By Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1893)
Are you content, you pretty three-years' wife?
_ _ Are you content and satisfied to live
_ _ On what your loving husband loves to give,
_ _ _ _ _
_ And give to him your life?
Are you content with work,—to toil alone,
_ _ To clean things dirty and to soil things clean;
_ _ To be a kitchen-maid, be called a queen,—
_ _ _ _ _
_ Queen of a cook-stove throne?
Are you content to reign in that small space
_ _ A wooden palace and a yard-fenced land
_ _ With other queens abundant on each hand,
_ _ _ _ _
_ Each fastened in her place?
Are you content to rear your children so?
_ _ Untaught yourself, untrained, perplexed, distressed,
_ _ Are you so sure your way is always best?
_ _ _ _ _
_ That you can always know?
Have you forgotten how you used to long
_ _ In days of ardent girlhood, to be great,
_ _ To help the groaning world, to serve the state,
_ _ _ _ _
_ To be so wise—so strong?
And are you quite convinced this is the way,
_ _ The only way a woman's duty lies—
_ _ Knowing all women so have shut their eyes?
_ _ _ _ _
_ Seeing the world to-day?
Have you no dream of life in fuller store?
_ _ Of growing to be more than that you are?
_ _ Doing the things you now do better far,
_ _ _ _ _
_ Yet doing others—more?
Losing no love, but finding as you grew
_ _ That as you entered upon nobler life
_ _ You so became a richer, sweeter wife,
_ _ _ _ _
_ A wiser mother too?
What holds you? Ah, my dear, it is your throne,
_ _ Your paltry queenship in that narrow place,
_ _ Your antique labors, your restricted space,
_ _ _ _ _
_ Your working all alone!
Be not deceived! 'Tis not your wifely bond
_ _ That holds you, nor the mother's royal power,
_ _ But selfish, slavish service hour by hour—
_ _ _ _ _
_ A life with no beyond!