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Mothers Explained
Harper’s Weekly (November 13, 1909) : 27
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      An idea has been offered which seems most comprehensive in its explaining, though not quite away, of a situation that has embarrassed us all for an uncomfortably long time. Mothers and daughters, with the chafing relations of the two, have been more or less covered up by all lovers of conventional, respectable affection ever since the present generation got firmly on its legs and with its first long-skirted, independent steps showed shamelessly individualistic tendencies. At first there was a great deal of confusion felt in all proper families; the daughter bowed under the ignominy of the antagonism she bore toward her feminine parent, the mother was harassed by the something that was making her lead her daughter and herself, poor lady, a dog’s life. Until it became as general as the weather, no one spoke of it. Now it is discussed with a relieving naturalness, and in the noisily, safely escaping steam an explanation of the entire matter has arisen.
      It seems (the knowledge that two generations of much-tried ears are listening attentively lends a gulping breathlessness to the writer) that mothers had to be. This goes without saying, of course, and let no one be disappointed at the obviousness of the announcement. What was meant is that present-day mothers, with the traits they are becoming almost unpleasantly notorious for, were an absolute necessity to the race. Without their extremely trying ways the race might have ceased to exist. Nature, in a panic-stricken attempt to save herself from the death blow given her by the present-day girl, invented the present-day mother. All is now understood, every one’s apology is accepted, and it is confidently believed by those in the know that Nature has accomplished her purpose, and that in the next generation mothers will be permitted to return to their charming, originally ordered selves. They have, let us put it gently, done their work very well. History will always be a little aghast at their thoroughness.
      As our mothers were on perfectly good terms with their mothers and regarded them as a friendly, forgiving centre around which the family resolved, we have penitently, unhappily felt that the fault lay with us. It has, after a fashion. Our mothers married early and almost without exception. The interest of the subject is embroiling the writer; it is again necessary to explain that what is meant is that the last generation went in for marrying in a satisfactorily wholesale manner. There was no need to force our mothers into matrimony. But we, with our careers, accentuated individualism, and enjoyable, newly found self-sufficiency, were in great danger of never marrying at all. A way had to be found to get us out of the parental home, and Nature, with her usual directness, used our mothers as instruments to bring about a really — this will readily be seen necessary ejection .
      In stubborn cases (it was evident that Nature was obliged to use all her forces, was genuinely frightened, and put to it to find a way out of her difficulty) the elder sister was added as the insupportable last straw. She was turned into a supplementary mother, with the result that marriage became again a not uncommon thing among the harried younger girls, and Shaw wrote his brazen, spade-like epigram, showing up a thing that Nature and all other circumspect women had hoped to pull off without undue public notice, “There is only one person an English girl hates more than her mother, and that is her elder sister.”
      It has all been very uncomfortable, but it was a payment exacted from a tender spot for a comfort that threatened to be serious. The young women of this generation thought they had solved a problem when they had only very pleasantly evaded it. They had postponed to an indefinite, improbable future the choosing of a husband. It was no longer necessary to marry a definite, disillusionizing man in order to get what they wanted. They were able to put him aside altogether or to limit him to an amusement when he was sure to be amusing. They found themselves able to earn sufficient money for an unrestricted indulgence in the serious luxuries of life. They saw to it that they were people of importance without the old-fashioned necessity of their first being married women. They remained in their father’s house with no responsibility except the soothing one of criticising the way in which it was run. Opinions were allowed them — in fact, opinions were hardly allowed any one else. If their mothers could only have been induced to give them amiable support there is no telling what might have become of the world. It would probably have become a mass of men’s clubs and women’s rest cures, and after that — ah, but long before this was even faintly in sight the mothers had started in doing their work with a whole-hearted zeal which caused the young women to exclaim, their patience being severely tried, “Ye gods! is it possible that even men would be preferable to this?”
      After the first shock of finding themselves stalking and being stalked by their mothers around a perpetual battle-field (the unconventionality of the thing cut them always, the bickering that seemed so humiliatingly slum-like), they arrived at the idea that it was curiously educating to their souls, and they started in to get all possible benefit out of the emotional ferment. Picture Nature’s distress when they took this view of the matter. They were becoming adepts at temperamental somersaults , and then by a master stroke mothers won out. They attacked the minutest details. They rubbed ceaselessly on the small spots of life, and the daughters crying, “This is beneath our dignity,” were by that same precious dignity made to do what Nature had been so hotly working toward. The men as a last resort were turned to, and the mothers are fortunately to have their release.
      It is to be most earnestly hoped that the “last resort” will not, in revenge for the period when they were scorned, desert the young women now when they need them. Perhaps Nature will see to that, too.

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      The sky is deserving of much more attention than it gets. It is the lovelist side of the world, no matter how lovely our side for the moment is. The sky even at times is able to lend the earth half its beauty and drapes it in shadows, arranging the sun upon the fields so that it is fair beyond words. The sky alone can never be made to look better or worse because of the thing reflected against it. When seen from a window of the Alhambra, it is still more beautiful than the window tracery. When seen with factory chimneys black against it, it is sad with the grime of the chimneys, but it glows, and the sky and the earth are ennobled. If one looks down the narrow vista of a cross street, it has managed to find room at the end to be beautiful and has used the crowding houses as a frame to hold its exquisite colors. If one only sees the top of it by standing at one’s window with tilted chin, then it calls three little clouds to look down into your window, and, though no doubt they would find it much more agreeable nearer the horizon, they continue to drift there on high, filling a space the sky thought blank and feared might disappoint one.
 

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