If I Were a Man By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

 

If I Were a Man

By

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Literary

Published 1914 in Physical Culture, Vol. 32, No. 1

‘If I were a man,...’ that was what pretty little Mollie Mathewson always said when Gerald would not do what she wanted him to—which was seldom.

That was what she said this bright morning, with a stamp of her little high-heeled slipper, just because he had made a fuss about that bill, the long one with the ‘account rendered,’ which she had forgotten to give him the first time and been afraid to the second—and now he had taken it from the postman himself.

Mollie was ‘true to type.’ She was a beautiful instance of what is reverentially called ‘a true woman.’ Little, of course—no true woman may be big. Pretty, of course—no true woman could possibly be plain. Whimsical, capricious, charming, changeable, devoted to pretty clothes and always ‘wearing them well,’ as the esoteric phrase has it. (This does not refer to the clothes—they do not wear well in the least—but to some special grace of putting them on and carrying them about, granted to but few, it appears.)

She was also a loving wife and a devoted mother possessed of ‘the social gift’ and the love of ‘society’ that goes with it, and, with all these was fond and proud of her home and managed it as capably as—well, as most women do.

If ever there was a true woman it was Mollie Mathewson, yet she was wishing heart and soul she was a man.

And all of a sudden she was!

She was Gerald, walking down the path so erect and square-shouldered, in a hurry for his morning train, as usual, and, it must be confessed, in something of a temper.

Her own words were ringing in her ears—not only the ‘last word,’ but several that had gone before, and she was holding her lips tight shut, not to say something she would be sorry for. But instead of acquiescence in the position taken by that angry little figure on the veranda, what she felt was a sort of superior pride, a sympathy as with weakness, a feeling that ‘I must be gentle with her,’ in spite of the temper.

A man! Really a man—with only enough subconscious memory of herself remaining to make her recognize the differences.

At first there was a funny sense of size and weight and extra thickness, the feet and hands seemed strangely large, and her long, straight, free legs swung forward at a gait that made her feel as if on stilts.

This presently passed, and in its place, growing all day, wherever she went, came a new and delightful feeling of being the right size.

Everything fitted now. Her back snugly against the seat-back, her feet comfortably on the floor. Her feet?...His feet! She studied them carefully. Never before, since her early school days, had she felt such freedom and comfort as to feet—they were firm and solid on the ground when she walked; quick, springy, safe-as when, moved by an unrecognizable impulse, she had run after, caught, and swung aboard the car.

Another impulse fished in a convenient pocket for change-instantly, automatically, bringing forth a nickel for the conductor and a penny for the newsboy. These pockets came as a revelation. Of course she had known they were there, had counted them, made fun of them, mended them, even envied them; but she never had dreamed of how it felt to have pockets.

Behind her newspaper she let her consciousness, that odd mingled consciousness, rove from pocket to pocket, realizing the armored assurance of having all those things at hand, instantly get-at-able, ready to meet emergencies. The cigar case gave her a warm feeling of comfort—it was full; the firmly held fountain pen, safe unless she stood on her head; the keys, pencils, letters, documents, notebook, checkbook, bill folder—all at once, with a deep rushing sense of power and pride, she felt what she had never felt before in all her life—the possession of money, of her own earned money—hers to give or to withhold, not to beg for, tease for, wheedle for—hers.

That bill—why, if it had come to her—to him, that is—he would have paid it as a matter of course, and never mentioned it—to her.

Then, being he, sitting there so easily and firmly with his money in his pockets, she wakened to his life-long consciousness about money. Boyhood—its desires and dreams, ambitions. Young manhood—working tremendously for the wherewithal to make a home—for her. The present years with all their net of cares and hopes and dangers; the present moment, when he needed every cent for special plans of great importance, and this bill, long overdue and demanding payment, meant an amount of inconvenience wholly unnecessary if it had been given him when it first came; also, the man’s keen dislike of that ‘account rendered.’

‘Women have no business sense!’ she found herself saying. ‘And all that money just for hats idiotic, useless, ugly things!’

With that she began to see the hats of the women in the car as she had never seen hats before.

The men’s seemed normal, dignified, becoming, with enough variety for personal taste, and with distinction in style and in age, such as she had never noticed before. But the women’s—

With the eyes of a man and the brain of a man; with the memory of a whole lifetime of free action wherein the hat, close-fitting on cropped hair, had been no handicap; she now perceived the hats of women.

The massed fluffed hair was at once attractive and foolish, and on that hair, at every angle, in all colors, tipped, twisted, tortured into every crooked shape, made of any substance chance might offer, perched these formless objects. Then, on their formlessness the trimmings-these squirts of stiff feathers, these violent outstanding bows of glistening ribbon, these swaying, projecting masses of plumage which tormented the faces of bystanders.

Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.

And yet, when there came into the car a little woman, as foolish as any, but pretty and sweet-looking, up rose Gerald Mathewson and gave her his seat. And, later, when there came in a handsome red-cheeked girl, whose hat was wilder, more violent in color and eccentric in shape than any other—when she stood nearby and her soft curling plumes swept his cheek once and again—he felt a sense of sudden pleasure at the intimate tickling touch—and she, deep down within, felt such a wave of shame as might well drown a thousand hats forever.

When he took his train, his seat in the smoking car, she had a new surprise. All about him were the other men, commuters too, and many of them friends of his.

To her, they would have been distinguished as ‘Mary Wade’s husband,’ ‘the man Belle Grant is engaged to’ ‘that rich Mr. Shopworth,’ or ‘that pleasant Mr. Beale.’ And they would all have lifted their hats to her, bowed, made polite conversation if near enough—especially Mr. Beale. Now came the feeling of open-eyed acquaintance, of knowing men—as they were. The mere amount of this knowledge was a surprise to her—the whole background of talk from boyhood up, the gossip of barber-shop and club, the conversation of morning and evening hours on trains, the knowledge of political affiliation, of business standing and prospects, of character—in a light she had never known before. The came and talked to Gerald, one and another. He seemed quite popular. And as they talked, with this new memory and new understanding, an understanding which seemed to include all these men’s minds, there poured in on the submerged consciousness beneath a new, a startling knowledge—what men really think of women.

Good, average, American men were there; married men for the most part, and happy—as happiness goes in general. In the minds of each and all there seemed to be a two-story department, quite apart from the rest of their ideas, a separate place where they kept their thoughts and feelings about women.

In the upper half were the tenderest emotions, the most exquisite ideals, the sweetest memories, all lovely sentiments as to ‘home’ and ‘mother,’ all delicate admiring adjectives, a sort of sanctuary, where a veiled statue, blindly adored, shared place with beloved yet commonplace experiences.

In the lower half—here that buried consciousness woke to keen distress—they kept quite another assortment of ideas. Here, even in this clean-minded husband of hers, was the memory of stories told at men’s dinners, of worse ones overheard in street or car, of base traditions, coarse epithets, gross experiences—known, though not shared.

And all these in the department ‘woman,’ while in the rest of the mind—here was new knowledge indeed.

The world opened before her. Not the world she had been reared in—where Home had covered all the map, almost, and the rest had been ‘foreign,’ or ‘unexplored country,’ but the world as it was—man’s world, as made, lived in, and seen, by men.

It was dizzying. To see the houses that fled so fast across the car window, in terms of builders’ bills, or of some technical insight into materials and methods; to see a passing village with lamentable knowledge of who ‘owned it’ and of how its Boss was rapidly aspiring in state power, or of how that kind of paving was a failure; to see shops, not as mere exhibitions of desirable objects, but as business ventures, many mere sinking ships, some promising a profitable voyage—this new world bewildered her.

She—as Gerald—had already forgotten about that bill, over which she—as Mollie—was still crying at home. Gerald was ‘talking business’ with this man, ‘talking politics’ with that, and now sympathizing with the carefully withheld troubles of a neighbor.

Mollie had always sympathized with the neighbor’s wife before.

She began to struggle violently with this large dominant masculine consciousness. She remembered with sudden clearness things she had read, lectures she had heard, and resented with increasing intensity this serene masculine preoccupation with the male point of view.

Mr. Miles, the little fussy man who lived on the other side of the street, was talking now. He had a large complacent wife; Mollie had never liked her much, but had always thought him rather nice-he was so punctilious in small courtesies.

And here he was talking to Gerald—such talk!

‘Had to come in here,’ he said. ‘Gave my seat to a dame who was bound to have it. There’s nothing they won’t get when they make up their minds to it—eh?’

‘No fear!’ said the big man in the next seat. ‘They haven’t much mind to make up, you know—and if they do, they’ll change it.’

‘The real danger,’ began the Rev. Alfred Smythe, the new Episcopal clergyman, a thin, nervous, tall man with a face several centuries behind the times, ‘is that they will overstep the limits of their God-appointed sphere.’

‘Their natural limits ought to hold ’em, I think,’ said cheerful Dr. Jones. ‘You can’t get around physiology, I tell you.’

‘I’ve never seen any limits, myself, not to what they want, anyhow,’ said Mr. Miles. ‘Merely a rich husband and a fine house and no end of bonnets and dresses, and the latest thing in motors, and a few diamonds-and so on. Keeps us pretty busy.’

There was a tired gray man across the aisle. He had a very nice wife, always beautifully dressed, and three unmarried daughters, also beautifully dressed—Mollie knew them. She knew he worked hard, too, and she looked at him now a little anxiously.

But he smiled cheerfully.

‘Do you good, Miles,’ he said. ‘What else would a man work for? A good woman is about the best thing on earth.’

‘And a bad one’s the worst, that’s sure,’ responded Miles.

‘She’s a pretty weak sister, viewed professionally,’ Dr. Jones averred with solemnity, and the Rev Alfred Smythe added, ‘She brought evil into the world.’

Gerald Mathewson sat up straight. Something was stirring in him which he did not recognize—yet could not resist.

‘Seems to me we all talk like Noah,’ he suggested drily. ‘Or the ancient Hindu scriptures.

Women have their limitations, but so do we. God knows. Haven’t we known girls in school and college just as smart as we were?’

‘They cannot play our games,’ coldly replied the clergyman.

Gerald measured his meager proportions with a practiced eye.

‘I never was particularly good at football myself,’ he modestly admitted, ‘but I’ve known women who could outlast a man in all-round endurance. Besides—life isn’t spent in athletics!’

This was sadly true. They all looked down the aisle where a heavily ill-dressed man with a bad complexion sat alone. He had held the top of the columns once, with headlines and photographs.

Now he earned less than any of them.

‘It’s time we woke up,’ pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. ‘Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools-but who’s to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and, what’s more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes—and shoes—which of us wants to dance with her?

‘Yes, we blame them for grafting on us, but are we willing to let our wives work? We are not.

It hurts our pride, that’s all. We are always criticizing them for making mercenary marriages, but what do we call a girl who marries a chump with no money? Just a poor fool, that’s all. And they know it.

‘As for Mother Eve—I wasn’t there and can’t deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the lion’s share of keeping it going ever since—how about that?’

They drew into the city, and all day long in his business, Gerald was vaguely conscious of new views, strange feelings, and the submerged Mollie learned and learned.

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