The next is the maternal character of this poor primeval labourer. Because of her wealth of power and patience it does not occur to her to make things easier for herself. The fatal inertia of home industries lies in their maternal basis. The work is only done for the family--the family is satisfied--what remains? There is no other ambition, no other incentive, no other reward. Where the horizon of duty and aspiration closes down with one's immediate blood relations, there is no room for growth.
All that has pushed and pulled reluctant man up the long path of social evolution has not touched the home-bound woman. Whatever height he reached, her place was still the same. The economic relation of the sexes here works[2] with tremendous force. Depending on the male for her economic profit, her own household labours kept to the sex-basis, and never allowed to enter the open market, there was nothing to modify her original sex-tendency to work with stationary contentment. If we can imagine for a moment a world like ours, with all our elaborate business processes in the hands of women, and the men still in the position of the male savage--painted braves, ready for the warpath, and good for little else--we get a comparison with this real condition, where the business processes are in the hands of men, and the women still in the position of the female savage--docile toilers for the family, and good for little else. That is the second limit of the housewife--that she is merely working for her own family--in the sex-relation--not the economic relation; as servant to the family instead of servant to the world.
[2] See "Women and Economics," C. P. Stetson.
Next comes her isolation. Even the bottom-level of a universal average--even the blind patience of a working mother--could be helped up a little under the beneficent influence of association. In the days when the ingenious squaw led the world, she had it. The women toiled together at their primitive tasks and talked together as they toiled. The women who founded the beginnings of agriculture were founders also of the village; and their feminine constructive tendencies held it together while the destructive tendencies of the belligerent male continually tore it apart. All through that babyhood of civilisation, the hunting and fighting instinct made men prey upon the accumulated wealth resultant from the labouring instinct of women--but industry conquered, being the best. As industry developed, as riches increased, as property rights were defined, as religions grew, women were confined more and more closely at home. Later civilisations have let them out to play--but not to work. The parasitic female of the upper classes is allowed the empty freedom of association with her useless kind; but the housewife is still confined to the house.