The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-04-11
DISCONTINUED WOMEN.


Of the day is the disrepute into which
housekeeping has fallen; for that is a
woman's first natural duty and answers
to the needs Of her best nature. 1t must
be noted that this revolt of certain
women against housekeeping is not a
revolt against their husbands; but it is
simply revolt against their duties.
They consider homework hard and mon-
otonous and inferior, and confess with a
cynical frankness that they prefer to
engross paper, or dabble in art or en-
broider pillow. shams, or sell goods, or in
some way make money to pay servants
who will cook their husbands dinner
and nurse their babies for them. And
they believe that in this way they show
themselves to have superior minds, and
ask credit for deed which ought to
cover them with shame. For actions
speak louder than words, and what does
such action say? In the first place it
asserts that any stranger-even young
uneducated peasant girl hired for few
dollars months able to perform the
duties Of the house mistress and the
mother. In the second place, it substi-
tutes poor ambition for love, and hand
service for heart service. In the third
place, it is visible abasement of the
loftiest duties Of womanhood to the ca
pacity of the lowest paid service. A
wife and mother cannot thus absolve
her own soul; she simply disgraces and
traduces her hottest work. Suppose even
that housekeeping is hard and monoton.
Gus; it is not more so than mems work
in the city. The first lesson business
man has to learn is to do pleasantly
what he does not like to do. All regu-
lar useful work must be monotonous,
but love ought to make it easy; and at
any rate, the tedium Of homework is
not any greater than the tedium of Office
work. AS for housekeeping being de-
grading, that is the veriest nonsense,
Home is little royalty. 1t is only the
weakest, silliest women who cannot lift
their work to the level of their thoughts.
and SO ennoble both.
There are other types Of the discon-
tented wife. There is nothing a man
hates more than woman going sobbing
and complaining about the house with
red eyes; unless it be a woman with
whom he must live in perpetual FOOLS
paradise Of perfection. There are also
discontinued wives who goad their hus-
bands into extravaganza expenditure, and
urge them to projects from which they
would naturally recoil. There are others
whose social ambitions STAY their domes-
tic ones. Some wives fret if they have
no children, others just as much il chill
dren come. In the first case, they are
disappointed; in the second, inconven-
fenced, and in both, discontinued. A
very disagreeable kind of discontinued
woman is the wife who instead of having
God to love and worship, makes god
OF her religion, alienates love for an
ecclesiastical idea, or neglects her own
flesh and blood, to carry the religious
needs Of the world; forgetting that the
good wife keeps her sentiments very
close to her own heart and hearth. But
perhaps the majority of discontented
wives have no special thing to complain
Of, they fret because they are 80 dull"
II they took the trouble to look for the
cause of this "dullness," they would find
it in the want of some definite plan of
life. and some vigorous aim or object
Amelia r. Barr, IN Christian Work.