THE ILLS OF ISOLATION
"Isolation" is a word that the Country Girl does not very much use, but still she feels the meaning of the word. This note sounds in the unusually frank answer of one who did not speak for herself but said that she really thought some of the other girls went away to the city because there was no one in the village for them to marry, and in the naïve words of the girl who stated that she always said a club was a very good thing. Where the community does not afford the social life they crave as a part of their development, as the natural normal state for their self-expression, and as a part of their plans for life, it is no wonder they seek it elsewhere. This is one of the chief causes of the cityward tendency. For this reason the girls are willing to exchange the pure air of the country for the close atmosphere of the town; the safe and kindly surroundings of the rural home for the dangerous conditions of the city, its unregulated contacts, its promiscuity and its perils, and its loneliness in the midst of the indifference of strangers. There is a forbidding solitariness in the city that is to that of the country as a desert to a garden. This misery attacks one even more virulently on the noisy boulevard than along the whispering country lane. But this the Country Girl does not know, and she seeks relief from a woe that she does understand.
Perhaps the young woman on a lonely farm in some remote region does not realize this. She may be too dulled and discouraged by the effects of isolation to know either what is the trouble with her or even that there is any definite thing the matter.
The lack of companionship is indeed a very real hardship; for companionship is necessary to our growth as well as to our happiness. The solitary girl on the remote farm or in the obsolescent village has small share in this form of education and remains with her resources undeveloped. For her natural and normal education she needs a great deal of association with other young growing human beings; something therefore must be devised to supply this need or the Country Girl will not have the happy and well-rounded life on the farm that is her right.
One woman in giving reasons why she preferred the city said she would "rather have folks than stumps!" Truly. Very few farms, however, consist solely of what is represented by the expressive word "stumps"; and as for "folks," it is possible to have in city life a plethora of social contact so that leisure for thought, reading and study, or for any form of self-development, is unknown. Besides there are "folks" and "folks"; and a neighborhood full of cousins and friends is an unsurpassed shelter for the favorable growth of the young human being.
But ah! there is the very point. A neighborhood! If every Country Girl had a neighborhood to grow up in, a group of homes about her to afford her companionship, she could ask nothing better. But there are many girls living on remote and lonely farms far away from any neighborly environment; to such as these the isolation is a very real sorrow. It falls as heavily upon the farmer's daughter as it does upon the farmer's wife—even more heavily if possible, for she is generally led to realize her need at a time when her social instincts are most insistent. To make for the young woman in the farm home a life so interesting, so fascinating, so full of purpose and of the possibilities of self-expression, that the loss of "folks" will to some extent be made up to her, and to give to her as much companionship as possible and the effects of companionship through all known means that can be devised, should be the object of an earnest and widespread effort.
A visit made to a country girl who lived at a farm that was on a steep hillside in a lonely part of the world far from any town or village, left a very deep impression. I was riding through that region with a cousin on my way to the railroad twenty miles off.
"In that house," she said, pointing to a dilapidated farmhouse nearly smothered in greenery and totally unkempt in appearance, "lives a relative of ours, a second cousin. We must stop and see her."
"Oh, no," I cried out, for I was then young and selfish; "don't let me have to see any more relatives to-day."
"Yes, we must stop," said my firm cousin. "She is a good girl and will remember it always if you stop, and will be bitterly disappointed if you do not."
We drew up; a figure promptly appeared on the rickety porch and came down between the tall grasses that almost obliterated the path to the torn gate.
"How old is she?" I whispered.
"About twenty-eight; yes, twenty-nine next December."
"She looks forty," I said.
"You must remember she has had a hard time on this farm—it's no good, the farm, and she and her father live here alone now."
Cousin Artemisia—for that was her ironical apportionment as to name—came down to the buggy and stood between the wheels and reached over a long slim hand in greeting to my companion. I thought she would never let go. Then I was introduced. Cousin Artemisia stood back and looked at me as if she would read every thought in my whole soul. The most devouring curiosity, the most rapt wonder, the still, thunderstruck, hypnotized look of absorbed contemplation, were in her eyes. All my features went, I am sure, into her memory's irremediable printing, to stay there forever. All this—more shame to me!—was only a bother to me, for I did not at all understand what it could mean to a poor lonely soul to have a vision of a young relative from the great big outside world. I will not accuse myself of cruelty—only of ignorance and carelessness; but that, of course, is bad enough. To pay me for this, and as a perpetual punishment, I have the memory of her last look. After some suave and polite nothings from my lips I nudged my driver cousin and we went on over the hill, leaving Artemisia alone with her solitariness, stunned, it may be, for the moment by our swift passing, as a prisoner might be into whose dark cell a ray of light had penetrated and then been quickly withdrawn, making the darkness blacker than before. That last long look! I cannot describe it, but I shall remember it always. At that moment there was in Cousin Artemisia's face the suppressed longing of the imprisoned soul, the appeal for help to one that was believed to have had opportunity, the cry of the hopelessly restricted longings, the desire for companionship, suppressed for years and accumulated unbearably.
The memory of that quarter of an hour with Cousin Artemisia has driven it home to me that the young woman in the solitary farm house wants and needs the means of self-expression as much as little Helen Keller needed the means to reveal herself that would take the place of the hearing and speaking and seeing that had been denied her. What would have happened to her if she had not had gateways opened to her mind and soul so that she could give out and receive, is what happens to all of us unless we have our powers developed by contact with others and by giving and taking intellectual and spiritual goods. Dumbness is a hindrance to growth. Excessive shyness and secrecy, bashfulness, a spirit of seclusion, sensitiveness, and other faults that attack young people in the growing years, are a result of the lack of the liberalizing and purifying ministry of companionship and they are an inhibition of development.
An account by a rural school-teacher presents a picture that is gruesome, and any one that wishes may omit it from the reading; but it suggests a possibility and drives home a lesson. Circumstances required her for a time, she said, to take care of an old lady, who lived with her husband and daughter on a lonely farm. All that they had in the house were the old things the mother had kept house with forty years ago. The chairs had been scrubbed till not a particle of paint was left; and their meals were alike three times a day—pork, potatoes and bread. Not a book was there to read except a few old school books and the Bible. The young woman who tells the story stayed a week, and it was the longest week she ever spent. The farmer's daughter was about eighteen years old. She seemed a bright young girl; but two years after that, while the father was gone to the factory, she hung herself in the barn. The school-teacher did not wonder; she said that if she had had to live in such a house, life would have been a burden.
Of course that is an extreme case. The suicide rate is higher for the city than it is for the country; it is higher for men than it is for women; the proportion of suicides over sixty-five years of age is greater for rural districts in our country than it is for cities. This may not especially interest the young woman on the farm; but it concerns us to see that all the younger people should have the natural normal life that will satisfy their physical, mental and moral needs; and that they should realize early that they are to be supplied with the career that their natures demand, in order that they may not despair before they have really begun to live.
A conviction dwells in the minds of many Country Girls that the quietness and freedom from interruptions on the farm form one of the chief reasons for desiring the rural life. There certainly is truth in this. The jaded city worker flees to the calm of the country for relief from people and things. But it is also true that isolation is not a good in itself and too much of it is directly harmful. We develop not by it but in spite of it. No man can be a true man, no woman a true woman, who has not been molded by human companionship. We should "live in the House by the Side of the Road" and unite our interests with those of humanity at large. We do not know ourselves except as we know others. Whether we are above the level of average human capacity, or below it, or simply different from others, or, what is more usually the case, different in some things and like in others, we do not know except by comparison with others. Companionship with others brings us knowledge of our defects, our omissions, our weaknesses, sometimes of our strength and power to give and to help.
Therefore, the normal development of the daughter on the farm depends largely upon having the heavy weight of rural solitariness lifted. She may not know this herself; but the quickness with which her spirit responds to the touch of companionship between herself and a friend of her own age, when fortunate occasion brings her this pleasure, shows what her need is. It is now said that the young men and the young women in college give to each other almost as much education as is given to them by the teachers themselves. In other words the social contact possible where many young people are brought together has such power to quicken energy and to incite noble rivalries that it alone becomes one of the most effective means of education.
This education and opportunity should be within reach of every Country Girl, and she may herself do a great deal to bring this about. In endeavoring to do her share in thus developing the social resources of the country, the Country Girl must, however, work for a time against a disadvantage. At present the young girl from the country makes the impression of being less developed than the young boy. As a general thing he has had a great deal more outlook, more responsibility, more contact with outside influences. He goes with his father to town; the father and the brother look upon this excursion as a task, and they think this is work that can be done by them and save the women-folk all that trouble. But the fact is that this going to town is a means of getting at least some outlook into the great world beyond that the farm circle did not give, an enlargement that would be just as good for the sister as for the brother. The sons come back joyous and electrified and able to work better afterward. Meantime the daughters have stayed at home in the treadmill, unexcited and dull; and because they have lacked the stimulus of the excursion into the outer world they get the discredit of being gloomy and stupid. If they had driven to the village also, or to call upon a girl friend, they would have returned joyous and eager, full of talk and energy, and with new ideas to add to the family discussion.
The efficient Country Girl of to-day is often as equal to the management of the intractable horse as a man: she rides the disc-plough and she runs the automobile. It would only be in some backward section of the country or in some tradition-bound family, where the daughter could not drive the horses and have the use of a conveyance to go to town whenever it seemed to her to be necessary. It has been suggested by an eminent authority that the farm woman should go to town once a week and should also go to a neighbor's every week for an afternoon's visit. What then should be the excursions of the daughter during the years when she is growing up and becoming a young lady, entering upon her duties as hostess and social leader? There should not a day pass when she does not have some contact with the social world of the rural community. She should have a large letter-writing correspondence and make it yield her all the culture possible. She should take part in every commendable social organization that is accessible and with her mother's cooperation make her home a center of gracious social welcome to friends and neighbors. With the new machinery there will be much greater simplification possible in the household, and in the wake of this may enter our old-time friend, Hospitality, so long and sadly missed from our ferny lanes.
Perhaps it is not necessary to suggest that the greatest care should be taken to place under the safest conditions the social life in which the daughter bears a part. In order that this may be so there is no better safeguard than that the mother should be in closest confidence with the daughter, should be present at all the parties, should be in all the fun. This is the scheme now most approved under the best social auspices and is adopted in the country wherever they live up to the most refined models. It means that the mother must never lose the thread of her daughter's confidence; and if she has done so by the mistake of some past day, she must leave no stone unturned, by tact and love and prayer, to regain the lost ground. It means joining in all the games; it means taking an interest in all the youthful plans. It means adapting her mind to the youthful mind. It means—but why should I tell mothers what that means? They know. And the daughters must do their part too in keeping the confidence-thread between themselves and their mother always perfect and golden.
When a community is really dead, we may know the fact by the absence of sociability. The whole country problem hinges chiefly upon this social matter; and as the woman is the essential upholder of the community the world over in social affairs, it behooves the young woman in rural life to prepare for these responsibilities if she will ward off from the farm and village community a deadly and intolerable inaction.
After all Cousin Artemisia was not in such a parlous state. If those eager eyes had had no expression in them at all, if the curiosity in them had long since faded into indifference and a dull unresponsive look had taken its place, then a just observer might well have had cause for compassion for that young woman into whose soul the iron of isolation had gone so deeply that it had hardened and deadened the best part of her. If a life has been lived through with all its experiences and has been one long record of unsatisfied longing for the impossible, and if the end came without ever one break in the cloud that hid away an imagined world of fulfilment and success, and if during it all there had been never an instant's let-up from the momently waiting for the sun to break through, such a life as that has been a success. Not to attain is not failure. The only failure is to cease trying, to stop aspiring, and to let the dream and the vision fade away from the face of the unresponding clouds.
Some one may say, Why then touch her in this obliviousness of her unfilled possibilities? The same fallacy lies beneath all missionary work, all philanthropy, all striving upward. We wish every Country Girl in the remotest stronghold of conservatism to be touched with that divine discontent that will stir her to an upward struggle.
Among the six million Country Girls for whom this book is written, there are many who are tremendously and honorably efficient; there are also many who are by no means awake to their duty and opportunity; but the vision will soon touch the eyes of all, and will reveal to them the part they may play in the new Country Life era.
Not for her own sake alone does any girl strive. All she does lifts everywhere as well as in her own valley. And these beneficent influences will reach out and include other and still other circles of girls who repose under the protection of the republic. Among these one may see the puzzled eyes of Porto Ricans, and of Aleutian and of Philippine girls. And there are found two larger companies: the dark-skinned girls with the tragic remembrance of slavery in their eyes, and the aquiline faces of the Appalachian mountain girls, dignified and quietly expectant and our close racial kin. Among these adoptive and neglected fields there will be hollows of stagnation and delays of progress. For the reclamation of these we are not by any means doing what we might as a people; they some way escape the great abundantly filled currents of philanthropy; and if they soon become discontented and ominous, we shall have ourselves to blame. It would be better to be beforehand with nature's demands and arouse noble aspirations that may forestall wrong tendencies.