female constitution which collapses just in the middle third of life,
comes out vulcanized India rubber, if it happens to live through the
period when health and strength are most wanted?"

And then, if one looks in the advertisements of half a century ago, one
finds the nostrum dealer loudly proclaiming his capacity to cure what
is evidently the Nervous Housewife. In America at least she has always
existed, perhaps in lesser numbers than at present. And one remembers in
a dim sort of way that the married woman of olden days was altogether
faded at thirty-five, that she entered on middle life at a time when at
least many of our women of to-day still think themselves young.

It becomes interesting and necessary at this point to trace the
evolution of the home, because this is to trace the evolution of our
housewife. We are apt to think of the home as originating in a sort of
cave, where the little unit--the Man, the Woman, and the Children--dwelt
in isolation, ever on the watch against marauders, either animal or
human. In this cave the woman was the chattel of man; he had seized her
by force and ruled by force.

Perhaps there was such a stage, but much more likely the home was a
communal residence, where the man-herd, the group, the clan, the Family
in the larger sense dwelt. Only a large group would be safe, and the
strong social instinct, the herd feeling, was the basis of the home.
Here the men and women dwelt in a promiscuity that through the ages
went through an evolution which finally became the father-controlled
monogamy of to-day. Here the women lived; here they span, sewed, built;
here they started the arts, the handicrafts, and the religions. And from
here the men went forth to fish and hunt and fight, grim males to whom a
maiden was a thing to court and a wife a thing to enslave.