"Why should she have married that fellow!" cries the father; "I gave her a good home—she had everything she wanted." It does not enter the mind of this man that a woman is something more than a rabbit. Even rabbits, well-fed rabbits, will gnaw and dig to get out—they like to run as well as eat. Also, the girl whose character has time to "set" a little in some legitimate business associations, instead of being held in everlasting solution at home, will be able to face the problems of domestic industry and expense with new eyes.
No men, with practical sense and trained minds, would put up for a week with the inchoate mass of wasted efforts in the home; and, when women have the same trained minds and practical sense, they will not put up with it much longer. For the home's sake, as well as her own sake, the girl will profit by experience in the working world.
Once she learns the pleasure and power of specialisation, the benefits of organisation, the advantages of combination, the whole tremendous enginery of civilised life, she can no more drop back into her ancestral cradle than her brother could turn into an Arcadian shepherd, piping prettily to his fleecy charge.
XIV
HOME INFLUENCE ON MEN
In our peculiar and artificial opposition of "the Home" and "the World," we have roughly ascribed all the virtues to the first, and all the vices to the second. "The world, the flesh, and the devil" we still associate, forgetting that home is the very temple of the flesh, and in no way impervious to the devil. Sin is found at home as generally as elsewhere—must be, unless women are sinless and men absolved on entering the sacred door.
There are different sins and virtues, truly, as we have seen in the chapter on Domestic Ethics. There is less fighting at home, as there is but one man there. There is less stealing, the goods being more in common, only sometimes a sly rifling of pockets by the unpaid wife. A man pays his housekeeper, or his housemaids, because he has to; and he pays, and pays highly, the purely extortionate women of pleasure; but sometimes he forgets to pay his wife, and sometimes she steals. The home has patience, chastity, industry, love. But there is less justice, less honour, less courage, less truth; it does not embrace all the virtues. Such as it is, strong for good and also very weak for some good, possibly even showing some tendencies to evil, what is its influence on men?
The boy baby feels it first; and that we have touched on. The home teaches the boy that women were made for service, domestic service, that the principal cares and labours of life are those which concern the body, and that his own particular tastes and preferences are of enormous importance. As fast as he gets out of the home and into the school, he learns quite other things, getting his exaggerated infant egotism knocked out of him very suddenly, and, as he gets out of school and into business, also into politics, he learns still further of the conditions of life. Proportion changes, perspective changes; he grows to have a very different view of life from the woman's view. The same thing happening to a man and a woman produces a widely varying effect; what is a trifle in the day's large activities to him is an event of insistent pressure to her; and, here, in the eternal misunderstanding between the home-bred woman and the world-bred man, lie the seeds of ceaseless trouble. The different range of vision of the occupant of the home and the occupant of the world makes it impossible for them to see things similarly. We are familiar with the difference, but have always considered it a distinction of sex.
We have called the broader, sounder, better balanced, more fully exercised brain "a man's brain," and the narrower, more emotional and personal one "a woman's brain"; whereas the difference is merely that between the world and the house. The absolute relation between any animal's brain and his range of activity is patent to the zoölogist, and simply furnishes the proof of its law of development. The greater the extent and complexity of any creature's business, the greater the mental capacity, of course.
We are familiar with the mental effect of living on small islands—"the insular mind," "insular prejudice" are well known terms. The smaller the island, the more deprived of contact and association with the rest of the world, the greater the insularity of mind. The Englishman is somewhat affected by the size of his country; the Manxman still more, and the dwellers on the lighthouse rock most of all. Our homes are not physically isolated, save on scattered farms and ranches—where the worst results are found; but they are isolated in their interests and industries.
The thought used every day is thought about half a dozen people and their concerns, mainly their personal bodily care and comfort; the mental processes of the woman must needs be intensified in personality as they are limited in range. Hence her greater sensitiveness to all personal events, and that quick variation in attitude so inevitable in a mind whose daily work involves continual and instant change. Varium et mutabile! murmurs the man sagely—"A woman's privilege is to change her mind!" If the nature of his industry were such that he had to change his mind from cooking to cleaning, from cleaning to sewing, from sewing to nursing, from nursing to teaching, and so, backward, forward, crosswise and over again, from morning to night—he too would become adept in the lightning-change act.