Causes and Uses of the Subjection of Women
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
When a creeping baby bumps his head on a chair, he blames the chair. He thinks the chair is a person, and that, as a person, the chair ought not to have hit him. It is a bad world--full of malicious chairs.
When a primitive savage misses fire in hunting, or is struck by lightning, or is eaten by a bear, he considers these misfortunes to be the work of evil spirits. Something or somebody is against him; some one is to blame; it is a bad world, full of malign influences.
The spirit of man, in its early development, is inordinately personal. He personifies rock, tree, and river, he makes gods of sun, moon, and stars; his constant attitude towards nature is one of praise or blame. This psychic attitude, when the human mind grew complex enough to formulate the larger religions, has found its utmost expression in the concepts of God and the Devil; the last personifications of Praise and Blame; and in the middle field of life,--the human soul,-these active sentiments are constantly in play. The people who please us are "good"--and we praise them; the people who hurt us are "bad"--and we blame them; and whatsoever human institution works to our advantage or disadvantage, we straightway pile up moral responsibility, with praise or blame proportionate, on all the persons involved.
So, when women began to be conscious of the disadvantages of their position of subjection to men, it was inevitable at first that they should revolt against the "cruelty of their oppressors," and blame with intense personal feeling the long dominion of "tyrant man." This feeling is natural, as it is natural for the child to blame the chair, but it is no more reasonable. The subjection of women was at no time an overt act like the conquest of a nation by a greedy superior, the oppression of colonies, or the maintenance of the Inquisition. Even deeds like these have their historical explanation, and woman's position antedates history and has a biological explanation, an essential cause, lying at the very basis of sociology.
All the phenomena of living species lie between the expanding force of life and the modifying pressure of the environment. Whatever creatures are, and whatever they do, is developed by this force, under this pressure. When the grand march of physical evolution culminated in the human animal, it stood at the very beginning of that psychic evolution in which lies all ensuing progress. Sociology, history, humanity, these are in the realms of psychic progress, and find their physical expression in the material creations of man. All human relations and inter-relations are to be studied in the light of social evolution, and the relation of woman to man is the most basic of all.
Here stands the human animal,--hairy, ferocious, strong, with the Hand that could multiply weapon and tool-also multiplying the powers of the Brain by its new activity. He is not yet Man. Man is a social being; his existence and further progress conditioned upon social relation. How is this solitary beast to be brought into the condition of mutual peace and love and helpfulness in the development of which is civilization? Life, within him, is only conscious of his own body: how can that consciousness extend to others?
Mammalian motherhood had already brought the seeds of love into the world. The nursing mother loved her child; but, poor brute, she did not love any one else. All animals love their young. This was not enough for human growth. We have to love each other to be human.
Now, love follows service and propinquity. These savage creatures must be brought into relations of mutual service and near neighborhood,--continued association, in order that they may love each other. And, in the laws of nature, this must be accomplished through existing instincts, desires, and impulses.
The dominant desires and impulses of man then were simply those of personal beasts, and more permanent, in that the overlapping series of children demanded unintermittent care. The multiplied self-interest of this group of beings made possible the coördinate action which is the base of economic progress.
But could not this have come to pass with woman free?
Primitive woman was no nobler an animal than primitive man. She was as fierce, or fiercer, though less strong; and though she loved her young as do the tigress and she-bear, it was only while she suckled them. She was also as greedy and promiscuous as he; both had the natural passions of their race and time. But, as a captive, with the economic energies of motherhood now forced into new channels, having to toil for mate as well as young, she developed new activities and new emotions. Denied free expression, free movement, this racial development was constantly repressed in her; but, since force cannot be denied some result, it was expressed in him--her son inherited her qualities.
The female of any species, having the larger share in reproductive processes, naturally inclines to those activities we call economic. She, by nature, works. There are species in which the male helps the female in her labors of nest-building, food-getting, etc.; but the main line of economic energy in the world is the female line,--from the "busy bee,"--a sterilized female,--and the worker ant, which is the same; or the jerky mother mud-wasp, laying up dinners for her young, up to the mother savage, embroidering little moccasins, and weaving baskets to hold the winter food. The labor of the animal world is all for the young; it is reproductive energy, finding its expression in economic activity through the mother.
This intensifying energy which the guileless tyrant, man, forbade his captive, woman, to express in freedom, he himself must needs express in her service and that of his numerous children. A free mother could and did feed her own young, and the free father had no need to do more than feed himself. But a captive mother could only make the best of what her mate brought home to her; and the more captive father must needs work as he never worked before, to "support the family." The subjection of woman was an essential condition to the development of economic activity in man; and also to such psychic growth as precedes and accompanies it.
It has inordinately developed sex-energy in the race, and has forced that energy into economic channels. Subject woman, growing in beauty and charm as an inevitable result of the relation in which she was compelled to live, enslaved her enslaver; and since he would not let her work for herself, he has, perforce, worked for her, spurred to gigantic efforts in behalf of the accumulated responsibilities he had himself assumed. The subjection of woman is not based on physical supremacy of the male. Other males are physically stronger than their mates, and yet do not enslave them. It is not based on intellectual supremacy, either; there is no intellectual difference between male and female of the same species, save what may be produced in later life by arbitrary conditions. But it is based on economic supremacy.
The power and place of humanity as the dominant race on earth lies in its ability to do things, to make things, to invent, and build, and translate matter to what form it will, through the action of brain and hand. Woman alone, as a free and independent economic agent, had no impulse to work for other than her own child, and for that but temporarily. Woman, forced to work for him who was also forced to work for her, became a living fountain of suppressed energy, which drove its way to expression through the free activities of the male. That fierce and lazy savage has become the world-conquering husband and father, under the remorseless pressure of the confined forces behind him--the enormous driving-power of female energy, maternal energy, finding economic expression through the male.
The painful elements in this relation and maintained. If the freedom of women was not needed under the same great laws, it would not be coming now.
Our social progress has reached a stage wherein the emotions and energies begotten by this old condition are no longer sufficient nor suitable. Even the love of the father and mother for each other and for their children, and the ensuing desperate effort of the father to wrest all earthly forces to the advantage of his family, have ceased to be the highest issues of our lives. The patriarchal dispensation has passed with the Oriental religions which were its psychic expressions. The religion of human love and social service demands that we work for each other, and the greatest obstacle to that religion is the subjection of woman and its accompanying phenomena. The lessons of that period of subjection have been learned, both the bitter and the sweet; its work is done: we stand at the beginning of a new age, a new society. Free womanhood is the essential condition of that new life; that she may lift her head at last, and see that the human being should love and work for more than mate and young. She will not lose the sweet, close love of those old ages, but she will add to it the larger, deeper, wiser love, the open eyes and open hands and open heart from which shall grow the civilization of a new era.