THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: Short Stories, Novels, Poems & Essays. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
They were hopelessly out of the running with us in all human lines; their business was housework, and ours was world work. There was very little real companionship.
“Now women are intelligent, experienced, well-trained citizens, fully our equals in any line of work they take up, and with us everywhere. It’s made the world over!”
“Made it ‘feminist’ through and through, I suppose!” I groaned.
“Not a bit! It used to be ‘masculist’x trough and through; now it’s just human,) And, see here — women are more attractive, as women, than they used to be.”
I stared at this, unbelieving.
“That’s true! You see, they are healthy; there’s a new standard of physical beauty — very Greek — you must have noticed already the big, vigorous, fresh-colored, free-stepping girls.”
I had, even in my brief hours of observation.
“They are far more perfect physically, better developed mentally, with a higher moral sense — yes, you needn’t look like that! We used to call them our ‘moral superiors,’ just because they had the one virtue we insisted on — and we never noticed the lack in other lines. Women today are truthful, brave, honest, generous, self — controlled; they are — jollier, more reasonable, more companionable.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” I rather grudgingly admitted. “I was afraid they would have lost all — charm.”
“Yes, we used to feel that way, I remember. Funny! We were convinced on the one hand that there was nothing to a woman but her eternal womanliness, and on the other we were desperately afraid her womanliness would disappear the moment she turned her mind to anything else. I assure you that men love women, in general and in particular, much more than they used to.”
I pondered. “But — what sort of home life do you have?”
“Think for a moment of what we used to have — even in a ‘happy home.’ The man had the whole responsibility of keeping it up — his business life and interests all foreign to her. She had the whole labor of running it — the direct manual labor in the great majority of cases — the management in any case. They were strangers in an industrial sense.
“When he came home he had to drop all his line of thought — and she hers, except that she generally unloaded on him the burden of inadequacy in housekeeping. Sometimes he unloaded, too. They could sympathize and condole, but neither could help the other.
“The whole thing cost like sin, too. It was a living nightmare to lots of men — and women! The only things they had in common were their children and ‘social interests.’
“Well — nowadays, in the first place every body is easy about money. ( I’ll go into that later.) No woman marries except for love — and good judgment, too; all women are more desirable — more men want to marry them — and that improves the men! You see, a man naturally cares more for women than for anything else in life — and they know it! It’s the handle they lift by. That’s what has eliminated tobacco.”
“Do you mean to say that these women have arbitrarily prevented smoking?” I do not smoke myself, but I was angry nevertheless.
“Not a bit of it, John — not a bit of it. Anybody can smoke who wants to.” “Then why don’t they?” “Because women do not like it.” “What has that to do with it? Can’t a man do what he wants to — even if they don’t like it?”
“Yes, he can; but it costs too much. Men like tobacco, but they like love better, old man.”
“Is it one of your legal requirements for marriage?”
“No, not legal; but women disapprove of tobacco-y lovers, husbands, fathers; they know that the excessive use of it is injurious, and won’t marry a heavy smoker. But the main point is that they simply don’t like the smell of the stuff, or of the man who uses it — most women, that is.”
“But what difference does it make? I dare say that most women did not like it before, but surely a man has a right ”
“To make himself a disgusting object to his wife,” Owen interrupted. “Yes, he has a
‘right’ to. We would have a right to bang on a tin pan, I suppose — or to burn rubber, but he wouldn’t be popular!”
“It’s tyranny!” I protested.
“Not at all,” he said, imperturbably. “We had no idea what a nuisance we used to be, that’s all; or how much women put up with that they did not like at all. I asked a woman once — when I was a bachelor — why she objected to tobacco, and she frankly replied that a man who did not smoke was much pleasanter to kiss I She was a very fascinating little widow — I confess it made me think.”
“It’s the same with liquor, I suppose? Let’s get it all told.”
“Yes, only more so. Alcoholism was a race evil of the worst sort. I cannot imagine how we put up with it so long.”
“Is this spotless world of yours one solid temperance union?”
“Practically. We use some light wines and a little spirits yet, but infrequently — in this country, at least, and Europe is vastly improved.
“But that was a much more serious thing than the other. It wasn’t a mere matter of not marrying! They used all kinds of means. But come on — we’ll be late to dinner; and dinner, at least, is still a joy, Brother John.”
Chapter 6
OUT of the mass of information offered by my new family and the pleasant friends we met, together with the books and publications profusely piling around me, I felt it necessary to make a species of digest for my own consideration. This I submitted to Nellie, Owen, and one or two others, adding suggestions and corrections; and thus established in my own mind a coherent view of what had happened.
In the first place, as Owen repeatedly assured me, nothing was done — finished — brought to static perfection.
“Thirty years isn’t much, you see,” he said cheerfully. “I dare say if you’d been here all along you wouldn’t think it was such a great advance. We have removed some obvious and utterly unnecessary evils, and cleared the ground for new beginnings; but what we are going to do is the exciting thing!
“Now you think it is so wonderful that we have no poverty. We think it is still more wonderful that a world of even partially sane people could have borne poverty so long.”
We naturally discussed this point a good deal, and they brought up a little party of the new economists to enlighten me — Dr. Harkness, sociologist; Mr. Alfred Brown, Department of Production; Mrs. Allerton of the Local Transportation Bureau; and a young fellow named Pike, who had written a little book on “Distinctive Changes of Three Decades,” which I found very useful.
“It was such a simple matter, after all, you see,” the sociologist explained to me, in an amiable class-room manner.
“Suppose now you were considering the poverty of one family, an isolated family, sir. Now, if this family was poor, it would be due to the limitations of the individual or of the environment. Limitations of the individual would cover inefficiency, false theory of industry, ill-judged division of labor, poor system of production, or misuse of product. Limitation of environment would, of course, apply to climate, soil, natural products, etc. No amount of health, intelligence or virtue could make Iceland rich — if it was completely isolated; nor England, for that matter, owing to the inexorable limitations of that environment.
“Here in this country we have no complaint to make of our natural resources. The soil is capable of sustaining an enormous population. So we have merely to consider the limitations of individuals, transferring our problem from the