The home: its work and influenceGilman, Charlotte Perkins
General
The home: its work and influence
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Home
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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