A Domestic Problem : Work and Culture in the Household eBook
Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz
The law, “No child shall walk the street in
a plain dress,” is just as practically a law
as if it had been enacted by the legal authorities.
Mothers obey its high behests, and dare not rebel against
it. Look at our little girls going to school,
each with her tucks and ruffles. Who “gets
time” to do all that sewing? where do they get
it, and at what sacrifices? A goodly number of
stitches and moments go to the making and putting
on of even one ruffle on one skirt. Think of all
the stitches and moments necessary for the making
and putting of all the ruffles on all the skirts of
the several little girls often belonging to one family!
What a prospect before her has a mother of little
girls! And there is no escape, not even in common
sense. A woman considered sensible in the very
highest degree will dress her little girl like other
little girls, or perish in the attempt. How many
do thus perish, or are helped to perish, we shall
never know. A frail, delicate woman said to me
one day, “Oh, I do hope the fashions will change
before Sissy grows up, for I don’t see how it
will be possible for me to make her clothes.”
You observe her submissive, law-abiding spirit.
The possibility of evading the law never even suggests
itself. There is many a feeble mother of grown
and growing “Sissys” to whom the spring
or fall dressmaking appears like an avalanche coming
to overwhelm her, or a Juggernaut coming to roll over
her. She asks not, “How shall I escape?”
but, “How shall I endure?” Let her console
herself. These semi-annual experiences are all
“mission.” All sewing is “mission;”
all cooking is “mission.” It matters
not what she cooks, nor what she sews. “Domestic,”
and worthy all praise, does the community consider
that woman who keeps her hands employed, and is bodily
present with her children inside the house.
But her bodily presence, even with mother love and
longing to do her best, is not enough. There
should be added two things,—knowledge and
wisdom. These, however, she does not have, because
to obtain them are needed what she does not get,—leisure,
tranquillity, and the various resources and appliances
of culture; also because their importance is not felt
even by herself; also because the community does not
yet see that she has need of them. And this brings
us round to the point we started from,—namely,
that the present unsatisfactory state of things is
owing largely to the want of insight, or unenlightenment,
which prevails concerning what woman needs and must
have in order rightly to fulfil her mission.
