CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
Of the women who represent and carry on this many-sided movement today,
the first to be considered from this masculine viewpoint should, I
think, be Charlotte Perkins Gilman. For she is, to a superficial view,
the most intransigent feminist of them all, the one most exclusively
concerned with the improvement of the lot of woman, the least likely to
compromise at the instance of man, child, church, state, or devil.
Mrs. Gilman is the author of "Women and Economics" and several other
books of theory, "What Diantha Did" and several other books of fiction;
she is the editor and publisher of a remarkable journal, The Forerunner,
the whole varied contents of which is written by herself; she has a
couple of plays to her credit, and she has published a book of poems.
If in spite of all this publicity it is still possible to misunderstand the
attitude of Mrs. Gilman, I can only suppose it to be because her poetry
is less well known than her prose. For in this book of verse, "In This
Our World," Mrs. Gilman has so completely justified herself that no man
need ever be afraid of her--nor any woman who, having a lingering
tenderness for the other sex, would object to living in a beehive world,
full of raging efficient females, with the males relegated to the
position of drones.
Of course, I do but jest when I speak of this fear; but there is, to
the ordinary male, something curiously objectionable at the first glance
in Mrs. Gilman's arguments, whether they are for cooeperative kitchens or
for the labor of women outside the home. And the reason for that
objection lies precisely in the fact that her plans seem to be made in a
complete forgetfulness of him and his interests. It all has the air of a
feminine plot. The cooeperative kitchens, and the labor by which women's
economic independence is to be achieved, seem the means to an end.
And so they are. But the end, as revealed in Mrs. Gilman's poems, is
that one which all intelligent men must desire. I do not know whether or
not the more elaborate cooeperative schemes of Mrs. Gilman are practical;
and I fancy that she rather exaggerates the possibilities of independent
work for women who have or intend to have children. But the spirit
behind these plans is one which cannot but be in the greatest degree
stimulating and beneficent in its effect upon her sex.
For Mrs. Gilman is, first of all, a poet, an idealist. She is a lover
of life. She rejoices in beauty and daring and achievement, in all the
fine and splendid things of the world. She does not merely disapprove of
the contemporary "home" as wasteful and inefficient--she hates it
because it vulgarizes life. In this "home," this private food-preparing
and baby-rearing establishment, she sees a machine which breaks down all
that is good and noble in women, which degrades and pettifies them. The
contrast between the instinctive ideals of young women and the sordid
realities into which housekeeping plunges them is to her intolerable.
And in the best satirical verses of modern times she ridicules these
unnecessary shames. In one spirited piece she points out that the
soap-vat, the pickle-tub, even the loom and wheel, have lost their
sanctity, have been banished to shops and factories:
But bow ye down to the Holy Stove,
The Altar of the Home!
The real feeling of Mrs. Gilman is revealed in these lines, which voice,
indeed, the angry mood of many an outraged housewife who finds herself
the serf of a contraption of cast-iron:
... We toil to keep the altar crowned
With dishes new and nice,
And Art and Love, and Time and Truth,
We offer up, with Health and Youth
In daily sacrifice.
Mrs. Gilman is not under the illusion that the conditions of work
outside the home are perfect; she is, indeed, a socialist, and as such
is engaged in the great task of revolutionizing the basis of modern
industry. But she has looked into women's souls, and turned away in
disgust at the likeness of a dirty kitchen which those souls present.
Into these lives corrupted by the influences of the "home" nothing can
come unspoiled--nothing can enter in its original stature and beauty.
She says:
Birth comes. Birth--
The breathing re-creation of the earth!
All earth, all sky, all God, life's sweet deep whole,
Newborn again to each new soul!
"Oh, are you? What a shame! Too bad, my dear!
How well you stand it, too! It's very queer
The dreadful trials women have to carry;
But you can't always help it when you marry.
Oh, what a sweet layette! What lovely socks!
What an exquisite puff and powder box!
Who is your doctor? Yes, his skill's immense--
But it's a dreadful danger and expense!"
And so with love, and death, and work--all are smutted and debased. And
her revolt is a revolt against that which smuts and debases
them--against those artificial channels which break up the strong, pure
stream of woman's energy into a thousand little stagnant canals, covered
with spiritual pond-scum.
It is a part of her idealism to conceive life in terms of war. So it is
that she scorns compromise, for in war compromise is treason. And so it
is that she has heart for the long, slow marshaling of forces, and the
dingy details of the commissariat--for these things are necessary if the
cry of victory is ever to ring out over the battlefield. Some of her
phrases have so militant an air that they seem to have been born among
the captains and the shouting. They make us ashamed of our vicious
civilian comfort.
Mrs. Gilman's attitude toward the bearing and rearing of children is
easy to misapprehend. She does seem to relegate these things to the
background of women's lives. She does deny to these things a tremendous
importance. Why, she asks, is it so important that women should bear and
rear children to live lives as empty and poor as their own? Surely, she
says, it is more important to make life something worth giving to
children! No, she insists, it is not sufficient to be a mother: an
oyster can be a mother. It is necessary that a woman should be a person
as well as a mother. She must know and do.
And as for the ideal of love which is founded on masculine privilege,
she satirizes it very effectively in some verses entitled "Wedded
Bliss":
"O come and be my mate!" said the Eagle to the Hen;
"I love to soar, but then
I want my mate to rest
Forever in the nest!"
Said the Hen, "I cannot fly
I have no wish to try,
But I joy to see my mate careering through the sky!"
They wed, and cried, "Ah, this is Love, my own!"
And the Hen sat, the Eagle soared, alone.
Woman, in Mrs. Gilman's view, must not be content with Hendom: the sky
is her province, too. Of all base domesticity, all degrading love, she
is the enemy. She gives her approval only to that work which has in it
something high and free, and that love which is the dalliance of the
eagles.