Herland
listened while Jeff roughly ran over the geologic history of the earth,
and showed them their own land in relation to the others. Out of that
same pocket reference book of mine came facts and figures which were
seized upon and placed in right relation with unerring acumen.
Even Terry grew interested in this work. “If we can keep this up,
they’ll be having us lecture to all the girls’ schools and colleges--how
about that?” he suggested to us. “Don’t know as I’d object to being an
Authority to such audiences.”
They did, in fact, urge us to give public lectures later, but not to the
hearers or with the purpose we expected.
What they were doing with us was like--like--well, say like Napoleon
extracting military information from a few illiterate peasants. They
knew just what to ask, and just what use to make of it; they had
mechanical appliances for disseminating information almost equal to ours
at home; and by the time we were led forth to lecture, our audiences
had thoroughly mastered a well-arranged digest of all we had previously
given to our teachers, and were prepared with such notes and questions
as might have intimidated a university professor.
They were not audiences of girls, either. It was some time before we
were allowed to meet the young women.
“Do you mind telling what you intend to do with us?” Terry burst
forth one day, facing the calm and friendly Moadine with that funny
half-blustering air of his. At first he used to storm and flourish quite
a good deal, but nothing seemed to amuse them more; they would gather
around and watch him as if it was an exhibition, politely, but with
evident interest. So he learned to check himself, and was almost
reasonable in his bearing--but not quite.
She announced smoothly and evenly: “Not in the least. I thought it was
quite plain. We are trying to learn of you all we can, and to teach you
what you are willing to learn of our country.”
“Is that all?” he insisted.
She smiled a quiet enigmatic smile. “That depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Mainly on yourselves,” she replied.
“Why do you keep us shut up so closely?”
“Because we do not feel quite safe in allowing you at large where there
are so many young women.”
Terry was really pleased at that. He had thought as much, inwardly; but
he pushed the question. “Why should you be afraid? We are gentlemen.”
She smiled that little smile again, and asked: “Are ‘gentlemen’ always
safe?”
“You surely do not think that any of us,” he said it with a good deal of
emphasis on the “us,” “would hurt your young girls?”
“Oh no,” she said quickly, in real surprise. “The danger is quite the
other way. They might hurt you. If, by any accident, you did harm any
one of us, you would have to face a million mothers.”
He looked so amazed and outraged that Jeff and I laughed outright, but
she went on gently.
“I do not think you quite understand yet. You are but men, three men,
in a country where the whole population are mothers--or are going to be.
Motherhood means to us something which I cannot yet discover in any
of the countries of which you tell us. You have spoken”--she turned to
Jeff, “of Human Brotherhood as a great idea among you, but even that I
judge is far from a practical expression?”
Jeff nodded rather sadly. “Very far--” he said.
“Here we have Human Motherhood--in full working use,” she went on.
“Nothing else except the literal sisterhood of our origin, and the far
higher and deeper union of our social growth.
“The children in this country are the one center and focus of all our
thoughts. Every step of our advance is always considered in its effect
on them--on the race. You see, we are _Mothers_,” she repeated, as if
in that she had said it all.
“I don’t see how that fact--which is shared by all women--constitutes
any risk to us,” Terry persisted. “You mean they would defend their
children from attack. Of course. Any mothers would. But we are not
savages, my dear lady; we are not going to hurt any mother’s child.”
They looked at one another and shook their heads a little, but
Zava turned to Jeff and urged him to make us see--said he seemed to
understand more fully than we did. And he tried.
I can see it now, or at least much more of it, but it has taken me a
long time, and a good deal of honest intellectual effort.
What they call Motherhood was like this:
They began with a really high degree of social development, something
like that of Ancient Egypt or Greece. Then they suffered the loss of
everything masculine, and supposed at first that all human power and
safety had gone too. Then they developed this virgin birth capacity.
Then, since the prosperity of their children depended on it, the fullest
and subtlest coordination began to be practiced.
I remember how long Terry balked at the evident unanimity of these
women--the most conspicuous feature of their whole culture. “It’s
impossible!” he would insist. “Women cannot cooperate--it’s against
nature.”
When we urged the obvious facts he would say: “Fiddlesticks!” or “Hang
your facts--I tell you it can’t be done!” And we never succeeded in
shutting him up till Jeff dragged in the hymenoptera.
“‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard’--and learn something,” he said
triumphantly. “Don’t they cooperate pretty well? You can’t beat it. This
place is just like an enormous anthill--you know an anthill is nothing
but a nursery. And how about bees? Don’t they manage to cooperate and
love one another?
As the birds do love the Spring,
Or the bees their careful king,
as that precious Constable had it. Just show me a combination of male
creatures, bird, bug, or beast, that works as well, will you? Or one of
our masculine countries where the people work together as well as they
do here! I tell you, women are the natural cooperators, not men!”
Terry had to learn a good many things he did not want to. To go back to
my little analysis of what happened:
They developed all this close inter-service in the interests of their
children. To do the best work they had to specialize, of course; the
children needed spinners and weavers, farmers and gardeners, carpenters
and masons, as well as mothers.
Then came the filling up of the place. When a population multiplies
by five every thirty years it soon reaches the limits of a country,
especially a small one like this. They very soon eliminated all the
grazing cattle--sheep were the last to go, I believe. Also, they worked
out a system of intensive agriculture surpassing anything I ever heard
of, with the very forests all reset with fruit- or nut-bearing trees.
Do what they would, however, there soon came a time when they were
confronted with the problem of “the pressure of population” in an acute
form. There was really crowding, and with it, unavoidably, a decline in
standards.
And how did those women meet it?
Not by a “struggle for existence” which would result in an everlasting
writhing mass of underbred people trying to get ahead of one
another--some few on top, temporarily, many constantly crushed out
underneath, a hopeless substratum of paupers and degenerates, and no
serenity or peace for anyone, no possibility for really noble qualities
among the people at large.
Neither did they start off on predatory excursions to get more land from
somebody else, or to get more food from somebody else, to maintain their
struggling mass.
Not at all. They sat down in council together and thought it out. Very
clear, strong thinkers they were. They said: “With our best endeavors
this country will support about so many people, with the standard of
peace, comfort, health, beauty, and progress we demand. Very well. That
is all the people we will make.”
There you have it. You see, they were Mothers, not in our sense of
helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land,
every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting
horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers
of People. Mother-love with them was not a brute passion, a mere
“instinct,” a wholly personal feeling; it was--a religion.
It included that limitless feeling of sisterhood, that wide unity in
service, which was so difficult for us to grasp. And it was National,
Racial, Human--oh, I don’t know how to say it.
We are used to seeing what we call “a mother” completely wrapped up in
her own pink bundle of fascinating babyhood, and taking but the faintest
theoretic interest in anybody else’s bundle, to say nothing of the
common needs of _all_ the bundles. But these women were working all
together at the grandest of tasks--they were Making People--and they
made them well.
There followed a period of “negative eugenics” which must have been an
appalling sacrifice. We are commonly willing to “lay down our lives” for
our country, but they had to forego motherhood for their country--and it
was precisely the hardest thing for them to do.
When I got this far in my reading I went to Somel for more light. We
were as friendly by that time as I had ever been in my life with any
woman. A mighty comfortable soul she was, giving one the nice smooth
mother-feeling a man likes in a woman, and yet giving also the clear
intelligence and dependableness I used to assume to be masculine
qualities. We had talked volumes already.
“See here,” said I. “Here was this dreadful period when they got far too
thick, and decided to limit the population. We have a lot of talk about
that among us, but your position is so different that I’d like to know a
little more about it.
“I understand that you make Motherhood the highest social service--a
sacrament, really; that it is only undertaken once, by the majority of
the population; that those held unfit are not allowed even that; and
that to be encouraged to bear more than one child is the very highest
reward and honor in the power of the state.”
(She interpolated here that the nearest approach to an aristocracy
they had was to come of a line of “Over Mothers”--those who had been so
honored.)
“But what I do not understand, naturally, is how you prevent it. I
gathered that each woman had five. You have no tyrannical husbands to
hold in check--and you surely do not destroy the unborn--”
The look of ghastly horror she gave me I shall never forget. She started
from her chair, pale, her eyes blazing.
“Destroy the unborn--!” she said in a hard whisper. “Do men do that in
your country?”
“Men!” I began to answer, rather hotly, and then saw the gulf before
me. None of us wanted these women to think that _our_ women, of whom we
boasted so proudly, were in any way inferior to them. I am ashamed
to say that I equivocated. I told her of certain criminal types of
women--perverts, or crazy, who had been known to commit infanticide. I
told her, truly enough, that there was much in our land which was
open to criticism, but that I hated to dwell on our defects until they
understood us and our conditions better.
And, making a wide detour, I scrambled back to my question of how they
limited the population.
As for Somel, she seemed sorry, a little ashamed even, of her too
clearly expressed amazement. As I look back now, knowing them better, I
am more and more and more amazed as I appreciate the exquisite courtesy
with which they had received over and over again statements and
admissions on our part which must have revolted them to the soul.
She explained to me, with sweet seriousness, that as I had supposed, at
first each woman bore five children; and that, in their eager desire
to build up a nation, they had gone on in that way for a few centuries,
till they were confronted with the absolute need of a limit. This fact
was equally plain to all--all were equally interested.