses and baby schools and boarding schools, and every one of them doing their best to keep their mothers as far from the children as possible."
"Darling Rose, you have gone Bolshie and no mistake. Think how we've been rocks and props to our husbands, and entertained their friends, and make a Home with a capital H."
"Given parties or dinners to people we like one day in the week, and gone out on the others--that's all it comes to, my dear hypocrite."
It seems a rather scathing indictment of her own class. I know it seems like a no-brainer in this day and age, but imagine having to take on the care of an entire household when you've been raised to simply ring a bell and have someone else do it for you. In any case, I think this will be an interesting book to read. Per the Persephone catalog: "Winifred Peck could foresee the future and wrote informatively and amusingly, not complainingly, about the need for middleclass women to run their home without help, the title of one of our books and a key theme of many of them."