Six Hours a Day by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Six hours a day the woman spends on food! / Six mortal hours a day. / With fire and water toiling, heat and cold; / Struggling with laws she does not understand / Of chemistry and physics, and the weight / Of poverty and ignorance besides. / Toiling for those she loves, the added strain / Of tense emotion on her humble skill, / The sensitiveness born of love and fear, / Making it harder to do even work. / Toiling without release, no hope ahead / Of taking up another business soon, / Of varying the task she finds too hard- / This, her career, so closely interknit / With holier demands as deep as life / That to refuse to cook is held the same / As to refuse her wife and motherhood. / Six mortal hours a day to handle food,- / Prepare it, serve it, clean it all away,- / With allied labors of the stove and tub, / The pan, the dishcloth, and the scrubbing-brush. / Developing forever in her brain / The power to do this work in which she lives; / While the slow finger of Heredity / Writes on the forehead of each living man, / Strive as he may, "His mother was a cook! "