This tremendous surge of free energy at twenty-one had no result in misbehavior. It found expression mainly in locking my door, actually and metaphorically. Once I sat up all night, just to see how it felt after having been sent to bed so inexorably from infancy; no revelry, just reading and working. Once I slept on the floor; once with a friend, on her roof — an unforgettable experience to me, to look up at the stars — to wake in the night with a soft breath of pure air on one’s face and look straight up into that deep, glittering sky — if ever I build a house of my own (which becomes increasingly doubtful), it shall have a habitable roof.
One new indulgence was to go out evenings alone. This I worked out carefully in my mind, as not only a right but a duty. Why should a woman be deprived of her only free time, the time allotted to recreation? Why must she be dependent on some man, and thus forced to please him if she wished to go anywhere at night?
A stalwart man once sharply contested my claim to this freedom to go alone. “Any true man,” he said with fervor, “is always ready to go with a woman at night. He is her natural protector.” “Against what?” I inquired. As a matter of fact, the thing a woman is most afraid to meet on a dark street is her natural protector. Singular.
Personally I have never known fear, except in dreams, that paralyzing terror born of indigestion. But if the streets were not safe for women they should be made so. In the meantime, if there is real danger, let them carry a pistol. So far, in forty-five years of free movement at night, from San Francisco to London, I have never met danger, and almost never the slightest impertinence.
As mother could no longer forbid my going, she tried to prevent me by saying that it made her feel badly. This I considered carefully. What I had decided was right she thought wrong. I was not afraid but she was. There did not seem to be any real danger, her fear was not based on present facts but on the way she had been brought up, for which I was not in the least responsible. Mothers and other relatives would always feel badly about it until it became habitual, a custom. Customs have to be made. I was sorry that mother should worry, but the reason lay in earlier standards, not in my conduct. So out I went.
Ever since the beginning of the character-building, I had established the inflexible habit of doing what I had decided to be right, unmoved by any further consideration. This inflexibility of youthful judgment becomes more malleable with passing years. One is not so certain of ethical values. With all my stern devotion to duty as I saw it, I was still painfully sensitive to the opinion of others. An old friend of mother’s came to visit us, and was shocked at my independence. She strove to rebuke and improve my conduct, and I cried like a child being scolded — but did not change.
So far there was a good record of health, strength, cheerfulness and patience, and constant industry. Within, the splendid sense of power, the high though indefinite purpose, the absolute consecration to coming service. Regarding consequences I had no illusions. No one who sets out to make the world better should expect people to enjoy it, all history shows what happens to would-be improvers.
In ancient times such persons were promptly killed, I noticed; later they were persecuted, ostracized. What I had to expect was mostly misunderstanding, and the ceaseless opposition of that old enemy, General Apathy. Emerson’s remark, “Misunderstood! It is a right fool’s word!” pleased me much. So I looked ahead to a steady lifetime of social study and service, with no reward whatever, on the theory that one should face life giving all and asking nothing.
One day in the gymnasium during a rest period, the girls were discussing what age they would rather be, for life. Most of them agreed on eighteen, which many of them were at the time. When they asked me I said fifty. They didn’t believe it. “Why?” they demanded. “Because,” I explained, “when I’m fifty, people will respect my opinions if they are ever going to, and I shall not be too old to work.”
This I remembered when starting the Forerunner at fifty.
My philosophy was efficacious to a degree. One very hot night in the boarding-house at Ogunquit, sleeping was difficult. The mattress was stuffed with corn-leaves, but some of the cobs or stalks seemed to be included, and stuck out determinedly. There were mosquitoes many and persistent, and I was freshly sunburned — the real burn that smarts.
These conditions I calmly considered one by one. “Heat? Cannot be helped, window and door both open. Mosquitoes? Can’t avoid them, nothing to shut them out, nothing to use as a deterrent. Sunburn? Nothing to put on that either, at present. The bed? It’s pretty bad, but there’s no choice except the floor, and that would be worse.” So, having dismissed each difficulty as irremediable at the time, I went to sleep.
A far better test of my boasted powers of ratiocination came one night, in my lonely room on the top floor. Mrs. Springer was away. Aunt Caroline had become a boarder and the second floor was vacant. I was wakened suddenly, with that sharp sense of something wrong which is so unmistakable. I made sure I was awake, and listened carefully — yes, there was something moving under the bed. It was winter. I had no desire to get up, unnecessarily, in that utterly cold room.
Here, thought I, is a good chance to use my mind, to find out what is under my bed by ratiocination. It is not wind, there is no wind. It stirs, pushes about stealthily, therefore it is alive. Being alive it is either human or some other animal. If human it is either man, woman or child. Women and children do not conceal themselves under beds in strange houses, nor do men without reason, such as robbery, murder or worse. There is nothing in this house to tempt robbers, no reason for murder — and besides, I listened carefully, if it were a man he would either keep still or come out. That quite satisfied me, it was inconceivable that any man should lie there nosing about those bundles and do nothing else.
So I dismissed human beings and began on the others. If an animal it is either wild or tame. There are no wild animals in Providence, and no circuses in winter. Of tame animals the only ones capable of climbing to the third story to fuss around under my bed are dogs, cats, or rats. If it was a dog I should hear him scratch, snuffle, thump, breathe — no, it’s not a dog. It’s either a cat or a rat, and I don’t care which. So I went to sleep again calmly, as sure as if I had seen the beast, and sure enough in the morning I found a stray cat in the vacant rooms below.
The only physical pain I knew in my youth was once an infected finger, and dentistry. When that hurt, hurt horribly, I would think all round it, say to myself: “Well, it hurts; that is a pain in my tooth, what of it?” and sit quite still, fanning the dentist while he drove the buzzer in.
In physical pain I am a partial anesthetic, things do not hurt me as much as other people. Up to recent years I could truly say that I had never had a headache, backache, earache or toothache — except in the dentist chair. That hurt. But this physical insensitiveness was counterbalanced by a pitiful susceptibility to mental pain, and of that I had plenty.
Young people are commonly unhappy at being “misunderstood,” and alone, but this usual condition was added to in my case by the wide range of my studies, hopes and purposes, and the complete lack of understanding or sympathy in those about me. No one that I knew had any interest in “the human race,” their interests were all for individuals, and as for plans for improving social conditions — such ideas seemed utterly absurd.
Long since I have learned to come down from my high horse and take solid comfort with good folks who ride different steeds, and do it better than I, but in those days my horse was so tremendously high, and I had struggled so hard to mount him, that I could not easily get down. These verses, intensely felt, give an accurate picture of “home comfort” in those years:
IN DUTY BOUND
In duty bound, a life hemmed in,
Whichever way the spirit turns to look;
No chance of breaking out, except by sin;
Not even room to shirk —
Simply to live, and work.
An obligation preimposed, unsought,
Yet binding with th
e force of natural law;
The pressure of antagonistic thought;
Aching within, each hour,
A sense of wasting power.
A house with roof so darkly low
The heavy rafters shut the sunlight out;
One cannot stand erect without a blow;
Until the soul inside
Cries for a grave — more wide.
A consciousness that if this thing endure,
The common joys of life will dull the pain;
The high ideals of the grand and pure
Die, as of course they must,
Of long disuse and rust.
That is the worst. It takes supernal strength
To hold the attitude that brings the pain;
And there are few indeed but stoop at length
To something less than best,
To find, in stooping, rest.
Nevertheless, good health, great hopes, and constant industry kept me content. For happiness I had my close friend Martha; that was perfect. I was used to bearing things, so tremendously upheld inside by the sense of power, of purpose, of big work before me, and by the triple-plated defense of my strong philosophy, that I used honestly to say I could not imagine the combination of circumstances that would make me unhappy.
CHAPTER VII. LOVE AND MARRIAGE
LOOKING back on my uncuddled childhood it seems to me a sad mistake of my heroic mother to withhold from me the petting I so craved, the sufficing comfort of maternal caresses. Denied that natural expression, my first memory of loving any one — not to mention the Polite Boy — was the pale and pious child in Hartford; the next was Hattie White, the next, and immeasurably the dearest, was Martha. Martha stayed. We were closely together, increasingly happy together, for four of those long years of girlhood. She was nearer and dearer than any one up to that time. This was love, but not sex.
That experience was in the Frog Prince affair, intense though remote, and never coming to anything at all. But while it lasted there was an unforgettable thrill in the mere sight of the “beloved object.” Sex but not love.
With Martha I knew perfect happiness. We used to say to each other that we should never have to reproach ourselves with not realizing this joy while we had it; we did, thoroughly. We were not only extremely fond of each other, but we had fun together, deliciously. One summer while she was away we agreed to write letters describing not only things that happened, but things which didn’t — and see if we could discriminate. Those were amazing letters. We wrote nonsense verses together in alternate lines, long ballads of adventure. I have one yet, written on a roll of three-inch ribbon paper.
Our best-loved sport was The One Word Game. This is not only such a delicious amusement, but such an unfailing rest and restorative for a weary and worried mind, that it is worth describing. The whole procedure is for each in turn to contribute one word (only one, save for proper names which may be given in full), to an unfolding story which no one composes, but which is most astonishingly produced by the successive additions. Any word which follows in grammatical sequence will do, no matter how sharply it disagrees with what the previous speaker had in mind.
The game was taught me with no rules whatever, but I have made these three, from experience. First, you must not try to make the story go your way, with, “Now you must say” this, or “Why didn’t you say” that; it must be allowed to unfold from the successive words, the whole charm is in the total unexpectedness. Second, it must be about persons. “Once there was a pig,” or the like, does not interest. Third, it should be a simple descriptive tale, like a child’s fairy story, about persons and what they wore, said and did. As a sample —
“Mr. Aminadab Hugus — entered — his — uncle’s — church — for — fish.” (A player may put a period to the sentence if he chooses and if his word ends it.) “Unfortunately — Mrs. Hugus — did — Now here the person who said ‘did’ had in mind ‘did not like fish,’ “ but the next player says “washing.” (period)
For hilarious young persons this is simply a means of amusement, but for a lifetime I have found it an unfailing source of relaxation, a complete and refreshing change of mind. It touches combinations impossible to any single thought-process, it is like massage to the brain, it is a “sure fire laugh” that does not cost three dollars a seat. Never could any individual mind conceive of the exquisite absurdities which occur from the interplay. Two intimate minds are best, but any number who can similarly relax will do.
Four years of satisfying happiness with Martha, then she married and moved away. In our perfect concord there was no Freudian taint, but peace of mind, understanding, comfort, deep affection — and I had no one else.
My Mother and her half-sister, with whom I lived, were unutterably remote — alien — and out of hearing. So were the other people I knew. “Why she’s still your friend, isn’t she?” they said. Of course she was — but she was gone. It was the keenest, the hardest, the most lasting pain I had yet known. There was no appreciation or sympathy anywhere.
I strove with it. “I wrote it out” — always a relief. I wrote “Grief is an emotion, it may be used as a spur to action — like anger, or love.”
Also this, one of those I used to keep stuck in the edge of my looking-glass to see every day and gather strength from:
FOR LONELINESS AND GRIEF
If I live, (as live I do,) for others — if all my high desires for self-improvement are solely with a view to the elevation of the race — if my mission is to lead a self-sacrificing life and “give to him that asketh” as I go — to teach and guide, to love, protect and care for — then it behooves me to crush all personal sorrow and drop the whole ground of self-interest forever. Neither is this Quixotic or impossible. If I keep every physical law as far as I know, feed the mental life as I learn to more and more, and love every one as far as I can reach — why, it stands to reason that such a one will be cared for and made happy by mere reaction. It is and must be so. I thoroughly believe it. Strength will come, courage will come, yes, and peace and joy will follow, inevitably. Though my heart swell mountain-high it is only so much the higher thing to stand on. Strength! and Courage!
So I pushed on, working every minute of the day except for meals, and three hours in the evening mostly, and carrying this, to me so grievous pain, as best I could, finishing that year’s diary thus:
A year of steady work. A quiet year and a hard one. A year of surprising growth. A year internally dedicated to discoveries and improvements. A year in which I knew the sweetness of a perfect friendship and have lost it forever. A year of marked advance in many ways, and with nothing conspicuous to regret. I am stronger, wiser and better than last year, and am fairly satisfied with the year’s work. I have learned much of self-control and consideration for others; often think before I speak and can keep still on occasions. My memory begins to show the training it has had, I can get back what I want when I want it, pretty generally. Most of all I have learned what pain is, have learned the need of human sympathy by the unfilled want of it, and have gained the power to give it, which is worth while. This year I attained my majority — may I never lose it.
As to men: That unattainable Prince had lasted me for two years or so. Then I was very fond of the cousin who was so devotedly polite to me at first, and so rude afterward, so suddenly and unaccountably rude that I always felt he had been reasoned with by his family and sought to choke off my young affection by this sharp method. As I had not been in the least “in love” with him as with my tall actor, but was generally fond of him, this was something of a blow, though nothing compared to losing Martha later.
Meanwhile there were various youths in Providence who came and went harmlessly, only one being conspicuously attentive — and he was far from bright! Those I met in Cambridge were vastly more attractive, yet left small impression, and in my “home town” I am puzzled by the diary’s frequent mention of young men. “Most devoted,” “Walks home with me,” and so on — and by my utter fo
rgetfulness of any of them.
Then, in January, 1882, I met Charles Walter Stetson, the painter.
He was quite the greatest man, near my own age, that I had ever known. He stood alone, true to his art, in that prosaic mercantile town, handicapped with poverty, indifference and misunderstanding. His genius was marked; although largely self-taught, his work was already so remarkable for its jeweled color that a dishonest dealer tried to suborn him to paint Diazes for him — in vain.
In a very minor way I had been painting, drawing and teaching the same for years, and was able in some small degree to appreciate his splendid work, and wholly to sympathize with his gallant determination. In courage, in aspiration, in ideals, in bitter loneliness, we were enough alike to be drawn together.
Very promptly he asked me to marry him. Very promptly I declined. Then, reviewing the occurrence with that cold philosophy of mine, I asked myself, “Is it right so lightly to refuse what after all may be the right thing to do?” This is a vivid commentary on my strenuous youth. Between deprivation and denial from outside, and intensive self-denial from within, there was no natural response of inclination or desire, no question of, “Do I love him?” only, “Is it right?”
So I took up the matter again, said that I had no present wish to marry him, but that it was possible that I might in time, and that if he so desired he might come to see me for a year and we would find out — which he was very willing to do.
Followed a time of what earlier novelists used to call “conflicting emotions.” There was the pleasure of association with a noble soul, with one who read and studied and cared for real things, of sharing high thought and purpose, of sympathy in many common deprivations and endurances. There was the natural force of sex-attraction between two lonely young people, the influence of propinquity.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 253
