Modern woman finds herself in the twentieth century heiress to an
accumulation of domestic experience handed down from her primitive
sisters, much of which originated in necessity, and survives from
custom.
It is said that "of the billion and a half human beings on the earth,
about 700,000,000 are females, and what share their mothers and
grandmothers, back to the remotest generation, have had in originating
and developing culture is a question which concerns the whole race,"
though allusion only can be made to it in this paper.
If, from the study of anthropology, we find that man was the hunter, the
killer of food, it was woman who cared for it, prepared it for use,
tilled the ground, cleaned, dried, cut, and sewed skins for clothing and
shelter. It is believed by many authorities that it was woman who
invented and made many of the implements with which she worked, and who
spun, wove, and dyed fibres of all kinds into strong, useful, and
sometimes beautiful fabrics of varied and pleasing tints and colours,
from dyes of her own making, which she obtained from animal and
vegetable sources. The introduction of much plain and ornamental
stitchery, the forerunner of the needlework of the present day, followed
quickly upon the coming of textiles.
Until the invention of machinery and the institution of the factory
system, the practice of a large number of arts was in the hands of women
as part of their lives and homes. Now, however, women are no longer
leather-dressers, potters, or weavers in the home--these arts have
become trades for men, carried on in factories; and even the more
intimate arts of cooking, cleaning, and needlework are threatened from
the outside.
The cheapness and readiness with which the products of the factory can
be obtained, whether for the purposes of food or of clothing, has to a
large extent removed the desire to exercise these arts herself,
especially from the woman whose time can be otherwise employed to her
financial advantage in industrial pursuits. It would almost appear that
she has failed to perceive the intellectual and aesthetic enjoyment to be
derived from them, and has been content to permit the skill and
knowledge she originally acquired and exercised to rust from want of
practice as each generation succeeds its predecessor. On the other hand,
as the accumulated profits from the factory have made it possible for
well-off women to depute their own share of cooking, cleaning, sewing,
and the care of children by payments to their less financially
fortunate sisters, usually untrained women of narrow education, public
opinion has shown a tendency to regard these arts as menial, and to some
extent derogatory in practice to the educated and refined. Amongst this
class of women, consequently, knowledge of these arts has steadily
dwindled, until the home-made jams, jellies, cordials and pickles of our
grandmothers, the linen they spun, wove, and fashioned, are no longer
the glory of our storerooms and linen-presses; while the home has come
to be less and less regarded as the right and proper place for
instruction in the domestic arts.
Deep down, however, in the modern woman's nature lies the old instinct
for order, for caring for things animate and inanimate. This instinct
has found expression since the early seventies among more fortunately
situated women in an endeavour to arrest the decay of what I have
called the more intimate household arts, to promote their revival
and to raise their status in education--an endeavour due, shall we
say, to "something in the air," a kind of "Zeit Geist"--beginning more
or less contemporaneously on the Continent of Europe, in Great Britain,
and in the United States and Canada; an endeavour not to benefit
themselves alone, but to help their poorer sisters.
It was soon agreed that the cultivation of the household arts belonged
to education, and that they might and should be taught in schools; but
the questions--What was their link with general education, by what
methods they could be most appropriately taught, and in the curriculum
of what schools they should find a place--have been the basis of
prolonged experimental effort. It is now the opinion of a large section
of persons of authority in education, that these arts are neither
"sacred mysteries which can only be understood by patient life study,"
nor, on the other hand, can any woman, whatever her intellectual
ability, master them without training. It has been well said, in effect,
that the former attitude leads to a contempt for the plain everyday
things of life, while the latter is responsible for the cultivation of a
girl's head at the expense of her hands.
The arts of cooking and cleaning took the lead in order of experiment.
The results, as recorded, have proved their position to belong directly
to the region of applied science, and to be worthy of a place in a
specially arranged course of household science and economics for women,
of university standard. We may confidently expect that this result only
anticipates a corresponding triumph, awaiting in its turn similar
experimental work, which has been carried on for some years in respect
of the teaching also of the art of needlework. These experimental
efforts include the intelligent employment of the pencil, the scissors,
and the needle in the production of garments, draperies, napery, and so
forth. The lines along which at the present moment this development is
proceeding have regard indeed not only to the practical worth of
needlecraft, but to its intimate association with general education as
well as to decorative and applied art.
When we inquire what have been the results of past methods of teaching
needlework in our elementary schools, and find that they are in no way
commensurate with the time, labour, and money spent upon them, it surely
is wise to call a halt and examine into our aims and methods. The
circular of "Suggestions for the Teaching of Needlework" issued by the
Board of Education in August 1909 is not the first authoritative
pronouncement of the Board on this matter, but is the outcome of "the
well-considered criticism" invited upon their "Suggestions" on the same
subject issued in 1905, which teachers and others were asked to consider
as a challenge to independent thought on the subjects of which it
treated.