Edith Stein, also known by her religious name Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, offered penetrating observations about women—with their capacity for great personal intimacy and their tendency toward characteristic flaws. Her Essays on Woman are renowned for their insights into the feminine mind and heart. The contemplations are not merely philosophical and, at times, offer startingly practical advice.
For example, when discussing the “feminine singularity,” the unique strengths and flaws of women in a fallen world, Stein articulates exactly why managing the dishes and weeding the garden is a path to feminine freedom. Stein’s training as a philosopher aids her in making a compelling argument for the uniqueness of woman. Described by others as a “feminist,” Stein does not appear to be a “feminist” in the modern sense by advocating for total equality between the sexes. Rather, she maintains that woman is unique, created for personal intimacy and driven to work in a manner different from man.
She explains some of the drawbacks: “Usually, the personal outlook appears to be exaggerated unwholesomely; in the first place, her inclination to center both her activities and those of others about her own person is expressed by vanity, desire for praise and recognition, and an unchecked need for communication; on the other hand, it is seen in an excessive interest in others as in curiosity, gossip, and an indiscreet need to penetrate into the intimate life of others.” Anyone with an overbearing mother or an office gossip can recognize these uniquely feminine excesses of the tendency to be personal.
Her observations of the negative aspects of femininity continue, “Her view reaching toward the whole leads easily to the frittering away of her powers: her antipathy for the necessary objective disciplining of individual abilities results in her superficial nibbling in all areas.” The young consultant promoted for to be the token woman on the team crippled by imposter syndrome might come to mind when thinking about this jack of all trades, master of none.
Stein, of course, does not leave us without hope. She said, “A good natural remedy against all typical feminine defects is solid objective work. This demands in itself the repression of an excessively personal attitude. It calls for an end to superficiality not only in her own work but in general. Because it requires submission to objective laws, it is a schooling in obedience.” What does Stein mean by objective work? She includes “housework, a trade, science, or anything else” that requires submission to definitive laws.
There is no negotiating and frittering away with the pile of dirty dishes; it is there until the dishes are cleaned. However one feels about cleaning the fingerprints off the front windows, they are dirty until someone takes the time to wipe them down. With concrete math, the answer is not subject to feeling or wide-ranging interpretation but stands in plain fact. Plumbing is a simple yet challenging encounter with undeniable physical forces and the creation and maintenance of systems that serve a straightforward purpose. In all these—the mechanics of housekeeping, the simplicity of math, the function of plumbing—the work is not tied to the expression of personality but to objective reality. Mastery of the intense emotions often moving through ordinary women can come through disciplining oneself to the really real.
The purpose of this objective work is not to make women more like men but rather to channel women’s energy into the full expression of their best qualities. Stein wrote that objective work “must lead neither to relinquishing of the good and pure personal attitude nor to a one-sided specializing and enslavement to a discipline which typifies the perversion of masculine nature. How extremely sufficient this natural remedy of objective work can be is seen in the maturity and harmony of many women who manifest a high intellectual formation or who were trained by the hardship of life in the discipline of strenuous professional work.”
Stein’s observation offers some insight into how motherhood can inspire a steady accumulation of accomplishment in professional work for many women. Rising to the task of caring for a person temporarily incapable of caring for himself, there is much objective work that offsets excessive and unhelpful emotion.
Unfortunately, the movement to “liberate” women has taken household tasks hostage by labeling them vehicles of oppression. What can help many women is true liberty—the mastery of self—is now off limits apart from endless negotiations about gender roles, fairness, equality, and gaslighting. It really is acceptable to want to do your own dishes, and if you don’t want to do them, just getting them done any way can do much to form your character and bring harmony in the home.
Women’s work is not limited to the domestic sphere, but the necessities of life are always with us: eating, sleeping, tidying up. With these activities so readily at hand, they can pair well with many professional pursuits for women inside and outside the home. Will those ideal professional outlets look like those of the average man? Well, of course not! However we may try to shield ourselves from the truth, men and women are, in fact, different.
Women’s work should not produce alienation from self and conflict with others but should draw out the benefits of woman’s attention to the personal and the particular. As Stein wrote, “The woman’s soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold.” Every person now living had a mother at one time, and every person in the world needs a mother still, that sheltering place to be known and loved. This, ultimately, is woman’s work. The way to get there sometimes: the dishes, the dust, and the plumbing.
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