On Friday, the women’s day, 8 march, and what dreams more and more women in dubbelarbetets time? To return to the home.

When I was a child in the sixties, the Home and Skolaföreningen meeting in the daytime; all the mothers were housewives. Said the principal.

but it was the not actually, not even then. Not the women who were widows, not those who were workers. Neither my mother, who had divorced when I was two and my sister is six years. Mother worked full time and often late in the evenings, we first had a nanny and after a few years, far too early, we got ready ourselves.

views on , but I find it hard to blame her. She did the best she could.

What she did was to explain to his daughters how important it is to get an education, work and income of their own. Money is power, even over his own life.

Mother read the poet Sonja Åkesson, who wrote,” the: ”White Man make Salary on their Work,/White To buy Things./White Man buying a wife.//Wife washing dishes sauce./Wife to boil the dirt./Wife handle grums.//Be White Man’s slave.” (The”)” from the poetry collection ”Husfrid”, 1963).

Dreams about hemmafrulivet has become more common again now, and it is not so strange.

Myself, I read eventually Virginia Woolf ”A room of their own ‘ who tells us about what women need: a private room and a private income. In Virginia Woolf cases was, admittedly, the income if the interest rates on a small fortune, and the home of the us quoted we prefer DN’s humorist Red Top in that case: ”The best way to acquire a small fortune is to start with a big one.” And some of those had not, after all, whether big or small.

And it is, of course, for most of us: we have to work to support us. Particular can single women (almost always women) to be supported by their spouses, but it is only the exceptionally.

the Dreams of hemmafrulivet has become more common again now, and it is not so strange. The tempo increases at the workplace. Claim for burnout and exhaustion depression is increasing, particularly among women. The duplication is unbearable.

Now dare apparently no longer the dream of political solutions, better working conditions, and six hours of work so that everyone gets the energy to a life outside of work. Now dream about, to be supported by a man.

***

Norstedts

Åsa Axelsson will be happier as a homemaker than as a teacher. It is provocative, but she has points in the case of the stressed-out contemporaries.

It all sounds incredibly nice. Åsa Axelsson is a teacher, married and mother to four children, when she is approaching a depression. Instead of fighting back to work she ceases to work completely.

And she becomes calm. She stops stressing. She will be happier. She has time to talk with their children, she will do all bad consciences, and, above all, that which she previously paid others to do.

the household manages to save more than her salary.

You can have objections, and it has other critics already had, so I summarize only: hemmafrutillvaron based on that she has a man who earns money. She sounds like a terrible hemmadiktator when she pulls down on all expenses: it is the end to expensive hårklippningar! It just gets porridge as lunch days! Carefully calculated mjölkranson! Not more than a five-minute shower! One can indeed hope that the family is in the mood.

But Åsa Axelsson definitely has a point, yes, many. She points out how we in our time have got go crazy on that guldkanta every single second, it should be lavish holidays, daily and expensive fitness center to do away with the excess calories. Better then to wobble in the road on the bike and act a little sadder food everyday, and only occasionally eat festive.

It is fun to read with plenty of food for thought. But it gets creepy when she talks about how much fun it was when first daughter was born. Then she got finally buy flickleksaker, dollhouses and dolls!

to reproduce exactly all the old gender roles? And tihi, she has offered her husband to be at home and that he was not.

Anyway, I think that she is right in much of their observations. Why don’t we talk more about that we work too much? It is possible perhaps to construct other solutions than the housewife provides.

Norstedts

the lord of the May in Örnsköldsvik is probably the main depiction of a Swedish housewife, which is written. This is mittenboken, forty and fifty: May have had two children, the husband has managed to become sober. The first big fear will not cope with adult life, has settled for both of them, but the uncertainty may May live with. She goes to his home and trim, and cooking, and compare themselves with the other homemakers. Good enough she?

It is the Swedish people’s home where the housewife was no longer a weight in a number of children, where modernity crept ever closer and the housewife needed it all less.

Now I suddenly see the similarity with our time (which I didn’t see when I read the trilogy for the first time): it is a material wealth, but May is controlled by the stuffiness and fear. So that our time also is, with increasing mental ill-health in wealth.

Translation Lisbeth Renner, Wahlström and Widstrand

Why miss so many of Ira Levin’s books? He wrote ”Rosemarys baby”, ”the Wives of Stepford” and ”the Boys from Brazil”, but most are content to see the blockbusters. It is a pity: he writes as an early Stephen King.

In this classic from 1972 moves Joanna and Walter with their two children to cozy Stepford. Walter goes with the Stepfords men’s club, good contacts. Joanna is trying to get off on his fotografkarriär.

But all the women in town are zombieartade housewives, oddly obsessed with cleaning. When Joanna is trying to get in touch thanks for the polite no, they have so much to do at home. Just a few of the newcomers seem interested.

Ira Levin effectively builds up a creeping unpleasant atmosphere around the housewife, who, with glassy eyes neatly stacks the goods in their shopping carts. After this, no one wants to be a housewife.

Translation Gun-Britt Sundström, Albert Bonniers förlag

the Final book in the classic trilogy, ”Alberte”, begins with a nightmare vision of hemmafrulivet. Alberte has given birth to a child with Sivert Ness (she didn’t even love), her best friend Liesel lives with Eliel and has done an illegal abortion. All father the to the sea over the summer, and share a house with the author Paul and his wife Jeanne and their children.

And Jeanne, she can! She sews and she’s cooking and she teaches, she is the perfect housewife and Cora Sandel describes it so that one can not else than hate Jeanne for her complacency.

Alberte doing it all wrong, she takes the wrong towels to the counter and the laws of the wrong food and can’t raise the son. She wants to write. She doesn’t want to be a housewife. But as a housewife, she is stuck with the person who is supporting her, even if it is a man she loathes all the more.

Translation Gun-Britt Sundström, Connecticut

of course, It is a trilogy, the books that gave Sigrid Undset’s nobel Prize and who told me about Kristin Lavransdotters life in the 1300-century Norway. In mittenboken, ”Husfrun”, will she as a pregnant nineteen year old to Erlend Nikulaussons farm a lot more and get the ceremonial of the big key chain.

As the housewife it is she who leads the large courtyard, she rule the roost with the maids and farmhands, and decides that her happy slarver to one is not interested in.

Husaby is a disaster when Kristin enters, with bedbugs in the beds and forgotten, rotten wool stored in the sheds. She works hard, constantly sick, worn out by all of their pregnancies.

She is sacrificing a lot to have to live with Erlend, and their love is more like a natural disaster: they are just lucky sometimes. Most of the time is work.

Read more book recommendations from Lotta Olsson