Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  I sent the post-card, and was met at the train, by a motor. We went up and up — even I could see how lovely the country was — up into the clear air, close to those shaggy, steep dry mountains.

  We passed from ordinary streets with pretty homes through a region of pleasant groups of big and little houses which the driver said was the ‘boarding section,’ through a higher place where he said there were ‘lungers and such,’ on to ‘Dr Clair’s Place.’

  The Place was apparently just out of doors. I did not dream then of all the cunningly contrived walks and seats and shelters, the fruits and flowers just where they were wanted, the marvellous mixture of natural beauty and ingenious loving-kindness, which make this place the wonder it is. All I saw was a big beautiful wide house, flower-hung, clean and quiet, and this nice woman, who received me in her office, just like any doctor, and said:

  ‘I’m glad to see you, Mrs Welch. I have the card announcing your coming, and you can be of very great service to me, if you are willing. Please understand — I do not undertake to cure you; I do not criticize in the least your purpose to leave an unbearable world. That I think is the last human right — to cut short unbearable and useless pain. But if you are willing to let me study you awhile and experiment on you a little — it won’t hurt, I assure you—’

  Sitting limp and heavy, I looked at her, the old slow tears rolling down as usual. ‘You can do anything you want to,’ I said. ‘Even hurt — what’s a little more pain? — if it’s any use.’

  She made a thorough physical examination, blood-test and all. Then she let me tell her all I wanted to about myself, asking occasional questions, making notes, setting it all down on a sort of chart. ‘That’s enough to show me the way for a start,’ she said. ‘Tell me — do you dread anaesthetics?’

  ‘No,’ said I, ‘so that you give me enough.’

  ‘Enough to begin with,’ she said cheerfully. ‘May I show you your room?’

  It was the prettiest room I had ever seen, as fair and shining as the inside of a shell.

  ‘You are to have the bath treatment first,’ she said, ‘then a sleep — then food — I mean to keep you very busy for a while.’

  So I was put through an elaborate course of bathing, shampoo, and massage, and finally put to bed, in that quiet fragrant rosy room, so physically comfortable that even my corroding grief and shame were forgotten, and I slept.

  It was late next day when I woke. Someone had been watching all the time, and at any sign of waking a gentle anaesthetic was given, quite unknown to me. My special attendant, a sweet-faced young giantess from Sweden, brought me a tray of breakfast and flowers, and asked if I liked music.

  ‘It is here by your bed,’ she said. ‘Here is the card — you ask for what you like, and just regulate the sound as you please.’

  There was a light movable telephone, with a little megaphone attached to the receiver, and a long list of records. I had only to order what I chose, and listen to it as close or as far off as I desired. Between certain hours there was a sort of ‘table d’hote’ to which we could listen or not as we liked, and these other hours wherein we called for favorites. I found it very restful. There were books and magazines, if I chose, and a rose-draped balcony with a hammock where I could sit or lie, taking my music there if I preferred. I was bathed and oiled and rubbed and fed; I slept better than I had for years, and more than I knew at the time, for when the restless misery came up they promptly put me to sleep and kept me there.

  Dr Clair came in twice a day, with notebook and pencil, asking me many careful questions; not as a physician to a patient, but as an inquiring scientific searcher for valuable truths. She told me about other cases, somewhat similar to my own, consulted me in a way, as to this or that bit of analysis she had made; and again and again as to certain points in my own case. Insensibly under her handling this grew more and more objective, more as if it were someone else who was suffering, and not myself.

  ‘I want you to keep a record, if you will,’ she said, ‘when the worst paroxysms come, the overwhelming waves of despair, or that slow tidal ebb of misery — here’s a little chart by your bed. When you feel the worst will you be so good as to try either of these three things, and note the result. The Music, as you have used it, noting the effect of the different airs. The Color — we have not introduced you to the color treatment yet — see here—’

  She put in my hand a little card of buttons, as it were, with wire attachments. I pressed one; the room was darkened, save for the tiny glow by which I saw the color list. Then, playing on the others, I could fill the room with any lovely hue I chose, and see them driving, mingling, changing as I played.

  ‘There,’ she said, ‘I would much like to have you make a study of these effects and note it for me. Then — don’t laugh! — I want you to try tastes, also. Have you never noticed the close connection between a pleasant flavor and a state of mind?’

  For this experiment I had a numbered set of little sweetmeats, each delicious and all beneficial, which I was to deliberately use when my misery was acute or wearing. Still further, she had a list of odors for similar use.

  This bedroom and balcony treatment lasted a month, and at the end of that time I was so much stronger physically that Dr Clair said, if I could stand it, she wanted to use certain physical tests on me. I almost hated to admit how much better I felt, but told her I would do anything she said. Then I was sent out with my attending maiden up the canyon to a certain halfway house. There I spent another month of physical enlargement. Part of it was slowly graduated mountain climbing; part was bathing and swimming in a long narrow pool. I grew gradually to feel the delight of mere ascent, so that every hilltop called me, and the joy of plain physical exhaustion and utter rest. To come down from a day on the mountain, to dip deep in that pure water and be rubbed by my ever careful masseuse; to eat heartily of the plain but delicious food, and sleep — out of doors now, on a pine needle bed — that was new life.

  My misery and pain and shame seemed to fade into a remote past, as a wholesome rampart of bodily health grew up between me and it.

  Then came the People.

  This was her Secret. She had People there who were better than Music and Color and Fragrance and Sweetness, — People who lived up there with work and interests of their own, some teachers, some writers, some makers of various things, but all Associates in her wonderful cures.

  It was the People who did it. First she made my body as strong as might be, and rebuilt my worn-out nerves with sleep — sleep — sleep. Then I had the right Contact, Soul to Soul.

  And now? Why now I am still under forty; I have a little cottage up here in these heavenly hills; I am a well woman; I earn my living by knitting and teaching it to others. And out of the waste and wreck of my life — which is of small consequence to me, I can myself serve to help new-comers. I am an Associate — even I! And I am Happy!

  A SURPLUS WOMAN

  HER father was killed in the war. He was a doctor, executed by a well-directed shell that destroyed a hospital; a most efficient shell — some of those wounded might have recovered.

  Her brother was killed in the war. He was a non-combatant on principle, a stretcher-bearer, picked off by a well-aimed bullet; a most efficient bullet — why encourage the work of salvage?

  Her lover was killed in the war. He was a soldier pure and simple, who expected to be killed and was not disappointed. He had not, however, expected to be burned alive, not having been educated in those methods of warfare.

  Moreover most of the young men she knew were killed in the war; and hundreds of thousands of young men she did not know. As there had already been a large majority of surplus women in her country, even before the wholesale destruction of a whole generation of masculine youth, the result was as plain as an example in simple arithmetic; there were now over a million women who could not marry — and she was one of them.

  Her younger sister, who was very pretty and as frisky as a healthy kitten, tossed her gay cu
rls and said she wouldn’t give up! She’d wait for some of these nice young boys who were growing so fast and not give them a chance to wait for the still younger girls also growing.

  ‘No single blessedness for me!’ said Miss Betty.

  Her older sister, who was a widow, but not permanently discouraged, also declined to give up, though she did not say so. She shook her head slowly under its flowing veil of crepe and said that loneliness was cruelly hard for a woman. And there were still many men who had been too old to go to the war — this was vaguely in her mind. ‘A woman’s place is the home,’ said Mrs Watson.

  We should not overlook one remaining male relative, Uncle Percy. The girls had always called him Uncle, because he was more than old enough to be one, but he was really only a cousin.

  As he possessed a most exalted sense of duty, both his own duty and those of other persons, he had come to visit them after Dr Page’s death, in order to lend some masculine dignity to the distressed family. This visit continued and repeated itself until Uncle Percy became quite a fixture. At first it had been of some assistance to Mrs Page, and quite possibly she accepted his presence as another of her ‘duties’; he certainly interpreted it as his.

  Betty did not mind him at all; rather coquetted with the old gentleman indeed, and he made quite a pet of her.

  Mrs Watson declared him invaluable — he used to divide his visits with her, before Mr Peters assumed headship of that household.

  But Susan found him wearing and irritating in the extreme because of his ceaseless emission of advice. Sometimes it was a heavy rain, sometimes a cloudburst, but always a depressing drizzle. She did not enjoy advice.

  Susan Page was not pretty, not frisky, not clinging, not ‘domestic.’ She had expected to knock about the world with her soldier-man, and while not herself of a belligerent disposition, she greatly admired the fine organization and high purpose of the army.

  As long as the war lasted she had worked hard enough to keep down her pain. There was nursing at the front, where she had learned much not merely in the exacting labors of her calling, but in the patience and strength of the sufferers all about her. The sum of that suffering was so great that her own part of it could not monopolize her.

  Being sent home to recover from a serious illness, her convalescent interest and returning strength were devoted to the constructive activities of the country; the careful organizations which were handling the civil problems of the time, — the sick and wounded, the refugees, the cripples, the blind, the deaf and dumb, the widows and orphans of soldiers. In all this flood of misery and loss she could not presume to overestimate her own.

  ‘It’s not just my sorrow,’ she told herself. ‘It is our sorrow. It is on us all. Why should I pick out mine to fuss over?’

  And she did not fuss; she worked.

  Having a natural taste for large organized activities, and the vivid experience of her hospital work, as well as the civil undertakings which followed, she had been a most useful helper through all that terrible time of stress and service.

  Now it was over. The war was ended; the nation breathed again. The helpless were cared for and the half-helpless placed where they could do something for themselves. The men not killed or wounded came back, and took the places saved for them, the places which in their absence had been filled by women. All the wheels began to turn again, slowly and creakingly at first, as the great country turned from its old task of warfare to the new task of reconstruction.

  Susan Page was dispossessed of the place she had held, as were so many others. She now became one of a larger army than that which had been slain; one of more than a million surplus women.

  Susan’s grandmother was Irish, a woman of wit and resource, with that streak of genius so frequent among her people. Her mother was Scotch, a stem sense of duty harnessing her unusual statesmanlike abilities to the routine of a mercilessly well-managed household. A strain of Welsh blood was in Susan’s veins also; the touch of mystic devotion, the dream of music and beauty. She was an excellent representative of Great Britain; and what she had she held.

  Now, twenty-eight, with all her personal life in ruins, the family fortune gone, her mother and grandmother still to be cared for, she faced the years before her.

  Betty was provided for; for Mrs Watson was now Mrs Peters, and had her home in London, where she said Betty would have more advantages. So Betty went to live with her, thankfully, and waited for her schoolboy.

  Susan had no illusions. As a girl she was not misled by baseless hopes, and now — with such grim facts behind her, she was not likely to delude herself.

  ‘Twenty-eight,’ said Susan. ‘Mother is fifty-two, strong and eager as ever. Grandmother is seventy-five, and both vigorous and cheerful. I probably have forty or fifty years to live, anyhow. What is the best thing to do?’

  In the matter of what was to be done, both by Susan and her countless fellow sufferers, Uncle Percy had much to say.

  ‘It is a lamentable misfortune to the country,’ quoth he, solemnly to Mrs Page, who listened with her self-contained patient unsmiling air; and to Susan, who was not so patient nor so easily able to control herself. ‘It is an unmitigated disaster — this vast mass of helpless women turned loose upon our hands. This is one of the most cruel consequences of war, an economic injury quite outside the pain of bereavement.’

  He looked at the widowed, son-less mother, the pre-widowed girl, with solemn sympathy, but neither of them seemed grateful.

  ‘Here are a million bread-winners gone, a million producers of wealth, and we are left with many more than that number of dependent females, consumers only; denied their natural place and power; merely adding to the expenses of the nation. You, my dear Margaret,’ he had a deep respect and some affection for Mrs Page, ‘are fortunately provided for, though but narrowly, and your daughters shall not suffer while I live.’ Uncle Percy was not rich; but he had enough money to keep him living in idleness as a gentleman should. He certainly was not a producer.

  He seemed to expect some response from Susan, so she said: ‘Thank you, Uncle Percy,’ and soon went to her own room, where she did much clear and careful thinking.

  Presently, with a dry smile, she determined to ‘call a meeting.’

  ‘That’s the way they begin,’ she told herself. ‘I’ll get Eleanore to do it.’

  The meeting was not a large one. There was Lady Eleanore, now the sole survivor of the Wardours of Wardour Hall. She was a neighbor, and a close friend since early girlhood. Gertrude Murray, the tall dark sturdy girl from Manchester, and Joan Whyte from Devon were friends she had made while nursing, and while working in London. Little Mrs Bates from the village was a plump rosy woman, bubbling over with energy, who had proved her executive force in the crowding activities of local relief work. Lady Eleanore had an immense respect for her, though Mr Bates had kept a shop — before the war took him; and his wife had kept it since, or tried to.

  The five women gathered in the big shadowy drawing-room of The Hall. All had been brought out by the war, out from their previous limitations, aspirations, and contentments. Everyone of them was larger and stronger, abler, more open to idea and to action, because of that cataclysmic experience. They had been democratized by it, not merely in theory, but in the practise of associate labor. Lady Eleanore, eager and devoted, had been in the hospital work for a while, till sent home with her invalided husband; she had learned to know Gertrude and Joan, one at the front, one in the equally necessary civic work; and to honor their courage and ability. As for Susan, she had worked with them all; she loved them all; she knew them all; and felt sure of her ground.

  They had their tea, chatting a little of what Mrs Carson could do, of Maud Westcote’s search for employment, and the needs of Molly Masters, and the Simpson girls, till Lady Eleanore said:

  ‘Now, Susan, this is all your doings. You will have to make us a speech to begin with.’

  Susan looked around her with her guarded earnest little smile, studying each s
trong kind face in its different grade of power.

  ‘My speech will be mostly questions,’ she said. ‘I want a real discussion, a definite long-distance planning as to what “we-all” are to do.’

  ‘“We-all”?’ Lady Eleanor looked at her inquiringly.

  ‘It’s an expression they have in The States,’ Susan said. ‘I read in a story. “We-all” and “you-all” — I think it very expressive. What I mean by “we-all” is all we women of England who are dispossessed, now, at one time — more than a million of us.’

  ‘It is a very grave question,’ agreed Lady Eleanore.

  ‘They can go back to the land — some of them,’ urged Joan Whyte. She had been one active in managing the farm-laboring women movement during the war, and believed in it.

  ‘Not by millions, Joan,’ protested Miss Murray. ‘The men have something to say, and the land on this island is a bit limited. But there are all the trades — some women have proved their abilities — it’s a matter of competition, I suppose.’

  Mrs Bates shook her head firmly. ‘That’s all very well for those who have the ability, but how about those who haven’t? Just plain working-women, widows and girls, by hundreds of thousands, who have no trade at all — and the men all back now taking up every place there is. Not that I blame ‘em,’ she added hastily. ‘We’ve no call to support ’em in idleness.’

  ‘There are many of us interested in this problem, Susan, as of course you know,’ Lady Eleanore gently suggested. ‘It is proposed that we secure a grant from the government to establish schools, technical schools, I mean, and to devise means of employment for as many as possible.’

  Susan smiled a little more warmly.’Yes, I know. But — do we need it?’

  They looked at her, waiting, and she began to speak, eagerly.