Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Then comes the sweetheart. A new deep love, a great overmastering reverence for the Woman, rises in his heart. In the light of that love he accepts her as she is, glorifying and idealising every weakness, every limitation, because it is hers. This is not well. He could love her just as well, better, if his reverence were better deserved, if the dignity of sex were enhanced by the dignity of a wise, strong, capable human being.

  Of course the man feels that he would not love her as well if she were different. So he felt in past ages when she was even more feminine, even less human. So he will feel in coming ages, when she is truly his equal, a strong and understanding friend, a restful and stimulating companion, as well as the beautiful and loving woman. We have always been drawn together by love and always will be. The beautiful Georgian slave is beloved, the peasant lass, the princess; man loves woman, and she need not fear any change in that.

  Our error lies in a false estimate of womanhood and manhood. The home, its labours, cares, and limitations we have called womanly; and everything else in life manly; wherefore if a woman manifested any power, ambition, interest, outside the home, that was unwomanly and must cost her her position as such. This is entirely wrong.

  A woman is a woman and attractive to the men of her place and time, whether she be a beaded Hottentot, a rosy milkmaid, a pretty schoolma’am, or a veiled beauty of the Zenana.

  We are taught that man most loves and admires the domestic type of woman. This is one of the roaring jokes of history. The breakers of hearts, the queens of romance, the goddesses of a thousand devotees, have not been cooks.

  Women in general are attractive to men, but let a woman be glaringly conspicuous — the great singer, dancer, actress — immediately she has lovers without number. The best-loved women of all time have not been the little brown birds at home, by any means. Of course, when a man marries the queen of song he expects her to settle at once to the nest and remain there. But does he thereafter maintain the same degree of devotion that he bestowed before? It is not easy, after all, to maintain the height of romantic devotion for one’s house-servant — or even one’s housekeeper. The man loves his wife; but it is in spite of the home — not because of it. And wherever the shadow of unhappiness falls between them, wherever the sad record of sorrow and sin is begun, it is too often because love strays from that domestic area to follow a freer bird in a wider field.

  It is not marriage which brings this danger, it is domestic service; it is not the perfect and mutual ownership of love, nor the sanction of law and religion; it is the one-sided ownership wherein the wife becomes the private servant, cook, cleaner, mender of rents, a valet, janitor, and chambermaid. Even as such she has more practical claim to respect than the wife who does not do this work nor any other; who is not the servant of the house, but merely its lady; who has absolutely no claim to human honour, no place in the social scheme, except that of the female.

  Thus we find that the influence of the home upon man, as felt through the home-restricted woman, is not always for the best; and that even, as supposedly increasing the woman’s charm, it does not work.

  What follows further of the influence of the home upon man directly? How does it modify his personal life and development? The boy grows and breaks out of the home. It has for him a myriad ties — but he does not like to be tied. He strikes out for himself. If he is an English boy of the upper classes he is cut off early and sent to a boarding school; later he has “chambers” of his own. If an American, he simply goes into business, and in most cases away from home, boarding for a while. Then he loves, marries, and sets up a home of his own; a woman-and-child house, which he gladly and proudly maintains and in many ways enjoys.

  So satisfied are we in our convictions regarding this status that we really and practically worship the home and family, holding it to be a man’s first duty to maintain them. No man does it more patiently and generously than the American, and he is supported in his position by all the moral opinion of our world. He is “a good family man” we say, and can say no more. To stay at home evenings is especially desirable; the more of life that can be spent at home the better, we think, for all concerned. Now what is the real effect upon the man? Is the home, as we have it, satisfying to the real needs of man’s nature; and if not, could it be improved?

  The best proof of man’s dissatisfaction with the home is found in his universal absence from it. It is not only that his work takes him out (and he sees to it that it does!) but the man who does not “have to work” also goes out, for pleasure.

  The leisure classes in any country have no necessity upon them to leave home, yet their whole range of uneasy activity is to get outside, or to furnish constant diversion and entertainment, to while away the hours within. A human creature must work, play, or rest. Men work outside, play outside, and cannot rest more than so long at a time.

  The man maintains a home, as part of his life-area, but does not himself find room in it. This is legitimate enough. It should be equally true of the woman. No human life of our period can find full exercise in a home. Both need it, to rest in; to work from; but not to stay in.

  This we find practically worked out in the average man’s attitude toward the home. He provides it, cheerfully, affectionately, proudly; at any cost of labour, care, and ingenuity; but if he has to stay in it too much, he knows it softens and enfeebles him.

  So he goes out, to meet men, to work and live as far as he can; and when he wants “a real good time,” — rest, recreation, healthful amusement, — he goes altogether with “the boys.” The distant camp in the woods, the mountain climb, the hunting trip, — real rest and pleasure to the man are found with men away from home.

  There is a sort of strain in the constant association with the smaller life, as there is in the painful keeping step with shorter legs; a slow, soft, gentle downward pull, against which every active man rebels. But he is bound to it, for life. The immutable laws of sex hold him to the woman; and as she is so he must be, more or less.

  He is bound to the home by the needs of the child, and by the physical convenience and necessity of the place. If it were all that it should be, it would offer to the man rest, comfort, stimulus, and inspiration. In so far as it does, it is right. In so far as it does not, it is wrong. The ideal home shines clear and bright, at the end of the day’s work. Peace and happiness, relief from all effort and anxiety, the calm replenishment of food and sleep, the most delightful companionship. In some cases it gives all this in fact. In many, many others the man has to descend in coming home — to come down to it instead of up. In it is a whole new field of cares, worries, and labours. The primitive machinery of the place, so imperfectly managed by the inexpert average woman, jars rudely on his specialised consciousness. The children are his pride and joy — that is as it should be. But when their lack of intelligent care robs him of his rest at night; and their lack of intelligent education, makes them an anxiety and a distress instead of a comfort; that is as it should not be.

  He does not bring his deficiencies in business home to his wife and expect her to walk the floor at night with them. The systematised man’s work is done for the day, and he comes home to shoulder a share of the unsystematised inadequate woman’s work. When the woman of exceptional ability keeps the whole house running smoothly, has no trouble with servants, no trouble with the children, then the influence of the home on man is pure beneficence. Such cases are most rare. So used are we to the contrary, so besotted in our blind adoration of ancient deficiencies, that we exhort the young couple to face “the cares and troubles of married life” as if they really were an essential part of it. They have nothing to do with married life. They are the cares and troubles of our antiquated, mischievous system of housekeeping.

  If men in their business were still using methods of a million years ago, they would need some exhortation too. It is marvellous that the same man who casts upon the scrap heap his most expensive machinery to replace it with still better, who constantly adjusts and readj
usts his business to the latest demands of our rapidly changing time, can go home and contentedly endure the same petty difficulties which his father and his grandfather and all his receding ancestors endured in turn.

  The inadequacy of the home, the gross imperfections of its methods and management have anything but a helpful influence on men. Necessary difficulties are to be borne or overcome, but to suffer with a sickle when a steam reaper is to be had is contemptible rather than elevating. There will be some pathetic protest here that it is a man’s duty to help woman bear the troubles and difficulties of the home. The woman ardently believes this, and the man too, sometimes. Of all incredible impositions this is the most astounding.

  Here we see half the human race, equally able with the other half (equal does not mean similar, remember!), content to see every industry on earth taken away from them, save house-service and child-culture, growing up in the full knowledge and acceptance of this field of labour, generally declining to study said industries before undertaking them, cheerfully undertaking them without any pretense of efficiency, and then calling upon the other half of the world, upon men, who do everything else that is done to maintain our civilisation, to help them do their work!

  We object to seeing the man harness the woman to the plough, and we are right. It is a poor way to work. A horse is more efficient, a steam-plough still better. It is time that we objected to the woman’s effort to harness the man to the home, in all its cumbrous old-world inefficiencies. It is not more labour that the home wants, it is better machinery and administration.

  Some hold that the feebleness of woman has a beneficent effect on man, draws out many of his nobler qualities. He should then marry a bed-ridden invalid — a purblind idiot — and draw them all out!

  The essential weakness and deficiencies of the child are quite sufficient to call out all the strength and wisdom of both parents, without adding this travesty of childhood, this pretended helplessness of a full-grown woman. The shame of it! That a mother, one who needs every attainable height of wisdom and power, should forego her own human development — to make good her claim on man for food and clothes and draw out his nobler qualities! The virtue of parentage is to be measured by its success, not by the amount of effort and sacrifice expended.

  Granting that the care of the body is woman’s especial work; the feeding, clothing, and cleaning of the world; she should by this time have developed some system of doing it which would make it less of a burden to the man as well as the woman. It is most discreditable to the business sense of a modern community that these vitally important life processes should be so clumsily performed, at such heavy cost of time, labour, and money.

  The care and education of children are legitimately shared by the father. In this a man and his wife are truly partners. They engage in a common business and both labour in it. At present the man by no means does his share in this all-important work, save as he does it collectively, through school and college; there the woman is in default.

  In the early years the man gives little thought and care to the child, this being supposed to be perfectly well attended to by the woman. That it is not, we may readily see; but the man can by no means assist in it; because he is so overburdened already in the material provision for the home.

  The enormous and unnecessary expense of our domestic processes constitutes so excessive a drain on man’s energy that it would be cruel, as well as useless, to expect him to do more.

  With the reduction in expense which we have shown to be possible, lessening the cost of living by two-thirds and adding to productive labour by nearly half, the home, instead of being an unconscionable burden and ceaseless care, would become what it should be: an easily attained place of complete rest, comfort, peace, and invigoration.

  The present influence of the home on men is felt most through this inordinate expense. The support of the family we have laid entirely upon man, thus developing in the dependent woman a limitless capacity for receiving things, and denying her the power to produce them. If this result remained in its simple first degree it would be bad enough; requiring of the man the maintenance of himself, a healthy able-bodied woman, and all the children, instead of having a vigorous helpmate, to honourably support herself, and do her share toward supporting her own children.

  This result is cumulative, however. The confinement of the woman to the home, when she does not labour, results in her becoming a parasite, and the appetite of a parasite is insatiable. She has no sense of what we call “the value of money,” — meaning how much labour it represents, — because she never laboured for it. She received it from her father, all unthinking of where he got it, as is natural to a child; and she continues to be a child, receiving as unthinkingly from her husband. This position we consider right, even beautiful; man stoutly maintains it himself, and considers any effort of the woman to support herself as a reflection on him. He has arrogated to himself as a masculine function the power of producing wealth; and considers it “unfeminine” for a woman to do it; and as indicating a lack of manliness in him.

  He should “consider the ant,” in this capacity, or the bee; and see that a purely masculine functionary has no other occupation whatsoever. He should consider also the male savage — he is “masculine” enough surely; but he is little else. Last, nearest, and most practical he should consider the immense majority of women all over the world to-day who labour in the home. The Lady of the House is a pure parasite, almost wholly detrimental in her influence, but the Housewife is one of the hardest workers on earth. She works unceasingly; as Mrs. Diaz put it years ago, in a thoughtful husband’s sudden consideration of his wife’s working hours— “No noonings — no evenings — no rainy days!” She works harder and longer than the man, in a miscellaneous shifting field of effort far more exhausting to vitality than his specialised line; and she bears children too! If any man could make a boast equal to that of the mother of nine children — (whose son told me this himself) that she had never missed washing on Monday but twice — there might be some ground for the claim of superior strength.

  In this kind of home — and it is still the rule on earth — what is the influence on man? Does this grade and amount of labour on the part of women lighten the burden, as we so fondly and proudly assume? It shows great ignorance of economic values to assume it.

  The poorer a man is, the more he has to pay for everything. In this nine-tenths of our population where the woman works in the home, the man works harder and gets less comfort for his money than among those more successful men able to maintain a parasite. He sustains to the fullest degree all the economic disadvantages we have previously enumerated — the last extreme of wasteful purchase, the lowest stage of industrial exchange. With him, a self-supporting wife would at once double the family income, and the benefits of organised labour and purchase would reduce their expenses at the same time. The unnecessary expenses of a poor man’s home are far greater in proportion than those of the rich man; and his enjoyment of the place is less.

  He has always a tired wife, an unprogressive wife, a wife who cannot be to him what a strong, happy, growing woman should be. If she had eight hours (to take even the custom of our labour-wasting time) of specialised work, to be done with and left with eagerness for the beloved home, she would have a far fresher and more stimulating mind than she has after her ceaseless, confusing toils in the confined domestic atmosphere. The two, together, could afford a better house. The two, together, with twice the money and half the expense for food, could furnish their children with far better care than the overworked and undereducated housewife can give them.

  The result upon the man would be pleasant, indeed. A clean, pretty, quiet home — not full of smell and steam and various messy industries, but simply a place to rest in when he comes to it. A wife as glad to be at home as he. Children also glad of the reunion hour, and the mother and father both delighted to be with their children. What is there in this a man should dread?

  Would not such a home
be good to come to, and would not its influence be wholly pleasant? Our Puritanism shrinks at the idea of homes being wholly pleasant. They should be something of a trial, we think, for our soul’s good. The wife and mother ought to be tired and overworked, careworn, dirty, anxious from hour to hour as she tries to “mind the children” and all her other trades as well. The man ought to be contented with the exhausted wife, the screaming babies, the ill-cooked food, the general weary chaos of the place, the endless demand on his single purse.

  Is he? What is the average workingman’s attitude toward this supposed haven of rest? The statistics of the temperance society are enough to show us the facts. A man does not like that kind of a place — and why should he?

  He is tired, working for six or ten; and to go from his completed labour of the day, back to his wife’s uncompleted labour of the day and night, does not rest him. He wants companionship. She cannot give it him. Her talk is of the suds, the coal, the need of shoes, clothes, furniture, utensils — everything!

  He wants amusement, she cannot give it him. An exhausted woman, taken every day, is not entertaining. The children are, or should be, in bed. The wife wants rest and companionship, and amusement, too; but that is another story. We are considering the man. She must stay at home in any case, the home being her place; but he does not have to, and out he goes.

  The instinctive demands of a highly developed human creature, a social creature, are strong within him; needs as vital as the needs of the body, and utterly unsatisfied at home. Out he goes, and to the one pleasant open door — the saloon. Ease, freedom, comfort, pleasant company, talk of something new, amusement — these are the main needs; and if a stimulating drink is the necessary price, there is nothing in the average man’s ill-fed stomach, overdeveloped personal selfishness, or untrained conscience, to refuse it.