Women and Economics, Charlotte Perkins Gilman [epub read online books .txt] 📗

the source of injury, they, like the fox with the swarm of flies, fear to be disturbed, lest their last state be worse than their first. In the face of this inevitable difficulty, however, the task must be undertaken.

Two things let us premise and agree upon before starting. First, that the duty of human life is progress, development; that we are here, not merely to live, but to grow⁠—not to be content with lean savagery or fat barbarism or sordid semi-civilization, but to toil on through the centuries, and build up the ever-nobler forms of life toward which social evolution tends. If this is not believed, if any hold that to keep alive and reproduce the species is the limit of our human duty, then they need look no farther here. That aim can be attained, and has been attained, for irrefutable centuries, through many forms of sex-relation and of economic relation. Human beings have lived and brought up children as good as their parents in free promiscuity and laziness, in forced polygamy and slavery, in willing polyandry and industry, and in monogamy plus prostitution and manufactures. Just to live and bear children does not prove the relative superiority of any system, either in sex or economics. But, when we believe that life means progress, then each succeeding form of sex-relation or economic relation is to be measured by its effect on that progress.

It may be necessary here to agree on a definition of human progress. According to the general law of organic evolution, it may be defined as follows: such progress in the individual and in his social relations as shall maintain him in health and happiness and increase the organic development of society.

If we accept such a definition of human progress, if we agree that progress is the duty of society, and that all social institutions are to be measured by it, we may proceed to our second premise. This is not to be ranked with the first in importance: it should be too commonly understood and accepted to be dragged into such a prominent position. But it is not commonly understood and accepted. In fact, it is misunderstood and denied to so general a degree that no apology is needed for insisting on it here.

The second premise is this: our enjoyment of a thing does not prove that it is right. Even our love, admiration, and reverence for a thing does not prove that it is right; and, even from an evolutionary point of view, our belief that a thing is “natural” does not prove that it is right. A thing may be right in one stage of evolution which becomes wrong in another. For instance, promiscuity is “natural”; the human animal, like many others, is quite easily inclined thereto. Monogamy is proven right by social evolution: it is the best way to carry on the human race in social relation; but it is not yet as “natural” as could be desired.

So, to return to our second premise, which is admittedly rather a large one, to show that any custom or status of ours is “natural” and enjoyable does not prove that it is right. It does not of course prevent its being right. Right things may be enjoyed, may be loved, admired, and reverenced, may even be “natural”; but so may wrong things. Even that subhuman faculty called instinct is only a true guide to conduct when the conditions are present which originally developed that instinct. The instinct that makes a modern house-dog turn around three times before he lies down is not worthy of much admiration today, though it served its purpose on the grassy plains and in the leafy hollows where it was formed. If these two premises are granted, that the duty of human life is progress, and that a given condition is not necessarily right because we like it, we may go on.

Is our present method of home life, based on the economic dependence of woman in the sex-relation, the best calculated to maintain the individual in health and happiness, and develop in him the higher social faculties? The individual is not maintained in health and happiness⁠—that is visible to all; and how little he is developed in social relation is shown in the jarring irregularity and wastefulness of our present economic system.

Economic independence for women necessarily involves a change in the home and family relation. But, if that change is for the advantage of individual and race, we need not fear it. It does not involve a change in the marriage relation except in withdrawing the element of economic dependence, nor in the relation of mother to child save to improve it. But it does involve the exercise of human faculty in women, in social service and exchange rather than in domestic service solely. This will of course require the introduction of some other form of living than that which now obtains. It will render impossible the present method of feeding the world by means of millions of private servants, and bringing up children by the same hand.

It is a melancholy fact that the vast majority of our children are reared and trained by domestic servants⁠—generally their mothers, to be sure, but domestic servants by trade. To become a producer, a factor in the economic activities of the world, must perforce interfere with woman’s present status as a private servant. House mistress she may still be, in the sense of owning and ordering her home, but housekeeper or house-servant she may not be⁠—and be anything else. Her position as mother will alter, too. Mother in the sense of bearer and rearer of noble children she will be, as the closest and dearest, the one most honored and best loved; but mother in the sense of exclusive individual nursery-maid and nursery-governess she may not be⁠—and be anything else.

It is precisely here that the world calls a halt. Nothing, it says, can be better than our homes with their fair priestesses. Nothing can