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Is Woman A Worker
by
“That kind of knightly feeling towards woman which reverences her delicacy, her frailty, which protects and cares for her, is, I think, the crown of manhood; and without it a man is only a rough animal. But our fair aristocrats and their knightly defenders need to be cautioned lest they lose their position, as many privileged orders have before done, by an arrogant and selfish use of power.
“I have said that the vices of aristocracy are more developed among women in America than among men, and that, while there are no men in the Northern States who are not ashamed of living a merely idle life of pleasure, there are many women who make a boast of helplessness and ignorance in woman’s family duties which any man would be ashamed to make with regard to man’s duties, as if such helplessness and ignorance were a grace and a charm.
“There are women who contentedly live on, year after year, a life of idleness, while the husband and father is straining every nerve, growing prematurely old and gray, abridged of almost every form of recreation or pleasure,–all that he may keep them in a state of careless ease and festivity. It may be very fine, very generous, very knightly, in the man who thus toils at the oar that his princesses may enjoy their painted voyages; but what is it for the women?
“A woman is a moral being–an immortal soul–before she is a woman; and as such she is charged by her Maker with some share of the great burden of work which lies on the world.
“Self-denial, the bearing of the cross, are stated by Christ as indispensable conditions to the entrance into his kingdom, and no exception is made for man or woman. Some task, some burden, some cross, each one must carry; and there must be something done in every true and worthy life, not as amusement, but as duty,–not as play, but as earnest work,–and no human being can attain to the Christian standard without this.
“When Jesus Christ took a towel and girded himself, poured water into a basin, and washed his disciples’ feet, he performed a significant and sacramental act, which no man or woman should ever forget. If wealth and rank and power absolve from the services of life, then certainly were Jesus Christ absolved, as he says: ‘Ye call me Master, and Lord. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.’
“Let a man who seeks to make a terrestrial paradise for the woman of his heart,–to absolve her from all care, from all labor, to teach her to accept and to receive the labor of others without any attempt to offer labor in return,–consider whether he is not thus going directly against the fundamental idea of Christianity; taking the direct way to make his idol selfish and exacting, to rob her of the highest and noblest beauty of womanhood.
“In that chapter of the Bible where the relation between man and woman is stated, it is thus said, with quaint simplicity: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.’ Woman the helper of man, not his toy,–not a picture, not a statue, not a work of art, but a HELPER, a doer,–such is the view of the Bible and the Christian religion.
“It is not necessary that women should work physically or morally to an extent which impairs beauty. In France, where woman is harnessed with an ass to the plough which her husband drives,–where she digs, and wields the pick-axe,–she becomes prematurely hideous; but in America, where woman reigns as queen in every household, she may surely be a good and thoughtful housekeeper, she may have physical strength exercised in lighter domestic toils, not only without injuring her beauty, but with manifest advantage to it. Almost every growing young girl would be the better in health, and therefore handsomer, for two hours of active housework daily; and the habit of usefulness thereby gained would be an equal advantage to her moral development. The labors of modern, well-arranged houses are not in any sense severe; they are as gentle as any kind of exercise that can be devised, and they bring into play muscles that ought to be exercised to be healthily developed.