Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  The Ordeal theory always appealed to me very strongly, and, while I had no fox to gnaw my vitals, I used to practise with mosquitoes. I’d keep perfectly still and let them suck and sting and swell up with my blood, visibly. They were easier to kill afterward, too. Once I let a bee sting me, but that was worse; it hurt so I plastered mud on it pretty quick. And when Mother put our winter flannels on us too soon, which she always did, I used to play it was a hair shirt.

  So when Father was horrid to me I would say to myself, “This is an Ordeal.” And I’d stand it. I had to stand it, you see, anyway, but by taking it as an Ordeal it became glorious. And not only glorious, but useful. I was astonished to find, from those mosquitoes and things, that a pain isn’t such an awful thing if you just take it as if you wanted it. And when Father rebuked me, and was so sarcastic and tedious, even while it really hurt, and the tears ran down my cheeks, I would be thinking inside: “How foolish it is to keep talking after you’ve really made your point.”

  If you have an active mind, a real active mind that likes to work, there is profitable experience in most everything.

  School was in some ways a better place to learn things than at home. I don’t meant the study in the schoolbooks — a little of that goes a long way — but the things you can learn about people, and how to manage them. At first school seems very impressive, so big and busy, so many children, so many rules. But you get used to it.

  I remember once, when I was about eight, sitting there with my lesson all learned, and thinking. It was a reading lesson, and I never did see the sense in those. Why, if you could read, you could read, and that was all there was to it. I always read the reader through as soon as I got it, and it wasn’t half as nice as a real book, anyway.

  The others were studying their lessons, however, and the big room was very still, all but the dull buzz children make when they are studying. I sat there and wondered why we had to maintain that oppressive silence. “Suppose we talked out loud,” I thought. “What would happen? Suppose I did? I’m going to — just to see.”

  Then I cast about in my infant mind for the shortest word I knew, and all at once, across the dull murmur of the quiet schoolroom, rose a clear young voice saying, “It!”

  The teacher was much astonished, for I was usually a model pupil. “Who said that word?” she demanded.

  “I did,” I said. She called me up to the desk and put her arm around me.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked.

  “I wanted to see what would happen,” I answered.

  And I found out. Nothing happened. She gave me a mild reprimand and told me not to do it again, which was needless; I wasn’t going to. I’d found out what I wanted to know.

  It is easy to please a teacher, and you don’t have to be very smart either. You only have to be “good,” that is, keep the rules. If you want to do something extra, and have a real good record behind you, you can mostly do that, too. Then if you keep watch you can find out something the teacher especially likes — and perhaps you can get it for her or him.

  Most of the scholars brought Teacher flowers, all kinds of flowers. I noticed that she always kept the roses most carefully, and if there were pinks she wore them. So I persuaded Father to put in some pinks for me next year, in my little bed down at the end of the garden, and I used to take one to Teacher every morning while they bloomed.

  Teachers are easy — and there’s only one of them. The children, they are harder.

  But I kept my eyes open. I noticed who were the favorites, and why; who were the ones they didn’t like, and why; and of those whys which of the good ones I could adopt and which of the bad ones avoid. As to studying, if you know your lessons pretty well, that pleases Teacher. If you know them too well, then the children don’t like it. The girl they disliked most was at the very head. Teacher didn’t like her, either — I could see that, for all she got the best marks. But if you know your lessons well enough to be able to help the others some, well enough to keep up but not well enough to get too far ahead, that pleases everybody. It’s easier, too, and more amusing. I was quick enough at lessons, but I found time to sharpen pencils for ever so many others, and to do lots of things beside.

  With the children just playing, I found that the thing they liked best of all was somebody who said, “Let’s do this,” and “Let’s play that.” So I used to think up things to do, and learn games on purpose — and make them up.

  One year — I was about eleven then — we had a real nice teacher, but I think she was poor. She had a pretty little watch, only silver, but real pretty, and big Lucy Harrison knocked it off the desk one day — she was always clumsy. Then she turned around and stepped on it — backward — off the platform — with her heel — and broke it all to smash. Miss Arthur turned white. Her eyes filled with tears, but she comforted Lucy, who was bawling, said it was only an accident — didn’t blame her a mite.

  I made up my mind that Miss Arthur should have another watch — I didn’t know how to do it, but I was bound I would — for Christmas. So I asked to see the pieces, and was ever so sorry about it, asked her if it couldn’t be mended. She said no, but that she would get another some day. I noticed that the one she got was what the boys have — a “tin watch” — and she had to set it by the clock almost every day. The one that broke was marked “Longines.”

  I went to the best jeweler’s store and asked how much a watch like that would be — I picked out one like it but prettier, and the man said ten dollars. That seemed impossible at first. But there were fifty children in our room, and two months to Christmas. I did it on my slate — fifty children into ten dollars — in long division, and it was twenty cents apiece. I didn’t think they could bring twenty cents apiece even if they wanted to. But there were two months yet.

  First I formed a Society, a Secret Society, to get Miss Arthur a Christmas present. I got Lucy elected President and myself Treasurer. Lucy was so sorry about the watch she contributed a quarter herself. We were all to bring five cents apiece to each meeting until we had money enough. The meetings were every Friday before school in the yard. But a month went by and I hadn’t but seven dollars, and the other children seemed to have lost interest.

  Then I got up a show, in our yard, a Dramatic Entertainment, which was to be five cents admission. Peggy and I used to perform “We Were Two Sisters of One Race.” We loved it. “She was the fairest in the face” — that was Peggy. “They were together and she fell” — Peggy used to fall beautifully, just as flat, and not hurt herself, either. I used to wonder why he didn’t hold her up, they being together. “Therefore revenge became me well” — I did the revenging. That was a great performance, really.

  Peggy was the Earl, too, coming to my banquet, and the mother was just a bolster dressed up and a coif on — sort of bowed over, as was natural with a dead son in a sheet dragged in and laid at her feet like that.

  And we did “The Outlandish Knight,” too. I was the Knight, and Peggy, being bigger, could “Catch me round the middle so small and tumble me into the stream” with great effect.

  I knew Father wouldn’t like this, but it seemed to me a case of justifiable — well, I don’t know what to call it. It wasn’t disobedience. Neither Father nor Mother had ever forbidden my giving a dramatic entertainment. But it had to be planned very carefully. I wrote out quite a lot of cards announcing it, and gave them to the children in the different rooms that morning. Then I asked Dr. Branson and Mr. Cutter, and my Sunday School teacher. Their five cents were as good as anybody’s. They came, too, and put in whole quarters. They said it was well worth it.

  I took a day when father wouldn’t be home until late. He had to go out of town somewhere. Peggy and I didn’t need to rehearse much. Mother was persuadable. I asked her if I might have some children to come and play with us that afternoon, and she was willing. She knew we didn’t often have a chance of that sort. She had to go downtown, she said, but we could play in the garden.

  Of course, Alison was aston
ished to see so many, but I took her into my confidence to some extent, and she was much interested.

  They came and they came and they came, and sat in rows on the grass. Peggy was scared, but I wasn’t a bit. I had it all fixed up with Lucy Harrison, she being so big and the President. As soon as there was enough money she was to go down the street and get that watch — it was all picked out at the jeweler’s — and to keep it until Christmas. Lucy could keep a secret, even if she was clumsy. The others of our Society didn’t know yet what the present was going to be, so they couldn’t tell.

  Well, the performance was grand. And so many came that we had $12.75 in all. Before Mother got back Lucy had gone for the watch, and she got a pretty little hook pin for it, too, and religiously kept it until Christmas. Miss Arthur was so pleased when Lucy gave it to her. “From her loving pupils” — Minnie Arnold made a nice little speech. Minnie was the best orator we had. And Lucy presented the watch, because she had broken the other. I just sat in my seat and smiled.

  Father was awfully angry with me. But it was too late. He couldn’t do anything to Lucy Harrison, you see, and the thing was done. He punished me, of course; I had expected that — that was an Ordeal. But I think he could have hung me up by the thumbs without my being sorry. I felt so fine to think of Miss Arthur’s really having that watch — a ten-dollar watch, and a nice pin — out of nothing at all. She praised Minnie and thanked Lucy, and she thanked “all her dear children,” and I just grinned to myself for days, I was so pleased, and I felt proud, too, and longed for new worlds to conquer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a world that I set my heart on next — a real world, a big globe for the schoolroom.

  Mr. Cutter had a globe in his study so big I couldn’t touch hands around it. The first time I saw it I was so pleased. It made the maps seem connected and sensible somehow. I could see how big Asiatic Russia was, and how little England was, and how Alaska leaned over to Japan and all sorts of things that never looked that way in the geography. Especially how things came together at the poles, like the knitting at the top of a mitten. And it would whirl around. It seemed to me we ought to have one in school.

  I asked Teacher about it, and she said she’d love to have one, but they were not provided by the Board. I asked if the Board provided the geographies, and she said yes, they decided what we must have and the parents bought them. Did they provide the pictures on the walls? No, the “Art in Schools Society” did that. I used to wish that there were some children in that Society.

  Now our minister thought well of me, and so did the Sunday School teachers. I used to go to Sunday School always, and was great friends with the teacher of our class. She liked me most, I think, on account of the paralyzed washerwoman. You see Jenny Gale next door told me their washerwoman was paralyzed and couldn’t come any more, but she had a little grandson who brought the washing and took it. She was only half paralyzed, Jenny said, and could do about half as much washing as she could before, but she had to do it at home. I was tremendously interested, and persuaded Jenny to take me and go with the grandson, who was a solemn little boy, and see this mysterious half-disease. It made me think of that Prince with the black marble legs, she being black and all. Well, there was the poor old woman, able to hobble about and use one arm all right and the other a little (it was an up and down half, I found); and she had nothing to live on but her work, she and the grandson. They lived in a little garret sort of place, and it was four dollars a month. Now our Sunday School class was pretty big. There were always over ten there, and we used to bring nickels and dimes every Sunday, for Missions. I had asked about those Missions, and found it was mostly poor people, but the children didn’t care particularly about them. They did not know them personally, you see.

  I told our teacher, Miss Ayres, about this paralyzed washerwoman. I persuaded her to go and see her, and I said: “Oh please, couldn’t we give her our money every week?” So then Miss Ayres suggested that perhaps our class could make a special mission of her rent. She was greatly pleased and interested. She took the whole class to see the old woman, and after that they used to bring dimes every Sunday and what there was over the rent we spent on Christmas presents for the grandson.

  Anyway I was great friends with the minister, and when I asked him if it would disturb him if I came in sometimes and did my geography by his globe, he let me do it. So I got my nose in.

  That idea came from the camel book. Peggy and I had a picture book about a Peasant in a Hut, and an Encroaching Camel that asked to warm his nose, and then poked his head in, and gradually got inside and lay down by the fire and took up all the room, and the Peasant couldn’t get him out. The trouble with that story, to my mind, was that camels live in countries that are warm — too warm. Whoever heard of a camel wanting to lie by a fire! And the Peasants in camel countries don’t have huts, they have tents. However, lots of stories were queer. One had to take them as one found them. And I got the idea out of this one all right.

  I used to be so quiet, just sitting there by the globe, never making any trouble, and he didn’t notice that I came oftener and oftener. Then I asked if I might bring one of my schoolmates, promising to make no noise or disturbance. “She’s very slow at geography,” I told Mr. Cutter, “and the globe makes it so much clearer.”

  “Why don’t they have one at the school?” he asked, laying down his pen and looking interested.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wish they would. May I bring Carrie? We’ll be very quiet. It’s not every day, you know.”

  He let us. It was only in the afternoon. So the camel got his head in.

  Well, Mr. Cutter, poor man, soon found a flourishing geography class trailing into his study Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays — a whole camel. I picked out children, though, who were in his church, and very polite and still, and I wasn’t much surprised when it came Christmas to have Teacher announce that good Mr. Cutter had presented our room with this beautiful globe. It was a great comfort to the whole room, and other rooms used to borrow it, and by and by there were more of them. Perhaps it was a comfort to Mr. Cutter, too. In my own mind I used to call that globe my camel.

  School things and church things, that is Sunday School ones, were not very difficult. Somehow where there are numbers of people together just for one purpose, sort of classified, it does not seem so hard to manage them.

  I put that down in my diary when I was about twelve. I took more interest in my diary when I was young than I do now. Of course I know older people would laugh at that the way they do, and ask what I call myself now. And I know that chronologically (that’s old enough, I hope) I’m what they call “only a girl.” But if thinking makes people grown up, why I was older when I was fifteen than they are at fifty.

  Why already, looking over these childish diaries and beginning to write out the earlier part of my life (so as to have “the decks cleared for action” — all the big crowding action that I can feel coming so fast), I feel not only old, but sort of immortal. As if life ran by, faster and faster, and I just stood watching, and sticking my finger in now and then. It is such fun!

  Well, as I was saying, some things you can do easily. Others are harder. Some you can’t seem to do at all. I found my hardest things at home. That is, there was one hard thing, big and troublesome. I couldn’t seem to manage it at all — I mean Father.

  Peggy was all right. She was pretty and good, and so obliging that she did not have to be managed. She was a great comfort to Mother at home, and I think Father liked her the best on account of her being so pretty. Or he would have if I hadn’t taken extra pains.

  I began to study Peggy very early, for she was always there. Father was away daytimes mostly, and even Mother was out sometimes, and downstairs in the evening, but Peggy was always with me, night and day. Naturally she was asleep nights, but so was I. So long as I was awake, there was Peggy. I was even in her room at school, for we were pretty nearly of an age, you see, and she was always willing to help me wit
h my lessons.

  So I gave my mind to the subject of Peggy from the first. Why was she prettier than I was? That I used to wonder when I wasn’t five. But I admired her prettiness with all my heart, and loved her dearly. She was sweet-tempered and docile and popular, not like other pretty sisters I read about in story books, and we grew up very close together.

  But as I got older — and I did get older far faster than she did — my respect for her as older sister began to dwindle, and instead of looking up to her for her age and her good looks, I began to look down on her a little, because she wasn’t as strong as I was intellectually. And then I got over that and began to see that for patience and sweetness and being a darling she was far superior to me. How one does change as one grows older!

  But I was stronger really, so I secretly called myself “big sister” and learned to take care of Peggy in lots of ways. She loved, bless her dear heart, to “help little sister,” as she had been told to from our babyhood, and she took great pains to have me keep up with her in school. She never noticed when I caught up with her, nor when helping me became the easiest way to learn her own lessons. As to getting ahead of her, I never did. That would have been a poor return for all her patience and kindness.

  It’s wonderful how much you learn by teaching people — that I soon found out. We kept together, year by year, and people praised her for helping me along far more than they did me for keeping up. That was lovely. I just danced inside, for I loved to have them praise Peggy, and above all things I wanted to be smart without being thought so.

  When I was very little I took advantage of her sometimes, like that about the gingersnaps, but not afterward. As a matter of fact, when she did once in a while get into trouble, I could help her out and did, gladly. She was nicer than any other girl’s sister I knew.