Man's power, his charm, for woman is far more than that of sex. It is the all-inclusive vital force of human life--of real social development. She has hung around him as devotedly as the cripple tags the athlete. When women have their own field of legitimate social activity, they retain their admiration for really noble manhood, but the "anybody, Good Lord!" petition is lost forever. A hint is perhaps suggested here, as to the world-old charm for women, of the priest and soldier. Both are forms of very wide social service--detached, impersonal, giving up life to the good of the whole--infinitely removed from the close clinging shadow of the house!
In our immediate time the progress of industry has cut the lady off from even her embroidery. Man, alert and inventive, follows her few remaining industries relentlessly, and grabs them from her, away from the house, into the mill and shop where they belong. But she, with ever idler hands, must stay behind. He will furnish her with everything her heart can wish--but she must stay right where she is and swallow it.
_"Lady Love! Lady Love! wilt thou be mine? Thou shalt neither wash dishes, nor yet feed the swine! But sit on a cushion and sew a gold seam And feed upon strawberries, sugar, and cream!"_
This amiable programme, so exquisitely ludicrous, when offered to the world's most inherently industrious worker, becomes as exquisitely cruel when applied. The physical energies of the mother--an enormous fund--denied natural expression in bodily exertion, work morbidly in manifold disease. The social energies, boundless, resistless, with which she is brought more in contact every year, denied natural expression in world-service, work morbidly inside the painfully inadequate limits of the house.
Here we have the simple explanation of that unreasonable excess which characterises the lady of the house. The amount of wealth this amiable prisoner can consume in fanciful caprices is practically unlimited. Her clothing and ornament is a study in itself. Start any crazy fad or fashion in this field, and off goes the flood of self-indulgence, the craving for "expression," absurdity topping extravagance. There is nothing to check it save the collapse of the source of supplies.