The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1890-12-12
A SORRY WAY OF LIVING.
Man and Woman Nowadays Are Reared
In Two Worlds.

Man and Woman Nowadays Are Reared
In Two Worlds.
Kate Fields Washington.
In curious old book on marriage Gus
toms there is an account of a certain wild
tribe in Grim Tartary, or some other land,
wherein the women and men lived sepa-
rately-the men nomadic, the women in
villages. The division was complete, save
for regularly yearly visit of the nomadic
males to the stationary females.
On these occasions there was an extern
sive wedding ceremony, or rather an ex-
tensive wedding with very little ceremony;
and on their departure the gentlemen took
with them all boys over years old, leav-
ing the girls, of course, with their mammas.
On meditating on such system, one
sees how the women must have practlced
agriculture and manufacture, and the men
warfare with man and beast, and perhaps
a little commerce. They got along very
comfortably, no doubt, valuing each others
society in proportion to its rarity; and, in
deed, the only deep sufferers seem to have
been the exported little boys, who must
have found an exclusive male companion
ship rather hard at so tender an age.
Still, masculine pride is q stout and early
growth. Doubtless that sustained them.
As for any joy or help in marriage, it was
OF course unknown; and, on sound physi-
illogical principles, it seems poor way to
halves so widely and make hybrids of every
generation.
For instance, in our Puritan ancestors
the religious sentiment was the main
thread of life. They lived and died for
their religion; the real man and woman
were one in education, action and be-
lief, and marriage worked well with them.
Still further back, in the days of war,
though man lived on the battlefield and
woman in the home, still their hopes, fears
and ambition were alike; they had the
same essential hcaracter; they were one in
the main sentiment of life, and marriage
worked well with them.
But today the whole internal lives of
man and woman are opposed. They work
from different motives, by different means,
toward different purposes. Happy mar
rlages are found mainly among two classes:
Either where the woman is Of the earlier
type-Seif-immOlate, domestic, wholly abb
sorbed in her love and her ''lot;" or in
those rarer cases where the woman is in
dividualized and does special work in the
same line with her husband.
And yet in subtler, and far wider way,
we are doing this still.
While the man and woman are reared
in two worlds as they are today, there can
be no universal JOY in marriage, and every
child born is more or less hybrid. say
today with special emphasis, for the
separation was never more distinct TO
more disastrous than now. As long as
the main feelings of the race are identical,
while they are united on the principles of
life, minor differences of sex-education
can be gotten over: There is an essential
similarity, and chance of joy and gain
proportionate to that similarity.
But in the mass we md world of dis
cord, active or passive. Man is now Z
business" animal. The majority of his
actions, his thoughts, feelings, hopes and
fears, take place in world woman knows
nothing about. He is part of huge COM
pick cooperative structure; she is sepa-
rate atom, unattached save to her own
family. He is part of what he has made
the life of the present. She is not even
part, but detached specimen of the life
of the past. Mentally, morally and physi-
cally, they are brought up in two worlds.
They never meet save on one ground,
and their union on that ground is
theme for Juvenal and Jeremiah. A man
is a tolerably well-balanced animal, who
enjoys physical exertion and physical rest.
A woman is an unbalanced nervous ami
NAL, who does not know what it is to enjoy
anything, physical except dancing and
rocking chair. Her exertion is exhaustion,
her rest is excitement.
A man is a tolerably well-balanced men
tally, who knows the rudiments of logic,
and whose personal life is more or less con-
sistent and reasonable. A woman is radi-
caliy unbalanced mentality, whose daily
existence is denial of logic and reason,
whose beliefs and habits are hopelessly in
consistent and unreasonable.
And morally? 1t is more than another
world, it is another universe.
What virtues they even call by the same
names are so different in scale as to be
unrecognizable, and for the most part they
have different names for the same thing,
or different things for the same name.
For instance, look at "honor" male and
female, virtue" male and female, and the
like. There is hardly an act in the lives of
either that would come. under the same
standard; and the Judgment Of either on
the acts of the other is mere mockery. AS
well ask the opinion of cow on the moral
value of pelican.
And yet these two beings are expected
to live together as equals, to understand,
to symphathize, to love. And they are
expected to produce, not leach after his
kind" but both together, a blended, har-
monious co-creation.
The results of this expectation, of this
manner of living, are somewhat similar to
the arrangements of our friends in Grim,
Tartary.
We live apart-widely. hopelessiy apart;
we meet for marriage only, and we value
each others society in proportion to its
rarity.
The main difference is that the boys are
not exported so early; and that, after all,
is very doubtful advantage.