سر البيت السعيد

by Marion Harland, محمد أحمد حسين

يقول الكاتب الشهير (فرانك بوم) صاحب روايات (ساحر أوز) الشهيرة: “لا يوجد مكان مثل المنزل”.
بالفعل، هناك سر ما في ذلك المكان الدافئ الذي تعود إليه في كل ليلة بعد يوم عمل طويل وشاق…
سر يجعلك تحب ذلك المكان وتخلع همومك على أعتابه..
ذلك المنزل السعيد يمتلك أسرارًا غامضة، لا تكشفها إلا الزوجة الذكية التي تنجح في التعامل مع كافة مشكلات المنزل، والزوج الصبور الذي يتفاهم مع زوجته لبقاء المنزل واحة للراحة والأمان.الكتاب الذي تناول معظم مشاكل الحياة اليومية التي تواجه الأسرة مع تقديم حلول لها، بين أيديكم الآن لكشف أسرار منزل سعيد تملؤه المودة والرحمة.

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

Mary Virginia Terhune (née Hawes), also known by her penname Marion Harland, was an American author. At age twenty-three she won a $50 prize from the Southern Era periodical for her article on temperance. Encouraged, she published her first novel, Alone, to great acclaim. Despite giving birth to six children and running a household, she never stopped writing, eventually publishing twenty-five novels and three volumes of short stories, as well as numerous books on travel, biography, colonial history, and domestic guidance.

Despite her successful career, Terhune was generally unsupportive of the nascent feminism of her day. Ironically, according to Susan Koppelman in the Old Maids anthology (the source of this biographical note):

She has long been dismissed as an unimportant writer, partly because of her phenomenal output (I think many critics assume that such quantity can't be of high quality) and partly because of the fact that those who cherish the ideals she advocated do not ordinarily go looking for forgotten women writers.

Terhune's three surviving children also became authors.

Reviews

[Fran · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I had to drag myself through the first 2 chapters, put the book down for a week, and then took a deep breathe before picking it up again. And during that week, I struggled, as a mom, homemaker and a woman who does it all for all my kids. I was looking for motivation, inspiration, an answer to the worries in my heart. And I picked up this book. It was all I needed. The loose narratives, used to illustrate the topic of each chapter, got a bit irrating at times, but the jewels and gems hidden in the pages were the answer to my worries. I read and allowed myself to really take in the words written over 100 years ago, and I felt revitalized.

[Meredith is a hot mess · Rating 2 out of 5]

dnf @ 62%

I didn't find this as charming as The Housekeeper's Week, and though I agreed with some of Marion Harland's insights the holier-than-thou tone wore on me over time. I'm giving this 2 'it was okay' stars - I suppose I would rec this if someone was doing research for certain attitudes of the time.

[Jennifer Booth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice little group of short stories

For the time of book, people were not as worldly as today's people. It was a nice read with a solid foundation.