Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  “But about the Jews?” I urged at last.

  “Oh, yes. Well, dear, as I see it, people are moving on to a wide and full mutual understanding, with peace, of course, free trade and social intercourse and intermarriage, until everyone is what you call civilized. Against this process stood first total ignorance and separation. Then opposing interests. Then opposing ideas. To-day it is ideas that do the most damage. Look at poor Europe. Every interest calls them together but their different mental content holds them apart. Their egregiously false histories, their patriomanias, their long-nursed hatreds and vengeances — oh it is pathetic.”

  “Yes — and the Jews?”

  “Oh dear me, Van, they’re only one people. I get so interested in the world at large that I forget them. Well, what the Jews did was to make their patriomania into a religion.”

  I did not get that and said so.

  “It was poorly put,” she admitted. “They couldn’t be patriomaniacs without a fatherland, could they? But it was the same feeling at a lower stage, applied only to the race. They thought they were ‘the chosen people’ — of God.”

  “Didn’t other races think the same thing? Don’t they yet?” I urged.

  “Oh in a way, they do — some of them. Especially since the Jews made a Bible of it. You see, Van, the combination was peculiar. The special talent of this race is in literary expression. Other races had their sorrows but could not utter them. Carthage had no Jeremiah; nor has Armenia.”

  She saw that I was impressed by this point.

  “You have Greece in its sculpture, its architecture and its objective literature. Even Greek history is a story told by an artist, a description. Rome lives in its roads, I have read, as well as its arts and its power of social organization. Rome, if it could have survived its besetting sins, was a super-nation, the beginning of a real world people. Egypt, India, — they all have something, but none of them concentrated on literature as the Jews did, having no other social expression.”

  “Why Ellador, don’t you call their religion anything? Haven’t they lifted the world with great religious concepts?”

  She smiled at me, that gentle warm, steady smile of hers. “Forgive an outsider, please. I know that the Christian religion rests on the Jewish books, and that it is hard indeed to see around early teachings. But I have read your Bible carefully, and some little of the latest study and criticism upon it. I think the Christian races have helped the Jews to overestimate their religion.”

  “You’ve never said much about our various religions, my fair foreigner, What do you really think about them?”

  This she pondered carefully.

  “It’s a large subject to try to comment on in a few words, but I can say this — they are certainly improving.”

  I had to laugh. This was such faint praise for our highest institution.

  “How do you measure them, O casual observer?”

  “By their effect upon the people, of course. Naturally, each set of believers holds its own to be the All True, and as naturally that is impossible. But there is enough truth and enough good will in your religions if you would only use them, instead of just believing them.”

  “And do you not think, especially considering the time of its development, that the Jewish concept of one God, the Jewish ethical ideal, was a long step upward?”

  “It was a step, certainly, but, Van, they did not think their God was the only one. He was just Theirs. A private tribal God, openly described as being jealous of the others. And as to their ethics and the behavior of the people — you have only to read their own books to see how bad it was. Van, no religion can be truly good where the initial doctrines are false, or even partly false. That utterly derogatory concept of a God who could curse all humanity because of one man’s doing what he knew he would, a God so petty as to pick out one small people for no better reason than that they gave him some recognition, and to set his face against all the rest of his equally descended ‘children’ — can’t you see how unethical, how morally degrading, such a religion must be?”

  “It was surely better than others at the time,” I insisted.

  “That may be, but the others of that period have mercifully perished. They weren’t so literary. Don’t you see, by means of their tremendous art this people have immortalized their race egotism and their whole record of religious aspirations, mistakes and failures, in literature. That is what has given them their lasting place in the world. But the effect of this primitive religion, immortalized by art, and thrust upon the world so long, has been far from good. It has well-nigh killed Christianity, from its cradle. It has been the foundation of most of those hideous old wars and persecutions. With quotations from that Hebrew ‘voice of God’ the most awful deeds have been committed and sanctioned. I consider it in many ways a most evil religion.”

  “But we have, as you say, accepted it; so it does not account for the general dislike for which you were offering explanations.”

  “The last explanation was the psychic one,” she went on. “What impresses me here is this: The psychic attitude of this people presents to all the other inhabitants of the world a spirit of concentrated pride. It rests first on the tribal animus, with that old endogenous marriage custom; and then on this tremendous literary-religious structure. One might imagine generations of Egyptians making their chief education a study of the pyramids, sphinxes and so on, or generations of Greeks bringing up their children in the ceaseless contemplation of the Acropolis, or the works of their dramatists; but with the Jews, as a matter of fact, we do see, century after century of education in their ancient language, in their ancient books, and everlasting study and discussion of what remote dead men have written. This has given a peculiar intensity to the Jewish character — a sort of psychic inbreeding; they have a condensed spirit, more and more so as time passes, and it becomes increasingly inimical to the diffused spirit of modern races. Look at the pale recent imitation of such a spirit given in Germany. They have tried in a generation or two to build up and force upon their people an intense national spirit, with, of course, the indwelling egotism essential to such an undertaking. Now, suppose all German national glory rested on a few sacred books; their own early writings imposed upon the modern world; and suppose that German spirit, even now so offensive to other nations, had been concentrated and transmitted for thousands of years. Do you think people would like them?”

  I was silent a bit. Her suggestions were certainly novel, and in no way resembled what I had heard before, either for or against this “peculiar people.”

  “What’s the answer?” I said at last. “Is it hopeless?”

  “Certainly not. Aren’t they born babies, with dear little, clean, free minds? Just as soon as people recognize the evil of filling up new minds with old foolishness, they can make over any race on earth.”

  “That won’t change ‘race characteristics,’ will it?”

  “No, not the physical ones,” she answered. “Intermarriage will do that.”

  “It looks to me as though your answer to the Jewish question was — leave off being Jews. Is that it?”

  “In a measure it is,” she said slowly. “They are world-people and can enrich the world with their splendid traits. They will keep, of course, their high race qualities, their special talents and virtues, by a chosen, not an enforced, selection. Some of the noblest people are Jews, some of the nicest. That can’t be denied. But this long-nursed bunch of ancient mistakes — it is high time they dropped it. What is the use of artificially maintaining characteristics which the whole world dislikes, and then complaining of race prejudice? Of course, there is race prejudice, a cultural one; and all the rest of you will have to bring up your children without that. It is only the matter of a few generations at most.”

  This was a part of the spirit of Herland to which I was slow in becoming accustomed. Their homogeneous, well-ordered life extended its social consciousness freely, ahead as well as backwards; their past history was common knowledge, and
their future development even more commonly discussed. They planned centuries ahead and accomplished what they planned. When I thought of their making over the entire language in the interests of childhood, of their vast field of cultural literature, of such material achievements as their replanting all their forests, I began to see that the greatness of a country is not to be measured by linear space, in extent of land, nor arithmetically by numbers of people, nor shallowly by the achievements of the present and a few leftovers, but by the scope of its predetermined social advance.

  As this perception grew within me, it brought first a sense of shame for all the rest of the world, and even more intensely for my own country, which had such incomparable advantages. But after a little, instead of shame, which is utter waste, I began to see life as I never had before: as a great open field of work, in which we were quite free to do as we would. We have always looked at it as a hopeless tangle of individual lives, short, aimless threads, as blindly mixed as the grass stems in a haystack. But collectively, as nations, taking sufficient time, there was nothing we could not do. I told her of my new vision, and she was dumbly happy — just held my hand, her eyes shining.

  “That’s how to stand the misery and failure, isn’t it?” I said. “That’s how not to be discouraged at the awfulness of things; and the reason you take up these separate ‘questions’ so lightly is that none of them mean much alone. The important thing is to get people to think and act together.”

  “There’s nothing on earth to hinder them, Van, dear, except what’s in their heads. And they can stop putting it in, in the babies, I mean, and can put it out of their own, at least enough to get to work. They are beginning, you know.”

  She spoke most encouragingly, most approvingly, of the special efforts we were making in small groups or as individuals to socialize various industries and functions, but with far more fervor of the great “movements.”

  “The biggest of all, and closest related, are your women’s movement and labor movement. Both seem to be swiftly growing stronger. The most inclusive forward-looking system is Socialism, of course. What a splendid vision of immediate possibilities that is. I can not accustom myself to your not seeing it at once. Of course, the reason is plain: your minds are full of your ancient mistakes, too; not so much racial and religious, as in beliefs of economic absurdities. It is so funny!”

  It always nettled me a little to have her laugh at us. That she should be shocked and horrified at the world I had expected; that she should criticize and blame; but to have her act as though all our troubles were easily removable, and we were just a pack of silly fools not to set about it — this was irritating.

  “Well, dear,” she pursued pleasantly, “doesn’t it look funny to you, like a man sleeping cold with good blankets at the foot of his bed; like Mr. Tantalus, quite able to get what he wanted, if he would only reach?”

  “If what you said was so—” I began.

  “And why isn’t it, dear?”

  “The trouble is, I think, in your psychology. You, as a free-minded Herlander, can not seem to see how helpless we are in our minds. All these ages of enforced belief have done something to us, I tell you. We can’t change all in a minute.”

  “The worst thing that has been done to you is to fill your poor heads with this notion that you cannot help yourselves. Tell me, now, what is there to hinder you?”

  “You had better be studying as to what does hinder us,” I answered, “and explain it so that we can do something. We mean well. We are fairly well educated. We are, as you say, rich enough and all that. But we, up to date, seem unable to get together on any line of concerted action toward better living.”

  “I have been studying just that, Van, ever since I first came. Of course after I saw how things were, that was the only thing to do.”

  “Well?” I said, and again, “Well?”

  She sat considering, turning over some books and papers that lay on the table beside her. A lovely picture she made, unique among the women of this land, she had the smooth rounded freedom of body we see in noble statues, and whatever her new friends tried to make her wear, she insisted upon a dress of such simplicity as did not contradict her natural lines and movements. Her face had changed, somewhat, in our two years of travel and study; there was a sadness in it, such as it never wore in Herland, such as I had never seen in anyone while there; and for all her quiet courtesy, her gentle patience, her scientific interest and loving kindness, there was a lonely look about her, as of some albatross in a poultry yard.

  To me she was even more tender and delicately sympathetic than in our first young happiness. She seemed to be infinitely sorry for me, though carefully refraining from expressing it. Our common experiences, our studying and seeing so much together, had drawn us very close, and for my own part I had a curious sense of growing detachedness from the conditions about me and an overwhelming attachment to her which transcended every other tie. It seemed as if my love for her as a human being, such love as a brother, a sister, a friend might feel, was now so much greater than my love of her as a woman, my woman, that I could not miss that fulfillment much while so contented in the larger relation.

  I thought of the many cases I had known where the situation was absolutely reversed, where a man loved a woman solely because of sex desire, without ever knowing her nature as a person, without even wanting to.

  I was very happy with Ellador.

  11. FEMINISM AND THE WOMAN’S MOVEMENT

  It was inevitable that my wife should take a large interest in Feminism. With that sweeping swiftness of hers she read a dozen or so of the leading — and misleading — books on the subject; spent some time in library work looking over files of papers and talked with all manner of people we met who had views on the matter. Furthermore, she thought about it.

  As I grew more and more accustomed to seeing Ellador think, or at least to seeing the results of that process, I was sharply struck with the lack of thinking among people in general. She smiled sociably when I mentioned it.

  “Why, yes, dear, that is largely what is the matter. You do not train your children to think — you train them not to. Your men think hard in narrow lines, just little pushing lines of their special work, or how to get richer, and your women—”

  “Oh, come, let’s have it!” I cried despairingly. “Whatever else you say or don’t say you are always thinking about the women; I can fairly hear your brain click. And I’ll tell you honestly, my dear, that I don’t believe you can hurt me now, no matter how hard you hit them — or the men. It certainly has been a liberal education to live with you. Also I’ve had my time in Herland to show me the difference. I confess that as I now see this life of ours the women shock me, in some ways, more than the men. And I’ve been doing some reading as well as you, even some thinking. I suppose one thing that has made you so reticent about this is that you can’t criticize the women without blaming the men. Perhaps it will encourage you if I begin to do the blaming.”

  She mildly said that perhaps it would seem more magnanimous, so I started in and found the case worse when stated at length than I had seen it in glimpses.

  “Of course, there is no getting around Lester Ward,” I began slowly. “No one can study biology and sociology much and not see that on the first physiological lines the female is the whole show, so to speak, or at least most of it. And all the way up she holds her own, even into early savagery, till Mr. Man gets into the saddle. How he came to do it is a mystery that I don’t believe even you can explain.”

  “No,” she agreed, “I can’t. I call it ‘The Great Divergence.’ There is no other such catastrophic change in all nature — as far as I’ve been able to gather.”

  What Ellador had “gathered” in two years was perhaps not equal in detailed knowledge to the learning of great specialists, but she had a marvelous gift for selecting the really important facts and for arranging them. That was the trick — she did something with what she knew — not merely stored it.

  “W
ell, he did take the reins, somehow,” I resumed, “and we began our historic period, which is somewhat too large to be covered in an hour — by me. But in all this time, as far as I can make out, he has never been even fair to women, and has for the most part treated her with such an assortment of cruelty and injustice as makes me blush for my sex.”

  “What made you think so, Van? What first?”

  “Why Herland first,” I answered promptly. “Seeing women who were People and that they were People because they were women, not in spite of it. Seeing that what we had called “womanliness” was a mere excess of sex, not the essential part of it at all. When I came back here and compared our women with yours — well, it was a blow. Besides, if I’d had no other evidence You would have shown me — just living with you, my Wonder Darling.”

  She looked at me with shining eyes, that look that was more than wife, more than mother; the illimitable loving Human look.

  “What I have learned from you, Dearest; from our companionship without the physical intimacy of sex, is this; that Persons, two Persons who love each other, have a bigger range of happiness than even two lovers. I mean than two lovers who are not such companions, of course. I do not deny that it has been hard, very hard, sometimes. I’ve been disagreeable to live with—”

  “Never!” she interpolated, “but somehow the more I loved you the less it troubled me. Now I feel that when we do reach that union, with all our love, with all the great mother purpose that is in your heart and the beginning of a sense of father purpose in mine, I’m sure that it will be only an incident in our love, our happiness, not the main thing.”