Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman [best books to read ever TXT] 📗

compatible with the existence of a neglect of national interests, a dishonesty, a cold indifference to the suffering of millions. Patriotism is largely pride, and very largely combativeness. Patriotism generally has a chip on its shoulder.

This country had no other country to measure itself by⁠—save the few poor savages far below, with whom they had no contact.

They loved their country because it was their nursery, playground, and workshop⁠—theirs and their children’s. They were proud of it as a workshop, proud of their record of ever-increasing efficiency; they had made a pleasant garden of it, a very practical little heaven; but most of all they valued it⁠—and here it is hard for us to understand them⁠—as a cultural environment for their children.

That, of course, is the keynote of the whole distinction⁠—their children.

From those first breathlessly guarded, half-adored race mothers, all up the ascending line, they had this dominant thought of building up a great race through the children.

All the surrendering devotion our women have put into their private families, these women put into their country and race. All the loyalty and service men expect of wives, they gave, not singly to men, but collectively to one another.

And the mother instinct, with us so painfully intense, so thwarted by conditions, so concentrated in personal devotion to a few, so bitterly hurt by death, disease, or barrenness, and even by the mere growth of the children, leaving the mother alone in her empty nest⁠—all this feeling with them flowed out in a strong, wide current, unbroken through the generations, deepening and widening through the years, including every child in all the land.

With their united power and wisdom, they had studied and overcome the “diseases of childhood”⁠—their children had none.

They had faced the problems of education and so solved them that their children grew up as naturally as young trees; learning through every sense; taught continuously but unconsciously⁠—never knowing they were being educated.

In fact, they did not use the word as we do. Their idea of education was the special training they took, when half grown up, under experts. Then the eager young minds fairly flung themselves on their chosen subjects, and acquired with an ease, a breadth, a grasp, at which I never ceased to wonder.

But the babies and little children never felt the pressure of that “forcible feeding” of the mind that we call “education.” Of this, more later.

IX Our Relations and Theirs

What I’m trying to show here is that with these women the whole relationship of life counted in a glad, eager growing-up to join the ranks of workers in the line best loved; a deep, tender reverence for one’s own mother⁠—too deep for them to speak of freely⁠—and beyond that, the whole, free, wide range of sisterhood, the splendid service of the country, and friendships.

To these women we came, filled with the ideas, convictions, traditions, of our culture, and undertook to rouse in them the emotions which⁠—to us⁠—seemed proper.

However much, or little, of true sex-feeling there was between us, it phrased itself in their minds in terms of friendship, the one purely personal love they knew, and of ultimate parentage. Visibly we were not mothers, nor children, nor compatriots; so, if they loved us, we must be friends.

That we should pair off together in our courting days was natural to them; that we three should remain much together, as they did themselves, was also natural. We had as yet no work, so we hung about them in their forest tasks; that was natural, too.

But when we began to talk about each couple having “homes” of our own, they could not understand it.

“Our work takes us all around the country,” explained Celis. “We cannot live in one place all the time.”

“We are together now,” urged Alima, looking proudly at Terry’s stalwart nearness. (This was one of the times when they were “on,” though presently “off” again.)

“It’s not the same thing at all,” he insisted. “A man wants a home of his own, with his wife and family in it.”

“Staying in it? All the time?” asked Ellador. “Not imprisoned, surely!”

“Of course not! Living there⁠—naturally,” he answered.

“What does she do there⁠—all the time?” Alima demanded. “What is her work?”

Then Terry patiently explained again that our women did not work⁠—with reservations.

“But what do they do⁠—if they have no work?” she persisted.

“They take care of the home⁠—and the children.”

“At the same time?” asked Ellador.

“Why yes. The children play about, and the mother has charge of it all. There are servants, of course.”

It seemed so obvious, so natural to Terry, that he always grew impatient; but the girls were honestly anxious to understand.

“How many children do your women have?” Alima had her notebook out now, and a rather firm set of lip. Terry began to dodge.

“There is no set number, my dear,” he explained. “Some have more, some have less.”

“Some have none at all,” I put in mischievously.

They pounced on this admission and soon wrung from us the general fact that those women who had the most children had the least servants, and those who had the most servants had the least children.

“There!” triumphed Alima. “One or two or no children, and three or four servants. Now what do those women do?”

We explained as best we might. We talked of “social duties,” disingenuously banking on their not interpreting the words as we did; we talked of hospitality, entertainment, and various “interests.” All the time we knew that to these large-minded women whose whole mental outlook was so collective, the limitations of a wholly personal life were inconceivable.

“We cannot really understand it,” Ellador concluded. “We are only half a people. We have our woman-ways and they have their man-ways and their both-ways. We have worked out a system of living which is, of course, limited. They must have a broader, richer, better one. I should like to see it.”

“You shall, dearest,” I whispered.

“There’s nothing to smoke,” complained Terry. He was in the midst of a prolonged quarrel with Alima, and needed