The Forerunner Part 57

Woman's love for man, as currently treated in fiction is largely a reflex; it is the way he wants her to feel, expects her to feel; not a fair representation of how she does feel. If "love" is to be selected as the most important thing in life to write about, then the mother's love should be the princ.i.p.al subject: This is the main stream. This is the general underlying, world-lifting force. The "life-force," now so glibly chattered about, finds its fullest expression in motherhood; not in the emotions of an a.s.sistant in the preliminary stages.

What has literature, what has fiction, to offer concerning mother-love, or even concerning father-love, as compared to this vast volume of excitement about lover-love? Why is the search-light continually focussed upon a two or three years s.p.a.ce of life "mid the blank miles round about?" Why indeed, except for the clear reason, that on a starkly masculine basis this is his one period of overwhelming interest and excitement.

If the beehive produced literature, the bee's fiction would be rich and broad; full of the complex tasks of comb-building and filling; the care and feeding of the young, the guardian-service of the queen; and far beyond that it would spread to the blue glory of the summer sky, the fresh winds, the endless beauty and sweetness of a thousand thousand flowers. It would treat of the vast fecundity of motherhood, the educative and selective processes of the group-mothers; and the pa.s.sion of loyalty, of social service, which holds the hive together.

But if the drones wrote fiction, it would have no subject matter save the feasting of many; and the nuptial flight, of one.

To the male, as such, this mating instinct is frankly the major interest of life; even the belligerent instincts are second to it. To the female, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a pa.s.sing interest.

In nature's economy, his is but a temporary devotion, hers the slow processes of life's fulfillment.

In Humanity we have long since, not outgrown, but overgrown, this stage of feeling. In Human Parentage even the mother's share begins to pale beside that ever-growing Social love and care, which guards and guides the children of to-day.

The art of literature in this main form of fiction is far too great a thing to be wholly governed by one dominant note. As life widened and intensified, the artist, if great enough, has transcended s.e.x; and in the mightier works of the real masters, we find fiction treating of life, life in general, in all its complex relationships, and refusing to be held longer to the rigid canons of an androcentric past.

This was the power of Balzac--he took in more than this one field. This was the universal appeal of d.i.c.kens; he wrote of people, all kinds of people, doing all kinds of things. As you recall with pleasure some preferred novel of this general favorite, you find yourself looking narrowly for the "love story" in it. It is there--for it is part of life; but it does not dominate the whole scene--any more than it does in life.

The thought of the world is made and handed out to us in the main. The makers of books are the makers of thoughts and feelings for people in general. Fiction is the most popular form in which this world-food is taken. If it were true, it would teach us life easily, swiftly, truly; teach not by preaching but by truly re-presenting; and we should grow up becoming acquainted with a far wider range of life in books than could even be ours in person. Then meeting life in reality we should be wise--and not be disappointed.

As it is, our great sea of fiction is steeped and dyed and flavored all one way. A young man faces life--the seventy year stretch, remember, and is given book upon book wherein one set of feelings is continually vocalized and overestimated. He reads forever of love, good love and bad love, natural and unnatural, legitimate and illegitimate; with the unavoidable inference that there is nothing else going on.

If he is a healthy young man he breaks loose from the whole thing, despises "love stories" and takes up life as he finds it. But what impression he does receive from fiction is a false one, and he suffers without knowing it from lack of the truer broader views of life it failed to give him.

A young woman faces life--the seventy year stretch remember; and is given the same books--with restrictions. Remember the remark of Rochefoucauld, "There are thirty good stories in the world and twenty-nine cannot be told to women." There is a certain broad field of literature so grossly androcentric that for very shame men have tried to keep it to themselves. But in a milder form, the spades all named teaspoons, or at the worst appearing as trowels--the young woman is given the same fiction. Love and love and love--from "first sight" to marriage. There it stops--just the fluttering ribbon of announcement, "and lived happily ever after."

Is that kind of fiction any sort of picture of a woman's life? Fiction, under our androcentric culture, has not given any true picture of woman's life, very little of human life, and a disproportioned section of man's life.

As we daily grow more human, both of us, this n.o.ble art is changing for the better so fast that a short lifetime can mark the growth. New fields are opening and new laborers are working in them. But it is no swift and easy matter to disabuse the race mind from att.i.tudes and habits inculcated for a thousand years. What we have been fed upon so long we are well used to, what we are used to we like, what we like we think is good and proper.

The widening demand for broader, truer fiction is disputed by the slow racial mind: and opposed by the marketers of literature on grounds of visible self-interest, as well as lethargic conservatism.

It is difficult for men, heretofore the sole producers and consumers of literature; and for women, new to the field, and following masculine canons because all the canons were masculine; to stretch their minds to a recognition of the change which is even now upon us.

This one narrow field has been for so long overworked, our minds are so filled with heroes and heroes continually repeating the one-act play, that when a book like David Harum is offered the publisher refuses it repeatedly, and finally insists on a "heart interest" being injected by force.

Did anyone read David Harum for that heart interest? Does anyone remember that heart interest? Has humanity no interests but those of the heart?

Robert Ellesmere was a popular book--but not because of its heart interest.

Uncle Tom's Cabin appealed to the entire world, more widely than any work of fiction that was ever written; but if anybody fell in love and married in it they have been forgotten. There was plenty of love in that book, love of family, love of friends, love of master for servant and servant for master; love of mother for child; love of married people for each other; love of humanity and love of G.o.d.

It was extremely popular. Some say it was not literature. That opinion will live, like the name of Empedocles.

The art of fiction is being re-born in these days. Life is discovered to be longer, wider, deeper, richer, than these monotonous players of one June would have us believe.

The humanizing of woman of itself opens five distinctly fresh fields of fiction: First the position of the young woman who is called upon to give up her "career"--her humanness--for marriage, and who objects to it; second, the middle-aged woman who at last discovers that her discontent is social starvation--that it is not more love that she wants, but more business in life: Third the interrelation of women with women--a thing we could never write about before because we never had it before: except in harems and convents: Fourth the inter-action between mothers and children; this not the eternal "mother and child," wherein the child is always a baby, but the long drama of personal relationship; the love and hope, the patience and power, the lasting joy and triumph, the slow eating disappointment which must never be owned to a living soul--here are grounds for novels that a million mothers and many million children would eagerly read: Fifth the new att.i.tude of the full-grown woman who faces the demands of love with the high standards of conscious motherhood.

There are other fields, broad and brilliantly promising, but this chapter is meant merely to show that our one-sided culture has, in this art, most disproportionately overestimated the dominant instincts of the male--Love and War--an offense against art and truth, and an injury to life.

WATER-LURE

We who were born of water, in the warm slow ancient years, Love it to-day for all we pay Of terror and loss and tears.

The child laughs loud at the fountain, laughs low in the April rain, And the sea's bright brim is a lure to him Where a lost life lives again.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

In a recent number of a leading "woman's" periodical is a disquisition on love--a girl's ideals of love, based on Elaine and the Sleeping Beauty.

This is a serious matter surely. Love being an essential preliminary to the best parenthood, and the major element of personal happiness, is a most commanding subject; and as the woman is the most important factor in both lines, her ideals are worth discussing.

We note that the author says "girl" instead of woman; but as boys and girls do have ideals they too are worth considering. What are these ideals as discussed in this worthy periodical?

We are told that the girl is often unfit to meet "the big grave questions of love itself;" and "to make sure that she has these ideals from the highest sources."

"What are these sources?" pursues this sagacious monitor; and then she offers--"fairy tales and old romance." For ideals of love--here--in America to-day--we are referred to Grimm's Marchen; to Cinderella, the Goose Girl, Beauty and the Beast, and the Sleeping Beauty! Various heroines of mythology and fiction are adduced, and the crowning type of all is Elaine, The Lily Maid of Astolat.

A careful reading of fairy tales, however worthy, does not seem to throw much light on the problems of marriage; and right marriage is what all this love and its ideals are for. Here is a matter calling for the widest knowledge, the n.o.blest purpose, the highest principles, the most practical action; a matter concerning not only the private happiness of two persons, but the lives of several others; a matter not only of individual appeal, but of the very broadest social duty; and for its ideals we are referred to old fairy tales!

The Sleeping Beauty is a most happy instance of woman's right att.i.tude toward love and marriage--she is to remain starkly unconscious, using absolutely no discretion; and cheerfully marry the first man that kisses her! In the fairy story he was a n.o.ble prince--but the average sleeping beauty of to-day is often waked up by the wrong man!

Sometimes she is married first, and wakes up afterward; like the lady in Lear's limerick:

"There a an old man of Jamaica, Who suddenly married a Quaker.

But she cried out, "O Lack!

I have married a Black!"

Which grieved that old man of Jamaica."

How does Elaine answer as an ideal? Almost as well as the Sleeping Beauty. Ignorance absolute; instant surrender to the first man appearing; no shadow of inquiry as to his being married or single; much less as to his morals. Then the apotheosis of the tidy-making instinct--embroidering a cover for a steel shield! a thing meant to bear the hardest kind of blows, made for that purpose, and she so afraid it will get "rust or soilure" that she constructs this decorated case for it.

Then the going forth to nurse her wounded hero, and the ingenuous proposal, when he offers to requite her.

Being refused, what then? Any thought of her duty in the world? Of her two good brothers? Of her aged father--very fond of her too, that old father? Not the slightest. Not even a glimmer of purpose to live on--if her love was so wonderful, and be of some use to the great man, by and by.

Nothing but herself. "I want something! I can't have it! I will die!"--and die she did, of set purpose, by a sort of flabby suicide; making the most careful arrangements for a spectacular funeral barge, and a letter that should wring the heart of the obdurate man.

Well, I can remember when I cried over it--at about thirteen. It does appeal to girls; but is it therefore an ideal to be held up as a High Source and followed?

It is time and more than time for us to recognize that marriage is for men and women, not girls and boys; that "love" is not a rosy dream but a responsible undertaking, with consequences; that no true ideals of love can be formed without full recognition of its purpose.

A thin small book of verse, a booklet, called "Philemon's Verses," from The Evergreen Press, Montrose, Pa., has been sent me for review.