The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909 1910)

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62

The fuel all went into a small, solidly built power house, and came out
in light and heat and force for the whole square.

Diantha sighed in absolute appreciation.

"Fine, isn't it?" said Mr. Porne.

"How do you like the architecture?" asked Mrs. Porne.

"What do you think of my investment?" said Mrs. Weatherstone. Diantha
stopped in her tracks and looked from one to the other of them.

"Fact. I control the stock--I'm president of the Hotel del las Casas
Company. Our friends here have stock in it, too, and more that you
don't know. We think it's going to be a paying concern. But if you can
make it go, my dear, as I think you will, you can buy us all out and own
the whole outfit!"

It took some time to explain all this, but the facts were visible
enough.

"Nothing remarkable at all," said Mrs. Weatherstone. "Here's Astor with
three big hotels on his hands--why shouldn't I have one to play with?
And I've got to employ _somebody_ to manage it!"

*

Within a year of her marriage Diantha was at the head of this pleasing
Centre of Housekeeping. She kept the hotel itself so that it was a joy
to all its patrons; she kept the little houses homes of pure delight for
those who were so fortunate as to hold them; and she kept up her "c. f.
d." business till it grew so large she had to have quite a fleet of
delivery wagons.

Orchardina basked and prospered; its citizens found their homes happier
and less expensive than ever before, and its citizenesses began to wake
up and to do things worth while.

*

Two years, and there was a small Ross Warden born.

She loved it, nursed it, and ran her business at long range for some six
months. But then she brought nurse and child to the hotel with her,
placed them in the cool, airy nursery in the garden, and varied her busy
day with still hours by herself--the baby in her arms.

Back they came together before supper, and found unbroken joy and peace
in the quiet of home; but always in the background was the current of
Ross' unspoken disapproval.

Three years, four years.

There were three babies now; Diantha was a splendid woman of thirty,
handsome and strong, pre-eminently successful--and yet, there were times
when she found it in her heart to envy the most ordinary people who
loved and quarreled and made up in the little outlying ranch houses
along the road; they had nothing between them, at least.

Meantime in the friendly opportunities of Orchardina society, added to
by the unexampled possibilities of Las Casas (and they did not scorn
this hotel nor Diantha's position in it), the three older Miss Wardens
had married. Two of them preferred "the good old way," but one tried
the "d. s." and the "c. f. d." and liked them well.

Dora amazed and displeased her family, as soon as she was of age, by
frankly going over to Diantha's side and learning bookkeeping. She
became an excellent accountant and bade fair to become an expert manager
soon.

Ross had prospered in his work. It may be that the element of
dissatisfaction in his married life spurred him on, while the unusual
opportunities of his ranch allowed free effort. He had always held that
the "non-transmissability of acquired traits" was not established by any
number of curtailed mice or crop-eared rats. "A mutilation is not an
acquired trait," he protested. "An acquired trait is one gained by
exercise; it modifies the whole organism. It must have an effect on the
race. We expect the sons of a line of soldiers to inherit their
fathers' courage--perhaps his habit of obedience--but not his wooden
leg."

To establish his views he selected from a fine family of guinea-pigs two
pair; set the one, Pair A, in conditions of ordinary guinea-pig bliss,
and subjected the other, Pair B, to a course of discipline. They were
trained to run. They, and their descendants after them, pair following
on pair; first with slow-turning wheels as in squirrel cages, the wheel
inexorably going, machine-driven, and the luckless little gluttons
having to move on, for gradually increasing periods of time, at
gradually increasing speeds. Pair A and their progeny were sheltered
and fed, but the rod was spared; Pair B were as the guests at
"Muldoon's"--they had to exercise. With scientific patience and
ingenuity, he devised mechanical surroundings which made them jump
increasing spaces, which made them run always a little faster and a
little farther; and he kept a record as carefully as if these little
sheds were racing stables for a king.

Several centuries of guinea-pig time went by; generation after
generation of healthy guinea-pigs passed under his modifying hands; and
after some five years he had in one small yard a fine group of the
descendants of his gall-fed pair, and in another the offspring of the
trained ones; nimble, swift, as different from the first as the
razor-backed pig of the forest from the fatted porkers in the sty. He
set them to race--the young untrained specimens of these distant
cousins--and the hare ran away from the tortoise completely.

Great zoologists and biologists came to see him, studied, fingered,
poked, and examined the records; argued and disbelieved--and saw them
run.

"It is natural selection," they said. "It profited them to run."

"Not at all," said he. "They were fed and cared for alike, with no gain
from running."

"It was artificial selection," they said. "You picked out the speediest
for your training."

"Not at all," said he. "I took always any healthy pair from the trained
parents and from the untrained ones--quite late in life, you understand,
as guinea-pigs go."

Anyhow, there were the pigs; and he took little specialized piglets
scarce weaned, and pitted them against piglets of the untrained lot--and
they outran them in a race for "Mama." Wherefore Mr. Ross Warden found
himself famous of a sudden; and all over the scientific world the
Wiesmanian controversy raged anew. He was invited to deliver a lecture
before some most learned societies abroad, and in several important
centers at home, and went, rejoicing.

Diantha was glad for him from the bottom of her heart, and proud of him
through and through. She thoroughly appreciated his sturdy opposition
to such a weight of authority; his long patience, his careful, steady
work. She was left in full swing with her big business, busy and
successful, honored and liked by all the town--practically--and quite
independent of the small fraction which still disapproved. Some people
always will. She was happy, too, in her babies--very happy.

The Hotel del las Casas was a triumph.

Diantha owned it now, and Mrs. Weatherstone built others, in other
places, at a large profit.

Mrs. Warden went to live with Cora in the town. Cora had more time to
entertain her--as she was the one who profited by her sister-in-law's
general services.

Diantha sat in friendly talk with Mrs. Weatherstone one quiet day, and
admitted that she had no cause for complaint.

"And yet--?" said her friend.

Young Mrs. Warden smiled. "There's no keeping anything from you, is
there? Yes--you're right. I'm not quite satisfied. I suppose I ought
not to care--but you see, I love him so! I want him to _approve_ of
me!--not just put up with it, and bear it! I want him to _feel_ with
me--to care. It is awful to know that all this big life of mine is just
a mistake to him--that he condemns it in his heart."

"But you knew this from the beginning, my dear, didn't you?"

"Yes--I knew it--but it is different now. You know when you are
_married_--"

Mrs. Weatherstone looked far away through the wide window. "I do know,"
she said.

Diantha reached a strong hand to clasp her friend's. "I wish I could
give it to you," she said. "You have done so much for me! So much!
You have poured out your money like water!"

"My money! Well I like that!" said Mrs. Weatherstone. "I have taken my
money out of five and seven per cent investments, and put it into ten
per cent ones, that's all. Shall I never make you realize that I am a
richer woman because of you, Diantha Bell Warden! So don't try to be
grateful--I won't have it! Your work has _paid_ remember--paid me as
well as you; and lots of other folks beside. You know there are
eighteen good imitations of Union House running now, in different
cities, and three 'Las Casas!' all succeeding--and the papers are
talking about the dangers of a Cooked Food Trust!"

They were friends old and tried, and happy in mutual affection. Diantha
had many now, though none quite so dear. Her parents were
contented--her brother and sister doing well--her children throve and
grew and found Mama a joy they never had enough of.

Yet still in her heart of hearts she was not wholly happy.

*

Then one night came by the last mail, a thick letter from Ross--thicker
than usual. She opened it in her room alone, their room--to which they
had come so joyously five years ago.

He told her of his journeying, his lectures, his controversies and
triumphs; rather briefly--and then:

"My darling, I have learned something at last, on my travels, which will
interest you, I fancy, more than the potential speed of all the
guinea-pigs in the world, and its transmissability.

"From what I hear about you in foreign lands; from what I read about you
wherever I go; and, even more, from what I see, as a visitor, in many
families; I have at last begun to grasp the nature and importance of
your work.

"As a man of science I must accept any truth when it is once clearly
seen; and, though I've been a long time about it, I do see at last what
brave, strong, valuable work you have been doing for the world. Doing
it scientifically, too. Your figures are quoted, your records studied,
your example followed. You have established certain truths in the
business of living which are of importance to the race. As a student I
recognize and appreciate your work. As man to man I'm proud of
you--tremendously proud of you. As your husband! Ah! my love! I am
coming back to you--coming soon, coming with my Whole Heart, Yours!
Just wait, My Darling, till I get back to you!

"Your Lover and Husband."

Diantha held the letter close, with hands that shook a little. She
kissed it--kissed it hard, over and over--not improving its appearance
as a piece of polite correspondence.

Then she gave way to an overmastering burst of feeling, and knelt down
by the wide bed, burying her face there, the letter still held fast. It
was a funny prayer, if any human ear had heard it.

"Thank you!" was all she said, with long, deep sobbing sighs between.
"Thank you!--O--thank you!"

The End

OUR OVERWORKED INSTINCTS

Instinct is a good thing in its place. We, in common with other
animals, have instincts, especially in our racial youth; but as reason
waxes, instinct wanes. At present, thanks to the development of the
brain and even the beginnings of education, we have few instincts left.
What we have, we work pretty hard.

Among both men and women, the most primal instincts are still deified.
The instinct of self-preservation, which in every species is promptly
subordinated to race preservation, we solemnly hail as "Nature's First
Law!" It may be first, as creeping comes before walking, but is no more
honorable for that!

Then there is the sex instinct, a good second to this first, an ancient,
useful and generally pleasant incentive to action; but we, in our
simplicity, have set up this contributive impulse as the Lord of Life.
"The Life Force," we call it; when it is only one form of expression for
the Life Force, and a limited one.

Self-preservation does very well to keep the cards on the table, and
race preservation goes on giving us a new deal, but neither of them
alone, nor both of them together, is The Game.

What we are really here for is Growth, Improvement, Progress--and we
have a deep and UNIVERSAL instinct towards that, too; but little is said
about it! It is our primitive animal instincts we are so proud of: our
social instincts we scarcely recognize.

Men have the instinct of combat, a very useful thing in its place. But
in their exclusive preoccupation of being men, they have assumed this
masculine proclivity to be something of universal importance and
solemnly assure us that "Life is a Struggle."

Life is a Growth, a Progress, a Journey, if you will. It may be
interrupted by having.to stop and struggle, but the struggling is at its
best only incidental. Nature, seeking always the line of least
resistance, avoids opposition when possible: the masculine instinct of
combat courts it, and he idealizes his own instincts.

So also the woman. She has her one, great original maternal instinct;
and both man and woman worship it. They assume something intrinsically
holy in the feelings of a mother, and something superlatively
efficacious in her ministrations. Motherhood is a beautiful and useful
institution, but it is not enough to take right care of children.

Every furry animal has a mother: every naked savage has a mother: every
ignorant peasant has a mother; and every mother has a compelling
instinct which causes her to love and protect her young. But furry
animal, naked savage, ignorant peasant they remain for all of their
mothers.

Evolution needs more than mothers! It is not enough to live, not enough
to reproduce one's kind: we have to change, progress, improve--and
instinct is no help here. Instinct is nothing but inherited habit. It
always dates a long way behind us. It is never any guide in new
conditions or a incentive to betterment. Instinct holds us in chains to
the past; or it would if it could.

In human life--especially in modern human life--conditions change so
rapidly that we have scant time to form individual habits, much less
develop instincts. What we have left are very old ones, prehuman or
savage in origin and mostly applying to physical relations. Suppose we
recognize these early assistants, regard them with respect as once
useful, and lay them where they belong--on the shelf.

Instinct is no guide to proper food to-day: we have to use our brains
and learn what is right to eat. It is no guide to proper clothing--as
witness the unhealthy, uncomfortable, unbeautiful garments we wear. It
is no guide to success in any kind of human industry, business, science
or art. These things have to be learned: they do not come "by
instinct." It is no suitable guardian of our behavior, either in public
or private: all good manners and established government are achieved at
considerable expense to "our natural instinct." And assuredly our
instincts are not reliable as leaders in education, religion or
morality.

Why then, seeing the inadequacy of instinct in all these lines, are we
so sure of its infallible guidance in the care of babies? A modern
human mother has far less instinct to guide her than her arboreal
ancestors: the real advantage her babies profit by are obtained through
the development of the father--in reason, in knowledge, in skill, in the
prosperity and progress of the world he makes.

He prepares for his children a Home, a School, a Church, a Government, a
Nation: he provides them all manufactured articles--each last and least
dish, utensil, piece of furniture, tool, weapon, safeguard, convenience,
ship, bridge, plaything, jewel. He makes the world.

Into this world of reason, knowledge, skill, training and experience
comes the baby, richer in each generation by a new and improved father.
He is born and cherished, however, by the same kind of mother, bringing
to her tremendous task no new tool worthy of the time, but merely the
same old dwindling, overworked "maternal instinct."

The children of today need mothers of today, and they must begin to
supplement their primitive impulse by the very fullest, highest, richest
powers of the human intellect and the human heart--the real human heart,
which cannot be satisfied until every child on earth is more than
mothered.

LOVE'S HIGHEST

Love came on earth, woke, laughed and began his dominion.
Strong? Just the Force of Creation. Glad? Merely Joy of Existence.
Love cast about for Expression--for work, which is Love in Expression,
And the fluctuant tissues of life began burgeoning, blooming and
fruiting.
Up through dim ages laughed Love, flowing through life like a fountain,
Pouring new forms and yet newer, filling each form with new passion,
Playing with lives like a juggler, life after life, never dropping;
Till a new form was developed: Humanity came: it was daylight.

Love laughed aloud, rose in splendor, offered up hymns of thanksgiving.
"Now I have room for expression! Here is a vehicle worthy!
Life that is lovelier far than all these poor blossoms and creatures;
Life that can grow on forever, unlimited, changeful, immortal.
Here I can riot and run through a thousand warm hearts in a moment,
I can flash into glories of art! I can flow into marvels of music!
I can stand in Cathedrals and Towers, and sit splendid, serene, in fair
cities!
These exquisite, limitless beings shall radiate love from their faces,
Shall uphold it with emulous arms, and scatter it wide with their
fingers,
Shall build me, through ages and ages, new forms and new fields of
expression!
I have worked through the mosses and grasses till the world was all
sweetened with roses,
Warm-clothed with the soft-spreading forests, and fed with ripe wheat
and red apples;
I have worked with fur-children and feathered, till they knew the
delights of my kingdom;
I have shown, thousand-fold, throughout Nature, my
Masterpiece--Glory--the Mother!
Now love shall pour like the sunlight, shall cover the earth like the
ocean,
Love encompassing all, as the air does, not only in fragrance and color,
Not only in Nature and Mothers, but now, in this Crown of Creation--
Latest fruit of the Tree Everlasting, this myriad-featured fulfillment--
With unlimited force I shall fill them, in unnumbered new voices be
uttered,
By millions and millions and millions they shall pour out their love in
their labor,
And the millions shall love one another.

THE PERMANENT CHILD

I sat watching my baby, my little son, who was asleep--a year old child,
fair and strong; and it did not seem a day since he was a tiny red
creature, helpless and faintly groping.

As I looked and loved, I thought how it would not seem another day till
he was a sturdy boy--a tall youth--a man grown; and I should lose my
baby forever!

Then I thought of all the other mothers whose babies were flying from
them by day and night--growing up, pushing away; of how we loved our
babies and could not keep them even if we would. And I seemed to see
the million babies of mankind all over the earth--black and white and
yellow and brown, well-loved little ones of a million mothers--breaking
into life like bubbles, blossoming, sprouting, coming into being
everywhere, every hour, every minute, every second--this budding glory
of babyhood--all over the earth: human life springing up in babies, like
the Spring grass. And they fled as fast as they came. The days flew
by--the weeks, the months, the years--and the babies changes and grew
like a transformation scene; taking new shape, new size, new power;
disappearing as I watched them, and becoming boys and girls, men and
women.

But while I watched this millionfold swift flutter of unceasing change,
suddenly something happened to it. The million and million all seemed
to coalesce and become one--one little child; and the swift flutter of
change grew vague and faint around it, so that although there was a soft
uncertainty around the child and a half-visible smoke of growing forms
arising from it, yet that small, dimpled shape remained, a little
uncertain in outline as in a composite photograph, but steady and
changeless as to the eyes--the clear, deep, searching eyes of a child.

My whole heart yearned to him: something rose and swelled within me,
deeper, wider, stronger than anything I had ever felt before. I loved
him as I had never loved my own, as I had never known I could love--and
suddenly I felt that I too had changed, and that I was now not only a
mother but THE MOTHER; and I saw what it was I loved: it was THE CHILD.
And I longed to feed and guard and shelter and serve that Child as might
a million mothers made into one, with all the sweet helplessness, all
the glorious promise of a million children made one for her to love.

Then as I watched those deep child eyes: as my heart swelled and ached
with that great love: I saw--I felt--I knew--what had been borne, and
still was borne, by this; The Child in human history. I saw the savage
mother and the savage father caring for the children the best they knew,
with all the torture and distortion, all the cruel initiations, all the
black, blind superstitions of those old times, to the crowning horror of
infant sacrifice when the child went through the fire to Moloch--for his
parents' sins!--the living, loving, helpless child, sacrificed by his
parents. I saw the bent skull of the Flathead Indian child, the
crippled feet of the Chinese girl child, the age-long, hideous life and
death of the child-wife and the child-widow of Hindoostan. I saw The
Child in Sparta, and The Child in Rome, The Child in the Dark Ages, The
Child scourged, imprisoned, starved, its mind filled with all manner of
black falsehoods, its body misunderstood, and maltreated; and my heart
ached, and I cried out, "Were there no Mothers for those children?"

And then I saw behind The Child, The Mother visible--the vague,
composite, mighty form of a million mothers made as one--but her heart
was my heart to feel and know.

I said to her--aching for her yet full of awful blame--"Could you not
have saved The Child from this?"

And she wrung her hands. "I loved my child," she said.

"Loved? Loved?" I cried. "Could Love allow all this? Could Love not
guard and feed, could Love not teach and save?"

"Alas, no!" she said. "I gave Love: it was all I had. I had neither
Knowledge nor Freedom, nor Wisdom, nor Power: and I could not guard nor
feed nor teach nor save. But I could love and I could serve--and I
could suffer."

And the eyes of The Child, steady, clear, deep as all Time, were on me;
and I felt his pain.

Then the moving screen of The Past was swept away and The Present spread
and widened before me 'till I saw the whole wide range of Earth in all
its starlit glory and sunlit joy--and everywhere The Child. Also
everywhere The Mother--still loving, still serving, still suffering,
still without Knowledge or Wisdom or Freedom or Power, still unable to
guard or feed or teach or save.

Disease seized upon The Child, disease planted in his bones and blood by
his Father while the Mother, blind and helpless, became partner in this
Unnatural Crime. Disease preyed upon The Child, disease from ignorance
and disease from poverty and disease from pride; and the Doctors strove
with the diseases--and they strove also with the Mothers, but in vain.

Poverty preyed upon The Child: he suffered for lack of life's
necessities, for decency and comfort, for peace and beauty and
cleanliness. And the Fathers strove with Poverty. But the Mothers
remained alone--and loved and served and suffered.

Labor preyed upon The Child. Forced Labor, Premature Labor, hard,
grinding, destructive Labor such as wastes the tissues of strong men;
and The Child went down before it like grass before the scythe, for
Childhood is meant for Growth and not for Waste and Toil. The Mind of
The Child was dulled, the Body of The Child was stunted and crippled and
broken: accidents fell upon him, with the Special Diseases of Labor and
Premature Death.

And I cried out to The Mother--that mighty figure I saw dimly there
behind The Child--to save The Child. But there replied only the faint,
piping voices of a million mothers, isolated and alone, each sorrowing
one heart-full for one child--and sorrowing in vain.

"My child is dead!" said one, and wept.

"Mine is a cripple!" said another, and wept.

"Mine is an idiot!" said another, and wept.

"Mine is stunted by the mill work!" said another, and wept.

"Mine is ignorant and grows vicious because of our poverty and the
vileness wherein we must live!" said another, and wept.

And I cried to them again, "But you are millions upon millions--and you
are Mothers! And you can have today--if you will but take it--Wisdom
and Freedom and Knowledge and Power, and you can feed and teach and
guard and save. And if you do not, the blood of The Child is on your
hands! And The Child is The World--the Whole World--a Baby World--and
yours!"

But the great picture faded and fled away. The Child disappeared and
left first the flickering flight of a million babies like the leaves of
a forest, and then but one, my child, asleep before me. That vague and
mighty figure of The Mother disappeared, leaving first the sad-eyed
faces of a million mothers--loving, serving and suffering--and then
nothing but myself and my child.

But in my heart remained an emptiness that nothing could fill. I caught
my baby to my heart--but he was not enough! I had seen and I had loved
the Child--the Baby World.