Happiness = Home

by Gretchen on June 25, 2004 in Beauty & Femininity, Kitchen & Garden

Gene Stratton-Porter’s book Michael O’Halloran is not only an enchanting and beautiful tale, but it is filled with practical, down-to-earth advice on the family and home. I found the same views I’ve read in other old books about not always feeding children store-bought sweets, but teaching them to appreciate mother’s homemade goodies. I read in wonder about a father realizing that he was to blame for his son wanting to go off and experience the “fun life” in the city—“Peter” realized he’d always taken his son to the movies, to go spend time in town, but never fishing or swimming around home. When it dawned on him that he’d taught his son discontent with his home life, he began to turn the way their family lived upside-down. And I wished that every American family today would follow his example!

Then there’s the woman’s place…and for me, I firmly believe that it’s in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant! Why have we gotten so far away from how God designed the family? Why are we looking outside our home and family for recognition and fulfillment? Where is the steadfast devotion and ready service to the “men in our life” that earns us their constant love, care, and help with the dishes?

More Quotations from the Book Michael O’Halloran by Gene Stratton-Porter

“If I’d trained you from your cradle to love your home, as I’ve trained you to love Multiopolis, you never would have left us.”

“This neighborhood does all in its power, from the day their children are born, to teach them that home is only a stopping-place, to eat, and sleep, and work, and be sick in; and that every desirable thing in life is to be found somewhere else…”

“And exactly in what do you feel your happiness consists, Leslie?” he asked.

“You and Douglas! My home and my men and what they imply!” she answered instantly. “As I figure it, it’s homes that count, Daddy.

“What each woman wants is her man, her cave, and her baby.”

“Of course, where my men are, like Ruth, ‘there will be I also’…”

“Men respect a masculine, well-balanced, argumentative woman, but every time they love and marry the impulsive, changeable, companionable one.”

“You ain’t no suffragette lady, are you? …As long as everything you say swings the circle and rounds up with Peter, it’s no job to guess what’s most important in your think-tank. Peter must be some pumpkins!”

“Strange how women folks get discouraged on their job, among their best friends, who would do anything in the world for them, ‘cept just to see that a little bit of change would help them.”

“It’s men’s work to eat, and I don’t know who made a law that it was any more ‘woman’s work’ to cook for men than it is their own. If there is a law of that kind, I bet a liberty-bird the men made it. I haven’t have my show at law-making yet, but when I get it, there are some things I can see right now that I’m going to fix…”