Anarchism and other essays by Emma Goldman - HTML preview

empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown

woman, full of life and passion, must deny nature's demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her

health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a "good"

man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an

arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important, factor of marriage, which

differentiates it from love.

Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of their fathers for love, when Gretchen

exposed herself to the gossip of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions, young people allow

themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken in care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become

"sensible."

The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has aroused her love, but rather is it, "How much?"

The important and only God of practical American life: Can the man make a living? can he support a wife? That is

the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are not of

moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of shopping tours and bargain counters. This soul poverty

and sordidness are the elements inherent in the marriage institution. The State and Church approve of no other

ideal, simply because it is the one that necessitates the State and Church control of men and women.

Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollars and cents. Particularly this is true of that

class whom economic necessity has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change in woman's

position, wrought by that mighty factor, is indeed phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short time since she

has entered the industrial arena. Six million women wage workers; six million women, who have equal right with

men to be exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to starve even. Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million

wage workers in every walk of life, from the highest brain work to the mines and railroad tracks; yes, even

detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation is complete.

Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of women wage workers look upon work as a

permanent issue, in the same light as does man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to be

independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is really independent in our economic treadmill; still, the

poorest specimen of a man hates to be a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate.

The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown aside for the first bidder. That is why it is

infinitely harder to organize women than men. "Why should I join a union? I am going to get married, to have a

home." Has she not been taught from infancy to look upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough

that the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and bars. It has a keeper so faithful

that naught can escape him. The most tragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wage slavery;

it only increases her task.

According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee "on labor and wages, and congestion of

population," ten per cent. of the wage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must continue to

work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this horrible aspect the drudgery of housework, and what

remains of the protection and glory of the home? As a matter of fact, even the middle-class girl in marriage can not

speak of her home, since it is the man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether the husband is a brute or

a darling. What I wish to prove is that marriage guarantees woman a home only by the grace of her husband.

There she moves about in HIS home, year after year, until her aspect of life and human affairs becomes as flat,

narrow, and drab as her surroundings. Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy,

unbearable, thus driving the man from the house. She could not go, if she wanted to; there is no place to go.

Besides, a short period of married life, of complete surrender of all faculties, absolutely incapacitates the average

woman for the outside world. She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her movements, dependent in her

decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a weight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully

inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not?

But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After all, is not that the most important consideration?

The sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless.

Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the Prevention

of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from "loving" parents, to place them under more

loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it!

Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it ever made him drink? The law will place the

father under arrest, and put him in convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child? If the parent

has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to

"justice," to put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the State. The

child receives but a blighted memory of his father's stripes.

As to the protection of the woman,—therein lies the curse of marriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very

idea is so revolting, such an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as to forever condemn this

parasitic institution.

It is like that other paternal arrangement—capitalism. It robs man of his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his

body, keeps him in ignorance, in poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on the last

vestige of man's self-respect.

The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life's

struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection,

which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character.

If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other protection does it need, save love and

freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only when you

follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if

she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, even

though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant

passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the hideous

epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would

exclude it forever from the realm of love.

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all

laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-

compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to

buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered

whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been

utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet

poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and

color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other

atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the

courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can

marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against death.

Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or

famished for the want of affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers in freedom by the

men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of

bestowing.

The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would

fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse the

indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The

race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere machine,—and the marriage institution is our only

safety valve against the pernicious sex awakening of woman. But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of

bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law. Woman

no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who

have neither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery. Instead she desires

fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage

imposes. Our pseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibility toward the child, that love in

freedom has awakened in the breast of woman. Rather would she forego forever the glory of motherhood than

bring forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she does become a mother, it is to

give to the child the deepest and best her being can yield. To grow with the child is her motto; she knows that in

that manner alone can she help build true manhood and womanhood.

Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a master stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the

ideal mother because she had outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken her chains, and set

her spirit free to soar until it returned a personality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue her life's

joy, her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love in freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who,

like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an

imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it

is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world.

In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes

root; or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress and strain of the daily grind.

Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with

those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love's summit.

Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, they will meet big and strong

and free, ready to receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what

poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a force in the life of men and women. If the

world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent.

THE MODERN DRAMA: A POWERFUL DISSEMINATOR OF RADICAL THOUGHT

So long as discontent and unrest make themselves but dumbly felt within a limited social class, the powers of

reaction may often succeed in suppressing such manifestations. But when the dumb unrest grows into conscious

expression and becomes almost universal, it necessarily affects all phases of human thought and action, and seeks

its individual and social expression in the gradual transvaluation of existing values.

An adequate appreciation of the tremendous spread of the modern, conscious social unrest cannot be gained from

merely propagandistic literature. Rather must we become conversant with the larger phases of human expression

manifest in art, literature, and, above all, the modern drama—the strongest and most far-reaching interpreter of our

deep-felt dissatisfaction.

What a tremendous factor for the awakening of conscious discontent are the simple canvasses of a Millet! The

figures of his peasants—what terrific indictment against our social wrongs; wrongs that condemn the Man With

the Hoe to hopeless drudgery, himself excluded from Nature's bounty.

The vision of a Meunier conceives the growing solidarity and defiance of labor in the group of miners carrying

their maimed brother to safety. His genius thus powerfully portrays the interrelation of the seething unrest among

those slaving in the bowels of the earth, and the spiritual revolt that seeks artistic expression.

No less important is the factor for rebellious awakening in modern literature—Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy,

Andreiev, Gorki, Whitman, Emerson, and scores of others embodying the spirit of universal ferment and the

longing for social change.

Still more far-reaching is the modern drama, as the leaven of radical thought and the disseminator of new values.

It might seem an exaggeration to ascribe to the modern drama such an important role. But a study of the

development of modern ideas in most countries will prove that the drama has succeeded in driving home great

social truths, truths generally ignored when presented in other forms. No doubt there are exceptions, as Russia and

France.

Russia, with its terrible political pressure, has made people think and has awakened their social sympathies,

because of the tremendous contrast which exists between the intellectual life of the people and the despotic regime

that is trying to crush that life. Yet while the great dramatic works of Tolstoy, Tchechov, Gorki, and Andreiev

closely mirror the life and the struggle, the hopes and aspirations of the Russian people, they did not influence

radical thought to the extent the drama has done in other countries.

Who can deny, however, the tremendous influence exerted by THE POWER OF DARKNESS or NIGHT

LODGING. Tolstoy, the real, true Christian, is yet the greatest enemy of organized Christianity. With a master

hand he portrays the destructive effects upon the human mind of the power of darkness, the superstitions of the

Christian Church.

What other medium could express, with such dramatic force, the responsibility of the Church for crimes

committed by its deluded victims; what other medium could, in consequence, rouse the indignation of man's

conscience?

Similarly direct and powerful is the indictment contained in Gorki's NIGHT LODGING. The social pariahs,

forced into poverty and crime, yet desperately clutch at the last vestiges of hope and aspiration. Lost existences

these, blighted and crushed by cruel, unsocial environment.

France, on the other hand, with her continuous struggle for liberty, is indeed the cradle of radical thought; as such

she, too, did not need the drama as a means of awakening. And yet the works of Brieux—as ROBE ROUGE,

portraying the terrible corruption of the judiciary—and Mirbeau's LES AFFAIRES SONT LES AFFAIRES—

picturing the destructive influence of wealth on the human soul—have undoubtedly reached wider circles than

most of the articles and books which have been written in France on the social question.

In countries like Germany, Scandinavia, England, and even in America—though in a lesser degree—the drama is

the vehicle which is really making history, disseminating radical thought in ranks not otherwise to be reached.

Let us take Germany, for instance. For nearly a quarter of a century men of brains, of ideas, and of the greatest

integrity, made it their life-work to spread the truth of human brotherhood, of justice, among the oppressed and

downtrodden. Socialism, that tremendous revolutionary wave, was to the victims of a merciless and inhumane

system like water to the parched lips of the desert traveler. Alas! The cultured people remained absolutely

indifferent; to them that revolutionary tide was but the murmur of dissatisfied, discontented men, dangerous,

illiterate troublemakers, whose proper place was behind prison bars.

Self-satisfied as the "cultured" usually are, they could not understand why one should fuss about the fact that

thousands of people were starving, though they contributed towards the wealth of the world. Surrounded by

beauty and luxury, they could not believe that side by side with them lived human beings degraded to a position

lower than a beast's, shelterless and ragged, without hope or ambition.

This condition of affairs was particularly pronounced in Germany after the Franco-German war. Full to the

bursting point with its victory, Germany thrived on a sentimental, patriotic literature, thereby poisoning the minds

of the country's youth by the glory of conquest and bloodshed.

Intellectual Germany had to take refuge in the literature of other countries, in the works of Ibsen, Zola, Daudet,

Maupassant, and especially in the great works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgeniev. But as no country can

long maintain a standard of culture without a literature and drama related to its own soil, so Germany gradually

began to develop a drama reflecting the life and the struggles of its own people.

Arno Holz, one of the youngest dramatists of that period, startled the Philistines out of their ease and comfort with

his FAMILIE SELICKE. The play deals with society's refuse, men and women of the alleys, whose only

subsistence consists of what they can pick out of the garbage barrels. A gruesome subject, is it not? And yet what

other method is there to break through the hard shell of the minds and souls of people who have never known

want, and who therefore assume that all is well in the world?

Needless to say, the play aroused tremendous indignation. The truth is bitter, and the people living on the Fifth

Avenue of Berlin hated to be confronted with the truth.

Not that FAMILIE SELICKE represented anything that had not been written about for years without any seeming

result. But the dramatic genius of Holz, together with the powerful interpretation of the play, necessarily made

inroads into the widest circles, and forced people to think about the terrible inequalities around them.

Sudermann's EHRE[1] and HEIMAT[2] deal with vital subjects. I have already referred to the sentimental

patriotism so completely turning the head of the average German as to create a perverted conception of honor.

Duelling became an every-day affair, costing innumerable lives. A great cry was raised against the fad by a

number of leading writers. But nothing acted as such a clarifier and exposer of that national disease as the EHRE.

Not that the play merely deals with duelling; it analyzes the real meaning of honor, proving that it is not a fixed,

inborn feeling, but that it varies with every people and every epoch, depending particularly on one's economic and

social station in life. We realize from this play that the man in the brownstone mansion will necessarily define

honor differently from his victims.

The family Heinecke enjoys the charity of the millionaire Muhling, being permitted to occupy a dilapidated shanty

on his premises in the absence of their son, Robert. The latter, as Muhling's representative, is making a vast

fortune for his employer in India. On his return Robert discovers that his sister had been seduced by young

Muhling, whose father graciously offers to straighten matters with a check for 40,000 marks. Robert, outraged

and indignant, resents the insult to his family's honor, and is forthwith dismissed from his position for impudence.

Robert finally throws this accusation into the face of the philanthropist millionaire:

"We slave for you, we sacrifice our heart's blood for you, while you seduce our daughters and sisters and kindly

pay for their disgrace with the gold we have earned for you. That is what you call honor."

An incidental side-light upon the conception of honor is given by Count Trast, the principal character in the

EHRE, a man widely conversant with the customs of various climes, who relates that in his many travels he

chanced across a savage tribe whose honor he mortally offended by refusing the hospitality which offered him the

charms of the chieftain's wife.

The theme of HEIMAT treats of the struggle between the old and the young generations. It holds a permanent and

important place in dramatic literature.

Magda, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Schwartz, has committed an unpardonable sin: she refused the suitor

selected by her father. For daring to disobey the parental commands she is driven from home. Magda, full of life

and the spirit of liberty, goes out into the world to return to her native town, twelve years later, a celebrated singer.

She consents to visit her parents on condition that they respect the privacy of her past. But her martinet father

immediately begins to question her, insisting on his "paternal rights." Magda is indignant, but gradually his

persistence brings to light the tragedy of her life. He learns that the respected Councillor Von Keller had in his

student days been Magda's lover, while she was battling for her economic and social independence. The

consequence of the fleeting romance was a child, deserted by the man even before birth. The rigid military father

of Magda demands as retribution from Councillor Von Keller that he legalize the love affair. In view of Magda's

social and professional success, Keller willingly consents, but on condition that she forsake the stage, and place

the child in an institution. The struggle between the Old and the New culminates in Magda's defiant words of the

woman grown to conscious independence of thought and action: "...I'll say what I think of you—of you and your

respectable society. Why should I be worse than you that I must prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why

should this gold upon my body, and the lustre which surrounds my name, only increase my infamy? Have I not

worked early and late for ten long years? Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built up

my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should I blush before anyone? I am myself, and through

myself I have become what I am."

The general theme of HEIMAT was not original. It had been previously treated by a master hand in FATHERS

AND SONS. Partly because Turgeniev's great work was typical rather of Russian than universal conditions, and

still more because it was in the form of fiction, the influence of FATHERS AND SONS was limited to Russia.

But HEIMAT, especially because of its dramatic expression, became almost a world factor.

The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is

Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG[3], refused by every leading German theatre

and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning,

illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an extensive landowner, ignorant,

illiterate, and brutalized, and his economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth, both on the

victims who created it and the possessor thereof, is shown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness,

idiocy, and decay. But the most striking feature of VOR SONNENAUFGANG, the one which brought a shower

of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was the question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit parents.

During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon almost caused a panic in the theatre by

swinging a pair of forceps over his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency and morality of

Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed openly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and

Hauptmann stands a colossal figure before the world.

When DIE WEBER[4] first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried

the moralists, "workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty in all its horrors and ugliness to be

dished out as an after-dinner amusement? That is too much!"

Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the

weaver's existence. It was too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunder in the deaf ears of self-

satisfied society, J'ACCUSE!

Of course, it was generally known even before the appearance of this drama that cap