The home: its work and influenceGilman, Charlotte Perkins
General
The home: its work and influence
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Home
To us, who have for so many unbroken generations been wholly bound to
the home, who honestly believe that its service and maintenance
constitute the whole duty of men and women, the picture of a world in
which home and its affairs takes but a small part of life's attention
gives rather a blank outlook. What else are we to do! What else to
love--what else to serve eternally! What else to revere, to worship!
How shall we occupy the hands of man if but a tithe of his labour
supports him in comfort; how fill the heart of woman, when her family
are happily and rightly served without sacrificing her in the
operation! It is hard, at first--we being so accustomed to spend all
life in merely keeping ourselves alive--to see what life might be when
we had some to spare. We find it difficult to imagine this "world of
trouble" as rid of its troubles; as rationally and comfortably managed;
peaceful, clean, safe, healthy, giving everyone room and time to grow.
Nor need we labour to forecast events too accurately; especially the
material details which must be decided by long experiment. No rigid
prescription is needed; no dictum as to whether we shall live in small
separate houses, greenly gardened, with closely connected conveniences
for service and for education, for work and play; or in towering
palaces with shaded flower-bright courts and cloisters. All that must
work out as have our great modern wonders in other lines, little by
little, in orderly development. But what we can forecast in safety is
the effect on the human body and the human soul.
A peaceful, healthy, happy babyhood and childhood, with such delicate
adjustment of educational processes as we already see indicated, will
give us a far better individual. The full-grown mother, contributing
racial advance in both body and mind, will add greatly to this gain. We
can be better people everywhere, better born, bred, fed, educated in
all ways. But quite beyond this is the rich growth of our long aborted
social instincts, which will rapidly follow the reduction of these long
artificially maintained primitive and animal instincts.
Where now trying to meet general needs by personal efforts, modern
needs by ancient methods, we must perforce manifest an intense degree
of self-interest to keep up the struggle; as soon as we meet these
needs easily, swiftly, inexpensively, by modern methods and common
efforts, less self-interest will be necessary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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