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 coöperative 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
co-laborers 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 régime. 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. Afterwards, 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 exaggeration. 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
must 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".[5]
"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."
[Footnote 5: 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.]