The natural and inevitable result of this new and improved state of things was that woman deprived of the productive industries at which she had formerly earned her keep and something over for her employer, was no longer a source of monetary profit to that employer. On the contrary, so far as money went and so long as she remained in the home, she was often a distinct loss. Instead of baking bread for her husband or father, her husband or father had to expend his money on buying bread for her to eat; she no longer wove the material for other people’s garments; on the contrary the material for her own had to be obtained at the draper’s. The position, for man, was a serious one; for be it remembered, he could not lower the wages of his domestic animal. These had always been fixed, whatever work she did, at the lowest possible rate—subsistence rate; so that even when her work ceased to be profitable her wages could not be made to go any lower—there was nowhere lower for them to go. One’s daughter had to be fed, clothed and lodged even if the narrowed scope of the home provided her with no more lucrative employment than dusting china dogs on the mantelpiece.
Under these circumstances the daughters of a household found themselves, often enough, face to face with a divided duty: the duty of earning their keep, which would necessitate emergence from the home, and the duty of remaining inside the sacred sphere—and confining their energies to china dogs. Left to themselves the more energetic and ambitious would naturally adopt the first alternative, the more slothful and timid as naturally adopt the second; but they were not always left to themselves, nor were their own desires and predilections the sole factor in their respective decisions. The views of the head of the household, who now got little or no return for the outlay he incurred in supporting them, had also to be taken into consideration; and his views were usually influenced by the calls made upon his purse. Theoretically he might hold fast to the belief that woman’s sphere was the home and nothing but the home. Actually he might object to the monetary outlay incurred if that belief was acted upon. The father of five strapping girls (all hungry several times a day), who might or might not succeed in inducing five desirable husbands to bear the expense of their support, would probably discover that, even if home was the sphere of woman, there were times when she was better out of it. It is a curious fact that when women are blamed for intruding into departments of the labour market hitherto reserved for men, the abuse which is freely showered upon the intruders is in no wise poured forth upon the male persons appertaining to the said intruders—who have presumably neglected to provide the funds necessary to enable their female relations to pass a blameless, if unremunerative, existence making cakes for home consumption, or producing masterpieces in Berlin wool-work. The different treatment meted out to the guilty parties in this respect seems to be another example of the practice of apportioning blame only to the person least able to resent it. It is quite natural that man should refuse to support healthy and able-bodied females; but he must not turn round and be nasty when, as a direct consequence of his refusal, the healthy and able-bodied females endeavour to support themselves.