The Man‐Made World
The young wife complains that the husband does not wait upon and
woo her as he did before marriage; to which he replies, “Why should I run after the street‐car when I‘ve caught it?”
Woman‘s love for man, as currently treated in fiction is largely a reflex; it is the way he wants her to feel, expects her to feel; not a fair representation of how she does feel. If “love” is to be selected as the most important thing in life to write about, then the mother‘s love should be the principal subject: This is the main stream. This is the general underlying, world‐lifting force. The “life‐force,” now so glibly chattered about, finds its fullest expression in motherhood; not in the emotions of an assistant in the preliminary stages.
What has literature, what has fiction, to offer concerning mother-love, or even concerning father‐love, as compared to this vast volume of excitement about lover‐love? Why is the search‐light continually focussed upon a two or three years space of life “mid the blank miles round about?” Why indeed, except for the clear reason,
that on a starkly masculine basis this is his one period of overwhelming interest and excitement.
If the beehive produced literature, the bee‘s fiction would be rich and broad; full of the complex tasks of comb‐building and filling; the care and feeding of the young, the guardian‐service of the queen; and far beyond that it would spread to the blue glory of the summer sky, the fresh winds, the endless beauty and sweetness of a thousand thousand flowers. It would treat of the vast fecundity of
motherhood, the educative and selective processes of the group-mothers; and the passion of loyalty, of social service, which holds the hive together.
But if the drones wrote fiction, it would have no subject matter save the feasting of many; and the nuptial flight, of one.
To the male, as such, this mating instinct is frankly the major interest of life; even the belligerent instincts are second to it. To the female, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a passing interest. In nature‘s economy, his is but a temporary devotion, hers the slow processes of life‘s fulfillment.
In Humanity we have long since, not outgrown, but overgrown, this
stage of feeling. In Human Parentage even the mother‘s share begins 39
The Man‐Made World
to pale beside that ever‐growing Social love and care, which guards and guides the children of to‐day.
The art of literature in this main form of fiction is far too great a thing to be wholly governed by one dominant note. As life widened
and intensified, the artist, if great enough, has transcended sex; and in the mightier works of the real masters, we find fiction treating of life, life in general, in all its complex relationships, and refusing to be held longer to the rigid canons of an androcentric past.
This was the power of Balzac—he took in more than this one field.
This was the universal appeal of Dickens; he wrote of people, all kinds of people, doing all kinds of things. As you recall with pleasure some preferred novel of this general favorite, you find yourself looking narrowly for the “love story” in it. It is there—for it is part of life; but it does not dominate the whole scene—any more than it does in life.
The thought of the world is made and handed out to us in the main.
The makers of books are the makers of thoughts and feelings for people in general. Fiction is the most popular form in which this world‐food is taken. If it were true, it would teach us life easily, swiftly, truly; teach not by preaching but by truly re‐presenting; and we should grow up becoming acquainted with a far wider range of
life in books than could even be ours in person. Then meeting life in reality we should be wise—and not be disappointed.
As it is, our great sea of fiction is steeped and dyed and flavored all one way. A young man faces life—the seventy year stretch,
remember, and is given book upon book wherein one set of feelings
is continually vocalized and overestimated. He reads forever of love, good love and bad love, natural and unnatural, legitimate and illegitimate; with the unavoidable inference that there is nothing else going on.
If he is a healthy young man he breaks loose from the whole thing,
despises “love stories” and takes up life as he finds it. But what impression he does receive from fiction is a false one, and he suffers without knowing it from lack of the truer broader views of life it failed to give him.
A young woman faces life—the seventy year stretch remember; and
is given the same books—with restrictions. Remember the remark of