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The Provincial Mind
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (September 16, 1911) : 24
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Provincialism would seem to be a matter of brain texture and only occasionally the result of circumstances and education. If one is innately provincial it is an ineradicable dye in the mind, a thing that colors one’s attitude toward every subject and is yet entirely compatible with a life spent in one of the world centers. If one's nature is free of the taint, the most stultifying of small towns can do nothing more than faintly affect one’s manners. Provincialism is a characteristic so glaring when met with, and so awful to encounter, that the search for a definition must be considered as a grappling with a dragon, accosted with the hope that a brave attack may cause it to resolve itself into half a dozen smaller and better known dragons, of a size convenient to kill, perhaps even already wounded by former bouts with public opinion.
The provincial mind, or lack of it, is indicated by one’s method of approach, not to the multitude of middle things, but to matters of genuine seriousness and to moments of undiluted nonsense. It is in taking one’s pleasure, and in touching on the world’s pains, that one is proved guilty or innocent. To be either extremely light-hearted or to attempt to deal at first hand with essentials is to disclose one’s self. In the former state what is in one bubbles forth too quickly to be prepared for public gaze, and in the latter there should be a dismissal of self, which, when it fails to take place, amounts to a serious indiscretion.
It may be that both extremes are impossible to the provincial mind, for both imply agility in the manipulation of self, and the provincial is above all else unwieldy. The non-provincial person has a malleable ego, which has been leavened, and is a portable material capable of ignition, of expansion, of flight, of dispersal before a thing infinitely greater than itself. He feels and thinks with such gaucherie that the freeness and spontaneity of movement necessary to take him as far as solemnity or joyousness are forever beyond his powers. The non-provincial person has a malleable ego, which has been leavened, and is a portable material capable of ignition, of expansion, of flight, of dispersal before a thing infinitely greater than itself. It is a thousand times more conscious than the provincial’s ego, and many times less self-conscious. It is more simple and unashamed. The provincial type is ashamed of everything, or was in the beginning, and, from terror at standing up and the consequent broad gaze attainable — not to mention the risk attendant on a possible temptation to act, with all the minor embarrassments of displaced draperies, the attention of one’s fellow-men, and the danger of original decisions being required — sat down long ago, and has ever since retained his discreet and cramped position. The result is, naturally enough, a slow creak every time you ask him to move. The slightest shift of position is regarded as a considerable undertaking, if not a tampering with nature’s laws. If he attempts it, it is with a nervous ponderousness, as though he feared falling, though not having risen an inch from his chair. If asked to turn his gaze to the right he does it with an awful tenacity, maintaining his course long after every one else has seen all there was to be seen from the right and discovered that the view to the left is productive of much greater interest. To present a serious topic to a provincial is to frighten him into a display of vulgar nicety which bids him veer away or a panicky and flippant dismissal of anything but platitudes, or, essaying seriousness, he accomplishes nothing but a drop into stodgy sententiousness.
The provincial is capable of nothing but provincialism. It is he who has “settled opinions on unsettled subjects.”The next step in our trial of the provincial takes us to ground where we have all often been before, and one is rueful at having what promised to be a long voyage of discovery bring up at a near-by, well-known spot — none other, in fact, than the comparison of the open and the closed mind. The non-provincial is potentially anything or everything. The provincial is capable of nothing but provincialism. It is he who has “settled opinions on unsettled subjects.” He knows whether a new idea is good or bad before he has attempted to comprehend it, and its novelty was sufficient to prejudice him in favor of pronouncing it bad. A provincial is quick in nothing but condemning.
Environment cannot dispel this type of mind any more than it can engender it. The quality is too deep-rooted. Environment cannot dispel this type of mind any more than it can engender it. The quality is too deep-rooted. Circumstances may form a crust of provincialism over a mind capable of exercising its functions, and in a whole townful of people without minds, having the same crust, it may be difficult to distinguish between the rule and the exception. Give the exception, however, an opportunity, hold a magnet before him in any form, so it be a real appeal, and a little awkwardly, but gladly, even relievedly, he will dare to feel strongly and dare to be joyous. The crust was not natural to him, and was easily broken through. After years of inexpressiveness and concentration on life’s petty mechanisms the harping on them had not killed his capacity for receptivity or fresh, straightly taken flights.
On the other hand, the person born in the big world who has managed to convert it into a village is not unknown. His jargon is made to seem lively because he abbreviates the names of great enterprises and speaks of nations as though they were members of his family. But his language is the cant of his circle, hardened into stereotyped gossip by the mechanical grinding of many little minds like his own. He would be ashamed to differ. He could not be himself because he does not exist, he is only the opaque and unilluminable reflection of the most obvious ingredients of his surroundings. Fresh matter renders him as nervous as it does his prototype in the small town. The safety and comfort of both lie in their refusing to see whatever has not long since become safely stale.
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