Charlotte Gilman - The home - its work and influence

One other, yes, two other avenues of publicity are open upon this supposed seclusion. We have seen that the privacy of the mother is at the mercy of four sets of invaders: children, servants, tradesmen, and callers. The tradesmen, in a city flat, are kept at a pleasing distance by the dumb-waiter and speaking tube; and, among rich households everywhere, the telephone is a defence. But, even at such long range, the stillness and peace of the home, the chance to do quiet continued work of any sort, are at the mercy of jarring electric bell or piercing whistle. One of the joys of the country vacation is the escape from just these things; the constant calls on time and attention, the interruption of whatever one seeks to do, by these mercantile demands against which the home offers no protection.

In less favoured situations, in the great majority of comfortable homes, the invader gets far closer. "The lady of the house" is demanded, and must come forth. The front door opens, the back door yawns, the maid pursues her with the calls of tradesmen, regular and irregular; from the daily butcher to the unescapable agent with a visiting card. Of course we resist this as best we may with a bulwark of trained servants. That is one of the main uses of servants – to offer some protection to the inmates of this so private place, the home!

Then comes the fourth class – callers. A whole series of revelations as to privacy comes here; a list so long and deep as to tempt a whole new chapter on that one theme. Here it can be but touched on, just a mention of the most salient points.

First there is the bulwark aforesaid, the servant, trained to protect a place called private from the entrance of a class of persons privileged to come in. To hold up the hands of the servant comes the lie; the common social lie, so palpable that it has no moral value to most of us – "Not at home!"

The home is private. Therefore, to be in private, you must claim to be out of it!

Back of this comes a whole series of intrenchments – the reception room, to delay the attack while the occupant hastily assumes defensive armour; the parlour or drawing room, wherein we may hold the enemy in play, cover the retreat of non-combatants, and keep some inner chambers still reserved; the armour above mentioned – costume and manner, not for the home and its inmates, but meant to keep the observer from forming an opinion as to the real home life; and then all the weapons crudely described in rural regions as "company manners," our whole system of defence and attack; by which we strive, and strive ever in vain, to maintain our filmy fiction of the privacy of the home.

The sanctity of the home is another dominant domestic myth. That we should revere the processes of nature as being the laws of God is good; a healthy attitude of mind. But why revere some more than others, and the lower more than the higher?

The home, as our oldest institution, is necessarily our lowest, it came first, before we were equal to any higher manifestation. The home processes are those which maintain the individual in health and comfort, or are intended to; and those which reproduce the individual. These are vital processes, healthy, natural, indispensable, but why sacred? To eat, to sleep, to breathe, to dress, to rest and amuse one's self – these are good and useful deeds; but are they more hallowed than others?

Then the shocked home-worshipper protests that it is not these physical and personal functions which he holds in reverence, but "the sacred duties of maternity," and "all those precious emotions which centre in the home."

Let us examine this view; but, first let us examine the sense of sanctity itself – see what part it holds in our psychology. In the first dawn of these emotions of reverence and sanctity, while man was yet a savage, the priest-craft of the day forced upon the growing racial mind a sense of darkness and mystery, a system of "tabu" – of "that which is forbidden." In China still, as term of high respect, the imperial seat of government is called "the Forbidden City." To the dim thick early mind, reverence was confounded with mystery and restriction.

Today, in ever-growing light, with microscope and telescope and Röntgen ray, we are learning the true reverence that follows knowledge, and outgrowing that which rests on ignorance.

The savage reveres a thing because he cannot understand it – we revere because we can understand.

The ancient sacred must be covered up; to honour king or god you must shut your eyes, hide your face, fall prostrate.

The modern sacred must be shown and known of all, and honoured by understanding and observance.

Let not our sense of sanctity shrink so sensitively from the searcher; if the home is really sacred, it can bear the light. So now for these "sacred processes of reproduction." (Protest. "We did not say 'reproduction,' we said 'maternity!'") And what is maternity but one of nature's processes of reproduction? Maternity and paternity and the sweet conscious duties and pleasures of human child-rearing are only more sacred than reproduction by fission, by parthenogenesis, by any other primitive device, because they are later in the course of evolution, so higher in the true measure of growth; and for that very reason education, the social function of child-rearing, is higher than maternity; later, more developed, more valuable, and so more sacred. Maternity is common to all animals – but we do not hold it sacred, in them. We have stultified motherhood most brutally in two of our main food products – milk and eggs – exploiting this function remorselessly to our own appetites.

In humanity, in some places and classes we do hold it sacred, however. Why? "Because it is the highest, sweetest, best thing we know!" will be eagerly answered. Is it – really? Is it better than Liberty, better than Justice, better than Art, Government, Science, Industry, Religion? How can that function which is common to savage, barbarian, peasant, to all kinds and classes, low and high, be nobler, sweeter, better, than those late-come, hard-won, slowly developed processes which make men greater, wiser, kinder, stronger from age to age?

The "sacred duties of maternity" reproduce the race, but they do nothing to improve it.

Is it not more sacred to teach right conduct for instance, as a true preacher does, than to feed one's own child as does the squaw? Grant that both are sacred – that all right processes are sacred – is not the relative sanctity up and out along the line of man's improvement?

Do we hold a wigwam more sacred than a beast's lair and less sacred than a modern home? If so, why? Do we hold an intelligent, capable mother more sacred than an ignorant, feeble one? Where are the limits and tendencies of these emotions?

The main basis of this home-sanctity idea is simply the historic record of our ancient religion of ancestor-worship. The home was once used as a church, as it yet is in China; and the odour of sanctity hangs round it still. The other basis is the equally old custom of sex-seclusion – the harem idea. This gives the feeling of mystery and "tabu," of "the forbidden" – a place shut and darkened – wholly private. A good, clean, healthy, modern home, with free people living and loving in it, is no more sacred than a schoolhouse. The schoolhouse represents a larger love, a higher function, a farther development for humanity. Let us revere, let us worship, but erect and open-eyed, the highest, not the lowest; the future, not the past!

Closely allied to our sense of home-sanctity and sprung from the same root, is our veneration for the old; either people or things; the "home of our ancestors" being if anything more sacred than our own, and the pot or plate or fiddle-back chair acquiring imputed sanctity by the simple flux of time. What time has to do with sanctity is not at first clear. Perhaps it is our natural respect for endurance. This thing has lasted , therefore it must be good; the longer it lasts the better it must be, let us revere it!