THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: Short Stories, Novels, Poems & Essays. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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were they before, pray?”
“Only female beings.”
“Female human beings, of course,” said I.
“Yes; a little human, but mostly female. Now they are mostly human. It is a great change.”
“I don’t follow you. Aren’t they still wives and mothers?”
“They are still mothers — far more so than they were before, as a matter of fact; but as to being wives — there’s a difference.”
I was displeased, and showed it.
“Well, is it Polygamy, or Polyandry, or Trial Marriages, or what?”
Owen gazed at me with an expression very like Nellie’s.
“There it is,” he said. “You can only think about women in some sort of relation to men, of a change in marriage relations as merely a change in kind; whereas what has happened is a change in degree. We still have monogamous marriages, on a much purer and more lasting plane than a generation ago; but the word ‘wife’ does not mean what it used to.”
“Go on — I can’t follow you at all.”
“A ‘wife’ used to be a possession; ‘wilt thou be mine?’ said the lover, and the wife was his.”
“Well — whose else is she now?” I asked with some sharpness.
“She does not ‘belong’ to anyone in that old sense. She is the wife of her husband in that she is his true lover, and that their marriage is legally recorded; but her life and work does not belong to him. He has no right to her ‘services’ any more. A woman who is in a business — like Hallie, for instance — does not give it up when she marries.”
I stopped him. “What! Isn’t Hallie married?”
“No — not yet.”
“But — that is her flat?” Yes; why not?” He laughed at me. You see, you can’t imagine a woman having a home of her own. Hallie is twenty-three. She won’t marry for some years, probably; but she has her position and is doing excellent work. It’s only a minor inspectorship, but she likes it. Why shouldn’t she have a home?”
Why doesn’t she have it with you?” Because I like to live with my wife. Her business, and mine, are in Michigan; Hallie’s in New York.”
“And when she marries she keeps on being an inspector?” I queried.
“Precisely. The man who marries that young woman will have much happiness, but he will not ‘own’ her, and she will not be his wife in the sense of a servant. She will not darn his socks or cook his meals. Why should she?” “Will she not nurse his babies?” “No; she will nurse her babies — their babies, not ‘his’ merely.”
“And keep on being an inspector?” “And keep on being an inspector — for four hours a day — in two shifts. Not a bit more difficult than cooking, my dear boy.” “But — she will not be with her children — ” “She will be with her children twenty hours out of the twenty-four — if she wants to. But Hallie’s not specially good with children. . . . You see, John, the women have specialized — even in motherhood.” Then he went on at considerable length to show how there had arisen a recognition of far more efficient motherhood than was being given; that those women best fitted for the work had given eager, devoted lives to it and built up a new science of Humaniculture; that no woman was allowed to care for her children without proof of capacity. “Allowed by whom?” I put in.
“By the other women — the Department of Child Culture — the Government.”
“And the fathers — do they submit to this, tamely?”
“No; they cheerfully agree and approve. Absolutely the biggest thing that has happened, some of us think, is that new recognition of the importance of childhood. We are raising better people now.”
I was silent for a while, pulling up bits of grass and snapping small sticks into inch pieces.
“There was a good deal of talk about Eugenics, I remember,” I said at last, “and — what was that thing? Endowment of Motherhood?”
“Yes — man’s talk,” Owen . explained. “You see, John, we couldn’t look at women but in one way — in the old days; it was all a question of sex with us — inevitably, we being males. Our whole idea of improvement was in better breeding; our whole idea of motherhood was in each woman’s devoting her whole life to her own children. That turbid freshet of an Englishman, Wells, who did so much to stir his generation, said
‘I am wholly feminist’ — and he was I He saw women only as females and wanted them endowed as such. He was never able to see them as human beings and amply competent to take care of themselves.
“Now, our women, getting hold of this idea that they really are human creatures, simply blossomed forth in new efficiency. They specialized the food business — Hallie’s right about the importance of that — and then they specialized the baby business. All .women who wish to, have babies; but if they wish to take care of them they must show a diploma.”
I looked at him. I didn’t like it — but what difference did that make? I had died thirty years ago, it appeared.
“A diploma for motherhood!” I repeated; but he corrected me.
“Not at all. Any woman can be a mother — if she’s normal. I said she had to have a diploma as a child-culturist — quite a different matter.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“No, I suppose not. I didn’t, once,” he said. “Any and every mother was supposed to be competent to ‘raise’ children — and look at the kind of people we raised! You see, we are beginning to learn — just beginning. You needn’t imagine that we are in a state of perfection — there are more new projects up for discussion than ever before. We’ve only made a start. The consequences, so far, are so good that we are boiling over with propositions for future steps.”
“Go on about the women,” I said. “I want to know the worst and become resigned.”
“There’s nothing very bad to tell,” he continued cheerfully. “When a girl is born she is treated in all ways as if she was a boy; there is no hint made in any distinction between them except in the perfectly open physiological instruction as to their future duties. Children, young humans, grow up under precisely the same conditions. I speak, of course, of the most advanced people — there are still backward places — there’s plenty to do yet.
“Then the growing girls are taught of their place and power as mothers — and they have tremendously high ideals. That’s what has done so much to raise the standard in men. It came hard, but it worked.”
I raised my head with keen interest, remarking, “I’ve glimpsed a sort of Iron hand in a velvet glove back of all this. What did they do?”
Owen looked rather grim for a moment.
“The worst of it was twenty or twenty-five years back. Most of those men are dead. That new religious movement stirred the socio-ethical sense to sudden power; it coincided with the women’s political movement, urging measures for social improvement; its enormous spread, both by preaching and literature, lit up the whole community with new facts, ideas and feelings. Health — physical purity — was made a practical ideal. The young women learned the proportion of men with syphilis and gonorrhoea and decided it was wrong to marry them. That was enough. They passed laws in every State requiring a clean bill of health with every marriage license. Diseased men had to die bachelors — that’s all.”
“And did men submit to legislation like that?” I protested.
“Why not? It was so patently for the protection of the race — of the family — of the women and children. Women were solid for it, of course — And all the best men with them. To oppose it was almost a confession of guilt