The Hired Girl(128)

But it wasn’t the only interesting thing. Last Easter I was confirmed, and that was not only interesting, but important. It’s an awe-inspiring thing to take the Sacrament. Each time I approach the altar rail, I feel reverent and buoyant, as if my body were recalled to life, as well as my soul. But the sad thing is now that I’m a true Catholic, I sometimes lack religious fervor and am apt to oversleep on Sunday mornings. Kitty and I say the rosary together (she is Catholic, too), and when we hear the church bells, we stop work and pray the Angelus. I’m glad to be religious, because religion is tremendous. Sometimes it doesn’t feel tremendous; sometimes it feels like being inside a fence. But God is spacious and mysterious.

I have seen the Ocean! This past summer, after Oskar and Irma had chicken pox, we went to Atlantic City, and I beheld the majesty of the unplumm’d, salt, estranging sea. Often I got up early so that I could watch the sunrise. I would walk barefoot at the edge of the water and think about David — not just David, but myself and love and art and death. When I behold the ocean, I know that the world isn’t just the grind of small tasks and small thoughts. The world is wide and wild and grand. Someday I will sail my little bark into the great ocean of life, braving the winds and the tide. And while the waves may dwarf me, they will not belittle me, because I will be the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.

Mr. Rosenbach is determined that I shall learn philosophy. I read several of the Socratic dialogues and I liked them, but eventually I got tired of Socrates winning all the arguments. So I wrote a dialogue where I taught Socrates some important things about the nature of true love. The dialogue ended with Socrates saying submissively, “Yes, that is so.” When Mr. Rosenbach read it, he laughed so hard he nearly died. Just now we are reading Shakespeare together. First we read Macbeth, which is thrilling, and then we read As You Like It. I like it when Rosalind says, “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” That’s exactly how I feel about David Rosenbach.

I thought I would love David forever, but now I’m not so sure. I think of him often, but not as much as I did. He sends me postcards from Paris, but they are identical to the ones he sends Mimi. There isn’t a particle of sentiment in them, and I know why. He’s afraid of inflaming my propensities. Mimi says her friend Maisie Phillips’s brother, Sam, would be sweet on me if I gave him a little encouragement, but I’m not going to do it, because he’s a Methodist and not interesting. Also, I’m busy: I’m planning to write an epic poem about the life of a Vestal Virgin. I was hoping to start it tonight but decided to finish this diary instead. I’ll begin it tomorrow, in Mimi’s new book.

Tomorrow, oh, tomorrow! What will my destiny be? Maybe I’ll be a teacher, as Ma encouraged me to be. Or a great novelist, like Charlotte Bront?. Or perhaps I’ll be a famous journalist like Nellie Bly and investigate insane asylums and fascinating places like that. One thing is sure: after I’ve paid Mr. Rosenbach for my schooling, I mean to go to Europe. I’ll see the bridge where Dante met Beatrice, and the Alhambra, and the slate-gray roofs of Paris. Maybe in Paris I’ll pay David to paint my portrait — because by then I’ll be ever so stylish and self-possessed, and maybe he’ll fall in love with me, and I’ll spurn him.

Or maybe I won’t.

Fortunately, I don’t have to decide just now, because my immediate tomorrow dictates only that I start school. School! As Shakespeare would say, O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!

I think about Ma, telling me to get educated, and dear Malka, who told me to grow up and become a woman.

And so I will.





In The Hired Girl, I have tried to be historically accurate about language. This has led me to use terms that are considered pejorative today, such as Hebrew, Mahomet, and Mahometans.

I used Mahomet and Mahometan for two reasons. The word Muslim, which is now preferred, was not in use until much later in the twentieth century. And, as a reader of Jane Eyre, Ivanhoe, and The Picturesque World, Joan would have encountered the words Mahomet and Mahometan. These are the words that were used at that time.

Similarly, many Jewish people today find the term Hebrew offensive, but the fact that many Jewish organizations in Baltimore used it (the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, the Hebrew Literary Society, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, etc.) suggests that at the turn of the century, the word Hebrew was used with pride.