"Morality for Beautiful Girls"

Morality for Beautiful Girls
By Alexander McCall Smith

From a cultural viewpoint, we learn that anyone with a well-paid job with two or more bedrooms was expected to have a maid; to not have one was seen as selfishness. (pg 75)

Ecotheology appears in chapter 14: “God Decided That Botswana Would Be a Dry Place” in which, (page 164), Mma. Ramotswe is reminded of the values of her people: “They shared the land with cattle, and with birds and the many other creatures that could be seen if only one watched.”

166 deals with mourning, as Mma. Ramotswe visits the cows her late father left her. She missed him “acutely” and she knew “she would probably weep and they would wonder why this woman still wept for her father who had died long ago. We still have tears to shed, she thought. We still have to weep for those mornings when we went out early and watched the cows able along the cattle paths and the birds flying high in the thermal currents.”

Mma Ramotswe solves a case for a disrespectful Government Man. When he tried to disrespect her, she stands her ground and lets him know where the door is. He comes to his senses and apologizes for his rude behavior and she informs him on who has tried to poison his family. But then she remarks that ‘the real poison within families is not the poison that you put in food, but the poison that grows up in the heart where people are jealous.” (220). When the man begins to cry, she tells him “Do not be ashamed to cry, Rra…It is the way that things begin to get better. It is the first step.” (220-221)