https://americanmind.org/essays/launder ... tle-women/
i appreciate Hollis Robbins’ views. she makes important points about subtleties i’m not sure current remakes are capable of or interested in catching.Hollis Robbins wrote:
.. Opening Little Women as a teenager I noticed immediately Beth fretting about her rough hands, from doing dishes. I might be the only reader who read closely Jo’s poem “A Song From the Suds,” about helping housemaid Hannah hand wash clothes when Marmee leaves the girls alone to go to Washington.
While I, like many readers, was drawn to Jo, I was equally fascinated by Hannah Mullet and the role she played in the March household, “considered by them all more as a friend than a servant,”
yet doing all of the really hard work. Who was she? What did she want? Did she mind being called
“Old” Hannah?
A central fact of democratic America (and its fictions) is the awkwardness of the middle class in dealing with servants.
There is no mention of Hannah’s wages. She builds the fire when the March household brings their breakfast to the poor German family, the Hummels, on Christmas morning.
Hannah does the cooking, the laundry, and the ironing. Hannah sleeps by the fire.
The book is filled with domestic disasters that Hannah cleans up.
When the girls give Hannah a holiday, they learn how much work she does. “Housekeeping ain’t no joke.” The fire goes out. When the stove is finally lit, the food is burnt.
Some chapters later, Hannah helps the newly married Meg set up her own home. .. ..
in my life, i most identify as Hannah.
i loved “the work” of being a wife and mother, now grandmother.
i didn’t mind being “overlooked,” in fact, maybe being so is a sort of satisfaction -
that you’re doing your job well??
the satisfaction comes from knowing work is done that needs doing, that helps the total, that if not done would be missed? being “an important part of” the whole, is satisfying.
a cog in the wheel.
i’m sorry to see so little or nothing taught of this today.
The importance of having a loving servant’s heart. interesting H. Robbins noticed.
i have not viewed this remake, i don’t plan to.
As a general thing, i would suggest reading the original book, maybe viewing the original film,
before attempting to view the remake.