For Everyone A Definite Work
No man is bom into the world whose work
Is not born with him. There is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil.
—James Russell Lowell.
The Service Of Man And Woman To Home And State
Generally we are under the impression that a man’s duties are public, and a woman’s private. But this is not altogether so. A man has a personal work or duty relating to his own home, and a public work or duty—which is the expansion of the other—relating to the state. So a woman has a personal work and duty relating to her own home, and a public work and duty which is also the expansion of that.
Now, the man’s work for his own home is, to secure its maintenance, progress, and defense; the woman’s to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness.
Expand both these functions The man’s duty as a member of a commonwealth is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the defense of the State. The woman’s duty as a member of the commonwealth is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of the State.
What the man is at his own gate,—defending it if need be against insult and spoil, that also,—not in less but in a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his country; leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work there.
And in like manner, what the woman is to be within her gates, as the center of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty, that she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveliness more rare. A Lady has claim to her title only so far as she communicates that help to the poor representatives of her Master, which women once, ministering to Him of their substance, were permitted to extend to that Master Himself; and when she is known, as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread.
—John Ruskin.
Alternate Reading: John 11: 1-44.