The personality of Edith Leete had naturally impressed me strongly ever
since I had come, in so strange a manner, to be an inmate of her
father's house, and it was to be expected that after what had happened
the night previous, I should be more than ever preoccupied with
thoughts of her. From the first I had been struck with the air of
serene frankness and ingenuous directness, more like that of a noble
and innocent boy than any girl I had ever known, which characterized
her. I was curious to know how far this charming quality might be
peculiar to herself, and how far possibly a result of alterations in
the social position of women which might have taken place since my
time. Finding an opportunity that day, when alone with Dr. Leete, I
turned the conversation in that direction.
"I suppose," I said, "that women nowadays, having been relieved of the
burden of housework, have no employment but the cultivation of their
charms and graces."
"So far as we men are concerned," replied Dr. Leete, "we should
consider that they amply paid their way, to use one of your forms of
expression, if they confined themselves to that occupation, but you may
be very sure that they have quite too much spirit to consent to be mere
beneficiaries of society, even as a return for ornamenting it. They
did, indeed, welcome their riddance from housework, because that was
not only exceptionally wearing in itself, but also wasteful, in the
extreme, of energy, as compared with the cooperative plan; but they
accepted relief from that sort of work only that they might contribute
in other and more effectual, as well as more agreeable, ways to the
common weal. Our women, as well as our men, are members of the
industrial army, and leave it only when maternal duties claim them. The
result is that most women, at one time or another of their lives, serve
industrially some five or ten or fifteen years, while those who have no
children fill out the full term."
"A woman does not, then, necessarily leave the industrial service on
marriage?" I queried.
"No more than a man," replied the doctor. "Why on earth should she?
Married women have no housekeeping responsibilities now, you know, and
a husband is not a baby that he should be cared for."
"It was thought one of the most grievous features of our civilization
that we required so much toil from women," I said; "but it seems to me
you get more out of them than we did."
Dr. Leete laughed. "Indeed we do, just as we do out of our men. Yet the
women of this age are very happy, and those of the nineteenth century,
unless contemporary references greatly mislead us, were very miserable.
The reason that women nowadays are so much more efficient colaborers
with the men, and at the same time are so happy, is that, in regard to
their work as well as men's, we follow the principle of providing every
one the kind of occupation he or she is best adapted to. Women being
inferior in strength to men, and further disqualified industrially in
special ways, the kinds of occupation reserved for them, and the
conditions under which they pursue them, have reference to these facts.
The heavier sorts of work are everywhere reserved for men, the lighter
occupations for women. Under no circumstances is a woman permitted to
follow any employment not perfectly adapted, both as to kind and degree
of labor, to her sex. Moreover, the hours of women's work are
considerably shorter than those of men's, more frequent vacations are
granted, and the most careful provision is made for rest when needed.
The men of this day so well appreciate that they owe to the beauty and
grace of women the chief zest of their lives and their main incentive
to effort, that they permit them to work at all only because it is
fully understood that a certain regular requirement of labor, of a sort
adapted to their powers, is well for body and mind, during the period
of maximum physical vigor. We believe that the magnificent health which
distinguishes our women from those of your day, who seem to have been
so generally sickly, is owing largely to the fact that all alike are
furnished with healthful and inspiriting occupation."
"I understood you," I said, "that the women-workers belong to the army
of industry, but how can they be under the same system of ranking and
discipline with the men, when the conditions of their labor are so
different?"
"They are under an entirely different discipline," replied Dr. Leete,
"and constitute rather an allied force than an integral part of the
army of the men. They have a woman general-in-chief and are under
exclusively feminine regime. This general, as also the higher officers,
is chosen by the body of women who have passed the time of service, in
correspondence with the manner in which the chiefs of the masculine
army and the President of the nation are elected. The general of the
women's army sits in the cabinet of the President and has a veto on
measures respecting women's work, pending appeals to Congress. I should
have said, in speaking of the judiciary, that we have women on the
bench, appointed by the general of the women, as well as men. Causes in
which both parties are women are determined by women judges, and where
a man and a woman are parties to a case, a judge of either sex must
consent to the verdict."
"Womanhood seems to be organized as a sort of imperium in imperio in
your system," I said.
"To some extent," Dr. Leete replied; "but the inner imperium is one
from which you will admit there is not likely to be much danger to the
nation. The lack of some such recognition of the distinct individuality
of the sexes was one of the innumerable defects of your society. The
passional attraction between men and women has too often prevented a
perception of the profound differences which make the members of each
sex in many things strange to the other, and capable of sympathy only
with their own. It is in giving full play to the differences of sex
rather than in seeking to obliterate them, as was apparently the effort
of some reformers in your day, that the enjoyment of each by itself and
the piquancy which each has for the other, are alike enhanced. In your
day there was no career for women except in an unnatural rivalry with
men. We have given them a world of their own, with its emulations,
ambitions, and careers, and I assure you they are very happy in it. It
seems to us that women were more than any other class the victims of
your civilization. There is something which, even at this distance of
time, penetrates one with pathos in the spectacle of their ennuied,
undeveloped lives, stunted at marriage, their narrow horizon, bounded
so often, physically, by the four walls of home, and morally by a petty
circle of personal interests. I speak now, not of the poorer classes,
who were generally worked to death, but also of the well-to-do and
rich. From the great sorrows, as well as the petty frets of life, they
had no refuge in the breezy outdoor world of human affairs, nor any
interests save those of the family. Such an existence would have
softened men's brains or driven them mad. All that is changed to-day.
No woman is heard nowadays wishing she were a man, nor parents desiring
boy rather than girl children. Our girls are as full of ambition for
their careers as our boys. Marriage, when it comes, does not mean
incarceration for them, nor does it separate them in any way from the
larger interests of society, the bustling life of the world. Only when
maternity fills a woman's mind with new interests does she withdraw
from the world for a time. Afterward, and at any time, she may return
to her place among her comrades, nor need she ever lose touch with
them. Women are a very happy race nowadays, as compared with what they
ever were before in the world's history, and their power of giving
happiness to men has been of course increased in proportion."
"I should imagine it possible," I said, "that the interest which girls
take in their careers as members of the industrial army and candidates
for its distinctions might have an effect to deter them from marriage."
Dr. Leete smiled. "Have no anxiety on that score, Mr. West," he
replied. "The Creator took very good care that whatever other
modifications the dispositions of men and women might with time take
on, their attraction for each other should remain constant. The mere
fact that in an age like yours, when the struggle for existence must
have left people little time for other thoughts, and the future was so
uncertain that to assume parental responsibilities must have often
seemed like a criminal risk, there was even then marrying and giving in
marriage, should be conclusive on this point. As for love nowadays, one
of our authors says that the vacuum left in the minds of men and women
by the absence of care for one's livelihood has been entirely taken up
by the tender passion. That, however, I beg you to believe, is
something of an exaggestion. For the rest, so far is marriage from
being an interference with a woman's career, that the higher positions
in the feminine army of industry are intrusted only to women who have
been both wives and mothers, as they alone fully represent their sex."
"Are credit cards issued to the women just as to the men?"
"Certainly."
"The credits of the women, I suppose, are for smaller sums, owing to
the frequent suspension of their labor on account of family
responsibilities."
"Smaller!" exclaimed Dr. Leete, "oh, no! The maintenance of all our
people is the same. There are no exceptions to that rule, but if any
difference were made on account of the interruptions you speak of, it
would be by making the woman's credit larger, not smaller. Can you
think of any service constituting a stronger claim on the nation's
gratitude than bearing and nursing the nation's children? According to
our view, none deserve so well of the world as good parents. There is
no task so unselfish, so necessarily without return, though the heart
is well rewarded, as the nurture of the children who are to make the
world for one another when we are gone."
"It would seem to follow, from what you have said, that wives are in no
way dependent on their husbands for maintenance."
"Of course they are not," replied Dr. Leete, "nor children on their
parents either, that is, for means of support, though of course they
are for the offices of affection. The child's labor, when he grows up,
will go to increase the common stock, not his parents', who will be
dead, and therefore he is properly nurtured out of the common stock.
The account of every person, man, woman, and child, you must
understand, is always with the nation directly, and never through any
intermediary, except, of course, that parents, to a certain extent, act
for children as their guardians. You see that it is by virtue of the
relation of individuals to the nation, of their membership in it, that
they are entitled to support; and this title is in no way connected
with or affected by their relations to other individuals who are fellow
members of the nation with them. That any person should be dependent
for the means of support upon another would be shocking to the moral
sense as well as indefensible on any rational social theory. What would
become of personal liberty and dignity under such an arrangement? I am
aware that you called yourselves free in the nineteenth century. The
meaning of the word could not then, however, have been at all what it
is at present, or you certainly would not have applied it to a society
of which nearly every member was in a position of galling personal
dependence upon others as to the very means of life, the poor upon the
rich, or employed upon employer, women upon men, children upon parents.
Instead of distributing the product of the nation directly to its
members, which would seem the most natural and obvious method, it would
actually appear that you had given your minds to devising a plan of
hand to hand distribution, involving the maximum of personal
humiliation to all classes of recipients.
"As regards the dependence of women upon men for support, which then
was usual, of course, natural attraction in case of marriages of love
may often have made it endurable, though for spirited women I should
fancy it must always have remained humiliating. What, then, must it
have been in the innumerable cases where women, with or without the
form of marriage, had to sell themselves to men to get their living?
Even your contemporaries, callous as they were to most of the revolting
aspects of their society, seem to have had an idea that this was not
quite as it should be; but, it was still only for pity's sake that they
deplored the lot of the women. It did not occur to them that it was
robbery as well as cruelty when men seized for themselves the whole
product of the world and left women to beg and wheedle for their share.
Why--but bless me, Mr. West, I am really running on at a remarkable
rate, just as if the robbery, the sorrow, and the shame which those
poor women endured were not over a century since, or as if you were
responsible for what you no doubt deplored as much as I do."
"I must bear my share of responsibility for the world as it then was,"
I replied. "All I can say in extenuation is that until the nation was
ripe for the present system of organized production and distribution,
no radical improvement in the position of woman was possible. The root
of her disability, as you say, was her personal dependence upon man for
her livelihood, and I can imagine no other mode of social organization
than that you have adopted, which would have set woman free of man at
the same time that it set men free of one another. I suppose, by the
way, that so entire a change in the position of women cannot have taken
place without affecting in marked ways the social relations of the
sexes. That will be a very interesting study for me."
"The change you will observe," said Dr. Leete, "will chiefly be, I
think, the entire frankness and unconstraint which now characterizes
those relations, as compared with the artificiality which seems to have
marked them in your time. The sexes now meet with the ease of perfect
equals, suitors to each other for nothing but love. In your time the
fact that women were dependent for support on men made the woman in
reality the one chiefly benefited by marriage. This fact, so far as we
can judge from contemporary records, appears to have been coarsely
enough recognized among the lower classes, while among the more
polished it was glossed over by a system of elaborate conventionalities
which aimed to carry the precisely opposite meaning, namely, that the
man was the party chiefly benefited. To keep up this convention it was
essential that he should always seem the suitor. Nothing was therefore
considered more shocking to the proprieties than that a woman should
betray a fondness for a man before he had indicated a desire to marry
her. Why, we actually have in our libraries books, by authors of your
day, written for no other purpose than to discuss the question whether,
under any conceivable circumstances, a woman might, without discredit
to her sex, reveal an unsolicited love. All this seems exquisitely
absurd to us, and yet we know that, given your circumstances, the
problem might have a serious side. When for a woman to proffer her love
to a man was in effect to invite him to assume the burden of her
support, it is easy to see that pride and delicacy might well have
checked the promptings of the heart. When you go out into our society,
Mr. West, you must be prepared to be often cross-questioned on this
point by our young people, who are naturally much interested in this
aspect of old-fashioned manners."[1]
"And so the girls of the twentieth century tell their love."
"If they choose," replied Dr. Leete. "There is no more pretense of a
concealment of feeling on their part than on the part of their lovers.
Coquetry would be as much despised in a girl as in a man. Affected
coldness, which in your day rarely deceived a lover, would deceive him
wholly now, for no one thinks of practicing it."
"One result which must follow from the independence of women I can see
for myself," I said. "There can be no marriages now except those of
inclination."
"That is a matter of course," replied Dr. Leete.
"Think of a world in which there are nothing but matches of pure love!
Ah me, Dr. Leete, how far you are from being able to understand what an
astonishing phenomenon such a world seems to a man of the nineteenth
century!"
"I can, however, to some extent, imagine it," replied the doctor. "But
the fact you celebrate, that there are nothing but love matches, means
even more, perhaps, than you probably at first realize. It means that
for the first time in human history the principle of sexual selection,
with its tendency to preserve and transmit the better types of the
race, and let the inferior types drop out, has unhindered operation.
The necessities of poverty, the need of having a home, no longer tempt
women to accept as the fathers of their children men whom they neither
can love nor respect. Wealth and rank no longer divert attention from
personal qualities. Gold no longer 'gilds the straitened forehead of
the fool.' The gifts of person, mind, and disposition; beauty, wit,
eloquence, kindness, generosity, geniality, courage, are sure of
transmission to posterity. Every generation is sifted through a little
finer mesh than the last. The attributes that human nature admires are
preserved, those that repel it are left behind. There are, of course, a
great many women who with love must mingle admiration, and seek to wed
greatly, but these not the less obey the same law, for to wed greatly
now is not to marry men of fortune or title, but those who have risen
above their fellows by the solidity or brilliance of their services to
humanity. These form nowadays the only aristocracy with which alliance
is distinction.
"You were speaking, a day or two ago, of the physical superiority of
our people to your contemporaries. Perhaps more important than any of
the causes I mentioned then as tending to race purification has been
the effect of untrammeled sexual selection upon the quality of two or
three successive generations. I believe that when you have made a
fuller study of our people you will find in them not only a physical,
but a mental and moral improvement. It would be strange if it were not
so, for not only is one of the great laws of nature now freely working
out the salvation of the race, but a profound moral sentiment has come
to its support. Individualism, which in your day was the animating idea
of society, not only was fatal to any vital sentiment of brotherhood
and common interest among living men, but equally to any realization of
the responsibility of the living for the generation to follow. To-day
this sense of responsibility, practically unrecognized in all previous
ages, has become one of the great ethical ideas of the race,
reinforcing, with an intense conviction of duty, the natural impulse to
seek in marriage the best and noblest of the other sex. The result is,
that not all the encouragements and incentives of every sort which we
have provided to develop industry, talent, genius, excellence of
whatever kind, are comparable in their effect on our young men with the
fact that our women sit aloft as judges of the race and reserve
themselves to reward the winners. Of all the whips, and spurs, and
baits, and prizes, there is none like the thought of the radiant faces
which the laggards will find averted.
"Celibates nowadays are almost invariably men who have failed to acquit
themselves creditably in the work of life. The woman must be a
courageous one, with a very evil sort of courage, too, whom pity for
one of these unfortunates should lead to defy the opinion of her
generation--for otherwise she is free--so far as to accept him for a
husband. I should add that, more exacting and difficult to resist than
any other element in that opinion, she would find the sentiment of her
own sex. Our women have risen to the full height of their
responsibility as the wardens of the world to come, to whose keeping
the keys of the future are confided. Their feeling of duty in this
respect amounts to a sense of religious consecration. It is a cult in
which they educate their daughters from childhood."
After going to my room that night, I sat up late to read a romance of
Berrian, handed me by Dr. Leete, the plot of which turned on a
situation suggested by his last words, concerning the modern view of
parental responsibility. A similar situation would almost certainly
have been treated by a nineteenth century romancist so as to excite the
morbid sympathy of the reader with the sentimental selfishness of the
lovers, and his resentment toward the unwritten law which they
outraged. I need not describe--for who has not read "Ruth Elton"?--how
different is the course which Berrian takes, and with what tremendous
effect he enforces the principle which he states: "Over the unborn our
power is that of God, and our responsibility like His toward us. As we
acquit ourselves toward them, so let Him deal with us."
[1] I may say that Dr. Leete's warning has been fully justified by my
experience. The amount and intensity of amusement which the young
people of this day, and the young women especially, are able to extract
from what they are pleased to call the oddities of courtship in the
nineteenth century, appear unlimited.