The home: its work and influence

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Then comes the sweetheart. A new deep love, a great overmastering reverence for the Woman, rises in his heart. In the light of that love he accepts her as she is, glorifying and idealising every weakness, every limitation, because it is hers. This is not well. He could love her just as well, better, if his reverence were better deserved, if the dignity of sex were enhanced by the dignity of a wise, strong, capable human being.

Of course the man feels that he would not love her as well if she were different. So he felt in past ages when she was even more feminine, even less human. So he will feel in coming ages, when she is truly his equal, a strong and understanding friend, a restful and stimulating companion, as well as the beautiful and loving woman. We have always been drawn together by love and always will be. The beautiful Georgian slave is beloved, the peasant lass, the princess; man loves woman, and she need not fear any change in that.

Our error lies in a false estimate of womanhood and manhood. The home, its labours, cares, and limitations we have called womanly; and everything else in life manly; wherefore if a woman manifested any power, ambition, interest, outside the home, that was unwomanly and must cost her her position as such. This is entirely wrong.

A woman is a woman and attractive to the men of her place and time, whether she be a beaded Hottentot, a rosy milkmaid, a pretty schoolma'am, or a veiled beauty of the Zenana.

We are taught that man most loves and admires the domestic type of woman. This is one of the roaring jokes of history. The breakers of hearts, the queens of romance, the goddesses of a thousand devotees, have not been cooks.

Women in general are attractive to men, but let a woman be glaringly conspicuous—the great singer, dancer, actress—immediately she has lovers without number. The best-loved women of all time have not been the little brown birds at home, by any means. Of course, when a man marries the queen of song he expects her to settle at once to the nest and remain there. But does he thereafter maintain the same degree of devotion that he bestowed before? It is not easy, after all, to maintain the height of romantic devotion for one's house-servant—or even one's housekeeper. The man loves his wife; but it is in spite of the home—not because of it. And wherever the shadow of unhappiness falls between them, wherever the sad record of sorrow and sin is begun, it is too often because love strays from that domestic area to follow a freer bird in a wider field.

It is not marriage which brings this danger, it is domestic service; it is not the perfect and mutual ownership of love, nor the sanction of law and religion; it is the one-sided ownership wherein the wife becomes the private servant, cook, cleaner, mender of rents, a valet, janitor, and chambermaid. Even as such she has more practical claim to respect than the wife who does not do this work nor any other; who is not the servant of the house, but merely its lady; who has absolutely no claim to human honour, no place in the social scheme, except that of the female.

Thus we find that the influence of the home upon man, as felt through the home-restricted woman, is not always for the best; and that even, as supposedly increasing the woman's charm, it does not work.

What follows further of the influence of the home upon man directly? How does it modify his personal life and development? The boy grows and breaks out of the home. It has for him a myriad ties—but he does not like to be tied. He strikes out for himself. If he is an English boy of the upper classes he is cut off early and sent to a boarding school; later he has "chambers" of his own. If an American, he simply goes into business, and in most cases away from home, boarding for a while. Then he loves, marries, and sets up a home of his own; a woman-and-child house, which he gladly and proudly maintains and in many ways enjoys.

So satisfied are we in our convictions regarding this status that we really and practically worship the home and family, holding it to be a man's first duty to maintain them. No man does it more patiently and generously than the American, and he is supported in his position by all the moral opinion of our world. He is "a good family man" we say, and can say no more. To stay at home evenings is especially desirable; the more of life that can be spent at home the better, we think, for all concerned. Now what is the real effect upon the man? Is the home, as we have it, satisfying to the real needs of man's nature; and if not, could it be improved?