Women’s Need of Recreation
I read an article the other day on working-men’s clubs, which set me thinking. In it was set forth the necessity, after a man’s hard day’s work, of an evening of rest, away from home, where he should find light and warmth, and boon companionship, other than is to be found in the corner grocery.
Now this is well, were there not a better way, as I believe. I am not about to propose clubs for working-women, because our police reports show every day that they have existed for a long time—thanks to “corner groceries”—and that they are made of any implement that comes handy, and result in bruised flesh and a broken head. This being the case, I cannot see why the working-woman, as well as the working-man, does not need, after a hard day’s work, “light, warmth, and boon companionship of an evening, away from home.” Nay, all the more, since work, hard as her husband may, it is often in the fresh, open air; or, if not, he has it going and returning, and the boon companionship of his fellow-workmen with it; while she, with “Ginx’s last baby” to look after, in some noisome tenement house, stands over the perpetual wash-tub or cooking-stove, with two or three half-grown children hanging to her draggled skirts, never exchanging her unwomanly rags, not even perhaps to mass for a hurried prayer in the church which, God be thanked, is free alike to poor and rich, and which suggests, in its own way, a distant heaven for her.
Thinking over all this, I said why not Germanize this thing? Why not have clubs for working-men and their families, with innocent amusement minus the drink? Isn’t it possible? Or if not, I wish it were, for the poor harassed women’s sake. I only see the millennial germ of it; but this I know, that the wives need it more, far more, than their husbands, the wide world over, and in every strata of society; by the pains of motherhood, even in favorable conditions; by her intenser nervous organization; by her indoor confinement and narrowing, petty detail-worries; by the work that ends not at sundown as does his. By the wakeful, unrestful nights, which every mother knows; this is the hardest, most wearing kind of work, no matter what may be said of the husband, who has his sleep at least; who demands that in every family exigency as his right, and as the foundation of his ability to labor for his family. Ah! what if the wife and mother, with less strength, feebler organization, should make a stand for this? even when, in addition to her other cares, she helps in some outside honest way to support the family?
Does she not, too, need warmth, light, and boon companionship of an evening? While it is true that
“All work and no play
Makes Jack a dull boy,”
remember it is just as true of Jack’s wife as it is of Jack, and the founders of “Working-men’s Clubs” would do well to put this into their foundation.
I wish that some of the pains taken to make human beings “good” were expended in trying to make them happy. Particularly is this necessary in regard to young people, though it is a fact that should be recognized much more than it is, in the conditions of every human being. Let a little sunshine into the outward circumstances surrounding them before you begin to talk about a future state. There are children, and grown people too, so cob-webbed over with care and misery, that all talk, how “good” soever, is useless. They want some brightness infused into their lives. It may be a wife—weary, body and soul; tired of plodding; she needs some kind voice to say (alas! how little husbands think of it!): “Come, leave all your cares just now, this minute, and if you can’t leave without I take your place, I’ll take it, and it will be a gain to both of us; for you have come just to that spot where you must stop to rest, or fail entirely.” It may be a little child under your care, perhaps your own, perhaps another’s; who is not really “bad,” but only troublesome. It wants change; a ramble in the Park, or a ramble somewhere; something to see and talk about, and happify it; some new objects to occupy its mind and thoughts; and the more intelligent the child is, the more necessary this becomes. Many a child is punished because its active mind, having no food, becomes a torment to itself and others. Give it food! Take it up to the Park and show it the animals there. Tell it of their habits, and the way they live in the countries from which they were taken. This is a cheap pleasure, it is true, and may, though it ought not to be, a very commonplace one to you; but you have no idea how it freshens the mind and body of the little one. Sometimes I almost think that happiness is goodness. Certainly, till the hard and difficult lesson of life is thoroughly learned, it is wise to lend a helping hand to those who are stumbling after, lest they fall by the way to rise no more.
Perhaps you have some good servants in your house whose underground, plodding life needs relief, who have grown sharp and querulous on account of it; whose lot needs brightening a bit. Send them or take them to some place of amusement; give them a holiday, or half a holiday if you can do no better. You have no idea how this break in their wearisome round will lighten toil for many a day; and more because you thought of it, perhaps, than from the pleasure the amusement afforded.
Life presses heavily on most of us in one shape or another. They are not always the greatest sufferers, whose barrel of meal and cruse of oil fail. Therefore, when I open a church door, and the first sentence I hear is about “An Awful God,” I sometimes want to invite the speaker to rest himself a bit, and let me try my hand at it. I believe that most people want soothing, and comforting, and encouraging, more than denouncing or frightening, even though the latter be done with good intentions. I know most women have been “punished” enough during the week, without being threatened with it in another world on Sundays. Take that poor soul with a drunken husband, who tries to support him and herself, and no end of children, by washing, and whose husband comes home only to demand her money, and smash up her wash-tub and table and chairs for his amusement. Would you talk to that woman about an “awful God,” when she stole away to church for a crumb of comfort on Sunday? You had much better buy her a new wash-tub, and put her brute of a husband where—but it won’t do to say all one thinks, even out of “meetin’.”