The Forerunner Part 20

"And to think," said he, gripping the back of a chair and looking down at her fiercely, "to think that a girl who can earn nine hundred dollars a year teaching school, and stay at home and do her duty by her family besides, should plan to desert her mother outright--now she's old and sick! Of course I can't stop you! You're of age, and children nowadays have no sense of natural obligation after they're grown up. You can go, of course, and disgrace the family as you propose--but you needn't expect to have me consent to it or approve of it--or of you. It's a shameful thing--and you are an unnatural daughter--that's all I've got to say!"

Mr. Bell took his hat and went out--a conclusive form of punctuation much used by men in discussions of this sort.

THE POOR RELATION

A certain man had a Poor Relation, who was only kept in the family as a Servant, who was certainly open to criticism, and who got it.

"He is so dirty!" said the Head of the Family, "That is why we make him sleep over the stable."

"He is careless and clumsy--he soils, breaks and loses things--that is why his furniture and clothing are so poor."

"He is a stupid fellow--not to be trusted with any important business--that is why he does the scullery work!"

"He is a sickly wretch too--it costs us a deal of money to have him cared for in the hospital and his defects attended to."

"Worst of all he has criminal tendencies--he is a disgrace and an expense to the Family on this account alone."

"Why do you keep him at all?" I asked.

"We have to--he is after all a relation. Besides--someone must do the scullery work."

"What do you pay him?" I asked.

"We don't really pay him anything; we just keep him alive--and clothed--so that he can do his work."

"Was he born defective?" I asked.

"No--I've heard my mother say he was as good a baby as I."

"And what relation did you say he was?"

"I rather hate to own it--but he's my brother!"

HIS CRUTCHES

Why should the Stronger s.e.x require, To hold him to his tasks, Two medicines of varied fire?

The Weaker Vessel asks.

Hobbling between the rosy cup And dry narcotic brown,-- One daily drug to stir him up And one to soothe him down.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

II.

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY.

The family is older than humanity, and therefore cannot be called a human inst.i.tution. A post office, now, is wholly human; no other creature has a post office, but there are families in plenty among birds and beasts; all kinds permanent and transient; monogamous, polygamous and polyandrous.

We are now to consider the growth of the family in humanity; what is its rational development in humanness; in mechanical, mental and social lines; in the extension of love and service; and the effect upon it of this strange new arrangement--a masculine proprietor.

Like all natural inst.i.tutions the family has a purpose; and is to be measured primarily as it serves that purpose; which is, the care and nurture of the young. To protect the helpless little ones, to feed and shelter them, to ensure them the benefits of an ever longer period of immaturity, and so to improve the race--this is the original purpose of the family.

When a natural inst.i.tution becomes human it enters the plane of consciousness. We think about it; and, in our strange new power of voluntary action do things to it. We have done strange things to the family; or, more specifically, men have.

Balsac, at his bitterest, observed, "Women's virtue is man's best invention." Balsac was wrong. Virtue--the unswerving devotion to one mate--is common among birds and some of the higher mammals. If Balsac meant celibacy when he said virtue, why that is one of man's inventions--though hardly his best.

What man has done to the family, speaking broadly, is to change it from an inst.i.tution for the best service of the child to one modified to his own service, the vehicle of his comfort, power and pride.

Among the heavy millions of the stirred East, a child--necessarily a male child--is desired for the credit and glory of the father, and his fathers; in place of seeing that all a parent is for is the best service of the child. Ancestor worship, that gross reversal of all natural law, is of wholly androcentric origin. It is strongest among old patriarchal races; lingers on in feudal Europe; is to be traced even in America today in a few sporadic efforts to magnify the deeds of our ancestors.

The best thing any of us can do for our ancestors is to be better than they were; and we ought to give our minds to it. When we use our past merely as a guide-book, and concentrate our n.o.ble emotions on the present and future, we shall improve more rapidly.

The peculiar changes brought about in family life by the predominance of the male are easily traced. In these studies we must keep clearly in mind the basic masculine characteristics: desire, combat, self-expression--all legitimate and right in proper use; only mischievous when excessive or out of place. Through them the male is led to strenuous compet.i.tion for the favor of the female; in the overflowing ardours of song, as in nightingale and tomcat; in wasteful splendor of personal decoration, from the pheasant's breast to an embroidered waistcoat; and in direct struggle for the prize, from the stag's locked horns to the clashing spears of the tournament.

It is earnestly hoped that no reader will take offence at the necessarily frequent, reference to these essential features of maleness.

In the many books about women it is, naturally, their femaleness that has been studied and enlarged upon. And though women, after thousands of years of such discussion, have become a little restive under the constant use of the word female: men, as rational beings, should not object to an a.n.a.logous study--at least not for some time--a few centuries or so.

How, then, do we find these masculine tendencies, desire, combat and self-expression, affect the home and family when given too much power?

First comes the effect in the preliminary work of selection. One of the most uplifting forces of nature is that of s.e.x selection. The males, numerous, varied, pouring a flood of energy into wide modifications, compete for the female, and she selects the victor, this securing to the race the new improvements.

In forming the proprietary family there is no such compet.i.tion, no such selection. The man, by violence or by purchase, does the choosing--he selects the kind of woman that pleases him. Nature did not intend him to select; he is not good at it. Neither was the female intended to compete--she is not good at it.

If there is a race between males for a mate--the swiftest gets her first; but if one male is chasing a number of females he gets the slowest first. The one method improves our speed: the other does not.

If males struggle and fight with one another for a mate, the strongest secures her; if the male struggles and fights with the female--(a peculiar and unnatural horror, known only among human beings) he most readily secures the weakest. The one method improves our strength--the other does not.

When women became the property of men; sold and bartered; "given away"

by their paternal owner to their marital owner; they lost this prerogative of the female, this primal duty of selection. The males were no longer improved by their natural compet.i.tion for the female; and the females were not improved; because the male did not select for points of racial superiority, but for such qualities as pleased him.

There is a locality in northern Africa, where young girls are deliberately fed with a certain oily seed, to make them fat,--that they may be the more readily married,--as the men like fat wives. Among certain more savage African tribes the chief's wives are prepared for him by being kept in small dark huts and fed on "mealies' and mola.s.ses; precisely as a Strasbourg goose is fattened for the gourmand. Now fatness is not a desirable race characteristic; it does not add to the woman's happiness or efficiency; or to the child's; it is merely an accessory pleasant to the master; his att.i.tude being much as the amorous monad ecstatically puts it, in Sill's quaint poem, "Five Lives,"

"O the little female monad's lips!

O the little female monad's eyes!

O the little, little, female, female monad!"

This ultra littleness and ultra femaleness has been demanded and produced by our Androcentric Culture.