A Post without a Picture

Thus far I have tried to keep my words at a minimum as I know its much more fun to look at pictures of William than to listen to me. And do not fear, I don't intend to change the practice. But I can't resist posting a link to an essay that has become one of my favorites. Every time I read it I want to stand up and shout AMEN, or whatever you shout to give your hearty approval.

It's about the value of a woman's work in the home. I chose the word "woman" and not "mother" because much of what he writes can be applied to the wife at home whether or not she has children.

The name of the essay is "The Emancipation of Domesticity", and it was written by G.K. Chesterton who was British. It took me several readings before I could thoroughly digest most of what he is saying and each time I read it, the reading becomes even more enjoyable because the humor, satire, and illusions have become more familiar. In other words, I've found it to be well worth the effort and no, I couldn't follow all of what he said with one read. The beginning is the hardest to get through so don't stop till you've finished.

Here is an excerpt:

Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. … Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up ... For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean.

When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.

How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.