Anarchist Fiction dot Net

Gertrude Nafe’s mini-bio in The Best Short Stories of 1917 reads simply: “Nafe, Gertrude. Born in Grand Island, Neb., 1883. Graduate of University of Colorado. Teaches English in East Denver High School. Her chief interest in life is revolution. Her first [sic] contribution was ‘The Woman Who Stood in the Market Place,’ published in Mother Earth in February, 1914. Lives in Denver, Colo.”

Nafe is one of those authors who largely slips the traces of the scholarly establishment, leaving only slender threads of bio-bibliography to follow. She was indeed a contributor to Mother Earth, an associate of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, of Margaret Sanger and John Reed. In The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools, Upton Sinclair explains how, during the 1914 coal miners’ strike that touched off the Colorado Coalfield War (“a strange dead nightmare of grief and horror,” as Nafe described it to readers of Mother Earth, with miners gunned down by hired thugs and National Guard troops), Nafe and her friend Ellen Kennan spoke out to their students about what was happening and were subsequently drummed out by the school board, after four years of legal persecution, for refusing to sign a loyalty oath.

Was Nafe an anarchist? She became an organizer for Reed’s Communist Labor Party in 1919, renamed the United Communist Party in 1920.  While this doesn’t in itself rule out the possibility of anarchist identification in the decade prior, the fact remains that Mother Earth did publish the work of allies and sympathizers who were not themselves anarchists.  However, Nafe’s contributions are well within the anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist ethos of the journal.  “The Law and the Man Who Laughed” (Mother Earth, vol. 8, no. 4, June 1913, pp. 123-124), for instance, is a sardonic send-up of the idea that human beings are unable to regulate themselves without “a large supply of laws on every subject” — so that when the “the law which regulates the number of times a minute the people should breathe” expires, so do the people.

More powerful, however, is Nafe’s “The Woman Who Stood in the Market Place,” with its anguished, almost prophetic tone.  Read for yourself.

THE WOMAN WHO STOOD IN THE MARKET-PLACE

By Gertrude Nafe

A WOMAN came and stood in the market-place and offered therein the work of her hands. And the market-place was filled with those who were very tired, because there was no room and no work for them, and they struggled to push her away again, saying, “There is no room here. Go away! There is not even room for us who were here before. Go to your home.”

And she was afraid when she saw their grim and gaunt faces and the eyes of them red with anger, and she shrank back, pleading with them, “Look and see the place where my home was, for the market-place has covered it, and in all the world I have no spot for my feet save here in the market-place.”

But they would not listen nor pause for her saying, and they stoned her with But they would not listen nor pause for her saying, and they stoned her with stones so that she would have fled save that in good truth she had nowhere to go but to another part of the market-place. Only their own [381] weakness and pain came upon them so that they fought no more, and their starved hands sadly dropped the stones, and their anger of its ancient futility grew futile again.

So they stood wearily in the market-place and none wanted them. And as she stood with the others who might not work, she watched the market-place. And there came by men bowed with many hours of toil, dulled in understanding, weak in body. And she said to them, “Let me help you. So I shall work and you shall have time to grow into your humanity.”

But they looked at her with frightened eyes, saying, “Go away from us. You would take our work and leave us standing, as you are, with empty hands in the marketplace.”

And there came by women, mothers of little children, tired and worn in the market-place. And the little children clinging to their skirts stumbled and fell on the rough stones, for they were too little for the streets of the market-place. But their mothers could not lift them in their arms or even show them the way across the stones, because of the heavy burdens they carried in their arms — the burdens that were to serve the marketplace. Then the woman spoke eagerly, “Let me carry your other burdens that you may take care of your children.” But the mothers could not hear her because of the pitiful wailing of the little children which always filled their ears.

And she saw other children (God knows how little they were!) and they carried heavy burdens for the market-place. And every right that childhood ever had, had been stolen from them that they might become the docile slaves of the market-place. Then the woman cried with a voice of agony, “Let me take upon myself the work of these children. For I eat the food that they earn, and they have not enough. I am a woman, and this is a disgrace too intolerable to bear. For I have looked upon the earth and there is no beast that lives upon the work of its starving young save here in this market-place.”

And the woman spoke again: “All the hope for the World That Is To Be is in the children.” And the children lifted dull eyes and showed their white faces [382] stamped with hunger, weakness and ignorance, and unnameable vices that come from hunger and weakness and ignorance. And the mockery in those faces which had never learned to smile said, “Here, then, is your hope for the World That Is To Be.”

And the woman cried with a very bitter cry, “Among all these weary people crushed beneath their loads, is there nothing I can do?”

Then there came to her certain women who said to her, “Come with us and you shall have no lack.” But she shrank from them, saying, “You sell your bodies. That I cannot do.” And they laughed, “Lift up your eyes. Who is there in this market-place that has not sold his body? — yes, and for good measure thrown in mind and soul if perchance he had either.” As they left her they laughed contemptuously.

Then the woman said, “Now I will go over this market-place and find out the happy ones and learn from them. For if so many are wretched here, surely a few must be very happy to keep the balance true.” So she searched carefully among all those who stood greatest in the market-place; but in their feverish, harassed, anxious eyes she found no happiness. And then one explained to her: “They indeed have not opportunity either to eat or sleep or breathe the air of heaven. But look upon their women. To them they give everything, and the women are the joy that is wrung from the anguish of the market-place.”

Then the woman saw a long car drawn by many horses and upon it were the women of those who had succeeded in the market-place. Under the wheels were ground the bodies of men and other women and little tiny children. And the woman said, “Surely these women cannot endure the wailing in their ears?”

“They have stuffed their ears carefully, so they can hear nothing, else they could not ride through the marketplace.”

“But to see the mangled bodies!”

“They keep their eyes always carefully closed, else they could not endure to ride through the market-place.”

“But are they happy with eyes and ears always closed?” [383]

“They keep themselves busy, in the way you see.”

Indeed, as they came nearer, the woman saw a curious sight. The women, loaded with numberless golden chains, performed a thousand little motions all in perfect time. As one raised her hand, all raised their hands; as she lowered her hand, all lowered their hands. They spoke in concert, using exactly the same words.

“Is it useful?” asked the woman, doubtfully; “or is it beautiful, like a dance?”

“Nay, it is neither,” said her guide, “but it must be done so. The rulers of the market-place are judged by the perfection in the drill of the women they own. If the chains ever gall, it is their pride not to own it. Most of them are well calloused under their chains by now.”

The woman looked sadly at the women with closed eyes and ears, chained and moving all together. “And these are the happy ones of the market-place?” she said.

“That is one of the words not in good use in the market-place,” said the other. “Instead of ‘happy’ we say ‘rich,’ instead of ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ ‘legal’ and ‘illegal.’”

“But they do not mean the same thing,” she tried to object.

“It is much less embarassing in explaining the market-place to our children,” he returned.

Then a passion of love and anger shook the heart of the woman. “And in the name of those children I shall curse this market-place.”

Then all who heard her ran together affrighted and clung to her skirts and said, “Lo, it is not for a woman to curse. Love and not hate is a woman’s work.” And lovers and little children clung to her and said, “There are still sunrise and flowers in the world. Do not curse our world away.”

And she blessed them saying, “I shall not curse your world away, and I could not if I would. For wherever there are children and lovers and saints and sages, the world is made anew every morning. But I shall curse the market-place which is the death of the world. For when a wind blows from there children die, and lovers grow suddenly white and old, and must part, and the sages are choked and the saints crucified. But I call upon all who keep in their hearts any justice or truth or [384] love to curse with me the market-place that violates every one of them. And I call mothers who carry in their bodies the World That Is To Be, and, more than all, those who carry it in their souls and will be delivered of it, in agony, when the time is come. And the curses called down upon it in hate and despair shall shake it, but this curse pronounced by love which it has violated shall destroy the Market Place forever.”

Nafe, Gertrude. “The Woman Who Stood in the Market Place.” Mother Earth 8.12 (Feb. 1914): 380-384.