Woman and Her Wishes - 1853

5. But the great anxiety, after all, seems to be for the dinner. Men insist, like the German Jean Paul, on having a wife who shall cook them something good. I confess to some sympathy with these. I, too, wish to save the dinner. Yet it seems more important, after all, to save the soul. It is a significant fact, that several female authors, as Mrs. Child and Miss Leslie, have had to work their passage into literature, by compiling cookery-books first; just as Miss Martineau thinks it well to vindicate Mrs. Somerville's right to use the telescope, by proving that she has an eye to the tea-table also. Let us consent to this, and only supplicate, that after the cookery-book is written, and the table set, the soul of the woman may be considered as free. Let us value the dinner, for it is well that labor should have its material basis, as life has; but let us remember that a woman who provides for that, and that only, is, after all, but a half-woman, of whom Mrs. Jellyby is the other half.

It is to be admitted, however, that among the "domestic virtues" there are functions nobler than the culinary department. Yet how strange the blindness that hopes to educate these by crushing all other faculties. And how strange a narrowness of estimate is often left, even after this blindness is partially removed. For instance, some critic said, after speaking very cordially of Mrs. Mill's able article on "the Enfranchisement of Woman," in the Westminster Review, that "it was to be hoped, however, that the mother of J. S. Mill would always regard it as her chief honor to have reared her distinguished son." But, in the name of common sense, why so? Is it not as much to be an useful woman as to rear an useful man? Why postpone the honor from generation to generation? or when will it be overtaken? Or, rather, what incompatibility between parental and social duties'? The father may be as important in the rearing of the child as the mother; (indeed, Jean Paul says, with exquisite truthfulness, that the mother marks the commas and semicolons in the son's life, but the father the colons and periods;) yet it is not considered the whole duty of than to be a good father. John Adams contrived to train John Quincy Adams, and to be a parent and guardian of American liberty likewise; why should woman content herself with one half the mission?

And there are facts enough to vindicate my position. Victoria is at the head of a kingdom and of a household, --and neither of them a small one; and she fulfils both vocations well. The most eminent of American Quakers stated it to me as the general experience of this body, that the female members most publicly useful, are also the best wives and mothers. Certainly, the twenty-five grandchildren of Elizabeth Fry rose up to call her blessed, none the-less, because she was the valued adviser of all the leading British statesmen, and the guest or correspondent of half the sovereigns of Europe. Nay, it is touching to read, that in the very height of her public labors, "Mrs. Fry's maternal experience led her to give some advice about the babies' dress, (at the Paris Enfans Trouvés,) that it might afford them more liberty of movement."