WRITINGS OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
Mrs. Stowe's romances are among the most thoughtful, picturesque, and
popular works of modern fiction. Indeed, they should hardly be called
fictitious; for they treat inimitably, and with unfailing freshness,
some of the deepest themes that engage the attention of earnest minds.
They paint marvellously truthful pictures of the times, countries, and
people to which they relate, and are inspired by a nobility of purpose
that lifts them infinitely above the ordinary novel. Yet they are so
humorous, so exceedingly ingenious in depicting the ludicrous side of
things, that they rank with the most charming stories in English
Literature. Her essays, juvenile books, and poems are among the best of
their kind, and bear ample proofs of Mrs. Stowe's genius.
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For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price by
JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., Publishers,
CATHEDRAL BUILDING, WINTHROP SQUARE, BOSTON.
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.
BY
CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD,
AUTHOR OF "HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS" AND "LITTLE FOXES."
[Illustration: Logo]
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
1877.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
District of Massachusetts.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER? OR, THE WOMAN QUESTION 1
II. WOMAN'S SPHERE 27
III. A FAMILY-TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION 63
IV. IS WOMAN A WORKER? 100
V. THE TRANSITION 123
VI. BODILY RELIGION: A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH 142
VII. HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COMPANY? 166
VIII. HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED? 187
IX. DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS 205
X. WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS 235
XI. THE CATHEDRAL 259
XII. THE NEW YEAR 278
XIII. THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS 297
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.
I.
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER? OR, THE WOMAN QUESTION.
"Well, what will you do with her?" said I to my wife.
My wife had just come down from an interview with a pale, faded-looking
young woman in rusty black attire, who had called upon me on the very
common supposition that I was an editor of the "Atlantic Monthly."
By the by, this is a mistake that brings me, Christopher Crowfield, many
letters that do not belong to me, and which might with equal pertinency
be addressed, "To the Man in the Moon." Yet these letters often make my
heart ache,--they speak so of people who strive and sorrow and want
help; and it is hard to be called on in plaintive tones for help which
you know it is perfectly impossible for you to give.
For instance, you get a letter in a delicate hand, setting forth the
old distress,--she is poor, and she has looking to her for support those
that are poorer and more helpless than herself: she has tried sewing,
but can make little at it; tried teaching, but cannot now get a
school,--all places being filled, and more than filled; at last has
tried literature, and written some little things, of which she sends you
a modest specimen, and wants your opinion whether she can gain her
living by writing. You run over the articles, and perceive at a glance
that there is no kind of hope or use in her trying to do anything at
literature; and then you ask yourself, mentally, "What is to be done
with her? What can she do?"
Such was the application that had come to me this morning,--only,
instead of by note, it came, as I have said, in the person of the
applicant, a thin, delicate, consumptive-looking being, wearing that
rusty mourning which speaks sadly at once of heart-bereavement and
material poverty.
My usual course is to turn such cases over to Mrs. Crowfield; and it is
to be confessed that this worthy woman spends a large portion of her
time, and wears out an extraordinary amount of shoe-leather, in
performing the duties of a self-constituted intelligence-office.
Talk of giving money to the poor! what is that, compared to giving
sympathy, thought, time, taking their burdens upon you, sharing their
perplexities? They who are able to buy off every application at the door
of their heart with a five or ten dollar bill are those who free
themselves at least expense.
My wife had communicated to our friend, in the gentlest tones and in the
blandest manner, that her poor little pieces, however interesting to her
own household circle, had nothing in them wherewith to enable her to
make her way in the thronged and crowded thoroughfare of letters,--that
they had no more strength or adaptation to win bread for her than a
broken-winged butterfly to draw a plough; and it took some resolution in
the background of her tenderness to make the poor applicant entirely
certain of this. In cases like this, absolute certainty is the very
greatest, the only true kindness.
It was grievous, my wife said, to see the discouraged shade which passed
over her thin, tremulous features, when this certainty forced itself
upon her. It is hard, when sinking in the waves, to see the frail bush
at which the hand clutches uprooted; hard, when alone in the crowded
thoroughfare of travel, to have one's last bank-note declared a
counterfeit. I knew I should not be able to see her face, under the
shade of this disappointment; and so, coward that I was, I turned this
trouble, where I have turned so many others, upon my wife.
"Well, what shall we do with her?" said I.
"I really don't know," said my wife, musingly.
"Do you think we could get that school in Taunton for her?"
"Impossible; Mr. Herbert told me he had already twelve applicants for
it."
"Couldn't you get her plain sewing? Is she handy with her needle?"
"She has tried that, but it brings on a pain in her side, and cough; and
the doctor has told her it will not do for her to confine herself."
"How is her handwriting? Does she write a good hand?"
"Only passable."
"Because," said I, "I was thinking if I could get Steele and Simpson to
give her law-papers to copy."
"They have more copyists than they need now; and, in fact, this woman
does not write the sort of hand at all that would enable her to get on
as a copyist."
"Well," said I, turning uneasily in my chair, and at last hitting on a
bright masculine expedient, "I'll tell you what must be done. She must
get married."
"My dear," said my wife, "marrying for a living is the very hardest way
a woman can take to get it. Even marrying for love often turns out badly
enough. Witness poor Jane."
Jane was one of the large number of people whom it seemed my wife's
fortune to carry through life on her back. She was a pretty, smiling,
pleasing daughter of Erin, who had been in our family originally as
nursery-maid. I had been greatly pleased in watching a little idyllic
affair growing up between her and a joyous, good-natured young Irishman,
to whom at last we married her. Mike soon after, however, took to
drinking and unsteady courses; and the result has been to Jane only a
yearly baby, with poor health, and no money.
"In fact," said my wife, "if Jane had only kept single, she could have
made her own way well enough, and might have now been in good health and
had a pretty sum in the savings bank. As it is, I must carry not only
her, but her three children, on my back."
"You ought to drop her, my dear. You really ought not to burden yourself
with other people's affairs as you do," said I, inconsistently.
"How _can_ I drop her? Can I help knowing that she is poor and
suffering? And if I drop her, who will take her up?"
Now there is a way of getting rid of cases of this kind, spoken of in a
quaint old book, which occurred strongly to me at this moment:--
"If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one
of you say unto them, 'Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled,'
notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the
body, what doth it profit?"
I must confess, notwithstanding the strong point of the closing
question, I looked with an evil eye of longing on this very easy way of
disposing of such cases. A few sympathizing words, a few expressions of
hope that I did not feel, a line written to turn the case into somebody
else's hands,--any expedient, in fact, to hide the longing eyes and
imploring hands from my sight, was what my carnal nature at this moment
greatly craved.
"Besides," said my wife, resuming the thread of her thoughts in regard
to the subject just now before us, "as to marriage, it's out of the
question at present for this poor child; for the man she loved and would
have married lies low in one of the graves before Richmond. It's a sad
story,--one of a thousand like it. She brightened for a few moments, and
looked almost handsome, when she spoke of his bravery and goodness. Her
father and lover have both died in this war. Her only brother has
returned from it a broken-down cripple, and she has him and her poor old
mother to care for, and so she seeks work. I told her to come again
to-morrow, and I would look about for her a little to-day."
"Let me see, how many are now down on your list to be looked about for,
Mrs. Crowfield?--some twelve or thirteen, are there not? You've got
Tom's sister disposed of finally, I hope,--that's a comfort!"
"Well, I'm sorry to say she came back on my hands yesterday," said my
wife, patiently. "She is a foolish young thing, and said she didn't like
living out in the country. I'm sorry, because the Morrises are an
excellent family, and she might have had a life-home there, if she had
only been steady, and chosen to behave herself properly. But yesterday I
found her back on her mother's hands again; and the poor woman told me
that the dear child never could bear to be separated from her, and that
she hadn't the heart to send her back."
"And in short," said I, "she gave you notice that you must provide for
Miss O'Connor in some more agreeable way. Cross that name off your list,
at any rate. That woman and girl need a few hard raps in the school of
experience before you can do anything for them."
"I think I shall," said my long-suffering wife; "but it 's a pity to see
a young thing put in the direct road to ruin."
"It is one of the inevitables," said I, "and we must save our strength
for those that are willing to help themselves."
"What's all this talk about?" said Bob, coming in upon us rather
brusquely.
"O, as usual, the old question," said I,--"'What's to be done with
her?'"
"Well," said Bob, "it's exactly what I've come to talk with mother
about. Since she keeps a distressed-women's agency-office, I've come to
consult her about Marianne. That woman will die before six months are
out, a victim to high civilization and the Paddies. There we are, twelve
miles out from Boston, in a country villa so convenient that every part
of it might almost do its own work,--everything arranged in the most
convenient, contiguous, self-adjusting, self-acting, patent-right,
perfective manner,--and yet, I tell you, Marianne will die of that
house. It will yet be recorded on her tombstone, 'Died of conveniences.'
For myself, what I languish for is a log cabin, with a bed in one
corner, a trundle-bed underneath for the children, a fireplace only six
feet off, a table, four chairs, one kettle, a coffee-pot, and a tin
baker,--that's all. I lived deliciously in an establishment of this kind
last summer, when I was up at Lake Superior; and I am convinced, if I
could move Marianne into it at once, that she would become a healthy and
a happy woman. Her life is smothered out of her with comforts; we have
too many rooms, too many carpets, too many vases and knick-knacks, too
much china and silver; she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets;
the children all have too many clothes;--in fact, to put it
scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our garments are moth-eaten, our
gold and our silver is cankered,--and, in short, Marianne is sick in
bed, and I have come to the agency-office-for-distressed-women to take
you out to attend to her.
"The fact is," continued Bob, "that since our cook married, and Alice
went to California, there seems to be no possibility of putting our
domestic cabinet upon any permanent basis. The number of female persons
that have been through our house, and the ravages they have wrought on
it for the last six months, pass belief. I had yesterday a bill of sixty
dollars' plumbing to pay for damages of various kinds which had had to
be repaired in our very convenient water-works; and the blame of each
particular one had been bandied like a shuttlecock among our three
household divinities. Biddy privately assured my wife that Kate was in
the habit of emptying dust-pans of rubbish into the main drain from the
chambers, and washing any little extra bits down through the bowls; and,
in fact, when one of the bathing-room bowls had overflowed so as to
damage the frescoes below, my wife, with great delicacy and precaution,
interrogated Kate as to whether she had followed her instructions in the
care of the water-pipes. Of course she protested the most immaculate
care and circumspection. 'Sure, and she knew how careful one ought to
be, and wasn't of the likes of thim as wouldn't mind what throuble they
made,--like Biddy, who would throw trash and hair in the pipes, and
niver listen to her tellin'; sure, and hadn't she broken the pipes in
the kitchen, and lost the stoppers, as it was a shame to see in a
Christian house?' Ann, the third girl, being privately questioned,
blamed Biddy on Monday, and Kate on Tuesday; on Wednesday, however, she
exonerated both; but on Thursday, being in a high quarrel with both, she
departed, accusing them severally, not only of all the evil practices
afore-said, but of lying, and stealing, and all other miscellaneous
wickednesses that came to hand. Whereat the two thus accused rushed in,
bewailing themselves and cursing Ann in alternate strophes, averring
that she had given the baby laudanum, and, taking it out riding, had
stopped for hours with it in a filthy lane, where the scarlet fever was
said to be rife,--in short, made so fearful a picture, that Marianne
gave up the child's life at once, and has taken to her bed. I have
endeavored all I could to quiet her, by telling her that the
scarlet-fever story was probably an extemporaneous work of fiction, got
up to gratify the Hibernian anger at Ann; and that it wasn't in the
least worth while to believe one thing more than another from the fact
that any of the tribe said it. But she refuses to be comforted, and is
so Utopian as to lie there, crying, 'O, if I only could get one that I
could trust,--one that really would speak the truth to me,--one that I
might know really went where she said she went, and really did as she
said she did!' To have to live so, she says, and bring up little
children with those she can't trust out of her sight, whose word is good
for nothing,--to feel that her beautiful house and her lovely things are
all going to rack and ruin, and she can't take care of them, and can't
see where or when or how the mischief is done,--in short, the poor child
talks as women do who are violently attacked with housekeeping fever
tending to congestion of the brain. She actually yesterday told me that
she wished, on the whole, she never had got married, which I take to be
the most positive indication of mental alienation."
"Here," said I, "we behold at this moment two women dying for the want
of what they can mutually give one another,--each having a supply of
what the other needs, but held back by certain invisible cobwebs, slight
but strong, from coming to each other's assistance. Marianne has money
enough, but she wants a helper in her family, such as all her money has
been hitherto unable to buy; and here, close at hand, is a woman who
wants home-shelter, healthy, varied, active, cheerful labor, with
nourishing food, kind care, and good wages. What hinders these women
from rushing to the help of one another, just as two drops of water on a
leaf rush together and make one? Nothing but a miserable prejudice,--but
a prejudice so strong that women will starve in any other mode of life,
rather than accept competency and comfort in this."
"You don't mean," said my wife, "to propose that our _protégée_ should
go to Marianne as a servant?"
"I do say it would be the best thing for her to do,--the only opening
that I see, and a very good one, too, it is. Just look at it. Her bare
living at this moment cannot cost her less than five or six dollars a
week,--everything at the present time is so very dear in the city. Now
by what possible calling open to her capacity can she pay her board and
washing, fuel and lights, and clear a hundred and some odd dollars a
year? She could not do it as a district school-teacher; she certainly
cannot, with her feeble health, do it by plain sewing; she could not do
it as a copyist. A robust woman might go into a factory, and earn more;
but factory work is unintermitted, twelve hours daily, week in and out,
in the same movement, in close air, amid the clatter of machinery; and a
person delicately organized soon sinks under it. It takes a stolid,
enduring temperament to bear factory labor. Now look at Marianne's house
and family, and see what is insured to your _protégée_ there.
"In the first place, a home,--a neat, quiet chamber, quite as good as
she has probably been accustomed to,--the very best of food, served in a
pleasant, light, airy kitchen, which is one of the most agreeable rooms
in the house, and the table and table-service quite equal to those of
most farmers and mechanics. Then her daily tasks would be light and
varied,--some sweeping, some dusting, the washing and dressing of
children, the care of their rooms and the nursery,--all of it the most
healthful, the most natural work of a woman,--work alternating with
rest, and diverting thought from painful subjects by its variety,--and
what is more, a kind of work in which a good Christian woman might have
satisfaction, as feeling herself useful in the highest and best way; for
the child's nurse, if she be a pious, well-educated woman, may make the
whole course of nursery-life an education in goodness. Then, what is far
different from many other modes of gaining a livelihood, a woman in this
capacity can make and feel herself really and truly beloved. The hearts
of little children are easily gained, and their love is real and warm,
and no true woman can become the object of it without feeling her own
life made brighter. Again, she would have in Marianne a sincere,
warm-hearted friend, who would care for her tenderly, respect her
sorrows, shelter her feelings, be considerate of her wants, and in
every way aid her in the cause she has most at heart,--the succor of her
family. There are many ways besides her wages in which she would
infallibly be assisted by Marianne, so that the probability would be
that she could send her little salary almost untouched to those for
whose support she was toiling,--all this on her part."
"But," added my wife, "on the other hand, she would be obliged to
associate and be ranked with common Irish servants."
"Well," I answered, "is there any occupation, by which any of us gain
our living, which has not its disagreeable side? Does not the lawyer
spend all his days either in a dusty office or in the foul air of a
court-room? Is he not brought into much disagreeable contact with the
lowest class of society? Are not his labors dry and hard and exhausting?
Does not the blacksmith spend half his life in soot and grime, that he
may gain a competence for the other half? If this woman were to work in
a factory, would she not often be brought into associations distasteful
to her? Might it not be the same in any of the arts and trades in which
a living is to be got? There must be unpleasant circumstances about
earning a living in any way; only I maintain that those which a woman
would be likely to meet with as a servant in a refined, well-bred,
Christian family would be less than in almost any other calling. Are
there no trials to a woman, I beg to know, in teaching a district
school, where all the boys, big and little, of a neighborhood
congregate? For my part, were it my daughter or sister who was in
necessitous circumstances, I would choose for her a position such as I
name, in a kind, intelligent, Christian family, before many of those to
which women do devote themselves."
"Well," said Bob, "all this has a good sound enough, but it's quite
impossible. It's true, I verily believe, that such a kind of servant in
our family would really prolong Marianne's life years,--that it would
improve her health, and be an unspeakable blessing to her, to me, and
the children,--and I would almost go down on my knees to a really
well-educated, good, American woman who would come into our family, and
take that place; but I know it's perfectly vain and useless to expect
it. You know we have tried the experiment two or three times of having a
person in our family who should be on the footing of a friend, yet do
the duties of a servant, and that we _never_ could make it work well.
These half-and-half people are so sensitive, so exacting in their
demands, so hard to please, that we have come to the firm determination
that we will have no sliding-scale in our family, and that whoever we
are to depend on must come with _bona-fide_ willingness to take the
position of a servant, such as that position is in our house; and
_that_, I suppose, your _protégée_ would never do, even if she could
thereby live easier, have less hard work, better health, and quite as
much money as she could earn in any other way."
"She would consider it a personal degradation, I suppose," said my wife.
"And yet, if she only knew it," said Bob, "I should respect her far more
profoundly for her willingness to take that position, when adverse
fortune has shut other doors."
"Well, now," said I, "this woman is, as I understand, the daughter of a
respectable stone-mason; and the domestic habits of her early life have
probably been economical and simple. Like most of our mechanics'
daughters, she has received in one of our high schools an education
which has cultivated and developed her mind far beyond those of her
parents and the associates of her childhood. This is a common fact in
our American life. By our high schools the daughters of plain workingmen
are raised to a state of intellectual culture which seems to make the
disposition of them in any kind of industrial calling a difficult one.
They all want to teach school,--and school-teaching, consequently, is an
overcrowded profession,--and, failing that, there is only millinery and
dressmaking. Of late, it is true, efforts have been made in various
directions to widen their sphere. Type-setting and book-keeping are in
some instances beginning to be open to them.
"All this time there is lying, neglected and despised, a calling to
which womanly talents and instincts are peculiarly fitted,--a calling
full of opportunities of the most lasting usefulness,--a calling which
insures a settled home, respectable protection, healthful exercise, good
air, good food, and good wages,--a calling in which a woman may make
real friends, and secure to herself warm affection; and yet this calling
is the one always refused, shunned, contemned, left to the alien and the
stranger, and that simply and solely because it bears the name of
_servant_. A Christian woman, who holds the name of Christ in her heart
in true devotion, would think it the greatest possible misfortune and
degradation to become like him in taking upon her 'the form of a
servant.' The founder of Christianity says, 'Whether is greater, he that
sitteth at meat or he that serveth? But _I_ am among you as he that
serveth.' But notwithstanding these so plain declarations of Jesus, we
find that scarce any one in a Christian land will accept real advantages
of position and employment that come with that name and condition."
"I suppose," said my wife, "I could prevail upon this woman to do all
the duties of the situation, if she could be, as they phrase it,
'treated as one of the family.'"
"That is to say," said Bob, "if she could sit with us at the same table,
be introduced to our friends, and be in all respects as one of us. Now
as to this, I am free to say that I have no false aristocratic scruples.
I consider every well-educated woman as fully my equal, not to say my
superior; but it does not follow from this that she would be one whom I
should wish to make a third party with me and my wife at mealtimes. Our
meals are often our seasons of privacy,--the times when we wish in
perfect unreserve to speak of matters that concern ourselves and our
family alone. Even invited guests and family friends would not be always
welcome, however agreeable at times. Now a woman may be perfectly worthy
of respect, and we may be perfectly respectful to her, whom nevertheless
we do not wish to take into the circle of intimate friendship. I regard
the position of a woman who comes to perform domestic service as I do
any other business relation. We have a very respectable young lady in
our employ, who does legal copying for us, and all is perfectly pleasant
and agreeable in our mutual relations; but the case would be far
otherwise, were she to take it into her head that we treated her with
contempt, because my wife did not call on her, and because she was not
occasionally invited to tea. Besides, I apprehend that a woman of quick
sensibilities, employed in domestic service, and who was so far treated
as a member of the family as to share our table, would find her position
even more painful and embarrassing than if she took once for all the
position of a servant. We could not control the feelings of our friends;
we could not always insure that they would be free from aristocratic
prejudice, even were we so ourselves. We could not force her upon their
acquaintance, and she might feel far more slighted than she would in a
position where no attentions of any kind were to be expected. Besides
which, I have always noticed that persons standing in this uncertain
position are objects of peculiar antipathy to the servants in full; that
they are the cause of constant and secret cabals and discontents; and
that a family where the two orders exist has always raked up in it the
smouldering embers of a quarrel ready at any time to burst out into open
feud."
"Well," said I, "here lies the problem of American life. Half our women,
like Marianne, are being faded and made old before their time by
exhausting endeavors to lead a life of high civilization and refinement
with only such untrained help as is washed up on our shores by the tide
of emigration. Our houses are built upon a plan that precludes the
necessity of much hard labor, but requires rather careful and nice
handling. A well-trained, intelligent woman, who had vitalized her
finger-ends by means of a well-developed brain, could do all the work of
such a house with comparatively little physical fatigue. So stands the
case as regards our houses. Now over against the women that are
perishing in them from too much care, there is another class of American
women that are wandering up and down, perishing for lack of some
remunerating employment. That class of women, whose developed brains and
less developed muscles mark them as peculiarly fitted for the
performance of the labors of a high civilization, stand utterly aloof
from paid domestic service. Sooner beg, sooner starve, sooner marry for
money, sooner hang on as dependants in families where they know they are
not wanted, than accept of a quiet home, easy, healthful work, and
certain wages, in these refined and pleasant modern dwellings of ours."
"What is the reason of this?" said Bob.
"The reason is, that we have not yet come to the full development of
Christian democracy. The taint of old aristocracies is yet pervading all
parts of our society. We have not yet realized fully the true dignity of
labor, and the surpassing dignity of domestic labor. And I must say that
the valuable and courageous women who have agitated the doctrines of
Woman's Rights among us have not in all things seen their way clear in
this matter."
"Don't talk to me of those creatures," said Bob, "those men-women,
those anomalies, neither flesh nor fish, with their conventions, and
their cracked woman-voices strained in what they call public speaking,
but which I call public squeaking! No man reverences true women more
than I do. I hold a real, true, thoroughly good _woman_, whether in my
parlor or my kitchen, as my superior. She can always teach me something
that I need to know. She has always in her somewhat of the divine gift
of prophecy; but in order to keep it, she must remain a woman. When she
crops her hair, puts on pantaloons, and strides about in conventions,
she is an abortion, and not a woman."
"Come! come!" said I, "after all, speak with deference. We that choose
to wear soft clothing and dwell in kings' houses must respect the
Baptists, who wear leathern girdles, and eat locusts and wild honey.
They are the voices crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for a
coming good. They go down on their knees in the mire of life to lift up
and brighten and restore a neglected truth; and we that have not the
energy to share their struggle should at least refrain from criticising
their soiled garments and ungraceful action. There have been
excrescences, eccentricities, peculiarities, about the camp of these
reformers; but the body of them have been true and noble women, and
worthy of all the reverence due to such. They have already in many of
our States reformed the laws relating to woman's position, and placed
her on a more just and Christian basis. It is through their movements
that in many of our States a woman can hold the fruits of her own
earnings, if it be her ill luck to have a worthless, drunken spendthrift
for a husband. It is owing to their exertions that new trades and
professions are opening to woman; and all that I have to say of them is,
that in the suddenness of their zeal for opening new paths for her feet,
they have not sufficiently considered the propriety of straightening,
widening, and mending the one broad, good old path of domestic labor,
established by God himself. It does appear to me, that, if at least a
portion of their zeal could be spent in removing the stones out of this
highway of domestic life, and making it pleasant and honorable, they
would effect even more. I would not have them leave undone what they are
doing; but I would, were I worthy to be considered, humbly suggest to
their prophetic wisdom and enthusiasm, whether, in this new future of
women which they wish to introduce, women's natural, God-given
employment of _domestic service_ is not to receive a new character, and
rise in a new form.
"'To love and serve' is a motto worn with pride on some aristocratic
family shields in England. It ought to be graven on the Christian
shield. _Servant_ is the name which Christ gives to the _Christian_; and
in speaking of his kingdom as distinguished from earthly kingdoms, he
distinctly said, that rank there should be conditioned, not upon desire
to command, but on willingness to serve.
"'Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them,
and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not
be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your
minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
_servant_.'
"Why is it, that this name of servant, which Christ says is the highest
in the kingdom of heaven, is so dishonored among us professing
Christians, that good women will beg or starve, will suffer almost any
extreme of poverty and privation, rather than accept home, competence,
security, with this honored name?"
"The fault with many of our friends of the Woman's Rights order," said
my wife, "is the depreciatory tone in which they have spoken of the
domestic labors of a family as being altogether below the scope of the
faculties of woman. '_Domestic drudgery_' they call it,--an expression
that has done more harm than any two words that ever were put together.
"Think of a woman's calling clear-starching and ironing domestic
drudgery, and to better the matter turning to type-setting in a grimy
printing-office! Call the care of china and silver, the sweeping of
carpets, the arrangement of parlors and sitting-rooms, drudgery; and go
into a factory and spend the day amid the whir and clatter and thunder
of machinery, inhaling an atmosphere loaded with wool and
machine-grease, and keeping on the feet for twelve hours, nearly
continuously! Think of its being called drudgery to take care of a
clean, light, airy nursery, to wash and dress and care for two or three
children, to mend their clothes, tell them stories, make them
playthings, take them out walking or driving; and rather than this, to
wear out the whole livelong day, extending often deep into the night, in
endless sewing, in a close room of a dressmaking establishment! Is it
any less drudgery to stand all day behind a counter, serving customers,
than to tend a door-bell and wait on a table? For my part," said my
wife, "I have often thought the matter over, and concluded, that, if I
were left in straitened circumstances, as many are in a great city, I
would seek a position as a servant in one of our good families."
"I envy the family that you even think of in that connection," said I.
"I fancy the amazement which would take possession of them as you began
to develop among them."
"I have always held," said my wife, "that family work, in many of its
branches, can be better performed by an educated woman than an
uneducated one. Just as an army where even the bayonets think is
superior to one of mere brute force and mechanical training, so, I have
heard it said, some of our distinguished modern female reformers show an
equal superiority in the domestic sphere,--and I do not doubt it. Family
work was never meant to be the special province of untaught brains. I
have sometimes thought I should like to show what I could do as a
servant."
"Well," said Bob, "to return from all this to the question, What's to be
done with her? Are you going to _my_ distressed woman? If you are,
suppose you take _your_ distressed woman along, and ask her to try it. I
can promise her a pleasant house, a quiet room by herself, healthful and
not too hard work, a kind friend, and some leisure for reading, writing,
or whatever other pursuit of her own she may choose for her recreation.
We are always quite willing to lend books to any who appreciate them.
Our house is surrounded by pleasant grounds, which are open to our
servants as to ourselves. So let her come and try us. I am quite sure
that country air, quiet security, and moderate exercise in a good home,
will bring up her health; and if she is willing to take the one or two
disagreeables which may come with all this, let her try us."
"Well," said I, "so be it; and would that all the women seeking homes
and employment could thus fall in with women who have homes and are
perishing in them for want of educated helpers!"
On this question of woman's work I have yet more to say, but must defer
it till another time.
II.
WOMAN'S SPHERE.
"What do you think of this Woman's Rights question?" said Bob Stephens.
"From some of your remarks, I apprehend that you think there is
something in it. I may be wrong, but I must confess that I have looked
with disgust on the whole movement. No man reverences women as I do; but
I reverence them _as_ women. I reverence them for those very things in
which their sex differs from ours; but when they come upon our ground,
and begin to work and fight after our manner and with our weapons, I
regard them as fearful anomalies, neither men nor women. These Woman's
Rights Conventions appear to me to have ventilated crudities,
absurdities, and blasphemies. To hear them talk about men, one would
suppose that the two sexes were natural-born enemies, and wonders
whether they ever had fathers and brothers. One would think, upon their
showing, that all men were a set of ruffians, in league against
women,--they seeming, at the same time, to forget how on their very
platforms the most constant and gallant defenders of their rights are
men. Wendell Phillips and Wentworth Higginson have put at the service of
the cause masculine training and manly vehemence, and complacently
accepted the wholesale abuse of their own sex at the hands of their
warrior sisters. One would think, were all they say of female powers
true, that our Joan-of-Arcs ought to have disdained to fight under male
captains."
"I think," said my wife, "that, in all this talk about the rights of
men, and the rights of women, and the rights of children, the world
seems to be forgetting what is quite as important, the _duties_ of men
and women and children. We all hear of our _rights_ till we forget our
_duties_; and even theology is beginning to concern itself more with
what man has a right to expect of his Creator than what the Creator has
a right to expect of man."
"You say the truth," said I; "there is danger of just this overaction;
and yet rights must be discussed; because, in order to understand the
duties we owe to any class, we must understand their rights. To know our
duties to men, women, and children, we must know what the rights of men,
women, and children justly are. As to the 'Woman's Rights movement,' it
is not peculiar to America, it is part of a great wave in the incoming
tide of modern civilization; the swell is felt no less in Europe, but it
combs over and breaks on our American shore, because our great wide
beach affords the best play for its waters; and as the ocean waves bring
with them kelp, sea-weed, mud, sand, gravel, and even putrefying debris,
which lie unsightly on the shore, and yet, on the whole, are healthful
and refreshing,--so the Woman's Rights movement, with its conventions,
its speech-makings, its crudities, and eccentricities, is nevertheless a
part of a healthful and necessary movement of the human race towards
progress. This question of Woman and her Sphere is now, perhaps, the
greatest of the age. We have put Slavery under foot, and with the
downfall of Slavery the only obstacle to the success of our great
democratic experiment is overthrown, and there seems no limit to the
splendid possibilities which it may open before the human race.
"In the reconstruction that is now coming there lies more than the
reconstruction of States and the arrangement of the machinery of
government. We need to know and feel, all of us, that, from the moment
of the death of Slavery, we parted finally from the _régime_ and control
of all the old ideas formed under old oppressive systems of society, and
came upon a new plane of life.
"In this new life we must never forget that we are a peculiar people,
that we have to walk in paths unknown to the Old World,--paths where its
wisdom cannot guide us, where its precedents can be of little use to us,
and its criticisms, in most cases, must be wholly irrelevant. The
history of our war has shown us of how little service to us in any
important crisis the opinions and advice of the Old World can be. We
have been hurt at what seemed to us the want of sympathy, the direct
antagonism, of England. We might have been less hurt if we had properly
understood that Providence had placed us in a position so far ahead of
her ideas or power of comprehension, that just judgment or sympathy was
not to be expected from her.
"As we went through our great war with no help but that of God, obliged
to disregard the misconceptions and impertinences which the foreign
press rained down upon us, so, if we are wise, we shall continue to do.
Our object must now be to make the principles on which our government is
founded permeate consistently the mass of society, and to purge out the
leaven of aristocratic and Old World ideas. So long as there is an
illogical working in our actual life, so long as there is any class
denied equal rights with other classes, so long will there be agitation
and trouble."
"Then," said my wife, "you believe that women ought to vote?"
"If the principle on which we founded our government is true, that
taxation must not exist without representation, and if women hold
property and are taxed, it follows that women should be represented in
the State by their votes, or there is an illogical working of our
government."
"But, my dear, don't you think that this will have a bad effect on the
female character?"
"Yes," said Bob, "it will make women caucus-holders, political
candidates."
"It may make this of some women, just as of some men," said I. "But all
men do not take any great interest in politics; it is very difficult to
get some of the best of them to do their duty in voting; and the same
will be found true among women."
"But, after all," said Bob, "what do you gain? What will a woman's vote
be but a duplicate of that of her husband or father, or whatever man
happens to be her adviser?"
"That may be true on a variety of questions; but there are subjects on
which the vote of women would, I think, be essentially different from
that of men. On the subjects of temperance, public morals, and
education, I have no doubt that the introduction of the female vote into
legislation, in States, counties, and cities, would produce results very
different from that of men alone. There are thousands of women who would
close grogshops, and stop the traffic in spirits, if they had the
legislative power; and it would be well for society if they had. In
fact, I think that a State can no more afford to dispense with the vote
of women in its affairs than a family. Imagine a family where the female
has no voice in the housekeeping! A State is but a larger family, and
there are many of its concerns which equally with those of a private
household would be bettered by female supervision."
"But fancy women going to those horrible voting-places! It is more than
I can do myself," said Bob.
"But you forget," said I, "that they are horrible and disgusting
principally because women never go to them. All places where women are
excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced,
there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order. When
a man can walk up to the ballot-box with his wife or his sister on his
arm, voting-places will be far more agreeable than now; and the polls
will not be such bear-gardens that refined men will be constantly
tempted to omit their political duties there.
"If for nothing else, I would have women vote, that the business of
voting may not be so disagreeable and intolerable to men of refinement
as it now is; and I sincerely believe that the cause of good morals,
good order, cleanliness, and public health would be a gainer, not merely
by the added feminine vote, but by the added vote of a great many
excellent, but too fastidious men, who are now kept from the polls by
the disagreeables they meet there.
"Do you suppose, that, if women had equal representation with men in the
municipal laws of New York, its reputation for filth during the last
year would have gone so far beyond that of Cologne, or any other city
renowned for bad smells? I trow not. I believe a _lady-mayoress_ would
have brought in a dispensation of brooms and whitewash, and made a
terrible searching into dark holes and vile corners, before now.
_Female_ New York, I have faith to believe, has yet left in her enough
of the primary instincts of womanhood to give us a clean, healthy city,
if female votes had any power to do it."
"But," said Bob, "you forget that voting would bring together all the
women of the lower classes."
"Yes; but thanks to the instincts of their sex, they would come in their
Sunday clothes; for where is the woman that hasn't her finery, and will
not embrace every chance to show it? Biddy's parasol, and hat with pink
ribbons, would necessitate a clean shirt in Pat as much as on Sunday.
Voting would become a _fête_, and we should have a population at the
polls as well dressed as at church. Such is my belief."
"I do not see," said Bob, "but you go to the full extent with our modern
female reformers."
"There are certain neglected truths, which have been held up by these
reformers, that are gradually being accepted and infused into the life
of modern society; and their recognition will help to solidify and
purify democratic institutions. They are,--
"1. The right of every woman to hold independent property.
"2. The right of every woman to receive equal pay with man for work
which she does equally well.
"3. The right of any woman to do any work for which, by her natural
organization and talent, she is peculiarly adapted.
"Under the first head, our energetic sisters have already, by the help
of their gallant male adjutants, reformed the laws of several of our
States, so that a married woman is no longer left the unprotected legal
slave of any unprincipled, drunken spendthrift who may be her
husband,--but, in case of the imbecility or improvidence of the natural
head of the family, the wife, if she have the ability, can conduct
business, make contracts, earn and retain money for the good of the
household; and I am sure no one can say that immense injustice and
cruelty are not thereby prevented.
"It is quite easy for women who have the good fortune to have just and
magnanimous husbands to say that they feel no interest in such reforms,
and that they would willingly trust their property to the man to whom
they give themselves; but they should remember that laws are not made
for the restraint of the generous and just, but of the dishonest and
base. The law which enables a married woman to hold her own property
does not forbid her to give it to the man of her heart, if she so
pleases; and it does protect many women who otherwise would be reduced
to the extremest misery. I once knew an energetic milliner who had her
shop attached four times, and a flourishing business broken up in four
different cities, because she was tracked from city to city by a
worthless spendthrift, who only waited till she had amassed a little
property in a new place to swoop down upon and carry it off. It is to be
hoped that the time is not distant when every State will give to woman a
fair chance to the ownership and use of her own earnings and her own
property.
"Under the head of the right of every woman to do any work for which by
natural organization and talent she is especially adapted, there is a
word or two to be said.
"The talents and tastes of the majority of women are naturally domestic.
The family is evidently their sphere, because in all ways their
organization fits them for that more than for anything else.
"But there are occasionally women who are exceptions to the common law,
gifted with peculiar genius and adaptations. With regard to such women,
there has never seemed to be any doubt in the verdict of mankind, that
they ought to follow their nature, and that their particular _sphere_
was the one to which they are called. Did anybody ever think that Mrs.
Siddons and Mrs. Kemble and Ristori had better have applied themselves
sedulously to keeping house, because they were women, and 'woman's
noblest station is retreat?'
"The world has always shown a fair average of good sense in this
matter,--from the days of the fair Hypatia in Alexandria, who, we are
told, gave lectures on philosophy behind a curtain, lest her charms
should distract the attention of too impressible young men, down to
those of Anna Dickinson. Mankind are not, after all, quite fools, and
seem in these cases to have a reasonable idea that exceptional talents
have exceptional laws, and make their own code of proprieties.