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EssaysHOUSE DRESSESSharon Tabor Warren Today, tonight: the news will be filled with stories of youngsters gone wrong. Those who profess to know, tell us our society is breaking down, values are disappearing like ice cubes on the Fourth of July. Psychologists, sociologists and welfare workers put forth volumes of seemingly useless repetitive tripe on what has happened to our mores; the causes of the decay; what can, and probably will not be, done.While those who are listened to continue their outcry against divorce, drugs, early sexual promiscuity, etc., I interject my wisdom gleaned from years of living among the falling debris, offer a single straw from the camel's back. It's elementary, the often-overlooked and simple fact that we don't wear house dresses any longer. The demise of the common house dress can be closely associated, a parallel path illustrated, with the crumbling of our social structure. Relics of days gone by, house dresses are now seen in museum displays of yesteryear. Television commercials and magazine advertisements once filled homes with June Cleaver-type housewives waxing kitchen floors attired in well fitted, near-designer dresses while wearing three-inch heels. It was media white wash or hog wash. Whatever the label, the ads portrayed something that never existed. There was an era when women wore house dresses, not as falsely portrayed by the advertising agencies, but the real things. The dresses were cotton prints, colors faded to a muted rainbow harmony by years of washing with rough detergents, wrung between hard rubber rollers and dried in the sun. These were not cast-off Sunday-best garments but were sewn, or less frequently purchased, to be house dresses only. The garment lasted many years and when no longer wearable, it was carefully torn into polishing cloths or strips for rag rugs. Nothing was wasted. Farm women often wore house dresses to town but it was considered a breach of etiquette for the women in town to do so. Mother slipped into and out of her house dress with more regularity than the pantomime artist in the vaudeville shows. Shopping required a day dress. When someone came calling, and visitors from the Fuller Brush man to the minister arrived with unannounced frequency in those days, the house dress was relegated to a hanger, the day dress hurriedly donned. Women on the farms had another advantage over town women: a ready source of fabric for their house dresses. Most of the feed used for farm animals could be purchased in bags of cotton prints, each providing about a yard-square of useable material. The farmer knew if his wife needed two, or three, bags of matching pattern for a dress and would purchase feed accordingly. Single bags of a print were used for children's clothes, napkins, tea towels. Multiple bags were more versatile. Today a farmer buys feed in plastic containers that he might recycle to another use in the barn or garage and his wife orders her clothes from L.L. Bean and Chadwicks. House dresses eventually gave way to slacks, then jeans, now to sweats or shorts. Housework is easier. The time and trouble required for a given task has lessened and society and culture currently decree tasks not be performed with the frequency of past years. My curtains are permanent press: wash, machine-dry and hang. Mother's were washed, starched, wrung by hand and stretched on finger-pricking frames. Hours were spent ironing the lace panels to smooth perfection. My floors are no-wax; Mother spent many mornings on hands and knees scrubbing and waxing; removing the wax and beginning again. Her windows were washed twice a month; mine are lucky to be cleaned once a year. Today, I might accomplish many tasks, June Cleaver style, in a fitted dress and three-inch heels. Mother could not. In my years of house-wifery, I had time to watch soaps and talk shows, consider how lacking my life was without a Great Romance or wonder why my childhood was or was not scarred by incest or adultery. I did not watch; I read instead. Wearing comfortable slacks and a loose plaid shirt, I learned history through the fantasy-filled actions of handsome heroes and dazzling damsels. I visited unfamiliar places, tasted exotic foods and heard the babble of alien tongues. I sought foreign cultures, a Crusader searching for her Holy Grail. I scanned new horizons through printed pages and widened my own as I read. As a child I crawled onto the laps of Mother, aunts and friends, reveled in the feel of soft washed cotton against my skin, the smell of sunshine and gentle breezes. I had no way to know my children would be denied the chance for a similar warming experience. My lap was there but the ever-open book was also. It was a buffer against their dependency, a deterrent to obsessive motherhood. Their father searched elsewhere altogether; found, in every port and town, his Great Romances. Perhaps I should have worn house dresses. A price was paid. The End Contact Sharon. |
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