Herland
say that we were kept in that fortress a good six months all told, and
after that, three in a pleasant enough city where--to Terry’s infinite
disgust--there were only “Colonels” and little children--no young women
whatever. Then we were under surveillance for three more--always with a
tutor or a guard or both. But those months were pleasant because we were
really getting acquainted with the girls. That was a chapter!--or will
be--I will try to do justice to it.
We learned their language pretty thoroughly--had to; and they learned
ours much more quickly and used it to hasten our own studies.
Jeff, who was never without reading matter of some sort, had two little
books with him, a novel and a little anthology of verse; and I had one
of those pocket encyclopedias--a fat little thing, bursting with facts.
These were used in our education--and theirs. Then as soon as we were up
to it, they furnished us with plenty of their own books, and I went in
for the history part--I wanted to understand the genesis of this miracle
of theirs.
And this is what happened, according to their records.
As to geography--at about the time of the Christian era this land had
a free passage to the sea. I’m not saying where, for good reasons. But
there was a fairly easy pass through that wall of mountains behind us,
and there is no doubt in my mind that these people were of Aryan stock,
and were once in contact with the best civilization of the old world.
They were “white,” but somewhat darker than our northern races because
of their constant exposure to sun and air.
The country was far larger then, including much land beyond the pass,
and a strip of coast. They had ships, commerce, an army, a king--for at
that time they were what they so calmly called us--a bi-sexual race.
What happened to them first was merely a succession of historic
misfortunes such as have befallen other nations often enough. They
were decimated by war, driven up from their coastline till finally the
reduced population, with many of the men killed in battle, occupied this
hinterland, and defended it for years, in the mountain passes. Where it
was open to any possible attack from below they strengthened the natural
defenses so that it became unscalably secure, as we found it.
They were a polygamous people, and a slave-holding people, like all of
their time; and during the generation or two of this struggle to defend
their mountain home they built the fortresses, such as the one we were
held in, and other of their oldest buildings, some still in use. Nothing
but earthquakes could destroy such architecture--huge solid blocks,
holding by their own weight. They must have had efficient workmen and
enough of them in those days.
They made a brave fight for their existence, but no nation can stand
up against what the steamship companies call “an act of God.” While
the whole fighting force was doing its best to defend their mountain
pathway, there occurred a volcanic outburst, with some local tremors,
and the result was the complete filling up of the pass--their only
outlet. Instead of a passage, a new ridge, sheer and high, stood between
them and the sea; they were walled in, and beneath that wall lay their
whole little army. Very few men were left alive, save the slaves;
and these now seized their opportunity, rose in revolt, killed their
remaining masters even to the youngest boy, killed the old women too,
and the mothers, intending to take possession of the country with the
remaining young women and girls.
But this succession of misfortunes was too much for those infuriated
virgins. There were many of them, and but few of these would-be masters,
so the young women, instead of submitting, rose in sheer desperation and
slew their brutal conquerors.
This sounds like Titus Andronicus, I know, but that is their account. I
suppose they were about crazy--can you blame them?
There was literally no one left on this beautiful high garden land but a
bunch of hysterical girls and some older slave women.
That was about two thousand years ago.
At first there was a period of sheer despair. The mountains towered
between them and their old enemies, but also between them and escape.
There was no way up or down or out--they simply had to stay there. Some
were for suicide, but not the majority. They must have been a plucky
lot, as a whole, and they decided to live--as long as they did live.
Of course they had hope, as youth must, that something would happen to
change their fate.
So they set to work, to bury the dead, to plow and sow, to care for one
another.
Speaking of burying the dead, I will set down while I think of it, that
they had adopted cremation in about the thirteenth century, for the same
reason that they had left off raising cattle--they could not spare
the room. They were much surprised to learn that we were still
burying--asked our reasons for it, and were much dissatisfied with what
we gave. We told them of the belief in the resurrection of the body, and
they asked if our God was not as well able to resurrect from ashes as
from long corruption. We told them of how people thought it repugnant to
have their loved ones burn, and they asked if it was less repugnant to
have them decay. They were inconveniently reasonable, those women.
Well--that original bunch of girls set to work to clean up the place and
make their living as best they could. Some of the remaining slave women
rendered invaluable service, teaching such trades as they knew. They
had such records as were then kept, all the tools and implements of the
time, and a most fertile land to work in.
There were a handful of the younger matrons who had escaped slaughter,
and a few babies were born after the cataclysm--but only two boys, and
they both died.
For five or ten years they worked together, growing stronger and wiser
and more and more mutually attached, and then the miracle happened--one
of these young women bore a child. Of course they all thought there must
be a man somewhere, but none was found. Then they decided it must be a
direct gift from the gods, and placed the proud mother in the Temple of
Maaia--their Goddess of Motherhood--under strict watch. And there,
as years passed, this wonder-woman bore child after child, five of
them--all girls.
I did my best, keenly interested as I have always been in sociology and
social psychology, to reconstruct in my mind the real position of these
ancient women. There were some five or six hundred of them, and they
were harem-bred; yet for the few preceding generations they had been
reared in the atmosphere of such heroic struggle that the stock must
have been toughened somewhat. Left alone in that terrific orphanhood,
they had clung together, supporting one another and their little
sisters, and developing unknown powers in the stress of new necessity.
To this pain-hardened and work-strengthened group, who had lost not only
the love and care of parents, but the hope of ever having children of
their own, there now dawned the new hope.
Here at last was Motherhood, and though it was not for all of them
personally, it might--if the power was inherited--found here a new race.
It may be imagined how those five Daughters of Maaia, Children of the
Temple, Mothers of the Future--they had all the titles that love and
hope and reverence could give--were reared. The whole little nation
of women surrounded them with loving service, and waited, between a
boundless hope and an equally boundless despair, to see if they, too,
would be mothers.
And they were! As fast as they reached the age of twenty-five they began
bearing. Each of them, like her mother, bore five daughters. Presently
there were twenty-five New Women, Mothers in their own right, and the
whole spirit of the country changed from mourning and mere courageous
resignation to proud joy. The older women, those who remembered men,
died off; the youngest of all the first lot of course died too, after
a while, and by that time there were left one hundred and fifty-five
parthenogenetic women, founding a new race.
They inherited all that the devoted care of that declining band of
original ones could leave them. Their little country was quite safe.
Their farms and gardens were all in full production. Such industries
as they had were in careful order. The records of their past were all
preserved, and for years the older women had spent their time in the
best teaching they were capable of, that they might leave to the little
group of sisters and mothers all they possessed of skill and knowledge.
There you have the start of Herland! One family, all descended from one
mother! She lived to a hundred years old; lived to see her hundred and
twenty-five great-granddaughters born; lived as Queen-Priestess-Mother
of them all; and died with a nobler pride and a fuller joy than perhaps
any human soul has ever known--she alone had founded a new race!
The first five daughters had grown up in an atmosphere of holy calm,
of awed watchful waiting, of breathless prayer. To them the longed-for
motherhood was not only a personal joy, but a nation’s hope. Their
twenty-five daughters in turn, with a stronger hope, a richer, wider
outlook, with the devoted love and care of all the surviving population,
grew up as a holy sisterhood, their whole ardent youth looking
forward to their great office. And at last they were left alone; the
white-haired First Mother was gone, and this one family, five sisters,
twenty-five first cousins, and a hundred and twenty-five second cousins,
began a new race.
Here you have human beings, unquestionably, but what we were slow in
understanding was how these ultra-women, inheriting only from women, had
eliminated not only certain masculine characteristics, which of
course we did not look for, but so much of what we had always thought
essentially feminine.
The tradition of men as guardians and protectors had quite died out.
These stalwart virgins had no men to fear and therefore no need of
protection. As to wild beasts--there were none in their sheltered land.
The power of mother-love, that maternal instinct we so highly laud, was
theirs of course, raised to its highest power; and a sister-love which,
even while recognizing the actual relationship, we found it hard to
credit.
Terry, incredulous, even contemptuous, when we were alone, refused to
believe the story. “A lot of traditions as old as Herodotus--and
about as trustworthy!” he said. “It’s likely women--just a pack of
women--would have hung together like that! We all know women can’t
organize--that they scrap like anything--are frightfully jealous.”
“But these New Ladies didn’t have anyone to be jealous of, remember,”
drawled Jeff.
“That’s a likely story,” Terry sneered.
“Why don’t you invent a likelier one?” I asked him. “Here _are_ the
women--nothing but women, and you yourself admit there’s no trace of a
man in the country.” This was after we had been about a good deal.
“I’ll admit that,” he growled. “And it’s a big miss, too. There’s not
only no fun without ’em--no real sport--no competition; but these women
aren’t _womanly_. You know they aren’t.”
That kind of talk always set Jeff going; and I gradually grew to side
with him. “Then you don’t call a breed of women whose one concern is
motherhood--womanly?” he asked.
“Indeed I don’t,” snapped Terry. “What does a man care for
motherhood--when he hasn’t a ghost of a chance at fatherhood? And
besides--what’s the good of talking sentiment when we are just men
together? What a man wants of women is a good deal more than all this
‘motherhood’!”
We were as patient as possible with Terry. He had lived about nine
months among the “Colonels” when he made that outburst; and with
no chance at any more strenuous excitement than our gymnastics gave