A New Atmosphere

by Gail Hamilton

“She” (she being the aforesaid orthodox heroine and orthodox submissive wife, now become the orthodox devoted mother),—“She had the consciousness that it was hers to make of this child what she would!”

I have spoken before of the comparative work of the husband and wife, considered merely as labor. I refer now to the comparative moral weight belonging to their respective positions.

All masculine and all orthodox feminine tractates on female education, all male lectures on female duties, all anniversary orators to female schools, ring the changes on the importance of educating girls to be good wives and mothers, with the persistency of the old song which shuttled back and forth some twenty times or more to tell us that “John Brown had a little Indian.” But were the graduating class of a college ever exhorted to be good husbands and fathers? Are fathers ever admonished to teach their sons domestic virtues, to make them fond and faithful and good providers for the wives they may one day possess? But I should like to know if girls have any stronger tendency to become wives and mothers, than the boys have to become husbands and fathers? Are they any more likely to be bad wives and mothers, than boys are to be bad husbands and fathers? Is the number of incompetent wives obviously greater than the number of incompetent husbands? Is the number of injudicious mothers obviously greater than the number of injudicious fathers? And where the wife and mother is incompetent and injudicious, does it generally seem to be owing to too great strength of mind and culture of intellect, and too little domestic education, or is it owing to weakness of character? It is not a remote, but it seems to be an entirely unobserved truth, that for every wife there is a husband, and for every mother there is a father; and so far as my observation extends, domestic mismanagement and unhappiness, in an overwhelming majority of cases, are owing to the shortcomings of the husband, and not of the wife, or to the wife in an inferior and resultant measure. “There is blame on both sides,” say the observers, oracularly, and this most superficial of all superficial generalizations is supposed to be an impartial and exhaustive summary. It is just as much a summary as the statement that two and two make four. Two and two do make four, but it is nothing to the purpose here. To say that there is blame on both sides, is simply saying that neither a man nor a woman is perfect, which nobody ever maintained. So long as humanity is humanity, it is not probable that one person will be entirely sinless and another entirely sinful; but there are, and will continue to be, many cases in which the blame on one side is much more heavy and condemning than the blame on the other. The man’s blame is most often one of aggression, of the first provocation, of unprincipled and heartless behavior, of cruel disappointing and thwarting, of a giant’s strength used giantly. The woman’s is a blame of imprudence, of weakness, of disappointment, unwisely met and impatiently or otherwise ill-borne; of an inability to manage with sagacity, and so to master by superior moral power the wild beast that has clutched her,—a blame that is negative rather than positive, passive rather than active, and not to be compared with the other in point of heinousness. Why, then, do you bear down so hard on the woman’s duty and leave the man to go his way unadmonished? If you do not enforce on college-boys the duty of providing for their future families, why do you enforce on seminary-girls the duty of directing their future families? If you do not educate young men to make good husbands, why should you educate young women to make good wives? If you do not exhort young men so to live and learn as to make their wives happy and train their children aright, why should you exhort young women to study to make their husbands happy and train their children aright? Because, you say, in the words already quoted, “It is the wife that makes the home, and the home makes the man.” It is nothing of the sort. It is the wife and the husband together that make the home, and the man was already made. The most that wife and home in conjunction can do is to modify the man. If a husband be intemperate, or given over to money-getting, or money-saving, or money-spending,—if he be ill-tempered, indelicate, ignorant, obstinate, arrogant,—no wife, be she ever so prudent, wise, affectionate, can make the home what it ought to be. At best she can only mend it. Her energies are wasted. The ingenuity, the love, the care, that should be expended in making it happy are sacrificed in the attempt to make it as little unhappy as possible. With the best of husbands and the best of wives there are always evils enough lying in wait. Danger, disease, sin, are ever ready to spring upon the happy home, even when both the keepers stand guard at the portals; how, then, can you expect the wife to ward off even her own part of these, when you lay upon her the husband’s part, and he himself is the greatest evil of all?

And what right have men to depend upon home and wife to “make” them? What is a man doing all the twenty or thirty years before he is married, that he has not made himself? And on what grounds does he come to her for completion? How came she to be any more finished than he? or any more capable of putting the finishing touches to another? Are wives generally mature and experienced, while husbands are young and inexperienced? Have wives generally more knowledge of the world, and more opportunities to become self-possessed and firmly and evenly balanced than husbands? Or is the masculine material naturally and permanently more plastic than the feminine? Let us know the pretext upon which a full-grown man charges a delicate woman, who has had little if anything to do with him until he became a full-grown man, with the cure of his soul? If there is anything to be done in the way of education and reformation, one would naturally suppose that it is the stronger sex which should educate and reform the weaker. It would seem as if the sex that is looked up to and sets itself up as sovereign should mould the sex which looks up and recognizes it as sovereign. Where, in the Bible, does a man find any warrant for laying himself to the account of his wife? When God calls every man to judgment, will he be able to pass over his shortcomings to his wife? The first man tried it, but with very small success. “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me,” whimpered Adam; but it was a sorry refuge of lies, and did not avail to stay the curse from descending heavily upon his head. The plea that did not avail the first man is not likely to avail the last, nor any man between. “If thou art wise, thou art wise for thyself, but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.” As a matter of fact, neither the wife makes the husband nor the husband the wife, but they both influence each other. She softens him and he strengthens her; or if, as not unfrequently happens, her nature is the stronger, she communicates to him of its strength. In a true marriage, delicacy is imparted on the one side and vigor on the other, to whichever side they originally belonged. Where the union is founded upon truth, there is always a tendency to equilibrium, woman supplying the spiritual, man the material element. She raises a mortal to the skies; he draws an angel down.

And no more than it belongs to the wife to make the home and the husband, does it belong to the mother to train up the children in the way they should go. The family is a joint-stock concern, so established both by nature and revelation. Where, in the Bible, do we find that the mother can make of her child what she will, or that God gave the making of the men of the world into her hand? In Holy Writ, the father’s duties loom up as largely as the mother’s, and if there is any difference it is not one that discriminates in his favor or in favor of his release from duty. Fathers and mothers in the Bible receive equal honor and equal deference, but the instruction and guidance of the children are much more definitely and repeatedly attributed to and inculcated upon and implied as belonging to the father than the mother. He is recognized as the head. At his door lies the responsibility. Ahaziah walked in the ways of his mother, but of his father also when he did evil in the sight of the Lord. It is the sins of the fathers, not of the mothers, that are visited upon the children. It was the fathers, not the mothers, who were to make known to the children the truth of Jehovah. It was the instruction of his father that Solomon commanded his son to hear, and the law of his mother which he commanded him not to forsake,—an arrangement which modern opinions seem inclined to reverse. It is the fathers who are pronounced to be the glory of children, not the mothers; and glory implies action. A father may die, and his dying prayer and his conscientious life, both commending his family to God, may descend upon them in ever-renewing blessing. Such is the promise of the Lord. A father may neglect his children, and the mother’s care and love be so blessed of Heaven that they shall be burning and shining lights in the temple of the Most High. But this is God’s uncovenanted mercy, and the father has no right to expect it. Yet one not seldom hears or sees anecdotes which imply that such neglect of children is not a crime,—a crime against children, against mothers, against society, against God. In times of financial disaster I have more than once heard of men’s consoling themselves for the ruin of their business by playfully declaring that they should now go home and get acquainted with their children. But the non-acquaintance with children, of which many fathers are guilty, is not a theme to be lightly spoken of. Is it a small thing to give life to a soul that can never die; that, through unending ages, in happiness or in misery, clothed with glory or with shame, beautiful, strong, upright, or disfigured and deformed, must live on and on and on, forever and forever? Is it a small thing to give life to a sentient being, that must know even the experience of this world? That may be bowed down with guilt, remorse, wretchedness, bringing other souls with it to the dust, or may be upborne through a pure, happy, and beneficent career, bearing other souls with it to the skies? How dare a man look upon these helpless, hapless souls, and know that to him they owe their being, with all its dread possibilities; that upon him may fall the curse of their ruined lives, and—neglect them? How dare he leave them to another? To no other do they belong. His duty he cannot delegate. After country, which includes all things, his first duty is to his family. He is a father, and at no price can he sell his fatherhood.

I see notices of Female Prayer-Meetings. The mothers of a regiment assemble to pray for their sons who have gone to the war. There are Mothers’ Guides and Mothers’ Assistants and Mothers’ Hymn-Books. But where are the Fathers’ Hymn-Books? Where are the Paternal Prayer-Meetings? When do the Fathers of Regiments assemble to pray for their soldier-sons? If boys need their mothers’ prayers, they need also their fathers’ prayers. Does the fervent, effectual prayer of righteous women avail so much that righteous men can feel they have nothing to do but give themselves up to their farms and their merchandise, to buy and to sell and to get gain? Can men wait upon the Lord by proxy? Shall we bring political economy into religion, and arrange a wise division of labor by which the wife shall serve God, and the husband shall serve Mammon,—the wife do the praying and the husband see to the marketing,—he make sure of this world and she look out for the next? It is a nice little arrangement, but—He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have it in derision.

But fathers must attend to their business. They must earn money to support the family. They must provide wherewith to keep the pot boiling. Certainly they must; but it requires no more time, or attention, or ingenuity, or vitality, or strength, or spirits, or endurance, no more expenditure of any of the forces of life, to go out and earn something to put into the pot, than it does to stay at home and boil it. If the mother, with her harassing cares, the never-ending details of her never-ending work, can find time for studying her maternal relations and responsibilities, and comparing her experience with that of others for purposes of improvement and the highest efficiency, and for joining in social prayer for the blessing of God on her efforts, the father can find time for similar study, effort, and prayer. If she can leave her baby, he can leave his books. If she can leave her kitchen, he can leave his counting-room. His bench, his desk, his fields, his office, are no more exacting than her nursery, her laundry, her work-basket. Women will go to the mothers’ meeting who have to sit up till one o’clock in the morning to darn the little frock, and patch the old coat that must be worn that day; and sometimes they do it from stern necessity, without having the consolation of any mothers’ meeting to go to. Let men but be as earnest in their purpose, as sincere in their belief, let them feel that the souls of their children are in their hands as keenly as mothers feel their responsibility, and business would straightway relax its claims and withdraw into the background, where it belongs. If a great general is come to town, if a famous regiment is to have a reception, if a long-looked-for statue has safely crossed the sea and is to be set up, if a foreign fleet lies in the harbor and is to send its officers on shore, if a young Prince is to pass through the city on his way home, men rush together in masses so dense as to endanger limb and life. Business is the last thing that interposes any obstacle to seeing and hearing that which a man determines to see and hear.

Business? What is man’s business? Is it to take care of that which is temporary or that which is permanent; that which belongs to matter, or that which belongs to mind; that which he shares in common with the beasts, or that which allies him to the angels,—nay, more, which constitutes in him the image and likeness of God? A man’s business is to support his family. Certainly. He that provideth not for his own household hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. I agree to that with all my heart. But what is he to provide? Food, raiment, shelter? These first, for without these is nothing; but these not last, for he who stops here and turns his powers into another channel is guilty of high crime. If his children were calves, lambs, chickens, he would do so much for them; because they are human beings, he must do somewhat more. But how many of the fathers who make business their plea for not watching over their children, who are away from home from seven in the morning till seven at night, who from year’s end to year’s end, except on Sunday and perhaps two or three festive days, see their children only at hurried meals, and snatch a kiss, perhaps, after they are in bed and asleep, who know no more about the inward and hourly life of their own than of their neighbor’s children,—how many of these fathers are spending their time and talents in the sole business of getting food, clothes, and shelter, or even books and educational opportunities for their families? How many of these men earn just that and no more? It is not the support of families, it is not business, it is not necessity alone, on which they lavish themselves. It is their own pride or luxury or inclination. They wish to extend their business, to acquire wealth, or a competence, to be known as enterprising, public-spirited men, to be chosen on committees and sent to the legislature, all right, if rightly come by, but terribly wrong, worthless, perishable with the using, and of no important use, if children are to be given in barter for them.

“This is all very well to talk about,” you say; “but a man cannot do anything in this world without money, and he cannot make money unless he sticks to his business.” Ah, my friend! so far as the best things of this world are concerned, you cannot do anything with money, and you cannot make good men and women unless you stick to your children. Will money give you back the little baby-soul whose tender unfolding had such sweetness and healing for you, but which you lost because you would not stop long enough to look at it in your mad world-ways? Will money give you the saving influence over your boy which might have kept him from vicious companions and vicious habits,—an influence which your constant interest, intercourse, and example in his boyish days might have established, but which seemed to you too trivial a thing to win you from your darling pursuit of gains? Will money make you the friend and confidant of your daughter, the joy of her heart, and the standard of her judgment, so that her ripening youth shall give you intimacy, interchange of thought and sentiment, and you shall give to her a measure to estimate the men around her, and a steady light that shall keep her from being beguiled by the lights that only lead astray? Will it give you back the children who have rushed out wildly or strayed indifferently from the house which you have never taken pains to make a home, but have been content to turn into a hotel, with only less of liberty? Will money make you the heart as well as the head of your family,—honored, revered, beloved?

If your firm transacts business on a capital of a hundred thousand instead of half a million dollars, what is it but a little less paper, fewer clerks, and narrower rooms? Though your farm have but fifty instead of two hundred acres, there is just as much land on the earth. Suppose you argue before a jury only two cases to-day instead of three, there are a dozen young advocates who will be glad of the crumbs that fall from your table, and Fate will mete out her sure, rough-handed justice. With half the business you are doing now, could not you and your family be comfortably and decently fed, clothed, and sheltered? House, dress, and furniture might not be so fine, but something of more worth than they would be finer. A family’s support does not necessarily involve sumptuous fare, purple and fine linen, damask and rosewood. If the choice lies between Turkey carpets, or even three-ply, under a child’s feet, and a father’s hand clasping his to guide his steps, what man who believes—I will not say in immortality, but in virtue,—what father who is not utterly unworthy to bear the sacred name, can for one moment waver?