American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian HomesStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
It is very much to be feared, that the apportionment of time actually
made by most women exactly inverts the order required by reason and
Christianity. Thus, the furnishing a needless variety of food, the
conveniences of dwellings, and the adornments of dress, often take a
larger portion of time than is given to any other object. Next after
this, comes intellectual improvement; and, last of all, benevolence
and religion.
It may be urged, that it is indispensable for most persons to give
more time to earn a livelihood, and to prepare food, raiment, and
dwellings, than, to any other object. But it may be asked, how much
of the time, devoted to these objects, is employed in preparing
varieties of food not necessary, but rather injurious, and how much
is spent for those parts of dress and furniture not indispensable, and
merely ornamental? Let a woman subtract from her domestic employments
all the time given to pursuits which are of no use, except as they
gratify a taste for ornament, or minister increased varieties to tempt
the appetite, and she will find that much which she calls "domestic
duty," and which prevents her attention to intellectual, benevolent,
and religious objects, should be called by a very different name.
No woman has a right to give up attention to the higher interests of
herself and others, for the ornaments of person or the gratification
of the palate. To a certain extent, these lower objects are lawful and
desirable; but when they intrude on nobler interests, they become
selfish and degrading. Every woman, then, when employing her hands in
ornamenting her person, her children, or her house, ought to calculate
whether she has devoted as _much_ time to the really more important
wants of herself and others. If she has not, she may know that she is
doing wrong, and that her system for apportioning her time and pursuits
should be altered.
Some persons endeavor to systematize their pursuits by apportioning
them to particular hours of each day. For example, a certain period
before breakfast, is given to devotional duties; after breakfast,
certain hours are devoted to exercise and domestic employments; other
hours, to sewing, or reading, or visiting; and others, to benevolent
duties. But in most cases, it is more difficult to systematize the
hours of each day, than it is to secure some regular division of the
week.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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