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 mee
t 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 fulfi
lment 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.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 211