The Knapps are a happier family than at the book's opening.Īs a story, I found the plot a bit didactic. Knapp, meanwhile, begins to emerge from his mental depression and take charge of his children, advising them from his bed downstairs on how to get out of the house and off to school, helping them with their homework, and making fatherly contact with his youngest rascal who begins to calm down under his father's attention. Her style, dress, courtesy, and attention soon make her the top clerk, and a happier Mrs. Knapp seeks employment and finds a job as a clerk in the same store that had employed her husband. Living before the days of the New Deal or the Great Society as they do, the Knapps have to fend for themselves. On the day that he is fired from his job and contemplating his total worthlessness, he has a serious accident while helping a neighbor put out a house fire and permanently loses the use of his legs. Her husband has a poetic nature and does poorly as a store clerk in the town dry goods store. She is praised by one and all for her spotless home, nutritious meals, clean children, and style, but she and her family are unhappy. Knapp, who has three children, one of them unruly. First published in 1924 and reprinted by Persephone Books, the novel concerns a fastidious housekeeper, Mrs. This is the question that sadly came to my mind, when I read The Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield.
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