Mammy, Tradwives, and The Total Woman
A Black Eyed Review of The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan
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Everything old is new again or maybe it’s the more things change the more things stay the same or maybe the writer of Ecclesiastes was right and there’s nothing new under the sun. Whichever it is, take your pick – tradwives are nothing new.
The very first tradwife was Mammy. She was the first submissive-domestic, subservient-enslaved body on the scene. Although she didn’t have a choice in the matter, she was the first to forgo her own needs for those of the master's. She was the first to lay her body down as a sacrifice. Yes, she was unwilling, but her unwillingness only made her burnt offering more humbling, thus more honoring, thus more romanticized. She was the first to set the dulcet and soothing tone of domesticity, the first to welcome the man-of-the-house home from his long, gritty day of manning up and ball-breaking in the dark, cruel, cold and hard world of planes and trains, bricks and steel, steam and coal, engines and machines, banks and deeds. Her sacrifice was his and his was hers. Bought and paid for. As James Brown sang: This is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl. And the first “woman or a girl” to bring meaning and worth to the American man was a Mammy (or an Abilene, or a Minny, or a Calpurnia) – an underpaid, overworked domestic. She took care of all the his needs: ironing, cooking, entertaining, running errands, childrearing. She did it all—and I do mean all—including performing “chores” in the bedroom.
I don’t think its a stretch to say Marabel Morgan’s book, The Total Woman, could’ve been titled The New Total Domestic or even The Totally White-Washed Domestic. The timing is just too close to call it coincidental that just as Black domestics were leaving White households to become part of the mainframe of our workforce in the 60s and 70s, White women were turning to the likes of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben to help ease the burden of meal prep.
The Civil Rights movement left White households somewhat bereft. Cheap domestic labor was a thing of the past. A Black domestic or washerwoman or “boy” to fetch was no longer as common as the kitchen sink. Suddenly, only the Betty Drapers of the world had Black domestics, that is until those “girls” could go to college or get a job with far better pay in an office or in retail or in a factory. Before long, Black domestics became as White as the Bradys’ Alice who, let’s face it, was more a paid best friend, sidekick, or home companion than a domestic, doing the chores alongside Carol, cracking jokes like a court jester.
An Atlantic Monthly article called The Decline of Domestic Help summed up the bygone era of Black domestics like this:
After the Great Migration brought multitudes of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North in the early 20th century, Black women took over the bulk of these exploitative jobs. Only during the Great Depression did this dynamic shift. Unemployment was especially severe among African American women. Many African American women lost their positions as domestic servants to white women who entered the market during the Depression. In urban areas, they were forced to convene on city corners in “slave markets,” hoping to be hired for very low-paid day labor…
By 1970, appliances, ready-made food, and other technologies had reduced both the amount and the rigor of household work and rendered domestic help a luxury. By the 1980s, household help was played for laughs on sitcoms such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Mr. Belvedere. It was a running joke on Gilmore Girls that Lorelei Gilmore’s wealthy mother, Emily, couldn’t keep a maid. By then, only women of Emily’s class were expected to have one.
Is it just me or is it strange that one of the sexiest costume tropes for the bedroom is a maid? The package will often wear the label of “French Maid” but who in America was hiring French maids?
In 1975, The Total Woman came along to encourage wives to put God first, then their husbands, then the children, then the upkeep of their homes, before even beginning to reach for her own dreams or aspirations. There were plenty of other books preaching the same message. What made The Total Woman different was its endorsement of saucy cosplay in the bedroom. A wife could “be a pixie, or a pirate—a cowgirl or a showgirl.” The book included sections titled “Accept Him: Salad, Sex, and Sports”, "Admire Him: Rebuilding a Partial Man”, “Adapt to Him: Sizzle at Ninety-Nine”, “Appreciate Him: Attitude of Gratitude”, and “Super Sex: Secrets of a Mistress” – but of course only after you’ve cleaned the house, cooked him dinner, and taken care of his children. Maybe the book should’ve been titled, How To Be A Total Mammy With Benefits.