In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

87 Chapter Five Into the World A new type of evangelism which would result in a person’s giving his whole self to the whole community. —discussed at the meeting of the Council of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (February 9–13, 1923) Community House allowed Hutchins and Rochester to cement their partnership as they moved away from charitable work and into the world. Yet Community House could not last. There would be no rings, no lasting commitments to a community of women. Economically , the household was not viable. What’s more, the Episcopal Church, at the core of the community, had proved resistant to the changes that had inspired the household’s formation in the first place. The situational incongruities were inescapable, sending the household into a crisis. Most household members left because they had to find paid work, but Hutchins and Rochester, with independent incomes, were able to shift their affiliations to a religious organization that offered them both the promise of more specific action and a platform from which to speak. They traded their ironic cartoons and parodies for more direct attempts to persuade readers to address the causes of inequality and war. Although this foray out of same-sex institutions would end in another economic debacle, it increased Hutchins and Rochester’s understandings of the difficulties inherent in challenging gender and class systems. And it didn’t stop them. Sally Cleghorn left the household in June 1922; she had found a teaching job again with Bill and Helen Fincke at Manumit Farm in Dutchess County, New York. Some housemates had left before Cleghorn; others would follow. After leaving, Cleghorn wrote to Hutchins, offering her assessment of the house and its mission, an assessment that served, following the lex continui, to propel Hutchins farther from the comfortable world she had inhabited, confronting directly and painfully the privileges and assumptions of her class. Apparently Hutchins had written to Cleghorn questioning her use of the word “monastic” in a conversation with Lucie Myer. “Monastic” would have alarmed Hutchins, as it was this word that had been seeping into conversations among the Companions. Vida Scudder, in particular, had been seeking to push the SCHC in a direction more defined by historical religious communities, perhaps attempting to preserve from the culture of the 1920s the community of women that had meant so much to her. But the word “monastic ” represented the antithesis of all that Hutchins had envisioned. Hutchins did want a community of women, but she did not want a community that separated itself from the 88 PASSIONATE COMMITMENTS common life of the neighborhood. Responding to this letter from Hutchins, Cleghorn wrote that she remembered using the word monastic in conversation with Lucie Myer. “By it,” she said, “I meant two totally different things; one was the exclusively feminine character of the family, and the other was the sense of dedication.”1 Cleghorn went on to explain. While she liked living with women, she also missed men, especially “big boys” such as those she used to teach. What she would prefer, she said, was a community consisting of both sexes and all ages. Or perhaps, she mused, if there were class differences among the women, that would take care of the feeling of exclusivity . The “sense of dedication,” she said, means that the “common lazy (moral) self can’t find a footing. And then,” she continued, “one finds oneself laboring under a faint sense of not quite hypocrisy, but at least of having a far far less attractive personality hidden away about one somewhere which under less dedicated conditions would issue, to be most appallingly apparent.” Perhaps, she ventured, it’s not really a “monastic tinge in the house” but rather an “atmosphere of very great though unconscious refinement.”2 Despite all this, Cleghorn said, she loved the house and the “wildness” that it allowed, “its lovely comradeship, its burning warmth, its reality of meaning, its truly humble sisterliness .” “Humor,” she said, “keeps it fresh, respect for differing opinion keeps it sane, vital reverence for life itself prevents it from growing stiff or suspicious of change.”3 What exactly Cleghorn meant by “wildness” we can only guess, but the household was groundbreaking in creating a space in which women could live together without the oversight of husbands or fathers—or institutions of some sort—and residents thoroughly enjoyed their freedom. Although the household was crumbling under its own contradictions, it was an important first step toward full social and civic liberation...

Share