Part 19

Besides the essential evils of an unbalanced nature, many harmful qualities have been developed in human characters by these conditions. For countless centuries we have sought to develope, by selection and education, a timid submission in woman. When there did appear “a curst shrew,” she was left unmarried; and her temper perished with her, or she was “tamed” by some Petruchio. The dependence of women on the personal favor of men has produced an exceeding cleverness in the adaptation of the dependent one to the source of her supplies. Under the necessity of pleasing, whether she wished or no, of interceding for a child’s pardon or of suing for new pleasures for herself, “the vices of the slave” have been forever maintained in this housemaid of the world.

Another discord introduced by the condition of servitude is that between will and action. A servant places his time and strength at the disposal of another will. He must hold himself in readiness to do what he is told; and the mere physical law of conservation of energy, to say nothing of his own conscious judgment, forbids wasting nerve-force in planning and undertaking what he may not be able to accomplish. This produces a condition of inactivity, save under compulsion, and, on the other side, a perverse, capricious wilfulness in little things,—the reaction from a forced submission.

A more insidious, disintegrating force to offset the evolution of human character could hardly be imagined than this steady training of the habits of servitude into half the human race,—the mother of all of it. These results have been modified, of course, by the different education and environment of men, developing in them opposite qualities, and transmitting the contradictory traits to the children indiscriminately.

Heredity has no Salic law. The boy inherits from his mother, as well as from his father; the girl from her father, as well as from her mother. This has prevented the full evil of the results that plight have ensued, but has also added to the personal difficulties of each of us, and retarded the general progress of the race.

Worse than the check set upon the physical activities of women has been the restriction of their power to think and judge for themselves. The extended use of the human will and its decisions is conditioned upon free, voluntary action. In her rudimentary position, woman was denied the physical freedom which underlies all knowledge, she was denied the mental freedom which is the path to further wisdom, she was denied the moral freedom of being mistress of her own action and of learning by the merciful law of consequences what was right and what was wrong; and she has remained, perforce, undeveloped in the larger judgment of ethics.

Her moral sense is large enough, morbidly large, because in this tutelage she is always being praised or blamed for her conduct. She lives in a forcing-bed of sensitiveness to moral distinctions, but the broad judgment that alone can guide and govern this sensitiveness she has not. Her contribution to moral progress has added to the anguish of the world the fierce sense of sin and shame, the desperate desire to do right, the fear of wrong; without giving it the essential help of a practical wisdom and a regulated will. Inheriting with each generation the accumulating forces of our social nature, set back in each generation by the conditions of the primitive human female, women have become vividly self-conscious centres of moral impulse, but poor guides as to the conduct which alone can make that impulse useful and build the habit of morality into the constitution of the race.

Recognizing her intense feeling on moral lines, and seeing in her the rigidly preserved virtues of faith, submission, and self-sacrifice,—qualities which in the Dark Ages were held to be the first of virtues,—we have agreed of late years to call woman the moral superior of man. But the ceaseless growth of human life, social life, has developed in him new virtues, later, higher, more needful; and the moral nature of woman, as maintained in this rudimentary stage by her economic dependence, is a continual check to the progress of the human soul. The main feature of her life—the restriction of her range of duty to the love and service of her own immediate family—acts upon us continually as a retarding influence, hindering the expansion of the spirit of social love and service on which our very lives depend. It keeps the moral standard of the patriarchal era still before us, and blinds our eyes to the full duty of man.

An intense self-consciousness, born of the ceaseless contact of close personal relation; an inordinate self-interest, bred by the constant personal attention and service of this relation; a feverish, torturing, moral sensitiveness, without the width and clarity of vision of a full-grown moral sense; a thwarted will, used to meek surrender, cunning evasion, or futile rebellion; a childish, wavering, short-range judgment, handicapped by emotion; a measureless devotion to one’s own sex relatives, and a maternal passion swollen with the full strength of the great social heart, but denied social expression,—such psychic qualities as these, born in us all, are the inevitable result of the sexuo-economic relation.

It is not alone upon woman, and, through her, upon the race, that the ill-effects may be observed. Man, as master, has suffered from his position also. The lust for power and conquest, natural to the male of any species, has been fostered in him to an enormous degree by this cheap and easy lordship. His dominance is not that of one chosen as best fitted to rule or of one ruling by successful competition with “foemen worthy of his steel”; but it is a sovereignty based on the accident of sex, and holding over such helpless and inferior dependants as could not question or oppose. The easy superiority that needs no striving to maintain it; the temptation to cruelty always begotten by irresponsible power; the pride and self-will which surely accompany it,—these qualities have been bred into the souls of men by their side of the relation. When man’s place was maintained by brute force, it made him more brutal: when his place was maintained by purchase, by the power of economic necessity, then he grew into the merciless use of such power as distinguishes him to-day.

Another giant evil engendered by this relation is what we call selfishness. Social life tends to reduce this feeling, which is but a belated individualism; but the sexuo-economic relation fosters and developes it. To have a whole human creature consecrated to his direct personal service, to pleasing and satisfying him in every way possible,—this has kept man selfish beyond the degree incidental to our stage of social growth. Even in our artificial society life men are more forbearing and considerate, more polite and kind, than they are at home. Pride, cruelty, and selfishness are the vices of the master; and these have been kept strong in the bosom of the family through the false position of woman. And every human soul is born, an impressionable child, into the close presence of these conditions. Our men must live in the ethics of a civilized, free, industrial, democratic age; but they are born and trained in the moral atmosphere of a primitive patriarchate. No wonder that we are all somewhat slow to rise to the full powers and privileges of democracy, to feel full social honor and social duty, while every soul of us is reared in this stronghold of ancient and outgrown emotions,—the economically related family.

So we may trace from the sexuo-economic relation of our species not only definite evils in psychic development, bred severally in men and women, and transmitted indifferently to their offspring, but the innate perversion of character resultant from the moral miscegenation of two so diverse souls,—the unfailing shadow and distortion which has darkened and twisted the spirit of man from its beginnings. We have been injured in body and in mind by the too dissimilar traits inherited from our widely separated parents, but nowhere is the injury more apparent than in its ill effects upon the moral nature of the race.

Yet here, as in the other evil results of the sexuo-economic relation, we can see the accompanying good that made the condition necessary in its time; and we can follow the beautiful results of our present changes with comforting assurance. A healthy, normal moral sense will be ours, freed from its exaggerations and contradictions; and, with that clear perception, we shall no longer conceive of the ethical process as something outside of and against nature, but as the most natural thing in the world.

Where now we strive and agonize after impossible virtues, we shall then grow naturally and easily into those very qualities; and we shall not even think of them as especially commendable. Where our progress hitherto has been warped and hindered by the retarding influence of surviving rudimentary forces, it will flow on smoothly and rapidly when both men and women stand equal in economic relation. When the mother of the race is free, we shall have a better world, by the easy right of birth and by the calm, slow, friendly forces of social evolution.

INDEX

Academic groves of Greece, 285.

Accident of sex, man’s sovereignty due to, 337.

Accompaniment to social life, home life only an, 282.

Action of heredity, 70.

—— in servitude, discord of will and, 333.

Activity in obstetrics, masculine, 197.

Advance, motherhood and racial, 189.

Advantage of professional cleaners, 255.

—— of family alone planned for, 296.

Advantages of home cooking, 249.

Africa, Darkest, 180.

African, hybrid progeny of Anglo-Saxon and, 332.

Age, the Augustan, 161.

—— Elizabethan, 161.

—— Periclean, 161.

Aggregate privacy of the family, 258.

Agony of Armenia, 162.

Allen, Grant, quotation from, 172.

Altruism, the main distinction of human virtue, 323.

—— the socialized individual profited by, 325.

—— of obedience, 327.

Amateur, the mother always an, 293.

America, 162.

—— the Englishman in, 79.

—— the human soul in, 148.

American, the, in England, 79.

“Americanitis.”

Amusement, woman’s, gained through sex-attraction, 308.

Anglo-Saxon blood, 147.

—— hybrid progeny of, and African, 332.

—— hybrid progeny of, and Oriental, 332.

Anthony, Susan B., 167.

Apartments, bachelor _vs._ marriage, 297.

Apple-tree, Eve and the, 329.

Arabellas of the last century, 148.

Armenia, the agony of, 162.

Arrested development of woman, result of, 330.

Art and science of cooking, 230.

Association, present methods of, unsatisfactory for women, 307.

—— value of, of the sexes, 314.

Associations of home, 221.

Attitude of women to marriage, 86.

Attraction, love a necessary, 325.

Augustan age, 161.

Baby, the first impressions of a, 281.

Baby-culture, wrong training of mothers for, 270.

Baby-education, the meaning of better, 287.

Baby-educator, the mother a bad, 284.

Babyhood, the ideal, 288.

Babylon, the girls of, 97.

Bachelor apartments _vs._ marriage, 297.

Balance of power in living organisms, 59.

Barton, Clara, 165.

Basis, change of, in family relations, 271.

—— the economic, of present family life, 303.

—— mingling on a human, 306.

Bela, the temple of, 97.

Benefits, of our sexuo-economic relation, 136.

—— of home life, 260.

Betterment, surroundings of infancy capable of, 292.

Bible, instructions of, 28.

Birth of free France, 137.

—— of historic crises, 146.

Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, 167.

Boston, 80.

—— Tea Party, 146.

Brain action, two laws of, 76.

Bridge’s Food for infants, 196.

Britons, surprise of, over Boston Tea Party, 146.

Brought up at home, children that are, 282.

Burden, economic, of children, 169.

Business partners, husband and wife not, 12.

Byron, quotation from “Childe Harold,” 24.

Camp, conduct of New Englanders in a mining, 320.

Captives, stripping of the Persian, 73.

Care of children, to marriage, value of, 301.

Cause of our exaggerated sex-development, 58.

—— of insanity, loneliness often a, 267.

Causes of the decline of home life,

Centre of moral influence, woman a self-conscious, 336.

Change of the sexuo-economic relation, 122.

—— of basis in the family relation, 271.

—— in condition means one in conduct, 320.

Changes, family ties strengthened by economic, 302.

Changing scale of virtues, 322.

Chastity demanded by society, 95.

—— the importance of, 318.

Chattel slavery, Christ blind to, 78.

—— a social institution, 78.

—— results of, 82.

—— opponents of, 137.

Check to race-development, reduced environment a, 65.

—— to excessive sex-development, death a ready, 72.

—— to social progress, home duties a, 156.

Child, old and new needs of the, 271.

—— wrong relation between parent and, 272.

—— effect of servant-motherhood on, 280.

—— fuller companionship for, 287.

—— a broader relationship for, 291.

—— necessities of, 301.

“Childe Harold,” quotation from, 24.

Child-bearing, women economically profited by, 169.

Child-education, development of, 283.

Child-feeding, instinct in, 196.

Children, precocity of sex-development in, 54–56.

—— economic burden of, 169.

—— brought up at home, 282.

—— how to know one’s, 301.

—— value to marriage of care of, 301.

—— trained to sex, 309.

China, family worship in, 223.

Chinaman, sex-prejudice of the, 69.

Choice of a young man, the wide, 71.

—— of a young woman, the single, 71.

—— of a father, 202.

—— of professions, woman’s limited, 246.

Christ blind to chattel slavery, 78.

Christianity, injustice of, to the Jew, 78.

Church, the convent and the, 165.

Cities, the larger social interests of, 267.

City, the young man in the, 311.

Civilization, effect of the growth of, 63.

—— a perfect, 73.

—— our race-distinction, 74.

—— a decadent, 158.

Classification, power of, 81.

Cleaners, advantage of professional, 255.

Club movement, woman’s, 164–166.

Collectivity _vs._ marriage, 115.

Comfort in the home, treason to society the price of, 278.

—— for women, peace and, 300.

Command to woman, Paul’s, 68.

Commander, the Greek, and his Persian captives, 72.

Common table, a common tie, 252.

Community of interest _vs._ sex-relation, 114.

Companionship of love, 219.

—— fuller, for the child, 287.

Competition, early individual, 100.

Complex society, life of a, 102.

Condition, change in, means a change in conduct, 320.

—— of woman, the doorway of evil, 329.

Conduct, instinct not always a true guide to, 209.

—— change in condition means change in, 320.

—— and ethics, 320.

Consumers, women non-productive, 118.

Contribution to moral progress, woman’s one-sided, 335.

Convent, the church and the, 165.

Cookery, evils of fancy, 232.

Cooking, woman’s practice of, 229.

—— art and science of, 230.

—— as a profession, 239.

—— of servants, 239.

—— a social function, 240.

—— professional service in, 241.

—— retarded as a race-function, 241.

—— advantages of home, 249.

—— science and emotion of, 251.

—— results of the future development of, 254.

Co-operation, failure of family, 240.

Corset, first effect of, 77.

Corsicans, _vendetta_ of, 275.

Cost of pleasing women, 312.

Crises, birth of historic, 146.

Cross-bred product of our human marriage, 332.

Custom, liking and, in food, 250.

Dane, 147.

Daniel, proclamation of, 71.

Darkest Africa, 180.

Dead-line of religious development, 68.

Death, gates of, in child-birth, 181.

Decadence of sex, 158.

Decadent civilization, 158.

Decline of the family, 215.

—— of home life, causes of, 266.

Decoration, household, an expression of woman’s economic dependence, 257.

Defence and feeding of woman, 61.

Deficiencies of human motherhood, 172.

Definition of human progress, 208.

Delicacy, feminine, an expression of sexuality, 46.

Demand, increasing, for a true marriage, 218.

—— for a freer social intercourse between the sexes, 296.

Democracy, the Federal, 148.

Dependence, economic, of rich women, 170.

—— household decoration an expression of women’s, 257.

Desdemona, 66.

Desire for work, woman’s, 157.

Development, dead-line of religious, 68.

—— of the martyr, 80.

—— of humanity, 134.

—— of woman, 168.

—— of marriage retarded by the family, 218.

—— outside the home, the highest, 222.

—— of cooking, results of the future, 254.

—— home ties detrimental to personal, 259.

—— of the home of the individual, 264.

—— of child-education, 283.

—— of education, 284.

—— of the kindergarten, result of, 286.

—— of true social intercourse, how to assist, 302.

—— moral, of humanity, 326.

—— arrested, result of, in woman, 330.

—— of submission in woman, 333.

“Devil,” our evil impulses called the, 328.

—— the world, the flesh, and the, 328.

Devotion, a sex-distinction, 48.

—— the height of filial, 176.

—— dining-room, 232–234.

—— the _vendetta_ an over-development of family, 275.

Disadvantage of maternity, 71.

Discord of will and action in servitude, 333.

Disease a life horror, 25.

Distinction, human, in virtue, 322.

—— altruism the main, in human virtue, 323.

Divinity, parental, 175.

Division of labor in housekeeping, 245.

Dog, the economically changed, 323.

Doorway of evil, condition of woman the, 329.

Domination of sex, 53.

“Don’t” (advice of _Punch_), 28.

Dual nature, man’s, 332.

Duchess of Towers, 148.

Duty of the mother, 187.

—— progress the, of human life, 207.

—— a social sense, 276.

—— restricted sense of, in the mother, 277.

Duties, home, as feminine functions, 225.

—— womanliness of, 225.

Eating, bad effects of social, 254.

Economic ability of woman, lack of development of, 9.

Economic basis, the present, of family life, 303.

Economic changes, family ties strengthened by, 302.

Economic conditions, effect of upon the human creature, 3.

—— results of special, 5.

Economic dependence, change in, in the human species, 6.

—— of female, changes made by, 37.

—— of woman, increase of, 93.

—— of woman, ending, 138.

—— of rich women, 170.

—— household decoration an expression of woman’s, 257.

Economic functions become sex-functions, 110.

Economic entity, home no longer an, 303.

Economic foods, consumption of, 11.

Economic independence, a relative condition, 10.

—— meaning of, 11.

—— of woman, result of, 304, 331.

—— women attaining, 316.

Economic paralysis, 8.

Economic production, maternity and, 17.

—— natural expression of human energy, 116.

Economic profit of woman through sex-attraction, 63.

Economic progress of the race, 8.

Economic relation, a sex-relation, 5.

—— a factor in the evolution of species, 23.

—— a field of human difficulty, 25.

—— good results of sex-equality in, 340.

Economic separation of married lovers, 219.

Economic status, of man, 7.

—— of a race, 8.

—— governed by male, 9.

—— general, of woman, 10.

—— not related to domestic labor, in women, 15.

Economic value of household labor, 13.

Economics, present problem in, 99.

Education, the process of reproduction and, 179.

—— a human function, 180.

—— motherhood in, 185.

—— of the young, 188.

—— a social function, 283.

—— development of, 284.

—— growth of systematic, 285.

—— motherhood supplemented by, 287.

Educative motherhood, 183.

—— maternity a social function, 293.

Effect of a constant impression on a nerve, 77.

—— first, of corset, 77.

—— of standard of good food, 250.

—— bad, of social eating, 254.

—— of servant-motherhood on the child, 280.

—— of changed relations of the sexes, 317.

Egotism, isolated individual profited by, 325.

Elizabethan age, 161.

Elbe, Little, 87.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 162.

Emotion attached to cooking, science and, 251.

Energy, maternal, 126.

England, the American in, 79.

English mixture, an expression of fresh racial life, 147.

Englishman in America, 79.

Enjoyment of a thing does not prove it is right, 209.

Enslaving, first, of woman, 60.

—— results of, of woman, 61.

Entity, home no longer an economic, 313.

Environment, result of a uniform, 64.

Estimate, new woman’s, of true manhood, 315.

Ethics, a social science, 319.

Ethics, conduct and, 320.

—— evolution in, 324.

Eve and the apple-tree, 329.

Evelinas of the last century, 148.

Evil, present, and future good, 206.

—— perception of good and, 324.

—— struggle between good and, 329.

—— condition of woman, the doorway of, 329.

—— impulses, our, called the “devil,” 328.

—— results of the sexuo-economic relation, 339.

Evils of fancy cookery, 232.

Evolution, social, 102, 103.

—— of sexual equality, 131.

—— in ethics, 324.

Examples of loyalty, modern, 276.

Existence, loyalty the first principle of social, 274.

Experienced mother, our idea of the, 293.

Experiments in males, Nature’s, 130.

Expression of woman’s economic dependence, household decoration an, 257.

Extension of social relation, 123.

—— of functions in woman, 160.

—— of the family, the tribe an, 215.

Factor, what kind of man is the best social, 326.

Failure of family co-operation, 240.

Faith in religion, virtue of, 322.

False perspective, taught by primitive motherhood, 289.

Familiarity by use, 79.

Family, history of the, 213.

—— marriage and the, 213.

—— patriarchal government in the, 214.

—— decline of the, 215.

—— marriage _vs._ the, 215.

—— the pastoral unit, 215.

—— the tribe an extension of the, 215.

—— in Utah, 216.

—— as a social unit, 217.

—— development of marriage retarded by the, 218.

—— worship of the, in China, 223.

—— ideal homes for women wage-earners with a, 242.

—— aggregate privacy of the, 258.

—— increasing friction in the, 273.

—— outgoing impulse in the, 303.

—— the person _vs._ the, 304.

Family advantage alone planned for, 296.

Family co-operation, failure of, 240.

Family devotion, the _vendetta_ an over-development of, 275.

Family hotel, growth of the, 265.

Family life, essentials of the patriarchal, 214.

—— and individual privacy, 258.

—— fulfilment of the true, 268.

“Family man,” a good, 303.

Family relation, change of basis in, 271.

Family tie, the stomach no longer a, 253.

Family strengthened by economic changes, 302.

Family, visiting a strain on the, 303.

Family unity bound by a table-cloth, 244.

Fancy cooking, the evils of, 232.

Father, the choice of a, 202.

—— loyalty to the, 275.

Faults of the sexuo-economic home, 261.

Feast, the, a natural institution, 252.

Federal Democracy, 148.

Feeding and defence of woman, 61.

Female of _genus homo_ supplied by the male, 18.

Female mind, 149.

Feminine delicacy an expression of sexuality, 46.

Feminine functions, home duties as, 225.

Femininity, functions of, 159.

Feudalism, passage from, to monarchism, 206.

—— of our present home life, 211.

Fiction, the woman of, 150.

Filial devotion, the height of, 176.

First impressions of a baby, 281.

Flesh, the, the world, and the devil, 328.

Food, Bridge’s, Hayrick’s, Marrow’s, Pestle’s, 196.

Food and woman, 226, 227.

—— dilution and adulteration of, 227.

—— woman’s preparation of, a sex-function, 235–237.

—— increase in professional preparation of, 249.

—— effects of standard of good, 250.

—— taste and custom in, 250.

Food products, standard of, 228.

Foods, infants’, 196.

—— health, 238.

Force of habit, individual and social, 78.

Form of sex-union, marriage a sanctioned, 213.

Forms of social service, high and low, 279.

Fort Sumter, 146.

_Forum_, the, 171, 172.

Fostering of selfishness, 280.

France, the _noblesse_ of, 146.

Free France, birth of, 137.

Free woman and her home, 257.

Freedom, social, before marriage, 309.

—— after marriage, 310.

Frederic the Great, 182.

Friendship means more to men than to women, 306.

—— between men and women a laughing-stock, 309.

—— often destroyed by marriage, 310.

—— no opportunity for true, 312.

Friction in families increasing, 273.

Fry, Elizabeth, 163.

Fulfilment of true family life, 268.

Function, extension of, in woman, 60.

—— education a human, 180.

—— cooking a social, 240.