Herland
This is one thing which we did not understand--had made no allowance
for. When in our pre-marital discussions one of those dear girls had
said: “We understand it thus and thus,” or “We hold such and such to be
true,” we men, in our own deep-seated convictions of the power of love,
and our easy views about beliefs and principles, fondly imagined that
we could convince them otherwise. What we imagined, before marriage, did
not matter any more than what an average innocent young girl imagines.
We found the facts to be different.
It was not that they did not love us; they did, deeply and warmly. But
there are you again--what they meant by “love” and what we meant by
“love” were so different.
Perhaps it seems rather cold-blooded to say “we” and “they,” as if we
were not separate couples, with our separate joys and sorrows, but our
positions as aliens drove us together constantly. The whole strange
experience had made our friendship more close and intimate than it would
ever have become in a free and easy lifetime among our own people.
Also, as men, with our masculine tradition of far more than two thousand
years, we were a unit, small but firm, against this far larger unit of
feminine tradition.
I think I can make clear the points of difference without a too painful
explicitness. The more external disagreement was in the matter of “the
home,” and the housekeeping duties and pleasures we, by instinct and
long education, supposed to be inherently appropriate to women.
I will give two illustrations, one away up, and the other away down, to
show how completely disappointed we were in this regard.
For the lower one, try to imagine a male ant, coming from some state of
existence where ants live in pairs, endeavoring to set up housekeeping
with a female ant from a highly developed anthill. This female ant might
regard him with intense personal affection, but her ideas of parentage
and economic management would be on a very different scale from his.
Now, of course, if she was a stray female in a country of pairing ants,
he might have had his way with her; but if he was a stray male in an
anthill--!
For the higher one, try to imagine a devoted and impassioned man trying
to set up housekeeping with a lady angel, a real wings-and-harp-and-halo
angel, accustomed to fulfilling divine missions all over interstellar
space. This angel might love the man with an affection quite beyond his
power of return or even of appreciation, but her ideas of service and
duty would be on a very different scale from his. Of course, if she was
a stray angel in a country of men, he might have had his way with her;
but if he was a stray man among angels--!
Terry, at his worst, in a black fury for which, as a man, I must have
some sympathy, preferred the ant simile. More of Terry and his special
troubles later. It was hard on Terry.
Jeff--well, Jeff always had a streak that was too good for this world!
He’s the kind that would have made a saintly priest in parentagearlier
times. He accepted the angel theory, swallowed it whole, tried to force
it on us--with varying effect. He so worshipped Celis, and not only
Celis, but what she represented; he had become so deeply convinced of
the almost supernatural advantages of this country and people, that he
took his medicine like a--I cannot say “like a man,” but more as if he
wasn’t one.
Don’t misunderstand me for a moment. Dear old Jeff was no milksop or
molly-coddle either. He was a strong, brave, efficient man, and an
excellent fighter when fighting was necessary. But there was always this
angel streak in him. It was rather a wonder, Terry being so different,
that he really loved Jeff as he did; but it happens so sometimes, in
spite of the difference--perhaps because of it.
As for me, I stood between. I was no such gay Lothario as Terry, and no
such Galahad as Jeff. But for all my limitations I think I had the habit
of using my brains in regard to behavior rather more frequently than
either of them. I had to use brain-power now, I can tell you.
The big point at issue between us and our wives was, as may easily be
imagined, in the very nature of the relation.
“Wives! Don’t talk to me about wives!” stormed Terry. “They don’t know
what the word means.”
Which is exactly the fact--they didn’t. How could they? Back in their
prehistoric records of polygamy and slavery there were no ideals of
wifehood as we know it, and since then no possibility of forming such.
“The only thing they can think of about a man is _Fatherhood!_” said
Terry in high scorn. “_Fatherhood!_ As if a man was always wanting to
be a _father!_”
This also was correct. They had their long, wide, deep, rich experience
of Motherhood, and their only perception of the value of a male creature
as such was for Fatherhood.
Aside from that, of course, was the whole range of personal love, love
which as Jeff earnestly phrased it “passeth the love of women!” It did,
too. I can give no idea--either now, after long and happy experience of
it, or as it seemed then, in the first measureless wonder--of the beauty
and power of the love they gave us.
Even Alima--who had a more stormy temperament than either of the others,
and who, heaven knows, had far more provocation--even Alima was patience
and tenderness and wisdom personified to the man she loved, until
he--but I haven’t got to that yet.
These, as Terry put it, “alleged or so-called wives” of ours, went right
on with their profession as foresters. We, having no special learnings,
had long since qualified as assistants. We had to do something, if only
to pass the time, and it had to be work--we couldn’t be playing forever.
This kept us out of doors with those dear girls, and more or less
together--too much together sometimes.
These people had, it now became clear to us, the highest, keenest, most
delicate sense of personal privacy, but not the faintest idea of that
_solitude à deux_ we are so fond of. They had, every one of them, the
“two rooms and a bath” theory realized. From earliest childhood each
had a separate bedroom with toilet conveniences, and one of the marks
of coming of age was the addition of an outer room in which to receive
friends.
Long since we had been given our own two rooms apiece, and as being of a
different sex and race, these were in a separate house. It seemed to be
recognized that we should breathe easier if able to free our minds in
real seclusion.
For food we either went to any convenient eating-house, ordered a meal
brought in, or took it with us to the woods, always and equally good.
All this we had become used to and enjoyed--in our courting days.
After marriage there arose in us a somewhat unexpected urge of feeling
that called for a separate house; but this feeling found no response in
the hearts of those fair ladies.
“We _are_ alone, dear,” Ellador explained to me with gentle patience.
“We are alone in these great forests; we may go and eat in any little
summer-house--just we two, or have a separate table anywhere--or even
have a separate meal in our own rooms. How could we be aloner?”
This was all very true. We had our pleasant mutual solitude about our
work, and our pleasant evening talks in their apartments or ours; we
had, as it were, all the pleasures of courtship carried right on; but we
had no sense of--perhaps it may be called possession.
“Might as well not be married at all,” growled Terry. “They only got up
that ceremony to please us--please Jeff, mostly. They’ve no real idea of
being married.”
I tried my best to get Ellador’s point of view, and naturally I tried to
give her mine. Of course, what we, as men, wanted to make them see was
that there were other, and as we proudly said “higher,” uses in this
relation than what Terry called “mere parentage.” In the highest terms I
knew I tried to explain this to Ellador.
“Anything higher than for mutual love to hope to give life, as we did?”
she said. “How is it higher?”
“It develops love,” I explained. “All the power of beautiful permanent
mated love comes through this higher development.”
“Are you sure?” she asked gently. “How do you know that it was so
developed? There are some birds who love each other so that they mope
and pine if separated, and never pair again if one dies, but they never
mate except in the mating season. Among your people do you find high and
lasting affection appearing in proportion to this indulgence?”
It is a very awkward thing, sometimes, to have a logical mind.
Of course I knew about those monogamous birds and beasts too, that mate
for life and show every sign of mutual affection, without ever having
stretched the sex relationship beyond its original range. But what of
it?
“Those are lower forms of life!” I protested. “They have no capacity
for faithful and affectionate, and apparently happy--but oh, my dear! my
dear!--what can they know of such a love as draws us together? Why, to
touch you--to be near you--to come closer and closer--to lose myself in
you--surely you feel it too, do you not?”
I came nearer. I seized her hands.
Her eyes were on mine, tender radiant, but steady and strong. There was
something so powerful, so large and changeless, in those eyes that
I could not sweep her off her feet by my own emotion as I had
unconsciously assumed would be the case.
It made me feel as, one might imagine, a man might feel who loved a
goddess--not a Venus, though! She did not resent my attitude, did not
repel it, did not in the least fear it, evidently. There was not a shade
of that timid withdrawal or pretty resistance which are so--provocative.
“You see, dearest,” she said, “you have to be patient with us. We are
not like the women of your country. We are Mothers, and we are People,
but we have not specialized in this line.”
“We” and “we” and “we”--it was so hard to get her to be personal. And,
as I thought that, I suddenly remembered how we were always criticizing
_our_ women for _being_ so personal.
Then I did my earnest best to picture to her the sweet intense joy of
married lovers, and the result in higher stimulus to all creative work.
“Do you mean,” she asked quite calmly, as if I was not holding her cool
firm hands in my hot and rather quivering ones, “that with you, when
people marry, they go right on doing this in season and out of season,
with no thought of children at all?”
“They do,” I said, with some bitterness. “They are not mere parents.
They are men and women, and they love each other.”
“How long?” asked Ellador, rather unexpectedly.
“How long?” I repeated, a little dashed. “Why as long as they live.”
“There is something very beautiful in the idea,” she admitted, still as
if she were discussing life on Mars. “This climactic expression, which,
in all the other life-forms, has but the one purpose, has with you
become specialized to higher, purer, nobler uses. It has--I judge from
what you tell me--the most ennobling effect on character. People marry,
not only for parentage, but for this exquisite interchange--and, as
a result, you have a world full of continuous lovers, ardent, happy,
mutually devoted, always living on that high tide of supreme emotion
which we had supposed to belong only to one season and one use. And you
say it has other results, stimulating all high creative work. That must
mean floods, oceans of such work, blossoming from this intense happiness
of every married pair! It is a beautiful idea!”
She was silent, thinking.
So was I.
She slipped one hand free, and was stroking my hair with it in a gentle
motherly way. I bowed my hot head on her shoulder and felt a dim sense
of peace, a restfulness which was very pleasant.
“You must take me there someday, darling,” she was saying. “It is