I grew up being groomed to be a wife and mother so that part made sense to me.
I liked the characters, especially Mary Jane. Surely with two contrary family systems operating, something was going to crash. I was eager to see how these human beings were going to impact each other. It moved right along and kept my attention the whole way. After a short while, however, some of that training starts to unravel. She is a bit flummoxed at first and initially behaves in the way that her mother has taught her. This is so very different than the family that Mary Jane has known.
Izzy’s family is messy, disordered, not particularly modest, and they are loud. Mary Jane bases her caregiving on what she has learned from her mom so the refrigerator gets cleaned out, Izzy gets regular baths, the family gets tasty meals, and Mary Jane shines in the role of nanny. This leaves much of the Izzy care to Mary Jane. Dad has an important patient that summer who will be staying with the family and mom will be involved in that care as well. Izzy lives with her mom and her psychiatrist dad. Until Mary Jane gets a summer job as a nanny for 5 year old Izzy. But hey, that’s all that Mary Jane knew and so it was fine.
All that order, cleanliness, tidiness, all those social rules? They made for a distant, cold, rather silent home life.
#MARY JANE WILDE HOW TO#
She knew exactly how to address adults and community members, she knew how to behave at the club and at church. Besides the domestic skills, Mary Jane was schooled in the “right way” to comport herself in the world. In short, Mary Jane was being prepared to serve her husband and offspring well, just like her own mother was taught to behave. She helped mom with meals every day, she went along to the grocery, she was taught the precise details required to get the laundry done correctly (by mom’s standards), she knew how to iron her dad’s shirts. She had been schooled by her mother in the skills necessary to keep a house. Overall, it was a light read with humorous passages but it also had messages to deliver.
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