Home Economics

Aunt Plenty and Aunt Peace are two spinsters in Louisa May Alcott's book 'Eight Cousins'. They house their niece, Rose, who has lost both her mother and father. Rose's guardian is her uncle Alec, who is some sort of merchant at sea, now staying at home to parent Rose.

There are lots of aunts and cousins - seven boys - in the neighborhood. Aunt Peace and Aunt Plenty don't have a large role to play in the book amidst the cousins' antics. Their main occupation is the running of the household - cooking, sewing, carrying out the rugs in the spring to be aired and shaken. But Alcott gives them a kind of tender attention. Uncle Alec asks Rose to spend some time with the under-appreciated ladies and they teach her to sew and bake. 'Bread and Buttonholes' becomes the challenge.

The story was written and set in the mid 1800s in New England, the northeastern part of the United States. When I was in school, and perhaps still today, classes were offered in 'home economics'. Kids learn about measuring flour versus measuring liquids, how to substitute this ingredient for that. They come home with a simple dress or shirt they have sewn. Perhaps they learn about bread and buttonholes.

I avoided home ec because I absorbed in greater things. Math! Science! Literature! Home ec seemed low on the ladder somehow. Fortunately, snooty me did learn some of these things through Girl Scouts. I've always remembered that Louisa May Alcott, the great writer, gave a lot of attention to the arts of maintaining a home. I came to see baking and cooking are in many ways scientific endeavors. Hanging clothes to dry, shelling pecans, stitching and knitting have been calming and meditative activities. Household arts - especially regarding food - pay off in a tremendously rewarding way - both in immediate satisfaction, and in holding together the intimate fabric of love, family and friends.