MAN’S WORLD (10)
By:
September 10, 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.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: INTRO | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25.
THE VOYAGES OF CHRISTOPHER
(cont.)
‘But, Christopher,’ said Nicolette (and as there were tears in her eyes she watched the hot sand dribbling through her fingers instead of looking at him), ‘if one’s emotions get out of control one can put them in order. Why didn’t you tell St. John? He would have helped you.’
‘Exactly.’ Christopher spoke with repressed passion. ‘He would. With a little effort I could become quite calm and steady. And I tell you, life would not be worth a dog’s bite to me! Perverse, reactionary, I am. But my emotions are myself. I refuse to purge myself of them as of waste matter. I will keep them!’
‘Come what may?’
‘What may! And I will tell you what that will be. There is only one possible outlet for me. Only one.’
‘You mean ——’
‘I mean religion.’
There was a pause. Nicolette was trying hard to understand.
Then, ‘How did you come to it? Did you wilfully convince yourself? Are you trying to justify yourself?’
‘Great stars, no. I dread it. That is how fear came to me. But because my emotions are stronger than reason I won’t stifle them for reason. It cannot supply what I want. It is not with me a matter of becoming reasonable as I grow up — putting away childish things. Religions, from the fetish worship of the savage to that of the late unlamented Roman church, supply every reason for not believing. In spite of that I need my god. That is the only thing than can be said in his favour.’
‘What is your belief, Christopher?’
‘I cannot tell at the moment. I am going to try to define it. All I feel just now is that there seems to be an Antagonist with whom I shall struggle. And that he or it will get me. I shall probably end,’ he said with a smile, ‘like that valiant nigger of whom a missionary wrote: “Our poor convert has lost his reason, but I rejoice to say that he retains his faith.” It’s a grim prospect.’
‘So you think I cannot share it with you?’
‘I do, and I will tell you why. To get to the bottom of my problem I must tackle it absolutely alone at first. I do not know my future. But I do yours. You must learn to go your own way, so that when it leads you to mating and motherhood I shall not stand on it like a sinister shadow to lead you back. And I foresee danger in this condition of mine. Faith is the seed of all rebellions. The religious life is one endless revolt against the social life; the individual’s sole effective protest against the community. Only in the name of his god can man truly rebel against the law of man. The only citizen of Rome who dares not to do as the Romans do is he who claims authority from his “father in heaven.” If it comes to that with me, you shall not be concerned.’
‘And if I refuse to stand aside?’
‘Then we shall see. But now, darling, be kind to me! Help me as you have always done. Let me be free.’
‘I will. I can do nothing else. But I am sure that in the end you will come back to me, as I shall come back to you, and that then nothing will ever separate us again!’
‘May it be so, my dear little mother-pot!’
They rose then and turned their backs on the rustling sea. Instinctively, as they had been taught from childhood to do, they rose on tip-toe, raised their arms, stretched to the finger-tips, and threw back their heads. But Christopher’s gesture was one of significance.
Christopher talked violently in the first person singular, for he could never consider his mind as a welter of hereditary tendencies. His maternal forbears, nevertheless, were dominant. There was the gentle persistence of the Lady Anne whom he resembled physically, the coolly obstinate creature who had borne Humphrey. Behind her was the ruthless wilfulness of the first baronet whomHumphrey did not succeed. The steadfast Richmond blood was at any rate responsible for those self-questionings which for a time acted as a brake on Christopher’s impetuosity. But allied to these various influences was one destined to cause him the most exquisite suffering: the streak of femininity perversely bequeathed to him by his mother.
Antonia, true descendant of the emotional Thomas, had responded wholeheartedly to the lyrical wooing of young St. John Richmond. To be mated to a man even in youth plainly destined to great things, the first ‘child’ of Mensch, handsome and brilliant, satisfied ambition as well as passion. Gladly she threw herself into his arms and his plans; proudly acquiescent, she bore him five robust sons. Only after the birth of Christopher did she realize how much she had wished the sixth child to be a daughter.
But the independence shown from their earliest days by her five boy babies had wearied her maternal vigilance. To have one that might remain, in spite of the custom of the day, a clinging, cuddling babe when other small sons already asserted their claim to individuality, was at first an unconscious but irresistible desire. Physically Antonia was in as healthy a condition as ever during her sixth pregnancy, but mentally, she weakened. She carried on all those exercisesprescribed to develop the masculinity of the growing embryo listlessly. She was not disobedient but rather unobedient. She indulged herself in hours of dreamy reverie. She cut short her walks and neglected her gardening tools and spent hours in romantic solitude, with books and music, among luxurious scenery that roused her emotions to a high pitch. She cheated even in the matters of her diet and her exercises. It was a negative rebellion, such as the high-spirited Anne would have scorned, but at a time when sex was still a matter more or less of experiment and the most stringent precautions were necessary in order successfully to coerce nature, it had its effect. It was only much later apparent that Christopher, though in no definite way physiologically abnormal, had more than his due share of emotionalism; with adolescence his lack of balance became clear to himself, though to few others. In accordance with his temperament he strove to hide it. He had, from childhood, an affinity with women that attracted their passionate devotion. Yet he did not respond as a normal boy of his age and day would have done; he was and grew with the years increasingly ascetic; a mystical understanding of the ways of women filled him to the exclusion of passion for them.
His attempt to take refuge in religious mysticism was symptomatic, but not necessarily of a mental flaw. St. John and every one else knew that such behaviour was strictly in accordance with the mental condition of youth during puberty. But those who clung to such a state, who held and openly proclaimed religious views, were all of the intellectually inferior kinds, those who were still anthropologically on a lower plane of development. Wisely, and in accordance with their principles of simplification, the Leaders let them be; knowing that with the passing of years their disciples would grow ever fewer, that, provided life could be lived to the full, the pitiful desire for after-life would wilt and fade away.
There were no epidemics of childhood now. But puberty was a state all had to pass through; a normal state in most, prolonged or violent in some, while others never outgrew it.
And finally even in this, ‘Man’s World,’ there were men who longed to assume the world was still God’s, and gamble their very lives away on the odds — Man versus his ‘Maker.’
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.