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【Cicely Hamilton】婚姻交易（十七）

The women's industries of a former date have, for the most part, been swallowed by the factory. They were never industries at which she earned much money; so far as the members of a family were concerned they were rewarded with nothing more than the customary wage of subsistence; but—and this is the real point—they were industries at which woman not only earned her wage of subsistence, but indirectly a profit for her employer, the head of the household—the husband or father.

A man might esteem the accomplishment of pickle-making or linen-weaving as an excellent thing in woman; but unless expense was really no object he would not encourage his wife and daughters to excel in these particular arts, since it was cheaper to buy sheets and bottled onions round the corner than to purchase the raw material and set the female members of his family to work upon it. 

The position, for man, was a serious one; for be it remembered, he could not lower the wages of his domestic animal. These had always been fixed, whatever work she did, at the lowest possible rate—subsistence rate; so that even when her work ceased to be profitable her wages could not be made to go any lower—there was nowhere lower for them to go.

Under these circumstances the daughters of a household found themselves, often enough, face to face with a divided duty: the duty of earning their keep, which would necessitate emergence from the home, and the duty of remaining inside the sacred sphere...but they were not always left to themselves, nor were their own desires and predilections the sole factor in their respective decisions. The views of the head of the household had also to be taken into consideration; and his views were usually influenced by the calls made upon his purse. Theoretically he might hold fast to the belief that woman's sphere was the home and nothing but the home...even if home was the sphere of woman, there were times when she was better out of it. 

Work in the factory or in the office, work which brings us into contact with the outside world, calls for the exercise of qualities and attainments which we had no need of before, for the abandonment of habits and ideas which can only hamper our progress in our changed surroundings...teachers, sanitary inspectors, journalists and typists have repressed the tendency to swoons and vapours...working and professional women are inclined to encourage a condition of rude bodily health which stands them in good stead in theirwork, and is, therefore, a valuable commercial asset...His natural predilection for her type may, and often does, induce him to give her the preference over her fellows in business matters; but he usually ends by admitting that, for certain purposes at least, the human being with brains is preferable to the seraph without them.

It has been borne in upon the modern woman that it pays her to have brains—even although they must be handled very cautiously for fear of wounding the susceptibilities of her master...Having, in the first instance, acquired a modicum of intelligence because she had to, she is now acquiring it in larger quantities because she likes it. The trades which do not require the qualification of stupidity are counteracting the effect upon her of the trade which did—the compulsory trade of marriage.