The home: its work and influenceGilman, Charlotte Perkins
General
The home: its work and influence
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Home
The principal fact is eating. This he learns perforce by seeing his
mother spending half her time on that one business; by seeing so much
house-space given to it; by the constant arrival of food supplies,
meat, groceries, milk, ice, and the rest; and excursions to get them.
The instincts of early savagery, which every child has to grow through,
are heavily reinforced by the engrossing food-processes of the home.
They do not necessarily please him or her, either. The child does not
grow up with a burning ambition to be a cook. Whether the ever-present
kitchen business was run by the mother or by a servant, it was not run
joyously and proudly; nor was it run in such wise as to really teach
the child the principles of hygiene in food-values and preparation. If
the family is a wealthy one the child is not allowed in the kitchen
perhaps, but is the more impressed by the complicated machinery of the
dining-room, and that elaborate cult of special "manners" used in this
sacred service of the body. Thus and thus must he eat, and thus handle
his utensils; and if the years and the tears spent in acquiring these
Eleusinian mysteries make due impression on the fresh brain tissue,
then we may expect to find the human being more impressed by the art of
eating than by any other.
And so we do find him. The children of the kitchen are differently
affected from the children of the dining-room. These last, of our
"upper classes," receive the indelible stamp of the tri-daily ritual,
and go through the rest of life thinking more highly of "table manners"
than of any other line of conduct, for the reason that they were more
incessantly, thoroughly, and importunately taught that code than any
other. To handle a fork properly is insisted upon far more imperatively
than to properly handle a temper.
The principal business of the home being the care of the body, and this
accomplished through these archaic domestic industries, the unending
up-current of young life, which should so steadily purify and uplift
the world, in every generation is steeped anew in this exaggeration of
physical needs and caprices.
Beyond the overwhelming cares of the table the other home industries
involve the care and replenishment of furniture and clothes. Hour after
hour, day after day, the child sees his mother devoting her entire life
to attendance upon these things--the daily cleaning, the weekly
cleaning, the spring and fall cleaning, the sewing and mending at all
times.
These things must be done, by some people, somewhere; but must they be
done by all people, that is by all women, the people who surround the
child, and all the time? Must the child always associate womanhood with
house-service; and assume, necessarily assume, that the main business
of life is to be clean, well-dressed, and eat in a proper manner?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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