Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-06-16
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WOMAN AND HOME.
GRANDEUR OF THE PLACE WOMEN
HOLD IN CIVILIZATION.

To Hasten the Coming of the Golden Age.
A Wife,s Difficult Position Bow to
Treat the Baby-Information for the
Benefit of the Housekeeper.
Our reformers have been pointing out for
years that all the perpetual effort to debar
women from fair employment, liberal educa-
ton, and just recognition has really had
nothing but contempt at the foundation.
The place assigned to that sex by one enthu-
siastic orator ga little higher than the
angels, but less than man, was plainly I'M
tenable. If woman really exists but as a
child bearing animal, let US say SO frankly,
and not cover it up under fine names But
the fine names seemed so much prettier, it was
SO charming to paint nladonnas, to draw an
aureole round the head that watched the
cradle, or to make, as in Werther, even the
cutting of bread and butter for children
ceremony for seraphs, that the general ten
dency has been all that way. An immense
deal of real injustice to women, great deal
of repression to the intellect, of spoliation to
property, has been carried on under cover
of these lofty sentiments.
There was something far better, because
franker, In the simple old Russian marriage
formula, "Here, wolf take thy lamb, or, in
the modern theory Of Mr.. Allen, ''that wo-
men, on the whole, are mostly told of to be
wives and mothers, or, in other words, to
perform mere reproductive functions. All
the vast gains of our race in the progress to-
ward civilization have been gains made for
the most part by men alone. The functions
hot I1Hy foil fhOSa
which woman, as female, shares equally with
all other females of the mammalian type
Any other belief seems to me pre-Darwinian
and archaeological Forum, May, 1889.
To those who remember the late Mr.. OAR
win in his home, and the simple and equal
dignity Of position that belonged to himself
and bis high minded wife-the common pride
they took in the training and usefulness Of
their fine sons-there is an outrage in the
very introduction Of the name of that great
man into SO cheap bit Of pseudo medieval
philosophy as this. When we remember that
Darwin himself, though he thought men the
superiors of women in respect to long sus-
tanned mental work, yet fell back upon the
simple formula, woman seems TO differ
from man in mental disposition chiefly in
her greater tenderness and less self1shnesS"
Descent of Man, Am. Ed, II, BID; and
when we consider that be himself was glad
to use the intellectual aid Of the other sex, so
far as to submit all the manuscript of his
greatest book to q woman for literary revi-
sion Qife, /, SID, it might be as well to leave
out the name OF Darwin from the discussion.
To say that 'tan that is distinctively human
is mau-the field, the ship, the mine, the
workshopn-is to omit that which is more
distinctiyeiy human and more essential than
all these put together-the home.
To say that "an that is truly woman is
merely reproductive" is to imply that any
savage, any criminal, any idiotic or insane
woman, 50 long as she can bear and rear
young, Is doing womans work as fully as
Queen Victoria or as Lucretia Mott. When
Mr.. Allen enurnerates ''the home, the nur-
sery, the school room," as included in the
truly womanly, he comedies everything; for
these represent not merely the cradle Of the
animal man, but Of the intellectual and
spiritual man, and so of civilization itself.
When Napoleon Bonaparte wished to state
what Franco most needed be did not say
merely mothers but 'igood mothersn The
addition of the adjective constituted the diff
ference between his theory and that Of Mr..
Allen.
! Civilization, progress, even decency, imply
tho home, and home implies not merely the
presence Of woman, but Of educated and re-
fined woman. The early California emil
grants who cheered the first arrival Of wives
and daughters, ''Three cheers for the ladies
who have como to make us betteT!" knew the
meaning Of tho word civilization better than
Mr. Allen. The merely physical function Of
child bearing ceases while woman is other
wise in the prime Of life, but her importance
rs factor in civilization is then just begun.
That man is to be pitied who has not had the
experience of owing a large part Of what is
civilized and enlightened in himself to the
direct influence Of woman.
1t is a compensation, in many cases, for the
early loss of father, to bethus drawn to do
Justice to what one owes to the sex SO long
subjected to the cruel whinls Of narrow theo-
logians on the one side, of crude scientists on
the other. There are nultitudes of men who
can say, after such an experience, that there
never was q moment when the intellectual
stimulus and guidance of their mothers
were not worth more to them than any other
whatever Tho nursery and school
room not merely train character, which lies
behind all intellect, but they begin the train
ing of intellect Itself, and they practically
never leave of while an enlightened mother
liyeS.-T. VI. II. in Harper's Bazaar.