A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

It has never been the custom, as with us, for girls of the middle classes to earn their living. Until very recently the jeune fille, the young, unmarried girl, hardly ever went out unescorted. The prototype of our American college bred, tennis playing, independent, self-supporting girl did not exist in France. The one ideal of the gently reared French girl was marriage and a home. And in the home she became a real power.

Theoretically all women are powers in their homes. The power of the French wife and mother is not theoretical, it is real, it is legalized. A Frenchman who does not consult his wife in every business matter is the exception. A son who does not refer all his affairs to his mother’s consideration is a bad son. Under French law the family council, which includes near relatives as well as fathers and mothers, settles most questions involving minor children. It is in the family council where marriages are arranged and marriage contracts agreed upon.

Women rule these family councils to a very great extent. Their voices in all domestic matters are listened to with respect. You will see bearded men give up a cherished project, even a love match, because Maman could not be persuaded of its wisdom. A man can not legally marry without his mother’s consent until he is twenty-five years old.

Because of their great power in the home French women have not left the domestic life to the same extent that English and American women have done. They have not insisted on entering all the trades and professions. They have not demanded the vote. But the war has brought great changes into French life, and the women of France will never again be as they were before. They, too, must go out and work. They must accept the responsibilities of political life. They must socialize their maternal love. They are doing it already.

When the Germans invaded northern France in 1914, when most of the men were swept away into the fighting, the women assumed the burden not only of family life but of community life as well. Often the German commander, entering a town or village and demanding the presence of the mayor, would be met by a stout, gray-haired matron who would calmly announce, “I am the mayor.”

So she was, and had been since monsieur le maire had been mobilized, or perhaps murdered by the invading Huns. Many a French town and village with its hapless population has been saved from utter annihilation by the intrepid courage and determination of a woman in authority. More than once the woman was a nun.

France knows better than ever of what stuff its women are made, and the future status of the women is absolutely theirs to decide. There is plenty of evidence that they will decide on more independence and a wider range of activities.

I visited French munitions works, including the famous Citroen factory in Paris, where shells for France’s celebrated 75’s are turned out. I sat down at luncheon in the vast canteen of the factory with thousands of workers, fully half of them women. Before the war most of those women would have been engaged in sewing work at home, at very low wages. Seclusion of women went with family self-respect.

Now the girls were working in a shell factory. They were in overalls, some of them, and they were doing men’s work. All through this tremendous establishment I met girls driving motor shell carriers at high speed. I saw them working in the flaming forge rooms. I saw them cutting through steel bars with acetylene torches. I saw them at lathes shaping shells. I saw them making bullets. They work ten hours a day, where eight had been the legal limit before the war. They do not complain. It is for France, pour la patrie.

There has not been, as there was in England, a great pouring into industry of the women of the middle classes. The women workers were recruited from the home workers and from the luxury trades, so-called. There were many more of these in France, which was the finery mine for all the world, than in other countries. Thousands of girls and women who made clothes and hats and bijoux were thrown out of work and were easily transferred to the munitions trades.