"You see, John, the women have specialized — even in motherhood.” Then he went on at considerable length to show how there had arisen a recognition of far more efficient motherhood than was being given; that those women best fitted for the work had given eager, devoted lives to it and built up a new science of Humaniculture; that no woman was allowed to care for her children without proof of capacity.
“Allowed by whom?” I put in.
“By the other women — the Department of Child Culture — the Government.”
“And the fathers — do they submit to this, tamely?”
“No; they cheerfully agree and approve. Absolutely the biggest thing that has happened, some of us think, is that new recognition of the importance of childhood. We are raising better people now.”
I was silent for a while, pulling up bits of grass and snapping small sticks into inch pieces.
“There was a good deal of talk about Eugenics, I remember,” I said at last, “and — what was that thing? Endowment of Motherhood?”
“Yes — man’s talk,” Owen explained. “You see, John, we couldn’t look at women but in one way — in the old days; it was all a question of sex with us — inevitably, we being males. Our whole idea of improvement was in better breeding; our whole idea of motherhood was in each woman’s devoting her whole life to her own children. That turbid freshet of an Englishman, Wells, who did so much to stir his generation, saw women only as females and wanted them endowed as such. He was never able to see them as human beings and amply competent to take care of themselves.“Now, our women, getting hold of this idea that they really are human creatures, simply blossomed forth in new efficiency. They specialized the food business — Hallie’s right about the importance of that — and then they specialized the baby business. All women who wish to, have babies; but if they wish to take care of them they must show a diploma.”
I looked at him. I didn’t like it — but what difference did that make? I had died thirty years ago, it appeared.
“A diploma for motherhood!” I repeated; but he corrected me.
“Not at all. Any woman can be a mother — if she’s normal. I said she had to have a diploma as a child-culturist— quite a different matter.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“No, I suppose not. I didn’t, once,” he said. “Any and every mother was supposed to be competent to ‘raise’ children — and look at the kind of people we raised! You see, we are beginning to learn — just beginning. You needn’t imagine that we are in a state of perfection — there are more new projects up for discussion than ever before.
We’ve only made a start. The consequences, so far, are so good that we are boiling over with propositions for future steps.”
“Go on about the women,” I said. “I want to know the worst and become resigned.”
“There’s nothing very bad to tell,” he continuedcheerfully.
“When a girl is born she is treated in all ways as if she was a boy; there is no hint made in any distinction between them except in the perfectly open physiologicalinstruction as to their future duties. Children, young humans, grow up under precisely the same conditions. I speak, of course, of the most advanced people — there are still backward places — there’s plenty to do yet.
“Then the growing girls are taught of their place and power as mothers — and they have tremendously high ideals. That’s what has done so much to raise the standard in men. It came hard, but it worked.”
I raised my head with keen interest, remarking, “I’ve glimpsed a sort of Iron hand in a velvet glove back of all this. What did they do?”
Owen looked rather grim for a moment.
“The worst of it was twenty or twenty-five years back. Most of those men are dead. That new religious movement stirred the socio-ethical sense to sudden power; it coincided with the women’s political movement, urging measures for social improvement; its enormous spread, both by preaching and literature, lit up the whole community with new facts, ideas and feelings. Health — physical purity — was made a practical ideal. The young women learned the proportion of men with syphilis and gonorrhoea and decided it was wrong to marry them. That was enough. They passed laws in every State requiring a clean bill of health with every marriage license. Diseased men had to die bachelors — that’s all.”
“And did men submit to legislation like that?” I protested.
“Why not? It was so patently for the protection of the race — of the family — of the women and children. Women were solid for it, of course — And all the best men with them. To oppose it was almost a confession of guilt and injured a man’s chances of marriage.”“It used to be said that any man could find a woman to marry him,” I murmured, meditatively.
“Maybe he could — once. He certainly cannot now. A man who has one of those diseases is so reported — just like small-pox, you see. Moreover, it is registered against him by the Department of Eugenics — physicians are required to send in lists; any girl can find out.”
As I read I'm starting to think that Gilman is not precisely eugenicist, in the sense of *unfit people* being bred out of existence. No, I think what's going on here is that *unfit men* are being manipulated into a different way of being. I don't think you can call this eugenics, although you definitely could call it social engineering.
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