The Greatest Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Oh, yes, plenty; better than ever were written. You’ll find it splendidly worth while to read quite a few of them while you’re getting oriented . . . Well, you want a kind of running, historic sketch?”
“Yes. Give me the outlines — just the heads, as it were. You see, my dear, it is not easy to get readjusted even to the old things, and there are so many new ones ”
We were in our steamer chairs, most people dozing after their midday meal. She reached over and took my hand in hers, and held it tight. It was marvelously comforting, this one live visible link between what was forever past and this uncertain future. But for her, even those old, old days might have flickered and seemed doubtful — I should have felt like one swimming under water and not knowing, which way was up. She gave me solid ground underfoot at any rate. Whatever her place might be in this New World, she had talked to me only of the old one.
In these long, quiet, restful days, she had revived in my mind the pleasant memories of our childhood together; our little Southern home; our patient, restrained Northern mother and the fine education she gave her school-less little ones; our high-minded — and, alas, narrow-minded — father, handsome, courteous, inflexible. Under Nellie’s gentle leading, my long unused memory-cells had revived like rain-washed leaves, and my past life had, at last, grown clear and steady.
My college life; my old chum, Granger, who had visited us once; our neighbors and relations; little gold-haired Cousin Drusilla, whom I, in ten years proud seniority, had teased as a baby, played with and tyrannized over as a confiding child, and kissed good-bye — a slim, startled little figure — when I left for Asia.
Nellie had always spoken of things as I remembered them, and avoided adroitly, or quietly refused to discuss, their new aspects.
I think she was right — at first.
“Out with it!” said I. “Come — Have we adopted Socialism?” I braced myself for the answer.
“Socialism? Oh — why, yes. I think we did. But that was twenty years ago.”
“And it didn’t last? You’ve proved the impracticable folly of it? You've discarded it?”
I sat up straight, very eager.
“Why, no — ” said Nellie. “It’s very hard to put these new things into old words — We’ve got beyond it.”
“Beyond Socialism! Not — not — Anarchy?”
“Oh, bless you, no; no indeed! We understand better what socialism meant, that’s all. We have more, much more, than it ever asked; but we don’t call it that.”
I did not understand.
“It’s like this,” she said. “Suppose you had left a friend in the throes of a long, tempestuous’ courtship, full of ardor, of keen joy, and keener anticipation. Then, returning, you say to your friend, ‘Do you still have courtship?’ And he says, ‘Why no, I’m married.’ It’s not that he has discarded it, proved it’s impracticable folly. He had to have it — he liked it — but he’s got beyond it.”
“Go on and elucidate,” I said. “I don’t quite follow your parable.”
She considered a bit.
“Well, here’s a more direct parallel. Back in the 18th century, the world was wild about Democracy — Democracy was going to do all things for all men. Then, with prodigious struggles, they acquired some Democracy — set it going. It was a good thing. But it took time. It grew. It had difficulties. In the next century, there was less talk about all the heavenly results of Democracy, and more definite efforts to make it work.”
This was clearer.
“You mean,” I followed her slowly.
“That what was called socialism was attained — and you’ve been improving upon it?”
“Exactly, Brother, ‘you are on’ — as we used to say. But even that’s not the main step.”
“No? What else?”
“Only a New Religion.”
I showed my disappointment. Nellie watched my face silently. She laughed. She even kissed me.
“John” said she, “I could make vast sums by exhibiting you to psychologists! as An Extinct Species of Mind. You’d draw better than a Woolly Mammoth.”
I smiled wryly; and she squeezed my hand. “Might as well make a joke of it, Old Man — you’ve got to get used to it, and ‘the sooner the quicker!’ ”
“All right — Go ahead with your New Religion.”
She sat back in her chair with an expression of amused retrospection.
“I had forgotten,” she said, “I had really forgotten. We didn’t use to think much of religion, did we?”
“Father did,” said I.
“No, not even Father and his kind — they only used it as a — what was the old joke? a patent fire escape! Nobody appreciated Religion!”
“They spent much time and money on it,” I suggested.
“That’s not appreciation!”
“Well, come on with the story. Did you have another Incarnation of any body?”
“You might call it that,” Nellie allowed, her voice growing quietly earnest, “We certainly had somebody with an unmistakable Power.”
This did not interest me at all. I hated to see Nellie looking so sweetly solemn over her “New Religion,” In the not unnatural reaction of a minister’s son, rigidly reared, I had had small use for religion of any sort. As a scholar I had studied them all, and felt as little reverence for the ancient ones as for the shifty mushroom crop of new sects and schools of thought with which the country teemed in my time.
“Now, look here, John,” said she at length, “I’ve been watching you pretty closely and I think you’re equal to a considerable mental effort — In one way, it may be easier for you, just because you’ve not seen a bit of it — anyhow, you’ve got to face it. Our world has changed in these thirty years, more than the change between what it used to be and what people used to imagine about Heaven. Here is the first thing you’ve got to do — mentally. You must understand, clearly, in your human consciousness, that the objection and distaste you feel is only in your personal consciousness. Everything is better; there is far more comfort, pleasure, peace of mind; a richer swifter growth, a higher happier life in every way; and yet, you won’t like it because your — ” she seemed to hesitate for a word, now and then; as one trying to translate, “reactions are all tuned to earlier con ditions. If you can understand this and see over your own personal — attitudes it will not be long before a real convincing sense of joy, of life, will follow the intellectual perception that things are better.”
“Hold on,” I said, “Let me chew on that a little.”
“As if,” I presently suggested, “as if I’d left a home that was poor and dirty and crowded, with a pair of quarrelsome inefficient parents — drunken and abusive, maybe, and a lot of horrid, wrangling, selfish, little brothers and sisters — and woke up one fine morning in a great clean beautiful house — richly furnished — full of a lot of angels — who were total strangers?”
“Exactly!” she cried. “Hurrah for you, Johnnie, you couldn’t have defined it better.”
“I don’t like it,” said I. “I’d rather have my old home and my own family than all the princely palaces and amiable angels you could dream of in a hundred years.”
“Mother had an old story-book by a New England author,” Nellie quietly remarked, “where somebody said, ‘You can’t always have your “druthers” ‘ — she used to quote it to me when I was little and complained that things were not as I wanted them. John, dear, please remember that the new people in the new world find it ‘like