MAN’S WORLD (5)
By:
August 17, 2024
HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize Charlotte Haldane’s 1926 proto-sf novel Man’s World for HILOBROW’s readers. Written by an author married to one of the world’s most prominent eugenics advocates, this ambivalent adventure anticipates both Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale. When a young woman rebels against her conditioning, can she break free? Reissued in 2024 (with a new introduction by Philippa Levine) by the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE series.
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WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST
Few but roses.
MELEAGER OF THE POEMS OF SAPPHO.
I
Nicolette sat on a bank that sloped gently to the edge of the lake. Above her a great cedar spread its velvety branches to the blue afternoon sky, dotted with lamb-like clouds. The dipping sun made a pattern of branch shadows on the lawn around her. A little breeze rustled the iris at the furthermost edge of the water.
A shade of melancholy seemed to tinge the atmosphere, the pleasant kind of melancholy loved by French poets and young girls unconsciously becoming aware of a change in themselves, that natural and impressive physiological change which attunes adolescent mind and body to the meanings beneath Nature’s pageant.
Nicolette was growing fast. She had lost some of her childhood’s prettiness, and had not yet gained the beauty of young womanhood. The adaptation of her mind and body from the old to the new standards was proceeding normally, for her environment was admirably planned. A slight heightening of her emotional capacities was her only apparent mental symptom.
Now she wrote down, easily and yet with concentration, the doubts and perplexities which filled her young mind. Auto-suggestion by such written confession provided both the youthful and the mature of her day with a wholesome outlet for their conflicts, and all were taught to practise it from childhood onward. This was the last form of examination which survived in these days of more subtle educational methods.
‘Ever since I was a tiny girl,’ wrote Nicolette to herself, ‘I have been looking forward to the day when I should have my own babies. The lovely darling creatures are all wonderful, but none could be so precious as my own. Before I came here to begin my I training I used to dream of my first one; what he would look like and feel like, and how I would try always to understand his every need. I would serve him truly and wholly, and he would be the loveliest and the most adorable baby ever born. I know I should not have thought like that; but although we know it is stupid, Christopher and I have always wanted secretly to have the best and be the best.
‘Since I came here I can see how stupid I was. But I am not sensible yet. All the babies are perfect, but I cannot help thinking my Toodles is more wonderful than the others. I do not think such a perfect baby has ever existed. And I love him so much that it makes me miserable to think I shall have one of my own that could never, possibly, be like him. I could never have such a baby. He is just like his mother, Leila, the loveliest thing I have ever seen, and she is kind and wise, too. I am a little fool and I know it. I am a fool to imagine these things which instead of helping me make things more difficult. I do not know what is the matter with me, and I despise myself so much sometimes that I do not think I am fit to be here. I am probably not fit for this vocation at all. But I cannot help it. I feel I never, never want a baby of my own if he is not just like that one, and I know he could never, never possibly be.’
At this moment there was a step on the grass above her, and the shadow of a woman fell across Nicolette’s page. The girl looked up and saw Leila, who stood a little higher up the bank and smiled down on her. Nicolette made no self-conscious attempt to conceal her writing. It was according to the prevailing standards, a part of herself, and therefore inviolable unless she chose to reveal it.
The woman came slowly towards her. A simple garment of apple green embroidered all over with small coloured starlike flowers moved in graceful folds from waist to ankle as she walked. A loose girdle, of the same colour as her bright brown hair, held the dress in a soft pouch over the hips. Ornaments she had none.
‘Nicolette, child,’ said Leila, ‘I am going in. Are you coming with me?’
‘I will, but just sit down for a minute,’ the girl answered. ‘Is it not lovely here? So quiet, so calm, and yet a little sad.’
‘Are you sad, dear?’ asked Leila, with a glance at the eyes that were slightly circled and the cheeks that seemed pale.
Nicolette replied indirectly. ‘I was thinking of you,’ she admitted. ‘And of Toodles. I love him so much that I was thinking all sorts of foolish things.’
‘But why should you not love him? That is what he and I are here for. If you did not love the child who teaches you, your lessons would be a waste of time, and we should not be training you for your vocation.’
‘You are a dear, Leila,’ Nicolette said gratefully, “but this is my fault. I love him much more than all the other babies. I could never love any child in the world like him.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Leila said, and her smiling eyes were all sympathy. ‘But you must remember that he is the first baby you have actually handled yourself. You are instinctively a little mother, and it is quite natural that you could not perform your first lessons without having such feelings. They are excellent, provided you understand them.’
‘Oh, I do not. I mean I am sure I am very foolish. I make more fuss over him than you do. I — I wish he were mine and not yours!’
Leila laughed gaily. ‘Well, you see, I have already had many children and you have none, so that is rather natural. When you have your own, you will feel just the same about the first, and afterwards you will not find it so much of a novelty and get used to them all.’
‘But Leila,’ Nicolette leant forward and gazed at the lake, and her voice was weighed down with the burden of her problem, ‘do you really think I could love a baby of my own as I do yours?’
‘You will love him quite differently. You see, Nicolette, at the period which you are now entering, nearly all girls feel very deeply. You must remember that your body is going through an important change. That of course stimulates your perceptions and puts a slight strain for the time being on your powers of self-control, while it sharpens your emotions. But if you stop thinking of yourself for a moment you will realize that this is usual, and not exceptional in your case. The more deeply this change affects a girl as a rule, the more certainly is she destined for motherhood. Those we call Neuters do not react so strongly. But this which is now happening to you is your preparation for your future. You will find in time that the bearing of children brings a love for them that is quite in harmony with self-control and intelligence. In the old days, when any woman could breed, before it was realized that motherhood was a vocation, and should therefore be carefully prepared for, many women had a sensual and passionate affection for their children that harmed both. Foolish men encouraged those women in that false affection that was about as noble as the feelings of a tiger for her cubs. They talked a lot of drivel about maternal instinct. Many of those mothers were hysterical or neurotic, and their children also lacked self-control. Then there were women forced into motherhood by custom. They feared it and revolted from it secretly. So that when they had borne a child they imagined they had done something abnormal and wonderful, instead of something to which not the least merit was attached. Thus they spoiled their own minds and those of their offspring.
‘Love is an excellent thing so long as it harmonizes with the laws which govern our thoughts and feelings. But it should never be allowed to become degrading to the lover and the loved. You may be sure that by the old standards our mothers, many of them, would be accused of indifference. But those were unscientific standards.
‘We are the vessels singled out for the propagation of our race. It is our mission to make ourselves perfect vessels. But once the child has left the mother’s womb, his individual existence and development are what she must bear in mind. In proportion to his excellence as an individual and a servant of the race is her honour and her joy.’
‘Thank you, dear Leila. I do understand all you say. But tell me just one thing more. Do you like bringing your babies to these gardens to teach us?’
‘Of course. It is glorious. Remember that it is an honour to be chosen to do so. To make our motherhood useful to our successors expands its purposes. You see, in the old days a mother of the white race was required to be an employee in the home of the father of her children. How they attempted it we cannot imagine, but we know that an individual cannot accomplish more than one important task successfully, could not expect to. Some one always suffered, and the order of the sufferers was first the mothers, then the children, then the man. But by giving ourselves wholly to motherhood we do not surrender our own chances of development. Our service to you is a service to ourselves and to our children.’
‘I cannot imagine why it took women so long to find out these things. Why, even if their minds could not grasp that the system was unfair, did they not revolt from the strain imposed on them?’
‘Well, that is quite easily explained. You must remember that the burden did not become really acute in Europe and North America until the dawn of the twentieth century. Then things developed very rapidly. And it was only then that large numbers of men began to think scientifically. It was scientific thinking by men that abolished war. About the same time as your father and his colleagues solved such problems by scientific thinking, other men and women began to apply the same methods to ours.’
‘And they met with terrific opposition?’
‘Of course, at first. Opposition is the soil in which the seeds of all reform are planted.’ Leila rose as she spoke. ‘That, however, is a long tale, my dear. And we must return now. Come.’
‘I do thank you, Leila, for helping me. I feel quite gay and jolly again. Wait, let me take my papers. I will make them into boats for Toodles.’
The girl and the woman smiled happily at one another as they strolled towards their Common Rooms. And by that smile, intimate, friendly and frank as their conversation, Nicolette was helped across the Rubicon dividing her past and her future.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.