The Nervous Housewife | Page 2

going to the dogs." "The good old days" has been the cry of man from
the very earliest times.
Yet read what a contemporary of the housewife of three quarters of a
century ago says,--the wisest, wittiest, sanest doctor of the day, Oliver
Wendell Holmes. The genial autocrat of the breakfast table observes:
"Talk about military duty! What is that to the warfare of a married maid
of all work, with the title of mistress and an American female
constitution which collapses just in the middle third of life, comes out
vulcanized India rubber, if it happens to live through the period when
health and strength are most wanted?"
And then, if one looks in the advertisements of half a century ago, one
finds the nostrum dealer loudly proclaiming his capacity to cure what is
evidently the Nervous Housewife. In America at least she has always
existed, perhaps in lesser numbers than at present. And one remembers

in a dim sort of way that the married woman of olden days was
altogether faded at thirty-five, that she entered on middle life at a time
when at least many of our women of to-day still think themselves
young.
It becomes interesting and necessary at this point to trace the evolution
of the home, because this is to trace the evolution of our housewife. We
are apt to think of the home as originating in a sort of cave, where the
little unit--the Man, the Woman, and the Children--dwelt in isolation,
ever on the watch against marauders, either animal or human. In this
cave the woman was the chattel of man; he had seized her by force and
ruled by force.
Perhaps there was such a stage, but much more likely the home was a
communal residence, where the man-herd, the group, the clan, the
Family in the larger sense dwelt. Only a large group would be safe, and
the strong social instinct, the herd feeling, was the basis of the home.
Here the men and women dwelt in a promiscuity that through the ages
went through an evolution which finally became the father-controlled
monogamy of to-day. Here the women lived; here they span, sewed,
built; here they started the arts, the handicrafts, and the religions. And
from here the men went forth to fish and hunt and fight, grim males to
whom a maiden was a thing to court and a wife a thing to enslave.
Just how the home became more and more segregated and the family
life more individualized is not in the province of this book to detail.
This is certain: that the home was not only a place where man and
woman mated, where their children were born and reared, where food
was prepared and cooked, and where shelter from the elements was
obtained; it was also the first great workshop, where all the manifold
industries had their inception and early development. The housewife
was then not only mother, wife, cook, and nurse; she was the spinner,
the weaver, the tanner, the dyer, the brewer, the druggist.
Even in the high civilization of the Jews this wide scope of the
housewife prevailed. Read what the wisest, perhaps because most
married, of men says:

She seeketh wool and flax, And worketh willingly with her hands. She
is like the merchant ships; She bringeth her food from afar. She
considereth a field, and buyeth it. With the fruit of her hands she
planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength, And maketh
strong her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good. Her lamp
goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the distaff And her
hands hold the spindle.
* * * * *
She is not afraid of the snow for her household: For all her household
are clothed with scarlet. She maketh for herself coverlets, She maketh
linen garments and selleth them, And delivereth girdles unto the
merchants.
No wonder "her children rise up and call her blessed" and it is
somewhat condescending of her husband when he "praiseth her." All
we learn of him is that he "is known in the gates when he sitteth among
the elders of the land." With a wife like her, this was all he had to do.
This combination of industrialism and domesticity continued until
gradually men stepped into the field of work, perhaps as a result of
their wives' example, and became farmers on a larger scale, merchants
of a wider scope, artisans, handicraftsmen, guild members of a more
developed technique. Woman started these things in the home or near it;
man, through his restless energy, specialized and thus developed an
intenser civilization. But even up till the nineteenth century woman
carried on all her occupations at the home, which still continued to be
workshop and hearth.