The home: its work and influence

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Some human life she must needs partake of by the law of heredity, sharing in the growth of the race through the father; and some she has also shared through contact with the man in such time as he was with her in the house, to such a degree as he was willing and able to share his experience. Also her condition has been steadily ameliorated, as he, growing ever broader and wiser by his human relationships, brought wisdom and justice and larger love into his family relationship. But the gain came from without, and filtered down to the woman in most niggardly fashion.

Literature was a great world-art for centuries and centuries before women were allowed to read—to say nothing of write! It is not long since the opinion was held that, if women were allowed to write, they would but write love letters! In our last century, in civilised Christian England, Harriet Martineau and Jane Austen covered their writing with their sewing when visitors came in; writing was "unwomanly!"

The very greatest of our human gains we have been the slowest to share with woman: education and democracy.

We have allowed them religion in a sense—as we have allowed them medicine—to take; not to give! They might have a priest as they might have a doctor, but on no account be one! Religion was for man to preach—and woman to practise.

In some churches, very recently, we are at last permitting women to hold equal place with men in what they deem to be the special service of God, but it is not yet common. Her extra-domestic education has been won within a lifetime; and there are still extant many to speak and write against it, even in the Universities—those men of Mezozoic minds! And her place as active participant in democratic government is still denied by an immense majority, on the ground—the same old underlying ground—that it would take her from the house! Here, clear and strong, stands out that ancient theory, that the very existence of womanhood depends on staying in the house.

We have seen what has been denied to woman by absence from the world; what do we find bestowed upon her by the ceaseless, enclosing presence of the house? How does staying in one's own house all one's life affect the mind? We cannot ask this question of a man, for no man has ever done it except a congenital invalid. Nothing short of paralysis will keep a man in the house. He would as soon spend his life in petticoats, they are both part of the feminine environment—no part of his. He will come home at night to sleep, at such hours as suit him. He likes to eat at home, and brings his friends to see the domestic group—house, wife, and children; all, things to be fond and proud of, things a man wishes to own and maintain properly. But for work or play, out he goes to his true companions—men, full-grown human creatures who understand each other; in his true place—the world, our human medium.

The woman, with such temporary excursions as our modern customs permit, works, plays, rests, does all things in her house, or in some neighbouring house—the same grade of environment. The home atmosphere is hers from birth to death. That this custom is rapidly changing I gladly admit. The women of our country and our time are marching out of the home to their daily work by millions, only to return to them at night with redoubled affection; but there are more millions far, many more millions, who are still housewives or ladies of houses.

The first result is a sort of mental myopia. Looking always at things too near, the lens expands, the focus shortens, the objects within range are all too large, and nothing else is seen clearly. To spend your whole time in attending to your own affairs in your own home inevitably restricts the mental vision; inevitably causes those same personal affairs to seem larger to you than others' personal affairs or the affairs of the nation.

This is a general sweeping consequence of being house-bound; and it is a heavily opposing influence to all human progress. The little-mindedness of the house-lady is not a distinction of sex. It is in no essential way a feminine distinction, but merely associatively feminine in that only women are confined to houses.

A larger range of interest and care instantly gives a resultant largeness of mind, in women as well as men. Such free great lives as have been here and there attained by women show the same broad human characteristics as similar lives of men. It can never be too frequently insisted upon, at least not in our beclouded time, that the whole area of human life is outside of, and irrelevant to, the distinctions of sex. Race characteristics belong in equal measure to either sex, and the misfortune of the house-bound woman is that she is denied time, place, and opportunity to develop those characteristics. She is feminine, more than enough, as man is masculine more than enough; but she is not human as he is human. The house-life does not bring out our humanness, for all the distinctive lines of human progress lie outside.