Читать книгу The home: its work and influence - Gilman Charlotte Perkins - Страница 3

We have been slow, slow and reluctant, to apply the laws of evolution to the familiar facts of human life. Whatever else might move, we surely were stationary; we were the superior onlookers – not part of the procession. Ideas which have possessed the racial mind from the oldest times are not to be dispossessed in a day; and this idea that man is something extra in the scheme of creation is one of our very oldest. We have always assumed that we were made by a special order, and that our manners and customs were peculiarly and distinctively our own, separated by an immeasurable gap from those of "the lower animals."

Now it appears, in large succeeding waves of proof, that there are no gaps in the long story of earth's continual creation; some pages may be lost to us, but they were once continuous. There is no break between us and the first stir of life upon our planet. Life is an unbroken line, a ceaseless stream that pours steadily on; or rather, it grows like an undying tree, some of whose branches wither and drop off, some reach their limit part way up, but the main trunk rises ever higher. We stand at the top and continue to grow, but we still carry with us many of the characteristics of the lower branches.

At what point in this long march of life was introduced that useful, blessed thing – the home? Is it something new, something distinctively human, like the church, the school, or the post office? No. It is traceable far back of humanity, back of the mammals, back of the vertebrates; we find it in most elaborate form even among insects.

What is a home? The idea of home is usually connected with that of family, as a place wherein young are born and reared, a common shelter for the reproductive group. The word may be also applied to the common shelter for any other permanent group, and to the place where any individual habitually stays. Continuous living in any place by individual or group makes that place a home; even old prisoners, at last released, have been known to come back to the familiar cell because it seemed like "home" to them. But "the home," in the sense in which we here discuss it, is the shelter of the family, of the group organised for purposes of reproduction. In this sense a beehive is as much a home as any human dwelling place – even more, perhaps. The snow hut of the Eskimo, the tent of hides that covers the American savage, the rock-bound fastness of the cave-dweller – these are homes as truly as the costliest modern mansion. The burrow of the prairie dog is a home, a fox's earth is a home, a bird's nest is a home, and the shelter of the little "seahorse" is a home. Wherever the mother feeds and guards her little ones, – more especially if the father helps her, – there is, for the time being, home.

This accounts at once for the bottomless depths of our attachment to the idea. For millions and millions of years it has been reborn in each generation and maintained by the same ceaseless pressure. The furry babies of the forest grow to consciousness in nests of leaves, in a warm stillness where they are safe and comfortable, where mother is – and mother is heaven and earth to the baby. Our lightly spoken phrase "What is home without a mother?" covers the deepest truth; there would never have been any home without her. It is from these antecedents that we may trace the formation of this deep-bedded concept, home.

The blended feelings covered by the word are a group of life's first necessities and most constant joys: shelter, quiet, safety, warmth, ease, comfort, peace, and love. Add to these food, and you have the sum of the animal's gratification. Home is indeed heaven to him. The world outside is, to the animal with a home, a field of excitement, exertion, and danger. He goes out to eat, in more or less danger of being eaten; but if he can secure his prey and drag it home he is then perfectly happy. Often he must feed where it falls, but then home is the place for the after-dinner nap.

With the graminivora there is no thought of home. The peaceful grass-eater drops foal or fawn, kid, calf, or lamb, where chance may find her in the open, and feeds at random under the sky. Vegetable food of a weak quality like grass has to be constantly followed up; there is no time to gather armfuls to take home, even if there were homes – or arms. But the beasts of prey have homes and love them, and the little timid things that live in instant danger – they, too, have homes to hide in at a moment's notice. These deep roots of animal satisfaction underlie the later growths of sentiment that so enshrine the home idea with us. The retreat, the shelter both from weather and enemies, this is a primal root.

It is interesting to note that there is a strong connection still between a disagreeable climate and the love of home. Where it is comfortable and pleasant out of doors, then you find the life of the street, the market place, the café, the plaza. Where it is damp and dark and chill, where rain and wind, snow and ice make it unpleasant without, there you find people gathering about the fireside, and boasting of it as a virtue – merely another instance of the law that makes virtue of necessity.

Man began with the beasts' need of home and the beasts' love of home. To this he rapidly applied new needs and new sentiments. The ingenious ferocity of man, and his unique habit of preying on his own kind, at once introduced a new necessity, that of fortification. Many animals live in terror of attack from other kinds of animals, and adapt their homes defensively as best they may, but few are exposed to danger of attack from their own kind. Ants, indeed, sometimes make war; bees are sometimes thieves; but man stands clear in his pre-eminence as a destroyer of his own race. From this habit of preying on each other came the need of fortified homes, and so the feeling of safety attached to the place grew and deepened.

The sense of comfort increased as we learned to multiply conveniences, and, with this increase in conveniences, came decreased power to do without them. The home where all sat on the floor had not so much advantage in comfort over "out-of-doors" as had the home where all sat on chairs, and became unable to sit on the ground with ease. So safety and comfort grew in the home concept. Shelter, too, became more complex as door and window and curtain guarded us better, and made us more susceptible to chill. Peace became more dear at home as war increased outside; quiet, as life waxed louder in the world; love, as we learned to hate each other more. The more dangerous and offensive life outside, the more we cling to the primal virtues of the home; and conversely, in our imagination of heaven, we do not picture the angels as bound up in their homes – if, indeed, they have any – but as gladly mingling in the larger love which includes them all. When we say "Heaven is my home," we mean the whole of it.

The care and shelter of the young is a far larger problem with us than with our hairy ancestors. Our longer period of immaturity gives us monogamous marriage and the permanent home. The animal may change his mate and home between litters; ours lap. This over-lapping, long-continuing babyhood has given us more good than we yet recognise.

Thus we see that all the animal cared for in the home we have in greater degree, and care for more; while we have, further, many home ideals they knew not. One of the earliest steps in human development was ancestor-worship. With lower animals the parents do their duty cheerfully, steadily, devotedly, but there is no thought of return. The law of reproduction acts to improve the race by relentlessly sacrificing the individual, and that individual, the parent, never sets up a claim to any special veneration or gratitude.

But with us it is different. Our little ones lasting longer and requiring more care, we become more conscious of our relation to them. So the primitive parent very soon set up a claim upon the child, and as the child was absolutely helpless and in the power of the parent, it did not take long to force into the racial mind this great back-acting theory. The extreme height is found where it is made a religion, ancestor-worship, once very common, and still dominant in some of our oldest, i. e., most primitive civilisations, as the Chinese. This ancestor-worship is what gave the element of sanctity to the home. As late as the Roman civilisation its power was so strong that the home was still a temple to a dwindling group of household gods – mere fossil grandpas – and we ourselves are not yet free from the influence of Roman civilisation. We still talk in poetic archaisms of "the altar of the home."

The extension of the family from a temporary reproductive group to a permanent social group is another human addition to the home idea. To have lived in one hole all his infancy makes that hole familiar and dear to the little fox. To have lived in one nest all his life makes that nest more familiar and more dear to the rook. But to have lived in one house for generations, to have "the home of my ancestors" loom upon one's growing consciousness – this is to enlarge enormously our sense of the dignity and value of the term.

This development of the home feeling of course hinges upon the theory of private property rights; and on another of our peculiar specialties, the exaltation of blood-relationships. Our whole social structure, together with social progress and social action, rests in reality on social relationship – that is, on the interchange of special services between individuals. But we, starting the custom at a time when we knew no better, and perpetuating it blindly, chose to assume that it was more important to be connected physically as are the animals, than psychically as human beings; so we extended the original family group of father, mother, and child into endless collateral lines and tried to attach our duties, our ambitions, our virtues and achievements to that group exclusively. The effect of this on any permanent home was necessarily to still further enlarge and deepen the sentiment attached to it.

There is another feature of human life, however, which has contributed enormously to our home sentiment, – the position of women. Having its rise, no doubt, in the over-lapping babyhood before mentioned, the habit grew of associating women more continuously with the home, but this tendency was as nothing compared to the impetus given by the custom of ownership in women. Women became, practically, property. They were sold, exchanged, given and bequeathed like horses, hides, or weapons. They belonged to the man, as did the house; it was one property group. With the steadily widening gulf between the sexes which followed upon this arbitrary imprisonment of the woman in the home, we have come to regard "the world" as exclusively man's province, and "the home" as exclusively woman's.

The man, who constitutes the progressive wing of the human race, went on outside as best he might, organising society, and always enshrining in his heart the woman and the home as one and indivisible. This gives the subtle charm of sex to a man's home ideals, and, equally, the scorn of sex to a man's home practices. Home to the man first means mother, as it does to all creatures, but later, and with renewed intensity, it means his own private harem – be it never so monogamous – the secret place where he keeps his most precious possession.

Thus the word "home," in the human mind, touches the spring of a large complex group of ideas and sentiments, some older than humanity, some recent enough for us to trace their birth, some as true and inalienable as any other laws of life, some as false and unnecessary as any others of mankind's mistakes. It does not follow that all the earliest ones are right for us to-day, because they were right for our remote predecessors, or that those later introduced are therefore wrong.

What is called for is a clear knowledge of the course of evolution of this earliest institution and an understanding of the reasons for its changes, that we may discriminate to-day between that which is vital and permanent in home life and that which is unessential and injurious. We may follow without difficulty the evolution of each and all the essential constituents of home, mark the introduction of non-essentials, show the evils resultant from forced retention of earlier forms; in a word, we may study the evolution of the home precisely as we study that of any other form of life.

Take that primal requisite of safety and shelter which seems to underlie all others, a place where the occupant may be protected from the weather and its enemies. This motive of home-making governs the nest-builder, the burrow-digger, the selector of caves; it dominates the insect, the animal, the savage, and the modern architect. Dangers change, and the home must change to suit the danger. So after the caves were found insufficient, the lake-dwellers built above the water, safe when the bridge was in. The drawbridge as an element of safety lingered long, even when an artificial moat must needs be made for lack of lake. When the principal danger is cold, as in Arctic regions, the home is built thick and small; when it is heat, we build thick and large; when it is dampness, we choose high ground, elevate the home, lay drains; when it is wind, we seek a sheltered slope, or if there is no slope, plant trees as a wind-break to protect the home, or, in the worst cases, make a "cyclone cellar."

The gradual development of our careful plastering and glazing, our methods of heating, of carpeting and curtaining, comes along this line of security and shelter, modified always by humanity's great enemy, conservatism. In these mechanical details, as in deeper issues, free adaptation to changed conditions is hindered by our invariable effort to maintain older habits. Older habits are most dear to the aged, and as the aged have always most controlled the home, that institution is peculiarly slow to respond to the kindling influence of changed condition. The Chaldeans built of brick for years unnumbered, because clay was their only building material. When they spread into Assyria, where stone was plenty, they continued calmly putting up great palaces of sunbaked brick, – mere adobe, – and each new king left the cracking terraces of his predecessor's pride and built another equally ephemeral. The influence of our ancestors has dominated the home more than it has any other human institution, and the influence of our ancestors is necessarily retroactive.

In the gathering currents of our present-day social evolution, and especially in this country where progress is not feared, this heavy undertow is being somewhat overcome. Things move so rapidly now that one life counts the changes, there is at last a sense of motion in human affairs, and so these healthful processes of change can have free way. The dangers to be met to-day by the home-builder are far different from those of ancient times, and, like most of our troubles, are largely of our own making. Earthquake and tidal wave still govern our choice of place and material somewhat, and climate of course always, but fire is the chief element of danger in our cities, and next to fire the greatest danger in the home is its own dirt.

The savage was dirty in his habits, from our point of view, but he lived in a clean world large enough to hold his little contribution of bones and ashes, and he did not defile his own tent with detritus of any sort. We, in our far larger homes, with our far more elaborate processes of living, and with our ancient system of confining women to the home entirely, have evolved a continuous accumulation of waste matter in the home. The effort temporarily to remove this waste is one of the main lines of domestic industry; the effort to produce it is the other.

Just as we may watch the course of evolution from a tiny transparent cell, absorbing some contiguous particle of food and eliminating its microscopic residuum of waste, up to the elaborate group of alimentary processes which make up so large a proportion of our complex physiology; so we may watch the evolution of these home processes from the simple gnawing of bones and tossing them in a heap of the cave-dweller, to the ten-course luncheon with its painted menu. In different nations the result varies, each nation assumes its methods to be right, and, so assuming, labours on to meet its supposed needs, to fulfil its local ambitions and duties as it apprehends them. And in no nation does it occur to the inhabitants to measure their habits and customs by the effect on life, health, happiness, and character.

The line of comfort may be followed in its growth like the line of safety. At first anything to keep the wind and rain off was comfortable – any snug hole to help retain the heat of the little animal. Then that old ABC of all later luxury, the bed, appeared – something soft between you and the rock – something dry between you and the ground. So on and on, as ease grew exquisite and skill increased, till we robbed the eider duck and stripped the goose to make down-heaps for our tender flesh to lie on, and so to the costly modern mattress. The ground, the stamped clay floor, the floor of brick, of stone, of wood; the rushes and the sand; the rug – a mere hide once and now the woven miracle of years of labour in the East, or gaudy carpet of the West – so runs that line of growth. Always the simple beginning, and its natural development under the laws of progress to more and more refinement and profusion. Always the essential changes that follow changed conditions, and always the downward pull of inviolate home-tradition, to hold back evolution when it could.

See it in furnishing: A stone or block of wood to sit on, a hide to lie on, a shelf to put the food on. See that block of wood change under your eyes and crawl up history on its forthcoming legs – a stool, a chair, a sofa, a settee, and now the endless ranks of sittable furniture wherewith we fill the home to keep ourselves from the floor withal. And these be-stuffed, be-springed, and upholstered till it would seem as if all humanity were newly whipped. It is much more tiresome to stand than to walk. If you are confined at home you cannot walk much – therefore you must sit – especially if your task be a stationary one. So, to the home-bound woman came much sitting, and much sitting called for ever softer seats, and to the wholly home-bound harem women even sitting is too strenuous; there you find cushions and more cushions and eternal lying down. A long way this from the strong bones, hard muscles, and free movement of the sturdy squaw, and yet a sure product of evolution with certain modifications of religious and social thought.

Our homes, thanks to other ideas and habits, are not thus ultra-cushioned; our women can still sit up, most of the time, preferring a stuffed chair. And among the more normal working classes, still largely and blessedly predominant, neither the sitting nor the stuffing is so evident. A woman who does the work in an ordinary home seldom sits down, and when she does any chair feels good.

In decoration this long and varied evolution is clearly and prominently visible, both in normal growth, in natural excess, and in utterly abnormal variations. So large a field of study is this that it will be given separate consideration in the chapter on Domestic Art.

What is here sought is simply to give a general impression of the continual flux and growth of the home as an institution, as one under the same laws as those which govern other institutions, and also of the check to that growth resultant from our human characteristic of remembering, recording, and venerating the past. The home, more than any other human phenomenon, is under that heavy check. The home is an incarnate past to us. It is our very oldest thing, and holds the heart more deeply than all others. The conscious thought of the world is always far behind the march of events, it is most so in those departments where we have made definite efforts to keep it at an earlier level, and nowhere, not even in religion, has there been a more distinct, persistent, and universal attempt to maintain the most remote possible status.

"The tendency to vary," that inadequate name for the great centrifugal force which keeps the universe swinging, is manifested most in the male. He is the natural variant, where the female is the natural conservative. By forcibly combining the woman with the home in his mind, and forcibly compelling her to stay there in body, then, conversely, by taking himself out and away as completely as possible, we have turned the expanding lines of social progress away from the home and left the ultra-feminised woman to ultra-conservatism therein. Where this condition is most extreme, as in the Orient, there is least progress; where it is least extreme, as with us, there is the most progress; but even with us, the least evolved of all our institutions is the home. Move it must, somewhat, as part of human life, but the movement has come from without, through the progressive man, and has been sadly retarded in its slow effect on the stationary woman.

This difference in rate of progress may be observed in the physical structure of the home, in its industrial processes, and in the group of concepts most closely associated with it. We have run over, cursorily enough, the physical evolution of the home-structure, yet wide as have been its changes they do not compare with the changes along similar lines in the ultra-domestic world. Moreover, such changes as there are have been introduced by the free man from his place in the more rapidly progressive world outside.

The distinctively home-made product changes far less. We see most progress in the physical characteristics of the home, its plan, building, materials, furnishings, and decoration, because all these are part of the world growth outside. We see less progress in such of the home industries as remain to us. It should be always held in mind that the phrase "domestic industry" does not apply to a special kind of work, but to a certain grade of work, a stage of development through which all kinds pass. All industries were once "domestic," that is, were performed at home and in the interests of the family. All industries have since that remote period risen to higher stages, except one or two which are still classed as "domestic," and rightly so, since they are the only industries on earth which have never left their primal stage. This a very large and important phase of the study of the home, and will be given due space later.

Least of all do we see progress in the home ideas. The home has changed much in physical structure, in spite of itself. It has changed somewhat in its functions, also in spite of itself. But it has changed very little – painfully little – dangerously little, in its governing concepts. Naturally ideas change with facts, but if ideas are held to be sacred and immovable, the facts slide out from under and go on growing because they must, while the ideas lag further and further behind. We once held that the earth was flat. This was our concept and governed our actions. In time, owing to a widening field of action on the one hand, and a growth of the human brain on the other, we ascertained the fact that the earth was round. See the larger thought of Columbus driving him westward, while the governing concepts of the sailors, proving too strong for him, dragged him back. Then, gradually, with some difficulty, the idea followed the fact, and has since penetrated to all minds in civilised countries. But the flatness of the earth was not an essential religious concept, though it was clung to strongly by the inert religion of the time; nor was it a domestic concept, something still more inert. If it had been, it would have taken far longer to make the change.

What progress has been made in our domestic concepts? The oldest, – the pre-human, – shelter, safety, comfort, quiet, and mother love, are still with us, still crude and limited. Then follow gradually later sentiments of sanctity, privacy, and sex-seclusion; and still later, some elements of personal convenience and personal expression. How do these stand as compared with the facts? Our safety is really insured by social law and order, not by any system of home defence. Against the real dangers of modern life the home is no safeguard. It is as open to criminal attack as any public building, yes, more. A public building is more easily and effectively watched and guarded than our private homes. Sewer gas invades the home; microbes, destructive insects, all diseases invade it also; so far as civilised life is open to danger, the home is defenceless. So far as the home is protected it is through social progress – through public sanitation enforced by law and the public guardians of the peace. If we would but shake off the primitive limitations of these old concepts, cease to imagine the home to be a safe place, and apply our ideas of shelter, safety, comfort, and quiet to the City and State, we should then be able to ensure their fulfilment in our private homes far more fully.

The mother-love concept suffers even more from its limitations. As a matter of fact our children are far more fully guarded, provided for, and educated, by social efforts than by domestic; compare the children of a nation with a system of public education with children having only domestic education; or children safeguarded by public law and order with children having only domestic protection. The home-love and care of the Armenians for their children is no doubt as genuine and strong as ours, but the public care is not strong and well organised, hence the little Armenians are open to massacre as little Americans are not. Our children are largely benefited by the public, and would be much more so if the domestic concept did not act too strongly in limiting mother love to so narrow a field of action.

The later sentiments of sanctity and the others have moved a little, but not much. Why it is more sacred to make a coat at home than to buy it of a tailor, to kill a cow at home than to buy it of a butcher, to cook a pie at home than to buy it of a baker, or to teach a child at home than to have it taught by a teacher, is not made clear to us, but the lingering weight of those ages of ancestor-worship, of real sacrifice and libation at a real altar, is still heavy in our minds. We still by race-habit regard the home as sacred, and cheerfully profane our halls of justice and marts of trade, as if social service were not at least as high a thing as domestic service. This sense of sanctity is a good thing, but it should grow, it should evolve along natural lines till it includes all human functions, not be forever confined to its cradle, the home.

The concept of sex-seclusion is, with us, rapidly passing away. Our millions of wage-earning women are leading us, by the irresistible force of accomplished fact, to recognise the feminine as part of the world around us, not as a purely domestic element. The foot-binding process in China is but an extreme expression of this old domestic concept, the veiling process another. We are steadily leaving them all behind, and an American man feels no jar to his sexuo-domestic sentiments in meeting a woman walking freely in the street or working in the shops.

The latest of our home-ideas, personal convenience and expression, are themselves resultant from larger development of personality, and lead out necessarily. The accumulating power of individuality developed in large social processes by the male, is inherited by the female; she, still confined to the home, begins to fill and overfill it with the effort at individual expression, and must sooner or later come out to find the only normal field for highly specialised human power – the world.

Thus we may be encouraged in our study of domestic evolution. The forces and sentiments originating in the home have long since worked out to large social processes. We have gone far on our way toward making the world our home. What most impedes our further progress is the persistent retention of certain lines of industry within domestic limits, and the still more persistent retention of certain lines of home feelings and ideas. Even here, in the deepest, oldest, darkest, slowest place in all man's mind, the light of science, the stir of progress, is penetrating. The world does move – and so does the home.