The home: its work and influenceGilman, Charlotte Perkins
General
The home: its work and influence
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Home
Human nature has changed and improved in tremendous ratio; and, if its
improvement has been strangely irregular, far greater in social life
than in personal life, it is for a very simple reason. All these large
social processes which show such marked improvement are those wherein
people work together in legitimate specialised lines in the world.
These personal processes which have not so improved, the parts of life
which are still so limited and imperfectly developed, may be fully
accounted for by their environment--the ancient and unchanging home.
Bring the home abreast of our other institutions; and our personal
health and happiness will equal our public gains.
Once more it must be stated that the true home, the legitimate and
necessary home, the home in right proportion and development, is wholly
good. It is at once the beautiful beginning, the constant help, and one
legitimate end of a life's work. To the personal life, the physical
life, this is enough. To the social life, it is not. If human duty had
no other scope than to maintain and reproduce this species of animal,
that duty might be accomplished in the home. The purely maternal
female, having no other reason for being than to bear and rear young; a
marauding male, to whom the world was but a hunting ground wherein to
find food for his family--these, and their unimproved successors, need
nothing more than homes. But human duty is not so limited. These
processes of reproduction are indeed essential to our human life, as
are the processes of respiration and digestion, but they do not
constitute that life, much less conclude it.
As human beings, our main field of duty lies in promoting social
advance. To maintain ourselves and our families is an animal duty we
share with the other animals; to maintain each other, and, by so doing
to increase our social efficiency, is human duty, first, last, and
always. We have always seen the necessity for social groups, religious,
political, and other; we have more or less fulfilled our social
functions therein; but we have in the main supposed that all this
common effort was merely for the greater safety and happiness of homes;
and when the interests of the home and those of the state clashed, most
of us have put home first.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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