[Fwd: Re: 1900 House]

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

whoops, sorry, sent to private address

Katha Pollitt wrote:
>
> SOME Suffragists (suffragettes is condescending term used by the enemies
> of femaler suffrage to belittle its supporters) said racist things --
> but others refused this route. And women were hardly the only ones
> looking out for number one: black men took the vote after Civ War,
> despite its being denied to black women and white women, after decades
> of womens and black rights being politically linked.  AFL under gompers
> had an official position  to put women back into the home. Socialist
> movement extremely ambivalent about women working, and even voting.
>
> And why is it cause for exclamation to say that running a victorian
> household --with maybe eight children -- would be a major handful even
> for a woman with one servant? this woman would have been constantly
> pregnant -- illegally aborting, miscarrying, caring for  sick kids, a
> real reproductive nightmare. Plus canning and preserving, making the
> children's clothes and maybe her own as well. and all that housework. On
> whatever budget her husband saw fit to give her.  Let's say, instead of
> running a home, this 1850- 1900 housewife was running a boarding house
> or a children's home for the same number of people, plus one extremely
> unhelpful male who had to be placated and catered to and cajoled and
> sexually satisfied and who could legally beat you if he wasn't kept
> happy -- would you find it impossible to imagine there being ample work
> for more than two women? I think the fact that it is family work makes
> it invisible. It seems natural that a housewife should work from sunup
> to way past when everyone's in bed.
>
> let's not forget -- Karl Marx had servants.  engels had servants. how
> much time do you think Bakunin spent mopping the floor?. As for today, I
> doubt Castro irons his own shirts or cleans his own toilet. Or Noam
> Chomsky either!
>
> katha