But we have also developed an array of diseases, follies, vices, and crimes, which distinguish us from the other animals as markedly as does our androcentric culture.
Not all of these disadvantages con be clearly traced to its door; but these three are plainly due to it; prost.i.tution, with all its devastation of its ensuing diseases; drug habits of all sorts, as alcohol, tobacco, opium--which are preponderantly masculine; and warfare; with its loss of life and wealth; its cruelty and waste; its foolish interference with true social processes.
If the matriarchal period can be shown to have produced worse evils than these then it was a blessing to lose it. If at all the splendid gains we have made under man"s rule can be traced to his separate influence then we might say even these world injuries may be borne for the sake of the benefits not otherwise obtainable. But if it can be shown that real progress is always paralleled by improvement in the conditions of women; that the most valuable human qualities are found in women as well as men; that these three worst evils of our present day are clearly of a masculine nature and removable by the extension of feminine influence--then our inquirer"s last question is easily answered; the existence of our androcentric culture during our period of modern progress distinctly does not prove that it is a necessary condition of that Progress.
A number of most interesting Personal Problems have come in this month, but the length of the above, postponed from June, prevents due answers in this issue. This one had to be long, its questions were so general.
The earnest friend who asks as to the right att.i.tude of a mother toward her children, born and unborn, asks too much. No explicit "answers" can be given to such life-covering queries. One may reply epigrammatically (and unsatisfactorily) as this:
The first duty of a mother is to be a mother worth having.
The second duty of a mother is to select a father worth having.
The third duty of a mother is to bring up children worth having--and to have children worth bringing up!
Motherhood is a personal process, Child-culture is a social process.
A vigorous well-placed wisely working woman should take her child-bearing naturally, not make too much ado about it. But child-rearing--that is another matter.
We can advise as to one wanting a gardener, "Get a good one."
If there are none--then it is not time we made some?
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Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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"Women and Economics" $1.50
Since John Stuart Mill"s essay there has been no book dealing with the whole position of women to approach it in originality of conception and brilliancy of exposition.--_London Chronicle._
A remarkable book. A work on economics that has not a dull page--the work of a woman about women that has not a flippant word.--_Boston Transcript._
Will be widely read and discussed as the cleverest, fairest, most forcible presentation of the view of the rapidly increasing group who look with favor on the extension of industrial employment to women.--_Political Science Quarterly._
"Concerning Children" $1.25
WANTED:--A philanthropist, to give a copy to every English-speaking parent.--_The Times,_ New York.
Should be read by every mother in the land.--_The Press,_ New York.
Wholesomely disturbing book that deserves to be read for its own sake.--_Chicago Dial._
"In This Our World" (Poems) $1.25
There is a joyous superabundance of life, of strength, of health, in Mrs. Gilman"s verse, which seems born of the glorious sunshine and rich gardens of California.--_Washington Times._
The poet of women and for women, a new and prophetic voice in the world.
Montaigne would have rejoiced in her.--_Mexican Herald._
"The Yellow Wall Paper" $0.50
Worthy of a place beside some of the weird masterpieces of Hawthorne and Poe.--_Literature._
As a short story it stands among the most powerful produced in America.--_Chicago News._
"The Home" $1.00
Indeed, Mrs. Gilman has not intended her book so much as a treatise for scholars as a surgical operation on the popular mind.--_The Critic,_ New York.
It is safe to say that no more stimulating arraignment has ever before taken shape and that the argument of the book is n.o.ble, and, on the whole, convincing.--_Congregationalist,_ Boston.
"Human Work" $1.00
Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman has been writing a new book, ent.i.tled "Human Work." It is the best thing that Mrs. Gilman has done, and it is meant to focus all of her previous work, so to speak.--_Tribune,_ Chicago.
In her latest volume, "Human Work," Charlotte Perkins Gilman places herself among the foremost students and elucidators of the problem of social economics.--"San Francisco Star._
It is impossible to overestimate the value of the insistence on the social aspect of human affairs as Mrs. Gilman has outlined it.--_Public Opinion._
IN PREPARATION:
"What Diantha Did" (A Novel) $1.00
"The Man Made World": or, "Our Androcentric Culture" $1.00
Orders taken for Bound Vols. THE FORERUNNER, $1.25