Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“ Jeff nodded rather sadly. "Very far--" he said.
"Here we have Human Motherhood--in full working use," she went on. "Nothing else except the literal sisterhood of our origin, and the far higher and deeper union of our social growth.
"The children in this country are the one center and focus of all our thoughts. Every step of our advance is always considered in its effect on them--on the race. You see, we are MOTHERS," she repeated, as if in that she had said it all.
"I don't see how that fact--which is shared by all women-- constitutes any risk to us," Terry persisted. ”

“ Zava gently asked, "are they all the laws you have?"
"I should say not!" protested Terry. "We have systems of law that go back thousands and thousands of years--just as you do, no doubt," he finished politely.
"Oh no," Moadine told him. "We have no laws over a hundred years old, and most of them are under twenty. In a few weeks more," she continued, "we are going to have the pleasure of showing you over our little land and explaining everything you care to know about. We want you to see our people."
"And I assure you," Somel added, "that our people want to see you." ”

“ We soon grew to see that mother-love has more than one channel of expression. I think the reason our children are so--so fully loved, by all of us, is that we never--any of us--have enough of our own. ”

“ Into this quiet lovely land, among these wise, sweet, strong women, we, in our easy assumption of superiority, had suddenly arrived; and now, tamed and trained to a degree they considered safe, we were at last brought out to see the country, to know the people. ”

“ Terry put it up to me, saying I was the sociologist, and I explained that the laws of nature require a struggle for existence, and that in the struggle the fittest survive, and the unfit perish. In our economic struggle, I continued, there was always plenty of opportunity for the fittest to reach the top, which they did, in great numbers, particularly in our country; that where there was severe economic pressure the lowest classes of course felt it the worst, and that among the poorest of all the women were driven into the labor market by necessity. ”

“ We are used to seeing what we call "a mother" completely wrapped up in her own pink bundle of fascinating babyhood, and taking but the faintest theoretic interest in anybody else's bundle, to say nothing of the common needs of ALL the bundles. But these women were working all together at the grandest of tasks--they were Making People--and they made them well. ”

“ You are but men, three men, in a country where the whole population are mothers-- or are going to be. Motherhood means to us something which I cannot yet discover in any of the countries of which you tell us. You have spoken"--she turned to Jeff, "of Human Brotherhood as a great idea among you, but even that I judge is far from a practical expression?" ”

“ Often our young women, those to whom motherhood had not yet come, would voluntarily defer it. When that deep inner demand for a child began to be felt she would deliberately engage in the most active work, physical and mental ”

“ You see, before a child comes to one of us there is a period of utter exaltation--the whole being is uplifted and filled with a concentrated desire for that child. We learned to look forward to that period with the greatest caution. ”

“ They had worked out a chemistry, a botany, a physics, with all the blends where a science touches an art, or merges into an industry, to such fullness of knowledge as made us feel like schoolchildren. ”

“ I tell you, women are the natural cooperators, not men!"
Terry had to learn a good many things he did not want to. To go back to my little analysis of what happened:
They developed all this close inter-service in the interests of their children. To do the best work they had to specialize, of course; the children needed spinners and weavers, farmers and gardeners, carpenters and masons, as well as mothers.
Then came the filling up of the place. When a population multiplies by five every thirty years it soon reaches the limits of a country, especially a small one like this. ”

“ Don't they cooperate pretty well? You can't beat it. This place is just like an enormous anthill--you know an anthill is nothing but a nursery. And how about bees? Don't they manage to cooperate and love one another? ”

“ They did effectually and permanently limit the population in numbers, so that the country furnished plenty for the fullest, richest life for all of them: plenty of everything, including room, air, solitude even. ”

“ Nevertheless, they had inferred (marvelously keen on inference and deduction their minds were!) the existence and development of civilization in other places, much as we infer it on other planets.
When our biplane came whirring over their heads in that first scouting flight of ours, they had instantly accepted it as proof of the high development of Some Where Else, and had prepared to receive us as cautiously and eagerly as we might prepare to welcome visitors who came "by meteor" from Mars. ”

“ And this people, steadily developing in mental capacity, in will power, in social devotion, had been playing with the arts and sciences--as far as they knew them--for a good many centuries now with inevitable success. ”

“ I talked later with little mountain girls from the fir-dark valleys away up at their highest part, and with sunburned plains- women and agile foresters, all over the country, as well as those in the towns, and everywhere there was the same high level of intelligence. ”

“ As we learned more and more of it, we learned to appreciate the exquisite mastery with which we ourselves, strangers of alien race, of unknown opposite sex, had been understood and provided for from the first. ”

“ Then they developed this virgin birth capacity. Then, since the prosperity of their children depended on it, the fullest and subtlest coordination began to be practiced.
I remember how long Terry balked at the evident unanimity of these women--the most conspicuous feature of their whole culture. "It's impossible!" he would insist. "Women cannot cooperate--it's against nature."
When we urged the obvious facts he would say: "Fiddlesticks!" or "Hang your facts--I tell you it can't be done!" And we never succeeded in shutting him up till Jeff dragged in the hymenoptera. ”

“ I understand that you make Motherhood the highest social service-- a sacrament, really; that it is only undertaken once, by the majority of the population; that those held unfit are not allowed even that ”

“ With this wide, deep, thorough knowledge, they had met and solved the problems of education in ways some of which I hope to make clear later. Those nation-loved children of theirs compared with the average in our country as the most perfectly cultivated, richly developed roses compare with--tumbleweeds. ”