Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  But a vigorous able energetic woman of forty-nine cannot fill all her time with the clothing of her household, especially when her household is reduced to two.

  She had been trying not to face it — the vacancy. But it kept gaining on her, rising like a tide, and finally it swept her quite off her feet, and she felt as one swimming in a calm gray horizonless sea.

  ‘Gerald!’ she burst out one evening, ‘how do you stand it?’

  ‘Stand what?’ he naturally inquired, lowering his newspaper.

  ‘Having them all gone!’ she burst out. ‘All of them — everything!’

  ‘You are not gone, Margie,’ he said affectionately, coming around to kiss her.

  She clung to him. ‘I don’t mean it that way, darling,’ she urged remorsefully. ‘But things to do — you are just myself Gerry, you are not an occupation.’

  ‘Why, there’s just as much to do as there ever was, isn’t there? I haven’t noticed that working hours are any shorter.’

  She looked at him, lovingly, but realizing as she never had before the difference in their position. Their partnership in parentage was at an end, but his business went right on. His real partner, Mr Edgers, was a bachelor, yet he had done his half of their common work all these years. They went right on — that partnership — where was hers?

  She was sitting by him now, holding his hand as if she was afraid he would go too. He laid the paper down and turned to her definitely, tenderly.

  ‘What is it, Pussy?’ he asked. ‘Is there something you want? You shall have it.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘There’s nothing I want — that I know of. Of course I wouldn’t have them back — of all things I wouldn’t have had the girls not marry — they all have to go, of course. And I’ve got you — I can’t be unhappy, really — while I have you, dearest. But — what am I to do?

  ‘I don’t understand, Margie. Here’s the house — as big as it always was. Isn’t that — an interest?’

  ‘Why, yes, it’s something. But that never was the main interest — I can’t begin to mother a house at my age. Besides Agnes and Ellen manage it all right now — it runs on wheels. It’s not an occupation for me.’

  ‘Haven’t you your friends, and clothes and things? Don’t they fill up?’

  ‘Why, yes — and so have you, Gerry. But that’s not your business. You have your business — mine’s gone!’

  Mr Haven frowned a little. He was very fond of his wife, and of his home. He had been an excellent father, not only holding up the entire household by his efficient labors outside, but really helping her in her more intimate parental problems.

  He missed his children, too, but had merely plunged more actively into the affairs of his office, affairs which opened endlessly before him. And he was extremely conservative.

  So far he had never thought of his wife as differing from him in his views. He thought ‘woman’s place was the home,’ and so, apparently, had she. She had always stayed in it, had been continuously busy in it, and apparently happy in it. She still had that home. She still had him. This was only a temporary fit of depression. He must cheer her up.

  ‘I don’t see that we can help it, Margie. As you say, you wouldn’t have them back. It’s the order of nature. I guess all women feel so at first — but they have to get used to it.’

  He petted her, drew her close to him.

  She was silent for a little, but his words called up a dreary vision. She remembered her own mother, what her life had been, of how little she had ever thought about it, being so immersed in her own. She recalled other elderly women, growing grayer and grayer, slowly fading out, as they ‘got used to it.’ She thought of the row on the hotel piazzas — middle-aged, elderly, old; rocking, doing fancy work, gossiping, — they were used to it. That gray endless ocean had other women in it, millions of them; some bobbing idly like loose corks, some surrounded by little trays of playthings like the patrons of some German bad; some slowly drowning — . She gave a little shiver.

  ‘You must have interests, of course, my dear, and you’ll find them — you’ll find them.’

  He thought of it after he went to bed, thought of it at intervals during the next day, and determined to ‘give her a change.’ His business was arranged to go on in the hands of Mr Edgers, and they went off for a long foreign tour, together.

  That was a very pleasant experience. It did them both good, and it helped Mrs Haven to a more settled frame of mind, a sounder health.

  When they returned he plunged with renewed vigor and keen zest into his affairs, and she plunged into that gray ocean....

  Then she was asked to address the Women’s Central Club, to tell them about her travels, and with some enthusiasm she took up ‘club work.’ He was pleased to see her returning cheerfulness, to have her chatting gaily across their small bright table of more vital subjects than of old; and, as far as he thought of her problems at all, considered them settled.

  They were not settled. The more Mrs Haven used her mind the more mind she had to use. That trip abroad had given her new angles of vision. The people she had met on the steamer, in hotels and trains; the books she was now reading in connection with club papers; the lectures and discussions she heard; all these furnished a stimulus which resulted in growth, surprising growth.

  It surprised her, because, in her thought of the lives of women she had always stopped short as most people do, with the mother period. Never until she came to it had she actively realized that life went right on, after motherhood was accomplished.

  There was a paper read at one of the State Federation meetings she attended, on ‘Ex-Mothers,’ which she found arresting indeed. The speaker, a woman some considered dangerously ‘advanced,’ showed how in the maternal scheme of nature mothers frequently died in the act, as it were — just laid eggs and departed. That in our own early savage period the risks and labors of maternity, with the added toil required of women so shortened their lives that they hardly survived the maternal period. Of them it might be said: ‘I lived and bore; and though I died, so that I lived to bear, my daughter lived and bore.’ She showed in later civilization women survived the mother period, but sunk their remaining years in the endless work and care of large families without ‘modern improvements,’ and that it was only to-day, when wealth was larger, families smaller, and education more general, that a new functionary was appearing on the scene — the Ex-Mother.

  The paper went on to suggest, what certainly Mrs Haven had never thought of before, that this opened to women a new vista of life, clear human life, in which they were quite free to take up any human function, having fulfilled the feminine.

  In two years’ time Margaret Haven came to a vital decision. She valued her husband’s love, she would on no account neglect his comfort, but she began to feel sure that he had no right to limit her activities during the hours he was away from her by what she now saw to be mere prejudices.

  Discussion was rather difficult. She tried her patient best to persuade him to give his consent to her undertaking some business of her own, but he was immovable.

  ‘It’s perfect nonsense, Margie,’ he insisted. ‘Business! What do you want of a business? Don’t I earn money enough? Don’t I give you money enough? It’s absurd — utterly absurd!’

  She tried to convince him that it was not for the money, but for the sake of the work — a point of view he was utterly unable to grasp. He could not see why she should not be content to ‘improve her mind’ eternally.

  ‘Would you want to go to school all your life?’ she asked him. ‘What is the use of improving my mind if I never use it. I tell you, Gerald, I am an able-bodied woman of fifty-one — and I’m going to work.’

  Finally he dismissed the subject rather snappily.

  ‘You may do what you please, of course. I can’t prevent you — it is a little late to begin to interfere with you now, my dear. Do what you like — but don’t expect me to enjoy it. Fortunately I’m doing well enough and people know it
— they won’t think you are helping me, at any rate.’

  She sighed. It would have been ever so much pleasanter if Gerald had been with her in her new hopes — but she could not give them up; she could not settle down to spend twenty or thirty years in ‘getting used to it,’ even to please him.

  They lived in a Middle Western city in a famous wheat district; busy, prosperous, progressive, but undeveloped in many lines. Mr Haven was a dealer in flour, one of many; and so far as his wife knew anything of business, she knew this. Her main interest in the flour had always been lodged in bread — in the last step between the producer and consumer, and when they were ‘changing girls’ in her young, less experienced days, she had often heard Gerald complain that such first-class flour should go to make such fourth-class food.

  The flour of their city was its pride, but the only city that was proud of its bread — as far as she knew, was Vienna.

  Spurred by her husband’s criticisms, she had long ago perfected herself in the not too abstruse art of bread-making, and took great pride in her ‘homemade’ rolls, her white and graham and whole-wheat loaves.

  In Europe she had been struck with the excellence of the ‘baker’s bread’ — a commodity her mother had taught her to despise; and in discussion with foreign critics had learned to her incredulous mortification that her own country had a very low national standard in breadmaking.

  Slowly there had grown in her mind a determination to do something to lift that standard.

  ‘The lady is the loaf-giver, they are always telling us. We ought to give better loaves then. If the man can’t we must.’

  That is why Mrs Gerald Haven went into the baking business.

  She called it ‘New Home’ bread, and began very simply, paying her excellent cook an extra price for extra work, and selling through the woman’s exchange. The orders increased, and she hired an earnest young Norwegian woman to learn in her own kitchen, training her herself as she had the cook.

  This was quiet and made no trouble. Mr Haven felt no difference in the domestic regime except heavier fuel bills, which he refused to let her pay — so she put the money in the bank. Her clientele grew and grew, and the boy who came to the back gate with the handcart protested that he needed a horse.

  Good bread, like good wine, needs no push and the second year she started a little shop, adding her own especial gingerbread, the ‘hot water’ gingerbread, smooth, sweet, dark, and as porous as a sponge. Also her own sponge cake, real sponge cake that, soaring aloft on unaided eggs.

  This grew, too, to the busy manager’s delight and pride; grew quite naturally and safely, on the advertisement that follows the pleased customer.

  Almost any woman is glad to avoid the baking if she is sure of getting as good and as reliable products outside; and the New Home Bakery furnished better goods than most of its patrons were able to make.

  To Mrs Haven it was a growing joy. Her wide circle of friends approved of the product if they did not approve of the principle and after all, their patronage was worth more than their approval.

  She gave a paper at the club, on ‘Bread-making, Domestic and Foreign,’ which was warmly received. As one of the committee on schools, she addressed the cooking classes of eager young people.

  Her supply of ‘yesterday’s bread’ to the Working Girls’ Club House was a substantial help to that struggling institution, and the girls said the New Home ‘yesterday’s’ was better than anyone else’s to-morrow’s.

  Meanwhile there was a widening range of study to be kept up. It was perhaps the happiest part of Mrs Haven’s work to feel the wonderful sense of youth that came with it. Youth is a beginning; it is full of ‘first times,’ and enjoys them. To her great surprise she found that this new enterprise roused a vivid, eager joy she had not thought ever to feel again, the joy of beginning.

  A Social Service lecturer spoke in the town on labor conditions, and disclosed the revolting circumstances in which so much of the baker’s bread is made. She was stirred to the depths by this revelation and her ambition took new shape.

  With the profits of three years’ work and the base of a steadily widening patronage she opened a Model Bakery. She remembered a sign she had seen over a little London dairy: ‘The Inspection of the Public is Invited,’ and invited it here.

  As she must have a delivery wagon in any case she found it cheaper to supply her little shop from a distance than to pay heavy downtown rent for the working place; and placed her bakery farther out, a trim comfortable little building, coolly situated in its own garden, adding to the fresh odors of flower and tree its own tempting bouquet of fragrance. Clean comfortable women worked for reasonable hours, and rested under the trees in their leisure moments.

  One girl was detailed to take visitors through the place, and the exquisite shining cleanliness, the glass and marble and nickel fittings, the big gas ovens, only heated for the actual hours of baking, the white-capped, white-uniformed workers, all had their effect on the purchasers.

  One of the pleasantest results was an emulous improvement in other bakeries. That kind of competition is indeed ‘the life of trade.’ Everywhere in the town the standard of bread and of bread-making was raised by this woman’s honest work, and her happy pride rose with it.

  She did not fade and wither and ‘get used to it.’ She grew, grew wiser, abler, more efficient, more interested yearly. She was asked far and wide to give ‘Bread Talks’ to schools and clubs.

  Her husband — who most sincerely loved her — grew proud of her in spite of himself. After all if breadmaking was not a woman’s business, what was?

  In the end there came to him an unexpected misfortune. Mr Edgers suddenly departed with the entire available funds of their business, at a time when it meant ruin.

  ‘Gerald,’ said his wife. ‘Oh, my dear! Don’t look like that, dear! What if he has! Let the poor wretch go and forget it. You’re young enough yet to go ahead and do better than ever. And in the meantime I wish you’d help me out. My work is getting quite beyond my managing ability — I wish you’d take hold and straighten it out for me.’

  He consented to look at her papers — and was surprised; pleased in spite of himself. A large and growing trade, a demand from neighboring towns, a branch already started in one, and in the city, three — there was need for careful management.

  He gave her the help of his experience, his larger business grip; she joyfully shifted the ‘money end’ as she called it, on to his shoulders, and went on developing the ‘bread end.’

  In a few more years they formed a Baking Company of solid importance and assured success.

  Then one day, as they sat together in the evening, discussing some little difficulty in one of the shops, rejoicing in their growing prosperity, she suddenly came around the table and ran into his arms.

  ‘Oh, Gerry! Gerry!’ she cried. ‘I’m such a happy woman! We are partners now, for keeps!’

  IF I WERE A MAN

  THAT was what pretty little Mollie Mathewson always said when Gerald would not do what she wanted him to — which was seldom.

  That was what she said this bright morning, with a stamp of her little high-heeled slipper, just because he had made a fuss about that bill, the long one with the ‘account rendered,’ which she had forgotten to give him the first time and been afraid to the second — and now he had taken it from the postman himself.

  Mollie was ‘true to type.’ She was a beautiful instance of what is reverentially called ‘a true woman.’ Little, of course — no true woman may be big. Pretty, of course — no true woman could possibly be plain. Whimsical, capricious, charming, changeable, devoted to pretty clothes and always ‘wearing them well,’ as the esoteric phrase has it. (This does not refer to the clothes — they do not wear well in the least; but to some special grace of putting them on and carrying them about, granted to but few, it appears.)

  She was also a loving wife and a devoted mother; possessed of ‘the social gift’ and the love of ‘society’ that goe
s with it, and, with all these was fond and proud of her home and managed it as capably as — well, as most women do.

  If ever there was a true woman it was Mollie Mathewson, yet she was wishing heart and soul she was a man.

  And all of a sudden she was!

  She was Gerald, walking down the path so erect and squareshouldered, in a hurry for his morning train, as usual, and, it must be confessed, in something of a temper.

  Her own words were ringing in her ears — not only the ‘last word,’ but several that had gone before, and she was holding her lips tight shut, not to say something she would be sorry for. But instead of acquiescence in the position taken by that angry little figure on the veranda, what she felt was a sort of superior pride, a sympathy as with weakness, a feeling that ‘I must be gentle with her,’ in spite of the temper.

  A man! Really a man; with only enough subconscious memory of herself remaining to make her recognize the differences.

  At first there was a funny sense of size and weight and extra thickness, the feet and hands seemed strangely large, and her long, straight, free legs swung forward at a gait that made her feel as if on stilts.

  This presently passed, and in its place, growing all day, wherever she went, came a new and delightful feeling of being the right size.

  Everything fitted now. Her back snugly against the seat-back, her feet comfortably on the floor. Her feet?... His feet! She studied them carefully. Never before, since her early school days, had she felt such freedom and comfort as to feet — they were firm and solid on the ground when she walked; quick, springy, safe — as when, moved by an unrecognizable impulse, she had run after, caught, and swung aboard the car.

  Another impulse fished in a convenient pocket for change — instantly, automatically, bringing forth a nickel for the conductor and a penny for the newsboy.

  These pockets came as a revelation. Of course she had known they were there, had counted them, made fun of them, mended them, even envied them; but she never had dreamed of how it felt to have pockets.