Home Author:Charlotte Perkins Gilman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HI DOMESTIC MYTHOLOGY is a school of myths connected with the home, more tenacious in their hold on the popular mind than even religious beliefs. Of all cu... more »rrent superstitions none are deeper rooted, none so sensitive to the touch, so acutely painful in removal. We have lived to see nations outgrow some early beliefs, but others are still left us to study, in their long slow processes of decay. Belief in " the divine right of kings," for instance, is practically outgrown in America; and yet, given a king,—or even a king's brother,—and we show how much of the feeling remains in our minds, disclaim as we may the idea. Habits of thought persist through the centuries; and while a healthy brain may reject the doctrine it no longer believes, it will continue to feel the same sentiments formerly associated with that doctrine. Wherever the pouring stream of social progress has had little influence,—in remote rural regions, hidden valleys, and neglected coasts,—we find still in active force some of the earliest myths. They may change theirnames as new religions take the place of old, Santa Claus and St. Valentine holding sway in place of forgotten deities of dim antiquity, but the festival or custom embodied is the same that was enjoyed by those most primitive ancestors. Of all hidden valleys none has so successfully avoided discovery as the Home. Church and State might change as they would—as they must; science changed, art changed, business changed, all human functions changed and grew save those of the home. Every man's home was his castle, and there he maintained as far as possible the facts and fancies of the place, unaltered from century to century. The facts have been too many for him. The domestic hearth, with its undying flame, has given way to the gilded pipes of the s...« less