"CLEANLINESS," said John Wesley, the founder of Methodism "is next to godliness," as if there were a moral dimension to how you or some other person or persons keep your home. By Wesley's criterion, some housewives (and a few househusbands) are godlier than others, and some are not godly at all.
Margaret Horsfield's ironically subtitled survey of housework examines the motivations and methods of domestic drudgery in England, America and Canada, past and present, from obsessive perfectionism to slobbish ineptitude and neglect. Readers in Ireland, too, no doubt, will nod approvingly or sympathetically sigh. In any case, if the book is read as entertainment as well as social history, one need not feel any pangs of guilt.
Horsfield initially invites you, not very alluringly, to think about household dirt, "grease on the top of kitchen cupboards, slime on dishracks, dustballs in corners and sticky messes on floors and countertops".
"Cleaning has absolutely no cachet," she acknowledges, "unlike other domestic pursuits like cooking, gardening, decorating or child-rearing; as an important part of our daily lives it is loftily disregarded. Such disregard is unjust."
Writers and would-be writers may find in Biting the Dust encouraging evidence that any subject, even what Horsfield calls "Cinderella skills", can be interesting if it is investigated with sufficient enthusiasm and diligence. Her sources include interviews with more than a hundred women between the ages of 25 and 75, periodicals, advertising, scholarly works on home economics, novels, children's stories and poetry.
The predominant prime sources of household lore, she discovered, are mothers. "Material influence, so powerful and close to the heart, is arguably the most important influence in our lives.
On the subject of cleanliness, as on so many others, our mothers' voices make themselves heard for the rest of our days, and mothers' expectations and habits intrude on our own.
Almost all the women whom Horsfield interviewed "agreed that their mothers' standards and practices have dogged them throughout their adult lives, even if the mothers' standards are angrily rejected or studiously ignored." Horsfield dedicates her book "for my mother, who shines".
The author traces the development of household practices from the Victorian era of upstairs ladies and downstairs maids to modern times, when housewives' labour-saving devices sometimes, though rarely, include men.
"Trying to understand men and how they clean or fail to clean is an exasperating challenge, down among the women. Equally exasperating - some might say, futile are the unceasing efforts, made to try to change the behaviour of men and women alike so that household labour is more equally divided."
Horsfield allows herself an autobiographical outburst. "The men I have known best have neither shared nor conformed to my standards. I have tried not to mind and failed miserably. Battles have been engaged, tempers have been lost, relationships have been frayed. These men can relax with a book, chuckling heartily over the funny bits, happily oblivious to disorder and dirt and largely unaware of the churning resentment emanating from their partners."
Her chapter entitled "Looking for Mr Clean" is the stuff of passionate controversy, which seems to call for a retaliatory response from a reasonable man. In this context, I make no claim to that title.