Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/94

90 more than it would be function enough for the father, for the man. After women have done all which pertains to housekeeping as a trade, to housekeeping as one of the fine arts, in their relation as wife and mother—after they have done all for the order of the house, for the order of the husband, and the order of the children—they have still energies to spare, a reserved power for yet other work.

There are three classes of women: —

First, domestic drudges, who are wholly taken up in the material details of their housekeeping, husband-keeping, child-keeping. Their housekeeping is a trade, and no more; and after they have done that, there is no more which they can do. In New England it is a small class, getting less every year.

Next, there are domestic dolls, wholly taken up with the vain show which delights the eye and the ear. They are ornaments of the estate. Similar toys, I suppose, will one day be more cheaply manufactured at Paris and Nuremberg, at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and other toy-shops of Europe, out of wax and papier-mâché, and sold in Boston at the haberdasher's by the dozen. These ask nothing beyond their function as dolls, and hate all attempts to elevate womankind.

But there are domestic women who order a house, and are not mere drudges, adorn it, and are not mere dolls, but women. Some of these—yes, many of them—conjoin the useful of the drudge and the beautiful of the doll into one womanhood, and have a great deal left besides. They are not wholly taken up with their function as housekeeper, wife, and mother.

In the progress of mankind, and the application of masculine science to what was once only feminine work—whereby so much time is saved from the wheel and the loom, the oven and the spit—with the consequent increase of riches, the saving of time, and the intellectual education which comes in consequence thereof, this class of women is continually enlarging. With us in New England, in all the North, it is already a large class.

Well, what shall these domestic women do with their spare energies and superfluous power? Once a malicious proverb said, “The shoemaker must not go beyond his