p. 126 | Dependent Women

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 17, 1879

Dependent Women.

WHAT a variety of meanings this phrase conveys! It may refer to the pecuniary relations of women, or it may refer to their social, moral, or mental conditions. In every case it means a pitiable and unfortunate condition. The woman with no family cares, who is pecuniarily dependent in these days is most unhappily situated; and if she is a woman of spirit, health, intelligence, and energy, she will not long remain so. She will find work in the world which shall make her feel that she renders a quid pro quo for her living.

Very often the wife and mother feels that she is a dependent. This is a most unhappy condition, and is utterly inconsistent with the rightly constituted home. The home is a sacred partnership in which the husband and wife join. Both give their labors to it, and if one's labors bring in the money, while the labors of the other conduct the internal affairs of the home, this constitutes no reason why the wife should not be the pecuniary partner of the money earned. In a business firm one partner often has nothing whatever to do with the sales or collection of money, but he is none the less entitled to his share of the profits. The merchant never complains that he has to support the family of his bookkeeper. A wife or mother who feels that she is "supported," that she is dependent, who lives off the generosity of her husband without doing her full share in the building of the home, is to be pitied indeed.

But there is another kind of dependence that is even more unfortunate for women, and yet which is often praised as though it were a merit in them. The beauty of a dependent, clinging nature is much extolled in women by a certain class of men, and its possession is much affected by a certain class of women. In real life nothing is more tiresome. The woman who has no resources within herself, who depends on her husband or society for her happiness, who cannot entertain herself, who is not self-poised, rotating on her own axis, pursuing and keeping her own orbit, falls far short of being the attractive woman she might be. Men praise helplessness and dependence in women only when it ministers to their own love of power. But they tire of it. They may not know the reason why; they may even reproach themselves with their inconstancy, but that does not alter the fact.

Women ought to understand men better than they understand themselves, and the really intelligent and comprehensive woman does. One of the most important things for any woman to understand who would retain the freshness and ardor of her husband's affections, is that she must constantly be bringing forth from her mental treasure-house things new and old, but especially new. She must grow; she must improve; she must have her own resources; she must possess herself; she must in short, spiritually and mentally, be independent of him. How fatal a mistake for her own happiness does that wife make, who proposes to secure her own happiness by devoting herself to him to the extinction of her own individuality!—Ex.