The gift in the age of austerity: The economics of affection and obligation

“ New year’s gifts are not yet obsolete, although the practice is losing ground, which is a pity, as it served to strengthen and cement that kind feeling in society, which so many circumstances concur to jar and interrupt. It is now very much confined to interchange of gifts in families, at least in this country. For on the Continent the mutual exchange of presents, in the shape of jewellery, fancy articles, bon-bons, sweetmeats, &c. ”

“ Then you learn that the New Year brings gifts as well as gladness.
But nowadays the giving of presents is not so common as it used to be. Far back in English history the grown-up people gave each other gifts on New [5] Year's Day, and some of these gifts were very beautiful and very costly. Diamond necklaces, gold caskets, jewelled swords, embroidered mantles—these were the kind of gifts which rich people gave to each other at the feast of the New Year. Our English Kings and Queens, in the old days, received many such precious gifts. ”

“ We will scale down non-priority spending and cut budgets for projects that do not deliver desired outcomes.
Governments at all levels should tighten their belts, and central government departments should take the lead by cutting no less than 5 percent of their general expenditures. No increase in spending on official overseas visits, official vehicles, or official hospitality is permitted; and we will squeeze out more funds to cover cuts in taxes and fees. We will keep government spending low and enrich our people. ”

“ It was always necessary for one’s peace of mind to go back to the value of the material stock and the assets to be counted on in the future. The steady branching out of the business in every direction was proof of the fact that if it did not it must retrench; and to retrench meant fewer orders, fewer opportunities—financial suicide.
It was the powerful shibboleth of the world of trade that one must be seen to be doing business; only so could the doors of credit be opened. If Cater came in with him now, as seemed at last to be expected, the doors must open farther. ”

“ The large responsibilities now incurred clashed grotesquely with the daily need of money at home for petty uses; a condition of affairs which often happens at the birth of a child, when the household is at loose ends, and the expenses are necessarily greater in every direction at the time when it seems most imperative to limit them. Justin seemed never to have enough “change” in his pockets, no matter how much he brought home.
In some men the business faculties become more and more self-sufficing when there is no other passion to divide them—the nature grows all one way ”

“ No woman, so far as he knew, had ever been "in love" with him, with the exception, perhaps, of one he didn't like.
He had always, of course, expected to marry some day; but family demands had absorbed his youth—he had an additional twinge now in the fact that he was really older than he looked—and since then his salary hadn't seemed to keep pace with the latter-day High Cost of Living, though his friends had certainly married unflinchingly even in spite of the reduction of wage which this sudden war depression had wrought. ”

“ Perhaps you would rather have a compliment to your generosity than to your justice; but in this I shall not indulge you, because I think you already set too high a value upon generosity. It has been the misfortune of your life, my dear friend, to believe that, by making great sacrifices, and conferring great benefits, you could ensure to yourself, in return, affection and gratitude. You mistake both the nature of obligation and the effect which it produces on the human mind. Obligations may command gratitude, but can never ensure love. ”

“ Woman, in her false economic position, reacts injuriously upon industry, upon art, upon science, discovery, and progress. The sexuo-economic relation in its effect on the constitution of the individual keeps alive in us the instincts of savage individualism which we should otherwise have well outgrown. It sexualizes our industrial relation and commercializes our sex-relation. And, in the external effect upon the market, the over-sexed woman, in her unintelligent and ceaseless demands, hinders and perverts the economic development of the world. ”

“ Only candies and sweetmeats, you will see, were brought down through the chimney by the Christ-child on Christmas eve. The favorite time for gift-making from parent to child, from child to parent, from friend to friend, was on New Year’s Day. Hence that holiday is known as “Le Jour des Étrennes” [210] (the day of presents) , “étrennes” being a corruption of the Latin word “strenae,” the gifts exchanged during the Saturnalia, about which I have written in the fourth chapter of this book. ”

“ In some European nations, especially France and Scotland, New Year’s Day is a more important holiday than Christmas. If you were a French peasant child you might put a wooden shoe on the hearth for a gift at Christmas, but grownups in France exchange gifts at the New Year festival, at which time there are family parties, with much merrymaking.
“In America the observance of New Year’s Day is varied. New Year’s Eve there are ‘watch night’ services in the churches—gay street revelers—dancing and theater parties; and New Year’s Day is a time for general entertaining and visiting. ”

“ I have a holiday today; but what can one do on a rainy day? I walk up and down my attic out of temper, and I determine to light my fire.
Unfortunately the matches are bad, the chimney smokes, the wood goes out! I throw down my bellows in disgust, and sink into my old armchair.
In truth, why should I rejoice to see the birth of a new year? All those who are already in the streets, with holiday looks and smiling faces—do they understand what makes them so gay? Do they even know what is the meaning of this holiday, or whence comes the custom of New-Year’s gifts? ”

“ If a man has made a million in one business and wishes he’d made it in another, he isn’t a success to himself. I figure that an artist who may not have any money, but whom people call the most wonderful artist in the world—if he can live on that remark—is a success. Take every actor, even our greatest and most successful comedians, they never consider themselves great actors until they’ve played a Shakespearean part. It’s the same way in the comic field. The comic man never considers himself a great artist until he studies the art of painting. ”

“ Many a night I have worked until two o'clock in the morning that Erla's cheques might go to her regularly, and I hardly felt whether it was dawn or dark.
And I had in that time some of my most exquisite flashes of happiness; it was almost as if I had a premonition of what was to happen. I had always been fond of beautiful things, but I took a fresh joy in sunsets, in the shimmering of lights across the snow, in the swaying of green leaves, and white clouds in a blue sky—things that come in the way of everyone—full of a beauty that raises the strain of courage in one's heart. ”

“ Society is perfectly right, because social evolution is as natural a process as individual evolution; and the permanent parent is proven an advantageous social factor. But social evolution, deep, unconscious, slow, is one thing; and self-conscious, loud-voiced society is another.
The deepest forces of nature have tended to evolve pure, lasting, monogamous marriage in the human race. But our peculiar arrangement of feeding one sex by the other has tended to produce a very different thing, and has produced it. In no other animal species is the female economically dependent on the male. ”

“ The working power of the mother has always been a prominent factor in human life. She is the worker par excellence, but her work is not such as to affect her economic status. Her living, all that she gets,—food, clothing, ornaments, amusements, luxuries,—these bear no relation to her power to produce wealth, to her services in the house, or to her motherhood. These things bear relation only to the man she marries, the man she depends on,—to how much he has and how much he is willing to give her. ”

“ It is just as humanly natural for a woman as for a man to want wealth. But, when her wealth is made to come through the same channels as her love, she is forbidden to ask for it by her own sex-nature and by business honor. Hence the millions of mismade marriages with “anybody, good Lord!” Hence the million broken hearts which must let all life pass, unable to make any attempt to stop it. Hence the many “maiden aunts,” elderly sisters and daughters, unattached 90women everywhere, who are a burden on their male relatives and society at large. ”

“ Although marriage is a means of livelihood, it is not honest employment where one can offer one’s labor without shame, but a relation where the support is given outright, and enforced by law in return for the functional service of the woman, the “duties of wife and mother.” Therefore no honorable woman can ask for it. It is not only that the natural feminine instinct is to retire, as that of the male is to advance, but that, because marriage means support, a woman must not ask a man to support her. It is economic beggary as well as a false attitude from a sex point of view. ”

“ To the young woman confronting life there is the same world beyond, there are the same human energies and human desires and ambition within. But all that she may wish to have, all that she may wish to do, must come through a single channel and a single choice. Wealth, power, social distinction, fame,—not only these, but home and happiness, reputation, ease and pleasure, her bread and butter,—all, must come to her through a small gold ring. This is a heavy pressure. It has accumulated behind her through heredity, and continued about her through environment. ”

“ A woman is no longer content and grateful to have “a kind husband”: a man is no longer content with a patient Griselda; and, as all men and women, in marrying, revert to the economic status of the earlier family, they come under conditions which steadily tend to lower the standard of their mutual love, and make of the average marriage only a sort of compromise, borne with varying ease or difficulty according to the good breeding and loving-kindness of the parties concerned. ”

“ As society developes, its functions specialize; and the reason why this great race-function of cooking has been so retarded in its natural growth is that the economic dependence of women has kept them back from their share in human progress. When women stand free as economic agents, they will lift and free their arrested functions, to the much better fulfilment of their duties as wives and mothers and to the vast improvement in health and happiness of the human race. ”

“ I want you to tell everyone—all who have done the least thing for my little child’s sake, yes, or who have wanted to do anything, that never while my life lasts—I hope it won’t be long—but never while it lasts will I forget them, never will I cease to ask God to bless them, ‘to reward them sevenfold into their bosom.’ I have been praying to-day, when I could pray, that He would teach me how to help others, that the world might be better because my little child had lived in it, and I had had such joy. ”