For the home we have been great; for the home we have been petty. Not many of us have stood with Christina Gyllenstierna on the walls of Stockholm and defended a city; still fewer of us have gone forth with Jeanne D’Arc to battle for the Fatherland. But if the enemy approached our own gate, we stood there with broom and dish rag, with the sharp tongue and clawing hand, ready to fight to the last in defense of our creation, the home. And this little structure which has cost us so much effort, is it a success or a failure? Is this woman’s contribution to civilization inconsiderable or valuable? Is it appreciated or despised?
Woman’s Sphere the Home
By Helen Keller
(From “Out of the Dark.”[4])
Woman’s sphere is the home, and the home, too, is the sphere of man. The home embraces everything we strive for in this world. To get and maintain a decent home is the object of all our best endeavors. But what is the home? What are its boundaries? What does it contain? What must we do to secure and protect it?
In olden times the home was a private factory.... Home and industrial life were one.... Once the housewife made her own butter and baked her own bread; she even sowed, reaped, threshed, and ground the wheat. Now her churn has been removed to great cheese and butter factories. The village mill, where she used to take her corn, is today in Minneapolis; her sickle is in Dakota. Every morning the express company delivers her loaves to the local grocer from a bakery that employs a thousand hands. The men who inspect her winter preserves are chemists in Washington. Her ice box is in Chicago. The men in control of her pantry are bankers in New York. The leavening of bread is somehow dependent upon the culinary science of congressmen, and the washing of milk cans is a complicated art which legislative bodies, composed of lawyers, are trying to teach the voting population on the farms.
It would take a modern woman a lifetime to walk across her kitchen floor; and to keep it clean is an Augean labor. No wonder that she sometimes shrinks from the task and joins the company of timid, lazy women who do not want to vote. But she must manage her home; for, no matter how grievously incompetent she may be, there is no one else authorized or able to manage it for her. She must secure for her children clean food at honest prices. Through all the changes of industry and government she remains the baker of bread, the minister of the universal sacrament of life.
[4] Doubleday Page & Co.