Domestic Amusements and Social Duties : Part 1

American Woman's Home
by Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Page 24 of 43)

Whenever the laws of body and mind are properly understood, it will be allowed that every person needs some kind of recreation; and that, by seeking it, the body is strengthened, the mind is invigorated and all our duties are more cheerfully and successfully performed.

Children, whose bodies are rapidly growing and whose nervous system is tender and excitable, need much more amusement than persons of mature age. Persons, also, who are oppressed with great responsibilities and duties, or who are taxed by great intellectual or moral excitement, need recreations which physically exercise and draw off the mind from absorbing interests. Unfortunately, such persons are those who least resort to amusements, while the idle, gay and thoughtless seek those which are not needed and for which useful occupation would be a most beneficial substitute.

As the only legitimate object of amusement is to prepare mind and body for the proper discharge of duty, the protracting of such as interfere with regular employments, or induce excessive fatigue, or weary the mind, or invade the proper hours for repose, must be sinful.

In deciding what should be selected and what avoided, the following are guiding principles. In the first place, no amusements which inflict needless pain should ever be allowed. All tricks which cause fright or vexation and all sports which involve suffering to animals, should be utterly forbidden. Hunting and fishing, for mere sport, can never be justified. If a man can convince his children that he follows these pursuits to gain food or health and not for amusement, his example may not be very injurious. But when children see grown persons kill and frighten animals, for sport, habits of cruelty, rather than feelings of tenderness and benevolence, are cultivated.

In the next place, we should seek no recreations which endanger life, or interfere with important duties. As the legitimate object of amusements is to promote health and prepare for some serious duties, selecting those which have a directly opposite tendency, can not be justified. Of course, if a person feels that the previous day's diversion has shortened the hours of needful repose, or induced a lassitude of mind or body, instead of invigorating them, it is certain that an evil has been done which should never be repeated.

Another rule which has been extensively adopted in the religious world is, to avoid those amusements which experience has shown to be so exciting and connected with so many temptations, as to be pernicious in tendency, both to the individual and to the community. It is on this ground, that horse-racing and circus-riding have been excluded. Not because there is any thing positively wrong in having men and horses run and perform feats of agility, or in persons looking on for the diversion: but because experience has shown so many evils connected with these recreations, that they should be relinquished. So with theaters. The enacting of characters and the amusement therefore afforded in themselves may be harmless; and possibly, in certain cases, might be useful: but experience has shown so many evils to result from this source, that it has been deemed wrong to patronize it. So, also, with those exciting games of chance which are employed in gambling.

Under the same head comes dancing, in the estimation of the great majority of the religious world. Still, there are many intelligent, excellent and conscientious persons who hold a contrary opinion. Such maintain that it is an innocent and healthy amusement, tending to promote ease of manners, cheerfulness, social affection and health of mind and body; that evils are involved only in its excess; that like food, study, or religions excitement, it is only wrong when not properly regulated; and that, if serious and intelligent people would strive to regulate, rather than banish, this amusement, much more good would be secured.

On the other side, it is objected, not that dancing is a sin, in itself considered, for it was once a part of sacred worship; not that it would be objectionable, if it were properly regulated; not that it does not tend, when used in a proper manner, to health of body and mind, to grace of manners; and to social enjoyment: all these things are conceded. But it is objected to, on the same ground as horse-racing and theatrical entertainments; that we are to look at amusements as they are and not as they might be. Horse-races might be so managed as not to involve cruelty, gambling, drunkenness and other vices. And so might theaters. And if serious and intelligent persons undertook to patronize these, in order to regulate them, perhaps they would be somewhat raised from the depths to which they have sunk. But such persons believe that, with the weak sense of moral obligation existing in the mass of society and the imperfect ideas mankind have of the proper use of amusements and the little self-control which men or women or children practice, these will not, in fact, be therefore regulated.

And they believe dancing to be liable to the same objections. As this recreation is actually conducted, it does not tend to produce health of body or mind, but directly the contrary. If young and old went out to dance together in open air, as the French peasants do, it would be a very different sort of amusement from that which often is witnessed in a room furnished with many lights and filled with guests, both expending the healthy part of the atmosphere, where the young collect, in their tightest dresses, to protract for several hours a kind of physical exertion which is not habitual to them. During this process, the blood is made to circulate more swiftly than usual, in circumstances where it is less perfectly oxygenized than health requires; the pores of the skin are excited by heat and exercise; the stomach is loaded with indigestible articles and the quiet, needful to digestion, withheld; the diversion is protracted beyond the usual hour for repose; and then, when the skin is made the most highly susceptible to damps and miasma, the company pass from a warm room to the cold night-air. It is probable that no single amusement can be pointed out combining so many injurious particulars as this, which is so often defended as a healthy one. Even if parents, who train their children to dance, can keep them from public balls, (which is seldom the case,) dancing, as ordinarily conducted in private parlors, in most cases is subject to nearly all the same mischievous influences.

The spirit of Christ is that of self-denying benevolence; and his great aim, by his teachings and example, was to train his followers to avoid all that should lead to sin, especially in regard to the weaker ones of his family. Yet he made wine at a wedding, attended a social feast on the Sabbath, reproved excess of strictness in Sabbath-keeping generally and forbade no safe and innocent enjoyment. In following his example, the rulers of the family, then, will introduce the most highly exciting amusements only in circumstances where there are such strong principles and habits of self-control that the enjoyment will not involve sin in the actor or needless temptation to the weak.

About the Author

Catharine Esther Beecher (1800 - 1878) was a noted educator, renowned for her forthright opinions on women's education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of a kindergarten into children's education.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896) was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain.