A thing that impresses me about this complaint is that it is not that of a poor woman. She is the mistress of a tolerably prosperous household of her time, which can afford such amenities as wallpaper, sugar, rosebushes, & ironed shirts. She doesn't even have children yet, or else she would surely have mentioned them.

True, she probably lived in the country & had no servants. But even for the bourgeoisie, keeping up a respectable household in the 19th century was a terrible grind. Read H. L. Mencken's gritty memoir "Baltimore in the Eighties".