Divine Drudgery

The feminist movement is often synonymous with getting women out of the house and into the workplace. The vision was about work, more specifically careers, being the key to liberation for women.  This, bell hooks points out in chapter 7 of Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, alienates a lot of poor, working class women whose jobs do not liberate them at all.  Their jobs are considered menial labor, and this is not the vision of fulfillment feminists were extolling.

hooks also is not in support of the whole idea of putting a price tag on household tasks.  She worries that this will only serve to be more dehumanizing, as inevitably these tasks will not fetch a high price tag, and people engaged in them, with sinking hearts will think, "Is that all it's worth?"  Low wages, after all, are often considered a mark of failure or inferiority. She puts forth another idea: that we re-think our attitudes towards work, especially menial labor and service work.

hooks suggests that housework contributes to our well-being, and that while necessary, can be an expression of dignity and discipline.  Teaching our children to do household tasks teaches them responsibility and how to care for and appreciate their surroundings.  She also controversially (she is bell hooks, after all) suggests that this may be why many spoiled men who never learned to pitch in around the house are less concerned about the environment.

I was particularly convicted when hooks admonished that teaching girls that housework is demeaning and degrading deprives them of personal satisfaction they could feel in accomplishing necessary tasks.  I am certain that I often send the message to my girls that house work is drudgery, and that I am the household's workhorse.  I remember an occasion when I asked Anna to pick up her toys off of the living room floor and she huffed, "Why do I always gotta be the maid around here?" It's always fun to hear your finest words come out of your 3 year old's mouth. What if I didn't go along with society's assumption that work's significance lies in its exchange value?

This is not to say that I should pretend that housework is the most enjoyable thing I do, and be falsely in love with washing the floors.  What came to my mind when I read this was the humble monk Brother Lawrence.

Brother Lawrence, whose given name was Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, was not highly educated.  His job in the monastery was washing everybody's dishes.  His prayer, "Make me a saint by getting meals and washing up plates" seems almost cheesy if taken out of context of his larger intent that everything he did was about reflecting God's glory.  I feel a need to go back and read his  The Practice of the Presence of God. It is a reminder that all the work we have been given to do has a higher purpose.  Brother Lawrence even suggests that tasks done "quietly, calmly, lovingly, entreating Him to prosper the work of our hands" can "bruise the head of the evil one, and beat his weapons to the ground." I'm pretty sure Brother Lawrence was not referring to anyone's husband in particular here;) I don't know what you think about a devil, but I think we can all agree there are forces of evil in this world.  In feminist-speak the word would be "oppression."

Does this strike you as a radical idea? It does me. In practice, anyway.  I have been known to buy into the idea that the unpaid work I have done in my life makes me a sucker, not a warrior.  But everyone has some kind of dirty work to do in life. Human nature tries to pass that buck to someone else. We arrange our lives so we are stuck with as little of that as possible.

"In our weakness we shall find in Him our strength." Brother Lawrence