Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887

by Edward Bellamy

  Chapter 25

  The personality of Edith Leete had naturally impressed me strongly eversince I had come, in so strange a manner, to be an inmate of herfather's house, and it was to be expected that after what had happenedthe night previous, I should be more than ever preoccupied withthoughts of her. From the first I had been struck with the air ofserene frankness and ingenuous directness, more like that of a nobleand innocent boy than any girl I had ever known, which characterizedher. I was curious to know how far this charming quality might bepeculiar to herself, and how far possibly a result of alterations inthe social position of women which might have taken place since mytime. Finding an opportunity that day, when alone with Dr. Leete, Iturned the conversation in that direction.

  "I suppose," I said, "that women nowadays, having been relieved of theburden of housework, have no employment but the cultivation of theircharms and graces."

  "So far as we men are concerned," replied Dr. Leete, "we shouldconsider that they amply paid their way, to use one of your forms ofexpression, if they confined themselves to that occupation, but you maybe very sure that they have quite too much spirit to consent to be merebeneficiaries of society, even as a return for ornamenting it. Theydid, indeed, welcome their riddance from housework, because that wasnot only exceptionally wearing in itself, but also wasteful, in theextreme, of energy, as compared with the cooperative plan; but theyaccepted relief from that sort of work only that they might contributein other and more effectual, as well as more agreeable, ways to thecommon weal. Our women, as well as our men, are members of theindustrial army, and leave it only when maternal duties claim them. Theresult is that most women, at one time or another of their lives, serveindustrially some five or ten or fifteen years, while those who have nochildren fill out the full term."

  "A woman does not, then, necessarily leave the industrial service onmarriage?" I queried.

  "No more than a man," replied the doctor. "Why on earth should she?Married women have no housekeeping responsibilities now, you know, anda husband is not a baby that he should be cared for."

  "It was thought one of the most grievous features of our civilizationthat we required so much toil from women," I said; "but it seems to meyou get more out of them than we did."

  Dr. Leete laughed. "Indeed we do, just as we do out of our men. Yet thewomen of this age are very happy, and those of the nineteenth century,unless contemporary references greatly mislead us, were very miserable.The reason that women nowadays are so much more efficient colaborerswith the men, and at the same time are so happy, is that, in regard totheir work as well as men's, we follow the principle of providing everyone the kind of occupation he or she is best adapted to. Women beinginferior in strength to men, and further disqualified industrially inspecial ways, the kinds of occupation reserved for them, and theconditions under which they pursue them, have reference to these facts.The heavier sorts of work are everywhere reserved for men, the lighteroccupations for women. Under no circumstances is a woman permitted tofollow any employment not perfectly adapted, both as to kind and degreeof labor, to her sex. Moreover, the hours of women's work areconsiderably shorter than those of men's, more frequent vacations aregranted, and the most careful provision is made for rest when needed.The men of this day so well appreciate that they owe to the beauty andgrace of women the chief zest of their lives and their main incentiveto effort, that they permit them to work at all only because it isfully understood that a certain regular requirement of labor, of a sortadapted to their powers, is well for body and mind, during the periodof maximum physical vigor. We believe that the magnificent health whichdistinguishes our women from those of your day, who seem to have beenso generally sickly, is owing largely to the fact that all alike arefurnished with healthful and inspiriting occupation."

  "I understood you," I said, "that the women-workers belong to the armyof industry, but how can they be under the same system of ranking anddiscipline with the men, when the conditions of their labor are sodifferent?"

  "They are under an entirely different discipline," replied Dr. Leete,"and constitute rather an allied force than an integral part of thearmy of the men. They have a woman general-in-chief and are underexclusively feminine regime. This general, as also the higher officers,is chosen by the body of women who have passed the time of service, incorrespondence with the manner in which the chiefs of the masculinearmy and the President of the nation are elected. The general of thewomen's army sits in the cabinet of the President and has a veto onmeasures respecting women's work, pending appeals to Congress. I shouldhave said, in speaking of the judiciary, that we have women on thebench, appointed by the general of the women, as well as men. Causes inwhich both parties are women are determined by women judges, and wherea man and a woman are parties to a case, a judge of either sex mustconsent to the verdict."

  "Womanhood seems to be organized as a sort of imperium in imperio inyour system," I said.

  "To some extent," Dr. Leete replied; "but the inner imperium is onefrom which you will admit there is not likely to be much danger to thenation. The lack of some such recognition of the distinct individualityof the sexes was one of the innumerable defects of your society. Thepassional attraction between men and women has too often prevented aperception of the profound differences which make the members of eachsex in many things strange to the other, and capable of sympathy onlywith their own. It is in giving full play to the differences of sexrather than in seeking to obliterate them, as was apparently the effortof some reformers in your day, that the enjoyment of each by itself andthe piquancy which each has for the other, are alike enhanced. In yourday there was no career for women except in an unnatural rivalry withmen. We have given them a world of their own, with its emulations,ambitions, and careers, and I assure you they are very happy in it. Itseems to us that women were more than any other class the victims ofyour civilization. There is something which, even at this distance oftime, penetrates one with pathos in the spectacle of their ennuied,undeveloped lives, stunted at marriage, their narrow horizon, boundedso often, physically, by the four walls of home, and morally by a pettycircle of personal interests. I speak now, not of the poorer classes,who were generally worked to death, but also of the well-to-do andrich. From the great sorrows, as well as the petty frets of life, theyhad no refuge in the breezy outdoor world of human affairs, nor anyinterests save those of the family. Such an existence would havesoftened men's brains or driven them mad. All that is changed to-day.No woman is heard nowadays wishing she were a man, nor parents desiringboy rather than girl children. Our girls are as full of ambition fortheir careers as our boys. Marriage, when it comes, does not meanincarceration for them, nor does it separate them in any way from thelarger interests of society, the bustling life of the world. Only whenmaternity fills a woman's mind with new interests does she withdrawfrom the world for a time. Afterward, and at any time, she may returnto her place among her comrades, nor need she ever lose touch withthem. Women are a very happy race nowadays, as compared with what theyever were before in the world's history, and their power of givinghappiness to men has been of course increased in proportion."

  "I should imagine it possible," I said, "that the interest which girlstake in their careers as members of the industrial army and candidatesfor its distinctions might have an effect to deter them from marriage."

  Dr. Leete smiled. "Have no anxiety on that score, Mr. West," hereplied. "The Creator took very good care that whatever othermodifications the dispositions of men and women might with time takeon, their attraction for each other should remain constant. The merefact that in an age like yours, when the struggle for existence musthave left people little time for other thoughts, and the future was souncertain that to assume parental responsibilities must have oftenseemed like a criminal risk, there was even then marrying and giving inmarriage, should be conclusive on this point. As for love nowadays, oneof our authors says that the vacuum left in the minds of men and womenby the absence of care for one's livelihood has been entirely t
aken upby the tender passion. That, however, I beg you to believe, issomething of an exaggestion. For the rest, so far is marriage frombeing an interference with a woman's career, that the higher positionsin the feminine army of industry are intrusted only to women who havebeen both wives and mothers, as they alone fully represent their sex."

  "Are credit cards issued to the women just as to the men?"

  "Certainly."

  "The credits of the women, I suppose, are for smaller sums, owing tothe frequent suspension of their labor on account of familyresponsibilities."

  "Smaller!" exclaimed Dr. Leete, "oh, no! The maintenance of all ourpeople is the same. There are no exceptions to that rule, but if anydifference were made on account of the interruptions you speak of, itwould be by making the woman's credit larger, not smaller. Can youthink of any service constituting a stronger claim on the nation'sgratitude than bearing and nursing the nation's children? According toour view, none deserve so well of the world as good parents. There isno task so unselfish, so necessarily without return, though the heartis well rewarded, as the nurture of the children who are to make theworld for one another when we are gone."

  "It would seem to follow, from what you have said, that wives are in noway dependent on their husbands for maintenance."

  "Of course they are not," replied Dr. Leete, "nor children on theirparents either, that is, for means of support, though of course theyare for the offices of affection. The child's labor, when he grows up,will go to increase the common stock, not his parents', who will bedead, and therefore he is properly nurtured out of the common stock.The account of every person, man, woman, and child, you mustunderstand, is always with the nation directly, and never through anyintermediary, except, of course, that parents, to a certain extent, actfor children as their guardians. You see that it is by virtue of therelation of individuals to the nation, of their membership in it, thatthey are entitled to support; and this title is in no way connectedwith or affected by their relations to other individuals who are fellowmembers of the nation with them. That any person should be dependentfor the means of support upon another would be shocking to the moralsense as well as indefensible on any rational social theory. What wouldbecome of personal liberty and dignity under such an arrangement? I amaware that you called yourselves free in the nineteenth century. Themeaning of the word could not then, however, have been at all what itis at present, or you certainly would not have applied it to a societyof which nearly every member was in a position of galling personaldependence upon others as to the very means of life, the poor upon therich, or employed upon employer, women upon men, children upon parents.Instead of distributing the product of the nation directly to itsmembers, which would seem the most natural and obvious method, it wouldactually appear that you had given your minds to devising a plan ofhand to hand distribution, involving the maximum of personalhumiliation to all classes of recipients.

  "As regards the dependence of women upon men for support, which thenwas usual, of course, natural attraction in case of marriages of lovemay often have made it endurable, though for spirited women I shouldfancy it must always have remained humiliating. What, then, must ithave been in the innumerable cases where women, with or without theform of marriage, had to sell themselves to men to get their living?Even your contemporaries, callous as they were to most of the revoltingaspects of their society, seem to have had an idea that this was notquite as it should be; but, it was still only for pity's sake that theydeplored the lot of the women. It did not occur to them that it wasrobbery as well as cruelty when men seized for themselves the wholeproduct of the world and left women to beg and wheedle for their share.Why--but bless me, Mr. West, I am really running on at a remarkablerate, just as if the robbery, the sorrow, and the shame which thosepoor women endured were not over a century since, or as if you wereresponsible for what you no doubt deplored as much as I do."

  "I must bear my share of responsibility for the world as it then was,"I replied. "All I can say in extenuation is that until the nation wasripe for the present system of organized production and distribution,no radical improvement in the position of woman was possible. The rootof her disability, as you say, was her personal dependence upon man forher livelihood, and I can imagine no other mode of social organizationthan that you have adopted, which would have set woman free of man atthe same time that it set men free of one another. I suppose, by theway, that so entire a change in the position of women cannot have takenplace without affecting in marked ways the social relations of thesexes. That will be a very interesting study for me."

  "The change you will observe," said Dr. Leete, "will chiefly be, Ithink, the entire frankness and unconstraint which now characterizesthose relations, as compared with the artificiality which seems to havemarked them in your time. The sexes now meet with the ease of perfectequals, suitors to each other for nothing but love. In your time thefact that women were dependent for support on men made the woman inreality the one chiefly benefited by marriage. This fact, so far as wecan judge from contemporary records, appears to have been coarselyenough recognized among the lower classes, while among the morepolished it was glossed over by a system of elaborate conventionalitieswhich aimed to carry the precisely opposite meaning, namely, that theman was the party chiefly benefited. To keep up this convention it wasessential that he should always seem the suitor. Nothing was thereforeconsidered more shocking to the proprieties than that a woman shouldbetray a fondness for a man before he had indicated a desire to marryher. Why, we actually have in our libraries books, by authors of yourday, written for no other purpose than to discuss the question whether,under any conceivable circumstances, a woman might, without discreditto her sex, reveal an unsolicited love. All this seems exquisitelyabsurd to us, and yet we know that, given your circumstances, theproblem might have a serious side. When for a woman to proffer her loveto a man was in effect to invite him to assume the burden of hersupport, it is easy to see that pride and delicacy might well havechecked the promptings of the heart. When you go out into our society,Mr. West, you must be prepared to be often cross-questioned on thispoint by our young people, who are naturally much interested in thisaspect of old-fashioned manners."[1]

  "And so the girls of the twentieth century tell their love."

  "If they choose," replied Dr. Leete. "There is no more pretense of aconcealment of feeling on their part than on the part of their lovers.Coquetry would be as much despised in a girl as in a man. Affectedcoldness, which in your day rarely deceived a lover, would deceive himwholly now, for no one thinks of practicing it."

  "One result which must follow from the independence of women I can seefor myself," I said. "There can be no marriages now except those ofinclination."

  "That is a matter of course," replied Dr. Leete.

  "Think of a world in which there are nothing but matches of pure love!Ah me, Dr. Leete, how far you are from being able to understand what anastonishing phenomenon such a world seems to a man of the nineteenthcentury!"

  "I can, however, to some extent, imagine it," replied the doctor. "Butthe fact you celebrate, that there are nothing but love matches, meanseven more, perhaps, than you probably at first realize. It means thatfor the first time in human history the principle of sexual selection,with its tendency to preserve and transmit the better types of therace, and let the inferior types drop out, has unhindered operation.The necessities of poverty, the need of having a home, no longer temptwomen to accept as the fathers of their children men whom they neithercan love nor respect. Wealth and rank no longer divert attention frompersonal qualities. Gold no longer 'gilds the straitened forehead ofthe fool.' The gifts of person, mind, and disposition; beauty, wit,eloquence, kindness, generosity, geniality, courage, are sure oftransmission to posterity. Every generation is sifted through a littlefiner mesh than the last. The attributes that human nature admires arepreserved, those that repel it are left behind. There are, of course, agreat many women who with love must mingle admiration, and seek to wedgreatly, but these not
the less obey the same law, for to wed greatlynow is not to marry men of fortune or title, but those who have risenabove their fellows by the solidity or brilliance of their services tohumanity. These form nowadays the only aristocracy with which allianceis distinction.

  "You were speaking, a day or two ago, of the physical superiority ofour people to your contemporaries. Perhaps more important than any ofthe causes I mentioned then as tending to race purification has beenthe effect of untrammeled sexual selection upon the quality of two orthree successive generations. I believe that when you have made afuller study of our people you will find in them not only a physical,but a mental and moral improvement. It would be strange if it were notso, for not only is one of the great laws of nature now freely workingout the salvation of the race, but a profound moral sentiment has cometo its support. Individualism, which in your day was the animating ideaof society, not only was fatal to any vital sentiment of brotherhoodand common interest among living men, but equally to any realization ofthe responsibility of the living for the generation to follow. To-daythis sense of responsibility, practically unrecognized in all previousages, has become one of the great ethical ideas of the race,reinforcing, with an intense conviction of duty, the natural impulse toseek in marriage the best and noblest of the other sex. The result is,that not all the encouragements and incentives of every sort which wehave provided to develop industry, talent, genius, excellence ofwhatever kind, are comparable in their effect on our young men with thefact that our women sit aloft as judges of the race and reservethemselves to reward the winners. Of all the whips, and spurs, andbaits, and prizes, there is none like the thought of the radiant faceswhich the laggards will find averted.

  "Celibates nowadays are almost invariably men who have failed to acquitthemselves creditably in the work of life. The woman must be acourageous one, with a very evil sort of courage, too, whom pity forone of these unfortunates should lead to defy the opinion of hergeneration--for otherwise she is free--so far as to accept him for ahusband. I should add that, more exacting and difficult to resist thanany other element in that opinion, she would find the sentiment of herown sex. Our women have risen to the full height of theirresponsibility as the wardens of the world to come, to whose keepingthe keys of the future are confided. Their feeling of duty in thisrespect amounts to a sense of religious consecration. It is a cult inwhich they educate their daughters from childhood."

  After going to my room that night, I sat up late to read a romance ofBerrian, handed me by Dr. Leete, the plot of which turned on asituation suggested by his last words, concerning the modern view ofparental responsibility. A similar situation would almost certainlyhave been treated by a nineteenth century romancist so as to excite themorbid sympathy of the reader with the sentimental selfishness of thelovers, and his resentment toward the unwritten law which theyoutraged. I need not describe--for who has not read "Ruth Elton"?--howdifferent is the course which Berrian takes, and with what tremendouseffect he enforces the principle which he states: "Over the unborn ourpower is that of God, and our responsibility like His toward us. As weacquit ourselves toward them, so let Him deal with us."

  [1] I may say that Dr. Leete's warning has been fully justified by myexperience. The amount and intensity of amusement which the youngpeople of this day, and the young women especially, are able to extractfrom what they are pleased to call the oddities of courtship in thenineteenth century, appear unlimited.