Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a Woman's Place in America

by Jill Bergman

  a servant: loving, trusting, affectionate—a young girl, an exile, a dependent; grateful for any kindness; untrained, uneducated, childish.” The two women

  are Marion Marroner, an educated woman with a PhD who served on a col-

  lege faculty before her marriage, and Gerta Petersen, an untutored, too trusting, pregnant eighteen- year- old Swedish domestic residing in their home. The man is Mr. Marroner (Gilman never reveals his first name), who is traveling

  abroad on business; he is largely absent through out most of the story. Public and private spheres intersect when two letters from Mr. Marroner arrive in

  the same late mail delivery, one addressed to his wife and the other to Gerta, to whom he of ten sends a “picture postcard.” Opening an envelope in a familiar type addressed to her, Marion Marroner finds a letter from her hus-

  band that is clearly not intended for her; the letters have inadvertently been put in the wrong envelopes. At once Marion discerns the identity of Gerta’s

  previously unknown seducer.8

  The letters also explain the story’s opening scene, which focuses on two

  weeping women, each in a different location in the Marroner home: in a luxu-

  rious bedroom, Marion sobs despite “her dignity, her self- control, her pride”; in a poorly furnished attic, fallen Gerta unabashedly “wept for two.” Initially Marion feels sympathy for Gerta, “a tall, rosy- cheeked baby; rich womanhood

  without, helpless infancy within”; she treats her kindly and resolves “ ‘to see her through this safely . . . and then get her back to Sweden somehow with

  her baby.’ ” However, the mood of the story changes with the arrival of the

  mixed- up letters. Marion at first turns against Gerta, her rival object of desire in the story’s sexual triangle, but then changes her mind and turns against the traditional notions of marriage and the home, both of which Gilman radically

  critiqued in her theoretical works, fiction, and poetry. The epistolary mix- up becomes a means to empower both Mr. Marroner’s betrayed wife and his mistress, who together transcend helplessness and achieve happiness.9

  These two mixed- up letters are among many that Mr. Marroner sends home

  during his prolonged business trip and that Gerta receives from her home in

  Sweden (Marion is surprised that this letter for Gerta is not from Sweden).

  Gilman was writing decades after the reduction of national and international

  postal rates in the 1870s and 1880s made letter writing affordable to most

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  Ameri cans and to people from countries in the Universal Postal Union. As

  literacy rates began to rise in the 1840s and 1850s and more people began to

  write letters, postage rates dropped. In 1883, two cents became the uniform

  rate for all mail weighing up to one- half ounce in the United States, regardless of the distance.10

  On July 1, 1875, the General Postal Union was founded. This specialized

  agency, which quickly became the Universal Postal Union, brought great re-

  ductions in overseas postage among member nations; the United States and

  Sweden, Gerta’s homeland, were two of the first of the twenty- two nations in the Universal Postal Union. By 1911, when Gilman published her story, the postal service was an established way to stay in touch with loved ones as wel as a vehicle for intimacy within courtship and marriage. One could travel abroad for business, as in Mr. Marroner’s case, or relocate for work, as in Gerta Peter sen’s, with the confidence that one could keep in contact with family and friends

  whom one might not see for months, years, or ever again.11

  Along with the increase in letters in the nineteenth century arose a greater

  market for letter- writing manuals. Such manuals, in ready circulation during the early twentieth century, provided advice on practical topics, like applying for a job and advertising a job, and sensitive matters, such as how to convey news of bereavement, break off an engagement, or declare one’s true love and

  affection. For example, Webster’s Ready- Made Love Letters offered model romantic missives to help a gentleman succeed at “matrimony, or at keeping bright

  the little golden circlet that is at once its token and its pledge.”12 Webster’s favored letters as the means by which to preserve the glowing love a gentleman

  professed and offered along with the wedding ring. The “golden circlet” was

  not only a keepsake; it was a promise of devotion.

  Mr. Marroner’s epistolary habits before the mix- up connote conjugal af-

  fection in an era when people proposed, renewed affection, and broke off en-

  gagements by mail. In accordance with popu lar advice manuals, Gilman es-

  tablished Mr. Marroner as a model husband who recognizes the importance

  of writing to his absent beloved. Going abroad for one month that expands

  into seven months, Mr. Marroner “wrote to his wife, long, loving, frequent

  letters, deeply regretting the delay.” His letters could have come directly from Perfect Etiquette: Or, How to Behave in Society, which advises that a letter of love “is controlled altogether by the heart, and the feelings of that vital part is the best criterion to go by.” Anticipating his return home in three weeks, Mr.

  Marroner tells his wife, “ ‘And you will be looking so lovely, with that eager light in your eyes and the changing flush I know so well—and love so well!

  My dear wife! We shall have to have a new honeymoon—other moons come

  every month, why shouldn’t the mellifluous kind?’ ” The rhetoric of this passage emphasizes the heart and the feelings. Writing at a time when letter writing

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  was an indicator of character, Gilman constructed a missive that seems mo-

  tivated “altogether by the heart.” Mr. Marroner compliments his wife’s looks.

  He remarks on her “flush” of desire and his anticipation of “honeymoon” in-

  timacy after a long absence, rekindling their newlywed joy when he first of-

  fered her the “golden circlet.” Moreover, his loving letters are long, which is significant in an age when inconstancy and brevity were hot topics in letter-writing manuals and a love letter’s length served as a barometer of affection.13

  Period letter- writing manuals like The Wide World Letter Writer: Letters with Answers focus on how the very sight of a letter could move the receiver to kiss the treasured letter in lieu of the absent beloved, as Marion does in “Turned.”

  David Henkin notes, “Handwritten letters bore the trace of physi cal contact

  and not simply the recognizable imprimatur of in di vidual identity.” An ex-

  tant letter from a Civil War soldier to his loving wife articulates how hand-

  writing provided a link to a loved one’s physical presence: “ ‘There is some thing in the exchange of letters that ranks next to the greeting of palm to palm.

  When I receive one of your letters the sheet seems to contain more than you

  were writing; it is something which has been touched by your hand, which

  has caught a pulse of your feeling, and which represents more than the words

  can possibly say.’ ”14

  Edward Bulwer- Lytton, in his 1832 novel Eugene Aram, even suggests that the sight of familiar handwriting may be more pleasurable than a meeting between lovers: for example, when the postman hands Madeline Lester a letter

  from her suitor, she responds to Aram’s handwriting: “ ‘Happy blush—bright

  smile! Ah! no meeting ever gives the delight that a letter can inspire in the short absences of a first love.’ ”15 Is this “blush,” as Bulwer- Lytton describes it, akin to the “flush” of intimacy that Mr. Marroner eagerly anticipates in his

  wife’s loving welcome?

  Reading “Turned” in the context of these epistolary examples from Vi
cto-

  rian life and fiction, we are not surprised that Marion rejoices upon seeing a letter from her long- absent, beloved husband: “One letter for her—her husband’s letter. She knew the postmark, the stamp, the kind of typewriting. She impulsively kissed it in the dim hall. No one would suspect Mrs. Marroner

  of kissing her husband’s letters—but she did, of ten.” Marion reacts “impul-

  sively” with joy simply because the letter “has been touched by [her husband’s]

  hand.” Yet, as Gilman’s qualifier, “No one would suspect Mrs. Marroner of

  kissing her husband’s letters,” indicates, we do not “suspect” her of caressing this treasured love object with her lips because she is a “Boston- bred” woman who prides herself in maintaining “dignity” and “self- control.” Gilman has

  told us that Marion is not easily given to emotion, but a “mass of emotion”

  aptly describes her in the opening weeping scene as well as when she caresses her husband’s letter in private.16

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  In this intimate epistolary scene, readers are voyeurs who glimpse Gilman’s

  “Boston- bred” professor savoring not only the “kind of typewriting” but also the postmark and stamp on an envelope that bears the trace of her husband’s

  “touch.” Observing Marion Marroner, we glimpse how love letters in early

  twentieth- century Ameri can culture were treasured objects that allowed one

  to “speak to those we love or esteem” or “converse with them by letter,” ac-

  cording to the rhetoric of letter- writing manuals.17

  Recall, however, that two letters arrive in the late mail that fateful day in

  “Turned.” One is addressed to “Gerta, and not from Sweden. It looked pre-

  cisely like her [Marion’s] own.” The visual resemblance between the two letters strikes Marion as “a little odd, but Mr. Marroner had several times sent messages and cards to the girl,” whom he pejoratively refers to as “ ‘little Gerta’ ”

  and “ ‘the child.’ ” The letter whose envelope Marion kisses in expectation of delight and takes to her room to read alone contains a fifty- dollar bill and the following advice: “ ‘My poor child, . . . You must bear it bravely, little girl. I shall be home soon, and will take care of you, of course. I hope there is not immediate anxiety. . . . Here is money, in case you need it. . . . If you have to go, be sure to leave your address at my office.’ ”18

  The language of this passage and Marion’s response to the letter also invite

  rhetorical analy sis. Mr. Marroner’s patronizing reference to Gerta as his “little girl” famously recalls the paternalistic rhetoric of Dr. John in “The Yellow WallPaper,” who calls the nameless narrator his “little girl” and his “blessed little goose” and insists that his wife rest in a yellow wallpapered nursery- prison.

  Marion observes that the typing of the letter is “not unusual,” but the letter

  “was unsigned, which was unusual. It enclosed an Ameri can bill—fifty dol-

  lars. It did not seem in the least like any letter she had ever had from her husband, or any letter she could imagine him writing. But a strange, cold feeling was creeping over her, like a flood rising around a house.”19

  Marion perceives that she is drowning in a swell of emotion that floods her

  like Alice in Wonderland when she finds herself sinking in a pool of her own

  tears. Moreover, Gilman has taken pains to note that this letter is unsigned, probably knowing very well that etiquette books caution, “Never send a letter without your signature, for anonymous epistles are the invention of knaves and fools.”20 In this scene Mr. Marroner’s untrustworthiness is eerily “creeping”

  over his betrayed wife in “Yellow Wall- Paper”–like fashion, and his treachery easily grants Mr. Marroner the status of being among the “knaves and fools.”

  Marion instructs Gerta to open the letter addressed to her and states brusquely,

  “ ‘Do you not see? Your letter was put in my envelope, and my letter was put

  in your envelope. Now we understand it.’ ” Marion then dismisses Gerta: “ ‘Go and pack your trunk. . . . You will leave my house tonight.’ ”21 The possessive

  “my” in Marion Marroner’s command displaces Gerta from where she lives:

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  the house is Marion’s only, and Gerta no longer has a place in it. This is the very response Mr. Marroner coldly anticipated when he tucked in the fifty-dollar bill and said, “If you have to go, be sure to leave your address at my office.” Marion is thus origi nally positioned in the stance of the outraged patriarch in Egg’s and Redgrave’s narrative paintings of fallen women as well as in nineteenth- century literature.

  In Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Lizzie Leigh” (1855), for example, Mr. Leigh, upon

  receiving his own letter returned from his daughter Lizzie’s former mistress

  in Manchester, learns “that Lizzie had left her service some time—and why.”

  Gaskell allowed her knowing readers to fill in the blank. The patriarch denies his fallen daughter a place in his home, declaring, “henceforth they would

  have no daughter; that she should be as one dead.”22 Marion Marroner also

  recalls the distressed patriarch in Egg’s Past and Present (I): the deceived husband holds in his left hand the incriminating letter that contains evidence

  of his wife’s adultery. With his left foot, the betrayed husband stamps on a

  miniature portrait of his wife’s lover, and the incriminating letter exposes an unfaithful wife, who clutches her hands in prayer and begs for forgiveness,

  which will not come. Marion’s rejection of the young, pregnant, unmarried

  Gerta perhaps most closely matches the subject matter of Redgrave’s The Outcast, particularly in Redgrave’s depiction of an unyielding patriarch who sends his erring fallen daughter and grandchild out into a snowy, friendless night.

  This is the same unyielding, compassionless stance temporarily granted to

  Marion Marroner. Giving Gerta packing orders and a month’s wage, Marion

  “had no shadow of pity for those anguished eyes, those tears which she heard

  drop on the floor.”23

  Ideas explored by Cresswell inform our reading of this scene. Gerta’s “an-

  guished eyes” speak to her disconnection from her homeland and her new

  home; she has suddenly lost her place in the hierarchy of the Marroner house-

  hold. “Gerta had literally thrown herself at [Marion’s] feet and begged her

  with streaming tears not to turn her away. She would admit nothing, explain

  nothing, but frantically promised to work for Mrs. Marroner as long as she

  lived—if only she would keep her.” Gilman, like Gaskell, chose to leave the

  details of the affair blank. Gerta’s main concern is that that Marion not “turn her away.” As an immigrant, Gerta is already living out of place, although

  Marion has helped her to “feel so much at home in this new land.”24 The fear

  of homelessness compounds Gerta’s dislocation from her place of origin, so

  we can understand why she grows hysterical and desperate. From the van-

  tage point of place, Gerta is trying to hold onto “a clear place in a social hierarchy that was beginning to dissolve.”25 Gerta offers to indenture herself to the Marroners or become a slave so as not to lose her new home, her place.

  Although the home is the site of male sexual transgression, Marion is not

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  just an innocent victim in this story. Her home is also a place of social and ethnic segregation, reflecting Gilman’s nativist tendency, evident in much of white America at the time Gilman wrote the story.26 The opening paragraphs

  show us Gerta residing in an “uncarpeted, thin- curtained, poorly finished

  chamber on the top floor
” of Marion’s home; this undesirable location within

  the home contrasts sharply to Marion’s own “soft- carpeted, thick- curtained, richly furnished chamber” with a “wide, soft bed.” The carefully chosen adjectives in the opening sentences of the first and fourth paragraphs invite a rhetorical comparison and critique from today’s vantage point of an enlightened

  awareness about immigrant populations. Racial and ethnic oppression undeni-

  ably remains a potent issue today, and when Gilman was writing, Ameri cans

  were experiencing a similar moral panic over the large influx of refugees (or

  “exiles,” as Gerta is called) into the melting pot of America. Marion describes Gerta condescendingly and reveals a xenophobic attitude: Marion “had grown

  to love the patient, sweet- natured child, in spite of her dullness.” She calls her an “ignorant child” and tries “to educate her somewhat.”27

  Yet the lens of place also allows us to sympathize with Marion. Given the

  epistolary mix- up, home is no longer Marion’s domestic haven but a site of

  sexual transgression and abuse. Marion loves her husband before her recogni-

  tion of his betrayal—she even puts aside her “Boston- bred” dignity to kiss his letters. Worse, it is clear that Mr. Marroner has been unfaithful to her in her own home: “He had done this thing under the same roof with her—his wife.”

  Arguably, “having no babies of her own,” Marion feels vulnerable because of

  the attachment her unfaithful husband has formed with their domestic servant, who is now carrying his child, a privilege she has been denied. Marion has

  longed for a child, which is revealed in her response to Gerta’s unwed motherhood: “ ‘How they [babies] do come where they are not wanted—and don’t

  come where they are wanted! Mrs. Marroner . . . almost envied Gerta.’ ”28

  Cresswell explains that rejection, racism, and bigotry of ten arise when “ ‘our place’ is threatened and others have to be excluded.”29 Marion is arguably responding like someone who believes that her place—literally and metaphorically—

  is in danger. If we view Marion’s initial banishment of Gerta as her wish to

  preserve her marriage rather than to kick out a now unwelcome immigrant,