A New Atmosphere

by Gail Hamilton

Somebody assumed to excuse Miss Dickinson, by saying that she gave up other and far more lucrative engagements for this; but it was entirely a work of supererogation. Miss Dickinson needed no excuse. One might, indeed, think within himself that Miss Cushman has nearly closed her public career, and is already possessed of an independent fortune, while Miss Dickinson’s life lies before her, and her fortune is still to be made. But all this is irrelevant. The whole paragraph is an impertinence. Why is any person to be mulcted at another’s instance in any sum for any charity or any purpose whatever? What right has any newspaper to decide the direction or the amount of a citizen’s benevolence? Had it concerned a man, it would have been impertinence; concerning a woman, it is something worse,—not because of her womanhood, but because of the injustice which is wrought upon her sex wherever there is the ability to be unjust.

These are very small things, but they are signs of great ones.

It may be inferred, therefore, that woman’s indifference to excellence in work does not necessarily impugn either her character or calibre. Excellence is indeed good in itself, and desirable, without reference to the money it brings; yet money and promotion are a spur, and therefore they must be taken into the account when we are dealing with facts and not merely with theories.

Now, then, let women, disregarding senseless and wicked customs, make a point of making a point of something, and then let them lay aside every weight which social injustice or indifference hangs upon them, and the consequent sin of superficiality which so easily besets them, and make that point perfect. No matter that they are ill-paid and held down, let them assert themselves; let them work so well that their work shall assert itself, and pay and promotion will come—to woman, if not to themselves—as the inevitable result.

I do not mean that every woman should study medicine, or apprentice herself to a trade. Indeed, I consider it to be a wrong state of society in which there is any other necessity for her doing so than that which arises from her own inward promptings. It is very likely that she can find in her father’s house abundant scope for the exercise of every faculty. She may have a leaning to home life, and to no other. Because a girl remains at home, it by no means follows that she is accomplishing nothing. What I do mean is, that she shall not dawdle away her time simply because she is a girl; and that if, moved by her own instincts, which are from God, or impelled by circumstances, which are generally the fault of men, she enters the arena where men strive, she shall have no other disabilities than those which Nature lays upon her. Do not fail to note the distinction between choice and necessity in her adoption of a career. When a woman, of her own free will and delight, pursues a study or an occupation beyond the common female range, it is one thing. When she is obliged to earn her own living, and for that purpose goes out into the paths where men walk, it is another thing. In both cases she should work on equal terms with men; in the first, because the very strength of her purpose, overcoming the natural disinclinations of her sex, shows it to be of celestial origin, and therefore worthy of respect; in the second, because, if man fails to give to woman the support which is her due, the smallest step towards reparation is to allow her every advantage in the attempt to support herself. It is always a sorrowful, I think it is always an injurious thing, for a woman to be obliged to compete with men, that is, to earn money. She can do it only at the constant torture, or the constant sacrifice—perhaps both—of something higher than can be brought into the strife. But so much the more should she be freed from every unnecessary pain and hinderance. Moreover, evil as is the imperative assumption by woman of man’s work, it combats a greater evil, and therefore also should her hands be upheld. The most persistent and kindly encouragement can never change, in the womanly heart, love of home into love of conquest and renown; but it can do much to soften the harshness of an uncongenial lot, and take somewhat from the bitterness of a cup that never can be sweet.

The mere fact of a daughter’s services being needed at home is no reason why they shall be claimed after she has become of age, either through years, or maturity of character, when such service is distasteful to her, and other service is tasteful and possible. If, for instance, a girl has a strong desire to be a milliner, or a mantua-maker, or an artist, she should not be prevented because her mother wants her at home to help take care of the children and do the work. I suppose to many this will seem unnatural and undutiful. It is neither the one nor the other. There are remarkable notions afloat concerning nature and duty. If one may judge from popular ethics, the duty seems to lie chiefly on one side. Lions, we are told, would appear to the world in a very different light if lions wrote history; so filial and parental relations, discussed as they always are by the parental part of the community, have a different bearing from what they would if looked at from the children’s point of view. In our eagerness to enforce the claims which parents have on children, we seem sometimes ready to forget the equally stringent claims which children have on parents. Much is said about the gratitude which parental care imposes upon the child; very little about the responsibility which his involuntary birth imposed upon himself.

Here is a daughter, an immortal being, accountable to God. Surely, when she has become a woman, she has a right to direct her life in the manner best adapted to bring out its abilities. No human being has a right to appropriate another human being’s life,—even if they be mother and daughter. You say that she owes life itself to her parents. True, but in such a way that it confers an additional obligation on them to give her every opportunity to make the most of life, and not in such a way as to justify them in monopolizing it, nor in such a way as to render her accountable to them alone for its use. The person who gives life is under much stronger bonds than the person who receives life. Life is a momentous thing. It may be an eternal curse. It is almost certain to involve deep sorrow. Sin, disease, pain, are almost sure to follow in its wake. It is a Pandora’s box whose best treasure is only a compensation. The happiest thing we know of it is, that it will one day come to an end: Psyche will rend off her disguises, and soar in her proper form. The uncertainty of the future is our solace against the certainty of the present. Surely, then, of all people in the world, those who impose this fearful burden are the very last who should add even a feather’s weight to it, and the very first and foremost who should at any sacrifice of less important matters lighten it as far as possible. Filial unfaithfulness is a sin, but parental unfaithfulness is a chief of sins. The first violates relations which it finds. The second violates those which it makes. Almost invariably the second is the direct cause of the first. There may be extraordinary malformations: a child may be born with some organic incapacity for love, or gratitude, or virtue, as children are born blind or deaf. But, as a rule, parental love and wisdom result in filial love and duty growing stronger and stronger every day, and removing the possibility of sacrifice by making all service a pleasure. Because, where I knew the circumstances, I never saw an instance of filial misbehavior that could not be traced directly to parental mismanagement or neglect, I believe it is so where I do not know the circumstances. I am persuaded that Solomon had the spirit of truth when he declared, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” A son administers arsenic to his parents, and the world starts back in horror. I would not diminish its horror; but before you lavish all your execration on the son, find out whether the parents have not been administering poison, or suffered poison to be administered, to his mind and heart from his earliest infancy. Be shocked at that. I never saw or heard of a son born of virtuous parents, and wisely trained in the ways of virtue, who turned about and poisoned his parents after he had grown up. The eider-duck plucks the down from her own breast to warm the nest for her young, and I do not suppose an ungrateful or rebellious eider-duckling was ever heard of; but if the eider-duck plucks the down from the breasts of her young to line the nest for herself—what then?

If a daughter, out of love or a “sense of duty,” chooses to sacrifice her inclinations,—by inclinations I do not mean the mere promptings of self-indulgence, but the voice of her soul calling her to a work in life,—I say not that she does not well. I only say that her mother has no right to demand such a sacrifice. It is an unjust exaction. It is a selfish building up of comfort on the ruins of another’s happiness, possibly of character, since few things are so apt to warp the tone of mind and temper as a forced performance of unsuitable work. Before children are old enough to choose for themselves, their parents must choose for them,—even then with a wary care lest they mistake a prompting of nature for a whim, but every restraint that is put upon a child for any other purpose than his own benefit is a sin against a soul. What duty his love does not prompt, you shall not by the sheer brute force of your position require. His life is in his own hands, put there by you, and he must make it into a vessel of honor or dishonor. You shall not hold back his hand from working its own beautiful designs, that it may putty up the cracks in your time-worn vessel. You make great account of the care which you took of his helpless infancy; but he owes no especial gratitude for that. As may be inferred from what I have before said, it was a debt you owed him. Having endowed him with life, the least you could do was to help him make the best of it. It would have been cruel not to do it. You have only made things even in doing it,—and hardly that. Besides, such considerations are logically useless. You may fill a child’s book, paper, and ears with his mother’s anxiety and care for him. You may tell him how she has watched over him and toiled for him during his helpless infancy, and conjure him on that account to love and obey her. It will be a waste of breath. You might just as well conjugate a Latin verb to him. He will no more form an intelligent conception of a mother’s love and care from your most forcible description, than he would from amo, amas, amat. He is not capable of such a conception. A child’s love is an instinct. It gradually develops into a sentiment which permeates his whole being. The mother’s love is also an instinct. She nurses her child just as instinctively as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings. There generally is something more than instinct, but there is instinct. But at no stage of a child’s life is love a matter of reasoning. If it is within him, it cannot be argued out; if it is not, it cannot be argued in. Never a person loved because he was convinced he ought to love. He loves because he loves, and that is all that can be said about it.

I hope I shall not be considered as attempting to weaken the cords between parents and children. On the contrary, I wish to strengthen them. But I wish to strengthen them by making them of that unseen, spiritual substance which alone is worthy of the relation,—proof against every external force, and drawing more and more closely with every opening year,—not of that gross and palpable outward material which chafes and irritates, and which will snap asunder the moment that young vigor spreads its wings.