The American Woman's Home
It's Christmas Eve around here, and so you'd think, should you find me blogging at this hour, that I was planning to discuss the posole and biscochitos we just ate, or some hoohah involving Santa, but no. Today we received a present which I must share with you, in case you haven't got one, which is a copy of The American Woman's Home, by Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Alert readers will notice that the latter is the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin; she didn't really have much to do with this book, though. It's pretty much Catharine's.
And what a book it is. Our friends who sent it to us thought that it would fit nicely with Bear's Retreat, and so it does; Catharine would have thought highly of Bear's Retreat, on account of its having been built in what was, even in 1869, when The American Woman's Home was written, the long ago, a prelapsarian long ago, where all was sane and well, so we have ventilation and a root cellar.
Let's have some illuminating excerpts, shall we?
After the section on "The Christian Family" ("Woman the chief minister of the family estate -- Man the out-door laborer and provider"), and "A Christian House," wherein you are helpfully provided with floor plans for sane and holy living, including a whole section on how to build a movable screen with drawers to block off one piece of a large room, we come to Several Sections dealing with human respiration.
There are pictures of lungs, and long discussions about the need for abundant oxygen, and a LOT of stuff about how we've all fallen on hard times on account of not having enough natural ventilation. Bear's Retreat is full of the latter, mostly around the windows, which is one reason Catharine would like the house, though she wouldn't approve of some of my domestic practices.
The deal is, we are all being poisoned (a word she repeats often) by a lack of abundant oxygen. Why, living in our modern homes is pretty much like living in the Black Hole of Calcutta, according to Beecher, and it's why we're not paying attention in school and in church
Pages and pages of this, I tell you, along with pictures of proper ventilating mechanisms.
I quote:
The grand art of ventilating houses is by some method that will empty rooms of the vitiated air and bring in a supply of pure air by small and imperceptible currents.
But this important duty of a Christian woman is one that demands more science, care, and attention than almost any other; and yet, to prepare her for this duty has never been part of female education. Young women are taught to draw mathematical diagrams and to solve astronomical problems; but few, if any, of them are taught to solve the problem of a house constructed to secure pure and moist air by day and night for all its inmates.
This is a woman who CARES about her subject, let me tell you.
Anyway. This is an excellent book; very fine reading material for long winter nights. The cooking section is good, too; after you've ventilated your house, you need to pay attention to the food, about which she says, "the main topics should be first, bread; second, butter; third, meat; fourth, vegetables; and fifth, tea," and lord bless her heart, ya gotta admire a woman who thinks butter and tea are two of the main food groups. Darling girl. She's wrong about that Black Hole of Calcutta stuff, though.
The volume continues, full of helpful advice. You'll not be surprised to learn that you should go to sleep early and get up early, and make sure young children are given firm boundaries, and the servants are charitably but firmly dealt with, and you know how to sew nightgowns.
I haven't gotten yet to the chapter entitled "Care of the Homeless, the Helpless, and the Vicious," but I'm really looking forward to it. I've got some time tonight before I go off to Midnight Mass; maybe I can get it in.
Let's see -- has she got any advice on what to feed Santa?.....
And what a book it is. Our friends who sent it to us thought that it would fit nicely with Bear's Retreat, and so it does; Catharine would have thought highly of Bear's Retreat, on account of its having been built in what was, even in 1869, when The American Woman's Home was written, the long ago, a prelapsarian long ago, where all was sane and well, so we have ventilation and a root cellar.
Let's have some illuminating excerpts, shall we?
After the section on "The Christian Family" ("Woman the chief minister of the family estate -- Man the out-door laborer and provider"), and "A Christian House," wherein you are helpfully provided with floor plans for sane and holy living, including a whole section on how to build a movable screen with drawers to block off one piece of a large room, we come to Several Sections dealing with human respiration.
There are pictures of lungs, and long discussions about the need for abundant oxygen, and a LOT of stuff about how we've all fallen on hard times on account of not having enough natural ventilation. Bear's Retreat is full of the latter, mostly around the windows, which is one reason Catharine would like the house, though she wouldn't approve of some of my domestic practices.
The deal is, we are all being poisoned (a word she repeats often) by a lack of abundant oxygen. Why, living in our modern homes is pretty much like living in the Black Hole of Calcutta, according to Beecher, and it's why we're not paying attention in school and in church
Pages and pages of this, I tell you, along with pictures of proper ventilating mechanisms.
I quote:
The grand art of ventilating houses is by some method that will empty rooms of the vitiated air and bring in a supply of pure air by small and imperceptible currents.
But this important duty of a Christian woman is one that demands more science, care, and attention than almost any other; and yet, to prepare her for this duty has never been part of female education. Young women are taught to draw mathematical diagrams and to solve astronomical problems; but few, if any, of them are taught to solve the problem of a house constructed to secure pure and moist air by day and night for all its inmates.
This is a woman who CARES about her subject, let me tell you.
Anyway. This is an excellent book; very fine reading material for long winter nights. The cooking section is good, too; after you've ventilated your house, you need to pay attention to the food, about which she says, "the main topics should be first, bread; second, butter; third, meat; fourth, vegetables; and fifth, tea," and lord bless her heart, ya gotta admire a woman who thinks butter and tea are two of the main food groups. Darling girl. She's wrong about that Black Hole of Calcutta stuff, though.
The volume continues, full of helpful advice. You'll not be surprised to learn that you should go to sleep early and get up early, and make sure young children are given firm boundaries, and the servants are charitably but firmly dealt with, and you know how to sew nightgowns.
I haven't gotten yet to the chapter entitled "Care of the Homeless, the Helpless, and the Vicious," but I'm really looking forward to it. I've got some time tonight before I go off to Midnight Mass; maybe I can get it in.
Let's see -- has she got any advice on what to feed Santa?.....
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