The home: its work and influence

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The effect of the lady of the house upon her husband is worth special study. He thinks he likes that kind of woman, he stoutly refuses to consider any other kind; and yet his very general discontent in her society has been the theme of all observers for all time. In our time it has reached such prominence as to be commented upon even in that first brief halcyon period, the "honeymoon." Punch had a piteous cartoon of a new-married pair, sitting bored and weary on the beach, during their wedding journey. "Don't you wish some friend would come along?" said she. "Yes," he answered—"or even an enemy!"

Men have accepted the insufficiencies and disagreeablenesses of "female society" as being due to "the disabilities of sex." They are not, being really due to the disability of the house-bound. Love may lead a man to "marry his housekeeper," and we condemn the misalliance; but he makes a housekeeper of his wife without criticism. The misalliance is still there.

A man, a healthy, well-placed man, has his position in the world and in the home, and finds happiness in both. He loves his wife, she meets his requirements as a husband, and he expects nothing more of her. His other requirements he meets in other ways. That she cannot give him this, that, and the other form of companionship, exercise, gratification, is no ground of blame; the world outside does that. So the man goes smoothly on, and when the woman is uncertain, capricious, exacting, he lays it to her being a woman, and lets it go at that.

But she, for all field of exertion, has but this house; for all kinds of companionship, this husband. He stands between her and the world, he has elected to represent it to her, to be "all the world" to her. Now, no man that ever lived, no series or combination of husbands that widowhood or polyandry ever achieved can be equivalent to the world. The man needs the wife and has her—needs the world and has it. The woman needs the husband—and has him; needs the world—and there is the husband instead. He stands between her and the world, with the best of intentions, doubtless; but a poor substitute for full human life.

"What else should she want?" he inquires in genuine amazement. "I love her, I am kind to her, I provide a good home for her—she has her children and she has me—what else should she want?"

What else does he want? He has her—the home and the children—does that suffice him? He wants also the human world to move freely in, to act fully in, to live widely in, and so does she.

And because she cannot have it, because he stands there in its stead, she demands of him the satisfaction of all these thwarted human instincts. She does not know what ails her. She thinks he does not love her enough; that if he only loved her enough, stayed with her enough, she would be satisfied. No man can sit down and love a woman eighteen hours a day, not actively. He does love her, all the time, in a perfectly reasonable way, but he has something else to do.

He loves her for good and all; it is in the bank, to draw on for the rest of life, a steady, unfailing supply; but she wants to see it and hear it and feel it all the time, like the miser of old who "made a bath of his gold and rolled in it."

The most glaring type of this unfortunate state of mind in recent fiction is that of the morbid Marna in the "Confessions of a Wife"—a vivid expression of what it is to be a highly-concentrated, double-distilled wife—and nothing else! No shadow of interest had she in life except this man; no duty, no pleasure, no use, no ambition, no religion, no business—nothing whatever but one embodied demand for her Man. He was indeed all the world to her—and he didn't like it.

If the woman was fully developed on the human side she would cease to be overdeveloped on the feminine side. If she had her fair share of world-life she would expect of her husband that he be a satisfactory man, but not that he be a satisfactory world, which is quite beyond him. Cannot men see how deeply benefited they would be by this change, this growth of woman? She would still be woman, beautiful, faithful, loving; but she would not be so greedy, either for money or for love.