home, at your own table, with your children, if
you like; but only think yourself, why should these fifty women waste
their whole morning to prepare a few cups of coffee and a simple meal!
Why fifty fires, when two people and one single fire would suffice to
cook all these pieces of meat and all these vegetables? Choose your own
beef or mutton to be roasted if you are particular. Season the
vegetables to your taste if you prefer a particular sauce! But have a
single kitchen with a single fire and organize it as beautifully as you
are able to.

Why has woman's work never been of any account? Why in every family are
the mother and three or four servants obliged to spend so much time at
what pertains to cooking? Because those who want to emancipate mankind
have not included woman in their dream of emancipation, and consider it
beneath their superior masculine dignity to think "of those kitchen
arrangements," which they have put on the shoulders of that
drudge--woman.

To emancipate woman, is not only to open the gates of the university,
the law courts, or the parliaments to her, for the "emancipated" woman
will always throw her domestic toil on to another woman. To emancipate
woman is to free her from the brutalizing toil of kitchen and washhouse;
it is to organize your household in such a way as to enable her to rear
her children, if she be so minded, while still retaining sufficient
leisure to take her share of social life.

It will come. As we have said, things are already improving. Only let us
fully understand that a revolution, intoxicated with the beautiful
words, Liberty, Equality, Solidarity, would not be a revolution if it
maintained slavery at home. Half humanity subjected to the slavery of
the hearth would still have to rebel against the other half.

FOOTNOTE:

[8] It seems that the Communists of Young Icaria had understood the
importance of a free choice in their daily relations apart from work.
The ideal of religious Communists has always been to have meals in
common; it is by meals in common that early Christians manifested their
adhesion to Christianity. Communion is still a vestige of it. Young
Icarians had given up this religious tradition. They dined in a common
dining room, but at small separate tables, at which they sat according
to the attractions of the moment. The Communists of Anama have each
their house and dine at home, while taking their provisions at will at
the communal stores.