Read "The Malingerer (the Forerunner)" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Exempt! She "does not have to work! " / So might one talk / Defending long, bedridden ease, / Weak yielding ankles, flaccid knees, / With, "I don't have to walk!"
Not have to work. Why not? Who gave / Free pass to you? / You're housed and fed and taught and dressed / By age-long labor of the rest -- / Work other people do!
What do you give in honest pay / For clothes and food? -- / Then as a shield, defence, excuse, / She offers her exclusive use -- / Her function -- Motherhood!
Is motherhood a trade you make / A living by? / And does the wealth you so may use, / Squander, accumulate, abuse, / Show motherhood as high?
Or does the motherhood of those / Whose toil endures, / The farmers' and mechanics' wives, / Hard working servants all their lives -- / Deserve less price than yours?
We're not exempt! Man's world runs on, / Motherless, wild; / Our servitude and long duress, / Our shameless, harem idleness, / Both fail to serve the child.