Maids, Wives, and Bachelors

Domestic Work for Women

To that class of women who toil not, neither spin, and who, like contented ravens, are fed they know not how nor whence, it is superfluous to speak of domestic service; for their housekeeping consists in “giving orders,” and their marketing is represented by tradesmen’s wagons and buff-colored pass-books. Yet I am far from inferring that, because they can financially afford to be idle, they have a right to be so. They surely owe to the world some free gift of labor, else it would be hard to see why they came into it. Not for ornaments certainly, since Parian marble and painted canvas would be both more economical and satisfactory; not for housewives, for their houses are in the hands of servants; not for mothers, for they universally grumble at the advent and responsibility of children.

But to the large majority of women, domestic service ought to be a high moral question, especially to those who are the wives of men striving to keep up on limited incomes the reality and the appearance of a prosperous home; all the more necessary, perhaps, because the appearance is the condition on which the reality is possible.

Too often a false notion that usefulness and elegance are incompatible, that it is “unladylike” to be in their kitchens, or come in contact with the baker and butcher, makes them abrogate the highest honors of wifehood. Or perhaps they have the misfortune to be the children of those tender parents who are permitted without loss of reputation to educate their daughters for drawing-room ornaments in their youth, and yet do nothing to insure them against a middle age of struggle and privation, and an old age of misery.

To such I would speak candidly – not without thought – not without practical knowledge of what I say – not without strong hopes that I may influence many warm, thoughtless hearts, who only need to be once alive to a responsibility in order to feel straitened and burdened until they assume and fulfil it.

Is it fair, then, is it just, kind, or honorable, that the husband day after day should be bound to the wheel of a monotonous occupation, and the wife fritter away the results in frivolity or suffer them to be wasted in extravagant and yet unsatisfactory housekeeping? Supposing the magnificent affection of the husband makes him willing to coin his life into dollars, in order that the wife may live and dress and visit according to her ideal, ought she to accept an offering that has in it so strong an odor of human sacrifice?

Even if it be necessary to keep up a certain style, it is still in the wife’s power to make the husband’s service for this end a reasonable one. Personal supervision of the marketing will save twenty per cent, and I am afraid to say how much might be saved from actual waste in the kitchen by the same means; and this is but the beginning.

Yet saving is only one item in the wife’s lawful domestic service; if her husband is to be a permanently successful man, she must take care of his digestion. It may seem derogatory to thought, enterprise, and virtue to assert that eating has anything to do with them. I cannot help the condition; I only know that it exists, and that she is but a poor wife who ignores the fact.

The days when men stuck to their “roast and boiled” as firmly as to their creed are, of necessity, disappearing. The fervid life we are all leading demands food that can be assimilated with the least possible detriment to, or expenditure of, the vital powers. “Thoughts that burn” are no poetic fancy; the planning, the calculating that a business man performs during the day literally burns up the material of conscious life. It is the wife’s duty to replenish the fires of intellect and energy by fuel that the enfeebled vitality can convert most easily into the elements necessary to repair the waste.

The idea that it is derogatory for cultivated brains and white hands to investigate the stock-jar and the stew-pan is a very mistaken one. The daintiest lady I ever knew, the wife of a merchant who is one of our princes, sees personally every day to the preparation of her husband’s dinner and its artistic and appetizing arrangement on the table. I have not the smallest doubt that the nourishing soups, the delicately prepared meats, the delicious desserts, are the secret of many a clear-headed business transaction, household investments that make possible the far-famed commercial ones. This mysterious relationship between what we eat and what we do was dimly perceived by Dr. Johnson when he said that “a man who did not care for his dinner would care for nothing else.”

Artistic cooking derogatory! Why, it is a science, an art, as sure to follow a high state of civilization as the fine arts do. No persons of fine feelings can be indifferent to what they eat, any more than to what they wear, or what their household surroundings are. A man may be compelled by circumstances to swallow half-cooked bloody beef and boiled paste dumplings, and yet it may be as repugnant to him as it would be to wear a scarlet belcher neckerchief, a brass watch-chain, and a cotton-velvet coat. Yet his wife may be ignorant or indifferent; he is too much occupied with other matters to “make a fuss about it,” and so he shuts his eyes, opens his mouth, and takes whatever his cook pleases to send him. I do not like to be uncharitable, but somehow I can’t help thinking that a wife who permits this kind of thing is unworthy of her wedding ring.

Let her take a volume of F. W. Johnston’s “Domestic Chemistry” in her hand, and go down into her kitchen. She will be in a far higher region of romance than Miss Braddon can take her into. She will learn that it is her province to renew her husband physically and mentally by dexterously depositing the right kind of nutriment upon the inward, invisible frame. The wonders of science shall supersede then, for her, the wonders of romance. To feed the sacred fire of life will become a noble office; she will count it as honorable, in its place, to make a fine soup or a delicate Charlotte Russe as to play a Beethoven sonata or read a German classic.

Truly, I think that it is almost a sin for a housekeeper with all her senses to be ignorant of the laws of chemistry affecting food. Yet the subject is so large and complicated that I can only indicate its importance; but I am sure that women of affection and intelligence who may now for the first time accept the thought, will follow my hints to all their manifold conclusions. One of these conclusions is so important that I cannot avoid directing special attention to it, – the moral effect of proper food.

Do not doubt that all through life high things depend on low ones; and in this matter it must be evident to every observing woman that food is often the nerve of our highest social affections. There is an acute domestic disorder which Dr. Marshall Hall used to call “the temper disease.” Need I point out to wives the wonderful sympathy between this disease and the dining-table? Do they not know that a fretful, belated, ill-cooked breakfast has the power to take all the energy out of a sensitively organized man, and make his entire day an uncomfortable failure?

On the contrary, a cheerful room, a snowy cloth, coffee “with the aroma in,” bread whose amber crust and light, white crumb is a picture, in short, a well-appointed, quiet, comfortable first meal has in it some subtle influence of strength and inspiration for work. I have seen men rise from such tables joyful– full of such gratitude and hope as I can well believe only found expression in that silent uplifting of the heart to God which is, after all, our purest prayer.

Then when at evening he returns weary, faint and hungry, a fine sonata or an exquisite painting will not much comfort him. I even doubt whether a religious service could profitably take the place of his dinner; for we know, if we will acknowledge it, that the importunate demands of the flesh do cry down the still small voice of devotion. But how different we feel after eating; then we are disposed for something higher, the mind is elevated to gracious thoughts, the brain gives reasonable counsel, the heart generous responses. And I speak with all reverence when I say that many of our darkest hours in spiritual things are not to be attributed to an angry God or a hidden Saviour, but to physical repletion or inanition. But if these wonderfully fashioned bodies be the “temple of the Holy Ghost,” how shall we expect the comforts of God in a disordered or ill-kept shrine?

Thus it is in the power of the housewife to turn the work of the kitchen into a sacrifice of gladness, and to make the offices of the table a means of grace. Certain it is that she will decide whether her husband is to be commercially successful or not; for if a man will be rich, he must ask his wife’s permission to be so. And if he will be physically healthy, mentally clear, morally sweet, she must take care that his home furnish the proper food and stimulus on which these conditions depend. Nor will she go far wrong if she take as a general rule, lying at the foundation, or in close connection with them all, Sydney Smith’s pleasant hyperbolic maxim, “Soup and fish explain half the emotions of life.”

We will suppose that the housewife is also the house-mother, and that she is not content with apathetically remarking that “her children are beyond her control,” and so sending them away to nurses and boarding schools; but that she really strives to encourage every virtue, draw out every latent power, and make both boys and girls worthy of the grand future to which they are heirs. Who shall say now that woman’s domestic sphere is narrow, or unworthy of her highest powers? For if she accepts honestly and solemnly all her responsibilities, she takes a position that only good women or angels could fill.

Nor need house duties shut her out from all service except to those of her own household. In these very duties she may find a way to help her poorer sisters far more efficient than many of more pretentious promise. When she has become a scientific, artistic cook, let her permit some ignorant but bright and ambitious girl to spend a few hours daily by her side, and learn by precept and example the highest rules and methods of the culinary art. Girls so instructed would be real blessings to those who hired them, and would themselves start life with a real, solid gain, able at once to command respectable service and high wages.

I am quite aware that such a practical philanthropist would meet with many ungracious returns, and not a few insinuating assertions that her charity was an insidious attempt to get work “for nothing.” But a good woman would not be deterred by this; she has had but small experience of life who has not learned that it is often our very best and most unselfish actions which are suspected, simply because their very unselfishness makes them unintelligible; and if we do not reverence what we cannot understand, we suspect it.

It may seem but a small thing to do for charity’s sweet sake, but who shall measure the results? Say that in the course of a year four young girls receive a practical knowledge of the art of cooking, how far will the influence of those four eventually reach? The larger part of all our good deeds is hid from us, – wisely so, else we should be overmuch lifted up. We have nothing to do with aggregate results, and I believe that the woman who provides intelligently for her household, makes it cheerful and restful, and finds heart and space to help some other woman to a higher life, has the noblest of “missions,” the grandest of “spheres,” and is most blessed among women.

She who adds to household duties maternal duties fills also the highest national office, since to her hands are committed – not indeed the laws of the republic but the fate of the republic; for the children of to-day are the to-morrow of society, and its men of action will be nothing but unconscious instruments of the patient love and prayerful thought of the mothers who taught them. And yet let the women who are excused from this office be grateful for their indulgence. Alas! how many shoulders without strength have asked for heavy burdens.

Professional Work for Women

That man should provide and woman dispense are the radical conditions of domestic service; conditions which I believe are highly favorable to the development of the highest type of womanhood. But at the same time they are far from embracing all women capable of high development, nor are they perhaps suitable for every phase of character included in that myriad-minded creature – woman.

For just as one tree attains its most perfect beauty through sheltering care, and another strikes the deepest roots and lifts the greenest boughs by self-reliant struggles, so also some women reach their highest development through domestic duties, while others hold their life most erect through public service and enforced responsibilities.

It has taken the world, however, nearly 6,000 years to come to the understanding that these latter souls must not be denied their proper arena, that brains have no sex, and that it is well for the world to have its work done irrespective of anything but the capability of the workers. But it has now so far accepted the doctrine that women who must labor if they would live honestly and independently need no longer do so under sufferance or suspicion. Wherever they can best make their way the road is open, and they are encouraged to make it; nor am I aware of any serious restriction laid on them, except one, whose true kindness is in its apparent severity, – namely, that the debutante must justify her work by her success in it. I call this kind, because favor and toleration are here unkind; since she who stands from any other reason than absolute fitness will sooner or later fall by an inevitable law.

The great curse of women, educated and yet unprovided for, is not that they have to labor, but that, having to work, they cannot find the work to do. Nor is it generally their fault; they have probably been miseducated in the old idea that marriage is the only social salvation provided whereby woman can be saved; and no one having married them, what are these compulsory social sinners to do?

A great number turn instinctively to literature for help and comfort; and their instinct in many respects is not at fault; for literature is one of the few professions that from the first has dealt kindly and honorably with women. Here the race is fair; if the female pen is fleetest, it wins.

But writing does not come by nature; it is an art to be seriously and sedulously pursued. My own reflection and experience lead me to believe that within the last thirty years its methods have radically changed. That condition of inspiration and mental excitement once considered the native air of genius has lost much of its importance; and people now ordinarily write by the exercise of their reason and reflection, and by the continual and faithful cultivation of such natural powers as they are endowed with. Upon the whole, it is a mark of rational progress, and opens the field to every woman who is thoughtful and cultivated and willing to study industriously. Not undervaluing the mood of inspiration, I yet honestly believe that for practical bread-winning purposes reason and study are the most effectual aids, and the hours devoted to personal culture by acquiring information just so much “stock in trade” acquired.

The motives for writing, too, have either changed with the method, or else writers have become more honest, as they have become more reasonable. I can remember when every author imagined himself influenced by some unworldly consideration, such as the desire to do good, or to instruct, or at least because he had something to say which constrained him to write. But people now sell their knowledge as they sell any other commodity; the best and the greatest men write simply for money, and no woman need feel any conscientious scruples because her own pressing cares sometimes obliterate the full sense of her responsibility. God does not work alone with model men and women. He takes us just as we are; and I know that the stray arrow shot from the bow when the hand was weary and the mind halting has often struck nearer home than those set with scrupulous exactness and sped with careful aim.

Besides writing, there are other literary occupations specially suited to women, such as index-makers, amanuenses, and proof-readers. The first need a clear head and great patience, but the remuneration is very good. An amanuensis must have a rapid hand, a fair education, and such a quick, sympathetic mind as will enable her to readily adapt herself to the author’s moods, and in some measure follow his train of thought. Proof-reading pre-supposes a general high cultivation, enough knowledge of French, Latin, etc., to read and correct quotations, and an intimate acquaintance with general literature, as well as grammar, orthography, and punctuation. But though a responsible position, women, both from physical and mental aptitude, fill it better than men. They have a faculty of detecting errors immediately, often without knowing why or how, and are both more patient and more expert. The editors of the Christian Union practically support me in this opinion, and the carefully correct type of the paper is evidence of the highest order. The conditions of these three employments being present, the mere technicalities of each are of the simplest kind, and very easily acquired.

“A fair field and no favor” has also been freely granted to women in every department of music and art. But in its highest branches public opinion is inexorable to mediocrity; and success is absolutely dependent on great natural abilities, thoroughly and highly cultivated. But there are many inferior branches in which women of average ability, properly educated, may make honorable and profitable livelihoods. Such, for instance, as engraving on wood and steel, chasing gold and silver, cutting gems and cameos, and designing for all these purposes.

Not a few women (and men too) make good livings by designing costumes for the large dry-goods houses and the fashionable modistes; but the good designer is a creator, and this faculty has always hitherto been confined to a small number both of men and women. The ability to draw by no means proves it; this is only the tool, the design is the thought. Therefore schools of design, though they may furnish natural designers with tools, cannot make designers. If designing, then, is a woman’s object, she must not deceive herself; for if the “faculty divine” is not present she may devote years to study, and never rise above the mere copyist.

It is usually conceded that antiquity and general “use and wont” confer a kind of claim to any office. If so, then women have an inherited right, almost wide as the world, and coeval with history, to practise medicine. Every one recognizes them as the natural physicians of the household, and under all our ordinary ailments it is to some wise woman of our family we go for advice or assistance. As Miss Cobbe says, —

“Who ever dreams of asking his grandfather, or his uncle, his footman, or his butler what he shall do for his cold, or to be so kind as to tie up his cut finger?” Yet women regard such requests as perfectly natural, and are very seldom unable to gratify them.

Medicine as a profession for women has almost won its ground; and as it is a science largely depending on insight into individual peculiarities, it would seem to be specially their office. An illustrious physician says, “There are no diseases, there are diseased people;” and the remark explains why women – who instinctively read mental characters – ought to be admirable physicians.

Indeed female physicians have already gained a position which entitles them to demand their male opponents to “show cause why” they may not share in all the honors and emoluments of the faculty. That the profession, as a means of employment for women, is gaining favor is evident from their large attendance at the free medical colleges for women in this city, nor are there any facts to indicate that their practice is less safe than that of men; and if accidents have taken place, they were doubtless the result of ignorance, and not of sex.

Theodore Parker favored even the legal profession for women, giving it as his opinion that “he must be rather an uncommon lawyer who thinks no feminine head could compete with him.” Most lawyers are rather mechanics at law, than attorneys or scholars at law; and in the mechanical part women could do as well as men, could be as good conveyancers, could follow precedents as carefully and copy forms as nicely. “I think,” he adds, “their presence would mend the manners of the court on the bench, not less than of the bar.”

But though, if properly prepared, there would seem no reason why women could not write out wills, deeds, mortgages, indentures, etc., yet I doubt much whether they have the natural control and peculiar aptitudes necessary for a counsellor at law. But no one will deny a woman’s capability to teach, even though so many have gone into the office that have no right there; for mere ability is not enough. Teachers, like artists, are born teachers, and the power to impart knowledge is a free gift of nature.

Those, then, who accept the office without vocation for it, just for a livelihood, both degrade themselves and it. The duties undertaken with reluctance lack the spirit which gives light and interest; the children suffer intelligently, the teacher morally. But if a woman becomes a teacher, having a call which is unmistakable, she is doubly blessed, and the world may drop the compassionate tone it is fond of displaying toward her, or, if it is willing to do her justice, may pay her more and pity her less.

The question of a woman’s right to preach is one that conscience rather than creeds or opinions must settle. It must be allowed that her natural influence is, and always has been greater than any delegated authority. She is born priestess over every soul she can influence, and the question of her right to preach seems to be only the question of her right to extend her influence. In this light she has always been a preacher; it is her natural office, from which nothing can absolve her. A woman must influence for good or evil every one she comes in contact with; by no direct effort perhaps, but simply because she must, it is her nature and her genius.

Whether women will ever do the world’s highest work as well as men, I consider, in all fairness, yet undecided. She has not had time to recover from centuries of no-education and mis-education: She is only just beginning to understand that neither beauty nor tact can take the place of skill, and that to do a man’s work she must prepare for it as a man prepares; but even if time proves that in creative works she cannot attain masculine grandeur of conception and power of execution, she may be just as excellent in her own way; and there are and always will be people who prefer Mrs. Browning to Milton, and George Eliot to Lord Bacon.

At first sight there seems some plausibility in the assertion that woman’s physical inferiority will always render her unfit to do men’s work. But all physical excellence is a matter of cultivation; and it would be very easy to prove that women are not naturally physically weaker than men. In all savage nations they do the hardest work, and Mr. Livingstone acknowledged that all his ideas as to their physical inferiority had been completely overturned.