Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Then I remembered parrots. This was lucky, for my wrath flamed again. It was really cooling, as I tried to work out responsibility and adjust penalties. But parrots! Any person who wants to keep a parrot should go and live on an island alone with their preferred conversationalist!

  There was a huge, squawky parrot right across the street from me, adding its senseless, rasping cries to the more necessary evils of other noises.

  I had also an aunt with a parrot. She was a wealthy, ostentatious person, who had been an only child and inherited her money.

  Uncle Joseph hated the yelling bird, but that didn’t make any difference to Aunt Mathilda.

  I didn’t like this aunt, and wouldn’t visit her, lest she think I was truckling for the sake of her money; but after I had wished this time, I called at the time set for my curse to work; and it did work with a vengeance. There sat poor Uncle Joe, looking thinner and meeker than ever; and my aunt, like an overripe plum, complacent enough.

  “Let me out!” said Polly, suddenly. “Let me out to take a walk!”

  “The clever thing!” said Aunt Mathilda. “He never said that before.”

  She let him out. Then he flapped up on the chandelier and sat among the prisms, quite safe.

  “What an old pig you are, Mathilda!” said the parrot.

  She started to her feet — naturally.

  “Born a Pig — trained a Pig — a Pig by nature and education!” said the parrot. “Nobody’d put up with you, except for your money; unless it’s this long-suffering husband of yours. He wouldn’t, if he hadn’t the patience of Job!”

  “Hold your tongue!” screamed Aunt Mathilda. “Come down from there! Come here!”

  Polly cocked his head and jingled the prisms. “Sit down, Mathilda!” he said, cheerfully. “You’ve got to listen. You are fat and homely and selfish. You are a nuisance to everybody about you. You have got to feed me and take care of me better than ever — and you’ve got to listen to me when I talk. Pig!”

  I visited another person with a parrot the next day. She put a cloth over his cage when I came in.

  “Take it off!” said Polly. She took it off.

  “Won’t you come into the other room?” she asked me, nervously.

  “Better stay here!” said her pet. “Sit still — sit still!”

  She sat still.

  “Your hair is mostly false,” said pretty Poll. “And your teeth — and your outlines. You eat too much. You are lazy. You ought to exercise, and don’t know enough. Better apologize to this lady for backbiting! You’ve got to listen.”

  The trade in parrots fell off from that day; they say there is no call for them. But the people who kept parrots, keep them yet — parrots live a long time.

  Bores were a class of offenders against whom I had long borne undying enmity. Now I rubbed my hands and began on them, with this simple wish: That every person whom they bored should tell them the plain truth.

  There is one man whom I have specially in mind. He was blackballed at a pleasant club, but continues to go there. He isn’t a member — he just goes; and no one does anything to him.

  It was very funny after this. He appeared that very night at a meeting, and almost every person present asked him how he came there. “You’re not a member, you know,” they said. “Why do you butt in? Nobody likes you.”

  Some were more lenient with him. “Why don’t you learn to be more considerate of others, and make some real friends?” they said. “To have a few friends who do enjoy your visits ought to be pleasanter than being a public nuisance.”

  He disappeared from that club, anyway.

  I began to feel very cocky indeed.

  In the food business there was already a marked improvement; and in transportation. The hubbub of reformation waxed louder daily, urged on by the unknown sufferings of all the profiters by iniquity.

  The papers thrived on all this; and as I watched the loud-voiced protestations of my pet abomination in journalism, I had a brilliant idea, literally.

  Next morning I was down town early, watching the men open their papers. My abomination was shamefully popular, and never more so than this morning. Across the top was printing in gold letters:

  All intentional lies, in adv., editorial, news, or any other column. .

  .Scarlet

  All malicious matter. . .Crimson

  All careless or ignorant mistakes. . .Pink

  All for direct self-interest of owner. . .Dark green

  All mere bait — to sell the paper. . .Bright green

  All advertising, primary or secondary. . .Brown

  All sensational and salacious matter. . .Yellow

  All hired hypocrisy. . .Purple

  Good fun, instruction and entertainment. . .Blue

  True and necessary news and honest editorials. . .Ordinary print

  You never saw such a crazy quilt of a paper. They were bought like hot cakes for some days; but the real business fell off very soon. They’d have stopped it all if they could; but the papers looked all right when they came off the press. The color scheme flamed out only to the bona-fide reader.

  I let this work for about a week, to the immense joy of all the other papers; and then turned it on to them, all at once. Newspaper reading became very exciting for a little, but the trade fell off. Even newspaper editors could not keep on feeding a market like that. The blue printed and ordinary printed matter grew from column to column and page to page. Some papers — small, to be sure, but refreshing — began to appear in blue and black alone.

  This kept me interested and happy for quite a while; so much so that I quite forgot to be angry at other things. There was such a change in all kinds of business, following the mere printing of truth in the newspapers. It began to appear as if we had lived in a sort of delirium — not really knowing the facts about anything. As soon as we really knew the facts, we began to behave very differently, of course.

  What really brought all my enjoyment to an end was women. Being a woman, I was naturally interested in them, and could see some things more clearly than men could. I saw their real power, their real dignity, their real responsibility in the world; and then the way they dress and behave used to make me fairly frantic. ’Twas like seeing archangels playing jackstraws — or real horses only used as rocking-horses. So I determined to get after them.

  How to manage it! What to hit first! Their hats, their ugly, inane, outrageous hats — that is what one thinks of first. Their silly, expensive clothes — their diddling beads and jewelry — their greedy childishness — mostly of the women provided for by rich men.

  Then I thought of all the other women, the real ones, the vast majority, patiently doing the work of servants without even a servant’s pay — and neglecting the noblest duties of motherhood in favor of house-service; the greatest power on earth, blind, chained, untaught, in a treadmill. I thought of what they might do, compared to what they did do, and my heart swelled with something that was far from anger.

  Then I wished — with all my strength — that women, all women, might realize Womanhood at last; its power and pride and place in life; that they might see their duty as mothers of the world — to love and care for everyone alive; that they might see their dirty to men — to choose only the best, and then to bear and rear better ones; that they might see their duty as human beings, and come right out into full life and work and happiness!

  I stopped, breathless, with shining eyes. I waited, trembling, for things to happen.

  Nothing happened.

  You see, this magic which had fallen on me was black magic — and I had wished white.

  It didn’t work at all, and, what was worse, it stopped all the other things that were working so nicely.

  Oh, if I had only thought to wish permanence for those lovely punishments! If only I had done more while I could do it, had half appreciated my privileges when I was a Witch!

  [Untitled]

  “I can understand,” says Eugene Wood, “how some women want to vote.
And I can understand how some women do not want to vote.”

  “But I can’t understand how some women do not want other women to vote.”

  THAT RARE JEWEL

  ‘WHAT are you laughing at, Sherman? You seem to find something endlessly amusing in your smoke-wreaths, or the roof of the piazza, or the sky yonder.’

  ‘Nothing so soothing as smoke, Hal, so simple as boards, or so natural as the sky. I’m laughing about modern girls.’

  ‘Oh! Well, I confess they are funny. But what special phase?’

  ‘Their high-minded social conscientiousness. You know Miss Walker — nice, sensible, jolly girl? She was a very good friend of mine, and I was having all manner of good times with her, when all at once I discovered that she was taking care of my heart all the time, for fear it should get broken. She was afraid to go with me so much, for fear I might think, you know, — that she might think, you know — Bah! It’s enough to make a man forswear womankind for ever!’

  Harold acquiesced cheerfully. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I’ve noticed it. If it were not for sheer pity — and natural attraction, I suppose — one would let the whole thing go. But if you don’t pay a girl some attention, she can’t do a single thing, dance, or walk, or have any kind of a time. A fellow has to sit up nights, to divide these wonderful attentions so that nobody can build on them.’

  Harold looked out over the beach and the bathers, where, perhaps, even an unceremonious clutch out of the grip of a big wave was being received and built upon as an ‘attention.’ Sherman Blake blew other soothing smoke wreaths, softly vanishing as they ascended toward the simple roof and natural sky before mentioned. He was a nice fellow, a very nice fellow indeed, much prized among the numerous young ladies of his acquaintance; and his responsibilities weighed heavily upon him, as we observe. Harold Onthewaite, his friend, was a clever young man, of literary tastes and newspaper necessities; much given to analysis and sweeping deduction.

  ‘You see, Sherman,’ said he, ‘girls nowadays are awfully complex. There is no naturalness to them. Women were always mysterious enough, heaven knows; but “the higher education” seems to have added an intense self-consciousness of their own intricacy. Where they used to be queer and couldn’t account for it, now they are queer and can give you a thousand reasons. It is wearing to a humble, plain, consistent creature like man.’

  ‘You’re right, there,’ said Sherman. ‘If that fair friend of mine had had an inkling of where my heart was wandering, she might have saved herself some pains. It is quite pathetic, though, really, to think of the study she wasted on her supposed victim! — the energy gone to waste! Now that I do not call so often, I suppose she thinks I languish! See you at lunch, Hal, I have an engagement.’ And young Blake settled his hat a little, and started off briskly to the next hotel.

  Harold followed him with his eyes.

  ‘What a shame it is,’ he thought, ‘that a man can’t find a natural, honest woman, either for friend or sweetheart. Honest! If they would only be consistent, I’d ask nothing else!’

  Julia Farwell sat by the window of her narrow little room in ‘The Water View,’ gazing off across the misty blue expanse with a rather perplexed expression. To her entered her mother, — pleasant-faced, well-dressed, serene.

  ‘Are you going to walk with Mr Blake or not, Julia? He is waiting around downstairs, and said he believed you had some such plan for this morning.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, mother. I hate to go with him all the time. He might think’ —

  ‘It doesn’t seem to me, dear, that you ought to think so much of what he might think. I know you are conscientious about it, but sometimes you seem to me to carry it too far. You are pretty and attractive enough, but so are other girls, and it is a little hard on a friendly young man always to suppose him paying attention. You can’t alter society, my dear.’

  ‘I know I can’t, mother. But you know well enough that a girl gets blamed for encouraging a man if he does mean anything.’

  ‘Yes, I know that. But do be reasonable! As society is constituted, you can’t have the amusements due to a girl of your age without some man’s escort. You can’t even go to walk alone without being conspicuous. Men like to have it so, too. When they are kind and gentlemanly and polite to a girl, I don’t think the girl ought to quarrel with it.’

  ‘Yes, but mother, if they are in earnest, if they really want to — to marry you, they have only the same way to show it; and you are supposed to understand.’

  ‘Now, my dear, you are absurd! In the first place, you do understand well enough when a man means that. And, in the second place, it seems to me scarcely — well, maidenly, to be assuming that every man who offers you some small attention wants to marry you. I may be old-fashioned, but it seems to me unbecoming to quarter the ground in advance, analyze every look and word, and try to take care of a man’s heart that may be miles away. The world is not on your shoulders, dear. Keep within your own proper limits, and let them take care of themselves.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to come with us, mother? I shall not go far.’

  ‘No, thank you, dear, I do not feel like it this morning. See that you don’t wet your feet.’

  So Miss Far well and Mr Blake set forth in the clear sunshine and fresh sea-breeze. They walked along the ever-inviting rocks, and found them too populous with other pairs; they walked through stony meadows, full of golden-rod and sumach, and found them too bare and hot; they walked down cool woodland roads, and were moved to gather flowers there, and to rest under the shimmering green roof of widespread pines. She made a lapful of their fragrant burden, and arranged great clusters to carry back with her. He took off his hat, the better to feel the gentle wind, and laid himself admiringly at her feet. And, finding words for the occasion, he spoke out manfully, called her ‘Julia,’ told her she knew he loved her, and asked her to be his wife.

  ‘Indeed — indeed, I did not know it, Mr Blake! If I had I should have saved you this. I do not — can not — it must be “no.” I had no idea it was so much to you — believe me!’

  There was an ominous silence, while the young man pulled up little bunches of thin wood grass and pushed them into the ground again with his stick.

  ‘I hope you are not angry, Mr Blake? I do like you very much, and I am so sorry.’

  ‘Thank you. I appreciate your — kindness.’

  And, as further conversation seemed difficult, they walked silently back together.

  He made his adieux with careful politeness, hoping he should see her again in the winter, and went straightway to his room and his valise.

  His companion sought her mother.

  ‘Why, Julia, what has happened? You look tired out. Did you go too far?’

  ‘Yes, mother, I did go too far, it appears; or Mr Blake did. It is just as I told you — just as I was afraid. And when I — couldn’t, he was angry — actually angry and sarcastic. He acted just as if I had led him on and played with him; and you know well enough how careful I have been!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Julia. It is not wicked, child. You can’t help it if you have offers. I had five myself, and I’m sure I didn’t encourage them. It’s nothing to grieve over, dear!’

  ‘It is something to grieve over, mother, to have things so that a girl cannot live naturally and honestly, try as she may. I don’t care, I’m going to enjoy the rest of my life as best I can, and not bother.’

  ‘A very sensible conclusion, my dear, and I hope you will keep to it. You will be far happier and more comfortable, and it will not hurt your chances, I promise you. Of all things, don’t be odd.’

  When Harold looked in to remind his friend of lunch time, he found him packing violently.

  ‘What’s up now, Sherm?’ he inquired. ‘You don’t look exactly permanent.’

  ‘I am going to take the afternoon train,’ said he, briefly.

  ‘Anything happened? Has — oh, I see! I’m awfully sorry, Sherm!’ And Harold’s hand-clasp was a small bit of human comfort, af
ter all. Sherman returned the pressure vigorously, walked to the window and looked out through panes that seemed uncommonly dim, and then burst out suddenly: ‘Don’t waste your sympathy, old fellow! I’m hurt, of course; but I’m almost more angry, to be so fooled and led by the nose like a — freshman!’

  Harold looked a world of interest, but was shy of speaking. But, as something seemed necessary, he tried one word— ‘Jilted?’

  ‘I should think so! Jilted! If ever a man was sure and careful and warranted in speaking, I was. Why, she has gone about with me all summer, danced and walked and ridden, and — why, you must have noticed it; everybody has noticed it!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harold, ‘I noticed it. I’m awfully sorry.’

  ‘It’s more than the pain, Hal. It’s the general disappointment. What is a man to expect, to hope for anywhere, when women are like this? And then we are blamed for not marrying!’

  ‘Yes, that’s what amuses me,’ said Harold. ‘We’d marry, be glad to marry, and marry young, too, if women were what they used to be.’

  ‘And the wretched idiots that talk about it miss the whole point. It’s not expense and frivolity and incapableness — those are bad enough — it’s this cursed, double-faced dishonesty. Lead a man on with the openest, baldest encouragement, till he’s fool enough really to show his heart, and then they’re so sorry! Well, I’m twenty-eight, and this is my third lesson. If I need another, I shall deserve it.’

  ‘And then they always offer to be sisters, and want to keep your friendship,’ echoed Hal. ‘Why can’t they be honest even there, and show a little natural triumph, if that was their game?’ The girls at that resort were the poorer by two young men, which was a serious diminution where one had to cover so many.

  Sherman finished his packing and his lunch, and left that evening. Harold went with him, disgusted with womankind.

  ‘If they would only be consistent!’ said he, ‘that’s all I’d ask!’