Open Doors V — Jan. 1870

A woman ought always to be allowed as many more words as she pleases: so I make no apology for coming again to say a forgotten word or two, before bidding a good-by to the friendly faces gathered about this hospitable Hearth and Home.

It has been suggested to me that my aim in the search of work for women was too practical and low to be of general utility; the doors I found open, I am told, lead but to different modes of money-making; which leave untouched the finer possibilities of her nature.

Honestly, such doors were all that I looked for.

But I am answered, that the greater part of the unhappiness of woman proceeds from the latent emotional power within her, which finds no vent: the capacity for struggle, for adventure, for love, for sweet and liberal charities, which, unused and idle, canker into morbid discontent. Woman, far less then man, can live by bread alone.

Yet has not the woman who has earned the bread she eats, by work suited to her, done much to silence the restless demon within? When careers enough are opened to women for every girl who chooses to make her own living by whatever brain-power or hand-skill she may have, there will be fewer complaining souls to tell their vague sorrows to the moon or to the public. The question of the need of suitable work cannot be held up too persistently as the real point at issue, now while it is in danger of being smothered under the roar of minor and comparatively insignificant claims. The great mass of women in the United States are suffering under no intolerable sense of injustice from rights denied: when you find an unhappy woman, you will discover the secret of her trouble to be the want of use for that talent which God has give her; or, on the other hand, a private grief—a lonely, unloved life, a neglectful husband, or a thankless child. Put work into her hand, and that speedily; but for the deeper griefs, the most unassuageable thirst, what legislation will avail? Individual cases must have each an individual remedy.

But the objector urges, the question of work and happiness ought to be in some way made the same. There is many a woman alone in the world to whom some mischance of body or of circumstance, perhaps, has denied husband and child, for whom she could work, and plan, and pray, and taste the sweet luxury or wearing out in the service of one better loved than herself. Yet this woman, be sure, is not the less constructed, in her body and soul, for wife and mother: large-brained perhaps, alive with tender passion, with fine, delicate sympathies: the shrunken bosom, on which no child of her own shall ever rest, full of hungry craving for something to caress, to brood over, to nourish, to give its throbbing strength to. She is a Christian, it may be, eager to give some little help to the needy world before she goes hence. Is the best work that can be found for her the raising of herbs for pork-butchers, or the ceaseless japanning of tea-trays with monstrous roses?

She, as well as the uneducated Sarah Johns, must live: but is there no mode of money getting which would call out the whole faculties of the woman, put her in her true place in the world, use all her energy, all her tenderness, all her helpfulness?

The apparent answer which suggests itself to every body is, that if the woman were a Roman Catholic, there would be no need of asking the question. Whatever may be our opinion, for or against that Church, no one can deny the perfection of its organization both in breadth and minutiae. It is a web which gathers every broken and loose thread into a seemly whole. It has a place and work ready for every one of its members. The very class of whom we speak, the lonely, unoccupied women, form, perhaps, the most powerful engine with which it acts upon the outside world. No matter what the woman’s capacity may be, an appropriate Order waits for her. Comfortable food and clothes are secured to her for life, and she either nurses the sick, teaches, works, sews, makes proselytes, or uses her tact and ambition to advance herself or her Church.

It seems to me that the hint lies here which will answer our question.

Outside as well as in the Catholic Church, are the poor, children, the sick, Magdalens, orphans: the field of work is surely wide enough, and white to the harvest. But, then, is the woman to go out single-handed to fight the wolf? How is she to be supported meanwhile?

If the need at her door is great and waiting, so also is the relief. There is a constant outcry again the hard-heartedness of the rich, and their want of charity; a cry so hackneyed that people accept it unquestioned. I am very much tempted to doubt its truth, once and for all. In this country, especially in the cities where money comes easily, and goes as fast, the possession of it, except in rare cases, warms rather than chills the heart. It pleases a man to think he can at last afford to be genial and generous without stinting his family. Looking at the statistics of the churches and great charities (necessarily incomplete) for a year, one is compelled to believe that if this amount could have been spent in preventing suffering instead of relieving it, there would be no more poverty among us in another generation. The Americans are habitually an almsgiving people, and they would give more if there were any security that their help would serve any effectual purpose. On one side of the gulf are the poor, on the other the rich, stretching out their hands to each other, which yet, for the want of some system, never seem to meet. It is just here that, in the Roman Church, single women are brought in to form the link. They are the medium between the two great classes. Why should they not be so among Protestants?

I do not speak here exactly of church organizations, although they have been tried and answered an effectual purpose. The largest, I believe, in this country is a branch of a Prussian Protestant sisterhood, in Pittsburg, under the care of the Rev. Mr. Passavant, the members of which go out as nurses, and have charge of hospitals and orphan asylums. They are supported entirely by voluntary contributions. Mr. Passavant brought over two or three of the members of the order a few years ago, and it is now a large and powerful organization, disbursing large sums of money, which proves how ready and eager the wealthier class is to give when it can find a wise and good man willing to be its almoner.

I see no reason why these organizations should not become common. There is a prejudice against them among the bigoted Protestants, because they resemble the Catholic orders: but there is no seclusion from the world, nor any promise of celibacy, I believe, for more than a year, which is, after all, only reasonable enough. It is as well, if a woman has work to do, to keep the Prince with the crown in his hand that far off from her at least.

But, outside of large organizations, what can women do? This is what two or three women once did do: They rented a small house, furnished it as the help of their friends enabled them, and gathering in some outcast children from the streets, began to fit them for seamstresses, cooks, and chambermaids, giving them, at the same time, a good English education, habits of neatness and order, and, as far as they might, striving to make them servants of the loving Saviour in whom they believe. When the girls had reached the proper age, situations were found for them in good Christian families, but the house was always kept open for them, as a home to which they could come back. After a year or two, with the work done indoors, and the fees paid by persons wishing servants, the establishment became self-supporting. The women, however, lived always poorly, devoting all surplus funds to increasing the number of their children, as they called them. When a girl’s natural capacity warranted it, they educated her for a teacher. The number of children was small enough to make them all one family, and keep away the chilling, routine air of an institution. This was before the war, in one of the Southern States. I do not know if they are at work there still, but I like to think of the eager stories they used to tell of their children, of the keen pleasure or disappointment with which they watched their course out in the world. The good they did was so immediate and practical, and it was such an easy way to fill their own vacant lives, and to find a mother’s work and a mother’s reward!

There is no reason why houses like this should not be multiplied indefinitely. In every alley there are pretty, innocent children, with the possibility in them of becoming quick, steady workwomen, and some day good wives and mothers; with the possibility in them, too, of becoming that thing which in the decency of our own homes we never name, whose feet go quicker than any others down the road that leads to hell. In every street there is a church filled with men, ready to give their money to help such children, if the money will be rightly used, and in the very next house to the church, perhaps, is some woman dawdling over a German grammar, or drawing melancholy strains from the piano, which remind her that life is an utter failure for her, and that in the whole world she had neither place nor work!

There is a great reform upon which I can barely touch, which, if ever it is made, must be done, it would seem, by the hands of women, and such single individual work as this. The great obstacle to success in the asylums for Magdalens, both Catholic and Protestant, I have been told by those who had charge of them, is the congregating of them together in large numbers. Besides the evil of communication, is the bad effect of formal routine. Any thing can be done by system and machinery but the saving of a soul. The very fact that she is one of a platoon marshaled for reformation drives the perverse heart of any woman back on her own secret thoughts for comfort and food. The incorrigible wretch, who goes out of the intolerable prim virtue of the reformatory with delight to begin again her frantic race down to death, is but a woman like us, after all, and brought face to face with another woman, patient and forgiving as her Master, in the quiet of a home for a few weeks, would understand the meaning of a home, and love, and come to His feet like her of old, who, after all her sin, served him more faithfully than they who had never fallen.

But how shall a woman go about such a work? Let her begin with doing little—alone, or with a companion. Take one or two fallen women, one or two children, to fit for useful, helpful places in the world. She may try to make her work as self-supporting as possible, but she need not be ashamed to accept of aid. She acts as the almoner of others: if her motives are pure, she has no cause to blush. There is no danger that she will not receive money enough. People are too willing to give, and so case their consciences, without asking farther; and, then, no pure work undertaken for the love of God or his children was ever suffered to fall to the ground.

But the work would require total self-abnegation? Yes; but I do not believe that would be a difficulty in the way. A nervous, earnest woman rather enjoys sacrificing herself. It might, very probably would, be irksome and even disgusting at times; but Catholic women have done this work which I propose to you for centuries, and are still doing it. It does not become us, while so much of it is yet untouched, to complain that our hands or hearts are idle.

There is no side to which we can turn where there is not an open door through which a sincere woman, heartily wishing to be of use to the world, cannot enter and find work waiting for her.

I can but indicate these slight signs the directions in which lie the practical openings for usefulness outside the profession. It is becoming a grave matter of doubt with many who consider such subjects, how far large and crowded asylums or reformatories of any kind answer their purpose. Neither men nor women will be cured, converted, or regenerated by general laws or wholesale routine. The individual soul must approach another soul, it would learn through it Christ’s humanity and love. It would be well, in this happy holiday-time, if every woman whose life is empty of interest and whose hands are idle, would look in the great under-world of society more steadily than she has ever done before. There are the poor, the insane, the ignorant; vice and misfortune where there might be daylight and happiness. Is there no help that she can bring? No door through which she can gain admittance to them? Or is there a question as to her place and work?

“For I say unto you, inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”[1]

Notes

1. Matthew 25:40

Key Words

orphanage, women's work

Creator

Emily Dolan