Abby Morton Diaz

“ Ever since I began inquiring into household affairs, my mind has been disturbed by a doubt—not quite a doubt; call it an uneasiness—as to the mental superiority of the dominant sex. No, it cannot amount to positive doubting. That would be to fly in the face of facts. History proves that the greatest philosophers, the greatest artists, the greatest writers, the greatest thinkers, have been men. If woman has the ability to be as great in these directions, why has she not been as great? ”

“ Alas for poor woman chained to the rolling-pin! Her sentence is for life.
“We read, too, in ancient story of powerful genii, whose control over their slaves was absolute; but this terrible genius of the household exacts from its slaves an equally prompt obedience. Is there one among them who dares assert her freedom?
“No: their doom is inevitable. Woman is foreordained to roll her life away. Is there no escape? No escape. The rolling-board is planted squarely [11] in the path of every little daughter; and sooner or later, if her life be spared, she will walk up to it. ”

“ So, examine an hourful of household work, and you will find it all alive with plans, contrivances, forethoughts, afterthoughts, happy thoughts, and countless trifling experiences, minute, it may be, but full of animation. The puddle is often set in commotion by a passing breeze, or by a stone dropping in. Well, household work, too, has its breezes of hurry and flurry, besides its regular trade-winds, which blow morning, noon, and night. ”

“ Uncle David owned to Fennel once, that he wants to have the name, when he dies, of leaving property. What a funny idea it is, when you come to think of it,—the idea of living this life, that can’t be lived but once, entirely for the sake of accumulating something, which, when we have done living, can be of no use to us! I agree with Fennel and Adeline, that we ought to get out of life what is best worth having. ”

“ There is much to admire and to reverence in these women of Tweenit. They are, generally speaking, just as bright and just as good as my friends at Piper’s Mills. The point is, that they do not, or the majority of them do not, like those friends of [48] mine, get the best out of life. Their energies are spent chiefly on physical, not mental needs. Their talk is trivial. Nature is almost a dead loss to them. While others are enjoying, through books, communion with the noblest minds, they are taken up with the petty concerns of their neighbors. ”

“ I see, that, with the mothers of Tweenit, life is one prolonged hurry. Feet and hands are hurrying to “get things done.” The mind is ever on the stretch, planning how to “get things done,” or fearing things will not “get done;” and things do not “get done.” One day’s work laps over on to the next, one week’s on to the next, one month’s, one year’s; and so there is no pause, no let-down. Rest, quiet, leisure, are here unknown terms with the mother of a family ”

“ It is about time, one would think, to put a stop to this woman-killing. A harsh phrase? It is not more harsh than the truth; for, if lightening labor will prolong life, insisting upon unnecessary labor is not far removed from that crime. And this unnecessary labor is insisted upon in one way or another.
For instance, I have Mrs. Fennel’s own word for it, that pies are “the heft of the cooking;” have heard her speak of rolling out pastry until she was “ready to drop,” of beating cake until her arms “hadn’t one mite of strength left in them.” ”

“ My friends, if the Almighty Creator meant that woman should be judged by the law, he gave to her an understanding mind to understand the law: otherwise, God is unjust. And, my friends, if women are to be saved, or lost, according to the deeds done in the body, it must be that they have consciences whereby they may tell right from wrong: otherwise, God is unjust. My friends, woman either is a responsible being, or she is not a responsible being: she can’t be sometimes one, and sometimes the other. It does not appear to me, my friends, that we are called upon to decide this matter. ”

“ Yes, the poor woman is killing herself with overwork. And when she rests, at last, beneath the turf, people will speak of the mysterious Providence which removed a wife and mother in the midst of her usefulness. ”

“ I don’t mean ever to marry till I find a man just like Fennel Payne. But he has no brother. Alas and alackaday! Why, he even bought silver-plated knives to save Adeline’s arms and Adeline’s moments. His Aunt Laura was over yesterday; and she gave him quite a lecture on extravagance, also threw out something about the mother of a family sitting down to read in the daytime. Fennel declared that he could buy a set of knives every month with what his aunt spent in cooking the unnecessaries of life; and Adeline did a sum in tarts and doughnuts to show where her reading-time came from. ”

“ A young woman of this village set before her company, the other afternoon, three kinds of cake, two of pie, three of preserves, besides Washington-pie, cookies, and hot and cold bread. Every woman who sat at that tea-table, when her turn of inviting the company comes round, will feel obliged to make a similar display. When this barbarous practice of stuffing one’s guests shall have been abolished, a social gathering will not necessarily imply hard labor and dyspepsia. Perhaps, when that time arrives, we shall be sufficiently civilized to demand pleasures of a higher sort. ”

“ Why do not philanthropists organize a society for the enlightenment of mothers? That is what the country needs. And when such a society shall have been organized, and have accomplished its purpose, another must be started, the object of which shall be to furnish mothers with time: not by putting more hours into the day, or more days into the week, but by an easy process which I have in my mind, and which I am willing to divulge. ”

“ Nanny Joe is tall, slender; has coal-black hair, coal-black eyes, a sallow complexion, and a chin unnecessarily long. She is pleasing and sprightly; her friend, pleasing and quiet.
Now joyful shouts uprise. There is money in the letter. David Melendy, junior, has sent twenty dollars. These women leave no stone unturned. A few months ago, one of them, while on a visit to the city, called upon all Tweenit-born individuals there residing, and by appealing to their pride, their generosity, or their piety, as suited each case, obtained various sums to help the cause along. ”

“ Hale, “takes from wives all personal responsibility. Submit yourselves to your husbands in every thing. If a husband wishes his wife to do a wrong act, it is her duty to obey him.”
Mr. David said, that, of course, a woman should not do any thing against her own conscience. Mr. Hale replied, that the text left her no right of private judgment, inasmuch as Paul declared over and over again in his epistles, that the wife must submit to the husband, and that “the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church.” ”

“ Now, no human being can live long in such a condition as that. Well, then, if overwork kills, whatever saves work saves life. Life is the most precious possession: therefore, money spent in saving work is money well spent ”

“ FENNEL PAYNE AND ADELINE. TWEENIT is usually in a state of ferment from one cause or another. Last week it was a quarrel between two neighbors; the week before it was Aunt Jinny’s (Aunt Jinny under the hill) undertaking to have company; this week, it is silver-plated knives. Fennel Payne has bought for Adeline silver-plated knives. “It does beat all!” exclaims Mrs. Laura, who is now discussing the matter with Mrs. Fennel in an adjoining room. My prophetic eye sees a day in the far-off future, when, even in country villages, women’s thoughts will be occupied by subjects of more importance. ”

“ Aunt Laura said she approved of laying by for a rainy day; and Adeline said that was just what she was doing,—laying up ideas against the day when her health might not be so good, or her family so small. ‘The question [84] is, Aunt Laura,’ said she, ‘who wastes time and money,—you, or I?’ Uncle David and Aunt Laura have always worked like slaves, and do now; but every dollar saved is put into the bank or into land. There’s hardly a pretty thing in their house. They work and save, work and save, denying themselves almost every enjoyment, except that of eating. They will live well. ”

“ A TALK IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE. AFTER the women, by working at home and begging abroad, had obtained the requisite sum, the men came forward, and proposed meeting together to form a society, or parish, which should build the chapel, and regulate all things pertaining thereto. The women said, “Yes, a very proper thing to do: we’ll come.”—“Oh, no!” the men said: “we can manage it ourselves. You don’t understand house-building; besides, a woman would be out of place in a parish meeting.” ”

“ It being settled, then, that woman does possess this motive-power which belongs to my science, and which I have named mind-power, the question next arises, Is she doing all she can with it? Is none of it running to waste? What ideas, apart from household affairs, take up her mind mostly? ”

“ They live in the city. They keep a cook, chambermaid, parlor-girl, nursery-maid, and usually a seamstress. As far as work is concerned, Mrs. Manchester’s life is one prolonged state of leisure. Does she give this leisure to her children? She does not: she gives it to society. I thought I would try the “book” in her case, and did so, scarcely able to conceal a smile, as I thought how little she imagined that an experiment was being made upon her for the benefit of domestic science. ”

“ He says, that, as Adeline has little Adeline and Buddy to bring up, she ought to have the means of preparing herself to do it, and beautiful things to look at, and leisure to enjoy them, so as to keep herself in a pleasant frame of mind. There is nothing he will not do to make Adeline’s work easy for her. ”

“ There is, after all, a relationship between us and the brutes; and we need not be ashamed to own our kindred, or to share in their enjoyments. Besides, these grains, fruits, vegetables, &c., which we are called to meet three times a day, are all our relations, on the mother’s side (Mother Nature’s) , and should by no means be regarded with contempt, especially as it is their destiny to be worked up into human beings, actually made bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. ”

“ Nanny Joe says there are very few people—that is, very few people in Tweenit (they are doubtless plenty elsewhere) —who are willing, really willing, to give away half a dollar right out and out. She asked five individuals to contribute that sum toward the sewing-machine, and they refused; they were unmarried men, too, earning daily wages, which were spent freely in tobacco, confectionery, horse-hire, and other gratifications. Nanny says that half a dollar to be spent on one’s self is a modest, insignificant little affair ”

“ Children must have their mother. She belongs to them. The best a woman has, the best an arch-angel has, is none too good for the children. No: the question is suggested, partly by the “observations” I have been making, and partly by the recollection of Mrs. Melendy’s remark, that the “three meals take [28] about all day.” I am glad the sewing-circle meets here this week; for, by attending to the conversation, I may learn upon what subjects the minds of at least some fifteen or twenty women chiefly dwell. ”

“ Every stroke on the board demands strength which is worse than thrown away. Every flake of pastry is so much food which were better left uneaten. And as for the time consumed in this kind of labor, who shall count the hours which are daily rolled away, and chiefly by overburdened women, who complain of ‘no time’ and ‘no constitution’?
[10] “One Saturday forenoon I stood on the hill which commands a view of the village. It was ‘baking-day.’ Being a clairvoyant, I looked through the roofs of the houses, and saw in every kitchen a weary woman, ‘standin’ on her feet,’ rolling, rolling, rolling. ”

“ THE WRITER FACES HIS OWN MUSIC. A LADY-FRIEND, after looking over my papers, asked why I harped so much on the rather low and trivial subject of eating. “Because,” said I, “daily observation has driven me to it.” And this is just the truth. I see that everybody takes it for granted they must have good living, “whatever,” to use Mrs. Melendy’s word, rather than pleasures of a higher grade, even the pleasure of helping the needy.
Take a close fisted man like Mr. David, who, though well enough off, practices the strictest stinginess. With him the spending of each dime is carefully considered. ”

“ It is certainly my business to see that woman is fitted for the training of children, because, in this republican country, women’s sons will all help to rule the land. Princes of royal households, it is well known, are cared for from their births with the utmost solicitude. Here every family is a royal household, and every boy is a prince. Every girl is not a princess ”

“ They are the ones to be ridiculed, who shut themselves in behind lath and plaster, and there scrub, sew, and cook, cook, sew, and scrub, scarcely noticing the wondrous show which each season, in turn, prepares for them. Flowers may bloom, trees may wave, brooks may ripple, the whole earth blossom into beauty ”

“ If the artist be imaginative, he may depict, hovering over their several emblems, dim, shadowy forms to represent, respectively, the genius of music, of painting, of literature, each vainly, and sorrowfully because vainly, beckoning the ruffler away. ”