For some thirty-seven years, with voice and pen, I have endeavored to explain and advocate this change, and the gain made in that time is probably all that could be expected in so deep-rooted a custom as that of to-every-man-his-own-cook. It would seem to one not accustomed to measure the glacial slowness of social progress, as if a change which would increase the income of a family and decrease its expenses by half, while at the same time greatly improving our health, would attract the most ordinary intelligence. But reason has no power against feeling, and feeling older than history is no light matter.
In politics there seems no great improvement. Our democracy is still the world’s standard for commercialized government, for pitiful inefficiency. We cannot enforce our own laws. Private individuals have to hire bravos to defend their property, as if we were still in the Dark Ages. Armored cars defend the transfer of pay-rolls, not always successfully. Groups of “hilarious” law-breakers make a joke of recent legislation. Worthy citizens evade taxation, and complacent assessors aid them by underrating the value of property. The “melon” and the “plum tree” continue to be the desirable fruits of political success.
In the first years of the century there was a burst of protest and exposure in many magazines, “The Shame of the Cities” was shown up. But with astonishing thoroughness these “muck-rakers” were put down, they and their magazines with them, and the protest ceased.
Physically we seem to be improving. There is far more knowledge about health, more interest in hygiene and exercise, the death rate is being lowered, we are getting ahead of some diseases. In this line of progress there was no orthodoxy to be overcome.
Religion is in a very healthy commotion. The Romanists were perfectly right in foretelling that if we once began to divide we should keep on dividing. We have. That is the law of growth, the growth of living things. From the first step, the division of the fertilized cell, all the way onward, growth means division.
Also, the stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged “truth” which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought. We no longer — meaning educated people in general — believe as our forefathers did; and the uneducated, who probably know more than the educated of a few centuries ago, refuse to submit to dogmas and commands.
The religious need of the human mind remains alive, never more so, but it demands a teaching which can be understood. Slowly an apprehension of the intimate, usable power of God is growing among us, and a growing recognition of the only worth-while application of that power — in the improvement of the world.
As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our “revolted youth” is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is “good” or “bad.”
Perhaps the most salient change of the present period is the lowering of standards in sex relations, approaching some of the worst periods in ancient history. In my youth there was a fine, earnest movement toward an equal standard of chastity for men and women, an equalizing upward to the level of what women were then. But now the very word “chastity” seems to have become ridiculous. Even if complete promiscuity is avoided, there is a preliminary promiscuity of approach which leaves little to be desired.
The main influence accounting for this is the psycho-philosophy, the sexuopathic philosophy, which solemnly advocates as “natural” a degree of indulgence utterly without parallel in nature. A larger knowledge of biology, of zoölogy, is what is wanted to offset this foolishness. In the widespread attacks upon marriage it is clearly shown that the attackers do not know that monogamy is a “natural” form of sex relationship, practised widely among both birds and beasts, who are neither “Puritan” nor “Mid-Victorian.” These uneducated persons seem to think that all animals are either promiscuous or polygamous; and to add to their folly, forget that even such creatures have their definite season for mating.
These things I have seen happen. None of them give cause for as much anxiety, to an American, as the rapidly descending extinction of our nation, superseded by other nations who will soon completely outnumber us. This, with the majority rule of a democracy, means that our grandchildren will belong to a minority of dwindling Americans, ruled over by a majority of conglomerate races quite dissimilar.
But since it is no new thing in history to have a given nation fail, give way and disappear, while the progress of society continues in other hands, we should perhaps contentedly admit our failure and welcome our superseders. Perhaps they will do better than we.
Leaving New York with measureless relief, I came in 1922 to this old Connecticut settlement, Norwich Town. It is so beautiful as to have won the title, Rose of New England. This is my native state, and while the town is not my ancestral home it is my husband’s, and in the larger sense of similarity in people and in tastes and habits, it has more of the home feeling than such a nomad as I had ever hoped for.
After New York it is like heaven. It is true that two-thirds of the population are aliens, but they are not so overwhelmingly in evidence as in the great city. The people I meet, and mostly those I see in the neighborhood, are of native stock. One may speak to them, to workmen of any grade, and get a cheerful man-to-man answer.
Here people can be friends, can see one another as often as desired without making a social function of it; here I can take my knitting or sewing and “run in”; or I can stop on my way down-town or up, for a little chat. Being a Connecticutter by birth, and my husband’s family well known and loved here, I have been welcomed more than kindly.
Such nice people! Such well-educated, well-read, well-intentioned people! I had more accessible friends here in one year than in New York in twenty. Our Norwich Town is the early settlement; Norwich, now the city, is a later growth. The town lies to the north of it, a narrow strip between wooded hills and the Yantic River. The long streets are lined with trees, New England fashion, and the majestic old houses stand back under their great elms, a succession of noble pictures.
The most conspicuous religion of the place is ancestor worship — at least it looks like it. The town is labeled with the names of long-dead residents, not merely on gravestones, but on neat white signs hung on old houses, nailed on trees, set on the ground here and there. These were first put up in honor of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement, and have been piously maintained ever since. One somewhat irreverent friend suggested that I write a limerick on this local habit, with this result:
So proud of our grandsires are we,
Each old house wears a sign, as you see;
If a house we have not,
Then we label the lot,
And hang up the sign on a tree.
One of these signs commemorates “First child born in Norwich.” Another prouder and more explicit, records “First male child.” Our ancient mansion I found decorated with two, on either side the front door, one a list of ancestors, the other announcing, “Lydia Huntley Sigourney born here.” The general effect of all these white records is of a sort of mural graveyard.
In the real graveyard, the old one, are truly interesting memories. In one place there is a touching group of tricolors around a big marked stone commemorating a number of French soldiers who died here during the Revolution. One table monument bears pleasing recognition of the advance of science — So-and-So, at such a time, “died (very suddenly) of a disease known to the medical faculty as Angina Pectoris.”
Home-like and lovely as it is, no one with a sens
e of historical perspective can live in a New England town and not suffer to see its gradual extinction. Those noble houses, pillared porches, fanlights over rich doorways, wide sweeps of lawn under majestic elms, are no longer built. The old people who had sufficient wealth to live in those gracious mansions pass away, and the young people who have sufficient wealth prefer to spend it in other ways, in other places. Down go the gracious mansions and up spring the close-set “bungalows”; a different kind of people are taking over the place. But as yet there is dignity and beauty and peace, and I enjoy it with the delight of a returned exile.
Our own place is a lovely one. What is left to it is only an acre, but on two sides spreads wide a pleasant park, Lowthorpe Meadows, once the “mowin’ lot” of the family. So there is green distance, wide open space to rest the eye, secured to us. On our acre is a big-enough flower garden, and some nine thousand square feet of vegetable garden, which Mr. Gilman and I cultivate with our own hands.
Never before did I have a garden to care for. In Rehoboth I was too young for anything but a bit of flower-bed; in California too sick and overworked for such enjoyment. But here there is plenty of honest-to-goodness physical labor, in which I exult. A somewhat reluctant husband does most of the hardest, but I do a good bit, as for instance in digging a four-foot-deep trench to prepare for sweet peas. That was great fun, to stand breast-deep and pitch out shovels full of dirt as I’ve so often seen men do in the street. We raise about thirty kinds of vegetables — with varying success.
Admiring friends urged that we write a book about our experiences and Mr. Gilman suggested as a title Two Gumps in a Garden. This would be a most legitimate name, for neither of us “knew beans” when we began. The psychology of gardening is interesting and varied; on the one hand there is an almost maternal tenderness for the little seedlings that grow so rewardingly; and on the other one may find expression for ferocious rage and cruelty in uprooting weeds.
As to my work.... After seven years of the Forerunner I had no impulse to write for some time. I had said, fully and freely, the most important things I had to say. But there were occasional magazine articles, and, after coming here, another book, His Religion and Hers. This seemed to me rather a useful and timely work, treating of matters of both lasting and immediate importance — sex and religion. Unfortunately my views on the sex question do not appeal at all to the Freudian complex of to-day; nor are people satisfied with a presentation of religion as a help in our tremendous work of improving this world — what they want is hope of another world, with no work in it.
Magazine articles continue, now and then, mostly then.
But lecturing goes on, I am glad to say, better than ever. I do not mean more of it, but that it is stronger, clearer, more impressive, as it should be after thirty-seven years’ practice. Much of it is Forum work. This does not pay well in money, but is splendidly worth doing on account of its wide reach among the people, and particularly enjoyable in being largely discussion. These discussions are always interesting and sometimes funny.
Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning. In the discussion after a Forum lecture in Boston, an address on some aspect of the Woman Question, a man in the gallery, who evidently took exception to a dull rose fillet I wore in my hair, demanded to know how women could expect to equal men “so long as they took so much time fixing up their hair and putting ribbons in it”? There was some commotion, and cries of “Put him out!” but I grinned up at him cheerfully and replied, “I do not think it has been yet established whether it takes a woman longer to do her hair than it does a man to shave.” This was not an answer at all, but it seemed to please every one but the inquirer.
Something should be said as to the effect on a life-philosophy of some fifty years of thinking and teaching. There must be growth, there is likely to be some change.
The basis, the reliable religion founded on fact, has held firm through all the years and all the difficulties. The socio-economic philosophy is also still satisfying, with its comforting long-range convictions as to our accelerating improvement in spite of all our foolishness. We still hinder social evolution, but not so successfully as we used to. The cheerful sense of our immense immediate power to better our conditions is unshaken; that we do not fully use it is a pity, but it is there none the less; and we are doing more and more with each succeeding year.
Our wide-scattered, irregular efforts are much nearer to an orderly, synchronized advance than they were in 1887 for instance, when I planned a paper on “The Inutility of Sporadic Reform.” This too-impressive title was scornfully translated by Dr. S. W. Mitchell into “The Uselessness of Spotty Work.” Our work of social improvement is not nearly so spotty as it used to be.
The most marked change which has been wrought by a lifetime’s experience is in regard to the recognition of different stages of growth, different kinds of growth, in the different races of men. The general love of humanity remains, with the continuing desire to help it onward, but with wider sociological knowledge comes further understanding of the nature of that humanity, and the need of varying treatment according to race and nation.
The forward surge of social enthusiasm which marked the close of the eighteenth century, finding such fierce expression in the French Revolution, such strong realization in the American one, assumed humanity to be all one thing. “The Rights of Man” applied to every man; all men were said to be “born free and equal,” our high-souled Abolitionists held that the Negro differed from the white “only in the color of his skin.”
The Great War has shown us, lit by that world conflagration, the deep, wide, lasting vital difference between races. Race-consciousness is increasing rather than decreasing, it is rising and moving more portentously than ever. The stir among Africans, the uprising in India, the sudden emergence of Japan, the huge efforts toward a more conscious national power in China, China with her mighty intellect and with immeasurable resources, all this does not bear out the innocent claim of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” which visualizes a world of brothers.
The study of the world must now turn on an understanding of races and their relative degree of advancement, with far-reaching views as to a fair division of the earth among them, not based on “the pressure of the population.” An earnest German once told me that Germany must have more land on account of that pressure. I asked him if he meant that the surface of the earth should be apportioned according to the fecundity of races — and he thought of Russia and was still.
If that were any rule by which to judge, glorious France ultimately would be ousted by any tribe in Africa, for instance; and we Americans justly deprived of our country by fecund foreigners. The pressure of population has been too long a standing excuse for war. When pacificists gather together to seek the cause of war, does any one mention babies? It seems hard to recognize babies, unlimited babies, as a ceaseless cause of war, but any one who can count — both years and people — can see it. With all its lamentable accompaniment of license and misbehavior, an intelligent limitation of a population to the resources of a country is one of the most essential requirements for any hope of world peace.
This new century of ours, still gasping from its hideous baptism of blood, has immanent possibilities of swift improvement. If our so ostentatiously revolted youth would outgrow their infantile delight in “self-expression,” playing with their new freedom as a baby does with its fingers and toes, and see their real power, their real duty, things would move.
This is the woman’s century, the first chance for the mother of the world to rise to her full place, her transcendent power to remake humanity, to rebuild the suffering world — and the world waits while she powders her nose....
Much, very much of what I have worked for has been attained. Far more is waiting to be done. There is need of new teaching, of ethics that a child can understand, of religion which requires no swallowing of baseless dogmas, and which shall fill the sou
l with hope and purpose of human happiness here, for all of us, instead of morbid anxiety for a posthumous hypothesis of personal immortality.
I keep on teaching, preaching, lecturing, writing, as opportunity offers. If I live ten years more there is room for considerable good work yet. Here’s hoping!
CHAPTER XXI. THE LAST TEN
NEARLY ten years since writing this book — which ended in hoping. For nine of them I remained in the old house in Norwich.
As to books, I wrote a species of detective story, at least unique, called Unpunished. No takers. “I find your characters interesting,” said one “reader.” “That is not necessary in a detective story.” Evidently it is not, but I have often wished it was.
There are two copies of this afloat, buried in manuscript heaps of some agent or publisher. The trouble is that after a year or so I forget their names.
I wrote my Social Ethics over and over. That, I hope, will be printed with Human Work; social economics and social ethics — on those two I would rest my claim to social service.
Human Work was recently read by a New York publisher. He was surprised to find how few alterations were required, and said he would be glad to reprint it “if conditions....”
As to lecturing — that market has declined before the advance of the radio. I had hoped for some hearing in my native state, where I had spoken in quite recent years; but when I offered my services to that invaluable association, The League of Women Voters, undertaking to lecture for them anywhere in the state, for expenses only, the total result was one engagement in a neighboring town, audience of ten. Also I had not unreasonably expected to be heard in the Connecticut College for Women, only some twelve miles from Norwich. After so many years of work for the advancement of women, with a fairly world-wide reputation in that work, and with so much that was new and strong to say to the coming generation, it seemed to me a natural opportunity. It did not seem so to the college. Once, for the League of Women Voters, I spoke in their hall — never otherwise.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 275
