Common Sense About Women

by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

As we trace society back to savage life, what are the prevailing employments of the male sex? More and more exclusively, war and the chase. From these two vocations, monopolizing literally the whole active life of the savage man, the savage woman is almost absolutely excluded. Precisely at the point where the man’s sphere leaves off, in each of these pursuits, the woman’s sphere begins. Among American Indians, the man takes the captive, the woman tortures him. The man kills the deer, carries it till within sight of his own village, and then throws it down, that the squaw may go out and drag it in. Much that seems cruel and selfish in Indian life is the result, as Mrs. Jameson long since pointed out, of this complete separation of functions. The reason why the Indian woman carries the lodgepoles and the provisions on the march is that the man’s limbs may be left free and agile for the far severer labors of war and of the chase, from which she is excluded. The reason why she finally brings the deer to the camp is because he has had the more exhausting labor of hunting and killing it.

Contrast now this absolute “sexual difference of employment” with the greater and greater blending of civilized society,—a blending, observe, which proceeds from both sides, and not from woman only. It is hard to say which is more remarkable, within the last half-century,—the way in which women have encroached on men’s work, or the way in which men have encroached on women’s.

In many mechanical and commercial pursuits,—as printing and bookkeeping,—once almost monopolized by men, you now find a very large number of women. In some pursuits, as in education, the women have come to outnumber the men enormously, at least in America; in others, as telegraphy, they seem likely to do the same. We constantly hear of new channels opening. A friend of mine, the other day, just before addressing an audience on woman suffrage, stepped into a barber’s shop, and to his great amazement was shaved by a woman. On inquiry, he learned for the first time, that a good many of that sex, mostly Germans, pursued this occupation in New York and elsewhere. Thus do the vocations of men and women now “blend and coincide.” On the other hand, the leading dressmaker of the world is a man; our bonnetshops are largely conducted by men; the eminent hotel cooks, whose salaries exceed any paid by Harvard University, are men; and the lady who goes to rest in a sleeping-car on our railroads has her pillow smoothed and her curtains drawn, not by a chambermaid, but by a chamberman.

These are the facts which seem to me, I must say, quite fatal to Dr. Hedge’s theory. And there is one thing worth noticing in the very different criticisms passed on men and on women as to these invasions of each other’s province. If you call attention to the way in which men are everywhere taking part in women’s work, people say approvingly, “To be sure! greater energy, greater skill! they do even women’s work better than women themselves can.” But if you point out, that, on the other hand, women are also doing men’s work, and in some cases—as in literature and lecturing—are actually obtaining higher prices than most men can obtain, the same people shake their heads disapprovingly, and say, “Unsexed; out of their sphere!” Now, if we lived in an age of chivalrous protection of women, it would be a different thing; but, as we live in an age of political economy, there is no reason why men alone should have the benefit of its laws. If practical life is to be regarded as a game of puss-in-the-corner, I should recommend to each ejected puss to make for the best corner she finds open, without much deference to the theories of the sages.

LXII.
THE USE OF ONE’S FEET.

Is it better to stand on one’s own feet, or to depend on those of other people? We need clear views on that matter, certainly; and there is not much doubt which theory will ultimately prevail.

For one, I believe the whole theory of a leisure-class, whether for man or woman, to be a snare and a delusion. It seems to me that there is one great drawback that a young American may encounter,—namely, the possession of an independent property; and that there is one great piece of good fortune,—to be thrown on one’s self for support. Of all influences for development or usefulness, I know of none so great as “the wholesome stimulus of pecuniary necessity.” Of all forms of social organization, that seems to me the most favorable which opens to all most freely the opportunity of early education, and then calls upon each to exert himself for his own support.

To be sure, it is hardly possible to overrate the value of cultivated companionship and refined association. In other countries it may be worth while, for the sake of these, to be born to wealth: it is so hard to get them without wealth. But the happiest and best American households are apt to be found among such as Miss Alcott, for instance, habitually describes, where there is plenty of refinement and very little money; where perhaps there has been wealth in times past, but it has been lost just in time for the good of the children. All that money can bring—all books, all travel, all art—are not worth so much as the power to stand on one’s own feet. It is an essential to the character, and it is certainly the greatest of delights. To have earned, for a single year, one’s own support, gives one, in a manner, the freedom of the universe. Till that is done, we are children: after that we are mature human beings.

In England, where the whole social atmosphere is so different, there are many instances of much service done to art and philanthropy by persons born to leisure. And yet, even in England, if the admissions of English people may be trusted, these instances are bought by a frightful disproportion of wasted lives; and the best work is, after all, done by those who have learned to stand on their own feet. This last fact is certainly true of France, Germany, and America. So far as my own observation goes, for one American born to leisure who makes a good use of it, there are a dozen who lead empty or vicious lives. And even that exceptional one, with all his advantages, is often distanced in the race by the men who have early had to stand on their own feet. The man of leisure is usually so limited, either by the absence of stimulus or by the tiresome narrowness of a petty circle, or by missing the wholesome attrition of other minds, that he dwindles and grows feeble. If such a man attains by the aid of wealth what the man of the next inferior grade attains without it, we are all glad, and say it is “an honorable instance.” Not that the rich are worse than other men. It is no calamity to earn wealth, or even to inherit it after we have learned the lesson of self-reliance. It is the children of wealth who are to be pitied.

Now, all women who are born outside of actual poverty in America are as badly off as if they had been born to wealth. They are systematically discouraged from the delightful tonic of self-support. But when it is said that they never even feel the desire to support themselves, I must dissent. For twenty years I have been encountering young women who so longed for the sense of an independent position that even the happiest paternal home could not satisfy them unless it gave them so much to do that they might honestly feel that they earned their living. Otherwise the most luxurious arm-chairs in their own houses would not satisfy them, they so longed to learn the use of their own feet. I have known girls to rejoice in their father’s loss of property, because it would release them to enjoy the happiness of self-reliance; and, for one, had I the good fortune to have a dozen daughters, I should wish them all to be of this way of thinking. Any other theory would give us a world of mere amateurs and dilettantes, and very little work would be done. We are getting over the theory that it is undignified for a man to stand upon his own feet; and we shall one day get over it in regard to women.