Vintage Sexism, Get-Back-In-the-Kitchen Edition

(Image via Haleysuzanne on Photobucket) Via Slashfood, a letter that ran in the New York Times in 1907, which argues not only that the job of a woman is to cook for and serve men, but that the only reason some women don't enjoy cooking and housework is that they don't know how to do it right.

WOMEN ENJOY COOKING.
A Pleasure, Not a Drudgery, Once the Art Is Acquired.

To the Editor of The New York Times:

Will you allow me space in THE TIMES to take up the discussion of the subject reported in to-day's TIMES before the Woman's Conference for the Society of Ethical Culture, in which Leslie Willis Sprague advocated the training of women for domestic service? [...] I think what I have to say may be of interest.

I am a strong advocate of schools to teach cooking, and in my professional life I advise every woman who comes to me for advice as to her future to learn to do the things which make for property house-keeping and home-making. As long as the race exists, men will have to eat, and some one will have to do the cooking. [...] I believe that if women could learn to cook well at proper schools so that they know how and why they do the various things in preparing a meal, the doing of it would be a pleasure and not a drudgery.

One of my father's pet stories is how one day he came into our home for lunch, and found me sitting in the kitchen with a cookbook on my lap, crying great tears into the pages while I tried to find out what to get him for lunch. He thinks it is a good story [!!!--ECB], but I know the trouble was that I was attempting to do a thing I did not understand, and was declaring that I never could and never would cook. After we finished that meal of bread and milk, I went at it with a will and learned to cook properly, and stuck at it under Mrs. Rorer and my mother until I could cook everything in the usual family menu, and as soon as I learned how I loved to do it. And I have never since then heard a woman decry cooking who was herself a good cook. Watch that point, and see if it is not so. [...]

Housework done intelligent is not drudgery. Cooking done well is as great a pleasure as painting a picture. Serving a good meal cooked by yourself is as great an achievement as arguing a case well in court. And the woman who can do so, and lets her servants have the benefit of her knowledge, has no trouble with her servants. [...]

GABRIELLE STEWART MULLINER
New York, March 26, 1907

While it may be true, as I've written elsewhere, that men think they do a lot more housework, cooking, and child care than they actually do, we've come a long way in the last 100 years. Maybe in another 100, that 70-30 split will actually be closer to 50-50. I still doubt that either gender will have started liking housework, though.