We see advertisements, occasionally, of "Homes for Aged Women," and more
rarely "Homes for Aged Men." The question sometimes suggests itself,
whether it would not be better to begin the provision earlier, and see that
homes are also provided, in some form, for the middle-aged and even the
young. The trouble is, I suppose, that as it takes two to make a bargain,
so it takes at least two to make a home; and unluckily it takes only one to
spoil it.
Madame Roland once defined marriage as an institution where one person
undertakes to provide happiness for two; and many failures are accounted
for, no doubt, by this false basis. Sometimes it is the man, more often the
woman, of whom this extravagant demand is made. There are marriages which
have proved a wreck almost wholly through the fault of the wife. Nor is
this confined to wedded homes alone. I have known a son who lived alone,
patiently and uncomplainingly, with that saddest of all conceivable
companions, a drunken mother. I have known another young man who supported
in his own home a mother and sister, both habitual drunkards. All these
were American-born, and all of respectable social position. A house
shadowed by such misery is not a home, though it might have proved such but
for the sins of women. Such instances are, however, rare and occasional
compared with the cases where the same offence in the husband makes ruin of
the home.
Then there are the cases where indolence, or selfishness, or vanity, or the
love of social excitement, in the woman, unfits her for home life. Here we
come upon ground where perhaps woman is the greater sinner. It must be
remembered, however, that against this must be balanced the neglect
produced by club-life, or by the life of society-membership, in a man. A
brilliant young married belle in London once told me that she was glad her
husband was so fond of his club, for it amused him every night while she
went to balls. "Married men do not go much into society here," she said,
"unless they are regular flirts,--which I do not think my husband would
ever be, for he is very fond of me,--so he goes every night to his club,
and gets home about the same time that I do. It is a very nice
arrangement." It is perhaps needless to add that they are long since
divorced.
It is common to denounce club-life in our large cities as destructive of
the home. The modern club is simply a more refined substitute for the
old-fashioned tavern, and is on the whole an advance in morals as well as
manners. In our large cities a man in a certain social coterie belongs to a
club, if he can afford it, as a means of contact with his fellows, and to
have various conveniences which he cannot so economically obtain at home. A
few haunt clubs constantly; the many use them occasionally. More absorbing
than these, perhaps, are the secret societies which have so revived among
us since the war, and which consume time so fearfully. There was a case
mentioned in the newspapers lately of a man who belonged to some twenty of
these associations; and when he died, and each wished to conduct his
funeral, great was the strife! In the small city where I write there are
seventeen secret societies down in the directory, and I suppose as many
more not so conspicuous. I meet men who assure me that they habitually
attend a society meeting every evening of the week except Sunday, when
they go to church meeting. These are rarely men of leisure; they are
usually mechanics or business men of some kind, who are hard at work all
day, and never see their families except at meal-times. Their case is far
worse, so far as absence from home is concerned, than that of the
"club-men" of large cities; for these are often men of leisure, who, if
married, at least make home one of their lounging-places, which such
secret-society men do not.
I honestly believe that this melancholy desertion of the home is largely
due to the traditional separation between the alleged spheres of the sexes.
The theory still prevails largely, that home is the peculiar province of
the woman, that she has almost no duties out of it; and hence, naturally
enough, that the husband has almost no duties in it. If he is amused there,
let him stay there; but, as it is not his recognized sphere of duty, he is
not actually violating any duty by absenting himself. This theory even
pervades our manuals of morals, of metaphysics, and of popular science; and
it is not every public teacher who has the manliness, having once stated
it, to modify his statement, as did the venerable President Hopkins of
Williams College, when lecturing the other day to the young ladies of
Vassar.
"I would," he said, "at this point correct my teaching in 'The Law of Love'
to the effect that home is peculiarly the sphere of woman, and civil
government that of man. _I now regard the home as the joint sphere of man
and woman, and the sphere of civil government more of an open question as
between the two._ It is, however, to be lamented that the present agitation
concerning the rights of woman is so much a matter of 'rights' rather than
of 'duties,' as the reform of the latter would involve the former."
If our instructors in moral philosophy will only base their theory of
ethics as broadly as this, we shall no longer need to advertise "Homes
Wanted;" for the joint efforts of men and women will soon provide them.