Yesterday’s blog was the result of reading ‘A Household Guide to Dying’ by Debra Adelaide where she talked about shirts. In one passage she talks of shirts being the reason given for a famous actor’s breakdown of her marriage.‘The symbol of the married woman’s unscripted yet unavoidable role in the relationship. No clause in the contract stipulating the care and maintenance of the make shirt yet somehow they took over, with their demands to be soaked, ironed, fresh and alert on hangers for the next excursion into working world. It took a stout feminist to withstand the onslaught of the shirt.’
I admit I still feel twinges of guilt when I let Mick iron a shirt. When I mentioned this yesterday, he thought it was bizarre. He doesn’t see why I should feel guilty.
As Michele pointed out it wasn’t just shirts. Her grandmother ironed the bed sheets, She wasn’t alone. I knew women of my mother’s and grandmother’s generations who did too. Back then everything got ironed. As a child my job was ironing handkerchiefs, tea towels and napkins. This was before the advent of tissues. These take day we use tissues, paper napkins and tea towels are terry toweling and never see an iron. No we don’t have a dishwasher. Mick and I wash and wipe up together and chat.
As for sheets. I’ve never ironed on in my life. On Saturday I washed them. Mick and I hung them on the line in the sun. When dry, I took them straight off the line and dumped them on the bed. That night Mick and I made the bed together, before we got into it together.
The funny thing is that women went to all this trouble with household chores years ago, when often they didn’t have the modern conveniences we have today. They didn’t have washing machines, but coppers in which clothes got boiled. They didn’t have driers or microwaves or dishwashers.
On the other hand the majority of them never worked outside the home, at least until after World War 11. They never had careers. It was a case of once they married their job was looking after their husbands and their homes. Home and husband was their life in a sense.
Yes, things have changed. Women’s attitudes and expectations and aspirations have changed. Marriage has changed. Is it all for the better? Yes and no. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Related blogs
Who’s Job Is It Anyway?
Changing Patterns in Marriage- Part 2