The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909 1910)

C >> Charlotte Perkins Gilman >> The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909 1910)

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(Let me remark here that I had my sermon in mind before I looked for the
text; but a more expressive and beautifully apposite one I never saw!)

The Preacher of old is right; this sore travail was laid upon us, a most
useful exercise; but we have lazily evaded it and taken other people's
judgment as to our duties.

That would-be Empire Builder, Moses, legislated for his people with an
unlimited explicitness that reflects small credit on their power to
search out by wisdom.

His cut and dried rules went down to most delicate selection of ovine
vicera for the sacrifice--"the fat and the rump, and the fat that
covereth the inwards and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys";
and into careful dietetics, which would cut out from our food list the
hare and rabbit, the lobster, the crab, the turtle, the clam, oyster and
scallop, indeed all shellfish.

The "fowls that creep, going upon all four," whatever they may be, are
also considered an abomination; but locusts, bald locusts, and
grasshoppers are recommended by name. Even in clothing we are carefully
forbidden to use a garment of linen and woolen, yet among our pious
Puritan ancestors "linsey-woolsey" was a very common and useful cloth.

All these secondary Mosaic directions have long since been relegated to
their place in archaeology; at least by the Christian churches, but the
ten commandments are still held as coming direct from God; and form the
main basis of our ethics. Yet while tacitly accepted they are not
studied, and few people have remarked how the pressure of social
development has changed their weight and relative value.

At first they stood, imposing and alike, an even row, to break anyone of
which was held an equal sin. Few persons now would hold disrespect to a
patently disrespectable parent as wrong as murder; or a failure to
"remember the Sabbath" as great a sin as adultery. Experience has
taught us something, and those who have undertaken that sore travail--to
seek and search out by wisdom--have found that some things are much more
wrong than others--and why.

I met once a very pious man; dark, gloomy, violently virtuous. He
looked like one of Cromwell's deacons; but was in fact a southerner and
an Episcopalian. Mention was made of an enlightened jury, somewhere in
the west, who had acquitted a man who stole bread for his starving
children.

"Good!" said I; "good! we are at last learning to discriminate in our
judgment of right and wrong."

He glowered at me forbiddingly. "There is no room for judgment," he
said; as if he were Fate itself. "There is a Commandment which says,
'Thou shalt not steal!'"

"Do you mean that all the Commandments stand equally?" I inquired.
"That we must hold all of the same importance, without qualification,
and to break any is an equal sin?"

"I do!" he said, with solemn assurance.

I meditated a little, and then asked, "Did you not say to me the other
day that if the negroes ever tried to assert social equality, you would
be among the first to shoulder your gun and put them in their place?"

"I would!" he admitted proudly.

"But," said I, "is there not a commandment which says, 'Thou shalt not
kill?'"

He was silent. He was much annoyed, and saw no way out of his morass of
contradiction. Then I offered what looked like a plank, a
stepping-stone to safety. "Surely," said I, "there is some room for
judgment. The later and smaller laws and regulations give many
directions for killing. All through ancient Hebraic history it was
frequently a special mandate, the people being distinctly commanded to
slay and destroy, sometimes even to kill women, children and the unborn.
And to-day--even a Christian man, in the exercise of legal justice, in
defence of his life, his family, his country,--surely he has a right to
kill! Do you not think there are times when it is right to kill?"

With a long breath of relief he agreed.

"Then why may it not be sometimes right to commit adultery?"

The conversation lapsed. He knew the two offenses were not in the same
category. He knew that the reasons adultery is wrong, and killing is
wrong are older than Hebrew history, and rest on observed facts. It
would be a hardy thinker who would defend adultery; but we all know--to
quote Ecclesiastes again that "There is a time to kill and a time to
heal."

It may be that that set of ten applied with beautiful precision to the
special vices of that people and that time; but there is room for many
more needed ones to-day. There is no commandment against gambling, for
instance; one of the most universal and indefensible evils. Gambling
does no one good; the winner of unearned money is corrupted and the
loser both corrupted and deprived. Gambling undermines all habits of
industry and thrift; it unsettles our reliance on care, patience,
thoroughness, ability, and tempts us to rely on chance. It is an
unmitigated social evil, but goes unforbidden by the Mosaic code, which
was so careful about which kind of fat to sacrifice and how much
uncleaner a girl baby was than a boy.

Speaking of social evil, _the_ social evil is not referred to. Adultery
is an offence to be sure, dangerous and destructive to family and social
life; but prostitution is a greater evil; far more common--and goes
unmentioned; unless in the original it meant the same thing.

Lying is not referred to. Of course some say that bearing false witness
means lying; but surely malicious perjury is a special crime, distinctly
described, and not the same thing as mere misrepresentation.

Another of the blackest sins known to man, always so recognized and
punished, goes without notice in this list:--treason. To betray one's
country--what could be worse! Is it not visibly wickeder than to play
ball on Sunday?

On the positive side our whole code of ethics, Hebrew and Christian,
fails to mention the main duty of life--to do your best work. This is
the one constant social service; and its reverse is a constant social
injury.

The old ethics is wholly personal, the new ethics (still unwritten) is
social first--personal later. In the old list we find, on a par with
adultery, theft and murder, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord
thy God in vain." Does this mean common swearing? Is it as wrong to
say 'damn' as to commit murder?

No, we do know better than that. We know that in those days, when lying
was so universal a habit that no one thought of prohibiting it, the two
most evil extremes were flat perjury with intent to harm, and the solemn
invocation of God's name to bind a bargain or seal a vow, afterward
broken. Both these were carefully forbidden. No one thought of
believing anything unless it was sworn to--and if they broke their oath
there was no reliance anywhere. To compel a slippery people to keep
faith--that was good ethics; and then most necessary.

We do not run our business that way now; we do greater evil in new
ways--and there is no commandment to forbid us. If that one read, "Thou
shalt not break faith nor cheat," it would have applied equally well
now.

The very first one is a curious proof of the then belief in many gods.
Jehovah does not say, "I am the only God," He says, "Thou shalt have no
other gods before me." That there were others is admitted, but it is
forbidden to run after them.

Nowadays we do not care enough even for our own idea of God--to say
nothing of other people's! And look at all that careful objection to
images and likenesses, and idol worship generally. The Jews forebore
painting and sculpture for many centuries because of that prohibition.
Now everyone with a kodak breaks it. The growth of true religious
feeling, as well as scientific thought, makes it impossible for
civilized peoples to make images and worship them, as did those
ingenious old Moabites and Midianites, Jebuzites and Perrizites,
Hittites and Haggathites.

The rigorous prohibition of coveting has always puzzled me--to covet is
such a private feeling. And if you keep it to yourself, what harm does
it do? You may spend your life wishing you had your neighbor's large
red automobile; but he is none the poorer. Of course if one sits up
nights to covet; or does it daytimes, by the hour, to the exclusion of
other business; it would interfere with industry and injure the health.
Can it be that the ancient Hebrews were that covetous?

Now suppose we do in good earnest give our hearts to seek and search out
all things that are done under heaven, to classify and study them, to
find which are most injurious and which are most beneficial, and base
thereon a farther code of ethics--by no means excluding the old.

The two great Christian laws will stand solidly. The absolute and all
absorbing love of God and the love of the neighbor which is much the
same thing--are good general directions. But in daily living; in
confronting that ceaseless array of "all things that are done under
heaven," the average person cannot stop to think out just how this game
of bridge or that horse-race interferes with love of God or man. We
need good hard honest scientific study; sore travail, which God hath
given to the sons of men, to be exercised therewith; and a further code
of ethics, not claimed as directly handed down from Heaven, but proven
by plain facts of common experience. We do not need to imitate or
parody the authoritative utterance of any priesthood; we want an
exposition which a bright child can understand and a practical man
respect.

We have succeeded before now in establishing elaborate codes of
conduct--yes and enforcing them, without any better sanction than habit,
prejudice, tradition. A schoolboy has his notion of right behavior, not
traceable to Hebrew or Christian ethics; so has the grown man, putting
his quaint ideas of "honor" and "sportsmanship" far beyond any religious
teaching. Our scorn of the tell-tale and the coward is not based on the
Bible, but on experience; our inhuman cruelty to "the woman who has
sinned" is based on mere ignorance and falsehood.

Take that fatuous "unwritten law" which allows a man to murder another
man and the wife who has offended what he calls "his honor." There is
nothing about that honor of his in old or new testament. It is a notion
of his own, which overrides, "Thou shalt not kill," as easily as "lying
like a gentleman" overrides, "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

Since we have shown such simple capacity to invent and enforce codes of
ethics, of questionable value, why not exercise our ingenuity in making
some better ones? We know more now.

As a matter of fact we do not want commands, we want instructions; we
want to know why things are wrong, which are the most wrong, and what
are their respective consequences. But if a distinct set of
prohibitions is preferred it is quite possible to make some that would
fit our present day conditions more closely than the Hebraic list.

It would be an interesting thing to have earnest people give their minds
to this and seek and search out for themselves a new light on everyday
ethics. As a starter here is a tentative list to think about; open to
alteration and addition by anyone.

And on what authority are these presented? some will ask. Not on
"authority" at all; but on law, natural law, the right and wrong
indicated being long since known to us. And are these set
presumptuously in the place of the Divine Command? will be tremblingly
inquired. By no means. The Ten stand as before--these are auxiliary
and merely suggestive of study.

1. Thou shalt learn that human love is a natural law and obey it as the
main condition of life: the service of man is the worship of God.

2. Thou shalt learn that the first duty of human life is to find thy
work and do it; for by labor ye live and grow and in it is worship,
pride and joy.

3. Thou shalt keep an open mind and use it, welcoming new knowledge and
new truth and giving them to all.

4. Thou shalt maintain liberty and justice for everyone.

5. Thou shalt maintain thy health and thy chastity. Temperance and
purity are required of all men.

6. Thou shalt not lie, break faith or cheat.

7. Thou shalt not gamble, nor live idly on the labor of others, nor by
any usury.

8. Thou shalt not steal; nor take from one another save in fair
exchange or as a free gift.

9. Thou shalt not do unnecessary hurt to any living thing.

10. Thou shalt not worship the past nor be content with the present,
for growth is the law of life.

THE MALINGERER

Exempt! She "does not have to work!"
So might one talk
Defending long, bedridden ease,
Weak yielding ankles, flaccid knees,
With, "I don't have to walk!"

Not have to work. Why not? Who gave
Free pass to you?
You're housed and fed and taught and dressed
By age-long labor of the rest--
Work other people do!

What do you give in honest pay
For clothes and food?
Then as a shield, defence, excuse,
She offers her exclusive use--
Her function--Motherhood!

Is motherhood a trade you make
A living by?
And does the wealth you so may use,
Squander, accumulate, abuse,
Show motherhood as high?

Or does the motherhood of those
Whose toil endures,
The farmers' and mechanics' wives,
Hard working servants all their lives--
Deserve less price than yours?

We're not exempt! Man's world runs on,
Motherless, wild;
Our servitude and long duress,
Our shameless, harem idleness,
Both fail to serve the child.

GENIUS, DOMESTIC AND MATERNAL

Most of us believe the human race to be the highest form of life--so
far. Not all of us know why. Because we do not properly realize the
causes of our superiority and swift advance, we do not take advantage of
them as we should.

Among various causes of human supremacy, none counts more than our
social gift of genius, the special power that is given to some more than
others, as part of social specialization. In social life, which is
organic, we do not find each one doing the same work, but some,
especially fitted for one thing, doing that thing for the service of the
others. No creature approaches us in the degree of our specialization,
and the crowning power of individual genius.

Because of this power we, as a whole, have benefited by the "genius for
mechanics," for invention, for discovery, for administration, and all
the commoner lines of work, as well as in the fine arts and professions.
The great surgeon is a genius as well as the great painter or poet, and
the world profits by the mighty works of these specialized servants.

For the development of genius we must allow it to specialize, of course.
The genius of Beethoven would have done us little good if he had passed
his life as a bookkeeper or dealer in ironware. The greatest of poets
could produce little poetry if he worked twelve hours a day in a rolling
mill. Genius may overcome some forms of opposition, but it must be
allowed to do the work it has a genius for--or none will be manifested.

We can easily see what a loss it would have been to the world if all
forms of genius had been checked and smothered; if we had no better
poetry than the average man writes when he is in love, no better surgery
than each of us could perform if he had to, no better music than the
tunes we make up to amuse ourselves, no better machinery than each of us
is capable of inventing. We know full well the limitation of the
average mind.

Now, suppose we had no better guide than that, no specialization at all,
no great financiers, no great administrators, no great astronomers or
architects, no great anything--simply the average mind, doing everything
for itself without any help from others. A nice, flat, low-grade world
we would have! Think of the houses, each of them "the house that Jack
built," and not a building on earth bigger or better than Jack alone
could make! No sciences, no arts, no skilled trades (one cannot develop
much special skill while doing everything for oneself); no teachers and
leaders of any sort--just the strength and ingenuity of each one of us,
trying to meet his own needs by his own efforts.

This would be stark savagery, not civilization.

All this is as true of women as it is of men; women also are human
beings, and members of society. Women have capacity for specialization,
for strong preference and high ability in certain kinds of work. But
since a man's world has viewed women only as females, since their
feminine functions were practically uniform, and since everything they
did was considered a feminine function, therefore women have not been
allowed to specialize and develop genius. All women were required to do
the same work (a) "keep house"; (b) "rear children."

These things we have at no time viewed as arts, trades, sciences or
professions; they were considered as feminine functions, and to be
performed by "instinct." Instinct is hereditary habit. It is developed
by the repeated action of identical conditions. It is a fine thing, for
animals, who have nothing else.

In humanity, instinct disappears in proportion as reason develops. Our
conditions vary, even more and rapidly, and we have to have something
much more rapid and alterable than instinct. No great man runs a
business by instinct; he learns how. For the performance of any social
service of importance, three powers are required. First, special
ability or genius; second, education; third, experience. When we are
served by special ability, education and experience, we are well served.
Any human business left without these is left at the bottom of the
ladder.

That is where we find the two great branches of human service left to
women, the domestic and the maternal. These universal services, of most
vital importance not only to our individual lives but to our social
development, are left to be performed by the average mind, by the
average woman, by instinct.

Our shoemaking is done by a shoemaker, our blacksmithing by a
blacksmith, our doctoring by a doctor; but our cooking is done not by a
cook, but by the woman a man happens to marry. She may, by rare chance,
have some genius for cooking; but even if she does, there is no
education and experience, save such as she may get from a cook book and
a lifetime of catering to one family. Quite aside from cooking, the
management of our daily living is a form of social service which should
be given by genius, education, and experience; and, like the cooking, it
is performed by any pretty girl a man secures in marriage.

This vast field of comfort or discomfort, ease or disease, happiness or
unhappiness, is cut off from the uplifting influence of specialization.

But it is in the tasks and cares we call "maternal" that our strange
restriction of normal development does most damage. We have lumped
under their large and generous term all the things done to the little
child--by his mother. What his father does for him is not so limited.

A child needs a house to live in--but his father does not have to build
it. A child needs shoes, hats, furniture, dishes, toys--his father does
not have to make them. A child needs, above all things,
instruction--his father does not have to give it.

No, the fathers, humanly specialized, developing great skill and making
constant progress, give to the world's children human advantages. A
partly civilized state, comparative peace, such and such religions and
systems of education, such and such fruits of the industry, trade,
commerce of the time, and the mighty works of genius; all these men give
to children, not individually, as parents, but collectively, as human
beings. The father who, as a savage, could give his children only a
father's services, now gives them the services of carpenters and masons,
farmers and graziers, doctors and lawyers, painters and glaziers,
butchers and bakers, soldiers and sailors--all the multiplied abilities
of modern specialization; while the mother is "only mother" still.

There are three exceptions: that most ancient division of labor which
provided the nurse, the next oldest which gave the servant, and the very
recent one which has lifted the world so wonderfully, the teacher. The
first two are still unspecialized. As any woman is supposed to be a
competent mother, so any woman is supposed to be a competent nursemaid
or housemaid. The teacher, however, has to learn his business, is a
skilled professional, and accomplishes much.

Teaching is a form of specialized motherhood. It gives "the mother
love"--an attribute of all female animals toward their own young--a
chance to grow to social form as a general love of children, and through
specialization, training, experience, it makes this love far more
useful. The teacher is to some degree a social mother, and the
advantage of this social motherhood is so great that it would seem
impossible to question it. Motherhood is common to all races of
humanity, down to the Bushmen, as well as to beasts and birds.
Education is found only with us; and in proportion to our stage of
social progress. Where there is no education but the mother's--no
progress. Where the teacher comes, and in proportion to the quantity
and quality of teachers, so advances civilization. In Africa there are
mothers, prolific and affectionate; in China, in India, everywhere. But
the nations with the most and best education are those which lead the
world.

Similarly in domestic service. Everywhere on earth, to the lowest
savages, we find the individual woman serving the individual man. "Home
cooking" varies with the home; from the oil-lamp of the Eskimo or
brazier of the Oriental, up to the more elaborate stoves and ranges of
to-day; but the art of cooking has grown through the men cooks, who made
it a business, and gave to this valuable form of social service the
advantages of genius, training and experience.

The whole people share in the development of architecture, of electric
transportation and communication, of science and invention. But no such
development is possible to the general public, in these basic
necessities of child care and house care, for the obvious reason above
stated, that these tasks are left to the unspecialized, untrained,
unexperienced average woman.

The child should have from birth the advantages of civilization. The
home should universally share in the progress of the age. To some
extent this now takes place, as far as the advance in child-culture can
spread and filter downward to the average mother, through the darkness
of ignorance and the obstacles of prejudice, and as far as public
statutes can enforce upon the private home the sanitary requirements of
the age. But this is a slow and pitifully small advance; we need
genius, for our children; genius to insure the health and happiness of
our daily lives.

Motherhood pure and simple, the bearing, nursing, loving and providing
for a child, is a feminine function, and should be common to all women.
But that "providing" does not have to be done in person. The mother has
long since deputed to the father the two main lines of child
care--defence and maintenance. She has allowed her responsibility to
shift in this matter on the ground that he could do it better than she
could.

In instruction she has accepted the services of the school, and of the
music-teacher, dancing-teacher, and other specialists; in case of
illness, she relies on the doctor; in daily use, she is glad to
patronize the shoemaker and hatter, seamstress and tailor. Yet in the
position of nurse and teacher to the baby, she admits no assistance
except a servant. But the first four or five years of a child's life
are of preeminent importance. Here above all is where he needs the
advantage of genius, training and experience, and is given but ignorant
affection and hired labor.

Some, to-day, driven to the wall by glaring facts such as these, that
babies die most of preventable diseases, and that their death rate is
greatest while they are most absolutely in their mother's care, do admit
the need of improvement. But they say, "The mother should engage this
specialist to help her in the home," or, "The mother must be taught."

If all normal women are to be mothers, as they should, how are any
specialists to be hired in private homes? A young nursemaid cannot
reach the heights of training and experience needed. As to teaching the
mother--_who is to teach her?_

Who understands this work? No one! And no one ever will until the
natural genius for child culture of some women is improved by training,
strengthened and deepened by experience, and recognized as social
service. Such women should be mothers themselves, of course, They would
be too few, by the laws of specialization, to be hired as private
nurses, and too expensive, if they were not too few. The great
Specialist in Child Culture should be as highly honored and paid as a
college president--more so; no place on earth is more important.

The average mother is not, and never can be, an eminent specialist, any
more than the average father can be. Averages do not attain genius.
Our children need genius in their service. "Where are we to get it?"
demand the carpers and doubters, clinging to their rocky fastnesses of
tradition and habit like so many limpets.