One of the sobering realizations about marriage is that I now have a roommate for life. And with any roommate comes a critical question: How do we divide up all these chores?
Who does the dishes? Who takes out the trash? Can I eat those leftovers in the fridge? In previous roommate relationships, I tried a variety of strategies: The chore chart (organized, fairly unsuccessful). The passive-aggressive note (disorganized, very unsuccessful). The ignore-everything-until-absolutely-necessary method (disorganized, but kind of successful if you don’t mind stepping over the piles of trash).
Clearly I needed a more sustainable strategy with my new roommate-for-life. So I looked to another family-turned-roommate duo: Charlotte and Emily Brontë.
The Brontës grew up in Haworth, a small town on the edge of the Moors. Although they both ventured out on their own on short-lived posts as governesses, they eventually both returned to become housemates again. While there, they worked out a division of labor that lasted for the rest of their lives.
Charlotte laid it all out in a 1839 letter to a friend. “I manage the ironing and keep the rooms clean,” she said. “Emily does the baking and attends to the kitchen.” This arrangement seemed to play to both of their strengths—or rather, to the least of Charlotte’s weaknesses. “I won’t be a cook; I hate cooking. I won’t be a nursemaid or a lady’s maid, far less a lady’s company … I won’t be anything but a housemaid.” Frankly, even her housemaid-ing talent seems questionable. “I excited aunt’s wrath very much by burning the clothes the first time I attempted to iron; but I do better now,” she wrote.
On the other hand, Emily’s skill at baking was known throughout Haworth; the town stationer, John Greenwood, said she could often be found “in the kitchen baking bread at which she had such a dainty hand.” In 1843, when the family maid broke her leg, Emily took over the rest of the cooking too, with beef and potatoes as mealtime staples. (Charlotte was known to pitch in for potato-peeling.)
So are you a Charlotte or an Emily? It shouldn’t be surprising how our household divvied up the tasks. I cook; he cleans. And being the cook has a notable benefit, particularly for Emily. It takes time—and that time can usually be spent with a book. “Books were, indeed, a very common sight in [the Brontë] kitchen,” Elizabeth Gaskell wrote of the sisters in her 1857 biography. “In their careful employment of time, they found many an odd five minutes for reading while watching the cakes.”
