The home: its work and influenceGilman, Charlotte Perkins
General
The home: its work and influence
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Home
Suppose we are visiting in such a family. We should find a very rude
small hut--no one man could build much of a house, but, ah! the tender
love, the pride, the intimate emotion he would put into that hut! For
his heart's dearest--for his precious little ones--he had dragged
together the fallen logs--chipped them smooth with his flint-ax (there
could have been no metal work while every man was a house-husband), and
piled them together. With patient, loving hands he had daubed the
chinks with clay, made beds of leaves, hung hides upon the walls. Even
some rude stools he might have contrived--though furniture really
belongs to a later period. But over all comes the incessant demand for
food. His cherished family must eat, often and often, and under that
imperative necessity all others wait.
So he goes forth to the hunt, brave, subtle, fiercely ingenious; and,
actuated by his ceaseless love for his family he performs wonders. He
brings home the food--day after day--even sometimes enough for several
days, though meat does not keep very long. The family would have food
of a sort, shelter of a sort, and love. But try to point out to the
house-husband what other things he could obtain for them, create for
them, provide for them, if he learned to combine with other men, to
exchange labour, to organise industry. See his virtuous horror!
What! Give up his duty to his family! Let another man hunt for
them!--another man build their home--another man make their garments!
He will not hear of it. "It is my duty as a husband," he will tell you,
"to serve my wife. It is my duty as a father to serve my children. No
other person could love them as I do, and without that love the work
would not be done as well." Strong in this conviction, the
house-husband would remain intrenched in his home, serving his family
with might and main, having no time, no strength, no brain capacity for
undertaking larger methods; and there he and his family would all be,
immovable in the Stone Age.
Never was any such idiot on earth as this hypothetical home-husband. It
was not in him to stay in such primitive restrictions. But he has been
quite willing to leave his wife in that interestingly remote period.
The permanent error of the housewife lies in that assumption that her
love for her family makes her service satisfactory. Family affection
has nothing to do with the specialist's skill; nor with the
specialist's love of his work for the pleasure of doing it. That is the
kind of love that makes good work; and that is the kind of work the
world needs and the families within it. Men, specialised, give to their
families all that we know of modern comforts, of scientific appliances,
of works of art, of the complex necessities and conveniences of modern
life. Women, unspecialised, refuse to benefit their families in like
proportion; but offer to them only the grade of service which was
proper enough in the Stone Age, but is a historic disgrace to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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