To us, who have for so many unbroken generations been wholly bound to the home, who honestly believe that its service and maintenance constitute the whole duty of men and women, the picture of a world in which home and its affairs takes but a small part of life's attention gives rather a blank outlook. What else are we to do! What else to love—what else to serve eternally! What else to revere, to worship! How shall we occupy the hands of man if but a tithe of his labour supports him in comfort; how fill the heart of woman, when her family are happily and rightly served without sacrificing her in the operation! It is hard, at first—we being so accustomed to spend all life in merely keeping ourselves alive—to see what life might be when we had some to spare. We find it difficult to imagine this "world of trouble" as rid of its troubles; as rationally and comfortably managed; peaceful, clean, safe, healthy, giving everyone room and time to grow. Nor need we labour to forecast events too accurately; especially the material details which must be decided by long experiment. No rigid prescription is needed; no dictum as to whether we shall live in small separate houses, greenly gardened, with closely connected conveniences for service and for education, for work and play; or in towering palaces with shaded flower-bright courts and cloisters. All that must work out as have our great modern wonders in other lines, little by little, in orderly development. But what we can forecast in safety is the effect on the human body and the human soul. A peaceful, healthy, happy babyhood and childhood, with such delicate adjustment of educational processes as we already see indicated, will give us a far better individual. The full-grown mother, contributing racial advance in both body and mind, will add greatly to this gain. We can be better people everywhere, better born, bred, fed, educated in all ways. But quite beyond this is the rich growth of our long aborted social instincts, which will rapidly follow the reduction of these long artificially maintained primitive and animal instincts. Where now trying to meet general needs by personal efforts, modern needs by ancient methods, we must perforce manifest an intense degree of self-interest to keep up the struggle; as soon as we meet these needs easily, swiftly, inexpensively, by modern methods and common efforts, less self-interest will be necessary. When sidewalks were narrow and streets foul, great was the jostling, keen the resentment—"You take the wall of me, sir!" Where all is broad, clean, safe, no such hot feeling exists. We do not truly prefer to be always sharply looking out for ourselves; it is much more interesting to look out for each other; but this method of handicapping each man with his own affairs, in such needless weight, keeps up a selfishness which true civilisation tends steadily to eliminate. Social instincts in social conditions are as natural as animal instincts in animal conditions. Starving, shipwrecked sailors, robbed of all social advantages, are reduced sometimes even to cannibalism. Polite people at a banquet show no hint of such fierce, relentless greed. Relieved of the necessity for spending our whole time taking care of ourselves, we shall deliciously launch forward into the much larger pleasure of taking care of one another. Relieved of the ceaseless, instant pressure of purely physical needs, we shall be able to put forth the true demands of human life at last. The mind, no longer penned in its weary treadmill of private affairs, will spread into its legitimate area—public affairs. We shall be able to see a greater number of things at once, and care about them. That larger-mindedness will be an immediate result; for we have already far more capacity than we use. We have developed the modern civilised mind, the social mind, through the world's work; but we bury it, enslave it, stultify it, in the home's work. A new power—a new sense of range—freedom, growth, as of a great stream flowing freely; plenty of force to work with, plenty of room to work in—this is what will follow as we learn to properly relate the home to the rest of life. Once the mind rises, free, outside those old enclosing, crushing walls, it will see life with different eyes. Our common good will appear to us as naturally as our private good does now. At present the average mind does not seem able to grasp a great general fact, be it for good or evil. To make a man appreciate the proposed advantage, realise the impending or existing evil, we must "bring it home to him," make him feel it "where he lives." When his home does not occupy most of his mind, tax his strength, reduce his range of interest and affection, he can see the big things more easily. When he "lives" in the whole city—i.e., thinks about it, cares about it, works for it, loves it—then he will promptly feel anything that affects it in any part. This common love and care are just as possible to human beings as love and care for one's own young are possible to the beasts. It is possible; it is natural; it is a great and increasing joy; but its development is checked by a system which requires all our love and care for our own, and even then does not properly provide for them. The love of human beings for each other is not a dream of religion, it is a law of nature. It is bred of human contact, of human relation, of human service; it rests on identical interest and the demands of a social development which must include all, if it permanently lift any. Against this perfectly natural development stands this opposing shell; this earlier form of life, essential in its place, most mischievous out of it; this early cradle of humanity in which lie smothered the full-grown people of to-day. Must we then leave it—lose it—go without it? Never. The more broadly socialised we become, the more we need our homes to rest in. The large area is necessary for the human soul; the big, modern, civilised social nature. But we are still separate animal beings as well as collective social beings. Always we need to return to the dear old ties, to the great primal basis, that we may rise refreshed and strengthened, like AntÆus from the earth. Private, secluded, sweet, wholly our own; not invaded by any trade or work or business, not open to the crowd; the place of the one initial and undying group of father, mother, and child, will remain to us. These, and the real friend, are all that belong to the home. It should be the recognised base and background of our lives; but those lives must be lived in their true area, the world. And so lived, by both of us, all of us; shared in by the child, served in by the woman as well as the man; that world will grow to have the sense of intimacy, of permanent close attachment, of comfort and pleasure and rest, which now attaches only to the home. So, living, really living in the world and loving it, the presence there of father, mother, and child will gradually bring out in it all the beauty and safety, the refreshment and strength we so vainly seek to ensure in our private home. The sense of duty, of reverence, of love, honestly transferred to the world we live in, will have its natural, its inevitable effect, and make that world our home at last. THE END BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN The Man-made World, By CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN Many books have been written about women, as such; women as females. This is a book about men, as such; men as males. Women have been considered as a sex, and their character and actions so discussed. This book considers men as a sex; and their character and actions are so discussed. Too much of women's influence is dreaded as "feminization"—as likely to render our culture "effeminate." Too much of men's influence is here studied as "masculization" and as having rendered our culture—there is no analogue for "effeminate." We have heard much of the "eternal womanly;" this book treats of the eternal manly. "Cherchez la femme!" is the old hue and cry; this book raises a new one: "Cherchez l'homme!" By mail of Charlton Co., $1.00. What Diantha Did. A Novel by CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN We have had military novels, and marine novels; novels of adventure, of mystery and crime; religious novels, historic novels, novels of business life, trades unions and the labor question; novels of "local color," dialect novels; and romances pure and simple—also impure and complicated. This novel deals with the most practical problem of women's lives today—and settles it—NOT by cooperation. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.00. "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER" Worthy of a place beside some of the weird masterpieces of Hawthorne and Poe.—Literature. As a short story it stands among the most powerful produced in America.—Chicago News. By mail of Charlton Co., $0.50. "HUMAN WORK" Charlotte Perkins Gilman has added a third to her great trilogy of books on economic subjects as they affect our daily life, particularly in the home. Mrs. Gilman is by far the most brilliant woman writer of our day, and this new volume, which she calls "Human Work," is a glorification of labor.—New Orleans Picayune. Charlotte Perkins Gilman has been writing a new book, entitled "Human Work." It is the best thing that Mrs. Gilman has done, and it is meant to focus all of her previous work, so to speak.—Tribune, Chicago. In her latest volume, "Human Work," Charlotte Perkins Gilman places herself among the foremost students and elucidators of the problem of social economics.—San Francisco Star. It is impossible to overestimate the value of the insistence on the social aspect of human affairs as Mrs. Gilman has outlined it.—Public Opinion. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.00. "IN THIS OUR WORLD" There is a joyous superabundance of life, of strength, of health, in Mrs. Gilman's verse, which seems born of the glorious sunshine and rich gardens of California.—Washington Times. The freshness, charm and geniality of her satire temporarily convert us to her most advanced views.—Boston Journal. The poet of women and for women, a new and prophetic voice in the world. Montaigne would have rejoiced in her.—Mexican Herald. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.25. "THE HOME" Indeed, Mrs. Gilman has not intended her book so much as a treatise for scholars as a surgical operation on the popular mind.—The Critic, New York. Whatever Mrs. Gilman writes, people read—approving or protesting, still they read.—Republican, Springfield, Mass. Full of thought and of new and striking suggestions. Tells what the average woman has and ought not keep, what she is and ought not be.—Literature World. But it is safe to say that no more stimulating arraignment has ever before taken shape and that the argument of the book is noble, and, on the whole, convincing.—Congregationalist, Boston. The name of this author is a guarantee of logical reasoning, sound economical principles and progressive thought.—The Craftsman, Syracuse. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.00. "The Home" has been translated into Swedish. "WOMEN AND ECONOMICS" Since John Stuart Mill's essay there has been no book dealing with the whole position of women to approach it in originality of conception and brilliancy of exposition.—London Chronicle. The most significant utterance on the subject since Mill's "Subjection of Women."—The Nation. It is the strongest book on the woman question that has yet been published.—Minneapolis Journal. A remarkable book. A work on economics that has not a dull page,—the work of a woman about women that has not a flippant word.—Boston Transcript. This book unites in a remarkable degree the charm of a brilliantly written essay with the inevitable logic of a proposition of Euclid. Nothing that we have read for many a long day can approach in clearness of conception, in power of arrangement, and in lucidity of expression the argument developed in the first seven chapters of this remarkable book.—Westminster Gazette, London. Will be widely read and discussed as the cleverest, fairest, most forcible presentation of the view of the rapidly increasing group who look with favor on the extension of industrial employment to women.—Political Science Quarterly. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.50. "Women and Economics" has been translated into German, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Russian and Japanese. "CONCERNING CHILDREN" Wanted:—A philanthropist, to give a copy to every English-speaking parent.—The Times, New York. Should be read by every mother in the land.—The Press, New York. Wholesomely disturbing book that deserves to be read for its own sake.—Chicago Dial. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.25. "Concerning Children" has been translated into German, Dutch and Yiddish. CHARLTON COMPANY, 67 Wall St., New York THE FORERUNNER A monthly magazine; written, Charlotte Perkins Gilman 67 Wall Street, New York City, SUBSCRIPTION PER YEAR:
This magazine carries Mrs. Gilman's best and newest work; her social philosophy, verse, satire, fiction, ethical teaching, humor, and opinion. It stands for Humanness in Women, and in Men; for better methods in Child-culture; for the New Ethics, the New Economics, the New World we are to make—are making. ORDERS TAKEN FOR Bound Vols. of first year, $1.25 Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
CHARLTON COMPANY, 67 Wall St., New York Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. The cover of this ebook was created by the transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain. |