Toward Monogamy
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
feminist, philosopher, writer was born at Hartford, Conn., July 3rd, 1860. Editor of the Forerunner 1909-1916; Author of “Women and Economics,” 1898; “In This, Our World,” 1898; “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” 1899; “Concerning Children,” 1900; “The Home, Its Work and Influence,” 1903; “Human Work,” 1904; “What Diantha Did,” 1910; “The Man-Made World,” 1910; “The Crux,” 1911; “Moving the Mountain,” 1911; “His Religion and Hers,” 1923.
TOWARD MONOGAMY
BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
Physiologists tell us that in all our long ages of animal evolution we have not yet completed the physical changes incident to assuming an erect posture. Psychologists may as plainly see that in the short centuries of social evolution we have naturally failed to complete the changes incident to our growth from tribal to national and international relationships.
Since we remained savages for some 90 per cent of the period of human life on earth, it is to be expected that the long-practiced tribal morals should have modified our characters more deeply than those evolved in the recent, varied, and fluctuating relationship of larger range. Yet we see, during the short period of progressive civilization, such swift and amazing development in some lines, such achievement in knowledge, in wealth, in ability, in breadth of thought, and nobility of feeling that our coincident stupidity and senseless misbehavior call for explanation.
The main reason for this peculiar delay and irregularity in social evolution is that it has been limited to half the race, the other half being restricted to domestic industry and to the still lower level of misused sex. Our specialized knowledge, power, and skill are developed through the organic relationships of the social group; as are also those characteristics of mutual loyalty and love, of truth, honor, and courage which are as natural to a human society as the distinctive virtues of ants or beavers to their groups.
Humanity’s major error, the exploitation of the female by the male, has not only kept her at the lowest step in social progress—solitary hand-labor in and for the family—but has resulted in excessive sex-development through prolonged misuse. This has made her ultra-feminine, to a degree often injurious to motherhood; and him ultra-masculine, his social advance confused, impeded, and repeatedly destroyed by his excessive emotions. In social morals he has of course outdistanced her, as he alone has entered into the relationships which develop them; but he has carefully exempted his essentially male activities from this elevating influence, maintaining that “all’s fair in love and war.” Of her, domestic morality demanded but one virtue, sex-loyalty; her mate or master taking it upon himself to be both judge and executioner in case of failure. She might be a liar and a coward, lazy, selfish, extravagant, or cruel, but if chaste these traits were overlooked. If unchaste, no array of other virtues was enough to save her. In her household labors she developed minor virtues natural to the position; a tireless industry, an instinct for cleanliness and order, with great capacity for self-denial and petty economy. Speaking broadly, of a race where the young, though necessarily inheriting from both parents, yet are divided almost from birth in training and experience, it may be said that the social virtues have belonged to men, the domestic virtues to women.