THEY say everyone has a negative internal voice. It provides a running commentary in your head warning that whatever you are doing is wrong and you’ll get caught. My negative internal voice is actually a chorus. A big gang of people is trying to persuade me to give up and go back to bed. I struggle on, regardless.One of the voices is that of Germaine Greer. She sits in the corner of my kitchen telling me I’m a pathetic victim of the patriarchal system. When I’m cleaning out the cutlery drawer, I can do without a lecture from the Australian feminist, but she won’t go away.
The problem is, I think Greer is magnificent. I love reading her. I love the way she opens my eyes to the vast conspiracy that seeks to crush me.
She talks about the “fantasy war on filth”, but I’m starting to wonder if ignorance isn’t bliss. Would I be happier if I wasn’t so familiar with her theories on the evils of shopping, the futility of housework? I can understand why housework is an important target for feminism. It was one of the principal tools by which women were suppressed. If you kept women cooking, washing floors and clothes they’d never have any money nor any power. Freedom from housework is essential to the freedom of women.
The way this freedom could be achieved was to make men do more and reduce the amount of work to be done. My battlefield is the division of labour and I think we are gaining ground. I’d say we have the men up to about 20%. A long way to go, but from a low base it’s not bad.
But the war on volume is the one on which Greer focuses and it seems to be a lost cause. Despite the invention of washing machines and dishwashers, the amount of housework has increased. We buy more clothes made from synthetic materials that have to be washed more often. My mother used not to wash clothes in the winter because with no drying weather it was impossible. Everyone wore overalls or aprons and protected their clothes. I can dry clothes 24/7.
My Greer voice tells me this is madness and I try hard to stick to one laundry day a week. If it doesn’t get washed on Monday, it stays dirty. But then I break out and sneak a midweek wash.
How did it get to the point where I have to justify a midweek wash to the Greer in my head? I’m at the stage where I wish she would come to my house so I can tell her it’s possible to be a good feminist and a good housewife. Because if feminism and housewifery are mutually exclusive, then I am doomed to a life of torment. It’s important that I work this out.
While Greer lectures me on the pointlessness of my existence, I also have to contend with the Monica factor. Monica was the character in Friends who overcleaned. Each character had their distinguishing “thing”. Joey was handsome but stupid; Ross was clever but dorky. Monica cleaned so much she gave it a bad name. If you were caught cleaning, someone would say “you’re such a Monica”. What they meant was that you had obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Thanks to Monica, cleaning now equals madness. It’s become a standing joke — the premenstrual woman frantically scrubbing the bath with a toothbrush. So here I am polishing a worktop trying to decide if I am entitled to take pride in my work. Am I a victim, a fool or insane? The fact that I am a well-educated liberal compounds the problem. Last year The New York Times expressed horror that educated women were getting married and dropping out of corporate life. Even Mary Robinson got in on the act, complaining about well-to-do women graduates staying at home with their children and cleaning their houses.
Linda Hirshman, an American writer, says that feminists care about women who stay at home because “what they do is bad for them and certainly bad for society”. So not only am I mad, I’m also bad.
I know it’s important to have women in public life in the hope they will make decisions that will benefit women. But is it absolutely necessary to gang up on me for trying to do the right thing in my own way? Actually, I think the feminist war on housework fell into a patriarchal trap the sisters didn’t see coming. Since it suited men to apply no value to housework, feminists did the same thing. From Betty Friedan onwards, they agreed that nobody could be fulfilled washing the floor and the only solution was to get out of the house and pay somebody else to do it. But women kept cleaning.
Now the Linda Hirshmans are furious some women have accepted that running a house well is conducive to a pleasant life for a family and therefore is a job worth doing. Even if nobody believes that.
While Ireland does have a culture of clean houses, I want to see a value placed on the work that keeps them clean. If spin doctors, advertising executives or graphic designers didn’t work the world would continue to revolve. But if someone stops washing the floor, your feet will stick to it. I know there is a disinfection thing going on that I don’t buy into. But where do you draw the line? Wiping the worktop is fine, but making it shine is the mad bit? A friend, in some kind of postmodern ironic gesture, gave me Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management for my birthday. I accepted it in ironic good grace and ended up turning to Isabella for solace. Her quotes from The Vicar of Wakefield made me smile — “She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims one from vice and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than ladies described in romances.” I’m not sure if my husband is grateful to have been rescued from vice, but I’ll give training the children to virtue a go.
The opening lines of the encyclopaedia have a better attitude. “As with the commander of an army or the leader of any enterprise, so is it with the mistress of the house . . . for household duties are perpetually dependant on the happiness, comfort and wellbeing of a family.” This is an approach I can adopt.
I’ve done my working-in-an-office stint. I operate on the basis that my current sojourn at home will not last forever — just while the children are small. In the meantime I have to find a way to get some kind of professional satisfaction from what I do.
Doing it well is a good start. In the office I was always well organised and paid attention to detail. I don’t see why applying this practice to housework can’t earn me the same kudos, instead of labelling me a conservative neurotic and a lackey of Procter & Gamble.
So c’mon Greer, how about providing a little validation for mad, bad housewives?
Colman said,
May 23, 2006 at 2:56 pm
So am I allowed get angry at feminists for not valuing the housework I do at home ? Am I a victim of the patriarchal system because I put on a wash a couple of times a week? Is my not shaving before going to the shops sufficient rebellion to redeem me? Mind you, I rather doubt I can compare to you in obsessiveness: I’m still looking at the dog hair drift at the top of the stairs and thinking I should take a hoover to it.
Strangely enough, the emphasis on benefits that can be easily valued in monetary terms also tends to demean the necessary work involved in keeping a house in some sort of half-decent order since savings are never included. What would it cost for you to pay someone to do the housework and child minding you do? What’s it worth to my wife to be able to come home, sit down to dinner and not have to face shopping, cooking, laundry or cleaning (mostly)?
Sarah said,
May 23, 2006 at 4:18 pm
tenner an hour for the housework. €40 a day for the creche. Add up the hours!
Colman said,
May 23, 2006 at 4:41 pm
I guess I should be getting more pocket money then.
John of Dublin said,
May 23, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Good article Sarah. Today is Tuesday and that means my dear spouse has been spending the entire day cleaning our 3,000 sq ft house. She also gets same feelings as you – it was deja vu reading your article!. We could afford a cleaner but she won’t have any of that (“I couldn’t let a cleaner into the house if it was dirty!!”).
I sometimes do the vacuuming but she prefers the “All day Tuesday attack” on all rooms, bathrooms, walk-in wardrobes etc. She has very admirable pride in cleanliness and she does an amazingly thorough job of it. Spousy was a successful qualified fashion designer and still does some freelance work in that area. However because her main daily activity is housework she often suffers from being made feel worthless by some other career ladies outside the family (some of whose houses look like filthy dumps inside). It’s bloody valuable and vital work but many seem to look down their noses at people who get involved with cleaning. Crazy.
BTW in case I appear a lazy moron (!!) – I do chores in evenings and more at weekends. I also make sure she always get’s sleep-in and breakfast in beds at weekends. But it’s still only a shadow her work.
ben said,
May 23, 2006 at 6:21 pm
Just so we’re clear … himself does 20% of the housework and 100% of the non-house work?
auds said,
May 23, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Good article.
My mother was a stay at home mother who had a cleaning lady in a few days a week and then when she started working in my family’s business from home when I was about 6 years old we got a full time housekeeper.
But…our house was always clean and my mother not stressed. And my sisters and I still had to hoover our rooms and clean up our own messes.
I think many people undervalue the therapeutic and immediate reward of housekeeping/cleaning.
Pat Moore said,
May 24, 2006 at 3:39 am
I have a friend who was overjoyed when business was good enough to get a cleaner a couple of days a week, but then she would insist on cleaning the house before the cleaner came. She diden’t want the woman coming to think they were dirty…..Make sense of that..:)
Pete said,
May 24, 2006 at 10:41 am
Oh God, it’s that “patriachal conspiracy” crap again.
There’s only one person who makes you do housework, and that’s you. And there’s only one person who can put a value of the housework you do, and that’s you. And there’s only one half of the human race who care or even notice if you do housework or not, and it’s not the “patriarchal” half, it’s the women. So stop blaming men for your choices.
Sarah said,
May 24, 2006 at 11:21 am
Pete, I don’t think I blamed men. I though I blamed women. btw, I know blog readers might be getting bored with this topic but column readers (of which there are more!) hadn’t had a dose in a long time.
one thing: a gremlin got at the Beeton quote and moved the “on”. It shouldn’t say this:
“. . . for household duties are perpetually dependant on the happiness, comfort and wellbeing of a family.”
It should say
“. . . for ON household duties are perpetually dependant the happiness, comfort and wellbeing of a family.”
tom said,
May 24, 2006 at 11:47 am
Obsessive cleaning is unhealthy. Literally in fact if you believe these new ‘theories’ about the immune system. Obviously nobody wants to live in a pigsty but if cleaning begins to occupy a significant part of the day I think you have a problem. Choosing to stay at home (if you are lucky enough to have a choice) is admirable but surely the point is to spend time with your children rather than polishing things?
Lastly if you had a smaller house there would be less cleaning – something for yourself and John to consider.
Colman said,
May 24, 2006 at 12:00 pm
“I think many people undervalue the therapeutic and immediate reward of housekeeping/cleaning.”
I think many people grossly exaggerate it in order to justify housework.
fatmammycat said,
May 24, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Oh yah boo sucks Germaine. There is nothing better in this world than getting into freshly laundered sheets and living in a clean house. Rasp to anyone that doesn’t thinkg so. I thought the feminist deal was to allow women to have rights, doesn’t that include the right to be a mum and housewife if she wishes, without having anyone snottily looking down their noses at them?
John of Dublin said,
May 24, 2006 at 1:16 pm
I know many people (including my wife) who tell similar story to what Pat said – either cleaning the house before cleaner comes or not letting cleaner into a dirty house!
Sarah said,
May 24, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Tom (and Coleman) , you’re just doing what I am complaining about! Cleaning automatically becomes “obsessive” cleaning. Why can’t it just be cleaning? Putting things in their place so there isn’t a row when you try to leave the house is a GOOD thing. It doesn’t mean I’ve got OCD. And one more thing Pete, I didn’t complain about doing the housework. I complained about people who complain about me doing the housework.
Pete said,
May 24, 2006 at 2:29 pm
>I don’t think I blamed men. I though I blamed women.
The article mentioned the word “patriarchal” several times, such as “housework fell into a patriarchal trap the sisters didn’t see coming”, which suggests a conspiracy by men. However, I’ll accept your point and just change the last line of my coment to read “Stop blaming other people for your choices”.
>Freedom from housework is essential to the freedom of women.
You ARE (almost) free of housework. Try it – do 50% less housework this week, and see if anyone except you notices. They won’t. If you then halve your housework again, people will start to notice, but your household will still function fine, noone will starve or get sick or die or be unhappy. And if you completely stop doing housework, your family won’t complain and demand you do it, they’ll just do the bits that they care about by themselves, and ignore the rest. You have a choice.
>Since it suited men to apply no value to housework
Men don’t apply no value to housework. They apply a sliding scale of value. If a house is so dirty that it’s impossible to live there, then the first 20% of the cleaning process has very high value – it provides one with a living space. The next 20% is also pretty good, changing the house from a “Young Ones” scenario into somewhere that you could invite friends into. After that, the value of further cleaning declines rapidly, until the last 5% (like cleaning the shower plughole with a toothbrush) has absolutely no value. Most men are happy to do the high-value housework, but not the low-value stuff. Perhaps you should do the same.
Daniel K. said,
May 24, 2006 at 2:33 pm
One thing is about how much it affects how you feel about the place. My mom would always lament that the place looked awful and my response is ‘but it feels like home’. I would feel self conscious and uncomfortable in a place that was much too clean.
At the end, it is your home and how it looks is the responsiblity of everyone living there, but it should also remain comfortable for them too. Do as much as you feel comfortable doing and no more.
Pete said,
May 24, 2006 at 2:33 pm
>Pete, I didn’t complain about doing the housework. I complained about people who complain about me doing the housework.
Ah. Yes. Fair point. Sort of invalidates my last comment. Sorry.
I can’t imagine why anyone would complain about you doing housework. As I said before, you have a choice, and you are free to choose to do lots of housework. Surely it’s noone else’s business?
Colman said,
May 24, 2006 at 2:37 pm
I might have been joking when I mentioned obsessiveness … compared to me and my dog hair dunes (which I still haven’t hoovered).
Since we’re not on the topic, how about a list of the essential four or five feminist books for egalitarian guys who are clueless about and slightly perplexed by feminist thinking?
tom said,
May 24, 2006 at 3:32 pm
I wasn’t talking about you specifically Sarah, it was just a series of observations on the subject of cleaning.
Pat Moore said,
May 25, 2006 at 4:05 am
Look just to help in any way I can….If anyone wants to come and do some cleaning in my house just to help them feel better, my door will always be open to them.
Sarah said,
May 25, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Boys, boys boys. First, Pete, I acknowledge your acknowledgement
You’d think what I choose to do in the privacy of my own home would be no one else’s business and I confess I am pathologically plagued with self-doubt (in case you hadn’t noticed) so am sensitive to sting of the mildest criticism (in case you hadn’t noticed that either, sigh) but seriously, Greer et all are totally anti-housework. It’s depressing. I want their approval.
Colman, that’s a bit of tough one since a lot of the major groundbreaking books are a little dated now. The Second Sex being a case in point. Get a copy but flick through it. Give more attention to the chapters on myth. They are quite powerful. Greer’s The Whole Woman is a good old rant. Susan Faludi’s Backlash is fabulous. I did love Marylin French’s The Woman’s Room. It got the whole housewife isolation thing down to a tee (and yes, a bit dated now but still worth it). Her description of clever women disintegrating in the prison of their homes is heartbreaking. (She says in America in the 1950′s they gave the women valium and the blacks heroin. If neither worked sufficiently to control their targets they put the women in asylums and the blacks in prison). However, Simone de Beauvoir’s memoirs are amazing. Her struggles to fight expectations and work out a system of happiness are fantastically documented (even if it did transpire that she told several lies in them – cutting out the lesbian sex for a start).
Pat, would you believe when I lived in town I would take responsiblity for friend’s houses when they went on vacation and could never resist doing a cleaning job in their absence. And then left in milk, bread and tea for when they came home. They were SO happy when they arrived back.Those days are gone now, but I could give up this writing stuff and set up a little service for people…
Pete said,
May 25, 2006 at 5:28 pm
>I want their approval.
Unless you’re hoping to receive an “Approved by G.Greer” membership card and secret decoder ring, why not just decide that your opinion of yourself is more important and valid than their (imagined) opinion of you? That’s why men don’t get all angst-ridden, we have ego.
EWI said,
May 25, 2006 at 11:37 pm
She sits in the corner of my kitchen telling me I’m a pathetic victim of the patriarchal system. When I’m cleaning out the cutlery drawer, I can do without a lecture from the Australian feminist, but she won’t go away.
So was I too being a “pathetic victime of the patriarchal system” when I cleaned out the kitchen the other day?
Pat Moore said,
May 26, 2006 at 4:18 am
Sarah after reading how you used to treat your friends, I am going to make a copy of this page and highlight that friends service section in the hope that some of them might become as good a friend as you so obviously are. I especially like the buying of goods…I mean have you seen how expensive it is to buy good, healthy food lately….please move to the south east because with that attitude you will be guaranteed to be the most popular person there…:)
Sarah said,
May 26, 2006 at 11:10 am
Pete, excellent advice. Of course, exorcising the validation anxieties in this way is quite therapeutic. I can tell her to feck off now.
Pat, it was nice to treat the friends like that, although it may also have been symptomatic of my control freaky behaviour….BEWARE….
Pat Moore said,
May 27, 2006 at 4:14 am
Well if you are going to have a friend with “control freaky behaviour” it would at least be nice to have that come with house cleaning and food buying..:)
gp said,
May 28, 2006 at 12:11 am
[But the war on volume is the one on which Greer focuses and it seems to be a lost cause. Despite the invention of washing machines and dishwashers, the amount of housework has increased.]
You can’t really be serious about that.
Try trading in the washer/dryer for a twin-tub or god forbid a basin and a washboard. Or the dishwasher for another basin and a pot-scrubber/dishrag. And the disposable nappies for cloth ones. And ditch the hoover. And all the electrical kitchen gadgets too!
Sarah said,
May 28, 2006 at 1:29 pm
I know it seems mad. We don’t have the nappy bucket anymore which was the chief horrible chore. But my mother (who I think is qualified in the matter) says she notices the difference in laundering big time:
1. Clothes now are more likely to be made of synthetic materials which attract and hold dirt. And everyone has more clothes which are washed after one wear.
2. When we were kids everyone wore overalls and things around the yard and aprons in the house.
3. Because you simply couldn’t dry clothes you were so much more careful about what you washed and when you washed.
4. Because you couldn’t store piles of food and couldn’t get lots of food, except for what was in season, she would just go the corner shop each day and pick up staples. The BIG supermarket shop she thinks is a huge chore and you spend more money.
5. She does adore the dishwasher but acknowledges that it hasn’t eliminated a lot of the tidying up, washing down, emptying, loading work.
6. Our houses are bigger and standards are higher.
I am not saying that we have more work to do than she did. But work expands to fill the time available to do it. What work was saved by not having to wash individual plates has been replaced by other work (moving on the clothes all the time, or washing shower doors, or whatever). Or shopping.
gp said,
May 28, 2006 at 2:30 pm
[But work expands to fill the time available to do it.]
True. I suppose the same principle operates in offices (computerisation -> more paperwork instead of the same amount of paperwork and the time saved used for something else).
tom said,
May 29, 2006 at 1:53 pm
“And everyone has more clothes which are washed after one wear.”
I have very few clothes and I tend to wear them for weeks at a time. So not everyone.
I find having children is very helpful in this regard. If you’ve spilt your chinese down your top the night before, you can wear it out again and when the stain is spotted you say something about amusing about kids getting food everywhere. Women love this.
Sarah said,
May 29, 2006 at 5:28 pm
haha. I rewear clothes at home but then someone visits unannounced and they look at me pityingly so I try to keep, if not groomed, then at least, clean. But generally, one wear…I think I’ve lost co-ordination since I had children. I keep spilling things on myself. I used to blame it on the bump, cos it could be awkward. But the bump is gone and I still can’t quite deal with hand to mouth movements reliably.
effie said,
November 15, 2006 at 10:37 am
I’m 56 years old. Up until a couple of years ago I had a high stress job with lots of responsibilty that also did wonders for my ego. Strangely enough my home was always clean. I now spend at least two hours a day, every day, cleaning and everything just seems to keep piling up. How, how did I accumulate so many things? Am I using material possessions as a substitute for my job – or at least the pleasure I derived from my job.
I have to say though that I love my house and garden and I feel a sense of accomplishment when everything is the way I want it to be. I am a perfectionist – only nothing is ever perfect enough for me.
I have a husband and a grown up son and I like to take care of them. My son is a diabetic, which means lots of cooking each day – I don’t use anything that has been processed and I take pride in the fact that I can cook such delicious healthy meals from scratch. The mediterrean diet is ideally suited not just to diabetics but to all those who want to stay healthy.
My husband has recently retired and he helps me quite a lot. We have developed a nice daily routine and have a lot of interests. We are rediscovering each other and, even though we have been lucky enough to have found happiness with each other, we have become even closer and happier.
Taking pride in your house and your family – and your ability to care for them – is a positive aspect in life. I feel wonderful when my house is clean – does this mean that I am not well educated or that I don’t read lots of books or that my mind doesn’t function properly?? Of course not.
Due to my age (I think) I’m not as fast or as co-ordinated as I used to be, but I’m much more content and practical and logical and loving and reasonable, etc. etc. etc…………………did I mention my enormous ego??????????????
Life is good – let’s enjoy it – every moment of it.
We are women and we can do anything and everything.
Effie
Greece