The home: its work and influence

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The instinctive demands of a highly developed human creature, a social creature, are strong within him; needs as vital as the needs of the body, and utterly unsatisfied at home. Out he goes, and to the one pleasant open door—the saloon. Ease, freedom, comfort, pleasant company, talk of something new, amusement—these are the main needs; and if a stimulating drink is the necessary price, there is nothing in the average man's ill-fed stomach, overdeveloped personal selfishness, or untrained conscience, to refuse it.

The measureless results in evil we all know well. Many are the noble souls devoting their life's efforts to the closing of the saloon, the driving back of erring man to the safe and supposedly all-satisfying shelter of the home. We do not dream that it is the home which drives him there.

One thing we have divined at last; that insufficient and ill-chosen food, villainously cooked, is one great cause of man's need for stimulants. Under this much illumination we now strive mightily to make man's private cook a better cook. If every man's wife were a Delmonico, if his appetites were catered to with absolute skill and ingenuity, would that teach him temperance and self-control?

The worse the private cook, the greater the physical need for stimulant. The better the private cook, the greater the self-indulgence developed in the happy Epicurean. But good or bad, no man of any grade can get the social stimulus he needs by spending every evening with his cook!

That is the key to the whole thing. Your cook may be "a treasure," she may cater to your needs most exquisitely, she may also be the mother of your children, as has been the case from the earliest times; but she is none the less your own personal servant, and as such not your social equal. You may love her dearly and honour her in her female capacity, also honour the excellence of her cooking, but you are not satisfied with her conversation or her skill in games.

The influence of the home with a working wife is not all that could be desired; and we may turn with some hope of better things to the home with a parasite wife. Here certainly the man comes home to rest and peace and comfort, and to satisfying companionship with the "eternal feminine." Here is a woman who is nothing on earth but a woman, not even a cook. Here, of course, the food is satisfactory; the children all a father's heart could wish, having the advantage of the incessant devotion of an entire mother; the machinery of the home, so painfully prominent to the workingman, is here running smoothly and unseen; and the whole thing is well within the means of the proud "provider."

What the food supply is in the hands of the housemaid we have seen. What the child is in the hands of the nursemaid, we may see anywhere. The parasitic woman by no means uses the time free of housework to devote herself to her children. A mother is essentially a worker. When a woman does not work it dries the very springs of motherhood. The idler she is, the less she does for her children. The rich man's children are as often an anxiety and disappointment to him as the poor man's.

The expense of the place is a thing of progressive dimensions. The home of the parasitic woman is a bottomless pit for money. She is never content. How could a human creature be content in such an unnatural position? She is supplied with nourishment; she has such social stimulus as her superficial contact with her kind affords, but nothing comes out; there is no commensurate action.

In the uneasy distress of this position her only idea of relief is to get something more; if she is not satisfied after one dinner, get or give another dinner; if not satisfied with one dress, get two, get twenty, get them all! If the home does not satisfy, by all means get another one in the country; perhaps that will feel different; try first one and then the other. If the two, or three, should pall, get a yacht, go to some other country, get more things to put in the home or on one's pretty body; get, get, get! and never a thought of the ease and freedom and joy that would come of Doing. Not of playing at doing, with a hot poker or a modelling tool—but really doing human work. It does not occur to her, and it does not occur to him. He thinks it right and beautiful to maintain the dainty domestic vampire, and pours forth his life's service to meet her insatiate demands. All the reward he asks is her love and faith, her sweet companionship.

May we look, then, in homes of this class for an ideal influence on man? Consecrating his life to the business of not only feeding and clothing, but profusely decorating and amusing a useless woman,—does this have an elevating effect on him? When he thinks of how charming she will look in the costly fur, the lace, the jewels, how she will enjoy the new home, the new carriage, the new furniture; of her fresh and ceaseless delight in her "social functions"—does his heart leap within him?