Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman (Spoiler warning)

My mother gave me this book to read, along with Jane Eyre, when I was about twelve, so I would have some romances with some weight and grit to them. This book certainly has grit. The fire gave me nightmares as a child. The bear trap, the death, and the way Katherine left and came back have lingered and haunted me ever since. For a book I only read once, it made a lifelong impression. It was traumatic to read this book as a kid, but it was a trauma I’ve always been thankful for. I’ve always been glad my mom gave me such a hard book to read and let me have the nightmares. I’m stronger because of it. This, of course, has not stopped me from forever giving her a hard time about what she let me read as a child. I tease because I love.

After recently reading The Blue Castle, I wanted something Canadian but with a higher cost to it. I decided it was high time I revisited this book.

It’s always dangerous to return to things that struck you as a child. Will it hold up? Will you find the same power in the book that you did before, or will you wonder at the poor taste and poor choices of your youthful immaturity? Thankfully, I can say that this book holds up. What struck me the most is that every part I remembered for its horror was rather short. The fire was a short scene in the book, as were the bear trap, the death of their children, and the bodies being kept from the dogs. When I read them as a child, they seemed mountainous. As an adult who has read so much more horror and so much military history, they were molehills in length. They were still intense and heart-rending. In some ways, that has been the major change from youth to adulthood: the heart-rending. As a kid, I had nightmares about the fire. As a grown-up, I cried over the death of Katherine’s children. Perspectives change. It was people’s endurance through tragedy that stood out to me more than the horrors. This book is an excellent way to see true persistence in the face of agony, distress, and catastrophe.

Now, don’t write this book off as a horror story. It’s not. It is a romance. But the romance part takes up a short amount of space in the book. The majority of the novel is two people loving each other in a harsh, beautiful environment. This is a woman going with her man, giving up all to follow him, and building a home with him in the wilderness. This book is community, courage, and commitment. I love Sarah, the good witch. I love the strength that grows in Katherine. I love how she manages her home even at a very young age. I love how she constantly tries to help those around her even when it costs her greatly. I love her love for her husband and his for her. I love the family they create. This is a homemaker book through and through. It just requires grit. This book is also beautiful. Katherine’s love of the wilderness shines through in all the descriptions of the nature around her and her return to it at the end. This was a point that tickled me. We live in a time where more and more people are talking about homesteading, getting out of the city, reviving dead crafts, and reclaiming lost knowledge and skills. Apparently it was no different in the early 1900s. Katherine leaves the wilderness and returns to Boston only to find out how much she misses life in the wilderness where things really matter and people really care about each other, even if life is harder and meaner and often shorter, even if it took her children from her. I had not thought of the desire to live close to the land and labor for existence as a common human experience but as a modern desire born out of the sterility of city life. I hadn’t realized the sense of lost community isn’t just a modern problem, but often a city problem.

If you enjoy a good love story but want something with more weight and higher stakes than just “will the boy get the girl?”, try Mrs. Mike. If you want to encourage your love of home and homemaking, try Mrs. Mike. If you find homesteading even a little bit attractive both for its challenge and its community, try Mrs. Mike.

(Also, I’m realizing that this book might be why I often don’t enjoy focusing on the first blush of romantic love between two characters as much as what they do with that love once it becomes more settled. The romance is fun, but the enduring, tried and tested love appeals to me far more. We learn something new about ourselves every day, don’t we?)

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

This short book arrived in my birthday box from Sarah with a sticky note on it indicating that I could only borrow this book and that I should pay attention to the mother. I read it for my casual evening reading after finishing Mrs. Mike. Anne wrote this book to expose the terrible positions governesses are put in and the horrible way they’re treated after she worked as a governess for a time. If you have worked in any service industry—but especially with children—this book might give you a little PSIA (post service industry anxiety). Much of the way she described being a non-person as a governess, I’ve experienced in retail. In retail, you’re treated as a machine that must recharge in the back at the end of the day. You’re rarely a person who has a life, hopes, and dreams. You’re a means to an end, and you’re doing it wrong.

The book is scathing, sarcastic, concerning, and also a sweet love story between a plain working woman and a gentle pastor. The parts that made me chuckle were the points where you could obviously tell that Agnes was a pastor’s daughter. It must be a PK thing. I do think if it had been any longer than it was, it would have gotten old, but the shortness allowed her to fully deal with her subject before the reader lost interest.

The gem of this book is the contrast between mothers. Agnes’ mother is diligent, frugal, cheerful, kind, and wise. She is a fantastic homemaker who blesses her husband despite their financial ruin, raises two capable daughters, and proceeds to provide for herself as much as she can to avoid being a burden on her family. She is a bulwark to her people. In contrast, the two mothers of the families Agnes is a governess for are shocking in their disconnection from their children and their home. They blame every problem on Agnes, while also robbing her of any ability to help them. The first one’s son tortures animals. I have to admit to feeling sick when I read about what this little boy did to birds and angry when their parents acted like that was normal. Their children were nightmares. The second family was less psychopathic and more willing to see the faults of the children, but again, Agnes was given an unfair standard to meet and berated when she didn’t meet it. What was truly haunting was when she returned to visit one of her charges after the girl was married. She was deeply unhappy because she’d been raised to be so self-focused that she couldn’t love her own child. She hates her husband and abandons her child. The contrast of wise mothering and engaged homemaking with foolish, blind mothers, completely unengaged with their children and their homes, is the great blessing of this book.

Dr. Elizabeth Weir, Stargate: Atlantis

I’m amazed that it took me this long to wax eloquent about Elizabeth. I’ve talked about Stargate: Atlantis before. It is one of my favorite shows. It’s cheesy, ridiculous, has way too much space for speculation, and is just old enough now to not be excessively ideologically preachy. If you hang out with me long enough, you will have to endure some squealing about Atlantis at some point. If you’d like to skip to that, here is a podcast episode I was a guest on specifically to talk about Atlantis. Atlantis merch makes me happy; just putting that out there.

Dr. Elizabeth Weir is the leader of the Stargate expedition sent into the Pegasus galaxy with no hope of returning home. She’s a scientist and explorer. She leads the military personnel and scientists through this adventure, leaving her home and her man behind. So how is she a tender of the home, you might be asking? It took me a bit to see it. I liked her as a character but had to constantly not look at the subtle message that work is more important than home, and that home and our people are negotiable if something cool enough comes along that furthers our career. I ignored what she communicated the first time I watched the show because John Sheppard was worth it. I immediately connected with his character and spent a ridiculous amount of time overanalyzing him and the story of how this loner found a home and a family that he was willing to repeatedly attempt to die for. Atlantis lit up, literally, when he walked in, and seemed to respond with joy that he was there. The message for his character wasn’t subtle, and I loved it: home and family are worth sticking with no matter what.

As I watched the show the second and third times, Elizabeth kept standing out more and more. Yes, the show has her pursuing her career at the cost of everything else in her life and tries to sell that as worthy because she’s exploring a new galaxy. But they also did something else. They have a woman in this empty, ancient city making a home. See, Atlantis is the location of the story, but it is also a character, much like the Enterprise and Serenity. The ship and, in this case, the city is a character in the show. Atlantis is specifically a home for misfits. She becomes a refuge for other peoples fleeing the terror of the Wraith. Atlantis is home, and at the head of this home is a woman. It makes me giddy.

Elizabeth almost never goes on missions; she stays in Atlantis. She worries about her people when they are gone, and she’s there to welcome them home when they return. She is the heart inside Atlantis. This is most easily seen in the episode Before I Sleep. (SPOILERS) In this episode, they find a 10,000-year-old woman that turns out to be Elizabeth herself. Through a time travel accident, Elizabeth went back in time. By doing this, she was able to save Atlantis and her people. She spent 10,000 years maintaining Atlantis (going in and out of stasis) so that when Sheppard and everyone else walked through the Stargate, they would survive. In the original timeline, everyone drowns within hours of arriving except Elizabeth, who is sent to the past. This freak accident allowed her to modify Atlantis’s failsafes so that her people would be safe when they arrived in 10,000 years. Talk about dedication to your people and your home. Elizabeth tended her hearth so her people would live and thrive. And when she finally got to see them alive and well, when she got to see the fruit of her labors, what a moment. (This is also when you realize you have to go back and watch the first episode again because what you thought happened isn’t what actually happened.)

Part of what makes this work is that Elizabeth isn’t a girlboss. She doesn’t ride rough-shod over her people. She leans on her people and values their input. Yes, sometimes she has to be aggressive about her role as leader, but more often than not, she lets her people do what they were trained to do. She trusts the men around her. She watches them go out and waits for them to return.

In episode after episode, Elizabeth manages the food, relationships, health, and interaction with other peoples to trade and support each other during the Wraith war. She does all of this without going on most of the adventures. The snarky part of me loves the fact that in an attempt to showcase a strong career woman who is a leader, they managed to actually showcase a strong and competent homemaker. This show is pretty safe for the whole family, about on the level of Star Trek: Next Generation. It’s fun, all about a great found family, a soldier who finds his place, an arrogant scientist who learns to love his people – it’s about home. Atlantis is about all the broken, lost, and lonely people finding a home together.

Here are two books and a show, homemakers, that will bless you and keep you engaged. Remember, always look for the tenders!