The home: its work and influence

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Allied to justice, following upon large equality and recognition of others, comes that true estimate of one's self and one's own powers which is an unnamed virtue. "Humility" is not it—to undervalue and depreciate one's self may be the opposite of pride, but it is not a virtue. A just estimate is not humility. But call it humility for convenience' sake; and see how ill it flourishes at home. In that circumscribed horizon small things look large. There is no general measuring point, no healthy standard of comparison.

The passionate love of the wife, the mother, and equally of the husband, the father, makes all geese swans. The parents idealise their children; and the children, even more restricted by the home atmosphere—for they know no other—idealise the parents. This is sometimes to their advantage—often the other way. Constant study of near objects, with no distant horizon to rest and change the focus, makes us short-sighted; and, as we all know, the smallest object is large if you hold it near enough. Constant association with one's nearest and dearest necessarily tends to a disproportionate estimate of their values.

There is no perspective—cannot be—in these close quarters. The infant prodigy of talent, praised and petted, brings his production into the cold light of the market, under the myriad facets of the public eye, to the measurement of professional standards—and no most swift return to the home atmosphere can counterbalance the effect of that judgment day. A just estimate of one's self and one's work can only be attained by the widest and most impersonal comparison. The home estimate is essentially personal, essentially narrow. It sometimes errs in underrating a world-talent; but nine times out of ten it errs the other way—overrating a home-talent. Humility, in the sense of an honest and accurate estimate of one's self, is not a home-made product. A morbid modesty or an unfounded pride often is. The intense self-consciousness, the prominent and sensitive personality developed by home life, we are all familiar with in women.

The woman who has always been in close personal relation with someone,—daughter, sister, wife, mother,—and so loved, valued, held close, feels herself neglected and chilly when she comes into business relations. She feels personal neglect in the broad indifference of office or shop; and instantly seeks to establish personal relations with all about her. As a business woman she outgrows it in time. It is not a sex-quality, it is a home-quality; found in a boy brought up entirely at home as well as in a girl. It tends to a disproportionate estimate of self; it is a primitive quality, common to children and savages; it is not conducive to justice and true social adjustment.

Closely allied to this branch of character is the power of self-control. As an initial human virtue none lies deeper than this; and here the home has credit for much help in developing some of the earlier stages of this great faculty. Primitive man brought to his dawning human relation a long-descended, highly-developed Ego. He had been an individual animal "always and always," he had now to begin to be a social animal, a collective animal, to develop the social instincts and the social conduct in which lay further progress.

The training of the child shows us in little what history shows us in the large. What the well-bred child has to learn to make him a pleasing member of the family is self-control. To restrain and adjust one's self to one's society—that is the line of courtesy—the line of Christianity—the line of social evolution. The home life does indeed teach the beginning of self-control; but no more. As compared with the world, it represents unbridled license. "In company" one must wear so and so, talk so and so, do so and so, look so and so. To "feel at home" means relaxation of all this.

This is as it should be. The home is the place for personal relief and rest from the higher plane of social contact. But social contact is needed to develop social qualities, constant staying at home does not do it.

The man, accustomed to meet all sorts of people in many ways, has a far larger and easier adjustment. The woman, used only to the close contact of a few people in a few relations, as child, parent, servant, tradesman; or to the set code of "company manners," has no such healthy human plane of contact.

"I never was so treated in my life!" she complains—and she never was—at home. This limits the range of life, cuts off the widest channels of growth, overdevelops the few deep ones; and does not develop self-control. The dressing-gown-and-slippers home attitude is temporarily changed for that of "shopping," or "visiting," but the childish sensitiveness, the disproportionate personality, remain dominant.

A too continuous home atmosphere checks in the woman the valuable social faculties. It checks it in the man more insidiously, through his position of easy mastery over these dependents, wife, children, servants; and through the constant catering of the whole ménage to his special tastes. If each man had a private tailor shop in his back yard he would be far more whimsical and exacting in his personal taste in clothes. Every natural tendency to self-indulgence is steadily increased by the life service of an entire wife. This having one whole woman devoted to one's direct personal service is about as far from the cultivation of self-control as any process that could be devised.