Domestic Manners of the Americans

After a few hours’ stop in Louisville, Kentucky, Trollope and company arrive at Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 10th and check in at the Washington Hotel.

In Cincinnati, Trollope is dismayed at the absence of “all the accommodation that Europeans conceive necessary to decency and comfort” (34). This is seen especially in the lack of water drainage or proper garbage disposal; trash is simply thrown in the middle of the street for the pigs to eat it up. Although admitting the city’s rapid growth from “aboriginal forest” in only 30 years, Trollope is generally disappointed with Cincinnati, finding it to fall far short of the “wonder of the west” (35) of which she was told.

Trollope takes a house near the city and has occasion to visit a subsistence farm nearby. Here she is struck by the fact that the farmers, while claiming “the back-wood’s independence” (43), live in isolation from society and civilization: “[T]here was something awful and almost unnatural in their loneliness” (43).

Having established a home, Trollope hires a maid to help around the house. However, she discovers that domestic service is looked down upon as an undesirable job in the United States; young girls regard it merely as a temporary occupation to be abandoned as soon as possible.