SEX AND SOCIETY 223 



The ordinary household industries spin- 

 ning weaving, storing and the like, which 

 were economically so important that they 

 absorbed the energies, not of the house-mother 

 alone, but of all the unmarried females of a 

 family, gradually dwindled in importance. 

 Enormous numbers of young women were 

 partly driven by necessity, but partly also 

 attracted by prospects of independence, into 

 working in or for the factories, and thus the 

 authority of the head of the household was 

 weakened. Even the house-mother herself 

 was often forced into outside labour, and the 

 distinctive features of the patriarchal home 

 disappeared. 



But there were equally important if less 

 directly obvious effects on the relatively 

 comfortable classes. Many of the activities 

 of the middle-class woman became super- 

 fluous, since the same results could be less 

 expensively attained by mechanical means. 

 Improvements in household arrangement 

 lightened domestic toil, and many a wife, who 

 could afford to have help for the harder part 

 of the work, found that the administrative 

 duties which remained afforded a wholly 

 insufficient outlet for her energies. Even 

 the essential function of motherhood was not 

 left unaffected, for actual number of births 

 ceased to be a criterion of social worth, as 

 brain replaced muscle in importance. It is 

 interesting that this point finds definite 

 expression in modern literature. In Brieux's 

 play, Maternity, for instance, when the fall- 

 ing birth-rate is being discussed at a meeting 



