XVIII
THE LUCKY WORKING WOMAN
Why do we hold to the theory that work is a blessing to men, but a curse to women? We know beyond all questioning that the necessity of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow was the consolation prize that Adam was handed along with his eviction papers when he was turned out of Eden. We know that the only happy man is the busy man. We know that only in constructive labor does a man find an interest that never palls and a game in which there is a perpetual thrill. We know that work is the greatest anodyne for sorrow and the best protection against temptation. We know that, as Stevenson says, “if a man loves the labor of any trade apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him, and he is of all men most enviable.”
So manifold are the benefits men derive from work, so salutary are its effects upon them, that we have a contempt for the idle, purposeless man and feel that, no matter how much money he has, he has no right to spend his life in loafing. We are eager to get our boys to work, so that their restless young energy may find a legitimate outlet, instead of being employed in devising new forms of dissipation. The young man must have something to do, and if he isn’t bending his back in honest farming he will be breaking his neck in sowing a wild-oats crop.
Our attitude, however, toward women and work is diametrically opposite. We do not regard work as a good thing for women. On the contrary, we consider it a misfortune for a woman to have to work. We have even coined a phrase for it and speak of the woman who must earn her own living as a “poor working woman.” Worse still, the woman who works pities herself. The mother whose daughters go down to business every morning bewails their fate and feels that destiny has dealt most unkindly by them. The woman who must do her own housework, and look after her own babies, and make her own clothes sheds barrels of tears over her lot.
Men also accept this view of the situation that labor is a curse to women, and work themselves to death in order that their wives and daughters may live in parasitic ease, with servants to wait upon them and have nothing to do but kill time. In fact, the consensus of opinion seems to be that the ideal state for a woman is that in which she never performs any useful labor, but merely sits on a silk cushion and feeds upon strawberries, sugar and cream. All of this is a distorted view of the situation. Women need to work just as much as men do. Idleness has just as disastrous an effect upon the feminine character as it has upon the male, and among women, as among men, the only happy, contented ones are those who are so much engrossed in some useful labor that they haven’t leisure in which to consider whether they are satisfied or not.
Mother “poor Marys” and “poor Sallys” her daughters who have to earn their living, but nowhere else will you see healthier, happier girls than those holding down good jobs in stores and offices. Nine times out of ten the girl behind the counter is brighter, more alert, and finds life a far more entertaining proposition than does her purposeless idle sister before the counter.
Nor is the domestic woman who has to do her own housework entitled to shed any tears of self-pity on our necks. There is no more reason why a husky young woman shouldn’t do her share of the work of the domestic partnership than there is why her husband should not do his. It is no more of a hardship for her to have to work than it is for him, and many a rich old woman who sits now with empty hands that ache for occupation will tell you that her happiest days were the busy, crowded ones when she got up at five o’clock to cook her husband’s breakfast before he went to the factory and sat up until eleven o’clock washing and patching his clothes so that he could make a decent appearance next day.
It is a significant fact that the women who fill sanitariums and enrich nerve specialists are not the overworked, hard-driven wives and mothers. They are the middle-aged and elderly women, who have nothing to do but to canvass their systems for symptoms of every disease they read about in the magazines. It takes leisure to develop invalidism. Busy people keep well because they haven’t time to be sick.
Nearly every man’s ambition is to keep his wife in idleness, and he thinks that he is being a good husband when he can boast that she hasn’t a thing on earth to do but to amuse herself. It is pathetic that the thing that so many good husbands strive for is their undoing. For it is the idle women who are the peevish, fretful, discontented wives. It is the idle women who run off with all sorts of fool fads and fancies. It is the idle women who decide that their good, honest, hard-working husbands are not their real soul-mates, and who get into scandals with jazzhounds and elope with romantic-looking sheiks they have picked up in hotel lobbies.
The idle woman is never a happy woman. Having nothing to do but to think about herself, she is sure to prod around in her mind until she finds a grievance. Having nothing to do, she is sure to get into mischief. Having no interesting occupation, she begins to hunt for thrills. And the net result is that she works harder trying to amuse herself than she would at scrubbing floors, and the only reward is that life is flat, stale and unpalatable in her mouth.
Let us hope that the time will soon come when we will have enough intelligence to perceive that work is a woman’s salvation even as it is a man’s, and when we will congratulate the woman with a job instead of pitying her.