The home: its work and influence. Gilman Charlotte Perkins

that of fortification. Many animals live in terror of attack from other kinds of animals, and adapt their homes defensively as best they may, but few are exposed to danger of attack from their own kind. Ants, indeed, sometimes make war; bees are sometimes thieves; but man stands clear in his pre-eminence as a destroyer of his own race. From this habit of preying on each other came the need of fortified homes, and so the feeling of safety attached to the place grew and deepened.

      The sense of comfort increased as we learned to multiply conveniences, and, with this increase in conveniences, came decreased power to do without them. The home where all sat on the floor had not so much advantage in comfort over "out-of-doors" as had the home where all sat on chairs, and became unable to sit on the ground with ease. So safety and comfort grew in the home concept. Shelter, too, became more complex as door and window and curtain guarded us better, and made us more susceptible to chill. Peace became more dear at home as war increased outside; quiet, as life waxed louder in the world; love, as we learned to hate each other more. The more dangerous and offensive life outside, the more we cling to the primal virtues of the home; and conversely, in our imagination of heaven, we do not picture the angels as bound up in their homes – if, indeed, they have any – but as gladly mingling in the larger love which includes them all. When we say "Heaven is my home," we mean the whole of it.

      The care and shelter of the young is a far larger problem with us than with our hairy ancestors. Our longer period of immaturity gives us monogamous marriage and the permanent home. The animal may change his mate and home between litters; ours lap. This over-lapping, long-continuing babyhood has given us more good than we yet recognise.

      Thus we see that all the animal cared for in the home we have in greater degree, and care for more; while we have, further, many home ideals they knew not. One of the earliest steps in human development was ancestor-worship. With lower animals the parents do their duty cheerfully, steadily, devotedly, but there is no thought of return. The law of reproduction acts to improve the race by relentlessly sacrificing the individual, and that individual, the parent, never sets up a claim to any special veneration or gratitude.

      But with us it is different. Our little ones lasting longer and requiring more care, we become more conscious of our relation to them. So the primitive parent very soon set up a claim upon the child, and as the child was absolutely helpless and in the power of the parent, it did not take long to force into the racial mind this great back-acting theory. The extreme height is found where it is made a religion, ancestor-worship, once very common, and still dominant in some of our oldest, i. e., most primitive civilisations, as the Chinese. This ancestor-worship is what gave the element of sanctity to the home. As late as the Roman civilisation its power was so strong that the home was still a temple to a dwindling group of household gods – mere fossil grandpas – and we ourselves are not yet free from the influence of Roman civilisation. We still talk in poetic archaisms of "the altar of the home."

      The extension of the family from a temporary reproductive group to a permanent social group is another human addition to the home idea. To have lived in one hole all his infancy makes that hole familiar and dear to the little fox. To have lived in one nest all his life makes that nest more familiar and more dear to the rook. But to have lived in one house for generations, to have "the home of my ancestors" loom upon one's growing consciousness – this is to enlarge enormously our sense of the dignity and value of the term.

      This development of the home feeling of course hinges upon the theory of private property rights; and on another of our peculiar specialties, the exaltation of blood-relationships. Our whole social structure, together with social progress and social action, rests in reality on social relationship – that is, on the interchange of special services between individuals. But we, starting the custom at a time when we knew no better, and perpetuating it blindly, chose to assume that it was more important to be connected physically as are the animals, than psychically as human beings; so we extended the original family group of father, mother, and child into endless collateral lines and tried to attach our duties, our ambitions, our virtues and achievements to that group exclusively. The effect of this on any permanent home was necessarily to still further enlarge and deepen the sentiment attached to it.

      There is another feature of human life, however, which has contributed enormously to our home sentiment, – the position of women. Having its rise, no doubt, in the over-lapping babyhood before mentioned, the habit grew of associating women more continuously with the home, but this tendency was as nothing compared to the impetus given by the custom of ownership in women. Women became, practically, property. They were sold, exchanged, given and bequeathed like horses, hides, or weapons. They belonged to the man, as did the house; it was one property group. With the steadily widening gulf between the sexes which followed upon this arbitrary imprisonment of the woman in the home, we have come to regard "the world" as exclusively man's province, and "the home" as exclusively woman's.

      The man, who constitutes the progressive wing of the human race, went on outside as best he might, organising society, and always enshrining in his heart the woman and the home as one and indivisible. This gives the subtle charm of sex to a man's home ideals, and, equally, the scorn of sex to a man's home practices. Home to the man first means mother, as it does to all creatures, but later, and with renewed intensity, it means his own private harem – be it never so monogamous – the secret place where he keeps his most precious possession.

      Thus the word "home," in the human mind, touches the spring of a large complex group of ideas and sentiments, some older than humanity, some recent enough for us to trace their birth, some as true and inalienable as any other laws of life, some as false and unnecessary as any others of mankind's mistakes. It does not follow that all the earliest ones are right for us to-day, because they were right for our remote predecessors, or that those later introduced are therefore wrong.

      What is called for is a clear knowledge of the course of evolution of this earliest institution and an understanding of the reasons for its changes, that we may discriminate to-day between that which is vital and permanent in home life and that which is unessential and injurious. We may follow without difficulty the evolution of each and all the essential constituents of home, mark the introduction of non-essentials, show the evils resultant from forced retention of earlier forms; in a word, we may study the evolution of the home precisely as we study that of any other form of life.

      Take that primal requisite of safety and shelter which seems to underlie all others, a place where the occupant may be protected from the weather and its enemies. This motive of home-making governs the nest-builder, the burrow-digger, the selector of caves; it dominates the insect, the animal, the savage, and the modern architect. Dangers change, and the home must change to suit the danger. So after the caves were found insufficient, the lake-dwellers built above the water, safe when the bridge was in. The drawbridge as an element of safety lingered long, even when an artificial moat must needs be made for lack of lake. When the principal danger is cold, as in Arctic regions, the home is built thick and small; when it is heat, we build thick and large; when it is dampness, we choose high ground, elevate the home, lay drains; when it is wind, we seek a sheltered slope, or if there is no slope, plant trees as a wind-break to protect the home, or, in the worst cases, make a "cyclone cellar."

      The gradual development of our careful plastering and glazing, our methods of heating, of carpeting and curtaining, comes along this line of security and shelter, modified always by humanity's great enemy, conservatism. In these mechanical details, as in deeper issues, free adaptation to changed conditions is hindered by our invariable effort to maintain older habits. Older habits are most dear to the aged, and as the aged have always most controlled the home, that institution is peculiarly slow to respond to the kindling influence of changed condition. The Chaldeans built of brick for years unnumbered, because clay was their only building material. When they spread into Assyria, where stone was plenty, they continued calmly putting up great palaces of sunbaked brick, – mere adobe, – and each new king left the cracking terraces of his predecessor's pride and built another equally ephemeral. The influence of our ancestors has dominated the home more than it has any other human institution, and the influence of our ancestors is necessarily retroactive.

      In the gathering currents of our present-day social evolution, and especially in this country where progress is not feared, this heavy undertow is being somewhat overcome. Things move so