Tom Sawyerish

Earlier this week, the Misses M-mv and I made entries into our nature journals, a thoroughly wonderful way to pass an hour on an early-spring afternoon. Not for the first time, I recalled the passage in Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, in which the author, Linda R. Hirshman, decries a stay-at-home mother's life:

My correspondent's life does have a certain Tom Sawyerish quality to it, but she has no power in the world.

This morning, as I nurse my second cup of coffee while correcting math lessons and counting birds at our feeders, I have neither the interest nor the strength to enter into a meaningful dialogue on the subject of women and work, so I'll confine my remarks to this query: Which text did Hirshman read that made her think Tom Sawyer has no power (i.e., influence) in or over his world?

[Added later: From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:

[T]hey came to jeer, but remained to whitewash... Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

Ayup.]

Heh, heh, heh.

A thin, pale sun warms the patch of galanthus in our back yard. Today I think I will add these to my journal.

Related aside
From Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study:

In my belief, there are two and only two occupations for Saturday afternoon or forenoon for a teacher. One is to be out-of-doors and the other is to lie in bed, and the first is best. Out in this, God's beautiful world, there is everything waiting to heal lacerated nerves, to strengthen tired muscles, to please and content the soul that is torn to shreds with duty and care.

In my belief, one could substitute the word "Saturday" in that passage with "any." What do I know, though? My life, after all, has "a certain Tom Sawyerish quality to it."

Book notes
My companion today: Proust Was a Neuroscientist.