as self-conscious creatures, to whom is always open the easy error of mistaking feeling for fact, to whose consciousness indeed the feeling is the fact,—a further process of reasoning being required to infer the fact from the feeling,—we are not greatly to be blamed for laying such stress on sentiment and emotion. we may perhaps admit, in the light of cold reasoning, that the home is not the best place in which to do so much work in, nor the wife and mother the best person to do it. but this intellectual conviction by no means alters our feeling on the subject. feeling, deep, long established, and over-stimulated, lies thick over the whole field of home life. not what we think about it (for we never have thought about it very much), but what we feel about it, constitutes the sum of our opinion. many of our feelings are true, right, legitimate. some are fatuous absurdities, mere dangling relics of outgrown tradition, slowly moulting from us as we grow.
consider, for instance, that long-standing popular myth known as “the privacy of the home.” there is something repugnant in the idea of food cooked outside the home, even though served within it; still more in the going out of the family to eat, and more yet in 249the going out of separate individuals to eat. the limitless personal taste developed by “home cooking” fears that it will lose its own particular shade of brown on the bacon, its own hottest of hot cakes, its own corner biscuit.
this objection must be honestly faced, and admitted in some degree. a menu, however liberally planned by professional cooks, would not allow so much play for personal idiosyncrasy as do those prepared by the numerous individual cooks now serving us. there would be a far larger range of choice in materials, but not so much in methods of preparation and service. the difference would be like that between every man’s making his own coat or having his women servants make it for him, on the one hand, and his selecting one from many ready made or ordering it of his tailor, on the other.
in the regular professional service of food there would be a good general standard, and the work of specialists for special occasions. we have long seen this process going on in the steady increase of professionally prepared food, from the cheap eating-house to the fashionable caterer, from the common “cracker” to the delicate “wafer.” “home cooking,” robbed of its professional adjuncts, would fall a long way. we do not realize how far we have already progressed in this line, nor how fast we are going.
250one of the most important effects of a steady general standard of good food will be the elevation of the popular taste. we should acquire a cultivated appreciation of what is good food, far removed from the erratic and whimsical self-indulgence of the private table. our only standard of taste in cooking is personal appetite and caprice. that we “like” a dish is enough to warrant full approval. but liking is only adaptation. nature is forever seeking to modify the organism to the environment; and, when it becomes so modified, so adapted, the organism “likes” the environment. in the earlier form, “it likes me,” this derivation is plainer.
each nation, each locality, each family, each individual, “likes,” in large measure, those things to which it has been accustomed. what else it might have liked, if it had had it, can never be known; but the slow penetration of new tastes and habits, the reluctant adoption of the potato, the tomato, maize, and other new vegetables by old countries, show that it is quite possible to change a liking.
in the narrow range of family capacity to supply and of family ability to prepare our food, and in our exaggerated intensity of personal preference, we have grown very rigid in our little field of choice. we insist on the superiority of our own methods, and despise the 251methods of our neighbors, with a sublime ignorance of any higher standard of criticism than our own uneducated tastes. when we become accustomed from childhood to scientifically and artistically prepared foods, we shall grow to know what is good and to enjoy it, as we learn to know good music by hearing it.
as we learn to appreciate a wider and higher range of cooking, we shall also learn to care for simplicity in this art. neither is attainable under our present system by the average person. as cooking becomes dissociated from the home, we shall gradually cease to attach emotions to it; and we shall learn to judge it impersonally upon a scientific and artistic basis. this will not, of course, prevent some persons’ having peculiar tastes; but these will know that they are peculiar, and so will their neighbors. it will not prevent, either, the woman who has a dilettante fondness for some branch of cookery, wherewith she loves to delight herself and her friends, from keeping a small cooking plant within reach, as she might a sewing-machine or a turning-lathe.
in regard to the eating of food we are still more opposed by the “privacy of the home” idea, and a marked—indeed, a pained—disinclination to dissociate that function from family life. to eat together does, of course, form 252a temporary bond. to establish a medium of communication between dissimilar persons, some common ground must be found,—some rite, some game, some entertainment,—something that they can do together. and, if the persons desiring to associate have no other common ground than this physical function,—which is so common, indeed, that it includes not only all humanity, but all the animal kingdom,—then by all means let them seek that. on occasions of general social rejoicing to celebrate some event of universal importance, the feast will always be a natural and satisfying institution.
to the primitive husband with fighting for his industry, the primitive wife with domestic service for hers, the primitive children with no relation to their parents but the physical,—to such a common table was the only common tie; and the simplicity of their food furnished a medium that hurt no one. but in the higher individualization of modern life the process of eating is by no means the only common interest among members of a family, and by no means the best. the sweetest, tenderest, holiest memories of family life are not connected with the table, though many jovial and pleasant ones may be so associated. and on many an occasion of deep feeling, whether of joy or of pain, 253the ruthless averaging of the whole group three times a day at table becomes an unbearable strain. if good food suited to a wide range of needs were always attainable, a family could go and feast together when it chose or simply eat together when it chose; and each individual could go alone when he chose. this is not to be forced or hurried; but, with a steady supply of food, easy of access to all, the stomach need no longer be compelled to serve as a family tie.
we have so far held that the lower animals ate alone in their brutality, and that man has made eating a social function, and so elevated it. the elevation is the difficult part to prove, when we look at humanity’s gross habits, morbid tastes, and deadly diseases, its artifice, and its unutterable depravity of gluttony and intemperance. the animals may be lower than we in their simple habit of eating what is good for them when they are hungry, but it serves their purpose well.
one result of our making eating a social function is that, the more elaborately we socialize it, the more we require at our feasts the service of a number of strangers absolutely shut out from social intercourse,—functionaries who do not eat with us, who do not talk with us, who must not by the twinkling of an eyelash show any interest in this performance, save to minister to 254the grosser needs of the occasion on a strictly commercial basis. such extraneous presence must and does keep the conversation at one level. in the family without a servant both mother and father are too hard worked to make the meal a social success; and, as soon as servants are introduced, a limit is set to the range of conversation. the effect of our social eating, either in families or in larger groups, is not wholly good. it is well open to question whether we cannot, in this particular, improve our system of living.
when the cooking of the world is open to full development by those whose natural talent and patient study lead them to learn how better and better to meet the needs of the body by delicate and delicious combinations of the elements of nutrition, we shall begin to understand what food means to us, and how to build up the human body in sweet health and full vigor. a world of pure, strong, beautiful men and women, knowing what they ought to eat and drink, and taking it when they need it, will be capable of much higher and subtler forms of association than this much-prized common table furnishes. the contented grossness of to-day, the persistent self-indulgence of otherwise intelligent adults, the fatness and leanness and feebleness, the whole train of food-made disorders, together 255with all drug habits,—these morbid phenomena are largely traceable to the abnormal attention given to both eating and cooking, which must accompany them as family functions. when we detach them from this false position by untangling the knot of our sexuo-economic relation, we shall give natural forces a chance to work their own pure way in us, and make us better.
our domestic privacy is held to be further threatened by the invasion of professional cleaners. we should see that a kitchenless home will require far less cleaning than is now needed, and that the daily ordering of one’s own room could be easily accomplished by the individual, when desired. many would so desire, keeping their own rooms, their personal inner chambers, inviolate from other presence than that of their nearest and dearest. such an ideal of privacy may seem ridiculous to those who accept contentedly the gross publicity of our present method. of all popular paradoxes, none is more nakedly absurd than to hear us prate of privacy in a place where we cheerfully admit to our table-talk and to our door service—yes, and to the making of our beds and to the handling of our clothing—a complete stranger, a stranger not only by reason of new acquaintance and of the false view inevitable to new 256eyes let in upon our secrets, but a stranger by birth, almost always an alien in race, and, more hopeless still, a stranger by breeding, one who can never truly understand.
this stranger all of us who can afford it summon to our homes,—one or more at once, and many in succession. if, like barbaric kings of old or bloody pirates of the main, we cut their tongues out that they might not tell, it would still remain an irreconcilable intrusion. but, as it is, with eyes to see, ears to hear, and tongues to speak, with no other interests to occupy their minds, and with the retaliatory fling that follows the enforced silence of those who must not “answer back,”—with this observing and repeating army lodged in the very bosom of the family, may we not smile a little bitterly at our fond ideal of “the privacy of the home”? the swift progress of professional sweepers, dusters, and scrubbers, through rooms where they were wanted, and when they were wanted, would be at least no more injurious to privacy than the present method. indeed, the exclusion of the domestic servant, and the entrance of woman on a plane of interest at once more social and more personal, would bring into the world a new conception of the sacredness of privacy, a feeling for the rights of the individual as yet unknown.
closely connected with the question of cleaning 257is that of household decoration and furnishing. the economically dependent woman, spending the accumulating energies of the race in her small cage, has thrown out a tangled mass of expression, as a large plant throws out roots in a small pot. she has crowded her limited habitat with unlimited things,—things useful and unuseful, ornamental and unornamental, comfortable and uncomfortable; and the labor of her life is to wait upon these things, and keep them clean.
the free woman, having room for full individual expression in her economic activities and in her social relation, will not be forced so to pour out her soul in tidies and photograph holders. the home will be her place of rest, not of uneasy activity; and she will learn to love simplicity at last. this will mean better sanitary conditions in the home, more beauty and less work. and the trend of the new conditions, enhancing the value of real privacy and developing the sense of beauty, will be toward a delicate loveliness in the interiors of our houses, which the owners can keep in order without undue exertion.
besides these comparatively external conditions, there are psychic effects produced upon the family by the sexuo-economic relation not altogether favorable to our best growth. one 258is the levelling effect of the group upon its members, under pressure of this relation. such privacy as we do have in our homes is family privacy, an aggregate privacy; and this does not insure—indeed, it prevents—individual privacy. this is another of the lingering rudiments of methods of living belonging to ages long since outgrown, and maintained among us by the careful preservation of primitive customs in the unchanged position of women. in very early times a crude and undifferentiated people could flock in family groups in one small tent without serious inconvenience or injury. the effects of such grouping on modern people is known in the tenement districts of large cities, where families live in single rooms; and these effects are of a distinctly degrading nature.
the progressive individuation of human beings requires a personal home, one room at least for each person. this need forces some recognition for itself in family life, and is met so far as private purses in private houses can meet it; but for the vast majority of the population no such provision is possible. to women, especially, a private room is the luxury of the rich alone. even where a partial provision for personal needs is made under pressure of social development, the other pressure of undeveloped family life is constantly against it. the home 259is the one place on earth where no one of the component individuals can have any privacy. a family is a crude aggregate of persons of different ages, sizes, sexes, and temperaments, held together by sex-ties and economic necessity; and the affection which should exist between the members of a family is not increased in the least by the economic pressure, rather it is lessened. such affection as is maintained by economic forces is not the kind which humanity most needs.
at present any tendency to withdraw and live one’s own life on any plane of separate interest or industry is naturally resented, or at least regretted, by the other members of the family. this affects women more than men, because men live very little in the family and very much in the world. the man has his individual life, his personal expression and its rights, his office, studio, shop: the women and children live in the home—because they must. for a woman to wish to spend much time elsewhere is considered wrong, and the children have no choice. the historic tendency of women to “gad abroad,” of children to run away, to be forever teasing for permission to go and play somewhere else; the ceaseless, futile, well-meant efforts to “keep the boys at home,”—these facts, together with the definite absence 260of the man of the home for so much of the time, constitute a curious commentary upon our patient belief that we live at home, and like it. yet the home ties bind us with a gentle dragging hold that few can resist. those who do resist, and who insist upon living their individual lives, find that this costs them loneliness and privation; and they lose so much in daily comfort and affection that others are deterred from following them.
there is no reason why this painful choice should be forced upon us, no reason why the home life of the human race should not be such as to allow—yes, to promote—the highest development of personality. we need the society of those dear to us, their love and their companionship. these will endure. but the common cook-shops of our industrially undeveloped homes, and all the allied evils, are not essential, and need not endure.
to our general thought the home just as it stands is held to be what is best for us. we imagine that it is at home that we learn the higher traits, the nobler emotions,—that the home teaches us how to live. the truth beneath this popular concept is this: the love of the mother for the child is at the base of all our higher love for one another. indeed, even behind that lies the generous giving impulse of sex-love, the 261outgoing force of sex-energy. the family relations ensuing do underlie our higher, wider social relations. the “home comforts” are essential to the preservation of individual life. and the bearing and forbearing of home life, with the dominant, ceaseless influence of conservative femininity, is a most useful check to the irregular flying impulses of masculine energy. while the world lasts, we shall need not only the individual home, but the family home, the common sheath for the budded leaflets of each new branch, held close to the parent stem before they finally diverge.
granting all this, there remains the steadily increasing ill effect, not of home life per se, but of the kind of home life based on the sexuo-economic relation. a home in which the rightly dominant feminine force is held at a primitive plane of development, and denied free participation in the swift, wide, upward movement of the world, reacts upon those who hold it down by holding them down in turn. a home in which the inordinate love of receiving things, so long bred into one sex, and the fierce hunger for procuring things, so carefully trained into the other, continually act upon the child, keeps ever before his eyes the fact that life consists in getting dinner and in getting the money to pay for it, getting the food from the market, working forever 262and ever to cook and serve it. these are the prominent facts of the home as we have made it. the kind of care in which our lives are spent, the things that wear and worry us, are things that should have been outgrown long, long ago if the human race had advanced evenly. man has advanced, but woman has been kept behind. by inheritance she advances, by experience she is retarded, being always forced back to the economic grade of many thousand years ago.
if a modern man, with all his intellect and energy and resource, were forced to spend all his days hunting with a bow and arrow, fishing with a bone-pointed spear, waiting hungrily on his traps and snares in hope of prey, he could not bring to his children or to his wife the uplifting influences of the true manhood of our time. even if he started with a college education, even if he had large books to read (when he had time to read them) and improving conversation, still the economic efforts of his life, the steady daily pressure of what he had to do for his living, would check the growth of higher powers. if all men had to be hunters from day to day, the world would be savage still. while all women have to be house servants from day to day, we are still a servile world.
a home life with a dependent mother, a 263servant-wife, is not an ennobling influence. we all feel this at times. the man, spreading and growing with the world’s great growth, comes home, and settles into the tiny talk and fret, or the alluring animal comfort of the place, with a distinct sense of coming down. it is pleasant, it is gratifying to every sense, it is kept warm and soft and pretty to suit the needs of the feebler and smaller creature who is forced to stay in it. it is even considered a virtue for the man to stay in it and to prize it, to value his slippers and his newspaper, his hearth fire and his supper table, his spring bed, and his clean clothes above any other interests.
the harm does not lie in loving home and in staying there as one can, but in the kind of a home and in the kind of womanhood that it fosters, in the grade of industrial development on which it rests. and here, without prophesying, it is easy to look along the line of present progress, and see whither our home life tends. from the cave and tent and hovel up to a graded, differentiated home, with as much room for the individual as the family can afford; from the surly dominance of the absolute patriarch, with his silent servile women and chattel children, to the comparative freedom, equality, and finely diversified lives of a well-bred family of to-day; from the bottom grade of 264industry in the savage camp, where all things are cooked together by the same person in the same pot,—without neatness, without delicacy, without specialization,—to the million widely separated hands that serve the home to-day in a thousand wide-spread industries,—the man and the mill have achieved it all; the woman has but gone shopping outside, and stayed at the base of the pyramid within.
and, more important and suggestive yet, mark this: whereas, in historic beginnings, nothing but the home of the family existed; slowly, as we have grown, has developed the home of the individual. the first wider movement of social life meant a freer flux of population,—trade, commerce, exchange, communication. along river courses and sea margins, from canoe to steamship, along paths and roads as they made them, from “shank’s mare to the iron horse,” faster and freer, wider and oftener, the individual human beings have flowed and mingled in the life that is humanity. at first the traveller’s only help was hospitality,—the right of the stranger; but his increasing functional use brought with it, of necessity, the organic structure which made it easy, the transitory individual home. from the most primitive caravansary up to the square miles of floor-space in our grand hotels, the public house has 265met the needs of social evolution as no private house could have done.
to man, so far the only fully human being of his age, the bachelor apartment of some sort has been a temporary home for that part of his life wherein he had escaped from one family and not yet entered another. to woman this possibility is opening to-day. more and more we see women presuming to live and have a home, even though they have not a family. the family home itself is more and more yielding to the influence of progress. once it was stationary and permanent, occupied from generation to generation. now we move, even in families,—move with reluctance and painful objection and with bitter sacrifice of household goods; but move we must under the increasing irritation of irreconcilable conditions. and so has sprung up and grown to vast proportions that startling, portent of our times, the “family hotel.”
consider it. here is the inn, once a mere makeshift stopping-place for weary travellers. yet even so the weary traveller long since noted the difference between his individual freedom there and his home restrictions, and cheerfully remarked, “i take mine ease in mine inn.” here is this temporary stopping-place for single men become a permanent dwelling-place for families! not from financial necessity. these 266are inhabited by people who could well afford to “keep house.” but they do not want to keep house. they are tired of keeping house. it is so difficult to keep house, the servant problem is so trying. the health of their wives is not equal to keeping house. these are the things they say.
but under these vague perceptions and expressions is heaving and stirring a slow, uprising social tide. the primitive home, based on the economic dependence of woman, with its unorganized industries, its servile labors, its smothering drag on individual development, is becoming increasingly unsuitable to the men and women of to-day. of course, they hark back to it, of necessity, so long as marriage and child-bearing are supposed to require it, so long as our fondest sentiments and our earliest memories so closely cling to it. but in its practical results, as shown by the ever-rising draught upon the man’s purse and the woman’s strength, it is fast wearing out.
we have watched the approach of this condition, and have laid it to every cause but the real one. we have blamed men for not staying at home as they once did. we have blamed women for not being as good housekeepers as they once were. we have blamed the children for their discontent, the servants for their inefficiency, 267the very brick and mortar for their poor construction. but we have never thought to blame the institution itself, and see whether it could not be improved upon.
on wide western prairies, or anywhere in lonely farm houses, the women of to-day, confined absolutely to this strangling cradle of the race, go mad by scores and hundreds. our asylums show a greater proportion of insane women among farmers’ wives than in any other class. in the cities, where there is less “home life,” people seem to stand it better. there are more distractions, the men say, and seek them. there is more excitement, amusement, variety, the women say, and seek them. what is really felt is the larger social interests and the pressure of forces newer than those of the home circle.
many fear this movement, and vainly strive to check it. there is no cause for alarm. we are not going to lose our homes nor our families, nor any of the sweetness and happiness that go with them. but we are going to lose our kitchens, as we have lost our laundries and bakeries. the cook-stove will follow the loom and wheel, the wool-carder and shears. we shall have homes that are places to live in and love in, to rest in and play in, to be alone in and to be together in; and they will not be confused 268and declassed by admixture with any industry whatever.
in homes like these the family life will have all its finer, truer spirit well maintained; and the cares and labors that now mar its beauty will have passed out into fields of higher fulfilment. the relation of wife to husband and mother to child is changing for the better with this outward alteration. all the personal relations of the family will be open to a far purer and fuller growth.
nothing in the exquisite pathos of woman’s long subjection goes deeper to the heart than the degradation of motherhood by the very conditions we supposed were essential to it. to see the mother’s heart and mind longing to go with the child, to help it all the way, and yet to see it year by year pass farther from her, learn things she never was allowed to know, do things she never was allowed to do, go out into “the world ”—their world, not hers—alone, and
“to bear, to nurse, to rear, to love, and then to lose!”
this not by the natural separation of growth and personal divergence, but by the unnatural separation of falsely divided classes,—rudimentary women and more highly developed men. it is the fissure that opens before the boy is ten years old, and it widens with each year.
269a mother economically free, a world-servant instead of a house-servant; a mother knowing the world and living in it,—can be to her children far more than has ever been possible before. motherhood in the world will make that world a different place for her child.
