It is not simply that women are chained to a body of death. Men are
equally victims. The world is kept back from its goal. One member
cannot suffer without involving all the members in its suffering.
Marriage, in its truest type, is love spiritualizing life; the union
of the mightiest and subtlest forces working the noblest results.
Marriage in its commonest manifestations is a clumsy mechanical
contrivance. Marriage is too often mirage,--far off, in books, in
dreams, lovely and divine; approached, it resolves itself into washing
and ironing and cooking and nursing and house-cleaning and making and
mending and long-suffering from New Year to Christmas and from
Christmas on to New Year, to the great majority of all the women I
know anything about. I do not mean simply the dull, uninteresting
women, of whom there are really not many, but the bright and
intellectual, capable of adorning any station, of whom there are more
than you think, because, buried under household ruins, you scarcely
catch a glimpse of what they long to be and what they might be. And
they do not like it. Volumes may be written and spoken, extolling the
tidy kitchens, the trim wives, the snowy table-cloths, and telling us
how beautiful a woman is when doing her house-work; and a few foolish
women will be found to accept it all and work the harder. Hundreds of
years ago, when a person I know was inconceivably young, and found
great delight in hanging about the kitchen during the seed-time and
harvest of pies and preserves, to glean up the remnants of mince-meat
and various mixtures left in the pans, a tiny relative much more acute
than he used to practise upon his approbativeness by soliloquizing to
himself while both their spoons were clattering around the sides of
the tin pan with frantic rapidity, "Now Peggoty isn't going away, and
let me have the rest. Peggoty is going to stay and eat it all up." The
result was that Peggoty used immediately to walk off and leave his
cormorant kinsman to the undivided booty. Just about as astute as the
kinsman, and just about as silly as Peggoty, are the men who prepare
and the women who suck the thin pap of our milk-and-water novels and
newspapers. But the latter are growing fewer and fewer every day. Some
women have a natural taste for cooking. Some women are specially
skilled in sewing. Some women are born with a broom in their hands,
and some find the sick-room their peculiar paradise: but I never saw
or heard of any woman who had a natural fondness for being worked and
worried from morning till night, hurrying from pillar to post, and
conscious all the time that things were left in an unfinished state,
from sheer want of time to complete them properly. Within a week, a
woman, a model housekeeper, devoted to her family,--a woman who never
wrote a word for print, nor ever addressed so much as a female meeting
of any kind, a woman whose husband looks upon strong-mindedness as a
species of leprosy, to be lamented rather than denounced, but at any
cost kept from spreading,--has told me that, if it were not for the
talk it would make, she would shut up her house, take her whole
family, and go to a hotel to board from June to October, so worn and
wearied is she with her household duties. Yet her family consists of
only three members, and her husband is full of loving-kindness and
consideration. Another woman, equally accomplished in all domestic
arts and graces, and equally happy in her conjugal relations, once
told me that she has seen from her window a carriage of friends coming
up the road to her house, and has been forced to wipe away the tears
before she could go to the door to greet them; so utterly disheartened
was she at the prospect of still further weight upon her already
overburdened shoulders. Yet she was no misanthrope, no nun. She loved
society, and was fitted to shine in it; but the inexorable,
unremitting labor of her household was such, that it was impossible
for her to receive from society the solace which it ought to give and
which it has to give. So heavily pressed the yoke, that a party of
friends was no pleasure to look forward to, but only more cake to be
made, more meat to be roasted, more sheets to be washed.
Women are accounted the weaker sex; but there is no comparison to be
made between the labor of the weaker and the stronger. Of fathers of
families and mothers of families, the real wear and tear of life comes
on the latter. If there is anxiety as to a sufficiency of support, the
mother shares it equally with the father, and feels it none the less
for not being able to contribute directly to the supply of the
deficiency; forced, passive endurance of an evil is quite as difficult
a virtue as unsuccessful struggle against it. If there is no anxiety
in that direction, the occupations of men can scarcely give them any
hint of the peculiar perplexing, depressing, irritating nature of a
woman's ordinary household duties. Pamphleteers exhort women to hush
up the discords, drive away the clouds, and have only smiles and
sunshine for the husband coming home wearied with his day's labor.
They would be employing themselves to much better advantage, if they
would enjoin him to bring home smiles and sunshine for his wife. She
is the one that pre-eminently needs strength and soothing and
consolation. She needs a warm heart to lean on, a strong arm, and a
steady hand to lift her out of the sloughs in which she is ready to
sink, and set her on the high places where birds sing and flowers
bloom and breezes blow. The husband's work may be absorbing and
exhaustive, but a fundamental difference lies in the simple fact, that
a man has constant and certain change of scene, and a woman has not. A
man goes out to his work and comes in to his meals. Two or three times
a day, sometimes all the evening, always at night and on Sunday, he is
away from his business and his place of business. The day may be long
or short, but there is an end to it. A woman is on the spot all the
time, and her cares never cease. She eats and drinks, she goes out and
comes in, she lies down and rises up, tethered to one stone. It does
not seem to amount to much, that a man closes his shop and goes home;
that he unyokes his oxen, ties up his cows, and sits down on the
door-step: but let the merchant, year after year, eat and sleep in his
counting-room, the schoolmaster in his school-room, the shoemaker over
his lapstone, the blacksmith by his anvil, the minister in his study,
the lawyer in his chambers, with only as frequent variations as a
housekeeper's visiting and tea-drinkings give her, and I think he
would presently learn that he needs not to possess powers acute enough
to divide a hair 'twixt north and northwest side, in order to
distinguish the difference. A distance of half a mile, or even a
quarter of a mile, breaks off all the little cords that have been
compressing a man's veins, and lets the blood rush through them with
force and freedom. It is change of scene, change of persons, change of
atmosphere, and a consequent change of a man's own self. He is made
over new.
But his wife moils on in the same place. Dark care sits behind her at
breakfast and dinner and supper. The walls are festooned with her
cares. The floors are covered with them as thick as the dust in the
Interpreter's house. _He_ shakes off the dust from his feet and goes
home: _her_ home is in the dust. What wonder that it strangles and
suffocates her?
Moreover, a man's occupation has uniformity, or rather unity. His path
lies in one line; sometimes he has only to walk mechanically along it.
Rather stupid, but not wearing work; for generally if he had been a
man upon whom it would have worn he would have done something else:
always he has power to bring everything to bear on his business. If it
is mental labor, he has the opportunity of solitude, or only such
association as assists. His helpers, and all with whom he is
concerned, are mature, intelligent, trained, and often ambitious and
self-respectful and courteous. He can set his fulcrum close to the
weight, and all he has to do is to bear down on the lever.
The wife's assistants, if she has any, are unspeakably in the rough,
and little children make all her schemes "gang a-gley." The incautious
slam of a door will shatter the best-laid plans, and the stubbing of a
chubby toe sinks her morning deep into the midday. Children are to a
man amusement, delight, juvenescence, a truthful rendering of the old
myth, that wicked kings were wont to derive a ghoul-like strength by
transfusion of the blood of infants. The father has them for a little
while. He frolics with them. He rejoices over them. They are beautiful
and charming. He is new to them, and they are new to him, and by the
time the novelty is over it is the hour for them to go to bed. He
feels rested and refreshed for his contact with them. They present
strong contrasts to the world he deals with all day. Their
transparency shines sweetly against its opacity. Even their little
wants and vanities and bickerings are to him only interesting
developments of human nature. His power is pleased with their
dependence; his pride flatters itself with their future; his
tenderness softens to their clinging; his earthliness cleaves away
before their innocence, and he thinks his quiver can never be too full
of them.
This is the poetry, and he reads it with great delight; but there is a
prose department, and that comes to the mother. She has had the
cherubs all day, and she knows that the trail of the serpent is over
them all. She sees the angel, in their souls as well as he, often
better; but she sees too the mark of the beast on their
forehead,--which he seldom discovers. His playthings are her
stumbling-blocks. The constancy of her presence forbids novelty, and
throws her upon her inventive powers for resources. All their
weariness and fretfulness and tumbles and aches are poured into her
lap. She has no division of labor, no concentration of forces; no five
or ten hours devoted to housework, and two or three to her children,
taking them into her heart to do good like a medicine. They patter
through every hour to stay her from doing with her might any of the
many things which her hands find to do. Nothing keeps limits;
everything laps over. God has given her a love so inexhaustible, that,
notwithstanding the washings and watchings, the sewing and dressing
which children necessitate, notwithstanding the care, the check, the
pull-back, the weariness, the heartsickness, which they occasion, the
"little hindering things" are--my pen is not wont to be timid, but it
shrinks from attempting to say what little ones are to a mother. But
divine arrangement does not prevent human drawback; and looking not at
inward solace, but outward business, it remains true that the business
of providing for the wants of a family is not of that smooth,
uncreaking nature to the mother that it is to the father. Let a man
take two or three little children--two or three? Let him take one!--of
one, two, three, or four years of age, to his shop, or stall, or
office, and take care of him all the time for a week, and he will see
what I mean.
I do not say that a man's work may not be harder for an hour, or five
or ten hours, more exhaustive of mental and vital power, more
exclusive of all diversions than his wife's for the same time. It may
or may not be; quite as often the latter as the former: but I do say
that severe prearranged, intermittent labor wears less upon the
temper, the nerves, and the spirits, that is, upon body and soul, than
lighter, confused, unintermitting labor. Work that enlists the
energies and the enthusiasm will weary, but the weariness itself is
welcome, and brings with it a satisfaction,--the pleasant sense of
something accomplished. The multiplicity of a woman's labors distracts
as well as wearies, and each one is so petty that she has scarcely
anything to look back on. Not one of them is great enough to brace and
stimulate, and all together they form a multitudinous heap, and not a
mountain. It is a round of endless detail; little, insignificant,
provoking items that she gets no credit for doing, but fatal discredit
for leaving undone. Nobody notices that things are as they should be;
but if things are not as they should be, it were better for her that a
millstone were hanged about her neck, &c.!
In a community, you find the husbands devoted to different pursuits.
Baker, miller, farmer, advocate, clerk,--each one has a peculiar
calling for which he is supposed to have a special taste, fitness, or
motive, perhaps all; but their wives have no room for choice. Whether
they have a gift of it or not, they have the same routine of baking
and brewing and house-cleaning. Suppose the woman does not like it?
The supposition is not an impossible, not even an unnatural one.
Woman's-sphere writers confound distinctions; they seem to think that
woman was not created in the garden in native honor clad like man, but
rather, like the turtle, with her house on her back, and that a modern
American house and its belongings; so that if she dislikes any of the
conclusions which such a house premises, it is as unnatural and
unwomanly as if she should be coarse or cruel. Womanliness, in their
vocabulary, implies fondness of and pleasure in domestic drudgery.
Their ideal woman is enamored of wash-tubs and broom-handles and
frying-pans. But modern housekeeping is no more woman's sphere than
farming is man's sphere, nor so much. If you go back far enough, you
will find that man was directly and divinely ordained to that very
pursuit. The Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of
Eden, _to dress it and to keep it_. His sphere was expressly marked
out. He was to be a gardener, a farmer, a tiller of the soil. What of
the woman? "The Lord God said, It is not good _that the man should be
alone_: I will make him an help meet for him." What kind of help was
meant is here implied, but is more clearly discovered further on by
Adam's own interpretation: "The woman whom thou gavest _to be with
me_." She was made for society, to be company for him; to talk and
laugh and cheer and keep him from being lonesome. Not a word about
housekeeping. Adam is concerned to put the very best face on the
matter, and he does not say, "the woman whom thou gavest to train up
the vines, to pare the apples, to stone the raisins, to gather the
currants, to press the grapes, to preserve the peaches," or for any
other purposes of an Eden household. It is simply "thou gavest _to be
with me_." Whatever may have come in afterwards to modify the original
arrangement, came for "the hardness of your hearts." But here, before
the fall, is seen, in all its beauty and simplicity, the original
plan. You have the whole "woman question" in a nutshell. Yet people
who are fond of quoting the Bible manage to skip this. They go back to
the curse, "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over
thee," and there they stop. Their nature is nature accursed, and even
that is silent on the point of menial service: they do not go back to
nature innocent, where it is excluded by implication. But if the Bible
is proof on one side, it is proof on the other. If the husband is made
to be the head of the woman, he is also made to be her serving-man.
Nay, even the silence of the curse is more golden than the speech of
man, for the same allotment of penalty which lays upon her the sorrow
of conception lays upon him the sorrow of toil: so that every man
whose wife is obliged to eat bread in the sweat of her brow is out of
his sphere, and has failed of his "mission." He lays upon the
shoulders of a weak woman his own burden as well as hers. And every
man who is not a farmer is out of his sphere, and should put himself
into it before he casts a single stone at any woman; and he is as much
more guilty as his sphere is more accurately defined.
So much for the revelation of the word; now for the revelation of
nature.
Naturally, I suppose women's tastes are not any more likely to be
uniform than men's tastes. The narrow range of their lives has
undoubtedly tended to keep them down towards one standard, but every
new-born child is a new protest of nature,--a new outburst of
individuality against monotony, so that the work is really never done,
and never comes anywhere near being so far done as that all women, or
the majority of women, should choose the life of a housekeeper. As far
as my observation goes, the best women, the brightest women, the
noblest women, are the very ones to whom it is most irksome. I do not
mean housekeeping with well-trained servants, for that is general
enough to admit a "brother near the throne"; but that, alas! is almost
unknown in the world wherein _I_ have lived; and a woman who is
satisfied with the small cares, the small economies, the small
interests, the constant contemplation of small things which many a
household demands, is a very small sort of woman. I make the assertion
both as an inference and an observation. A noble discontent--not a
peevish complaining, but an inward and spiritual protest--is a woman's
safeguard against the deterioration which such a life threatens, and
her proof of capacity and her note of preparation for a higher. Such a
woman does not do her work less well, but she rises ever superior to
her work. I know such women.
You talk about the mother-instinct. The mother-instinct makes a mother
love her children, but it does not make her love to destroy herself
with unremitting toil for them. It makes her do it, but it does not
make her love to do it. And because, in her great love, she will do it
when the necessity is laid upon her,--a wicked perversion of God's
good gift often lays the necessity upon her when God does not. The
mother-instinct in woman corresponds to the father-instinct in man;
and the wifely love to the husbandly love. Each is strong enough to
bear joyfully all that God lays upon it, and patiently much that he
does not lay and never intended to be laid. But he who counts upon
that strength, for the purpose of abusing it, is guilty of a high
crime against humanity. Each sex has the same uniformity in its loves,
and would undoubtedly have the same variety in its tastes if it were
not hindered. Men do not themselves believe so much as they profess in
this menial gravitation. If they did, they would never lecture women
so much about it. The very frenzy and frequency of their exhortations
are suspicious. They join together what God has not joined. They claim
identity where he has established diversity. Women are continually and
publicly admonished of their household obligations, but who ever heard
an assembly of men admonished of theirs? Yet men are as often derelict
in furnishing provision for their families as women are lax in its
administration. And while the husband may do his part in the way which
seems good in his own eyes, the wife must do hers in only one way,
whether it seem good or bad. The wise woman must tread "the old dull
round of things" as well as the foolish woman, and then she is so
footsore that she cannot enter upon that higher path which is open
only to her, and shut to the foolish woman. The low necessities usurp
the throne of the lofty possibilities. Oh! for this what tender
consideration should she not receive! Confined to the uninteresting
routine of domestic drudgery, while her tastes incline and her powers
fit her for other things, no admiration is too deep, no sympathy too
warm. The gentlest and most thoughtful attention is her smallest due.
Let men fancy for a moment that at marriage they must give up the law,
the pulpit, the machine-shop, the farm, in which they excel, and which
is adequate to purse and pleasure, and turn hod-carrier or
road-mender, and they may have a glimpse of the sacrifice which many a
gifted woman has made. If she made it unwittingly, marrying before she
knew her powers, or the life which marriage involves, a generous pity
and love will smooth her path as much as may be, and press back the
unexpected thorns. If she made it wittingly, choosing, in her strong
love, to lay upon the altar her pleasant things, so much the more will
a generous man constrain her to forget, in the fervor and efficacy of
his love, the fruit which once her soul longed for. If he cannot
prevent the sacrifice, he can cause that it shall not have been made
in vain.
Again, a man receives immediate and definite results from his work. He
has salary or wages,--so much a day, a year, a job. He is Lord High
Chancellor of the Exchequer and irresponsible. His wife gets no money
for her work. She has no funds under her own control, no resources of
which she is mistress. She must draw supplies from her husband, and
often with much outlay of ingenuity. Some men dole out money to their
wives as if it were a gift, a charity, something to which the latter
have no right, but which they must receive as a favor, and for which
they must be thankful. They act as if their wives were trying to
plunder them. Now a man has no more right to his earnings than his
wife has. They belong to her just as much as to him. There is a
mischievous popular opinion that the husband is the producer and the
wife the consumer. In point of fact, the wife is just as much a
producer as the husband. Her part in the concern is just as important
as his. She earns it as truly, and has just as strong a claim and just
as much a right to it as he; if possible she has more, for she ought
to receive some compensation for the gap that yawns between work and
wages. It is much more satisfactory to receive the latter as a direct
result of the former, than as a kind of alms. Many a woman does as
much to build up her husband's prosperity as he does himself. Many a
woman saves him from failure and disgrace. And, as a general rule, the
fate and fortunes of the family lie in her hands as much as in his.
What absurdity to _pay_ him his _wages_ and to _give_ her money to go
shopping with!
A woman who went around to make a collection for a small local
charity, told me that she could not help noticing the difference
between the married and the unmarried women. The latter took out their
purses on the spot and gave their mite or mint without hesitation. The
former parleyed and would see about it, gave rather uncertainly, and
must speak to Edward before they could decide. Now it may well be that
a woman who has only her own self to provide for can give more
liberally than one upon whose purse come the innumerable requisitions
of a family. The mother may be forced to make many sacrifices, and yet
be so blessed in the making that there shall be no sacrifice. The
pleasure shall overbalance the pain. But there is no reason why a
married woman should hesitate, or be embarrassed, or consult Edward as
to the expenditure of a dime or a dollar, any more than an unmarried
one. There may be more calls on the purse, but she ought to be
mistress of it. She ought to know her husband's circumstances well
enough to know what she can afford to give away, and she ought to be
as free to use her judgment as he is to use his. In any unusual
emergency, each will wish to consult the other; but he does not think
of asking her as to the disposal of every chance quarter of a dollar,
neither should she think of asking him. If circumstances make it
necessary to sail close to the wind, sail close to the wind; but let
both be in the same boat.
All this miserable and humiliating halting arises from the miserable
and humiliating notion that the husband is the power and the wife the
weight. It comes out, more convenient in substance, but just as
objectionable in shape, in the wife's "allowance." The husband
_allows_ her so much a year for her expenses. If it means simply that
so much is set aside for that purpose, very well; only it would sound
rather strange to say that she allows him so much to carry on his
business. A woman does not wish to be conversant with the details of
her husband's shop any more than he wishes to understand the details
of her kitchen: but he desires to know enough of that to be sure of
prompt, sufficient, and agreeable meals, and a tidy house, at a cost
within his means. So she should know with sufficient accuracy the
extent and sources of their income to be able to arrange her ordinary
disbursements without constant recurrence to him. He does not take his
dinner as a boon from her. He feels under no obligations for it. He
does not consider himself on his good behavior out of gratitude. It is
a regular institution, a blessing entirely common to both, and excites
no emotion. So should her money be,--as regularly and mechanically
supplied as the dinner, exciting no more comment and needing no more
argument. Whether it is kept in her pocket or his may be of small
moment; but as she does not lock up the dinner in the cupboard, and
then stand at the door and dole it out to him by the plateful, but
sets it on the table for him to help himself: so it is better, more
pacific, that he should deposit the money in an equally neutral and
accessible locality.
I portray to myself the flutter which such a proposition would raise
in many marital bosoms; would that they might be soothed. It is well
known among farmers that hens will not eat so much if you set a
measure of corn where they can pick whenever they choose, as they will
if you only fling down a handful now and then, and keep them
continually half starved. At the same time they will be in better
condition. So, looking at the matter from the very lowest stand-point,
a woman who has free access to the money will not be half so likely to
lavish it as the woman who is put off with scanty and infrequent sums.
She who knows how much there is to spend will almost invariably keep
within the limits. If she does not know, her imagination will be very
likely to magnify the fountain, and if but meagre supplies are
forthcoming, she will attribute it to niggardliness, and will consider
everything that can be got from her husband as legal plunder; and with
under-ground pipes and above-ground trenches it shall go hard but she
will drain him tolerably dry. Then he will inveigh against her
extravagance, and so not only lose his money, but his temper, his
calmness, and his complacency, all the while blaming her when the
fault is chiefly his own. If he had but frankly acquainted her with
the main facts; if he had but permitted her to look in and see what
was the capacity of the reservoir, instead of leaving her to sit under
the walls, knowing nothing of its resources but what she could learn
from the occasional spouting of a single small pipe, he would have
avoided all the trouble. It is so rarely that a wife will recklessly
transcend her reasonable income, that I do not think it worth while to
suggest any provision against the evil. It is an abnormal and sporadic
case, to be treated physiologically rather than philosophically. The
man has unfortunately allied himself to a mad woman, or he has found
to his regret that there is nothing more fulsome than a she-fool.
It irks me to say these things. It is almost a profanation to connect
such cold-blooded business matters with a relation which is supposed
to involve, and which should involve, the highest, the purest, the
fairest traits of human life. In true marriage there is indeed no need
of these considerations. A complete and perfect marriage breaks down
all barriers, and fuses each separate interest into one. In such there
is no mine and thine, but unity and identity. For perfect marriages I
do not write; but for the imperfect, and the marriages not yet
contracted. Let us have another standard set up, another
starting-point established, another goal fixed, that we may run
without weariness, and walk without faintness, and be crowned at last
with a laurel worth the wearing. A ten years' wife once said to a
young lady who was spending money rather freely,--money which was,
however, her own, for which she had to depend upon no one,--"You ought
to lay up something for yourself. You should have a little money--if
only five hundred dollars, it will be better than nothing--in the
bank, so that when you are married you will have something of your own
to go to, and not have to depend entirely upon your husband. You will
be a great deal happier to have something that you can do what you
choose with, and not feel that you must account for every cent, and
make it go as far as possible." But it seems to me that this is _felo
de se_. Doubtless, people often find that they have married the wrong
person; but it is supposed to be a mistake, and not a walking into the
ditch with eyes open. If a girl knows, or even suspects, or entertains
the possibility beforehand, that she is going to marry a man from whom
it is necessary to provide for herself a pecuniary refuge, why does
she marry him at all? If she deliberately unites herself to one who
she believes, or even fears, will not receive her as a trust from God,
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, she forfeits all sympathy and
pity, whatever may befall her. If the husband whom she is to take
threatens to be greedy, or unsympathizing, or selfish, or stolid, her
best defence against him is, not to put money in a bank, but to keep
herself out of his reach. It is impossible to conceive of happiness in
marriage, where the financial wheels do not run--I will not say
smoothly, but evenly. The road may be rough, roundabout, and steep,
without precluding wholesome and hearty happiness; but if one wheel
drags while the other turns, if one goes back while the other goes
forward, if for any reason the two do not move by parallel lines in
the same direction, the whole carriage is bewitched, the whole journey
is embittered, the whole object is baffled.
It is marvellous to see the insensibility with which men manage these
delicate matters. It is impossible for a man to be too scrupulous, too
chivalrous, too refined, in his bearing towards his wife. Her
dependence should be the strongest appeal to his manhood. The very act
of receiving money from him puts her in a position so equivocal, that
the utmost affection and attention should be brought into play to
reassure her. The velvet touch of love should disguise the iron hand
of business. A sensitive woman is fully enough alive to her relations.
There is need that every gentle and tender courtesy should assure and
convince her that the money which she costs is a pleasure and a
privilege. Her delicacy, her self-respect, her confidence in his
appreciation, are the strongest ties that can bind her to himself. Let
them but be sundered, and he has no longer any hold on happiness, any
safeguard against discord. Let chivalry be forgotten, let
sensitiveness be violated, let money intrude into the domain of love,
and the spell is broken. Your stately silver urn is become an iron
kettle.
Yet men will deliberately, in the presence of their wives, _to_ their
wives, groan over the cost of living. They do not mean extravagant
purchases of silk and lace and velvet, which might be a wife's fault
or thoughtlessness, and furnish an excuse for rebuke; but the
butcher's bill, and the grocer's bill, and the joiner's bill. Man,
when a woman is married, do you think she loses all personal feeling?
Do you think your glum look over the expenses of housekeeping is a
fulfilment of your promise to love and cherish? Is it calculated to
retain and increase her tenderness for you? Does it bring sunshine and
lighten toil, and bless her with knightly grace? Do you not know that
it is only a way of regretting that you married her? It is a way of
saying that you did not count the cost. You may not present it to
yourself in that light, but in that light you present it to her. And
do you think it is a pleasant thing to her? You go out to your shop,
or sit down to your newspaper, and forget all about it. She sits down
to her sewing, or stands over her cooking-stove, and meditates upon it
with an indescribable pain. I do not say that every kind of uneasiness
regarding expense is or ought to be thus construed. There may be an
uneasiness springing directly from love. A strong and great-hearted
affection frets that it cannot minister the beauty and the comfort
which it longs to do, or defend against the emergencies which a future
may bring. But this uneasiness is rarely if ever mistaken. Love can
usually find a way to soothe the sorrows of love, and a wife's hand
can almost always smooth out the wrinkles from the brow which is
corrugated only for her. The complaint which I mean is of quite
another character. Women know it, if men do not;--the women who have
suffered from it, for it is pleasant to think that there are women to
whose experience every such sensation is entirely foreign. These very
men who complain because it costs so much to live will lose by bad
debts more than their wives spend. They will, by sheer negligence, by
a selfish reluctance to present a bill to a disagreeable person, by a
cowardly fear lest insisting on what is due should alienate a
customer, by culpable mismanagement of business, by indorsing a note,
or lending money, through mere want of courage to say "No," or of
shrewdness to detect dishonesty or incapacity, lose money enough to
foot up half a dozen bills. They will waste money in cigars, in
oyster-suppers, in riding when walking would be better for them, in
keeping a horse which "eats his head off," in buying luxuries which
they would be better off without, in sending packages and luggage by
express, rather than have the trouble of taking them themselves, in
numberless small items of which they make no account, but of which the
bills make great account. If one might judge from the newspapers,
extravagance is a peculiarity of women. So far as my observation goes,
the extravagance of women is not for a moment to be compared with the
extravagance of men.[3] A man is perversely, persistently, and with
malice aforethought, extravagant. He is extravagant in spite of
admonition and remonstrance. Where his personal comfort or interest is
concerned, he scorns a sacrifice. He laughs at the suggestion that
such a little thing makes any difference one way or another. He has
not even the idea of economy. He does not know what the word means. He
does not know the thing when he sees it. Women take to it naturally. A
certain innate sense of harmony keeps them from being wasteful. Their
extravagance is the exception, not the rule. They are willing to incur
self-denial. They do not scorn to take thought and trouble, and be put
to inconvenience, for the sake of saving money. The greater animalism
of man also comes out here in full force. If sacrifice must be, a
woman will sacrifice her comforts before her taste. The man will let
his tastes go, and keep his comforts, and call it good sense. A
woman's extravagance is to some purpose. A man's to none. She buys
many dresses, but she gives her old ones away, or cuts them over for
the children, and works dextrously. A man buys and destroys. Look at
the manner in which men manage the national housekeeping, and see
whether it is men or women who are extravagant. Look at the clerkships
in the departments, look at members of Congress browsing among
government supplies, look at army and navy; walk through a camp: see
the barrels of good food thrown away, see the wood wasted, see the
tools wantonly destroyed. I think the wives of the soldiers could
support themselves comfortably on the fragments of the soldiers'
feasts. Nobody complains. A great nation must not look too closely
after the pennies. A great army always makes great waste, say the
newspapers that exhort women against extravagance, as if it were as
much a law of nature as gravitation. Why not say housekeeping is
always wasteful, and fall back on that as a primal law of nature also?
Because housekeeping is not always wasteful, you say. Precisely.
Housekeeping is nearly always economically conducted, and your
animadversions amount just to this: because women are generally
prudent, they are to be chided for all shortcomings. But men are
always wasteful, therefore they must be let alone. Only be universally
bad, and you shall be as unmolested as if you were good. You say that
it is easier to be economical in a family than in an army. Perhaps so;
but if the soldiers, instead of being men, were women, do you for a
moment imagine that there would be any such waste? Let all other
circumstances be unchanged. Let all the cost come upon the government
just as it does. Let all provisions be furnished in the same abundance
as now, and I do not believe there would be much more waste than there
is in average families. I do not believe you could force women at the
point of the bayonet to such reckless prodigality as men indulge in.
It is against their nature. It hurts them. It violates God's law,
written in their hearts. They would also be too conscientious to do
it. They would not consider the fact that "Uncle Sam foots the bills"
a reason why a saw should be tossed aside on the first symptom of
dulness, and a new one bought. They would not throw away a half loaf
because there were plenty of whole ones, but keep it and steam it. And
not only would there be a great deal less waste, but there would be a
great deal better supply. If women had charge of the commissariat, I
do not believe there would have been one half so much friction as
there has been. Hungry regiments would not get to the end of a long
march and find nothing to eat. Sick soldiers would not be expected to
recover health from salt pork and muddy coffee. Experience or no
experience, red tape or no tape, women would have managed to bring
hungry mouths and hot soups together, and to furnish delicate food for
delicate health. They would not only have supplied the soldiers at
less cost to government, but the less cost would have produced a
larger bill of fare. How did the English army fare till Florence
Nightingale came by and knocked their granary doors open? That my
remarks are not mere theory, or rather that my theory is founded on
truth, is abundantly proved by a statement printed in the North
American Review for January, 1864, long after my words were written.
It is from an article on the Sanitary Commission.
[3] The discussions which, since this was written, have
arisen concerning expenditure and extravagance, in
connection with the women's pledge against the purchase of
foreign goods, only increase the strength of my position.
But let it be remembered, that I speak not for an emergency,
but for the conduct of life.
"At this moment, the only region in the loyal States that is
definitely out of the circle is Missouri. The rest of our loyal
territory is all embraced within one ring of method and federality.
This is chiefly due to the wonderful spirit of nationality that beats
in the breasts of American women. They, even more than the men of the
country, from their utter withdrawal from partisan strifes and local
politics, have felt the assault upon the life of the nation in its
true national import. They are infinitely less _State-ish_, and more
national in their pride and in their sympathies. They see the war in
its broad, impersonal outlines; and while their particular and special
affections are keener than men's, their general humanity and tender
sensibility for unseen and distant sufferings is stronger and more
constant.
"The women of the country, who are the actual creators, by the labor
of their fingers, of the chief supplies and comforts needed by the
soldiers, have been the first to understand, appreciate, and
co-operate with the Sanitary Commission. It is due to the sagacity and
zeal with which they have entered into the work, that the system of
supplies, organized by the extraordinary genius of Mr. Olmstead, has
become so broadly and nationally extended, and that, with Milwaukee,
Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburg, Philadelphia,
New York, Brooklyn, New Haven, Hartford, Providence, Boston, Portland,
and Concord for centres, there should be at least fifteen thousand
Soldiers' Aid Societies, all under the control of women, combined and
united in a common work,--of supplying, through the United States
Sanitary Commission, the wants of the sick and wounded in the great
Federal army.
"The skill, zeal, business qualities, and patient and persistent
devotion exhibited by those women who manage the truly vast operations
of the several chief centres of supply, at Chicago, Boston, Cleveland,
Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and New York, have unfolded a new page in the
history of the aptitudes and capacities of women. To receive,
acknowledge, sort, arrange, mark, repack, store, hold ready for
shipment, procure transportation for, and send forward at sudden call,
the many thousand boxes of hospital stores which, at the order of the
General Secretary at Washington, have been for the past two years and
a half forwarded at various times by the 'Women's Central' at New
York, the Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio, at Cleveland, the
Branches at Cincinnati and at Philadelphia, or the Northwestern Branch
at Chicago, has required business talents of the highest order. A
correspondence demanding infinite tact, promptness, and method has
been carried on with their local tributaries, by the women from these
centres, with a ceaseless ardor, to which the Commission owes a very
large share of its success, and the nation no small part of the
sustained usefulness and generous alacrity of its own patriotic
impulses.
"To collect funds (for the supply branches have usually raised their
own funds from the immediate communities in which they have been
situated) has often tasked their ingenuity to the utmost. In Chicago,
for instance, the Branch has lately held a fair of colossal
proportions, to which the whole Northwest was invited to send
supplies, and to come in mass! On the 26th of October last, when it
opened, a procession of three miles in length, composed of wagon-loads
of supplies, and of people in various ways interested, paraded through
the streets of Chicago; the stores being closed, and the day given up
to patriotic sympathies. For fourteen days the fair lasted, and every
day brought reinforcements of supplies, and of people and purchasers.
The country people, from hundreds of miles about, sent in upon the
railroads all the various products of their farms, mills, and hands.
Those who had nothing else sent the poultry from their barnyards; the
ox, or bull, or calf, from the stall; the title-deed of a few acres of
land; so many bushels of grain, or potatoes, or onions. Loads of hay,
even, were sent in from ten or a dozen miles out, and sold at once in
the hay-market. On the roads entering the city were seen rickety and
lumbering wagons, made of poles, loaded with mixed freight,--a few
cabbages, a bundle of socks, a coop of tame ducks, a few barrels of
turnips, a pot of butter, and a bag of beans,--with the proud and
humane farmer driving the team, his wife behind in charge of the baby,
while two or three little children contended with the boxes and
barrels and bundles for room to sit or lie. Such were the evidences of
devotion and self-sacrificing zeal the Northwestern farmers gave, as
in their long trains of wagons they trundled into Chicago, from twenty
and thirty miles' distance, and unloaded their contents at the doors
of the Northwestern Fairs, for the benefit of the United States
Sanitary Commission. The mechanics and artisans of the towns and
cities were not behind the farmers. Each manufacturer sent his best
piano, plough, threshing-machine, or sewing-machine. Every form of
agricultural implement, and every product of mechanical skill, was
represented. From the watchmaker's jewelry to horseshoes and harness;
from lace, cloth, cotton and linen, to iron and steel; from wooden and
waxen and earthen ware, to butter and cheese, bacon and beef;--nothing
came amiss, and nothing failed to come, and the ordering of all this
was in the hands of women. They fed in the restaurant, under 'the
Fair,' at fifty cents a meal--fifteen hundred mouths a day, for a
fortnight--from food furnished, cooked, and served by the women of
Chicago; and so orderly and convenient, so practical and wise were the
arrangements, that, day by day, they had just what they had ordered
and what they counted on,--always enough, and never too much. They
divided the houses of the town, and levied on No. 16 A Street, for
five turkeys, on Monday; No. 37 B Street, for twelve apple-pies, on
Tuesday; No. 49 C Street, for forty pounds of roast beef, on
Wednesday; No. 23 D Street was to furnish so much pepper on Thursday;
No. 33 E Street, so much salt on Friday. In short, every preparation
was made in advance, at the least inconvenience possible to the
people, to distribute in the most equal manner the welcome burden of
feeding the visitors, at the fair, at the expense of the good people
of Chicago, but for the pecuniary benefit of the Sanitary Commission.
Hundreds of lovely young girls, in simple uniforms, took their places
as waiters behind the vast array of tables, and everybody was as well
served as at a first-class hotel, at a less expense to himself, and
with a great profit to the fair. Fifty thousand dollars, it is said,
will be the least net return of this gigantic fair to the treasury of
the Branch at Chicago. It is universally conceded that to Mrs.
Livermore and Mrs. Hoge, old and tried friends of the soldier and of
the Sanitary Commission, and its ever active agents, are due the
planning, management, and success of this truly American exploit. What
is the value of the money thus raised, important as it is, when
compared with the worth of the spirit manifested, the loyalty
exhibited, the patriotism stimulated, the example set, the prodigious
tide of national devotion put in motion! How can rebellion hope to
succeed in the face of such demonstrations as the Northwestern Fair?
They are bloodless battles, equal in significance and results to
Vicksburg and Gettysburg, to New Orleans and Newbern."
Men, have you read this paragraph? Please to read it again! Think of
all your inveighing against female extravagance and incapacity, and
read it yet again. Put on sackcloth and ashes, and read it aloud to
your wife, to your mother, to your daughter, to your sister, to your
grandmother, to your aunt, to your niece, to your mother-in-law, and
all your relatives-in-law, and to every woman who suffers your
presence, and then lay your hand on your mouth, and your mouth in the
dust, and cry, "Woe is me! for I am undone." Inexperience? Had Mrs.
Hoge and Mrs. Livermore any more experience in feeding fifteen hundred
mouths a day than the quartermaster of a regiment? Have the women of
Chicago generally devoted their lives to trafficking in tame ducks,
loads of hay, threshing-machines, and beef and bacon? Yet you have the
very essence of business tact in "nothing came amiss, and nothing
failed to come"; and the very essence of economy in "always enough,
and never too much"; and the crowning glory--write it on the posts of
thy house, and on thy gates; teach it diligently unto thy children,
and talk of it when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest
by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up; bind it
for a sign upon thine hand, and let it be as a frontlet between thine
eyes--"the ordering of all this was in the hands of women."
This ascription of female extravagance, whether made publicly in
newspapers or privately in family conclave, is not only false and
fatal, but it is fatal in the very innermost and vital points of life.
What is destroyed is not an adventitious thing, but the spring of all
satisfaction. The relations between a man and his wife decide the weal
of his life. The whole chain of his circumstances can be no stronger
than the link between him and her. He may be ever so rich or renowned,
but he can bear no heavier weight of happiness than that link can
sustain. The newspaper paragraphs do the harm of confirming individual
men in their notions that it is the wife who incurs the unnecessary
expense, and so divert their attention from their own duties, and urge
them on in their evil courses to their own undoing. But a man is just
as powerful for good as he is for evil. By as much as he can alienate
his wife from himself by his petty financiering, by so much can he
draw her to his heart by a gentle chivalry. Invested by the law with
power, he has only to transmute it into love to secure a loyalty
capable of any sacrifice. Let a wife read in her husband's face and
bearing how grateful is her society, how precious her life, how
sweetest of all pleasures to him is the knowledge of her pleasure; let
her feel that she is to him something different from all earthly
interests,--something above and beyond all other joys; let her see
that, with her coming, money ceased to be mere current coin, that
labor acquired a new dignity, and prudence a new charm, because they
all might minister to her convenience or delight; let her see that she
adjusts, harmonizes, and completes his life; that she is the central
sun, about which all minor interests and plans revolve; and--what have
you gained? A good housekeeper? A well-ordered household? More than
this. An empire. Supreme dominion. You have only to be tender and
true, and nothing can sweep away the golden mist through which,
whatever you may be to others, you shall appear to her eyes a knight
without fear and without reproach.
Wrong opinions concerning the relations between husband and wife are
also occasionally expressed in another and opposite manner. A wife
comes into the possession of property. The husband, determined not to
encroach upon her rights, leaves the disposal of the property to her.
He insists that it shall be invested in her name. He will take no
responsibility as to the mode of investment. This may be done from
honorable motives. The man means to be just and blameless; and if he
is conscious of innate weakness or wickedness, or if the marriage be
an ill-assorted one, he may be pursuing the best course. There may
also be outside, merely business reasons which make it the best
course. But to do it simply from a notion of justice, is as far as
possible from what ought to be. The man shows himself entirely at
fault regarding the range of justice. If life were what it should be,
the law would be right in recognizing for the woman no existence
separate from her husband. Love is but the fulfilling of that law. The
reason why such a law is unjust is, that life is so constant a
violation of the higher spiritual law, that this lower one which
embodies it works mischief. It fits the righteous theory only, not the
wicked facts. But law is for the evil, not for the good. There is no
enactment that a man shall possess his own property. The enactments
are to punish those who attempt to wrest his property from him. There
need be no enactment that a man shall be master of his wife's
possessions; he has but to be to her a true husband, and all that she
has is his. The law should punish him for neglect of duty and
disregard of claims, by a forfeiture of property. If the law this day
completely reversed the position of husband and wife, it would make no
jot or tittle of change in their actual position, where they love each
other as they ought. Women naturally have a distaste to business, and
an indifference to money. Of their own motion, they would leave such
things in the hands of men, if the instinct of self-preservation did
not force them to interference. In addition to this generic negative
willingness, the happy wife has a positive delight in enriching with
every blessing the man she loves. When Aurora gave her love with all
lavishment, and prayed Romney,
"If now you'd stoop so low to take my love,
And use it roughly, without stint or spare,
As men use common things with more behind,
To any mean and ordinary end,--
The joy would set me like a star, in heaven,
So high up, I should shine because of height
And not of virtue,"--
did she make a mental reservation to herself of the money which her
books had brought her?
What the law should do, is to step in and guard woman against the
possible disastrous consequences which may spring from the spontaneous
self-abnegation of love. What it should not do, is to guarantee to the
miser, the spendthrift, the tyrant, debauchee, or vampire, the things
which _a man_ would possess of his own inalienable right. What a
husband should do, is to show himself great enough and good enough to
know and feel that, in love, giving and receiving wear the selfsame
grace. What he should not do, is to talk of justice when they twain
should be one flesh.