use and admire it. The "street dress," even the most unsophisticated,
is under some restrictions; but the house dress may be anything we
please. There is nothing in the mechanical limitations of house life to
pervert or check this form of loveliness. We are free to make and to
use the most exquisite materials, to wear the most pleasing of textures
and shapes.
Why, then, do we find in this line of development such hideously
inartistic things? Because the discords of domestic industries and
functions prevent a sense of harmony even here. Because the woman,
confined to a primitive, a savage plane of occupation, continues to
manifest an equally savage plane of æsthetic taste.
One of the most marked features of early savage decoration is in its
distortion and mutilation of the body to meet arbitrary standards of
supposed beauty. An idea of beauty, true or false, is apprehended, its
line of special evolution rapidly followed, and there is no knowledge
of physiology or grasp of larger harmonies of bodily grace to check the
ensuing mutilation.
The Zulus decorate their cattle by cutting the dewlap into fringe, and
splitting and twisting the growing horns into fantastic shapes. Some
savage women tie the gastrocnemius muscle tightly above and below, till
the "calf of the leg" looks like a Dutch cheese on a broomstick. Some
tie strings about the breasts till they dangle half detached; some file
the teeth or pluck out the eyebrows.
In the home, among women, still appear these manifestations of a crude
beauty-sense, unchecked by larger knowledge. Our best existent examples
are in the Chinese foot-binding custom, and ours of waist-binding. The
initial idea of the corset is in a way artistic. We perceive that the
feminine form has certain curves and proportions, tending thus and so;
and following the tendency we proceed to exaggerate those curves and
proportions and fix them arbitrarily. This is the same law by which we
conventionalise a flower for decorative purposes, turning the lily of
the field into the _fleur-de-lis_ of the tapestry. The Egyptians
did it, to an extreme degree, in their pictorial art, reducing the
human body to certain fixed proportions and attitudes.
The application of these principles to living bodies is peculiar to the
savage, and its persistence among our women is perhaps the strongest
proof of the primitive nature of the home. As women enter the larger
life of the world these limitations are easily outgrown; the
working-woman cannot make a conventionalised ornament of her body, and
the business woman does not care to; the really educated woman knows
better, and the woman artist would be bitterly ashamed of such an
offence against nature; only the home-bound woman peacefully maintains
it.
To the scientific student, man or woman, the sturdy reappearance of
this very early custom is intensely interesting; he sees in the "newest
fashion" of holding and binding the body a peculiar survival of the
very oldest fashion in personal decoration known to us. The latest
corset advertisement ranks ethnologically with the earliest Egyptian
hieroglyph, the Aztec inscriptions, and races far behind them.
The woman's love of beauty finds its freest expression along lines of
personal decorations, and there, as in the decoration of the house, we
see the same crippling influence.
She loves beautiful textures, velvet, satin, and silk, soft muslin and
sheer lawn; she loves the delicate fantasy of lace, the alluring
richness of fur; she loves the colour and sparkle of gems, the
splendour of burnished metal, and, in her savage crudity of taste, she
slaps together any and every combination of these things and wears them
happily.
A typical extreme of this ingenuous lack of artistic principles is the
recent, and still present, enormity of trimming lace with fur. This
combines the acme of all highly wrought refinement of texture and
exquisite delicacy of design, a fabric that suggests the subtleties of
artistic expression with a gossamer tenuity of grace; this, and dressed
hide with the hair still on, the very first cover for man's nakedness,
the symbol of savage luxury and grandeur, of raw barbaric wealth, which
suggests warmth, ample satisfying warmth and crude splendour in its
thick profusion! We cut up the warmth and amplitude into threads and
scraps which can only suggest the gleanings of a tan-yard rag-picker,
and use these shabby fragments to _trim lace_! Trim what is in
itself the sublimated essence of trimming, with the leavings of the
earliest of raw materials! Only the soul which spends its life in a
group of chambers connected merely by mechanical force; in a group of
industries connected merely by iron tradition, could bear a combination
like that--to say nothing of enjoying it. Domestic art is almost a
contradiction in terms.
The development of art, like the development of industry, requires the
specialisation, the life-long devotion, impossible to the arbitrary
combinations of home life. Where you find great beauty you find a great
civic sense, most clearly in that high-water mark of human progress in
this direction, ancient Greece. Within the limits of their cities, the
Greeks were more fully "civilised" than any people before or since.
They thought, felt, and acted in this large social contact; and so
developed a sufficient breadth of view, a wide, sweet sanity of mind,
which allowed of this free growth of the art-sense. Great art is always
public, and appears only in periods of high social development. The one
great art of the dark ages--religious architecture--flourished in that
universal atmosphere of "Christendom," the one social plane on which
all met.
The Greeks were unified in many ways; and their highly socialised minds
gave room for a more general development of art, as well as many other
social faculties.
Household decoration was not conspicuous, nor elaborate attire; and
while their women were necessarily beautiful as the daughters of such
men, it was the men whose beauty was most admired and immortalised. The
women stayed at home, as now, but the home did not absorb men, too, as
it does now. When art caters to private tastes, to domestic tastes, to
the wholly private and domestic tastes of women, art goes down.
The Home was the birthplace of Art, as of so many other human
faculties, but is no sufficing area for it. So long as the lives of our
women are spent at home, their tastes limited by it, their abilities,
ambitions, and desires limited by it, so long will the domestic
influence lower art.
"So much the worse for art!" will stoutly cry the defenders of the
home; and they would be right if we could have but one. We can have
both.
A larger womanhood, a civilised womanhood, specialised, broad-minded,
working and caring for the public good _as well as the private_,
will give us not only better homes, but homes more beautiful. The child
will be cradled in an atmosphere of harmonious loveliness, and its
influence will be felt in all life. This is no trifle of an
artificially cultivated æsthetic taste; it is one of nature's deepest
laws. "Art" may vary and suffer in different stages of our growth, but
the laws of beauty remain the same; and a race reared under those laws
will be the nobler.
These more developed women will outgrow the magpie taste that hoards
all manner of gay baubles; the monkey-taste that imitates whatever it
sees; the savage taste that distorts the human body; they will
recognise in that body one infinitely noble expression of beauty, and
refuse to dishonour it with ugliness.
They will learn to care for proportion as well as plumpness, for health
as well as complexion, for strength and activity as essentials to
living loveliness, and to see that no dress can be beautiful which in
any way contradicts the body it should but serve and glorify. We do not
know, because we have not seen, the difference to our lives which will
be made by this large sense of beauty in the woman--in the home; but we
may be assured that, while she stays continually there, we shall have
but our present stage of domestic art.
IX
DOMESTIC ETHICS
The relation of the home to ethics is so vital, so intimate, so
extensive, as to call for the utmost care and patience in its study.
The "domestic virtues" are well known to us, and well loved. We have a
general conviction that all our virtues as well as charity begin at
home; that the ethical progress of man is a steady stream flowing out
of the home, and as far as we compare one virtue with another, we
assume the domestic virtues to be the best.
In half the race we ask nothing but the domestic virtues; in the other
half we look for something further; but consider such civic and social
virtues as appear to be offshoots of the domestic. We call the home
"the cradle of all the virtues," and never imagine for a moment that it
can cradle anything else--in the line of ethics.
Now let us make a careful examination of this field; first establishing
a standard of human conduct and character, and then studying the
relation of the home to that standard. The same consideration referred
to in previous chapters is here most urgently pressed upon the reader:
that all the qualities found in the home do not necessarily originate
there. As a race rises and improves, its improvement appears in the
home, as elsewhere. But that improvement is in itself due to varying
conditions. The diffusion of intelligence following the discovery of
the art of printing lifted the general average mind, and so lifted the
home as well as other departments of life. But that increase of
intelligence did not originate in home life, and is in no way due to
its influence.
The sense of human liberty which spread rapidly among us in the early
years of the settlement of this country, following, as it did, the
splendid dash for religious liberty which brought so many of our
ancestors here, has borne fruit in our home life. We have more freedom
in the family relation than is found in older forms of government, but
this larger freedom did not originate in the home and is in no way to
be accredited to it.
Home-life, as such, does in itself tend to produce certain ethical
qualities; qualities not produced, or not in any such degree, by other
fields of life. Constant association with helpless infancy develops a
generous care and kindness--that is, it does so when the helpless
infants are one's own. The managers of foundling and orphan asylums do
not seem always to be so affected. Constant association with the
inevitable errors and mistakes of childhood develops patience and
sympathy, or tends to do so. There are qualities brought out in home
life which extend their influence into the life of the world. The young
man or woman who has had good home influence shows that advantage all
through life. But there are also qualities brought out in the world's
life apart from the home; and the man or woman affected by these shows
them in the home life. We find in our homes the gathered flowers of
civilisation, of Christianity, of progress in general; and
unconsciously accredit the homes with the production of these beautiful
results--quite erroneously.
The influence of religion, as we all know when we stop to think of it,
has done much more for us than the influence of the home. The
Canaanites had homes--yet gave their children to Moloch. The demand of
the idol had more power than the appeal of the child. The Hindoos have
homes, yet give their babies to the water, their widows to the fire.
Besides religion there are many other influences which affect human
character and conduct; the influences of our government, our education,
our business. We are seeking here to point out precisely what ethical
qualities are developed by home life, good or bad; and to show further
that the present condition of the home is not final, nor vitally
essential. We may so change the conditions of home life as to retain
all that modifies character for good, and to discard all that modifies
it for evil.
The home as a permanent institution in society, if rightly placed and
understood, works for good. The home in its non-essential conditions,
if wrongly placed in our scheme of thought, if misunderstood, if out of
proportion and loaded with anachronisms, works evil. In the complex
group of qualities which make up the human character to-day, for good
and ill, many influences are traceable; and we wish here to disentangle
from among them some lines of influence, and show what place is held by
the home in making us what we are and what we wish to be.
What is the preferred type of excellence in humanity according to our
social instincts and to the measure of history? We began as savages,
and the savage standard of ethics is easily grasped; we have progressed
a long way beyond that savage standard; but ours is still well within
the reach of common understanding. Without seeking for careful sequence
let us enumerate our principal human virtues:
Love; with derivatives of kindness, sympathy, courtesy, etc. Truth;
with honesty, accuracy, etc. Courage; connects with strength and
wisdom. Justice; with a right humility. Self-control; with endurance,
patience, and again with courtesy; also with temperance and chastity.
Honour; a high, inflexible standard of various virtues.
These are arbitrary general types, but do fairly enough for this study.
A human being possessed of these in high degree we should call "good."
They all combine well with one another, and have many derivatives, some
of which are above noted. Their common opposites are as easily given:
Hate; unkindness, coldness, rudeness. Falsehood; lying, dishonesty,
inaccuracy. Cowardice; connects with weakness and ignorance. Injustice;
this allows pride--rests on ignorance. Self-indulgence; followed by
intemperance, unchastity, impatience, and other vices. Dishonour;
meaning a low standard of virtues in general.
Man the savage had of these courage, in some lines; endurance and
patience, in some lines; civilised man surpasses him in these, and has
developed all the others. What are the conditions which have brought
forth this degree of virtue in us, and how does the home rank among
those conditions?
Let us first do it full justice. Mother-love is the foundation and
permanent force of home life; and, mother-love is, indeed, the parent
of all the love we know. Altruism was born of babyhood. The continued
existence of the child--of a succession of children; the permanent
presence of helplessness and its irresistible demands for care; this
forced us into a widening of the sympathies, a deepening of
sensitiveness to others' needs; this laid the foundations of human
love. In this sense, the home is the cradle of one of our very greatest
virtues. Love began with the mother; but it should not stop with her.
"Mother-love" is precisely limited to its own children.
Few, indeed, are the mothers who love other women's children. As
"mother" is a synonym for all kindness, so "stepmother" is a synonym
for all unkindness. Folklore and fairy-tale indicate old fact. Infant
helplessness and orphan need are not only what appeals to the
mother--it is most the blood-tie, the physical relation.
Civilisation and Christianity teach us to care for "the child,"
motherhood stops at "my child."
Still, in the home we do find the nursery of all the lines of family
affection, parental, filial, fraternal, and these are good. Hearts able
to love ten could more easily take in twenty; the love of one's own
parents spread to our present care for the aged; the power of loving
grew, and, as soon as it overstepped the limits of the home, it grew
more rapidly. We have learned to love our neighbours--if not as
ourselves, at least, better than strangers. We have learned to love our
fellow-citizens, fellow-craftsmen, fellow-countrymen. To-day the first
thrills of international good-will are stealing across the world--and
we are extending our sympathy even to the animals.
All this beautiful growth of love began at home; but the influence of
the home, as it now exists upon the growth, is not so wholly
gratifying. The love that we call human, the love of one another, the
love Christ teaches us, is extra-domestic. We are not told, "Inasmuch
as you have done it to your own families you have done it unto me." We
are not exhorted to an ever-increasing intensity of devotion to our own
blood-relations.
Both the teaching of our religion and the tendency of social progress
call for a larger love, and the home, in its position of arrested
development, primitive industry, and crippled womanhood, tends rather
to check that growth than to help it. The man's love for his family
finds expression in his labour for other people--he serves society, and
society provides for him and his dear ones; so good will spreads and
knits; comradeship and fellow-feeling appear, friendship brings its
pure height of affection; this is the natural line of development in
the great social virtue, love.
But the woman, still expressing her love for her family in direct
personal service, misses all that. The primitive father, to feed the
child, went forth himself and killed some rabbit--and the primitive
mother cooked it: love, in grade A. The modern father, to feed his
child, takes his thousandth part in some complex industry, and receives
his thousand-fold share of the complex products of others' industry,
and so provides for the child far more richly than could the savage:
love, in grade Z. But the modern mother--if we can call her so by
courtesy--to feed her child still does nothing but cook for it, still
loves in grade A; and the effect of that persistence of grade A is to
retard the development of grade Z. Mother-love is the fountain of all
our human affection; but mother-love, _as limited by the home_,
does not have the range and efficacy proper to our time. The home, as
at present maintained, checks the growth of love.
As to Truth. This is a distinctly modern virtue. It comes in slowly,
following power and freedom. The weak lie, a small beast hides; the
lion does not hide. The slave lies--and the courtier; the king does not
lie--he does not need to.
The most truthful nations are the most powerful. The most truthful
class is the most powerful. The more truthful sex is the more powerful.
Weakness, helplessness, ignorance, dependence, these breed falsehood
and evasion; and, in child, servant, and woman, the denizens of the
home, we have to combat these tendencies. The standard of sincerity of
the father may be taught the son; but the home is not the originator of
that standard. In this, as in other virtues, gain made in quite other
fields of growth is necessarily transmitted to the home; but fair
analysis must discriminate between the effect of religion, of
education, of new social demands, and the effect of the home as such.
Courage comes along two main lines--by exposure to danger, and by
increase of strength. The home, in its very nature, is intended to
shield from danger; it is in origin a hiding place, a shelter for the
defenceless. Staying in it is in no way conducive to the growth of
courage. Constant shelter, protection, and defence may breed
gratitude--must breed cowardice. We expect timidity of "women and
children"--the housemates. Yet courage is by no means a sex attribute.
Every species of animal that shows courage shows it equally in male and
female--or even more in mother than in father. "It is better to meet a
she-bear robbed of her whelps than a fool in his folly." This dominant
terror--the fool--is contrasted with the female bear--not the male.
Belligerence, mere combativeness, is a masculine attribute; but courage
is not.
The cowardice of women is a distinctly home product. It is born of
weakness and ignorance; a weakness and an ignorance by no means
essential feminine attributes, but strictly domestic attributes. Keep a
man from birth wrapped in much cloth, shut away from sky and sun, wind
and rain, continually exhausting his nervous energy by incessant
activity in monotonous little things, and never developing his muscular
strength and skill by suitable exercise of a large and varied nature,
and he would be weak. Savage women are not weak. Peasant women are not
weak. Fishwives are not weak. The home-bound woman is weak, as would be
a home-bound man. Also, she is ignorant. Not, at least not nowadays,
ignorant necessarily of books, but ignorant of general life.
It is this ignorance and this weakness which makes women cowards;
cowards frank and unashamed; cowards accustomed to be petted and
praised, to be called "true woman" because they scream at that
arch-terror of the home--a mouse. This home-bred cowardice, so admired
in women, is of necessity transmitted to their sons as well as
daughters. It is laughed out of them and knocked out of them, but it is
born into them, relentlessly, with every generation. As black mothers
must alter the complexion of a race, so must coward mothers alter its
character. Apart from fighting--where the natural combative
sex-tendency often counts as courage--our men are not as brave as they
would be if their mothers were braver. We need courage to-day as much
as we ever needed it in our lives. Courage to think and speak the
truth; courage to face convention and prejudice, ridicule and
opposition. We need courage in men and women equally, to face the
problems of the times; and we do not get that courage from the home.
The sense of Justice is one of the highest human attributes; one of the
latest in appearance, one of the rarest and most precious. We love and
honour justice; we seek in some main lines of life to enforce it, after
a fashion; but many of our arrangements are still so palpably unjust
that one would think the virtue was but dreamed of, as yet unborn.
Justice follows equality and freedom. To apprehend it at all the mind
must first perceive the equal, and then resent the unequal. We must get
a sense of level, of balance, and then we notice a deflection. As a
matter of social evolution our system of legal justice springs from the
primitive market place, the disputes of equals, the calling in of a
third party to adjudicate. The disputants know instinctively that an
outsider can see the difficulty better than an insider. Slowly the
arbiter was given more power, more scope; out of much experience came
the crystallisation of law. "Justice!" was the cry of the lowest before
the highest; and the greatest kings were honoured most for this great
virtue.
The field for justice has widened as the state widened; it has reached
out to all classes; its high exercise distinguishes the foremost
nations of our times. Yet even in the teeth of the law-courts injustice
is still common; in everyday life it is most patent.
We have made great progress in the sense of justice and fair play; yet
we are still greatly lacking in it. What is the contribution of
domestic ethics to this mighty virtue? In the home is neither freedom
nor equality. There is ownership throughout; the dominant father, the
more or less subservient mother, the utterly dependent child; and
sometimes that still lower grade--the servant. Love is possible, love
deep and reciprocal; loyalty is possible; gratitude is possible;
kindness, to ruinous favouritism, is possible; unkindness, to all
conspiracy, hate, and rebellion is possible; justice is not possible.
Justice was born outside the home and a long way from it; and it has
never even been adopted there.