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This is a book of housekeeping advice from 1917 and it's really funny to read! It has a little frame story of all the advice being given in letters from the author to a young relative of hers who's just setting up a new household. Jane Prince has VOLUMINOUS advice for her dear Penelope and lets her know in detail everything Penelope needs to do to have a respectable and economical household situation. If Penelope were real and I were Penelope I would feel pretty talked down to! But of course the fictional Penelope seems (at least from what Prince says) to be genuinely grateful for all advice.
I was particularly amused by the idea that economies might be practiced in the matter of what you purchase for your meals or what clothing you wear, but OBVIOUSLY you must have at least one servant, if only a maid-of-all-work who cooks for you as well. Going servantless isn't even an option to be considered.
It's interesting overall, actually, to have such a careful accounting of what's considered to be normal and expected household arrangements for an American household of a certain class in that era. So much of it is completely alien to my experience of life! But the bit about budgeting is actually advice that (with modern updates) would not be unexpected on a finance blog today.
I found myself pleasantly surprised by the focus in the book on making sure you respect your maids' time off and have conversations with them about what their needs and preferences are. I mean, it's all framed from the perspective of how if you keep your maids happy then you'll get better work out of them, but it explicitly acknowledges that maids are real people with real feelings who want to have fun and visit with their friends, and that this is legitimate for them to want.
Of course this is a book by a white woman with a lot of focus on the appropriate behaviour of servants, so it's not surprising to me (though it is unfortunate) that there is one moment of explicit racism. Prince talks at one point about a new black servant she was hiring, and describes her natural hairstyle and brightly coloured clothing negatively despite her being clean and carefully put together, and then says how much better this black woman looked after her hair was "smoothed out" and she was wearing clothing that the author considered appropriate. I guess this is another window into what was normal in the author's social circles....... And something that has not changed enough in the century since it was written.
I was particularly amused by the idea that economies might be practiced in the matter of what you purchase for your meals or what clothing you wear, but OBVIOUSLY you must have at least one servant, if only a maid-of-all-work who cooks for you as well. Going servantless isn't even an option to be considered.
It's interesting overall, actually, to have such a careful accounting of what's considered to be normal and expected household arrangements for an American household of a certain class in that era. So much of it is completely alien to my experience of life! But the bit about budgeting is actually advice that (with modern updates) would not be unexpected on a finance blog today.
I found myself pleasantly surprised by the focus in the book on making sure you respect your maids' time off and have conversations with them about what their needs and preferences are. I mean, it's all framed from the perspective of how if you keep your maids happy then you'll get better work out of them, but it explicitly acknowledges that maids are real people with real feelings who want to have fun and visit with their friends, and that this is legitimate for them to want.
Of course this is a book by a white woman with a lot of focus on the appropriate behaviour of servants, so it's not surprising to me (though it is unfortunate) that there is one moment of explicit racism. Prince talks at one point about a new black servant she was hiring, and describes her natural hairstyle and brightly coloured clothing negatively despite her being clean and carefully put together, and then says how much better this black woman looked after her hair was "smoothed out" and she was wearing clothing that the author considered appropriate. I guess this is another window into what was normal in the author's social circles....... And something that has not changed enough in the century since it was written.
