Holiday (Themes)

Themes

Alienation

The most obvious example of alienation is that of Ottilie, the crippled Müller daughter. The fact that she is made to labor intensively for the rest of the family is not in itself evidence of alienation, because all of the Müllers work hard. However, by being responsible for cooking and serving all the family's meals, Ottilie is automatically prevented from taking part in the key social events of the Müller family life: the daily meals, the wedding celebration, even her own mother's funeral. Being unable to speak isolates Ottilie from the rest of the family. This alienation is intensified by the Müllers's attitude towards her: unable to deal with their feelings about her and her condition, they simply ignore her. More attention is lavished on the cows and sheep than on poor Ottilie, who is only spoken to when a meal is being requested.

The narrator is also alienated from the family; first, because she is an outsider, second, because she does not speak German. Her childless, husbandless status makes her even more of an oddity in a house fairly bursting with babies. A woman on her own in the early 1920s, when this story was originally written, was looked upon with both curiosity and suspicion. As though to emphasize this unfeminine condition, she is seated on the men's side of the table at dinner.

Because the majority of Porter's work is drawn from personal experience, this story can also be seen as a comment on the alienation Porter experienced as a woman artist on her own in the 1920s, and throughout her life. A woman devoting her life to her work, in this era, was seen as unnatural, someone who has turned her back on the kind of life embraced by the Müller women: serving a man, having his children, and caring for them. The narrator's obvious affection for the Müllers and their way of life shows her ambivalence about this choice.

Sacrifice

Whatever individual opinions, ambitions, and desires of separate family members, the Müllers have sacrificed for the collective family good. They have sacrificed so much of their individuality, in fact, that they all act as parts of one homogenous whole. As the narrator says, "I got a powerful impression that they were all, even the sons-in-law, one human being divided into several separate appearances." Even their appearance is not that separate; they all have the same high cheekbones and "slanted water-blue eyes." Ottilie, whose deformity has rendered her inescapably unique, still shares these features with the rest of the family. Even the boy whom Hatsy marries "resemble[s] her brothers enough to be her brother," maintaining the homogenous nature of the group.

No one has been forced to sacrifice more than Ottilie; she has been reduced to the state of a slave. Both literally and figuratively, she has no voice in the family. Worst of all, she has been forced to sacrifice human connection, by being banished from family gatherings and celebrations. She is completely ignored.

Parallels can be drawn between the Müller family and communist societies. One of the basic tenets of communism is the equality of all citizens, and the equal distribution of the products of labor. This equality necessitates, of course, a quashing of personal ambition and a greater dedication to the progress of the whole than to the advancement of the individual. Father Müller is a devotee of Karl Marx's Das Kapital, but only to the point that it is practical. As Marx did, he rejects religion; however, he cannot resist the temptation to use his power and wealth to get what he wants. In this way, he is illustrative of one of the main weaknesses of communism: its failure to account for the self-serving desires that are a part of human nature.

Cycles of Life and Nature

In escaping to the Müller farm, the narrator has placed herself with a family and a community living in harmony with nature and the natural cycles of life. This has a restorative effect; the narrator says, "It was easier to breathe, and I might even weep, if I pleased. In a very few days I no longer felt like weeping."

In her one month at the Müllers, the narrator witnesses a birth, a death, a wedding, a violent storm, and the rebirth of the landscape that is barren when she arrives. In other words, in just one month she witnesses the complete cycle of life, both for the Müllers and for nature. Only Ottilie seems to be out of sync with these natural rhythms, with her unsteady gait and indeterminate age: "The blurred, dark face was neither young nor old, but crumpled into criss cross wrinkles, irrelevant either to age or suffering."

Gender Roles

Accepted as part of nature's way are the strict gender roles adhered to by the Müllers. The married women stand behind their husbands at the dinner table and serve them. All childcare, of course, is the women's responsibility, as is the milking of the cows. Hatsy's new husband is harshly rebuffed when he offers to help Hatsy with the heavy pails of milk that Mother Müller brings into the house after milking the cows in the storm. "The milk is not business for a man," she tells him.

The narrator, as a guest, is seated on the men's side of the table at dinner. Ottilie does not sit on the women's side of the table, because she is too busy serving the meal. Ottilie and the narrator are also the only two women in the family without children or husbands. In this household, they are almost genderless, and as such their role is uncertain. Ottilie's job is well defined, but the family seems unable to relate to her in any other way. She is not a mother, she is not a wife, she is not a child; like the narrator, she is a grown woman alone, a role for which the Müllers (and much of society in the early 1920s) have no references.

Topics for Further Study

• How would this story have been different if the narrator could speak German? If Ottilie could speak? Write a conversation between the narrator and Ottilie.
• Research the meanings of some of the German names used in the story. Do the meanings of the names correlate to the personality or role of the characters? Explain any connections you discover.
• Research the percentage of American women in the workforce in 1920, 1960, and today. Draw a graph charting the difference. Now research the average wages of women in these three years compared to the average wages of men, and chart your findings.
• What kind of "troubles" do you think the narrator is trying to escape by going on her holiday? Write a "prequel" to this story that describes the problems she is leaving behind and how they came about.