ABSTRACT
In the middle classes a daughter lives with her mother. Hour after hour she is with her, under her heart, her hand, her guidance. Her mother nurses and rears her, leading her really by the hand from infancy to youth. Chardin, 1 who knows the bourgeoisie, shows us over and over his little maid, at the side of her devoted and laborious mother, a reliable little soul, simple and understanding, as she grows under the shadow, as it were, of the domestic virtues. She is no little "fluff-ball." Look at her: a plump little headpad, square and snug, a short-sleeved bodice, a skirt and apron with a homely frill; and for playthings she needs but a drum, a pinwheel, a racket and skittles, the toys of the sidewalk and the populace. Her mother is her only governess. Her mother educates her, in a home which reflects her in its order and comfort, where everything bespeaks the neatness and substantial weal of middle class happiness: the massive furniture, the well-scrubbed floor, the large arm-chairs poised on rounded feet, the walnut cupboard with a bottle of cassis on the shelf, where the almanacks of years long flown slumber, nursing their births and deaths, hoarding the whole family history. Her mother it is who makes her fold her hands, before she passes the soup, which little Miss Manners, from her low stool, sees steaming in its pewter bowl, in deep-drawn fumes of grace. Her mother it is who, halting the skein and leaving the whirring wheel and spindle on the table, does up her hair before the mirror and, flicking a bow on her forehead, turns her out in Sunday bib and tucker. She it is who makes her recite her catechism and lessons; and if ever she does trust a proxy, it is an older sister, who mothers the little girl for an hour. Here, in these hard-working families, the young are not alienated from their mothers by the claims and pleasures of the world: boy or girl, they are a help and company and a courage the more in the house. A mother, here, has no false pride: she loves her own, and loves her with a good hard hug. Besides, for a middle-class mother, her children have cost her less than other women: she has no pleasures to forego, no life to curtail to give "breath to those urgent little beggars." Accustomed as they are to domestic life, for these women childbearing is no sacrifice, and the rôle of mother, far from being a burden, is rather a duty which rewards them for the performance of their other duties. The daughters of the middle class, therefore, are attached to their mothers. Bashful and reserved, they wear a dress that is sober even when fancy, where thrift is not above practising a revamping of the neckerchief; they grow, wearing on their skirts a woman's tools of toil, scissors and pincushion, the emblems of her trade. Full of the joy of their years, healthy and strong, they grow at the knees of a mother, who narrows the gulf between them by the tender familiarity of her tutoiement. At the age of seven, the child has reached the years of reason, or rather her parents like to pretend so, hoping to improve her behavior by giving her a higher idea of her little person and a precocious sense of dignity. Her mother, to punish her, addresses her as Mademoiselle, and the child comes to learn that there are certain words in a mother's mouth harder to bear than a switch in her hand. Now she is trusted on a visit to her grandparents or for a walk in the afternoon; and she is sent to catechism class to prepare for confirmation.
