She is not afraid of the snow for her household:
For all her household are clothed with scarlet.
She maketh for herself coverlets,
She maketh linen garments and selleth them,
And delivereth girdles unto the merchants.

No wonder "her children rise up and call her blessed" and it is somewhat
condescending of her husband when he "praiseth her." All we learn of him
is that he "is known in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of
the land." With a wife like her, this was all he had to do.

This combination of industrialism and domesticity continued until
gradually men stepped into the field of work, perhaps as a result of
their wives' example, and became farmers on a larger scale, merchants of
a wider scope, artisans, handicraftsmen, guild members of a more
developed technique. Woman started these things in the home or near it;
man, through his restless energy, specialized and thus developed an
intenser civilization. But even up till the nineteenth century woman
carried on all her occupations at the home, which still continued to be
workshop and hearth.

Then man invented the machine, harnessed steam, wired electricity, and
there was born the Factory, the specialized house of industry, in which
there works no artisan, only factory hands. The home could not compete
with this man's monster, into which flowed one river of raw material and
out of which poured another of finished products. But not only did the
factory dye, weave, spin, tan, etc.; it also invaded the innermost
sphere of woman's work. For her loaf of bread it turned out thousands,
until finally she is beginning to give up baking; for her hit-or-miss
jellies, preserves, jams, it invented scientific canning with absolute