Domestic Discontent

What the Public Needs

Domestic Discontent written by Margaret Fairley

The Colliery Accident

From The Canadian Forum, November 1920, p.44

An old argument against universal education was that there would come a time when the drudgery of the world would be left undone through lack of people unambitious enough to undertake it. That time does not seem to have come yet, so far as concerns the drudgery of standing hour after hour and day after day handling or watching the same bit of machinery. But there is at the present time a serious shortage of people willing to undertake the far less monotonous drudgery of running a house. The business of running a house is, for women, a very large part of the business of marriage. Some of us wish to delegate this housekeeping to paid assistants, and we are seriously put about if these assistants are not forthcoming. But it is apparent that it is hopeless to expect a return to the days of faithful, life-long retainers, and meanwhile many of us are wasting quite a slice of our lives in pining for the impossible and comparing notes about our misfortunes.

The well-educated woman wants to do much more than housework. She has been trained to value mental and spiritual life for its own sake, and she asks for a good deal more than the "trivial round, the common task". She refuses to acquiesce in the theory of self-effacement and self-sacrifice which generations ago men invented to keep women in their place, and, while she takes her job as seriously as did her mother and grandmother, she cannot admit that she is or should be called upon to stifle her mind and keep it too in its place. She demands an opportunity to live in the world of books and music and friendship, all of which require time. It seems clear too that, if she tries to do all that the "good housewife" should do, she will fail. She is sure to find her thwarted desire for leisure and friendship turn to illtemper. The best things will go for the less good, and gradually she will lose heart and enthusiasm. This is a real problem for educated married women to consider. If they are not content to drift into continual worry over the "help" question, let them take a stand immediately, and so take possession of their own lives that they are no longer the victims of circumstance, but the creators of a new way of life.

The care of a house and children is not unpleasant to most women. And it is certainly not too easy for the best educated of women. No one need feel that it makes too slight a demand upon brain or character. In fact most would probably say that if they could feel at the end of the day that they had completed a day's job and done it well and had a little time for other things, they would find all the happiness to be found in any work. What is it that prevents many women from feeling this? The question is so important that very much of the happiness of all our lives depends on it. If women could feel so content with their work, we could be more sure of happy evenings for men, women, and children. It is foolish and ridiculous and supremely unworthy of sensible educated people that they cannot so order and control their lives as to win this sense of free complacency when the honest day's work is done.

In the first place they attempt far too much. Here, many are quite foolish. If there is not much help available, big sections of unnecessary work could be cut out — most of the sewing, all of the canning, much of the cooking. Why not do as little of these things as possible instead of as much? If there is any margin of income why not spend it on buying leisure? If people to cook and wash in the house are hard to come by, why not use the services which they are willing to give in bakery and laundry? If the opportunity to read and talk is really desired, there must be the readiness to sacrifice a little money, a little reputation for housewifeliness, and a little of the special flavour of home-made jam.

There is in Canada a fast increasing number of well-educated women. And far too many of them are unable to follow up the interests which have been awakened and developed in them. What hope is there of free intellectual life for them? Thoreau was convinced that the machinery of life, the acquiring of food and shelter and clothing, should occupy but a small portion of a man's time and it is probable that, if educated housewives are to do more than live on their intellectual capital, some kind of domestic revolution is necessary. Courageous experiment is required to break down conventions and traditions based on two outworn practices — that of living as a clan, many branches of a family in a house, and that of educating the girls far less than the boys. Perhaps our habits of eating and drinking are based on these practices and the dimensions of dish-washing are, in consequence, quite disproportionate to the spiritual demands of women. Let us then break through some of these dishes and do something drastic to win back our self-respect. Women are so miserably at the mercy of things that they cannot live without whining at them. Every religious revival calls men away from preoccupation with the material side of life, and then the orthodox humdrum religious teacher in his turn tells men, and especially women, to find in drudgery their salvation. The well-educated woman should side with the reformer, with Christ and St. Francis and Savonarola and Fox. The austerity of these men has its chief value in the freedom which it gives. If you prepare the one needful dish which Martha's guest would have preferred to [p.45] her elaborate dinner, there is so much more time for friendly talk. If your dress is the dress of your order there is so much more time for the life of the spirit, for walks in the country, for contemplation of your brother and sisters, the sun and the birds. If you have no gold and silver you need not clean it, and again you have time to live. It is all a question of values. And at present it is a question of individual values. For no doubt the world still sees little need for shortening the housewife's day, and pours forth its praise on the woman who does everything herself and is never leisured.

One of the wisest of litlle-known Englishmen wrote "When I came into the country, and being seated among silent trees, and meads and hills, had all my time in mine own hands, I resolved to spend it all, whatever it cost me, in the search of happiness, and to satiate that burning thirst which Nature had enkindled in me from my youth. In which I was so resolute, that I chose rather to live upon ten pounds a year, and to go in leather clothes, and feed upon bread and water, so that I might have all my time clearly to myself, than to keep many thousands per annum in an estate of life where my time would be devoured in care and labour." Only those housewives who value their time more than their jam can contribute much towards that new order where the life can be more than meat and the body than raiment.

But not much can be done by individuals. Thinking women as a whole must change their standards, their domestic customs, and their methods of enticing help. There might, for example, be far more entertaining without the inevitable meal. Invitation cards might be printed with "Please eat at home" in the corner. Even so the margin of time left for pursuing vital interests will be small, and some paid help will still be desirable. What is the most likely form that this help will take in the future? Everything indicates that the number of girls willing to live and work in other people's houses is on the decrease. The reasons are obvious. It is pleasant to have a work place and a living place. It is pleasant to live with people with whom you share a common point of view and a common idea of amusement. It is pleasant to be your own mistress over the ordinary little details of your off-time, your bed time, and your rising time; your bath, your exercise, and fresh air, and recreation.

Any organization dealing with domestic work could, if it had the confidence of employers and employed, do much more than handle casual appeals for help or for work. The women of an energetic community who feel the need of organized domestic work could get together and work out some scheme whereby this eternally recurring worry could be compelled to take a back seat. Their aim should be to make the good life possible for housewives and for paid assistants alike.

A comparatively small district could set the example, say the streets lying within a given square mile. Every house in the district might receive a letter asking for answers to some such questions as these:

1. Do you desire help in your house or with your children?

2. If so, for what work? at what hours? for what pay?

3. Is there any woman or girl in your house ready to give help in another house?

4. If so what work? at what hours? for what pay?

5. Are there children in your house?

6. Is there anyone in your house willing to take her turn (say two or three evenings a month) at staying with neighbours' children in the evenings when their parents are out?

The enterprising two or three who have made themselves responsible for canvassing the district will, if they get much encouragement from the returns, probably appoint a secretary whose duty it will be to try and turn the good will of the district to practical account. The answers to 6 will have to be classified under very small areas. It is conceivable that the answers to questions 3 and 4 might bring to light a girl with a gift for cleaning silver who could work for half a street, another who was a skilled bed-maker, a third who liked nothing better than dish-washing. So a procession of experts might be at our service and we should have merely to be at hand to let them in and out of the house. We should in our turn become expert door-openers.

It is, surely true that if a determined effort were made, as far as income allows, to reduce work, to make use of outside help such as that of laundry, bakery, nursery school, to organize paid help in the house for certain parts of the work, and to organize the neighbourly interchange of responsibility for the children in the evenings, this wearisomely monotonous discontent over the domestic problem would in great measure disappear. There would surely be more happiness, though of course there would have to be some hard thinking for topics of conversation.

Margaret Fairley