Brilliantly sour American short story writer Lucia Berlin had some great advice for housewives. Never make friends with cats, always with dogs. Don't ever work for psychiatrists, you'll go insane. Take what your mistress gives you and say "thank you". You can leave it on the bus.
The advice is part of her story A Handbook for Cleaning Women (also the title of her 1977 collection). Like most of his work, it is heavily autobiographical. He had a turbulent life, too turbulent some would say, struggling with trauma and alcoholism. Like many other writers, she took menial jobs to make ends meet, and one of them was cleaning.
Lucia Berlin struggled with trauma and alcoholism. Photo credit: Buddy Berlin
Housecleaning can be both a necessary evil and a millennial inspiration for writers, especially women. Recently, it's a profession that's become a bestseller and Netflix series thanks to American writer Stephanie Land, author of the memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive .
Not that Land dreamed of such things once she started cleaning houses to support herself and her baby. A refugee from domestic violence, she shared her experiences of bondage and extreme poverty, the majority of employers treating her like a ghost and the few who shared their own problems with her. The country is now a reluctant "poverty hit" that defends the interests of those more marginalized than itself.
We had our own Maid in Australia stories. Elizabeth Jolley worked as a housekeeper, and her 1981 novel The Newspaper of Claremont Street is about a servant on duty who cleans houses and then gossips about the residents. She's been staged her entire life, but she finally finds the courage to step up in a typically dark and fun Jolley conclusion.
Then there is the extreme end of the ministry portrayed in Sarah Krasnostein's The Trauma Cleaner , the true story of a woman cleaning homes that have been looted by crime or hoarding. The late Sandra Pankhurst fought extraordinary battles in her own life that gave her the compassion and courage to help others in need.
Books inspired by cleaning (clockwise from top left): A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin, Other Houses by Paddy O'Reilly, The Newspaper of Claremont Street by Elizabeth Jolley, and The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein.
Australia's latest novel on the subject is Paddy O'Reilly's Other Houses , in which Lily works as a cleaner in central Melbourne while her partner Janks works in a food factory, both determined to build a better life for their daughter Jewelee. . O'Reilly was inspired to write her book during lockdown when she was shocked to see how suddenly and lightly working people can fall into despair.
While these stories are valuable as records of a humble and neglected social class, they are also insightful observations of how relatively wealthy people conduct themselves in private. Cleaners see things that no one else can because they are not considered observers.
What they see can be strange, outrageous, or just downright tragic. Stephanie Land has names for her homes: The Porn House, where romance novels sit next to a bed and hustler magazines sit next to a couch; or The Sad House, where the walls are covered with photos of the owner's late wife and son. In O'Reilly's novel, the cleaners find a bulletin board with pictures of one of the cats and a label, "Maude RIP". Lily stops to write a condolence note to the owner.
Never work in a home with preschool children, says Lucia Berlin. "You get screaming dry Cheerios, hard falls and walking on Snoopy's pajama foot." The playroom is a mess. The children tell him that they throw their toys there on Mondays because the cleaning lady comes.
Janesullivan.sullivan9@gmail.com
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