Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (bts book recommendations .txt) 📕

“No stimulus to industry,” they repeated, with that puzzled look we had learned to know so well. “Stimulus? To industry? But don’t you like to work?”

“No man would work unless he had to,” Terry declared.

“Oh, no man! You mean that is one of your sex distinctions?”

“No, indeed!” he said hastily. “No one, I mean, man or woman, would work without incentive. Competition is the⁠—the motor power, you see.”

“It is not with us,” they explained gently, “so it is hard for us to understand. Do you mean, for instance, that with you no mother would work for her children without the stimulus of competition?”

No, he admitted that he did not mean that. Mothers, he supposed, would of course work for their children in the home; but the world’s work was different⁠—that had to be done by men, and required the competitive element.

All our teachers were eagerly interested.

“We want so much to know⁠—you have the whole world to tell us of, and we have only our little land! And there are two of you⁠—the two sexes⁠—to love and help one another. It must be a rich and wonderful world. Tell us⁠—what is the work of the world, that men do⁠—which we have not here?”

“Oh, everything,” Terry said grandly. “The men do everything, with us.” He squared his broad shoulders and lifted his chest. “We do not allow our women to work. Women are loved⁠—idolized⁠—honored⁠—kept in the home to care for the children.”

“What is ‘the home’?” asked Somel a little wistfully.

But Zava begged: “Tell me first, do no women work, really?”

“Why, yes,” Terry admitted. “Some have to, of the poorer sort.”

“About how many⁠—in your country?”

“About seven or eight million,” said Jeff, as mischievous as ever.

I had always been proud of my country, of course. Everyone is. Compared with the other lands and other races I knew, the United States of America had always seemed to me, speaking modestly, as good as the best of them.

But just as a clear-eyed, intelligent, perfectly honest, and well-meaning child will frequently jar one’s self-esteem by innocent questions, so did these women, without the slightest appearance of malice or satire, continually bring up points of discussion which we spent our best efforts in evading.

Now that we were fairly proficient in their language, had read a lot about their history, and had given them the general outlines of ours, they were able to press their questions closer.

So when Jeff admitted the number of “women wage earners” we had, they instantly asked for the total population, for the proportion of adult women, and found that there were but twenty million or so at the outside.

“Then at least a third of your women are⁠—what is it you call them⁠—wage earners? And they are all ‘poor.’ What is ‘poor,’ exactly?”

“Ours is the best country in the world as to poverty,” Terry told them. “We do not have the wretched paupers and beggars of the older countries, I assure you. Why, European visitors tell us, we don’t know what poverty is.”

“Neither do we,” answered Zava. “Won’t you tell us?”

Terry put it up to me, saying I was the sociologist, and I explained that the laws of nature require a struggle for existence, and that in the struggle the fittest survive, and the unfit perish. In our economic struggle, I continued, there was always plenty of opportunity for the fittest to reach the top, which they did, in great numbers, particularly in our country; that where there was severe economic pressure the lowest classes of course felt it the worst, and that among the poorest of all the women were driven into the labor market by necessity.

They listened closely, with the usual note-taking.

“About one-third, then, belong to the poorest class,” observed Moadine gravely. “And two-thirds are the ones who are⁠—how was it you so beautifully put it?⁠—‘loved, honored, kept in the home to care for the children.’ This inferior one-third have no children, I suppose?”

Jeff⁠—he was getting as bad as they were⁠—solemnly replied that, on the contrary, the poorer they were, the more children they had. That too, he explained, was a law of nature: “Reproduction is in inverse proportion to individuation.”

“These ‘laws of nature,’ ” Zava gently asked, “are they all the laws you have?”

“I should say not!” protested Terry. “We have systems of law that go back thousands and thousands of years⁠—just as you do, no doubt,” he finished politely.

“Oh no,” Moadine told him. “We have no laws over a hundred years old, and most of them are under twenty. In a few weeks more,” she continued, “we are going to have the pleasure of showing you over our little land and explaining everything you care to know about. We want you to see our people.”

“And I assure you,” Somel added, “that our people want to see you.”

Terry brightened up immensely at this news, and reconciled himself to the renewed demands upon our capacity as teachers. It was lucky that we knew so little, really, and had no books to refer to, else, I fancy we might all be there yet, teaching those eager-minded women about the rest of the world.

As to geography, they had the tradition of the Great Sea, beyond the mountains; and they could see for themselves the endless thick-forested plains below them⁠—that was all. But from the few records of their ancient condition⁠—not “before the flood” with them, but before that mighty quake which had cut them off so completely⁠—they were aware that there were other peoples and other countries.

In geology they were quite ignorant.

As to anthropology, they had those same remnants of information about other peoples, and the knowledge of the savagery of the occupants of those dim forests below. Nevertheless, they had inferred (marvelously keen on inference and deduction their minds were!) the existence and development of civilization in other places, much as we infer it on other planets.

When our biplane came whirring over their heads in that first scouting flight of ours, they had instantly