Feminism, the Body, and the Machine

Berry envisions marriage as a state of mutual help and the household as an economy. In contrast, the popular model of marriage is two careerists in bed with an elaborate political system of rights and interests that must be asserted and defended constantly. Thus, marriage has taken on the form of a divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things should be divided. The modern home is a place where the couple does most of their consuming, but nothing productive.

In contrast, some married couples understand each other as belonging to their marriage, to each other, and their children. What they have, they have in common. Usually at the heart of this home is something productive; it involves the work of husband and wife that gives them a measure of economic independence and self-protection, self-employment, freedom as well as common ground and satisfaction. May include: housewifery, carpentry, gardening, maybe even a ‘cottage industry’ of writing.

This is the kind of work first held in contempt by the man and now by the feminist. But there is nothing better than to make your marriage and household work, nothing more satisfying. Children need ordinary daily association with both parents; need to see their parents at work, then play at this work, then work with their parents. It matters a great deal that this work should have the dignity of economic value.

Berry’s critics assume (the orthodox assumption of the industrial economy) that the only help worth giving is not given at all but sold. Love, friendship, neighborliness, compassion, and duty are irrelevant to the realist. Our technological progress has not improved life with integrity or happiness of our families. That has been subordinated to the education system, the television industry, and the consumer economy.
Wendell Berry “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine”