The home must always claim the first place in the large majority of
women's lives. It has done so in the past, it does so in the present, it
will continue to do so in the future. But woman's activities are no
longer to be merely confined to her own fireside, though that must
always hold a prominent place. The real problem of the day is the right
conduct of the home on scientific lines.
In some ways the management of the home has never been more difficult.
The servant problem has never been more acute than to-day; the cost of
living and the standard of comfort is going up by leaps and bounds, and
the old recipe of "Feed the brute," as far as the husband is concerned,
is no less inefficient. It is essential to-day to know something about
food values, the arrangement of meals, which avoid monotony, and provide
that requisite variety in nourishment, on which the good health and
ultimately the good temper of the household depend.
Again we are realising the great complexities of all questions dealing
with child-rearing and education. We have travelled far from the
self-complacency of the woman of thirty years ago, who based her claims
to a thorough knowledge of the up-bringing of children on the fact that
she had buried ten. This need for wider knowledge in all branches of
housekeeping is equally important to the unmarried woman, who is more
and more being called upon to act as a foster-mother, whether as a
teacher or in some other capacity, to the nation's children.
The care of the children is considered by all shades of opinion to be
the _clou_ of a woman's life, and every day more and more responsibility
is cast upon her in this respect. How can she, then, fulfil these duties
as they should be fulfilled if she is utterly ignorant of the laws of
health and of child-life, and how both are affected by environment and
all the other grave and fundamental truths which lie at the root of the
successful up-bringing and development of the child? It is now a
hackneyed saying "that the child of to-day is the man or woman of
to-morrow," but a whole world of truth lies enshrined in those words;
the children are the assets of the nation, and if their up-bringing is
not of the best they can never attain to that full heritage of
development which is the right of every soul born into the world.
Scientific training in Household Administration can alone save the
sorely taxed housewife of to-day from becoming more than a slave to her
domestic responsibilities. It is only by being a mistress of her craft,
"whether China fall or no," that she can make sufficient time to devote
herself to necessary self-culture and recreation as well as to those
ever-growing outside duties which the twentieth century is imposing upon
her in the shape of public and social work. If there is one thing which
is becoming increasingly obvious, it is that the help and advice of
scientifically trained women are absolutely necessary in the management
of hospitals, the administration of the Poor Law, and the general
solution of social problems.
At no other epoch in the history of mankind has woman stood on the same
high plane as she does to-day, and at no other period has so much been
demanded of her, intellectually, morally, and physically. It is only
within recent years that Science has attempted to come to the aid of
woman in helping her firstly to obtain, and then to maintain, the
position for which she was originally designed, as the complement of man
and as the chief element of preservation in human society.
If the history of mankind is traced back to primordial times, we find
that it was the female who possessed power over the emotional nature of
man, and it is becoming increasingly evident that the family owes
its origin as a social factor to the Mother, not to the Father.
Lippert is convinced "that the idea of an exclusively maternal kinship
at one time extended over the whole earth," and McLennan says, "We shall
endeavour to show that the most ancient system in which the idea of
blood-relationship was embodied was a system of kinship through the
females only."
Occupation seems to have been the main factor in determining that the
mother rather than the father should be the founder of the family.
Agriculture originally appears to have been entirely the woman's
industry, while the men were engaged in hunting or looking after the
cattle, and wherever agriculture was the predominant feature of life we
find that relationship is traced through the mother; while on the other
hand those tribes who were chiefly pastoral had a paternal system of
relationship--that is to say, that descent was counted through the
males.
Drummond, in his book on the "Ascent of Man," places the Evolution of
Motherhood long before that of Fatherhood. "An early result, partly of
her sex, partly of her passive strain, is the founding through the
instrumentality of the first savage Mother of a new and beautiful social
state--Domesticity--while Man, restless, eager, and hungry, is a
wanderer on the Earth, Woman makes a Home!" And according to the same
authority we find "that to Man has been assigned the fulfilment of the
first great function--the Struggle for Life--Woman, whose higher
contribution has not yet been named, is the chosen instrument for
carrying on the Life of Others." Nature took many aeons to make a mother,
whose gift to the world was Love and Sympathy; the evolution of the
Father came still later. "It was when man's mind first became capable of
making its own provision against the weather and the crops that the
possibility of Fatherhood, Motherhood and the Family were realised."
"The Mother-age, with its mother-right customs, was a civilisation, as I
have indicated, largely built up by woman's activity and developed by
her skill; it was an age within the small social unit of which there was
more community of interest, far more fellowship in labour and
partnership in property and sex, than we find in the larger social unit
of to-day."[1]
In connection with this theory of the "Mother-age" it is interesting to
note that the Etruscans traced their descent through the female line,
and it was from the Etruscans that the Romans derived nearly all their
institutions; thus many of the "initiative forces of civilisation" have
come down to us from women.
It is believed that the patriarchal system--where the man was the head
of the family, as amongst the Jews--which succeeded the Mother-age, grew
out of the custom of capturing women belonging to other tribes, this
being succeeded later on by purchase, and "as soon as the woman ceased
to be protected by the force of ideas, as soon, that is to say, as she
lost her position as head of the family, her downward path was certain."
But even among primitive people we find that it was an almost universal
custom that a woman should be provided with an independent property,
"Mitgift," though as time went on and the patriarchal system became more
firmly established, it appears that this Mitgift became the husband's
property, and that every bride was expected to bring a dowry to her
husband, whose property she became, thus losing all independence.
However, in Greece the position of woman, during the Heroic times was to
a certain extent an independent one, as is clear from the poems of Homer
and the treatment of Homeric and Heroic themes by the Athenian
dramatists. But one has only to compare the "Nausicaea" of Homer or the
"Electra" of the Tragedians with the women of the time of Pericles, to
see how much the status of the female sex had deteriorated. The Athenian
wife of that time was treated as a mere "Hausfrau," expected to spend
her whole time at home in the managing of the household, while the
husband satisfied his intellectual tastes by intercourse with the
"Stranger-women" attracted to Athens from other towns. "Thus arose a
most unnatural division of functions among the women of those days. The
citizen-women had to be mothers and housewives--nothing more; the
stranger-women had to discharge the duties of the companions, but remain
outside the pale of the privileged and marriageable class."[2] To this
artificial condition of domestic and social life may be partly
attributed the downfall of Athens, for it is impossible to divide the
functions of woman without serious risk to State and race.
In ancient Rome the patriarchal system was the prevailing custom. Under
the Roman law the husband was the only member of the family possessing
legal rights. "The family (_familia_) in its original and proper meaning
is the aggregate of members of a household under a common head; this
head was the paterfamilias, the only member of the household who
possesses legal rights."[3] It is true that there were many honoured
women under the Roman Republic, such as Cornelia and Portia, the
daughter of Cato, but the lot of the majority was not an enviable one.
Gradually, however, the tutelage of women became less severe, and
Justinian in revising the whole Roman code placed married and family
life on an altogether new basis, "the husband lost his absolute control
over his wife's dower, and in case of separation he had to restore it
entire."
Women had been for so long under such strict tutelage that they were
unfit to benefit by these new laws. Doubtless it will be remembered that
the corruption of the women of the period is practically unparalleled in
history, but it must be also borne in mind that the whole system of
Imperial government was so vicious that it was almost impossible for
women to escape from the widespread influence of vice and corruption.
Christianity as a force began to make itself felt while woman was yet in
this low moral state, and it is not therefore surprising that to the
leaders of Christianity the freedom which women then enjoyed and the
easy method of divorce obtainable were in a large measure responsible
for the vitiated state of Roman life. In their eyes the only means of
producing a more salutary state of affairs was to put a check on what
they considered a menace to a Christian society.
It is of interest to notice how the attitude of the Early Fathers
towards women differs from that of Our Lord as recorded in the Gospels.
There indeed are women highly honoured, and it is to a woman that Christ
often gives a message of the highest import. It was to Mary Magdalen
that the Risen Lord first appeared and bade her tell the others, and
again it was the woman of Samaria who became the instrument of salvation
to her people. But to the Early Fathers the ascetic ideal was the
predominant one, and in consequence thereof women were treated as the
chief source of temptation to man. "Woman was represented as the door of
Hell, as the mother of all human ills. She should be ashamed at the very
thought that she is a woman. She should live in continual penance on
account of the curses she has brought upon the world. She should be
ashamed of her dress, for it is the memorial of her fall. She should be
especially ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most potent instrument
of the demon."[4] In fact a decree of the Council of Auxerre (A.D. 578)
forbade women to receive the Eucharist in their naked hands owing to
their impurity.
Unfortunately "the bigotry of the Early Christian teachers gave the
first check to the tendency to freer institutions, the next was given by
the fall of the Empire."
With the influx of the Teutonic tribes we find a new code of ideas and
morals, but eventually a compromise was effected between the Germanic
and Roman laws. Thus from very early times we find that it was a German
custom to provide every bride with a dower, and this is remarked upon by
Tacitus. Afterwards the Church adopted this custom, which was strangely
enough both Roman and Teutonic in origin.
From the time when the Empire went down in a cataclysm which shook the
foundations of the world, until the beginning of the Middle Ages, we
hear but little of woman. It was the Sturm and Drang period in the
world's history, in which woman had no real position. The women of the
upper classes were of necessity confined either to the castle or the
convent, and woman's sphere was therefore a small one; man demanded
nothing more than that they should minister to his physical wants in the
short periods of peace he then enjoyed. Hallam says, "I am not sure that
we could trace very minutely the condition of women for the period
between the subversion of the Roman Empire and the First Crusade ...
there seems however to have been more roughness in that social
intercourse between the sexes than we find at a later period."[5]
With the end of this stormy period comes the dawn of the Age of
Chivalry, and from that time forward until the Reformation, woman
enjoyed a portion at least of her rightful position. It is said that
"Chivalry not only bestowed upon the woman perfect freedom in the
disposal of hand and heart, but required of the knight who should win
her, devoted and lengthened service"; this may be, however, a rather
idealised view of the situation; but there is no doubt that the Court
and the Cloister became the two centres of women's lives, and an
intimate connection was maintained between the two. Nearly all women of
gentle birth were educated in nunnery schools, and by the eighth century
we find that these schools had attained a high standard of learning,
which increased and developed in the succeeding centuries. The convent
afforded a shelter to the woman who did not marry and to whom the
marriage state did not appeal; there she was able to a certain extent to
follow the career she desired, at the same time her personal safety was
assured. "The scholar, the artist, the recluse, the farmer, each found a
career open to him; while men and women were prompted to undertake
duties within and without the religious settlement, which make their
activity comparable to that of the relieving officer, the poor law
guardian, and the district nurse of a later age."[6] It is perhaps of
interest to us to note that the first hospital for lepers in England was
founded by a woman, "good Queen Maud," in 1101 at S. Giles' on the
East.
The rule of an abbey or a priory called for no mean business capacity on
the part of their heads, and as a rule the abbess and prioress were
women of great business and administrative ability. Before the Norman
Conquest nearly all the nunneries founded in England were abbacies,
subsequently priories were the most usual foundations, as according to
feudal law women were unable to hold property.
The latter half of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are renowned
throughout history for their women, who, occupying foremost positions in
the government, were clever, cultured, and liberal-minded. One has but
to mention the names of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the "Lady
Margaret" of Oxford and Cambridge; of Leonore d'Este, the mother of
equally famous daughters, Isabella and Beatrice d'Este; Marguerite de
Valois, sister of Francis I., and Isabella of Castile, to conjure up
before one's eyes the whole procession of the proud and capable women of
these days.
"One and all have been fruitful as successive stages of growth, yet they
can never recur, and only the fanatic or visionary could wish that they
should recur, for each is narrow and insufficient from the standpoint of
a later age."
In England "the women who were the mothers of the men who created the
great Elizabethan epoch were almost without exception brought up in
nunnery schools"[7] and, alas, the destruction of the nunneries and the
rise of the Puritan spirit sounded the death-knell of women's education.
After the Reformation the position of woman was peculiarly degrading; in
the eyes of the law she possessed practically no status, and "the old
chivalrous feeling for woman seems to have faded out with the romance of
the Middle Ages--she now figured as the legal property of man, 'the
safeguard against sin,' the bearer of children _ad infinitum_."
So woman was left once more to sink back into a slough of despond, until
with the end of the eighteenth century there arose the humanitarian
movement and the gradual awakening of woman to the sense of her
responsibility, with the inevitable corollary of her rightful position
as the social equal of man.
If these ideals are to be realised, woman must recognise her
responsibilities and act accordingly. She has proved herself a more than
apt student in all the liberal studies, she has practically forced the
door of nearly all the professions, now she must realise that she must
apply her higher learning to what is probably the most difficult
profession of all, the management of the home, or in other words she
must see that the knowledge she has acquired be adapted and turned to
practical aims.
Up to the present time the conduct of the home has been regulated purely
by rule of thumb methods; if however in the future it can only be
administered with the same method and scientific exactitude as prevail
in other great business enterprises, the drudgery of housekeeping will
diminish and woman will cease to be a slave to household duties. She
will have more time to devote to the cultivation of her own mind, and
thus, while becoming a more real companion to man, she will be free to
take a more enlightened interest in the education and development of her
children.
"Incidentally this may go to prove that a sound knowledge of the
household sciences and arts may serve, not to tie a woman more to the
storeroom and kitchen, but to enable her to get better results with the
expenditure of less time and energy, by enabling her to apply to
everything simple and complex within the household the master-mind,
instead of the mind of the uncertain amateur."
Her responsibilities are great not only as an individual but as a member
of the community to which she belongs; and if she is to fulfil these
responsibilities in respect to the home, she cannot do so without a
thorough scientific preparation.
The home is the "cradle of life," it was the birthplace of those
industries which to-day form the great centres and constitute the means
of livelihood for millions. In some of these there is reason to believe
that woman took her share as originator. With the process of time,
these primitive practices have grown into the great industries and arts
of to-day, yet it is still to the woman that the call comes to cultivate
and use her taste in these matters, so that when it falls to her to be
responsible for the decoration and furnishing of a house, she may be
able to choose in all departments of life what is _the best_, to the
everlasting benefit of herself and her family, both physically and
morally.
If man be the producer and distributer of wealth, woman is certainly the
director of consumption. On her rests the responsibility of expending
wisely and well the money entrusted to her for the nutrition and
clothing of her family, and how can this be adequately fulfilled if she
have no real knowledge of the subject beyond what she is able to pick up
as she goes along, a method detrimental to all concerned? Little would
be thought of any business house which entrusted its most delicate
operations to inexperienced buyers, or of any municipality which allowed
its affairs to be conducted by an amateur. Far less would be heard of
misery, poverty, and ill-health if the art of buying and preparing food,
for instance, were properly understood by those whom it most concerns.
Again, the chief racial responsibility falls on woman; it is just in the
most precious years of childhood that her influence is so potent, and it
is the mother, who besides helping to sow all the ethical and spiritual
seeds, should safeguard the perfect physical condition of her children,
in order that an unimpaired vitality and constitution be handed on from
generation to generation. No proverb is truer than "Mens sana in corpore
sano"; the two go hand in hand together, and their accomplishment is the
proud privilege of the woman.
From the family flows the life of the nation, and the power to guide it
aright lies largely in the hands of women, whether they be married or
single. With the married woman her own family comes first of all, and
then through it her duty as a citizen; the unmarried woman's duties as a
citizen are manifold, and each year they increase and expand. Nearly all
the activities of public life are open to her; for instance she may sit
on County Councils, Municipal Councils, District Councils, urban and
rural Parish Councils,[8] Boards of Guardians, &c.; in fact in the
growing field of social work, her services are being more and more
recognised as indispensable, and it is impossible in a few words to
enumerate all the possibilities of service which lie before her, both
professional and philanthropic.
Consequently if a healthy nation is desired, the women of a country must
be educated both academically and scientifically. "If women are to be
fit wives and mothers they must have all, perhaps more, of the
opportunities for personal development that men have. All the activities
hitherto reserved to men must be open to them, and many of these
activities, certain functions of citizenship, for example, must be
expected of them. Moreover, whatever the lines may be along which the
fitness of woman to labour will be experimentally determined, the
underlying position must be established that, for the sake of the
individual and race character, she must be a producer as well as a
consumer of social values."[9]
Now how is this most desirable end to be attained? The succeeding papers
will deal with the subject _in extenso_; here can only be briefly
indicated the scope and purpose of the majority.
An eminent authority tells us that "the objects of nature may be
designated as the objective point of view. It is the standpoint of
biology and affords the natural conditions for the successful
investigation of the laws of life, not only of the lower organisms but
of the human race as well."[10] This immediately demonstrates the vital
necessity that women should know something of these fundamental laws of
life, which biology alone can teach, in order that she may apply these
to her ordinary daily life and recognise them as operating in all her
surroundings.
The transition from this stage to the next is an easy one. Woman
having learnt the laws of life, will immediately view her economic
responsibilities with a clearer eye and fuller understanding. It is
true that throughout the ages woman has striven to acquit herself as
best she could, but until the present day it has mostly been a
groping in the dark, without the aid of any exterior agency. Now
light is beginning to be thrown on many points hitherto obscure.
Household economics has been well said "to rest on two chief
cornerstones, the economy of wealth and the economy of health, and
encloses the groundwork of human happiness and human aspirations ...
even all departments of science must contribute to its development."
But a mere knowledge of biology and economics is useless without bodily
efficiency, and true bodily efficiency is only possible where the
environment is favourable to growth and life. It cannot be expected that
full physical development can ever take place in ill-lighted, badly
ventilated, defectively drained or otherwise objectionable houses. And
it must never for a moment be forgotten that if the body be neglected,
then, as an inevitable consequence, the mind and spirit must also become
warped. It is not that we desire man to develop his physical nature at
the expense of his spiritual, but rather that we would see him placed in
such a condition that he is able to apply those great faculties, which
distinguish him from the brute creation, to their highest and best use.
The ancients recognised in very early times the need of sanitary
precautions to protect themselves from the onslaught of disease and the
consequent decimation of their race.
We find Mena, King of Egypt (5000 B.C.), mentioning in his Ordinances
that offences in diet were one of the things through which "the genius
of death becomes eager to destroy men."
The Levitical Laws contain many enactments of a sanitary character, they
are one of the oldest known sanitary codes, and have many wise and
necessary provisions for the health of the people.
Rules for the conduct of rural life were formulated so far back as
100-500 B.C. in Boeotia. Tarquinus Priscus began and Tarquinus Superbus
completed the great works for the drainage of Rome in the fourth and
fifth centuries B.C., of which the Cloaca Maxima was the most remarkable
feature; even to-day the ancient water-supply of Rome and her system of
baths are still a source of admiration to the modern world. And to
their credit be it said that the Romans carried this knowledge with them
to the countries which they conquered; we find aqueducts at Great
Chester and Lanchester, an arterial sewer at Lincoln, and the well-known
baths at Bath.
From the destruction of Rome until well-nigh ten centuries later was a
period in which no advance in sanitation was made; on the contrary,
retrogression was the keynote of the time. Warfare, religious
segregation, and the spread of asceticism were the chief reasons for
this; the ideals of both Christian and Pagan were opposed to personal
and public hygiene. "The ascetic violated all laws of personal hygiene,
the monastery's ideal was inconsistent with public hygiene, and both
glorified God by teaching submission to pestilence,"[11] which from time
to time swept over the country, devastating it from end to end.
But with the increase of trade it became necessary to adopt certain
measures for the preservation of human life, and in 1348 we hear of
the first street-cleaning and quarantine in those two great centres of
commerce, Venice and Cologne. It was in the same year that the most
terrible plague which the world has ever known attacked Britain and
practically depopulated it, finding its chief prey in the filthy
streets of the City. This led in 1379 to an Order in Common Council
for keeping the streets clean. But despite this, all through mediaeval
times personal health was shamefully neglected and public health
practically unknown. The consequences are easy to trace; the country
was again and again swept by epidemics which were naturally followed
by severe famines, and thus on every side progress was checked. The Fire
of London at least cleansed London of its filth, and from that time
forward matters began to improve. All through the eighteenth century,
smallpox, typhus, scurvy, and ague were rampant, and it is not till
1834 that we find the beginning of sanitary legislation. In 1837 the
Act for the Registration of Births and Deaths was passed, which at
once provided the indispensable foundation for reliable statistics;
previous to that date all that there was to depend upon were the
Baptismal Registers and the more or less accurate Bills of Mortality.
This has been followed by a long series of Public Health enactments
concerned with practically every department of life. In fact during
the last fifty years the public conscience has been quickened to an
extraordinary degree. Much however has yet to be done which cannot
be touched by legislation, and it is to the woman, who has been trained
in the right conduct of life both private and public, that the world
looks for the preservation of healthy human life, much of which is now
needlessly sacrificed on the altar of ignorance. In many cases the
woman is the only person who can prevent this, therefore she must
equip herself for her high and noble duty with all that Science can
provide and Art can suggest, neither must she forget that her own
home must ever be the starting-point of every endeavour. For the
"Mrs. Jellabies" of this world are not those who help forward its
progress, rather are they the clogs on its wheels.
Not only charity, but all other virtues begin at home. "So long as the
first concern of a nation is for its homes, it matters little what it
seeks second or third."