Dear Friend: No one thing, I think, strikes the foreigners eye, on his arrival in this extraordinary land so strongly as does the lack of variety and of taste displayed in the dress of either the men or the women. Both sexes dress, to begin with, as I said in my last, precisely alike. As it is one of the unwritten social laws of the people to dress as simply, economically and sensibly as possible, it results that there is neither brightness nor color nor beauty of line in any of the garments worn. In passing the Government Clothing Distribution Bureaus, nothing so forcibly suggests the ideal equality existing between the sexes, as does the sight of the big and the little trowsers, hanging side by side, quite unabashed, the straight and the baggy legs being the only discernible difference. Baggy trowsers and a somewhat long, full cloak for the women—straight-legged trowsers and a shorter coat for the men, this is the dress of the entire population. Some of the women are still pretty, in spite of their hideous clothes. But they all tell me, they wouldn’t be if they could help it, as they hold that the beauty of their sex was the chief cause of their long-continued former slavery; they consider comeliness now as a brand and mark of which to be ashamed. From what I have been able to observe, however, I should say that the prettiness which has descended to some of the women fails to awaken any old-time sentiment or gallantry on the part of the men. There has, I learn, been a gradual decay of the erotic sentiment, which doubtless accounts for the indifference among the men; a decay which is due to the peculiar relations brought about by the emancipation of woman.
It is now nearly two hundred years since women have enjoyed the same freedom and rights as men. It is interesting and curious to note the changes, both upon the character and nature of the two sexes, which has been the result of this development. One’s first impression, in coming here, is that women are the sole inhabitants of the country. One sees them everywhere—in all the public offices, as heads of departments, as government clerks, as officials, as engineers, machinists, aeronauts, tax collectors, firemen, filling, in fact, every office and vocation in civil, political and social life. The few men—by comparison, whom I saw seemed to me to be allowed to exist as specimen examples of a fallen race. Of course, this view is more or less exaggeration. But the women here do appear to possess by far the most energy, vigor, vitality and ambition. Their predominance in office just now is owing to their over-powering number, the women’s vote polled being ten to one over that of the men. This strong sex influence has been fruitful in greatly changing and modifying the domestic, social and political laws of the community.
Women, for instance, having satisfactorily emancipated themselves from the bondage of domestic drudgery and the dominion of servants, by means of the improvement in machinery and the invention of the famous culinary conduits, found one obstacle still in their path to complete and co-equal man-freedom. There still remained the children to be taken care of and brought up. As motherhood came in course of time to be considered in its true light, as perhaps the chief cause of the degradation of women, it was finally abolished by act of legislature. Women were still to continue to bear children, or else the socialistic society itself would cease to be. A law was passed providing that children almost immediately after birth, should be brought up, educated and trained under state direction to be returned to their parents when fully grown, and ready for their duties as men and women citizens. In this way women stand at last on as absolutely equal a physical plane with men as it is possible to make them.
It has followed, of course, that with the jurisdiction of the state over the children of the community, all family life has died out. Men and women live together as man and wife, but the relation between them has become more nominal than real. It is significant of the changes that have been brought about between the sexes, that the word “home” has entirely dropped out of the language. A man’s house has in truth ceased to be his home. There are no children there to greet him, his wife, who is his comrade, a man, a citizen like himself, is as rarely at home as he. Their food can be eaten anywhere—there is no common board; there is not even a servant to welcome the master with a smile. The word wife has also lost all its original significance. It stands for nothing. Husband and wife are in reality two men having equal rights, with the same range of occupation, the same duties as citizens to perform, the same haunts and the same dreary leisure.Is it therefore, my dear Hannevig, to be wondered at, that all ideas of love, and that all strong mutual attraction and affections should have died out between the sexes? Man loves, longs for passionately and protects with tender solicitude only that which is difficult to conquer. The imagination must at least be inflamed. But where there is no struggle, no opposition, no conditions which breed longing, desire, or the poetry of a little healthy despair, how is love or any sentiment at all to be awakened or kindled? Here there is no parental authority to make a wall between lovers, nor is there inequality of fortunes, nor any marked difference between the two sexes, even in their daily duties or in their lives. I am more and more impressed with the conviction, as I look into this question—this question of what we should consider the growth of an abnormal indifference between the sexes—that the latter cause is perhaps the one which has been chiefly instrumental in the bringing about so complete a change over the face of the passions. Woman has placed herself by the side of man, as his co-equal in labor and vocation, only to make the real distance between them the greater. She has gained her independence at the expense of her strongest appeal to man, her power as mistress, wife and mother. How can a man get up any very vivid or profound sentiment or affection for these men-women—who are neither mothers nor housekeepers, who differ in no smallest degree from themselves in their pursuits and occupation? Constant and perpetual companionship, from earliest infancy to manhood and old age has resulted in blunting all sense of any real difference between the sexes. Whatever slight inequalities may still exist between men and women in the matter of muscular energy or physical strength is more than counterbalanced by the enormous disproportion between them, numerically, as voters.
Some very curious and important political changes have been effected by the preponderance of the women’s vote.
Wars, for instance, have been within the last fifty years declared illegal. Woman found that whereas she was eminently fitted for all men’s avocations in time of peace, when it came to war she made a very poor figure of a soldier. Wars, therefore, were soon voted down; foreign difficulties were adjusted by arbitration. As women, as a rule, were sent on these foreign diplomatic missions, I have heard it wickedly whispered that the chief cause of the usually speedy conclusion of any trouble with a foreign court was because of the babel of tongues which ensued: a foreign court being willing to concede any thing rather than to continue negotiations with women-diplomatists. But this of course, is to be put down to pure maliciousness. Women since time immemorial, have had the best of man whenever it came to contests of the tongue, and this appears to be the one insignia of their former prestige which the sex insists on claiming.
In my next I shall try to give you some conception of the position which man occupies, as a citizen and as worker in this community. I shall, I think, also be able to give you some most interesting results of the effects produced by the communistic, socialistic principles which have been incorporated into the constitution of this people.
It is late and I am weary, so farewell for a few days.
Ever and ever,————.
