Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  I can remember the last visit we made there as a family, and I couldn’t have been over seven: the loud talking — the old man shaking a stick — Mother crying — it was dreadfully exciting. After that we never went any more, until I did. Every summer Mother used to look so unhappy when the time came around again.

  Finally Grandpa got so uneasy about us that he gave Mother our house, settled it on her somehow so that Father couldn’t sell it, and tied it up so tight he could not get it away from her. It was lucky for us that we had the good house and garden, but oh what a bone of contention it was. Father was always wanting to mortgage it to carry out some of his schemes, but he couldn’t without Mother’s signature, and she never would give it to him. All through my childhood I can remember discussions about that house, he always tormenting Mother about it.

  “Woman!” he would say in that slow rasping wooden voice of his — wood with nails in it, “a wife cannot hold anything separately from her husband — they two are one. The house belongs to me, in spite of the wearying laws of this unreliable country. When I can take you back to Scotland there will be far less difficulty in the household. Now perform your duty without more words and sign this at once!”

  “This” was a mortgage deed which he had prepared in spite of Mother’s protests, and which had been a sore topic of discussion for years.

  “I can’t do it, Angus!” Mother would cry. “You know I can’t! It would not be right. My Father gave me the house to keep — to keep for the children — so that we might be sure of a roof over our heads. He made me promise never to sell or mortgage it, never to let you persuade me into it — it was the condition of the gift. And I can’t do it — I can’t break my word to my father, Angus. Don’t try to make me — I’ll die first!”

  Mother would get awfully nervous and upset over these discussions, and by the time I was old enough to understand what they were arguing about she had grown so weak she couldn’t hold out ten minutes — used to break down and cry.

  But Father could hold out for hours. I used to sit by that hole in the floor and take it down in shorthand.

  “If you have the power to reason,” he would say, “which I sometimes doubt, I can make you see the absurdity and the immorality of your position. Listen now — do not sit crying like an ill-behaved child. In the first place a promise is not binding unless it is made with free will and in full understanding of the circumstances. Now you were coerced by a domineering and unreasonable parent — do not interrupt me! And as to understanding the circumstances, you do not understand them yet, after my logical exposition of all these years. It may be you never will, but I think even a woman can follow this.

  “Secondly, a promise has no moral weight against an obvious duty. You were already a wife when you made that promise, and the first duty of a wife is to her husband.

  “Thirdly, a promise under duress is null and void in law and reason.

  “Fourthly, since the duty of a wife is to her husband and your husband needs to raise money on this house, you have no right to resist him.

  “Fifthly, the duty of a mother is to her children; your children need many things they have not for lack of the money to be raised on this house and used by me in legitimate business.

  “Now, you with your baseless emotionalism and mulish obstinacy — pure brainless instinctive opposition based on no rational premises — are sinning against both husband and child — defrauding your family of its rightful prosperity! Can you deny that? Answer me now!”

  Mother wasn’t a bit logical. He would make her admit this and that and the other premise, and then prove his points one after the other, relentlessly, in that dry monotonous voice, and Mother would get all worn out. She’d go back on her admissions and deny his conclusions, and return to her original position after she was, logically, completely driven off it.

  So Father grew angrier and angrier. It was irritating, the way Mother wouldn’t argue; but then it was more irritating the way he could. And she’d cry and he’d say things that fairly scalded. It was awful.

  I don’t think Mother would have minded his treatment of her so much — she had a regular talent for suffering — if he had been fair to us children, or if he had been more — well, generally decent.

  I don’t mean that Father was an immoral man — no, indeed. He didn’t even drink in the melodramatic way and “come reeling, rolling home”; he sat quietly at home and drank, and got uglier and uglier in his temper. He didn’t beat Mother with a club, nor jump on her, but he would make her listen by the hour to those interminable arguments of his until I have heard her sob and shake for half the night afterward, while he snored.

  Peggy never seemed to hear, and I never said I did; what was the use? But I kept a record. Even if I couldn’t do anything I liked to know what was going on.

  Sometimes I heard Mother say, “Hush, Angus! Do hush! The children will hear you.”

  “And why should they not hear me?” he would demand. “What I say is reasonable and right and it would be well if they could hear it. They might understand better than you do, and small credit to them!”

  After a while I began to keep a kind of record of things Father did — in cipher. I learned about substitution codes from The Gold Bug, and in some other books, too. Peggy and I used to have one, and Jennie Gale and I had another; they are easy to make.

  I found out quite suddenly one day, after writing to Jennie all about one of Father’s meannesses to Peggy, that I felt better just for writing it. It seemed almost like doing something. Afterwards when I got maddest I’d go off alone and write it all down — in cipher — and it did me good.

  So I kept a blank book just for Father. It said on the cover: “3iist — xoe$.” I would never have told what was in it even under torture. That is, I made up my mind not to, but Mother never interfered with our play. She seemed to think we had a right to keep things to ourselves, and though Peggy wanted to know she didn’t use torture. Father never saw it. I began this book when I was just twelve, and in two years’ time I was astonished myself to see how it mounted up, and how many kinds of meannesses there were.

  I’ve mentioned how Mother loved flowers. She wanted them everywhere — in her hair, on her dress, all around in vases, and especially on the table. Her other passion was for hospitality. If she could have a table full at every meal, and a parlor full in the evening, she would flush and brighten and shine like a rose in her soft gray dress.

  She wasn’t an orthodox Friend, but always kept largely to their way of living, and she never seemed to tire of doing things to make people comfortable. She was proud of her cooking, too, and no wonder. It was a natural genius with her. To get up a delicious meal and serve it smoothly, with a tableful of flowers and guests — that would have satisfied Mother in heaven, I think. But Father! He would not have a flower on the table — and would prove to you at an hour’s length, if you didn’t give in sooner, that to have them there was unsuitable and unhygienic and inartistic and in every way deleterious. But he’d smoke his pipe at the table, I noticed, and it always made Mother sick.

  When I was little and we were better off and Father hadn’t taken this stand, I can remember Mother sometimes, sitting up there across the roses, and just basking in compliments about her cooking from the friends assembled. But we got poorer and poorer, and Father more and more disagreeable, so that we could never have any company, unless it was the minister. He called, of course, and Mother would ask him to stay to tea, and he sometimes did. Father seemed to have a lingering respect for the Dominie, as he called him, so that he wouldn’t be rude to him at the table.

  But even then Mother was always broken down next day, having been kept awake and crying most of the night to hear father talk about “the Priest and the Woman,” with volumes of ancient history of the most unpleasant description pouring slowly and tediously forth. I thought it was simply insulting to Mother, and it was.

  Now I had watched all this for nearly ten years, noticing more and more as I grew o
lder, of course. And, at the rate it went on, another year or two would see Mother either mercifully dead or unmercifully driven crazy. It was the ceaseless irritation, the criticism, and caustic comment, the being hindered in everything she wanted to do, and the uncertainty about money. That is worse than plain poverty. Of course, Father brought home something — paid for the coal and so on — but a lot of that was just on credit, and how Mother did hate a debt. He told her that if she wouldn’t let him mortgage the house, he would simply do the same thing by getting in debt, and it would be sold over our heads by the sheriff. But I guess his credit wasn’t good enough to really do that.

  So I focussed all my attention on this most important problem — how to get rid of Father. This was no light matter.

  I realized that. I should have Mother on my hands then, and Peggy, too, but I knew the difficulty with her wouldn’t last long. It was only a question of steering her into reliable matrimony.

  With all the ways I had of earning money I didn’t feel worried about Mother. Besides, I had plans for her. As to her missing Father, I couldn’t believe she would. Even if she did, I didn’t believe that missing him would be half as bad for her health as having him.

  Well, the first thing was to establish friendly relations with Father, as far as possible. There never had been any open break between us. I was wise enough for that, and he was no mind-reader. But now I wanted to get... en rapport, I think that’s what they call it.

  I studied him as if he were new. Not just his looks — there was nothing new there except some gray in the red of his thick hair — but his character. I must be sure of him, very sure.

  It is surprising how much interest there is in anybody once you really give your mind to them. If it had been only myself I should have become almost fond of him, because when you understand just why a person does a thing you don’t mind. Study means interest, and interest is pretty close to affection. I mean to remember that if ever I marry a man who turns out to be disagreeable. I mean to marry, of course, but not for ever so long. There are things to do first — lots of them.

  Father’s strong points were Science and Invention, that I knew, of course. Fortunately, I liked them too, and it was not difficult to do a little extra reading, to ask his opinion or advice, to consult him about things I found rather hard to understand. I never saw anybody who didn’t enjoy teaching their favorite topic to anybody who is interested in it. And I believe parents have a very particular fondness for seeing their own traits in their children. It seems flattering, somehow.

  Meanwhile I learned a lot about mechanical engineering and electricity and things of that sort. My long acquaintance with our nice librarian helped too. He would tell me of special articles in technical magazines, and I’d tell Father, and we got almost chummy. It was fun, in a way, like walking a tightrope or something like that, to see how far I could go, this way or that, and recover myself quickly if I went too far. He was so easily irritated, so tedious in explanation, and so offensively patronizing. But I did it. I succeeded in establishing an entente cordiale with Father.

  Peggy had been rather cold to him ever since that time about Ned. I didn’t blame her a bit. She devoted herself to Mother more, now. I didn’t neglect Mother — not at all. It was really a service to her to keep Father in a tolerable humor, and his mind off her, as it were.

  Then, following along naturally on Science and Invention, I took up Scotland. This was the main line of attack. I approached slowly and with great care. Scotch History is really very interesting, especially if you’ve been brought up on Scott’s novels and poems and have kept up with the later authors. Father had a bookcase full of them. It had always seemed foolish to me, with as little money as we had, and a whole public library for nothing, but Father’s love for books was hereditary, I guess.

  I began to knit a cardigan jacket for him (I should have called it a sweater, but that doesn’t matter), and used to get him to read to me out of those beloved books of his while I worked. As I’ve said before, reading aloud was Father’s strong point in domesticity. If he couldn’t talk he liked to read — interminably.

  Well, I plowed and harrowed and seeded the soil. I became a better authority on Scotland than he was himself, almost. I knew all those old kings and chieftains, way back to the Roman invasion, and the legends and ballads — thousands of them. One thing I found that pleased me — that most of those nice ballads and songs were written by women, but I never dwelt on that. Where there was a doubt, Father always denied it; and when it was an established fact, he ignored it.

  Our own line was the background of it all. I got him to make a genealogical tree, working out all he knew of our kith and kin, and it joined with a great many printed ones that covered the kings of ancient Europe, and went back to Noah’s Ark.

  Father and I had a very pleasant time; he almost complimented me once in a while. But his business worried him, and since Mother remained so feeble that even he hardly dared to harry her now, he got to confiding his troubles to me — or parts of them. That he was homesick for Scotland I knew; that fire I kept burning all the time. It was not only our talk and reading, but I got Peggy to play Scotch airs to us evenings. And when she said she hated everything Scotch and never wanted to hear any of their screeching music any more, I just had a good talk with her. I told her if she would play and sing Scotch things for me for another few weeks I wouldn’t ask her to again for... three years. I’d have said “ever,” but you never know for sure that you may not want a thing again. It is well to be economical, even with promises. So she used to sit down after supper (Mother always went to bed early now, the doctor said she must) and just drift along with old Scotch melodies, and sing now and then, and I’d lay my book down and ask Father things about Scotland until he’d get up and walk the floor, let his pipe go out, and even forget his tumbler of toddy while he talked of his native land. He got more homesick than ever.

  Then I gradually found out that one reason he wanted to get over there was that he was convinced there was coal on his land and that if he were only on the spot he could make sure. The work he did here might stop any day, he said gloomily. He used to get more confidential toward the end of the evening, when Peggy had gone to bed, too, and I sat knitting. It was then I gathered finally that he was more or less in debt — on his own account, I mean, not just the house.

  “You have a fairly good head, for a girl, Benigna,” he said to me. “Can ye not see that if only that poor mother of yours would let me raise a bit of money on this house of hers we could all win out clear?”

  “What is she afraid of?” I asked. “That we should lose the house?”

  “’Tis just woman’s foolishness!” He got up and walked about, swinging his long arms. “She cannot sell it, and I do not ask her to, but she could mortgage it — for a little. That I could pay off in a year or two at most, and no risk at all.”

  “I’ve heard you speak of a deed — is that what you mean?” I asked cautiously. “That doesn’t sound very terrible.”

  “It is not terrible, it is plain common sense. But your mother won’t see it. You cannot argue with a woman.” And he sat down disgustedly.

  “Perhaps when she’s a little better she’ll feel differently. Could you explain about that deed to me, Father? Maybe if I understood it I could persuade Mother a little.”

  He showed it to me without any difficulty — had it in his pocket. It was all made out solemn and legal as could be, everything ready but Mother’s name to be signed.

  “’Tis only a miserable thousand dollars that it calls for,” he said, as if a thousand dollars was no more than a pittance. “Then I could clear off these trifling matters that annoy me here, and have enough left to make the voyage — and what little it would take over there. There’s nothing in the way but your mother’s obstinacy!” And he’d march again, and talk about “these women.”

  “If you were there, Father, could you live on your estate?” I asked with a serious face.

  “Live on
it! We could all live on it!” he protested. “There’s a house and a garden and a sheep run — do I not draw an income from it, as you know?”

  He did, and I did know. I’d been figuring on it very carefully. If there were any way on earth of getting him over there I thought the place would keep him in decent comfort.

  Then I made a little arrangement through an old school friend of mine, Mary Howard, who had gone to England to live with her father’s people. We used to correspond in cipher. I was very fond of Mary. She was trustworthy, and thought a good deal of my judgment; I had helped her out of a scrape once or twice.

  I sent her a typewritten message in an addressed envelope, and asked her to send it to the Edinburgh Weekly News and Observer. That was the paper Alison took. She would have a paper of her own, wouldn’t be contented with a secondhand one, but was proud to let Father read it, and he said there was no reason why we should take two. There was a postal note to pay for the advertisement; I had that much in my Secret Hoard. Grandpa had given me a generous allowance to come home with, too, and I always had a little something.

  I told Mary to please change the note into stamps at a post office not near to her home, and put them into the envelope. “Please insert the enclosed advertisement for the issue of October 3rd. Stamps for payment enclosed.” That was the message. And keep it a Dead Secret, for my sake, I told her. I said she was welcome to read it, but perhaps she’d be safer if she knew nothing whatever about it.

  Mary was a cautious person. She walked a mile and a half to change that note, and never peeked into the envelope at all — just sealed and sent it, after tucking in the stamps. She wrote me all about it.