The Kennewick courier-reporter. [volume] (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1933-07-27
Housekeeping Art
Needs a Revival?
Good Chance to Recreate
Perfect Housewife.

Writing In the New York World
Telegram, Gretta Palmer, woman's
page editor, has this to say Of the
dignity Of housekeeping:
sit is too bad that there cannot
be friendship between the genera.
lions who are divided by century
or so of time. Think, If your great.
grandmother were able to drop out
of the skies to spend the day with
you, what tremendous, Eighteenth
century kick she would get out OF
the Improvement which science has
contributed to the noble art house.
keeping.
"Imagine ner delighted apprecia-
ton of the mechanical refrigerator,
the stove with its oven regulator
fired by a turn of your wrist, the
pots and pans which require no more
securing than so many bits ii porce.
lain. You might not seem a domes:
tic improvement to your great.
grandmother, but she would love
your kitchen.
"For It Is one of the enigmas OF
women's history that as soon as
housekeeping became reasonably
easy. on the physical side, they very
largely lost interest In Its artistic
possibilities. and that today. If we
wish to find housewi1- who is
ready to pour her soul into the per.
lection of a souffle. we must go to
those countries where the copper
pots and pans still require energetic
polishing, where the water must be
lugged up from the well and the
stove kept going with coal or wood
1.-THE peasant women of France
Italy and Germany look upon house
keeping as pursuit every bit as
serious and honorable as the efforts
of their husbands to raise the best
grapes In the district, or the finest
cows. The middle and upper class
women of Europe feel that the order,
Ing of gracious household Is as
dignified and difficult an accomplish
ment as those their husbands claim
In the professional and siness
worlds. What is more, their hus-
bands think so, too.
But in America and, to some ex.
tent. in England the woman whose
primary interest in life is her home
Is often regarded with pity. She
doesn't win tournaments at bridge.
She doesn't run a dress shop at n
slight loss. She doesn't sit on com
mittees. She merely counts the linen
and fills the house with flowers and
sees that her family and guests are
served the most savory meals for
miles around.
"Why this type Of woman should
be rated lower than her sister who
goes in for politics is one of the
mysteries of the Anglo-Saxon or del
lcatessen-dining world. But she is.
"And 1t is just possible that the
cool contempt with which other WON
en- view her may be traced to the
fact that 1t was in these countries
England and America-that the fem
mist movements were most success
tul. Our perfect housewife represents
a survival from an age upon which
modern women cannot 'ook--even
now-without s faint sense of alarm.
"Hers is the serene, well-defined
2 life against which American women
only recently most fiercely rebelled.
She Is the wife whose contentment
with her lot established norm for
the whole sex. so that the occasional
Bohemian, the rebel. the woman with
flair for other activities. was forced
to submit painfully to an order which
insisted that every woman be home
maker. The perfect housewife was 8
menace to the pioneers who first In
sisted that all women were not con.
tented as they were.
But she is menace no longer
The women who are fitted to strug
gle outside the home have estab-
lished their right so to do so firmly
that no one Is apt to dislodge them
Couldn't the rest. at this late date
take the risk of restoring proficiency
and art to the home? Isn't 1t safesto
admit now that for most women
housekeeping would be the greatest
of adventures II they would simply
LET themselves fall into their great
grandmother's mood?"
"Sheets" for Roadbed