"Former aux bonnes moeurs l'esprit de ses enfants, Faire aller son ménage, avoir l'oeil sur ses gens Et régler la dépense avec économie Doit être son étude et sa philosophie."
Man has laid down only three occupations: _kirche_, _küche_, _kinder_.
Hence the revolt. If man had not so much desired that woman should be housekeeper and courtesan, she would not so violently have rebelled against him, for why should one rebel until somebody says, "Thou shalt"! At the words "Thou shalt", rebellion becomes automatic, and, so long as woman has virility in her, so will it be. Still, leaving origins alone, and considering only the last fifty or sixty years of our history, it might be said that they are divided into three periods:
(_b_) The powder-puff and possible virtue period.
(_c_) The Russian ballet and leopard-skin period.
There are exceptions, qualifications, occasional retrogressions, but, taking it roughly, that is the history of English womanhood from wax fruit to Bakst designs. There were crises, such as the early 'eighties, when bloomers came in and women essayed cigarettes, and felt very advanced and sick; when they joined Ibsen clubs and took up Bernard Shaw, and wore eyeglasses and generally tried to be men without succeeding in being gentlemen. There was another crisis about 1906, when suffrage put forward in England its first violent claims. That, too, was abortive in a sense, as is ironically recorded in a comic song popular at the time:
"Back, back to the office she went: The secretary was a perfect gent."
But still, in a rough and general way, there has been a continual and growing discontent with the heavy weight of the household, the complications of its administration. There has been a drive toward freedom which has affected even that most conservative of all animals, the male. There have been conscious rebellions as expressed, for instance, by Nora who "slammed the door"; by the many girls who decide to "live their own lives", as life was expounded in the yellow-backs of the 'nineties; by the growing demand for entry into the professions; for votes; for admission to the legislatures. There is nothing irrelevant in this; given that by the nature of her position in society and of the duties intrusted to her in the household, she was cut off from all other fields of human activity, it may be said that every attempt that woman has made to share in any activity that lay beyond her front door has been revolutionary and directed at the foundations of the English household system. Whether this has also been the case in America, where a curious type of woman has been evolved--pampered, selfish, intelligent, domineering, and wildly pleasure-loving--I cannot tell. Nor is it my business; like other men, the Americans have the wives they deserve.