Written by Elisa Sola
About A Manual for Cleaning Women
The story is told in the first person by an unnamed narrator, a white and well-educated mother of four children who is profoundly grieving the recent death of her husband, Ter. Because of that, she has to clean houses in the San Francisco Bay Area, around Oakland and Berkeley.The narrative doesn’t follow a traditional linear plot; instead, it is structured around the transit routes of the public buses she takes to travel between the homes of her various wealthy employers.
The characters
The employers for
whom she works show a decadent social mosaic:
Mrs Jessel: an incredibly forgetful woman who has a lot of ailments and feels loneliness.
Linda and Bob: friends of the narrator who are very chaotic and messy.
The Blums: a couple of psychiatrists that are incapable of managing their lives and have to take pills (“She has uppers and he has downers”).
Mrs Burke: a meticulously scientist woman who feels guilty about being wealthy and idle.
Mrs Johanssen: an elderly employer who spends her days completing picture puzzles.
Mrs Jessel: an incredibly forgetful woman who has a lot of ailments and feels loneliness.
Linda and Bob: friends of the narrator who are very chaotic and messy.
The Blums: a couple of psychiatrists that are incapable of managing their lives and have to take pills (“She has uppers and he has downers”).
Mrs Burke: a meticulously scientist woman who feels guilty about being wealthy and idle.
Mrs Johanssen: an elderly employer who spends her days completing picture puzzles.
The perspective of
this cleaning woman, who has access to the private lives of her
employers and who is treated like a ghost, gradually paints a picture
of a sick American upper-class society. This detachment grants the
narrator an intellectual superiority, which shapes the story’s
point of view: “Cleaning women know everything”, or “Doing
everything wrong only reassures them that you are thorough; it gives
them the chance to be assertive and to act as the boss”.
The literary device Berlin uses is to write a manual for other cleaning women to help them learn practical things, such as which households offer the best lunches (“Jewish people and Black people are the only ones who give you lunch”) or how to handle their employers’ pets.
A sense of humour is one of the most characteristic ingredients of the story. For instance, when it mentions the traps employers set to catch cleaning women in the act of stealing, like as leaving loose change in the ashtrays, her advice is: “add a few pennies, even a dime”.
However, her sense of humour takes a bitter turn when she reveals that she steals pills “for a rainy day”. From this point, she unfolds her plan for suicide. Throughout the day, the narrative is spotted with memories of her late husband and the pain they evoke. These thoughts surface intermittently and repeatedly –like a stream of consciousness– and draw the two stories’ central themes: the expression of grief over loss and the awareness of class.
Nevertheless, as a narrative shifts, she experiences a quiet change of heart and decides not to kill herself. The story closes on a cold January day with the narrator watching the buses pass away (the passage of time in life) and finally allowing herself to weep and accept the heavy reality of her grief to carry on with her life.
The literary device Berlin uses is to write a manual for other cleaning women to help them learn practical things, such as which households offer the best lunches (“Jewish people and Black people are the only ones who give you lunch”) or how to handle their employers’ pets.
A sense of humour is one of the most characteristic ingredients of the story. For instance, when it mentions the traps employers set to catch cleaning women in the act of stealing, like as leaving loose change in the ashtrays, her advice is: “add a few pennies, even a dime”.
However, her sense of humour takes a bitter turn when she reveals that she steals pills “for a rainy day”. From this point, she unfolds her plan for suicide. Throughout the day, the narrative is spotted with memories of her late husband and the pain they evoke. These thoughts surface intermittently and repeatedly –like a stream of consciousness– and draw the two stories’ central themes: the expression of grief over loss and the awareness of class.
Nevertheless, as a narrative shifts, she experiences a quiet change of heart and decides not to kill herself. The story closes on a cold January day with the narrator watching the buses pass away (the passage of time in life) and finally allowing herself to weep and accept the heavy reality of her grief to carry on with her life.
Other themes of the story:
The invisibility of
the working class and its living conditions. Berlin highlights how
domestic workers become like ghosts or pieces of furniture to the
wealthy. Employers talk around them oblivious to their inner lives,
education or thoughts (the same point of view as in the film The
Help). Moreover, Berlin expresses how they live: “people in
cars never look at people on the street, at all. Poor ones all do...
Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats,
phone booths, emergency room, jails...”
The routine of precarious living: “Every Wednesday I climb the stairs like Sisyphus into their living room”, a good image of the nature of domestic work!
Humour as a survival mechanism. Despite dealing with heavy themes such as poverty, addiction and intense grief, the tone is never purely tragic. Berlin uses a sharp and detached perspective to keep the story grounded as a shield to maintain her dignity and power. A little piece of humour in the story: “women’s voices always raise two octaves when they talk cleaning women or cats”. About pets: “never make friends with cats... The ladies will get jealous”. About psychiatrists: “never work for psychiatrists, either. You'll go crazy”.
In short, perhaps what I liked most about the story is the perspective: a subversion of reality where power shifts from the wealthy to the poor, accompanied by the intellectual superiority of a lucid observer, like an anthropologist, who watches without being seen. Moreover, her portrayal of the working class is human and avoids clichés: “cleaning women do steal. Not the things the people we work for are so nervous about...”
The routine of precarious living: “Every Wednesday I climb the stairs like Sisyphus into their living room”, a good image of the nature of domestic work!
Humour as a survival mechanism. Despite dealing with heavy themes such as poverty, addiction and intense grief, the tone is never purely tragic. Berlin uses a sharp and detached perspective to keep the story grounded as a shield to maintain her dignity and power. A little piece of humour in the story: “women’s voices always raise two octaves when they talk cleaning women or cats”. About pets: “never make friends with cats... The ladies will get jealous”. About psychiatrists: “never work for psychiatrists, either. You'll go crazy”.
In short, perhaps what I liked most about the story is the perspective: a subversion of reality where power shifts from the wealthy to the poor, accompanied by the intellectual superiority of a lucid observer, like an anthropologist, who watches without being seen. Moreover, her portrayal of the working class is human and avoids clichés: “cleaning women do steal. Not the things the people we work for are so nervous about...”
A good story!
QUESTIONS
-Have you had any experiences hiring a cleaning woman or being a cleaning woman?
-What job would / woulnd't you take in a desperate situation?
-According to your personal point of view, what is the most degrading job? Why do you think so?
VOCABULARY
quarter, phenobarbital, cukcoo, dime, curb, transfer, come, racing forms, coke, filmily, boarded up, arraignment, frosted wig, elevator shoes, crissake, sultry, flurry, swooping, fly swatter, dumb, wallowing, shoot-out, Marina, posts, stove, creamer, waffle iron, hassle, to boot, cockeyed, long hair, flurries, rasty
quarter, phenobarbital, cukcoo, dime, curb, transfer, come, racing forms, coke, filmily, boarded up, arraignment, frosted wig, elevator shoes, crissake, sultry, flurry, swooping, fly swatter, dumb, wallowing, shoot-out, Marina, posts, stove, creamer, waffle iron, hassle, to boot, cockeyed, long hair, flurries, rasty