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The Transition
by
“Once in a while our Italian opera-singers bring to our shores those glorious physiques which formed the inspiration of Italian painters; and then American editors make coarse jokes about Barnum’s fat woman, and avalanches, and pretend to be struck with terror at such dimensions.
“We should be better instructed, and consider that Italy does us a favor, in sending us specimens, not only of higher styles of musical art, but of a warmer, richer, and more abundant womanly life. The magnificent voice is only in keeping with the magnificent proportions of the singer. A voice which has no grate, no strain, which flows without effort,–which does not labor eagerly up to a high note, but alights on it like a bird from above, there carelessly warbling and trilling,–a voice which then without effort sinks into broad, rich, sombre depths of soft, heavy chest-tone,–can come only with a physical nature at once strong, wide, and fine,–from a nature such as the sun of Italy ripens, as he does her golden grapes, filling it with the new wine of song.”
“Well,” said I, “so much for our strictures on Miss Letitia’s letter. What comes next?”
“Here is a correspondent who answers the question, ‘What shall we do with her?’–apropos of the case of the distressed young woman which we considered in our first chapter.”
“And what does he recommend?”
“He tells us that he should advise us to make our distressed woman Marianne’s housekeeper, and to send South for three or four contrabands for her to train, and, with great apparent complacency, seems to think that course will solve all similar cases of difficulty.”
“That’s quite a man’s view of the subject,” said Jenny. “They think any woman who isn’t particularly fitted to do anything else can keep house.”
“As if housekeeping were not the very highest craft and mystery of social life,” said I. “I admit that our sex speak too unadvisedly on such topics, and, being well instructed by my household priestesses, will humbly suggest the following ideas to my correspondent.
“1st. A woman is not of course fit to be a housekeeper because she is a woman of good education and refinement.
“2d. If she were, a family with young children in it is not the proper place to establish a school for untaught contrabands, however desirable their training may be.
“A woman of good education and good common sense may learn to be a good housekeeper, as she learns any trade, by going into a good family and practicing first one and then another branch of the business, till finally she shall acquire the comprehensive knowledge to direct all.
“The next letter I will read:–
“DEAR MR. CROWFIELD,–Your papers relating to the domestic problem have touched upon a difficulty which threatens to become a matter of life and death with me.
“I am a young man, with good health, good courage, and good prospects. I have, for a young man, a fair income, and a prospect of its increase. But my business requires me to reside in a country town, near a great manufacturing city. The demand for labor there has made such a drain on the female population of the vicinity, that it seems, for a great part of the time, impossible to keep any servants at all; and what we can hire are of the poorest quality, and want exorbitant wages. My wife was a well-trained housekeeper, and knows perfectly all that pertains to the care of a family; but she has three little children, and a delicate babe only a few weeks old; and can any one woman do all that is needed for such a household? Something must be trusted to servants; and what is thus trusted brings such confusion and waste and dirt into our house, that the poor woman is constantly distraught between the disgust of having them and the utter impossibility of doing without them.
“Now, it has been suggested that we remedy the trouble by paying higher wages; but I find that for the very highest wages I secure only the most miserable service; and yet, poor as it is, we are obliged to put up with it, because there is an amount of work to be done in our family that is absolutely beyond my wife’s strength.