SOME WORKING-WOMEN

It is almost a stereotyped remark, that the women of the more fashionable and worldly class, in America, are indolent, idle, incapable, and live feeble and lazy lives.  It has always seemed to me that, on the contrary, they are compelled, by the very circumstances of their situation, to lead very laborious lives, requiring great strength and energy.  Whether many of their pursuits are frivolous, is a different question; but that they are arduous, I do not see how any one can doubt.  I think it can be easily shown that the common charges against American fashionable women do not hold against the class I describe.

There is, for instance, the charge of evading the cares of housekeeping, and of preferring a boarding-house or hotel.  But no woman with high aims in the world of fashion can afford to relieve herself from household cares in this way, except as an exceptional or occasional thing.  She must keep house in order to have entertainments, to form a circle, to secure a position.  The law of give and take is as absolute in society as in business; and the very first essential to social position in our larger cities is a household and a hospitality of one’s own.  It is far more practicable for a family of high rank in England to live temporarily in lodgings in London, than for any family with social aspirations to do the same in New York.  The married woman who seeks a position in the world of society must, therefore, keep house.

And, with housekeeping, there comes at once to the American woman a world of care far beyond that of her European sisters.

Abroad, everything in domestic life is systematized; and services of any grade, up to that of housekeeper or steward, can be secured for money, and for a moderate amount of that.  The mere amount of money might not trouble the American woman; but where to get the service?  Such a thing as a trained housekeeper, who can undertake, at any salary, to take the work off the shoulders of the lady of the house,—­such a thing America hardly affords.  Without this, the multiplication of servants only increaseth sorrow; the servants themselves are often but an undisciplined mob, and the lady of the house is like a general attempting to drill his whole command personally, without the aid of a staff-officer or so much as a sergeant.  For an occasional grand entertainment, she can, perhaps, import a special force; some fashionable sexton can arrange her invitations, and some genteel caterer her supper.  But for the daily routine of the household—­guests, children, door-bell, equipage—­there is one vast, constant toil every day; and the woman who would have these things done well must give her own orders, and discipline her own retinue.  The husband may have no “business,” his wealth may supersede the necessity of all toil beyond daily billiards; but for the wife wealth means business, and the more complete the social triumph, the more overwhelming the daily toil.