Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Then, on my part, periods of bitter revulsion, of desperate efforts to regain the dispassionate poise, the balanced judgment I was used to. My mind was not fully clear as to whether I should or should not marry. On the one hand I knew it was normal and right in general, and held that a woman should be able to have marriage and motherhood, and do her work in the world also. On the other, I felt strongly that for me it was not right, that the nature of the life before me forbade it, that I ought to forego the more intimate personal happiness for complete devotion to my work.

  Having lived so long on clear convictions, on definite well-reasoned decisions, there was something ignominious in feeling myself slip and waver in uncertainty. Once I demanded a year’s complete separation, to recover clear judgment, but could not secure it. It was a terrible two years for me, and must have been wearing for him, but he held on. Then, at one time when he had met a keen personal disappointment, I agreed to marry him. After that, in spite of reactions and misgivings, I kept my word, but the period of courtship was by no means a happy one.

  There are poems of this time which show deep affection, and high hopes, also doubt and uncertainty.

  On the opening of the year of my wedding appears this cheerful inscription:

  1883 — 1884. Midnight — Morning. With no pride, with little hope, with uncertain occasional happiness, with no glad energy and living power, with no faith or nearly none, but still, thank God! with firm belief in what is right and wrong, I begin the new year. Let me recognize fully that I do not look forward to happiness, that I have no decided hope of success. So long must I live. One does not die young who so desires it. Perhaps it was not meant for me to work as I intended. Perhaps I am not to be of use to others. I am weak. I anticipate a future of failure and suffering. Children sick and unhappy. Husband miserable because of my distress, and I —

  I think sometimes that it may be the other way, bright and happy — but this comes oftenest, holds longest. But this life is marked for me. I will not withdraw, and let me at least learn to be uncomplaining and unselfish. Let me do my work and not fling my pain on others. Let me keep at least this ambition, to be good and a pleasure to some one, to some others, no matter what I feel myself.

  More of this, and then:

  And let me not forget to be grateful for what I have, some strength, some purpose, some design, some progress, some esteem, respect and affection. And some Love. Which I can neither see, feel nor believe in when the darkness comes. I mean this year to try hard for somewhat of my former force and courage. As I remember it was got by practice.

  This was evidently a very black hour. Succeeding days show more cheer and vigor, as March 24th, “Then gym. enjoying it intensely and doing more than usual. Carried a girl on one arm and hip — easily!”

  We were married in May, 1884....

  Mr. Stetson’s father, a Baptist minister, married us, in the house on the corner of Manning and Ives Streets, and then, with some last things to carry, we walked down to Wayland Avenue, where our three rooms awaited us. We had the whole second floor, big corner rooms every one, and the young artist had made it beautiful.

  “Do it just as you choose,” I told him. “I have no tastes and no desires. I shall like whatever you do.”

  The house stood on a high bank, looking southward over the chimneys of a few small buildings below to the broad basin of the Seekonk, ringed at night with golden lights. White ducks drifted like magnolia petals along the still margins. Opposite us was a grove of tall pines — a pleasant place to walk and sit.

  The housework for two in this tiny place was nothing to me, then some time I definitely devoted to deliberately breaking the regular habits of doing things on set days and hours in which I had been trained, repudiating the rigid New England schedule. Orderly habits of working are good, and later I established my own, but the immutable submission of the dutiful housewives I know, bred rebellion in me.

  I determined to learn to cook. “I won’t have a cook-book in the house,” quoth I. “I’m going to learn how.” Knowing already the ordinary needful dishes, I began to alter the relative amount of ingredients, in small degree, and note the results, as of a little more sugar or less flour. Soon I learned the reaction of the different materials, and then was able to compose. The common method of merely following recipes is like studying music by learning a collection of tunes.

  One of the most pleasing compliments of later years was that of a New York club man who told me I could command a high salary as chef in his club. During the period of experimentation no harm was done, I had enough practical knowledge to keep things edible, they merely varied from time to time, as indeed “home-cooking” frequently does.

  Two instances were funny, however. Our first pair of chickens were in the oven. Walter went out to see how they were getting along. He sat down on the floor in front of the stove and laughed loud and long. I presently joined him in the position and the laughter. There lay the poor dears, their legs sticking out at casual angles, simply wreathed in stiff ringlets of slowly exuding stuffing, crisping as it oozed. I had made that stuffing too soft, the stitches wherewith it was sewed in too wide, the oven was too slow, and I had not tied their legs. But they tasted just as good.

  The other experiment we gave to the neighbor’s children; it was harmless but peculiar. Mother used to make a plain cake flavored with almond, of which I was fond. I made one, and in the course of my researches I put in more flour than was usual. The result was a meritorious cake, a solid cake of sterling character, a cake which would have gone well among lumbermen in winter, or lost in the woods with no other food. It lingered, that cake, growing no softer.

  Then said I, “I will make ‘trifle’ of this cake.” One might as well have undertaken to make a ballet dancer of a Swedish servant girl. “First it must be soaked in wine,” I mused. I had no wine, and was a total abstainer at that. “Wine is a fruit juice,” quoth I, and having no fruit at hand but apples and lemons, I made a thin apple-sauce, seasoned as usual with nutmeg, and vivified with a little lemon juice. In this I soaked the slices of cake, and up to that time the dish was good. I ate a piece and enjoyed it. Then came the soft custard, and never did I make a smoother one, flavoring it as I liked best, with cinnamon.

  This in a tall glass dish, the piled slices of softened and enriched cake, the perfect custard flowing over all. My husband gazed upon it with a happy smile, and put some of the almond-apple-lemon-nutmeg-cinnamon mixture into his mouth. As many expressions chased across his countenance as were the tastes encountered, and with amazing discernment he unraveled the combination and named them all. It was a noble confection, but too composite, and served as a wholly sufficient lesson in the art of flavoring.

  We were really very happy together. There was nothing to prevent it but that increasing depression of mine. My diary is full of thankfulness for happiness and prayers for deserving it, full of Walter’s constant kindness and helpfulness in the work when I was not well — the not-wellness coming oftener and oftener.

  The record dwells on delectable meals in full enumeration, as if I was a school-boy. As a note on current prices this: “Dinner vilely expensive, chops, six little chops, .50 cts.!” “Walter home about five. Brings me flowers. Dear boy!” “Walter gets most of the breakfast.” “Amuse ourselves in the evenings with funny drawings.” These were works of art of an unusual nature, a head and body to the waist being drawn by one of us and the paper folded back at the waistline leaving the sides indicated; and then the other finished the legs, not knowing in the least what the other part was like. The results are surprising.

  I think Walter was happy. A most successful exhibition in Boston had established him more favorably and enabled him to meet domestic expenses; and an order for a set of large etchings was added.

  A lover more tender, a husband more devoted, woman could not ask. He helped in the housework more and more as my strength began to fail, for something was going wrong from the first. The steady cheerfulness, the strong, tire
less spirit sank away. A sort of gray fog drifted across my mind, a cloud that grew and darkened.

  “Feel sick and remain so all day.” “Walter stays home and does everything for me.” “Walter gets breakfast.” October 10th: “I have coffee in bed mornings while Walter briskly makes fires and gets breakfast.” “O dear! That I should come to this!” By October 13th the diary stops altogether, until January 1, 1885. “My journal has been long neglected by reason of ill-health. This day has not been a successful one as I was sicker than for some weeks. Walter also was not very well, and stayed at home, principally on my account. He has worked for me and for us both, waited on me in every tenderest way, played to me, read to me, done all for me as he always does. God be thanked for my husband.”

  February 16th: “A well-nigh sleepless night. Hot, cold, hot, restless, nervous, hysterical. Walter is love and patience personified, gets up over and over, gets me warm wintergreen, bromide, hot foot-bath, more bromide — all to no purpose.”

  Then, with impressive inscription: “March 23rd, 1885. This day, at about five minutes to nine in the morning, was born my child, Katharine.”

  Brief ecstasy. Long pain.

  Then years of joy again.

  Motherhood means giving....

  We had attributed all my increasing weakness and depression to pregnancy, and looked forward to prompt recovery now. All was normal and ordinary enough, but I was already plunged into an extreme of nervous exhaustion which no one observed or understood in the least. Of all angelic babies that darling was the best, a heavenly baby. My nurse, Maria Pease of Boston, was a joy while she lasted, and remained a lifelong friend. But after her month was up and I was left alone with the child I broke so fast that we sent for my mother, who had been visiting Thomas in Utah, and that baby-worshiping grandmother came to take care of the darling, I being incapable of doing that — or anything else, a mental wreck.

  Presently we moved to a better house, on Humboldt Avenue near by, and a German servant girl of unparalleled virtues was installed. Here was a charming home; a loving and devoted husband; an exquisite baby, healthy, intelligent and good; a highly competent mother to run things; a wholly satisfactory servant — and I lay all day on the lounge and cried.

  CHAPTER VIII. THE BREAKDOWN

  IN those days a new disease had dawned on the medical horizon. It was called “nervous prostration.” No one knew much about it, and there were many who openly scoffed, saying it was only a new name for laziness. To be recognizably ill one must be confined to one’s bed, and preferably in pain.

  That a heretofore markedly vigorous young woman, with every comfort about her, should collapse in this lamentable manner was inexplicable. “You should use your will,” said earnest friends. I had used it, hard and long, perhaps too hard and too long; at any rate it wouldn’t work now.

  “Force some happiness into your life,” said one sympathizer. “Take an agreeable book to bed with you, occupy your mind with pleasant things.” She did not realize that I was unable to read, and that my mind was exclusively occupied with unpleasant things. This disorder involved a growing melancholia, and that, as those know who have tasted it, consists of every painful mental sensation, shame, fear, remorse, a blind oppressive confusion, utter weakness, a steady brain-ache that fills the conscious mind with crowding images of distress.

  The misery is doubtless as physical as a toothache, but a brain, of its own nature, gropes for reasons for its misery. Feeling the sensation fear, the mind suggests every possible calamity; the sensation shame — remorse — and one remembers every mistake and misdeeds of a lifetime, and grovels to the earth in abasement.

  “If you would get up and do something you would feel better,” said my mother. I rose drearily, and essayed to brush up the floor a little, with a dustpan and small whiskbroom, but soon dropped those implements exhausted, and wept again in helpless shame.

  I, the ceaselessly industrious, could do no work of any kind. I was so weak that the knife and fork sank from my hands — too tired to eat. I could not read nor write nor paint nor sew nor talk nor listen to talking, nor anything. I lay on that lounge and wept all day. The tears ran down into my ears on either side. I went to bed crying, woke in the night crying, sat on the edge of the bed in the morning and cried — from sheer continuous pain. Not physical, the doctors examined me and found nothing the matter.

  The only physical pain I ever knew, besides dentistry and one sore finger, was having the baby, and I would rather have had a baby every week than suffer as I suffered in my mind. A constant dragging weariness miles below zero. Absolute incapacity. Absolute misery. To the spirit it was as if one were an armless, legless, eyeless, voiceless cripple. Prominent among the tumbling suggestions of a suffering brain was the thought, “You did it yourself! You did it yourself! You had health and strength and hope and glorious work before you — and you threw it all away. You were called to serve humanity, and you cannot serve yourself. No good as a wife, no good as a mother, no good at anything. And you did it yourself!” ...

  The baby? I nursed her for five months. I would hold her close — that lovely child! — and instead of love and happiness, feel only pain. The tears ran down on my breast.... Nothing was more utterly bitter than this, that even motherhood brought no joy.

  The doctor said I must wean her, and go away, for a change. So she was duly weaned and throve finely on Mellins’ Food, drinking eagerly from the cup — no bottle needed. With mother there and the excellent maid I was free to go.

  Those always kind friends, the Channings, had gone to Pasadena to live, and invited me to spend the winter with them. Feeble and hopeless I set forth, armed with tonics and sedatives, to cross the continent. From the moment the wheels began to turn, the train to move, I felt better. A visit to my brother in Utah broke the journey.

  He had gone west as a boy of nineteen, working as a surveyor in Nevada, and later, finding Utah quite a heaven after Nevada, had settled in Ogden and married there. At one time he was City Engineer. His wife knew of my coming, but it was to be a surprise to my brother, and succeeded.

  He came to the door in his shirt-sleeves, as was the local custom, holding a lamp in his hand. There stood the sister he had not seen in eight years, calmly smiling.

  “Good evening,” said I with equanimity. This he repeated, nodding his head fatuously, “Good evening! Good evening! Good evening!” It was a complete success.

  As I still bore a grudge for the teasing which had embittered my childish years, I enjoyed this little joke, already feeling so much better that I could enjoy. There was another little joke, too. He took me to ride in that vast, shining, mile-high valley, and pointing to some sharply defined little hills which looked about five or ten miles away, asked me how far I thought they were. But I had read stories of that dry, deceiving air, and solemnly replied, “Three hundred miles.” They were forty, but that didn’t sound like much.

  Society in Ogden at that time was not exacting; the leading lady, I was told, was the wife of a railroad conductor. We went to a species of ball in a hotel. The bedrooms were all occupied by sleeping babies, as described in The Virginian. Among the dancers there was pointed out to me a man who had killed somebody — no one seemed to hold it against him; and another who had been scalped three times — the white patches were visible among the hair. I had thought scalping a more exhaustive process. At that rate a disingenuous savage could make three triumphant exhibits from one victim. As I did not dance we had a game of whist, and I was somewhat less than pleased to see each of the gentlemen playing bring a large cuspidor and set it by his side. They needed them.

  From Utah to San Francisco — on which trip I first met the San Francisco flea. Long since he has been largely overcome, but then was what the newspapers call “a force to be reckoned with” — not California newspapers, of course.

  My father was then at the head of the San Francisco Public Library. He met me on the Oakland side, and took me across to a room he had engaged for me for a day or t
wo. Here he solemnly called on me, as would any acquaintance, and went with me across the ferry again when I started south.

  “If you ever come to Providence again I hope you will come to see me,” said I politely, as we parted, to which he courteously replied, “Thank you. I will bear your invitation in mind.”

  So down the great inland plain of California, over the Mojave Desert, and to heaven.

  Pasadena was then but little changed from the sheep-ranch it used to be. The Channings had bought a beautiful place by the little reservoir at the corner of Walnut Street and Orange Avenue. Already their year-old trees were shooting up unbelievably, their flowers a glory.

  The Arroyo Seco was then wild and clean, its steep banks a tangle of loveliness. About opposite us a point ran out where stood a huge twin live oak, still to be seen, but not to be reached by strangers. There was no house by them then, callas bloomed by the hydrant, and sweet alyssum ran wild in the grass.

  Never before had my passion for beauty been satisfied. This place did not seem like earth, it was paradise. Kind and congenial friends, pleasant society, amusement, out-door sports, the blessed mountains, the long, unbroken sweep of the valley, with snow-peaks at the far eastern end — with such surroundings I recovered so fast, to outward appearance at least, that I was taken for a vigorous young girl. Hope came back, love came back, I was eager to get home to husband and child, life was bright again.

  The return trip was made a little sooner than I had intended because of a railroad war of unparalleled violence which drove prices down unbelievably. It seemed foolish not to take advantage of it, and I bought my ticket from Los Angeles to Chicago, standard, for $5.00. If I had waited for a few days more it could have been bought for $1. The eastern end was unchanged, twenty dollars from Chicago to Boston, but that cut-throat competition was all over the western roads, the sleepers had every berth filled, often two in each. So many traveled that it was said the roads made quite as much money as usual.