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"Independent men and women, in independent homes, leading separate and
independent lives, with full freedom to form and dissolve relations, and with
perfectly equal opportunities to happiness, development, and love".... This
idea. so stated, is attractive to me and completely in harmony with my idea of
the course in life which will best further human happiness.
I am not sure that I quite understand Victor's position in regard to the number
of children desirable in the future family, yet this seems to me so essential
an item in the consideration of the social problem of the future that it must
be dealt with at the outset. If the greatest amount of happiness can only be
secured by obedience to the "natural" sexual instincts, unrestrained by
consideration of any other pleasures which are renounced for their sake, then I
can but admit that there seems no escape from the perpetual dependence of woman
upon man. Of whatever form the new organization of society may be, it is not
likely to be one in which one can "have his cake and eat it too." And, allowing
considerable margin for the "certain period" at which, Victor claims, "variety
is only a temporary demand," it is not too much to suppose, on his theory of
life, that every Apollo will find his Venus before she is older than twenty
five. She has twenty years of child-bearing possibilities before her, and the
simply gratification of by no means abnormal sexual impulses might result in
her giving birth to ten children. And yet his plan involves that, during this
time, when, he asserts, she "needs the care, support, and service of others and
is therefore unable to support herself," she is nevertheless "educating the
children and surrounding her lover with comfort"! It seems to me that, if I
have not misunderstood him in this, he has been looking at the subject from a
man's standpoint.
But I do not see why we should let this sexual impulse lead us where it may....
I do not always eat whenever I see appetizing foods; I refrain from sitting in
a drought and drinking ice-water when I am too much heated; I sometimes get up
when I am still sleepy; and I do not stay in the ocean long enough to risk a
chill. And I know the consequences of following the simple sexual impulses to
be more serious than any others.
I may consider many of nature's methods exceedingly wasteful and clumsy, and I
may believe that, if I had made the world, I would have made it otherwise; that
I would have made our simple, spontaneous, first, a most keenly-felt desires
those which, if blindly followed, would result in the greatest conceivable
happiness. But nature and the laws of the universe and of our own selves are
facts which we cannot alter and to which we can only study to adjust ourselves.
"If God exists, he is man's enemy"; woman's even more. Finding no escape from
this conclusion, I no longer treat nature as my friend when she betrays me....
Now, for the woman, the consequences of simply obeying the sexual impulses are
the bearing of children. That means risking her life. It also means the
endurance of intense suffering, such suffering as she has never before been
able to conceive. In the future social condition I believe every girl will be
taught this. Nevertheless, I believe there will still be children in the world.
I believe that, when a woman no longer looks upon bearing children as either a
duty or a slave's necessity in the service of her master, it is not impossible
that she will consider it the greatest privilege life may hold out to her. And
with her claim to this child which has cost her so much once recognized by all
men and women, why may it not be that she would choose this luxury rather than
other "opportunities"? A woman will no longer look upon children as a more or
less unfortunate natural consequence of the satisfaction of a strong desire,
but as a blessing - yes, the very greatest in life to any woman with the
mother-instinct - to be secured with full purpose and careful choice, with a
complete understanding of all else that must be given up for its sake. Victor
has not made it clear to my mind that the woman is the loser who chooses this.
It is hard to find the measure of other development or luxury that will be
compensation for a woman's loss of this possibility.
But I do not admit that she must needs sacrifice her independence to secure
this end. Under normal conditions a woman is by no means unfitted for any
productive labor during pregnancy. It would be an exceptional case in which she
would be unable to perform the three hours' daily work necessary for
self-support during the whole period. This is adding one hour to the limit set
in the "Science of Society," in which Mr. Andrews claims that two hours' daily
labor will be more than sufficient to support each individual in average
comfort. I do not even admit that the woman "has to depend upon the man whom
she made the father of her child." All that is needful is that she have the
service and help of some one...
After the birth of a child, a woman may be unfitted for any productive labor
for two months. And we must add to the list of expenses the support of a nurse
during this time and the physician's fee. During another seven months she will
nurse her child and, perhaps, will do no other work except directly caring for
him. But I am taking this for granted rather from a desire not to underestimate
the needful expense of child-bearing than because it seems to me surely the
better way. There is a strong feeling among advanced people that a woman ought
to do nothing whatever during pregnancy and child-nursing but fold her hands
and look at beautiful pictures and listen to beautiful music. But I think this
as largely reactionary. The pendulum has swung quite over. It is like saying:
"Women have done too much; therefore they should do nothing."
It is a safe estimate, it seems to me, to say that it will cost not more than
half as much to support a child for the first ten years of its life as to
support an adult. That is, a woman will be obliged to work four hours and a
half a day instead of the three for ten years in order to support each child.
And she must have previously saved money enough for the child-bearing expenses
which I have just indicated. After ten years, in the new order of economic
life, a child may be self-supporting.
I cannot see how all this can seem to any one an impossibility or even an
undesirability. When the nursing period is at an end, the mother engages in the
four and a half hours' daily employment, leaving for this time her child in the
care of others. These others may be friends who assume this care because it is
to them a delight and a rest. Or, in the absence of such friends, it may be
simply trustworthy people who would find in it, not rest, but attractive labor,
for which they would recieve due remuneration. I am almost certain of
encountering on this point a remonstrance in the minds of many women. A true
mother will never leave a young child, they will say. But I am almost as
certain that every mother who is thoroughly honest with herself will admit that
it would have been better, both for herself and her child, if she could have
left him in safe hands for a few hours each day....
This theory of independent living does not seem to me to involve any loss of
the "home" which the family relation has always, it is assumed, been alone able
to secure. There would always be, for the little children, the safe, sure
mother-home. And, besides this, there would be the father-home, somewhere else,
and as many friend-homes as there were dear friends, to which the little
children would lend their sunshine whenever their wish so to do met with the
mother's consent.
I cannot really understand anyone but a communist being ready to favor "a sort
of communism between lovers." In every other social relation an Individualist
would have the strongest faith in every plan which conduced to the greatest
development of individuality as most certain to bring happiness. But in this
relation, in which, of all others in life, mistakes result in the sharpest
suffering, this general principle is set aside, and the development of
individuality, at least of womanly individuality, less carefully considered
than the securing, for her, of certain luxuries and other material advantages.
It is true that, when one is in love, it is impossible to conceive happiness in
any other form than the constant presence of the loved one. Nevertheless, I
believe that neither the finest nor the keenest happiness lovers are capable of
yielding each other will result from following this wish blindly, without
reason or thought. I am even disposed to find fault with Victor's saying that
"between true lovers who are really devoted to each other the relations are
ideal." I do not think that "devotion" is any element of an ideal relation
between grown-up people. A mother or father or adult friend may be devoted to
the helpless baby, to a child, or to a weak, sick, afflicted man or woman. But
only weakness has need of devotion, or desires it. What strong men and women
want, in either the relation of friendship or in that fervid, passion-full form
of friendship known as love, is simply to feel the "home in another's heart"; a
home not made, but found. Apollo's Venus is doubtless altogether lovely in his
eyes, but that fact is only tiresome or amusing to the rest or the world, and
must inevitably tend to fill Venus with a narrow vanity which effectually
checks all desire or capacity for growth. I no more admire a blind love than a
blind hatred. Either is below the plane on which developed men and women will
find themselves. That youth is inconstant is proverbial, but not all proverbs
are quite true. Youth is the age of hero-worship, and the tendency of that
period is to idealize the object of love. Today young people, experimenting in
love, begin by finding an Apollo or Venus in every beautiful face, and end - in
what? In finding the true one at last? Not at all. in finding that they were
mistaken, but in concluding that this one
will
do. Having reached this conclusion, their inconstancy hides itself from public
view under the veil of married life, and these young people become
constant,
but not always constant in their
love.
My prophecy of the future is that, after love has been left free long enough (I
do not mean an individual man or woman, but all men and women), Apollo will
find that he has no Venus. Because it seems to me that, as human life advances
and human beings differentiate, there becomes less and less possibility of
finding any one with whom one is completely in sympathy.
Nevertheless, I believe there will always be love. Indeed, I believe in
love.... Now, I am going to assume, in spite of all public sentiment to the
contrary, that love is not a bad thing, but a good thing; that it is a normal,
healthful, strength-giving, developing force among the conditions of human
existence; that it is called forth by the perception of lovable, admirable,
fine qualities, wherever they exist; that in its intrinsic nature it is a
blessing, and not a curse, wherever it exists; that it does not need to be
sanctified
by a marriage rite or even by the approval of friends...
When a man "makes a home" for a woman in the way Victor proposes, he makes it
impossible that either shall know any other love without calling upon the other
to bear a certain amount of deprivation. For me, any arrangement which would
involve the love of only one at a time would be sufficient to condemn it. Not
to be free to love is the hardest of all slavery. But marriage is like taking a
path in which there is only room for two. And a man and woman cannot take up a
position before the world as dearest friends or lovers - call the relation by
any name you choose - without by that action cutting themselves off from all
fullness and spontaneity of other love and friendship. By the very announcement
of their mutual feeling - in whatever form the announcement may be made - they
have said: "Everything in my life is to be subordinated to this." To
voluntarily and deliberately "make a home" is to say that nothing foreign to
either can enter. The result in life today is commonly this: of the old friends
of either only those enter the new home who have a sufficient number of
qualities that are equally attractive to both to make them welcome and who can
be content to continue friendship on the basis of those qualities. If John does
not like music, Ellen gives up her musical friends. Why should he be asked to
hear the piano, when it is only so much noise to him, or even hear music
discussed, when it is a bore to him? Why should Ellen be called upon to breathe
tobacco-perfumed air, because John and certain of John's friends feel restless
and uncomfortable without their after-dinner cigar? Things are mainly either
pleasurable or painful; not indifferent. If John and Ellen are honest with each
other, they will discover that John dislikes music and Ellen dislikes tobacco,
and that to lay aside their sensitivities on one occasion may be a slight
matter, but that to be called upon to lay them aside at any time is a really
serious matter. But Victor perhaps thinks the home need not be like that. John
may have his smoking-room and Ellen her music-room. In that case the smoking
-room would be, after dinner, John's home, and the music-room Ellen's home. The
place where we are free, - that is home. That is perhaps the secret of all home
feeling. The presence of our dearest friends helps it only when their mood
meets ours.
But this is not "making a home." To make a home, in the popular sense, is to
buy land and build a house which is
ours,
buy dishes and furniture which are
ours,
agree to have children which are
ours,
and to make no change in our life arrangements except by mutual consent.
Victor puts the case simply, and it sounds easy: "When they cease to be happy
together, they separate." Is it so simple? It is not enough to say: We are not
bound together one hour longer than our mutual love lasts. Mutual love does not
come and go, keeping step like well-trained soldiers.
As the first flush of love passes away, people begin to
discover
each other. After all, they were not one. In very many cases it was only the
blinding force of the sex element which retarded this discovery. There was no
conscious deceit. But the discovery is apt to be a painful one. And the old
hunger for sympathy in all things returns. If we are still free to seek it, no
harm comes. There may even be no pain in the slow discovery that in no one
other soul can it be found. But if we are not free, and if, by some chance,
one, not both, comes to believe that the love was founded on a mistake?...
It is very true of love that we know not whence it comes or whither it goes. It
is sometimes more sadly true, and makes one of life's problems far more
intricate, that we know not when it comes or when it goes. It's death is as
incomprehensible as its birth. Sometimes it is drained away, silently and
unsuspectedly, by the thousand wearing trifles inevitably attendant upon that
constant companionship which the torrent of newborn love so imperiously
demands. Sometimes it is swept away in one instant by the discovery of some
quality of character of whose existence we have never dreamed. Sometimes, as in
"What's To Be Done?" the constant need of one is identical only with the
temporary need of the other, and discovery can not possibly be made until the
temporary need has passed. All life is either growth or decay, - that is,
change. And with every change in the individual there is change in his love. In
the happiest lives and the longest loves its proportion and depth and character
are perpetually changing.
Victor says: Variety may be as truly the mother of duality as liberty is the
mother of order. Has he forgotten that this mother does not die in giving birth
to her daughter, and that this child does not thrive well without the mother?
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