Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Such was the S. P.

  As for me, as if the fly should try to bite the cartwheel — I record: “Sept. 17. Am roused to new enthusiasm against the S. P. Speak to Ina Coolbrith about a new crusade against it. Go to see Mr. P. and ask him about it. Go to the Enquirer (a small Oakland paper), and can have space.” And so on and so on — doubtless to no purpose whatever. But since any opponent of that ruthless power was marked for destruction, my later vicissitudes may have been colored by this effort.

  My aged landlord was taken very ill, but did not wish his daughter told — wanted me to nurse him! What lay behind I never knew; he got better each night under the nurse I had got for him, and worse each day with the nurse his daughter got him, and presently died.

  My various lodgers came and went. One couple with children took three rooms for light housekeeping, for which I had to buy utensils, etc. They left before they had paid enough to cover my outlay, and knew they were going to when they took the rooms. She did try in a half-hearted way to induce me not to spend much on them, but by no means said that they were not staying long enough to make it worth my while. Another couple, who took a big room downstairs, and were to get their meals in my kitchen, brought with them a cat, a dog and a parrot. They quarreled so ferociously I had to get rid of them.

  A big noisy man came and wanted my best room. He was one of the old stage-drivers, he said. I did not like him and named a larger price to deter him, but he immediately agreed, and paid in advance. That creature used to lie in bed and spit on the carpet, copiously. I never dreamed, in my New England innocence, that he might have further designs, and when he complained that he was “as lonesome as a wolf,” let him remain so. He got drunk, too; came home late, helped upstairs by an obliging friend. I spoke to the friend as he came down (he was drunk too, but not so badly, and I did not know it), and said that he must get him out of my house, that I would not have a drunken man in my house. He went, ultimately.

  One night a tramp came, a feeble, exhausted, slender man, who had evidently “seen better days.” He said that he had spent his last cent to come to his old Sunday-school teacher who lived next door — and he was away — and could I give him a bed for the night. What he meant was a little ticket, distributed by the Associated Charities, which paid for a bed, but I thought of my empty rooms, and my principles, and said, “Why yes, I can. Come in.”

  He came in, amazed. I turned him loose in the bathroom, and gave him a little hall-room to sleep in. In a story-book he would have been “a changed man” from that hour, but in fact he merely sat down to stay. I had difficulty in persuading him to leave.

  The time dragged on. Outside work, inside work, heartache, anxiety and debt, mother steadily failing. The grocer came to see me one day about my climbing bill, a nice elderly gentleman. I asked him into the parlor, and we sat there while I told him just how I was situated. “You are a brave woman,” said he. “You shall have credit at my store as long as you need it.” There was nothing brave about it. I went on because there was nothing else to do. Indeed I used to say that I was willing to “eat crow” — but there was no crow to eat....

  March 3rd: “Am hard set by this cold. Sit up till two in the morning with mother — the nurse gets four hours’ sleep. Write short powerful paper, ‘The Sex Question Answered,’ for The Woman’s Congress. Nothing seems seriously to affect my power to write. This paper has been done in short laborious efforts during these wretched days, and finished last night by mother’s deathbed.”

  She died early in the morning of March 7th.

  As a closing act of wisdom and duty she had arranged to have her body cremated, a courageous step in those days. Afterward the little box of ashes was returned to Providence and buried beside her mother.

  CHAPTER XI. MOTHERHOOD

  SOMETHING of my mother’s passion for children I had inherited, but not especially for babies, as with her. My feeling was a deep sympathy for children of all ages, a reverence for them as the world’s best hope; a tenderness for these ever-coming strangers, misunderstood, misjudged, mistreated, even when warmly “loved.” In my own childhood and youth I had well learned that “love” by no means ensures understanding or appreciation.

  In that eager, youthful effort at self-improvement, I had always as one purpose the handing down of a better character, a better constitution, than I had inherited. Quite early I had formulated the dictum: “The first duty of a mother is to be a mother worth having.” The second is to select a father worth having. Upon that follows all that can be given in the way of environment and education.

  Always I loved children and children loved me. In the days of my teaching the pupils were happy, enjoying the verses, stories and pictures with which the lessons were accompanied. Even the atrocious little boy upon whom I once wasted ten weeks of governessing, afterward sent me this sad little note, brought by a servant:

  MISS PIRKINS

  i am very sick and would like to have you make me sum rimes and pictures on squere pieces of paper the way we did when we were down to maine if you please

  Yours Truly

  ——

  there is a ancer

  when can I have them

  When I looked forward hopefully to marriage I planned to have six children, three of each kind. The coming of my baby was unmeasured joy and hope, with high purposes of wisest, tenderest care.

  But the black helplessness into which I fell, with its deadness of heart, its aching emptiness of mind, grievously limited all my usefulness to her. In place of a warm efficient love I could feel nothing but that dull, constant pain. A mother weeping away her days on a lounge is not much good. Yet that lovely child would come “hitching” — she never crept, but sat up and wiggled along — across the room to bring me a handkerchief because she saw my tears.

  Nevertheless, there were some things I could do, and some avoid. From Spencer I learned wisdom and applied it. There is much, very much, that can be done in the first few years of a child’s life. This one had, not surprisingly, inherited a pronounced disinclination to “mind.” A command brought instant opposition. With stern authority and what they used to call “discipline,” this would have meant a contest of wills, punishments, bitter unhappiness.

  On the other hand she was more than willing to oblige, to do anything and everything to be helpful — if not compelled. Children are of all people most open to suggestion. “Let’s” is the magic word with them, from playmate or grown person — if the grown person is honest! Yet this easy and powerful handle by which to move them to the conduct we desire, is ignored by most of us, and we persist in using our superiority to enforce the behavior demanded, with conflict and resentment. Using the method of suggestion, there was never any difficulty in these first years of education.

  Another piece of forethought I was able to use, of such marked value to the educator that it is a marvel so few seem to think of it. I call it “laying pipe.” It is necessary for a child to have confidence in the parent or teacher, to respect his judgment, to rely on his advice. Every time the parent says, “You’ll fall!” or “You’ll catch cold!” and the child does not, his confidence is shaken. I took continuous pains not only to avoid this mistake, as by saying, “You may fall,” but to take advantage of occasions when I could foretell consequences with certainty, do so, and point out the results.

  From her earliest years, I always made a steady habit of mentioning a reason for an action with the act, as “Please shut the door, I feel the cold air.” There is a reason for every act, and while we cannot always give a child the reason, we can give a reason, accustoming the young mind automatically to associate cause and effect. The immeasurable advantage of this training becomes clearer with every year of growth. It soon becomes enough to mention the cause, and the result is produced, as “I feel the cold air from that door” — and the child shuts it.

  When we demand, after some piece of foolishness, “Why did you do that?” a child not accustomed to associate reasons with actions has nothing
to say. He sees no reason for most of the things we do, or expect him to do, and has none to produce for his own conduct.

  Children are naturally reasonable, and, most of them, well meaning. This one of mine was both, and never gave trouble or caused anxiety by her behavior. An incident when she was between three and four will illustrate this: she had gone down the lane to play with the washerwoman’s children, a thing not “forbidden” but advised against. I went after her and led the little sunbonneted figure home.

  “Why, Katharine!” I said gravely, “this is the first time I have known you to do a thing I asked you not to.” Quoth a calm little voice under the sunbonnet, “All children have to be naughty sometimes.” See me condemned out of my own mouth — the first time — and I making a fuss about it!

  Another instance of the pipe-laying process consists in looking ahead along the years and their inevitable developments, or to coming events, and telling the child beforehand such things as will comfortably prepare the mind. When that transcontinental journey lay before us I talked about it, repeatedly, speaking of the interesting features and of the unavoidable disadvantages.

  “It’s rather hard on children, being in the cars so many days,” I explained, “because they have to keep still. Most of the people are grown up, some are old and some are sick, and they can’t bear noisy children. Maybe there will be some children you can play quietly with, maybe not. Anyway, I’ll carry some things to amuse you.” Then I would dilate on the interesting features of the trip, just casually talking about it as I would to any friend. So when we went there was no shock or disappointment, she was quite prepared to behave as well as anybody, and did — at three and a half.

  It is also easy to anticipate some of the questions children are sure to ask, by telling them beforehand many things which will make later answers understandable. All the labored profundity people spend on teaching children what we used solemnly to call “the mystery of life,” might be resolved to a pleasant, matter-of-fact piece of information, in due proportion to the rest of life, if various simple data as to this chapter of nature’s open book had been made familiar beforehand.

  Absolute honesty was another thing I could give her, sick or well. She never had cause to doubt my word. If I made a mistake I was quick to acknowledge it, to apologize if necessary, a custom she easily imitated. Children are preternaturally quick to recognize pretense in any form. We are too apt to say: “Mama is angry,” or “Mama is hurt,” instead of being it. Once when we were playing on the floor together, the child, not meaning any harm, spit at me.

  I got up at once, swiftly, and left her. Nothing was said, or done to her, but her playmate was gone, and there was displeasure in the air. Of course she demanded a reason — what was the matter? I replied coldly, “You have insulted me.” My prompt and noticeable reaction showed what an insult was as no description could have done. She met, not punishment, but consequence, and did not do it again because she did not like the consequence.

  Childhood is a transient condition; what we are trying to “raise” is a competent adult. Just “minding” under compulsion, does not train the mind to govern conduct by principle or by consequence in later life. As for the more recent method of not training them at all — the visible results are not altogether pleasurable, even to the victims.

  Another instance, from that field of conduct in which children are so incessantly “trained” — table manners. Katharine and I were living in the Pasadena cottage. She was four. As a baby in a high chair, her dainty accuracy in eating had been notable. Now she entered on a phase of really offensive messing. I used the usual methods of reasonable appeal, but the misbehavior seemed a stronger impulse than her reason could master. So I set to work to think out the true causation of the desired conduct, and how to enlist her own desire in acquiring it:

  “What is the real reason I am so anxious she should have good table manners?” It was not far to seek, without them she would be cut off from good society when she was grown. This reason was not one which could be effectually presented now. A mental image of what you are told will happen in later years, the predicted loss of something you do not in the least understand or value, has small weight. Somehow I must make good table manners the price of desirable society now.

  The next time she joyfully indulged in unpleasantness I said: “Excuse me,” rose up quietly, with no emotional stress whatever, took my plate and utensils and retired, into the kitchen, leaving a conspicuous vacancy. There was no rebuke, no anger, simply a goneness. “Mama!” “Yes, Dear?” “Where are you?” “In the kitchen.” “Why?” “Well, Dear, I hate to speak of it again, perhaps I’ve spoken too often already, but honestly, when you do things like that it makes me a little sick, and if you don’t mind I prefer to eat here.” But she did mind, very much, and to please herself, to secure something she desired, she mended her manners.

  These methods were by no means approved by my friends and neighbors. Discipline and obedience were still the ideal then. My ideas looked to them not only wrong in principle but impracticable. They brought up instances of danger, need for prompt action— “What do you do when you have to catch a train?” they demanded. “Tell her we have to catch the train,” I answered, “with several previous experiences, carefully arranged, wherein she learned how bitterly disappointing it is to be too late.”

  There arose an occasion for restraint of impulse on her part which called for real strength of character, and found it. Next door lived a friend with small children, nurses, rabbits, a donkey, toys of all kinds, a neighboring heaven for my small lonely one, who played continually and most happily there. Then she had a cough, not a bad one, but Mrs. C. feared it was whooping-cough, which was in town, and of which she had had bitter experience; so she asked me to keep my little girl at home until the cough was gone.

  This was a very great loss to her, loss of her principal pleasure, a daily habitual joy. She was five years old. There was no fence or hedge between the places, merely a furrow in the plowed ground of the orange grove. I stated the facts, told her of the undoubted danger of the disease, how one of her little playmates had already suffered from it, how contagious it was, and how she surely did not want to carry danger of injury, perhaps death, to her friends; that Mrs. C. had begged her to stay away until well over her cough.

  She stayed. I can see now that small, disconsolate figure, in its blue apron and little sunbonnet, standing with little bare toes touching the dividing line, looking at Paradise and never going in. It was not “obedience,” it was understanding and self-control.

  Another touching instance; one night she had the earache. I had done all I could for her, but the dull ache went on, and the poor baby naturally cried, a low monotonous dreary cry. We lay in the big bed, by the rose-shaded window, and my wretched nerves broke. One of the results of my ruin, from which I have never recovered, is hyperesthesia of the auditory nerve, noises hurt, even music must be soft and low, a sudden loud sound is worse than a blow, a room full of chattering people is a buzzing torment — so this low, continuous wailing became unbearable anguish. Knowing well the exhaustion which would follow, preventing the work on which we must live, I made the appeal to reason:

  “Katharine dear — mother knows you are sick, in pain, and you have a right to cry. I’m not blaming you at all, precious, but you know mother is sick too (poor child, she knew it but too well), and I can’t stand some kinds of noises. I’ve been trying to stand it, but it is beyond me, and if it goes on I’ll have to go out and walk about outside. But I think I could stand it a while longer if you could change the sound — cry on a different key.”

  And that blessed baby did.

  The good mamas of Pasadena were extremely critical of my methods. One of them said that she would admit that Katharine was the best child she ever saw, but it was no credit to her mother — she would have ruined any other child by her system! They thought it scandalous that I should so frankly teach her the simple facts of sex, but when one of the piously brough
t up little boys she played with made proposals which would have been dangerous had they been sixteen instead of six, I felt well repaid by her easy confidence, she did not accede and came at once to tell me about it. I showed no sinister alarm, merely explained again how senseless any such performance was for children, and I was glad she knew better than he did. Self-esteem is an excellent weapon.

  I dressed her in little gingham aprons, with bloomers of the same, carefully made not to show, children being naturally conservative. But she asked, “Why can’t I wear boy’s clothes clear?” Also, she played barefooted in the blessed California sunshine — she grew up with a foot which was the delight of sculptors.

  For all this I was harshly blamed, accused of “neglecting my child.” It gives me much satisfaction to-day to see the children of equally conservative mamas now “wearing boy’s clothes clear” with full approval.

  We shared the one bedroom of the tiny house, sleeping close to a south window shaded with white Lady Banksia roses, and with my condition for the only drawback, were very happy together. One of our morning games I put quite literally in verse, and the editor who published it urged that I give myself to the writing of children’s verse — said I had a special talent for it. Here is this one:

  THE BAD LITTLE COO-BIRD

  In the morning, in the bed,

  She hugged her little girl and said,

  “You’re my little bird and this is our nest,

  My little coo-bird that I love the best,

  Now coo! little coo-bird, coo!”