A comment I posted in response to this review in the Daily Telegraph about Jane Brocket (yarnstorm)’s new book, The Gentle Art of Domesticity:
Ridiculous. If you feel insecure about your own choices in life, don’t pin the blame on Jane Brocket/Nigella Lawson/Martha Stewart. “Impossible standards”? Blame yourself for wanting to live up to them, or, if you’re getting flack from your husband, blame him. Don’t complain about how someone else is spoiling everything for you just because they take pleasure in something you don’t. I think Jane Brocket’s blog (http://yarnstorm.blogs.com/knitblog/) is a real pleasure, and I’m looking forward to reading her book once I can find it in the States. It’s a real shame you were able to see only your own bitterness and discontent in its pages.
My house is a mess, a jumble of mismatched thrift-store and Ikea furniture, because I don’t choose to spend my energy on that part of my domestic life. But I do find a great deal of pleasure in cooking lovely, elaborate meals every now and then, and hand-knitting clothing for myself and my loved ones, and I grew my own vegetables when I had a garden. “Why should we when we can buy it?” Sure, I could buy cheap machine-knit sweaters at Wal-Mart for a fraction of the time and cost it would take to make them by hand, but it’s a wonderful, relaxing feeling to feel the yarn passing through my fingers, and as fulfilling as anything I’ve known to look at my beautiful finished pieces and know that I made them from scratch. I don’t see any of this as a chore, and, in fact, it’s a worse mindset in my opinion to think that the key to feeling better about yourself is to go out and buy stuff. (And just where do you think those hand-knitted bed socks come from?) The enjoyment, for me, comes more from the process of creation than from just owning another cardigan.
If you don’t enjoy doing any of this, fine. Don’t. Go enjoy doing whatever it is you like doing better. Just don’t imply that Jane Brocket is a self-absorbed, terrible person unthinkingly ruining everything for the rest of us, and don’t imply that anyone who does enjoy the “domestic arts” is doing so in a frantic attempt to live up to someone else’s impossibly high standards, or because they’re backwards, deluded slaves stuck in a pre-feminist era.
Are you just jealous that she has the means to stay at home with her kids?
Should she go back to doing an office job she doesn’t like and doesn’t need just because it’s considered more “worthwhile” than working in the home?
Should she stop doing the domestic things she enjoys, or stop sharing them with the world, because it’s making you feel bad about yourself?
I have to admit I do have a certain degree of insecurity about this myself–I’d feel deeply ambivalent, at this point in my life, about quitting work and becoming a housewife, I think mainly because the societal pressures in the circles I run in hold up fulfillment of intellectual/career-oriented potential above domestic duty, and I’ve internalized these expectations. But I have dreams of a life where I can spend my days spinning and knitting, growing organic vegetables, gathering fresh eggs from my backyard chicken coop, cooking fresh and lovely locally grown meals, sewing my own quilts and clothing. Oh well–I’m not going to blame this disconnect on the Domestic Goddesses.
Well said!
I have to agree, the idea that it’s a “better” choice to buy in home-made looking things than to actually make them… depressing, isn’t it? I’m not particularly domestic myself. I love to knit and crochet, but that’s about the extent of it. But why some women have to attack others who actually enjoy baking, that’s beyond me.
Well said.
By the way, I don’t think there is much of a disconnect in your fantasies/ambitions… it just seems that way because the “housewife” label is so loaded. I imagine most people harbour idle fantasies of a life that enables them to do nothing but indulge their hobbies. No one would criticise a man for wishing he could pack it all in to spend his days sailing around the world, say. And if he suddenly came into some money and were able to do that, well, lucky him!
But of course if one’s hobbies happen to be “domestic”, it starts to look like a world that women used to be trapped in, hence the ambivalence. My opinion? You’re allowed to dream whatever you want. You’re even allowed to act on it. As long as you don’t try to tell anyone else that yours is the better choice for anyone but you.
[...] rest of the interview was kind of interesting, too. Basically more of the same yarntempest in a teacup I wrote a bit about earlier. I liked the phrase “pinny porn.” I love that word. Pinny! [...]
The trick is not to use the word “housewife”, which to me is redolent of slippers and vallium. Say, “I want to farm a smallholding” (which is what you’d need to do to grow your own veg and keep chickens), and you’re actually describing a working life.
Thank you for this! Well spoken (written). I have followed Jane’s blog for many years and really appreciate what you had to say.
I will be putting your blog on my reader!
Thank you again. . .