The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress

by Gertrude Stein

  Phillip Redfern was born in a small city and in the south western part of this country. He was the son of a consciously ill-assorted pair of parents and his earliest intellectual concept so in his later living he was always saying as I will soon be telling, was the realisation of the quality of these two decisive and unharmonised elements in his child life. He remembered too very well his first definite realisation of the quality of women when the inherent contradictions in the claims made for that sex awoke in him much confused thought. He often said that he had often puzzled over the fact that he must give up his chair to and be careful of little girls while at the same time he was taught that the little girl was quite as strong as he and quite as able to use liberty and to perfect action. In his later living he said that when he was a very little one this had been so much a puzzle to him, little girls then, to him, had everything, he wished then when he was a little one and this was a puzzle to him, he wished he had been a little girl so and so have everything.

  His mother was his dear dear friend then and from her he received then all the thoughts and convictions that were definite and conscious then and for a long time after in him. She was an eager, impetuous, sensitive creature, full of ideal enthusiasms in her being, with moments of clear purpose and vigorous thinking but for the most part was excitably prejudiced and inconsequent in sensitive enthusiasm and given to accepting and giving and living sensations and impressions under the conviction that she had them as carefully thought out theories and principles that were complete from reasoning. Her constant rebellion against the pressure of her husband's steady domination found effective expression in the inspiring training of her son to be the champion of women. It would be a sublime proof of the justice of all the poetry of living so she was always thinking for the son of James Redfern to devote the strength of the father that was soon to be in the son of him to the winning of liberty, equality, opportunity, beauty, feeling, for all women.

  James Redfern was a man determined to be master always in his house. He was a man courteous and deferential to all women, he never came into any vivid relation with any human being. He was cold and reserved and had a strong calm attacking will in him, and he was always perfectly right in doing everything. This was always true of him. He never knew it in him that his wife had a set purpose in her to make their son any particular thing in living. Such a thing could never be a real thing to him, such a thing no woman he could have living in the house with him could have in her, to him. It could have no meaning such a fantastic notion and then too she never said it to him. It would not have any meaning excepting as words if she had ever said it to him. The things that have no meaning as existing are to every one very many, and that is always more and more important in understanding the being in men and women. Often it is very astonishing, it is like seeing something and some one who always has been walking with you and you always have been feeling that one was seeing everything with you and you feel then that they are seeing that thing the way you are seeing it then and you go sometime with that one to a doctor to have that one have their eyes examined and then you find that things you are seeing they cannot see and never have been seeing and it is very astonishing and everything is different and you know then that you are seeing, you are writing completely only for one and that is yourself then and to every other one it is a different thing and then you remember every one has said that sometime and you know it then and it is astonishing. You know it then yes but you do not really know it as a continuous knowing in you for then in living always you are feeling that some one else is understanding, feeling seeing something the way you are feeling, seeing, understanding that thing, and always it is a shock to you sometime with every one you are ever knowing and many never really know it of any one that they are feeling, seeing, understanding a different way from them and this is very very common. As I was saying it never would come to Mr. James Redfern to be realising that Mrs. Redfern had a destiny for their son such as being a champion of women. Such a thing would be a fantastic dream that could come from sickness in some one and nothing more to him and as I was saying she never said it to him. Mr. Redfern was very willing that Mrs. Redfern should be the tender dear friend of their son, he was too simply certain of the being in himself and in his son to pay much attention to the emotional influences that Mrs. Redfern brought to bear on him then when he was a young one. He was simply certain, that was the being in him, that his son would be a rational man. Emotional women and romantic children had pleasant fantastic dreams that were alright for them. He demanded from his son then obedience and in his presence self-restraint and for the rest when Phillip was a man being his father's son would make him the man all the Redferns had been.

  Phillip Redfern when he was a man was to most every one who ever came to know him a person having in him a strange and incalculable nature. The strong enthusiasm of emotion of his mother's nature early awoke in him with the stimulation she was always then giving to him very much interest to him for the emotional life he could have in him. The interest for knowledge and domination were in him equally strong and from the beginning he devoted himself to meditation and analysis of the emotions he had in him. The constant spectacle of an armed neutrality between his parents early filled him with an interest in the nature of marriage and the meaning of women.

  Many children who are always in the society of older men and women have their elder's feelings in them and these older men and women in their talking and their feeling if they have very decided quality in them to give to them the children always with them a knowledge of life quite out of relation to the reality of the children's experiencing and sometimes such a one one of such children while knowing and accepting many facts that his elders would have listened to in astonished horror from him often will be really ignorant of the meaning of the simplest things that happen to every one living which other children have in them as natural things for them to be knowing then. Phillip Redfern then had in him then when he was a young one and was living with his mother and his father as the only people then for him in him, his own living where there was much knowledge from reading and thinking, wonderful dreams, keen analysis, much real emotion of sympathising and very little experiencing of beginning living.

  From his father then and from his mother too then, then when he was a little one Phillip Redfern learned careful and scrupulous courtesy to women and to himself and to every one he was ever seeing or feeling or meeting in books or in living or in his hearing talking or in his dreaming, and from his father then power of reserve and these were in him without the determined standards that governed the elder Redfern. Phillip learned his principles from his mother and these were in her longings and aspirations rather than reasoned settled purposes and experiencing and they were real in him though really then he did not believe in them though then and longer he lived by them.

  When Phillip was beginning to be a young man he went to college as I was saying in my describing the living of Martha Hersland. He had never been to a school, his learning had been gathered from his father and largely by himself in reading. Now for the first time in his living he with his brilliant personality for he had that then to himself and to every one, keen intellect, ardent desires, moral aspirations and principles that he knew he could know by analysing them were not well reasoned principles for him to have in him but were to him as his mother's being was in him as a dear dear friend inside him, was to be thrown into familiar relations with young men and women.

  The college of which Redfern became a member was the typical coeducational college of the west, a completely democratic institution. Mostly no one there was conscious of a grand-father unless as remembering one as an old man living in the house with them or as living in another place and being written to sometimes by them and then having died and that was the end of grand-fathers to them. No one among them was held responsible for the father they had unless by some particular notoriety that had come to the father of some one. It was then a democratic western institution, this colleg
e where Redfern went to have his college education. This democracy was too simple and genuine to be discussed by any one then. No one was really interested how any man or woman of them came by the money that was educating them, whether it came through several generations of gentlemen to them, whether it came through two generations or one, whether one of them earned it for herself or for himself by working, or teaching, or working on a farm or at book-selling or at anything else that would bring money to them in the summer or whether they earned a little by being a janitor to a school building in the winter or had it given them by some one interested in them. This democracy was then almost complete among them and was the same between the men and women as between the men, as between the women. This democracy was really almost complete among all of them and included very simple comradeship among them all, all of the men and women there together then. The men mostly were simple, direct and earnest in their relations with the women there being educated with them, the men, most of them treating them with generosity and kindliness enough and never really doubting even for a moment their right to any learning or occupation the women, any of them were able to acquire then. The students were many of them earnest experienced men and women who had already struggled solidly with poverty and education. Many of them were interested in the sciences and the practical application of them but also there was among them a kind of feeling and yearning for beauty and this then often showed itself in them in much out of door wandering, and was beginning a little with some of them to realise itself in attempting making pictures and sculpture.

  It was of such a sober minded, earnest, moral, democratic community that Redfern was now become a part. His moral aspirations found full satisfaction in the serious life of the place and his interest in emotional enthusiasm found a new and delightful exercise in the problem of woman that presented itself so strangely here. At this time the return to honest nature to him, was complete delight in him for elaboration was then not so necessary in his conviction but that vigor and force unadorned then made him forgetful of subtlety and refinement. The free simple comradeship of the men and women at first filled him with astonishment and then with delight. He could not feel himself a part of it, he could not love the sense of danger in the presence and companionship of women, his instincts bade him be on guard but his ideal he felt to be here realised.

  Among the many vigorous young women in the place there was Martha Hersland. She was a blond good-looking young woman full of moral purpose and educational desires. She had an eager earnest intelligence, fixed convictions and principles by then, and restless energy. She and Redfern were students in the same studies in the same class and soon singled themselves out from the crowd, it was all new, strange and dangerous for the south-western man and all perfectly simple and matter of course for the western girl. They had long talks on the meanings of things, he discoursing of his life and aims, she listening, understanding and sympathising. This intercourse steadily grew more constant and familiar. Redfern's instincts were dangerous was always there as a conviction in him, his ideals simple and pure was almost always real inside him, slowly he realised in this constant companion the existence of instincts as simple and pure as his ideals.

  They were going through the country one wintry day, plunging vigorously through the snow and liking the cold air and rapid walking and excited with their own health and their youth and the freedom. “You are a comrade and a woman,” he cried out in his pleasure, “It is the new world,” “Surely, there is no difference our being together only it is pleasanter and we go faster,” was her eager answer. “I know it,” said Redfern, “I know it, it is the new world.” This comradeship continued through the three years. They spent much time in explaining to each other what neither quite understood. He never quite felt the reality of her simple convictions, she never quite realised what it was he did not understand.

  One spring day a boy friend came to see her a younger brother of John Davidson who used to play duets with her and all three went out in the country. It was a soft warm day, the ground was warm and wet and they were healthy and they did not mind that. They found a fairly dry hill-side and sat down all three too indolent to wander further. The young fellow, a boy of eighteen, threw himself on the ground and rested his head on Martha Hersland's lap. Redfern did not stop a start of surprise and Martha Hersland smiled. The next day Redfern frankly came to her with his perplexity. “I don't understand,” he said. “Was it alright for Davidson to do so yesterday. I almost believed it was my duty to knock him off.” “Yes I saw you were surprised,” she said and she looked uneasy and then she resolutely tried to make him see. “Do you know that to me a western woman it seems very strange that any one should see any wrong in his action. Yes I will say it, I have never understood before why you always seemed on guard”. She ended pretty steadily, he flushed and looked uneasy. He looked at her earnestly, whatever was there, he certainly could not doubt her honesty. It could not be a new form of deliberate enticement even though it made a new danger.

  After two years of marriage Redfern's realisation of her was almost complete. Martha was all that she had promised him to be, all that he had thought her, but that all proved sufficiently inadequate to his needs. She was moral, strenuous and pure and sought earnestly after higher things in life and art but her mind was narrow and in its way insistent, her intelligence quick but without grace and harsh and Redfern loved a gentle intelligence. Redfern was a hard man to hold, he had no tender fibre to make him gentle to discordant suffering and when once he was certain that this woman had no message for him there was no way in which she could make to him an appeal. Her narrow eager mind was helpless.

  It was part of his elaborate chivalry and she though harsh and crude should never cease to receive from him this respect. He knew she must suffer but what could he do. They were man and wife, their minds and natures were separated by great gulfs, it must be again an armed neutrality but this time it was not as with his parents an armed neutrality between equals but with an inferior who could not learn the rules of the game. It was just so much the more unhappy.

  Mrs. Redfern never understood what had happened to her. In a dazed blind way she tried all ways of breaking through the walls that confined her. She threw herself against them with impatient energy and again she tried to destroy them piece by piece. She was always thrown back bruised and dazed and never quite certain whence came the blow, how it was dealt or why. It was a long agony, she never became wiser or more indifferent, she struggled on always in the same dazed eager way.