Fisherman's Family, Winslow Homer (1881)

SOME PEOPLE say that modern industrialization took men from the home, and that this in turn led to feminism. I don’t deny that industrialization brought different demands, but men have for thousands of years left home in significant numbers. They left to fish, to hunt, to trap, to go whaling, to fight wars, to study, to mine, to pan for gold, to explore, and to sell goods.

And women have always waited for them.

It was only with modernity that large numbers of women lost the capacity for hopeful, watchful, ever vigilant waiting. It takes courage to wait.

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