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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1440-0.txt b/1440-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..941ae6c --- /dev/null +++ b/1440-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5217 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1440 *** + +WOMAN AND LABOUR + +by Olive Schreiner + + +Author of “Dreams,” “The Story of an African Farm,” “Trooper Peter +Halket,” “Dream Life and Real Life,” etc. etc. + + + Dedicated to Constance Lytton + + “Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, + Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea-- + Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong-- + Nay, but she aim’d not at glory, no lover of glory she: + Give her the glory of going on and still to be.” + + Tennyson. + + Olive Schreiner. + De Aar, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. 1911. + + + + +Contents + + Introduction + + Chapter I. Parasitism + + Chapter II. Parasitism (continued) + + Chapter III. Parasitism (continued) + + Chapter IV. Woman and War + + Chapter V. Sex Differences + + Chapter VI. Certain Objections + + + + + +Introduction. + +It is necessary to say a few words to explain this book. The original +title of the book was “Musings on Woman and Labour.” + +It is, what its name implies, a collection of musings on some of the +points connected with woman’s work. + +In my early youth I began a book on Woman. I continued the work till +ten years ago. It necessarily touched on most matters in which sex has a +part, however incompletely. + +It began by tracing the differences of sex function to their earliest +appearances in life on the globe; not only as when in the animal world, +two amoeboid globules coalesce, and the process of sexual generation +almost unconsciously begins; but to its yet more primitive +manifestations in plant life. In the first three chapters I traced, +as far as I was able, the evolution of sex in different branches of +non-human life. Many large facts surprised me in following this line of +thought by their bearing on the whole modern sex problem. Such facts +as this; that, in the great majority of species on the earth the female +form exceeds the male in size and strength and often in predatory +instinct; and that sex relationships may assume almost any form on earth +as the conditions of life vary; and that, even in their sexual relations +towards offspring, those differences which we, conventionally, are apt +to suppose are inherent in the paternal or the maternal sex form, are +not inherent--as when one studies the lives of certain toads, where the +female deposits her eggs in cavities on the back of the male, where the +eggs are preserved and hatched; or, of certain sea animals, in which the +male carries the young about with him and rears them in a pouch formed +of his own substance; and countless other such. And above all, this +important fact, which had first impressed me when as a child I wandered +alone in the African bush and watched cock-o-veets singing their +inter-knit love-songs, and small singing birds building their nests +together, and caring for and watching over, not only their young, but +each other, and which has powerfully influenced all I have thought and +felt on sex matters since;--the fact that, along the line of bird +life and among certain of its species sex has attained its highest and +aesthetic, and one might almost say intellectual, development on +earth: a point of development to which no human race as a whole has +yet reached, and which represents the realisation of the highest sexual +ideal which haunts humanity. + +When these three chapters we ended I went on to deal, as far as +possible, with woman’s condition in the most primitive, in the savage +and in the semi-savage states. I had always been strangely interested +from childhood in watching the condition of the native African women +in their primitive society about me. When I was eighteen I had a +conversation with a Kafir woman still in her untouched primitive +condition, a conversation which made a more profound impression on my +mind than any but one other incident connected with the position of +woman has ever done. She was a woman whom I cannot think of otherwise +than as a person of genius. In language more eloquent and intense than +I have ever heard from the lips of any other woman, she painted the +condition of the women of her race; the labour of women, the anguish of +woman as she grew older, and the limitations of her life closed in about +her, her sufferings under the condition of polygamy and subjection; all +this she painted with a passion and intensity I have not known equalled; +and yet, and this was the interesting point, when I went on to question +her, combined with a deep and almost fierce bitterness against life +and the unseen powers which had shaped woman and her conditions as they +were, there was not one word of bitterness against the individual man, +nor any will or intention to revolt; rather, there was a stern and +almost majestic attitude of acceptance of the inevitable; life and the +conditions of her race being what they were. It was this conversation +which first forced upon me a truth, which I have since come to regard as +almost axiomatic, that, the women of no race or class will ever rise in +revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment of their +relation to their society, however intense their suffering and however +clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of their +society requires their submission: that, wherever there is a general +attempt on the part of the women of any society to readjust their +position in it, a close analysis will always show that the changed or +changing conditions of that society have made woman’s acquiescence no +longer necessary or desirable. + +Another point which it was attempted to deal with in this division of +the book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that +woman’s physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain other +directions was the price which woman has been compelled to pay for the +passing of the race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state to the +erect; and which was essential if humanity as we know it was to exist +(this of course was dealt with by a physiological study of woman’s +structure); and also, to deal with the highly probable, though unproved +and perhaps unprovable, suggestion, that it was largely the necessity +which woman was under of bearing her helpless young in her arms while +procuring food for them and herself, and of carrying them when escaping +from enemies, that led to the entirely erect position being forced on +developing humanity. + +These and many other points throwing an interesting light on the later +development of women (such as the relation between agriculture and the +subjection of women) were gone into in this division of the book dealing +with primitive and semi-barbarous womanhood. + +When this division was ended, I had them type-written, and with the +first three chapters bound in one volume about the year 1888; and then +went on to work at the last division, which I had already begun. + +This dealt with what is more popularly known as the women’s question: +with the causes which in modern European societies are leading women to +attempt readjustment in their relation to their social organism; with +the direction in which such readjustments are taking place; and with the +results which in the future it appears likely such readjustments will +produce. + +After eleven years, 1899, these chapters were finished and bound in a +large volume with the first two divisions. There then only remained to +revise the book and write a preface. In addition to the prose argument +I had in each chapter one or more allegories; because while it is easy +clearly to express abstract thoughts in argumentative prose, whatever +emotion those thoughts awaken I have not felt myself able adequately +to express except in the other form. (The allegory “Three Dreams in a +Desert” which I published about nineteen years ago was taken from this +book; and I have felt that perhaps being taken from its context it was +not quite clear to every one.) I had also tried throughout to illustrate +the subject with exactly those particular facts in the animal and human +world, with which I had come into personal contact and which had helped +to form the conclusions which were given; as it has always seemed to +me that in dealing with sociological questions a knowledge of the exact +manner in which any writer has arrived at his view is necessary in +measuring its worth. The work had occupied a large part of my life, and +I had hoped, whatever its deficiencies, that it might at least stimulate +other minds, perhaps more happily situated, to an enlarged study of the +question. + +In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was +ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of +two months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I +arrived at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but Martial Law had +already been proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to +allow my return to my home in Johannesburg and sent me to the Colony; +nor was I allowed to send any communication through, to any person, who +might have extended some care over my possessions. Some eight months +after, when the British troops had taken and entered Johannesburg; a +friend, who, being on the British side, had been allowed to go up, wrote +me that he had visited my house and found it looted, that all that was +of value had been taken or destroyed; that my desk had been forced open +and broken up, and its contents set on fire in the centre of the room, +so that the roof was blackened over the pile of burnt papers. He added +that there was little in the remnants of paper of which I could make any +use, but that he had gathered and stored the fragments till such time +as I might be allowed to come and see them. I thus knew my book had been +destroyed. + +Some months later in the war when confined in a little up-country +hamlet, many hundreds of miles from the coast and from Johannesburg; +with the brunt of the war at that time breaking around us, de Wet having +crossed the Orange River and being said to have been within a few miles +of us, and the British columns moving hither and thither, I was living +in a little house on the outskirts of the village, in a single room, +with a stretcher and two packing-cases as furniture, and with my little +dog for company. Thirty-six armed African natives were set to guard +night and day at the doors and windows of the house; and I was only +allowed to go out during certain hours in the middle of the day to fetch +water from the fountain, or to buy what I needed, and I was allowed to +receive no books, newspapers or magazines. A high barbed wire fence, +guarded by armed natives, surrounded the village, through which it would +have been death to try to escape. All day the pompoms from the armoured +trains, that paraded on the railway line nine miles distant, could be +heard at intervals; and at night the talk of the armed natives as they +pressed against the windows, and the tramp of the watch with the endless +“Who goes there?” as they walked round the wire fence through the long, +dark hours, when one was allowed neither to light a candle nor strike +a match. When a conflict was fought near by, the dying and wounded were +brought in; three men belonging to our little village were led out to +execution; death sentences were read in our little market-place; our +prison was filled with our fellow-countrymen; and we did not know +from hour to hour what the next would bring to any of us. Under these +conditions I felt it necessary I should resolutely force my thought at +times from the horror of the world around me, to dwell on some abstract +question, and it was under these circumstances that this little book was +written; being a remembrance mainly drawn from one chapter of the larger +book. The armed native guards standing against the uncurtained windows, +it was impossible to open the shutters, and the room was therefore +always so dark that even the physical act of writing was difficult. + +A year and a half after, when the war was over and peace had been +proclaimed for above four months, I with difficulty obtained a permit to +visit the Transvaal. I found among the burnt fragments the leathern back +of my book intact, the front half of the leaves burnt away; the back +half of the leaves next to the cover still all there, but so browned and +scorched with the flames that they broke as you touched them; and there +was nothing left but to destroy it. I even then felt a hope that at some +future time I might yet rewrite the entire book. But life is short; and +I have found that not only shall I never rewrite the book, but I +shall not have the health even to fill out and harmonise this little +remembrance from it. + +It is therefore with considerable pain that I give out this fragment. I +am only comforted by the thought that perhaps, all sincere and earnest +search after truth, even where it fails to reach it, yet, often comes +so near to it, that other minds more happily situated may be led, by +pointing out its very limitations and errors, to obtain a larger view. + +I have dared to give this long and very uninteresting explanation, not +at all because I have wished by giving the conditions under which this +little book was written, to make excuse for any repetitions or lack of +literary perfection, for these things matter very little; but, because +(and this matters very much) it might lead to misconception on the +subject-matter itself if its genesis were not exactly understood. + +Not only is this book not a general view of the whole vast body +of phenomena connected with woman’s position; but it is not even a +bird’s-eye view of the whole question of woman’s relation to labour. + +In the original book the matter of the parasitism of woman filled only +one chapter out of twelve, and it was mainly from this chapter that this +book was drawn. The question of the parasitism of woman is, I think, +very vital, very important; it explains many phenomena which nothing +else explains; and it will be of increasing importance. But for the +moment there are other aspects of woman’s relation to labour practically +quite as pressing. In the larger book I had devoted one chapter entirely +to an examination of the work woman has done and still does in the +modern world, and the gigantic evils which arise from the fact that +her labour, especially domestic labour, often the most wearisome and +unending known to any section of the human race, is not adequately +recognised or recompensed. Especially on this point I have feared this +book might lead to a misconception, if by its great insistence on the +problem of sex parasitism, and the lighter dealing with other aspects, +it should lead to the impression that woman’s domestic labour at the +present day (something quite distinct from, though indirectly connected +with, the sexual relation between man and woman) should not be highly +and most highly recognised and recompensed. I believe it will be in the +future, and then when woman gives up her independent field of labour for +domestic or marital duty of any kind, she will not receive her share +of the earnings of the man as a more or less eleemosynary benefaction, +placing her in a position of subjection, but an equal share, as the fair +division, in an equal partnership. (It may be objected that where a man +and woman have valued each other sufficiently to select one another from +all other humans for a lifelong physical union, it is an impertinence +to suppose there could be any necessity to adjust economic relations. In +love there is no first nor last! And that the desire of each must be to +excel the other in service. That this should be so is true; that it is +so now, in the case of union between two perfectly morally developed +humans, is also true, and that this condition may in a distant future be +almost universal is certainly true. But dealing with this matter as a +practical question today, we have to consider not what should be, or +what may be, but what, given traditions and institutions of our +societies, is, today.) Especially I have feared that the points dealt +with in this little book, when taken apart from other aspects of the +question, might lead to the conception that it was intended to express +the thought, that it was possible or desirable that woman in addition to +her child-bearing should take from man his share in the support and care +of his offspring or of the woman who fulfilled with regard to himself +domestic duties of any kind. In that chapter in the original book +devoted to the consideration of man’s labour in connection with woman +and with his offspring more than one hundred pages were devoted to +illustrating how essential to the humanising and civilising of man, and +therefore of the whole race, was an increased sense of sexual and +paternal responsibility, and an increased justice towards woman as a +domestic labourer. In the last half of the same chapter I dealt at great +length with what seems to me an even more pressing practical sex +question at this moment--man’s attitude towards those women who are not +engaged in domestic labour; toward that vast and always increasing body +of women, who as modern conditions develop are thrown out into the +stream of modern economic life to sustain themselves and often others by +their own labour; and who yet are there bound hand and foot, not by the +intellectual or physical limitations of their nature, but by artificial +constrictions and conventions, the remnants of a past condition of +society. It is largely this maladjustment, which, deeply studied in all +its ramifications, will be found to lie as the taproot and central +source of the most terrible of the social diseases that afflict us. + +The fact that for equal work equally well performed by a man and by +a woman, it is ordained that the woman on the ground of her sex alone +shall receive a less recompense, is the nearest approach to a wilful +and unqualified “wrong” in the whole relation of woman to society today. +That males of enlightenment and equity can for an hour tolerate the +existence of this inequality has seemed to me always incomprehensible; +and it is only explainable when one regards it as a result of the +blinding effects of custom and habit. Personally, I have felt so +profoundly on this subject, that this, with one other point connected +with woman’s sexual relation to man, are the only matters connected with +woman’s position, in thinking of which I have always felt it necessary +almost fiercely to crush down indignation and to restrain it, if I would +maintain an impartiality of outlook. I should therefore much regret if +the light and passing manner in which this question has been touched on +in this little book made it seem of less vital importance than I hold +it. + +In the last chapter of the original book, the longest, and I believe the +most important, I dealt with the problems connected with marriage and +the personal relations of men and women in the modern world. In it I +tried to give expression to that which I hold to be a great truth, and +one on which I should not fear to challenge the verdict of long future +generations--that, the direction in which the endeavour of woman to +readjust herself to the new conditions of life is leading today, is +not towards a greater sexual laxity, or promiscuity, or to an increased +self-indulgence, but toward a higher appreciation of the sacredness of +all sex relations, and a clearer perception of the sex relation between +man and woman as the basis of human society, on whose integrity, beauty +and healthfulness depend the health and beauty of human life, as a +whole. Above all, that it will lead to a closer, more permanent, more +emotionally and intellectually complete and intimate relation between +the individual man and woman. And if in the present disco-ordinate +transitional stage of our social growth it is found necessary to +allow of readjustment by means of divorce, it will not be because +such readjustments will be regarded lightly, but rather, as when, in a +complex and delicate mechanism moved by a central spring, we allow +in the structure for the readjustment and regulation of that spring, +because on its absolute perfection of action depends the movement of the +whole mechanism. In the last pages of the book, I tried to express what +seems to me a most profound truth often overlooked--that as humanity +and human societies pass on slowly from their present barbarous and +semi-savage condition in matters of sex into a higher, it will be found +increasingly, that over and above its function in producing and sending +onward the physical stream of life (a function which humanity shares +with the most lowly animal and vegetable forms of life, and which even +by some noted thinkers of the present day seems to be regarded as its +only possible function,) that sex and the sexual relation between man +and woman have distinct aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual functions +and ends, apart entirely from physical reproduction. That noble as is +the function of the physical reproduction of humanity by the union of +man and woman, rightly viewed, that union has in it latent, other, and +even higher forms, of creative energy and life-dispensing power, and +that its history on earth has only begun. As the first wild rose when it +hung from its stem with its centre of stamens and pistils and its single +whorl of pale petals, had only begun its course, and was destined, as +the ages passed, to develop stamen upon stamen and petal upon petal, +till it assumed a hundred forms of joy and beauty. + +And, it would indeed almost seem, that, on the path toward the higher +development of sexual life on earth, as man has so often had to lead +in other paths, that here it is perhaps woman, by reason of those very +sexual conditions which in the past have crushed and trammelled her, who +is bound to lead the way, and man to follow. So that it may be at last, +that sexual love--that tired angel who through the ages has presided +over the march of humanity, with distraught eyes, and feather-shafts +broken, and wings drabbled in the mires of lust and greed, and golden +locks caked over with the dust of injustice and oppression--till those +looking at him have sometimes cried in terror, “He is the Evil and +not the Good of life!” and have sought, if it were not possible, to +exterminate him--shall yet, at last, bathed from the mire and dust of +ages in the streams of friendship and freedom, leap upwards, with white +wings spread, resplendent in the sunshine of a distant future--the +essentially Good and Beautiful of human existence. + +I have given this long and very wearisome explanation of the scope and +origin of this little book, because I feel that it might lead to grave +misunderstanding were it not understood how it came to be written. + +I have inscribed it to my friend, Lady Constance Lytton; not because +I think it worthy of her, nor yet because of the splendid part she +has played in the struggle of the women fighting today in England for +certain forms of freedom for all women. It is, if I may be allowed +without violating the sanctity of a close personal friendship so to +say, because she, with one or two other men and women I have known, have +embodied for me the highest ideal of human nature, in which intellectual +power and strength of will are combined with an infinite tenderness and +a wide human sympathy; a combination which, whether in the person of the +man or the woman, is essential to the existence of the fully rounded and +harmonised human creature; and which an English woman of genius summed +in one line when she cried in her invocation of her great French +sister:-- + +“Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man!” + +One word more I should like to add, as I may not again speak or write +on this subject. I should like to say to the men and women of the +generations which will come after us--“You will look back at us with +astonishment! You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished +so little; at the, to you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did +not take; at the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we +sat down passive; at the great truths staring us in the face, which we +failed to see; at the truths we grasped at, but could never quite +get our fingers round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so +little--but, what you will never know is how it was thinking of you and +for you, that we struggled as we did and accomplished the little which +we have done; that it was in the thought of your larger realisation and +fuller life, that we found consolation for the futilities of our own.” + +“What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me.” + +O.S. + + + +Chapter I. Parasitism. + +In that clamour which has arisen in the modern world, where now this, +and then that, is demanded for and by large bodies of modern women, he +who listens carefully may detect as a keynote, beneath all the clamour, +a demand which may be embodied in such a cry as this: Give us labour and +the training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves +alone, but for the race. + +If this demand be logically expanded, it will take such form as this: +Give us labour! For countless ages, for thousands, millions it may be, +we have laboured. When first man wandered, the naked, newly-erected +savage, and hunted and fought, we wandered with him: each step of +his was ours. Within our bodies we bore the race, on our shoulders we +carried it; we sought the roots and plants for its food; and, when man’s +barbed arrow or hook brought the game, our hands dressed it. Side by +side, the savage man and the savage woman, we wandered free together and +laboured free together. And we were contented! + +Then a change came. + +We ceased from our wanderings, and, camping upon one spot of earth, +again the labours of life were divided between us. While man went forth +to hunt, or to battle with the foe who would have dispossessed us of +all, we laboured on the land. We hoed the earth, we reaped the grain, +we shaped the dwellings, we wove the clothing, we modelled the earthen +vessels and drew the lines upon them, which were humanity’s first +attempt at domestic art; we studied the properties and uses of plants, +and our old women were the first physicians of the race, as, often, its +first priests and prophets. + +We fed the race at our breast, we bore it on our shoulders; through us +it was shaped, fed, and clothed. Labour more toilsome and unending than +that of man was ours; yet did we never cry out that it was too heavy for +us. While savage man lay in the sunshine on his skins, resting, that he +might be fitted for war or the chase, or while he shaped his weapons of +death, he ate and drank that which our hands had provided for him; and +while we knelt over our grindstone, or hoed in the fields, with one +child in our womb, perhaps, and one on our back, toiling till the +young body was old before its time--did we ever cry out that the labour +allotted to us was too hard for us? Did we not know that the woman who +threw down her burden was as a man who cast away his shield in battle--a +coward and a traitor to his race? Man fought--that was his work; we fed +and nurtured the race--that was ours. We knew that upon our labours, +even as upon man’s, depended the life and well-being of the people whom +we bore. We endured our toil, as man bore his wounds, silently; and we +were content. + +Then again a change came. + +Ages passed, and time was when it was no longer necessary that all men +should go to the hunt or the field of war; and when only one in five, +or one in ten, or but one in twenty, was needed continually for these +labours. Then our fellow-man, having no longer full occupation in his +old fields of labour, began to take his share in ours. He too began to +cultivate the field, to build the house, to grind the corn (or make +his male slaves do it); and the hoe, and the potter’s tools, and the +thatching-needle, and at last even the grindstones which we first had +picked up and smoothed to grind the food for our children, began to pass +from our hands into his. The old, sweet life of the open fields was ours +no more; we moved within the gates, where the time passes more slowly +and the world is sadder than in the air outside; but we had our own work +still, and were content. + +If, indeed, we might no longer grow the food for our people, we were +still its dressers; if we did not always plant and prepare the flax and +hemp, we still wove the garments for our race; if we did no longer raise +the house walls, the tapestries that covered them were the work of our +hands; we brewed the ale, and the simples which were used as medicines +we distilled and prescribed; and, close about our feet, from birth +to manhood, grew up the children whom we had borne; their voices +were always in our ears. At the doors of our houses we sat with our +spinning-wheels, and we looked out across the fields that were once ours +to labour in--and were contented. Lord’s wife, peasant’s, or burgher’s, +we all still had our work to do! + +A thousand years ago, had one gone to some great dame, questioning her +why she did not go out a-hunting or a-fighting, or enter the great hall +to dispense justice and confer upon the making of laws, she would have +answered: “Am I a fool that you put to me such questions? Have I not a +hundred maidens to keep at work at spinning-wheels and needles? With my +own hands daily do I not dispense bread to over a hundred folk? In the +great hall go and see the tapestries I with my maidens have created by +the labour of years, and which we shall labour over for twenty more, +that my children’s children may see recorded the great deeds of their +forefathers. In my store-room are there not salves and simples, that my +own hands have prepared for the healing of my household and the sick in +the country round? Ill would it go indeed, if when the folk came home +from war and the chase of wild beasts, weary or wounded, they found all +the womenfolk gone out a-hunting and a-fighting, and none there to dress +their wounds, or prepare their meat, or guide and rule the household! +Better far might my lord and his followers come and help us with our +work, than that we should go to help them! You are surely bereft of all +wit. What becomes of the country if the women forsake their toil?” + +And the burgher’s wife, asked why she did not go to labour in her +husband’s workshop, or away into the market-place, or go a-trading to +foreign countries, would certainly have answered: “I am too busy to +speak with such as you! The bread is in the oven (already I smell it +a-burning), the winter is coming on, and my children lack good woollen +hose and my husband needs a warm coat. I have six vats of ale all +a-brewing, and I have daughters whom I must teach to spin and sew, and +the babies are clinging round my knees. And you ask me why I do not go +abroad to seek for new labours! Godsooth! Would you have me to leave my +household to starve in summer and die of cold in winter, and my children +to go untrained, while I gad about to seek for other work? A man must +have his belly full and his back covered before all things in life. Who, +think you, would spin and bake and brew, and rear and train my babes, +if I went abroad? New labour, indeed, when the days are not long enough, +and I have to toil far into the night! I have no time to talk with +fools! Who will rear and shape the nation if I do not?” + +And the young maiden at the cottage door, beside her wheel, asked why +she was content and did not seek new fields of labour, would surely have +answered: “Go away, I have no time to listen to you. Do you not see that +I am spinning here that I too may have a home of my own? I am weaving +the linen garments that shall clothe my household in the long years to +come! I cannot marry till the chest upstairs be full. You cannot hear +it, but as I sit here alone, spinning, far off across the hum of my +spinning-wheel I hear the voices of my little unborn children calling to +me--‘O mother, mother, make haste, that we may be!’--and sometimes, when +I seem to be looking out across my wheel into the sunshine, it is the +blaze of my own fireside that I see, and the light shines on the faces +round it; and I spin on the faster and the steadier when I think of what +shall come. Do you ask me why I do not go out and labour in the fields +with the lad whom I have chosen? Is his work, then, indeed more needed +than mine for the raising of that home that shall be ours? Oh, very hard +I will labour, for him and for my children, in the long years to come. +But I cannot stop to talk to you now. Far off, over the hum of my +spinning-wheel, I hear the voices of my children calling, and I must +hurry on. Do you ask me why I do not seek for labour whose hands are +full to bursting? Who will give folk to the nation if I do not?” + +Such would have been our answer in Europe in the ages of the past, if +asked the question why we were contented with our field of labour and +sought no other. Man had his work; we had ours. We knew that we upbore +our world on our shoulders; and that through the labour of our hands it +was sustained and strengthened--and we were contented. + +But now, again a change has come. + +Something that is entirely new has entered into the field of human +labour, and left nothing as it was. + +In man’s fields of toil, change has accomplished, and is yet more +quickly accomplishing, itself. + +On lands where once fifty men and youths toiled with their cattle, today +one steam-plough, guided by but two pair of hands, passes swiftly; and +an automatic reaper in one day reaps and binds and prepares for the +garner the produce of fields it would have taken a hundred strong male +arms to harvest in the past. The iron tools and weapons, only one +of which it took an ancient father of our race long months of stern +exertion to extract from ore and bring to shape and temper, are now +poured forth by steam-driven machinery as a millpond pours forth its +water; and even in war, the male’s ancient and especial field of labour, +a complete reversal of the ancient order has taken place. Time was when +the size and strength of the muscles in a man’s legs and arms, and the +strength and size of his body, largely determined his fighting powers, +and an Achilles or a Richard Coeur de Lion, armed only with his spear +or battle-axe, made a host fly before him; today the puniest mannikin +behind a modern Maxim gun may mow down in perfect safety a phalanx of +heroes whose legs and arms and physical powers a Greek god might have +envied, but who, having not the modern machinery of war, fall powerless. +The day of the primary import to humanity of the strength in man’s +extensor and flexor muscles, whether in labours of war or of peace, is +gone by for ever; and the day of the all-importance of the culture and +activity of man’s brain and nerve has already come. + +The brain of one consumptive German chemist, who in his laboratory +compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of the modern +peoples than ten thousand soldierly legs and arms; and the man who +invents one new labour-saving machine may, through the cerebration of +a few days, have performed the labour it would otherwise have taken +hundreds of thousands of his lusty fellows decades to accomplish. + +Year by year, month by month, and almost hour by hour, this change is +increasingly showing itself in the field of the modern labour; and crude +muscular force, whether in man or beast, sinks continually in its value +in the world of human toil; while intellectual power, virility, and +activity, and that culture which leads to the mastery of the inanimate +forces of nature, to the invention of machinery, and to that delicate +manipulative skill often required in guiding it, becomes ever of greater +and greater importance to the race. Already today we tremble on the +verge of a discovery, which may come tomorrow or the next day, when, +through the attainment of a simple and cheap method of controlling +some widely diffused, everywhere accessible, natural force (such, for +instance, as the force of the great tidal wave) there will at once and +for ever pass away even that comparatively small value which still, in +our present stage of material civilisation, clings to the expenditure +of mere crude, mechanical, human energy; and the creature, however +physically powerful, who can merely pull, push, and lift, much after the +manner of a machine, will have no further value in the field of human +labour. + +Therefore, even today, we find that wherever that condition which we +call modern civilisation prevails, and in proportion as it tends to +prevail--wherever steam-power, electricity, or the forces of wind +and water, are compelled by man’s intellectual activity to act as the +motor-powers in the accomplishment of human toil, wherever the delicate +adaptions of scientifically constructed machinery are taking the place +of the simple manipulation of the human hand--there has arisen, all the +world over, a large body of males who find that their ancient fields of +labour have slipped or are slipping from them, and who discover that +the modern world has no place or need for them. At the gates of +our dockyards, in our streets, and in our fields, are to be found +everywhere, in proportion as modern civilisation is really dominant, +men whose bulk and mere animal strength would have made them as warriors +invaluable members of any primitive community, and who would have been +valuable even in any simpler civilisation than our own, as machines +of toil; but who, owing to lack of intellectual or delicate manual +training, have now no form of labour to offer society which it stands +really in need of, and who therefore tend to form our Great Male +Unemployed--a body which finds the only powers it possesses so little +needed by its fellows that, in return for its intensest physical labour, +it hardly earns the poorest sustenance. The material conditions of life +have been rapidly modified, and the man has not been modified with them; +machinery has largely filled his place in his old field of labour, and +he has found no new one. + +It is from these men, men who, viewed from the broad humanitarian +standpoint, are often of the most lovable and interesting type, and +who might in a simpler state of society, where physical force was the +dominating factor, have been the heroes, leaders, and chiefs of their +people, that there arises in the modern world the bitter cry of the male +unemployed: “Give us labour or we die!” (The problem of the unemployed +male is, of course, not nearly so modern as that of the unemployed +female. It may be said in England to have taken its rise in almost its +present form as early as the fifteenth century, when economic changes +began to sever the agricultural labourer from the land, and rob him of +his ancient forms of social toil. Still, in its most acute form, it may +be called a modern problem.) + +Yet it is only upon one, and a comparatively small, section of the +males of the modern civilised world that these changes in the material +conditions of life have told in such fashion as to take all useful +occupation from them and render them wholly or partly worthless to +society. If the modern man’s field of labour has contracted at one end +(the physical), at the other (the intellectual) it has immeasurably +expanded! If machinery and the command of inanimate motor-forces +have rendered of comparatively little value the male’s mere physical +motor-power, the demand upon his intellectual faculties, the call +for the expenditure of nervous energy, and the exercise of delicate +manipulative skill in the labour of human life, have immeasurably +increased. + +In a million new directions forms of honoured and remunerative social +labour are opening up before the feet of the modern man, which his +ancestors never dreamed of; and day by day they yet increase in +numbers and importance. The steamship, the hydraulic lift, the patent +road-maker, the railway-train, the electric tram-car, the steam-driven +mill, the Maxim gun and the torpedo boat, once made, may perform their +labours with the guidance and assistance of comparatively few hands; but +a whole army of men of science, engineers, clerks, and highly-trained +workmen is necessary for their invention, construction, and maintenance. +In the domains of art, of science, of literature, and above all in the +field of politics and government, an almost infinite extension has taken +place in the fields of male labour. Where in primitive times woman was +often the only builder, and patterns she daubed on her hut walls or +traced on her earthen vessels the only attempts at domestic art; and +where later but an individual here and there was required to design +a king’s palace or a god’s temple or to ornament it with statues or +paintings, today a mighty army of men, a million strong, is employed in +producing plastic art alone, both high and low, from the traceries on +wall-paper and the illustrations in penny journals, to the production +of the pictures and statues which adorn the national collections, and +a mighty new field of toil has opened before the anciently hunting and +fighting male. Where once one ancient witch-doctress may have been the +only creature in a whole district who studied the nature of herbs and +earths, or a solitary wizard experimenting on poisons was the only +individual in a whole territory interrogating nature; and where later, +a few score of alchemists and astrologers only were engaged in examining +the structure of substances, or the movement of planets, today thousands +of men in every civilised community are labouring to unravel the +mysteries of nature, and the practical chemist, the physician, the +anatomist, the engineer, the astronomer, the mathematician, the +electrician, form a mighty and always increasingly important army of +male labourers. Where once an isolated bard supplied a nation with its +literatures, or where later a few thousand priests and men of letters +wrote and transcribed for the few to read, today literature gives labour +to a multitude almost as countless as a swarm of locusts. From the +penny-a-liner to the artist and thinker, the demand for their labour +continually increases. Where one town-crier with stout legs and lusty +lungs was once all-sufficient to spread the town and country news, a +score of men now sit daily pen in hand, preparing the columns of the +morning’s paper, and far into the night a hundred compositors are +engaged in a labour which requires a higher culture of brain and finger +than most ancient kings and rulers possessed. Even in the labours of +war, the most brutal and primitive of the occupations lingering on into +civilised life from the savage state, the new demand for labour of an +intellectual kind is enormous. The invention, construction, and working +of one Krupp gun, though its mere discharge hardly demands more crude +muscular exertion than a savage expends in throwing his boomerang, yet +represents an infinitude of intellectual care and thought, far greater +than that which went to the shaping of all the weapons of a primitive +army. Above all, in the domain of politics and government, where once a +king or queen, aided by a handful of councillors, was alone practically +concerned in the labours of national guidance or legislation; today, +owing to the rapid means of intercommunication, printing, and the +consequent diffusion of political and social information throughout a +territory, it has become possible, for the first time, for all adults +in a large community to keep themselves closely informed on all national +affairs; and in every highly-civilised state the ordinary male has been +almost compelled to take his share, however small, in the duties and +labours of legislation and government. Thus there has opened before the +mass of men a vast new sphere of labour undreamed of by their ancestors. +In every direction the change which material civilisation has wrought, +while it has militated against that comparatively small section of males +who have nothing to offer society but the expenditure of their untrained +muscular energy (inflicting much and often completely unmerited +suffering upon them), has immeasurably extended the field of male labour +as a whole. Never before in the history of the earth has the man’s field +of remunerative toil been so wide, so interesting, so complex, and in +its results so all-important to society; never before has the male sex, +taken as a whole, been so fully and strenuously employed. + +So much is this the case, that, exactly as in the earlier conditions of +society an excessive and almost crushing amount of the most important +physical labour generally devolved upon the female, so under modern +civilised conditions among the wealthier and fully civilised classes, +an unduly excessive share of labour tends to devolve upon the male. That +almost entirely modern, morbid condition, affecting brain and nervous +system, and shortening the lives of thousands in modern civilised +societies, which is vulgarly known as “overwork” or “nervous breakdown,” + is but one evidence of the even excessive share of mental toil devolving +upon the modern male of the cultured classes, who, in addition to +maintaining himself, has frequently dependent upon him a larger or +smaller number of entirely parasitic females. But, whatever the result +of the changes of modern civilisation may be with regard to the male, +he certainly cannot complain that they have as a whole robbed him of +his fields of labour, diminished his share in the conduct of life, or +reduced him to a condition of morbid inactivity. + +In our woman’s field of labour, matters have tended to shape themselves +wholly otherwise! The changes which have taken place during the last +centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term “modern +civilisation,” have tended to rob woman, not merely in part but almost +wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and +social labour; and, where there has not been a determined and conscious +resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to +her new and compensatory fields. + +It is this fact which constitutes our modern “Woman’s Labour Problem.” + +Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings +steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often +those of men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no +longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our peoples. + +Our hoes and our grindstones passed from us long ago, when the ploughman +and the miller took our place; but for a time we kept fast possession of +the kneading-trough and the brewing-vat. Today, steam often shapes our +bread, and the loaves are set down at our very door--it may be by a +man-driven motor-car! The history of our household drinks we know no +longer; we merely see them set before us at our tables. Day by day +machine-prepared and factory-produced viands take a larger and larger +place in the dietary of rich and poor, till the working man’s wife +places before her household little that is of her own preparation; while +among the wealthier classes, so far has domestic change gone that men +are not unfrequently found labouring in our houses and kitchens, and +even standing behind our chairs ready to do all but actually place the +morsels of food between our feminine lips. The army of rosy milkmaids +has passed away for ever, to give place to the cream-separator and the, +largely, male-and-machinery manipulated butter pat. In every direction +the ancient saw, that it was exclusively the woman’s sphere to prepare +the viands for her household, has become, in proportion as civilisation +has perfected itself, an antiquated lie. + +Even the minor domestic operations are tending to pass out of the circle +of woman’s labour. In modern cities our carpets are beaten, our windows +cleaned, our floors polished, by machinery, or extra domestic, and often +male labour. Change has gone much farther than to the mere taking +from us of the preparation of the materials from which the clothing is +formed. Already the domestic sewing-machine, which has supplanted almost +entirely the ancient needle, begins to become antiquated, and a thousand +machines driven in factories by central engines are supplying not only +the husband and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of +clothing from vest to jacket; while among the wealthy classes, the +male dress-designer with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers +is helping finally to explode the ancient myth, that it is woman’s +exclusive sphere, and a part of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the +garments she or her household wear. + +Year by year, day by day, there is a silently working but determined +tendency for the sphere of woman’s domestic labours to contract itself; +and the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex +condition which we term “modern civilisation” is advanced. + +It manifests itself more in England and America than in Italy and Spain, +more in great cities than in country places, more among the wealthier +classes than the poorer, and is an unfailing indication of advancing +modern civilisation. (There is, indeed, often something pathetic in the +attitude of many a good old mother of the race, who having survived, +here and there, into the heart of our modern civilisation, is sorely +puzzled by the change in woman’s duties and obligations. She may be +found looking into the eyes of some ancient crone, who, like herself, +has survived from a previous state of civilisation, seeking there a +confirmation of a view of life of which a troublous doubt has crept +even into her own soul. “I,” she cries, “always cured my own hams, and +knitted my own socks, and made up all the linen by hand. We always did +it when we were girls--but now my daughters object!” And her old +crone answers her? “Yes, we did it; it’s the right thing; but it’s so +expensive. It’s so much cheaper to buy things ready made!” And they +shake their heads and go their ways, feeling that the world is strangely +out of joint when duty seems no more duty. Such women are, in truth, +like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her ducklings to +the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is left but +baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to it, and +walks about with flapping wings and anxious quack, trying to induce them +to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far off +the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up +to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that +is growing up beside it; and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on +the baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And +they leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to +seek for new pastures--perhaps to lose themselves upon the way?--perhaps +to find them? To the old mother one is inclined to say, “Ah, good old +mother duck, can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the +water back into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter +when it was there, but it has gone for ever; and, would you and yours +swim again, it must be in other waters.” New machinery, new duties.) + +But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women’s material +domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient +field of labour. + +Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult +years were reached. Hers was the training and influence which shaped +them. From the moment when the infant first lay on her breast, till her +daughters left her for marriage and her sons went to take share in man’s +labour, they were continually under the mother’s influence. Today, +so complex have become even the technical and simpler branches of +education, so mighty and inexorable are the demands which modern +civilisation makes for specialised instruction and training for all +individuals who are to survive and retain their usefulness under modern +conditions, that, from the earliest years of its life, the child is of +necessity largely removed from the hands of the mother, and placed +in those of the specialised instructor. Among the wealthier classes, +scarcely is the infant born when it passes into the hands of the trained +nurse, and from hers on into the hands of the qualified teacher; till, +at nine or ten, the son in certain countries often leaves his home for +ever for the public school, to pass on to the college and university; +while the daughter, in the hands of trained instructors and dependents, +owes in the majority of cases hardly more of her education or formation +to maternal toil. While even among our poorer classes, the infant +school, and the public school; and later on the necessity for manual +training, takes the son and often the daughter as completely, and always +increasingly as civilisation advances, from the mother’s control. So +marked has this change in woman’s ancient field of labour become, that a +woman of almost any class may have borne many children and yet in early +middle age be found sitting alone in an empty house, all her offspring +gone from her to receive training and instruction at the hands of +others. The ancient statement that the training and education of her +offspring is exclusively the duty of the mother, however true it +may have been with regard to a remote past, has become an absolute +misstatement; and the woman who should at the present day insist on +entirely educating her own offspring would, in nine cases out of ten, +inflict an irreparable injury on them, because she is incompetent. + +But, if possible, yet more deeply and radically have the changes of +modern civilisation touched our ancient field of labour in another +direction--in that very portion of the field of human labour which is +peculiarly and organically ours, and which can never be wholly taken +from us. Here the shrinkage has been larger than in any other direction, +and touches us as women more vitally. + +Time was, and still is, among almost all primitive and savage folk, when +the first and all-important duty of the female to her society was +to bear, to bear much, and to bear unceasingly! On her adequate and +persistent performance of this passive form of labour, and of her +successful feeding of her young from her own breast, and rearing it, +depended, not merely the welfare, but often the very existence, of +her tribe or nation. Where, as is the case among almost all barbarous +peoples, the rate of infant mortality is high; where the unceasing +casualties resulting from war, the chase, and acts of personal violence +tend continually to reduce the number of adult males; where, surgical +knowledge being still in its infancy, most wounds are fatal; where, +above all, recurrent pestilence and famine, unfailing if of irregular +recurrence, decimated the people, it has been all important that woman +should employ her creative power to its very uttermost limits if the +race were not at once to dwindle and die out. “May thy wife’s womb never +cease from bearing,” is still today the highest expression of goodwill +on the part of a native African chief to his departing guest. For, not +only does the prolific woman in the primitive state contribute to the +wealth and strength of her nation as a whole, but to that of her own +male companion and of her family. Where the social conditions of life +are so simple that, in addition to bearing and suckling the child, it +is reared and nourished through childhood almost entirely through the +labour and care of the mother, requiring no expenditure of tribal +or family wealth on its training or education, its value as an adult +enormously outweighs, both to the state and the male, the trouble and +expense of rearing it, which falls almost entirely on the individual +woman who bears it. The man who has twenty children to become warriors +and labourers is by so much the richer and the more powerful than he who +has but one; while the state whose women are prolific and labour for and +rear their children stands so far insured against destruction. Incessant +and persistent child-bearing is thus truly the highest duty and the most +socially esteemed occupation of the primitive woman, equalling fully in +social importance the labour of the man as hunter and warrior. + +Even under those conditions of civilisation which have existed in the +centuries which divide primitive savagery from high civilisation, the +demand for continuous, unbroken child-bearing on the part of the woman +as her loftiest social duty has generally been hardly less imperious. +Throughout the Middle Ages of Europe, and down almost to our own day, +the rate of infant mortality was almost as large as in a savage state; +medical ignorance destroyed innumerable lives; antiseptic surgery being +unknown, serious wounds were still almost always fatal; in the low +state of sanitary science, plagues such as those which in the reign +of Justinian swept across the civilised world from India to Northern +Europe, well nigh depopulating the globe, or the Black Death of 1349, +which in England alone swept away more than half the population of the +island, were but extreme forms of the destruction of population going on +continually as the result of zymotic disease; while wars were not +merely far more common but, owing to the famines which almost invariably +followed them, were far more destructive to human life than in our own +days, and deaths by violence, whether at the hands of the state or as +the result of personal enmity, were of daily occurrence in all lands. +Under these conditions abstinence on the part of woman from incessant +child-bearing might have led to almost the same serious diminution or +even extinction of her people, as in the savage state; while the very +existence of her civilisation depended on the production of an immense +number of individuals as beasts of burden, without the expenditure +of whose crude muscular force in physical labour of agriculture and +manufacture those intermediate civilisations would, in the absence of +machinery, have been impossible. Twenty men had to be born, fed at the +breast, and reared by women to perform the crude brute labour which is +performed today by one small, well-adjusted steam crane; and the demand +for large masses of human creatures as mere reservoirs of motor force +for accomplishing the simplest processes was imperative. So strong, +indeed, was the consciousness of the importance to society of continuous +child-bearing on the part of woman, that as late as the middle of the +sixteenth century Martin Luther wrote: “If a woman becomes weary or at +last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, +she is there to do it;” and he doubtless gave expression, in a crude +and somewhat brutal form, to a conviction common to the bulk of his +contemporaries, both male and female. + +Today, this condition has almost completely reversed itself. + +The advance of science and the amelioration of the physical conditions +of life tend rapidly toward a diminution of human mortality. The infant +death-rate among the upper classes in modern civilisations has fallen +by more than one-half; while among poorer classes it is already, though +slowly, falling: the increased knowledge of the laws of sanitation has +made among all highly civilised peoples the depopulation by plague a +thing of the past, and the discoveries of the next twenty or thirty +years will probably do away for ever with the danger to man of zymotic +disease. Famines of the old desolating type have become an impossibility +where rapid means of transportation convey the superfluity of one land +to supply the lack of another; and war and deeds of violence, though +still lingering among us, have already become episodal in the lives of +nations as of individuals; while the vast advances in antiseptic surgery +have caused even the effects of wounds and dismemberments to become only +very partially fatal to human life. All these changes have tended to +diminish human mortality and protract human life; and they have today +already made it possible for a race not only to maintain its numbers, +but even to increase them, with a comparatively small expenditure of +woman’s vitality in the passive labour of child-bearing. + +But yet more seriously has the demand for woman’s labour as child-bearer +been diminished by change in another direction. + +Every mechanical invention which lessens the necessity for rough, +untrained, muscular, human labour, diminishes also the social demand +upon woman as the producer in large masses of such labourers. Already +throughout the modern civilised world we have reached a point at which +the social demand is not merely for human creatures in the bulk for use +as beasts of burden, but, rather, and only, for such human creatures as +shall be so trained and cultured as to be fitted for the performance of +the more complex duties of modern life. Not, now, merely for many men, +but, rather, for few men, and those few, well born and well instructed, +is the modern demand. And the woman who today merely produces twelve +children and suckles them, and then turns them loose on her society and +family, is regarded, and rightly so, as a curse and down draught, and +not the productive labourer, of her community. Indeed, so difficult and +expensive has become in the modern world the rearing and training of +even one individual, in a manner suited to fit it for coping with the +complexities and difficulties of civilised life, that, to the family as +well as to the state, unlimited fecundity on the part of the female has +already, in most cases, become irremediable evil; whether it be in the +case of the artisan, who at the cost of immense self-sacrifice must +support and train his children till their twelfth or fourteenth year, +if they are ever to become even skilled manual labourers, and who if his +family be large often sinks beneath the burden, allowing his offspring, +untaught and untrained, to become waste products of human life; or, in +that of the professional man, who by his mental toil is compelled to +support and educate, at immense expense, his sons till they are twenty +or older, and to sustain his daughters, often throughout their whole +lives should they not marry, and to whom a large family proves often no +less disastrous; while the state whose women produce recklessly large +masses of individuals in excess of those for whom they can provide +instruction and nourishment is a state, in so far, tending toward +deterioration. The commandment to the modern woman is now not simply +“Thou shalt bear,” but rather, “Thou shalt not bear in excess of thy +power to rear and train satisfactorily;” and the woman who should +today appear at the door of a workhouse or the tribunal of the +poor-law guardians followed by her twelve infants, demanding honourable +sustenance for them and herself in return for the labour she had +undergone in producing them, would meet with but short shrift. And the +modern man who on his wedding-day should be greeted with the ancient +good wish, that he might become the father of twenty sons and twenty +daughters, would regard it as a malediction rather than a blessing. It +is certain that the time is now rapidly approaching when child-bearing +will be regarded rather as a lofty privilege, permissible only to +those who have shown their power rightly to train and provide for their +offspring, than a labour which in itself, and under whatever conditions +performed, is beneficial to society. (The difference between the +primitive and modern view on this matter is aptly and quaintly +illustrated by two incidents. Seeing a certain Bantu woman who appeared +better cared for, less hard worked, and happier than the mass of +her companions, we made inquiry, and found that she had two impotent +brothers; because of this she herself had not married, but had borne by +different men fourteen children, all of whom when grown she had given +to her brothers. “They are fond of me because I have given them so many +children, therefore I have not to work like the other women; and my +brothers give me plenty of mealies and milk,” she replied, complacently, +when questioned, “and our family will not die out.” And this person, +whose conduct was so emphatically anti-social on all sides when viewed +from the modern standpoint, was evidently regarded as pre-eminently of +value to her family and to society because of her mere fecundity. On the +other hand, a few weeks back appeared an account in the London papers +of an individual who, taken up at the East End for some brutal offence, +blubbered out in court that she was the mother of twenty children. +“You should be ashamed of yourself!” responded the magistrate; “a woman +capable of such conduct would be capable of doing anything!” and the +fine was remorselessly inflicted. Undoubtedly, if somewhat brutally, +the magistrate yet gave true voice to the modern view on the subject of +excessive and reckless child-bearing.) + +Further, owing partly to the diminished demand for child-bearing, rising +from the extreme difficulty and expense of rearing and education, and +to many other complex social causes, to which we shall return later, +millions of women in our modern societies are so placed as to be +absolutely compelled to go through life not merely childless, but +without sex relationship in any form whatever; while another mighty army +of women is reduced by the dislocations of our civilisation to accepting +sexual relationships which practically negate child-bearing, and whose +only product is physical and moral disease. + +Thus, it has come to pass that vast numbers of us are, by modern social +conditions, prohibited from child-bearing at all; and that even those +among us who are child-bearers are required, in proportion as the class +of race to which we belong stands high in the scale of civilisation, to +produce in most cases a limited number of offspring; so that even for +these of us, child-bearing and suckling, instead of filling the entire +circle of female life from the first appearance of puberty to the end of +middle age, becomes an episodal occupation, employing from three or four +to ten or twenty of the threescore-and-ten-years which are allotted to +human life. In such societies the statement (so profoundly true when +made with regard to most savage societies, and even largely true with +regard to those in the intermediate stages of civilisation) that the +main and continuous occupation of all women from puberty to age is the +bearing and suckling of children, and that this occupation must fully +satisfy all her needs for social labour and activity, becomes an +antiquated and unmitigated misstatement. + +Not only are millions of our women precluded from ever bearing a child, +but for those of us who do bear the demand is ever increasingly in +civilised societies coupled with the condition that if we would act +socially we must restrict our powers. (As regards modern civilised +nations, we find that those whose birthrate is the highest per woman are +by no means the happiest, most enlightened, or powerful; nor do we even +find that the population always increases in proportion to the births. +France, which in many respects leads in the van of civilisation, has +one of the lowest birthrates per woman in Europe; and among the free and +enlightened population of Switzerland and Scandinavia the birthrate is +often exceedingly low; while Ireland, one of the most unhappy and weak +of European nations, had long one of the highest birthrates, without +any proportional increase in population or power. With regard to the +different classes in one community, the same effect is observable. The +birthrate per woman is higher among the lowest and most ignorant classes +in the back slums of our great cities, than among the women of the upper +and cultured classes, mainly because the age at which marriages are +contracted always tends to become higher as the culture and intelligence +of individuals rises, but also because of the regulation of the number +of births after marriage. Yet the number of children reared to adult +years among the more intelligent classes probably equals or exceeds +those of the lowest, owing to the high rate of infant mortality where +births are excessive.) + +Looking round, then, with the uttermost impartiality we can command, +on the entire field of woman’s ancient and traditional labours, we find +that fully three-fourths of it have shrunk away for ever, and that the +remaining fourth still tends to shrink. + +It is this great fact, so often and so completely overlooked, which lies +as the propelling force behind that vast and restless “Woman’s Movement” + which marks our day. It is this fact, whether clearly and intellectually +grasped, or, as is more often the case, vaguely and painfully felt, +which awakes in the hearts of the ablest modern European women their +passionate, and at times it would seem almost incoherent, cry for new +forms of labour and new fields for the exercise of their powers. + +Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this: We do not ask that +the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life +flow backward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning-wheels be again +resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old +grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake +himself entirely to his ancient province of war and the chase, leaving +to us all domestic and civil labour. We do not even demand that society +shall immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a +child-bearer (deep and over-mastering as lies the hunger for motherhood +in every virile woman’s heart!); neither do we demand that the children +whom we bear shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. +This, we know, cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone +for ever; no will of man can recall them; but this is our demand: We +demand that, in that strange new world that is arising alike upon +the man and the woman, where nothing is as it was, and all things are +assuming new shapes and relations, that in this new world we also shall +have our share of honoured and socially useful human toil, our full +half of the labour of the Children of Woman. We demand nothing more than +this, and we will take nothing less. This is our “WOMAN’S RIGHT!” + + + +Chapter II. Parasitism (continued). + +Is it to be, that, in the future, machinery and the captive motor-forces +of nature are largely to take the place of human hand and foot in +the labour of clothing and feeding the nations; are these branches +of industry to be no longer domestic labours?--then, we demand in the +factory, the warehouse, and the field, wherever machinery has usurped +our ancient labour-ground, that we also should have our place, as +guiders, controllers, and possessors. Is child-bearing to become the +labour of but a portion of our sex?--then we demand for those among +us who are allowed to take no share in it, compensatory and equally +honourable and important fields of social toil. Is the training of +human creatures to become a yet more and more onerous and laborious +occupation, their education and culture to become increasingly a high +art, complex and scientific?--if so, then, we demand that high and +complex culture and training which shall fit us for instructing the race +which we bring into the world. Is the demand for child-bearing to +become so diminished that, even in the lives of those among us who are +child-bearers, it shall fill no more than half a dozen years out of the +three-score-and-ten of human life?--then we demand that an additional +outlet be ours which shall fill up with dignity and value the tale +of the years not so employed. Is intellectual labour to take ever and +increasingly the place of crude muscular exertion in the labour of +life?--then we demand for ourselves that culture and the freedom +of action which alone can yield us the knowledge of life and the +intellectual vigour and strength which will enable us to undertake the +same share of mental which we have borne in the past in physical labours +of life. Are the rulers of the race to be no more its kings and queens, +but the mass of the peoples?--then we, one-half of the nations, demand +our full queens’ share in the duties and labours of government and +legislation. Slowly but determinately, as the old fields of labour close +up and are submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the new. + +We make this demand, not for our own sakes alone, but for the succour of +the race. + +A horseman, riding along on a dark night in an unknown land, may chance +to feel his horse start beneath him; rearing, it may almost hurl him to +the earth: in the darkness he may curse his beast, and believe its aim +is simply to cast him off, and free itself for ever of its burden. +But when the morning dawns and lights the hills and valleys he has +travelled, looking backward, he may perceive that the spot where his +beast reared, planting its feet into the earth, and where it refused to +move farther on the old road, was indeed the edge of a mighty precipice, +down which one step more would have precipitated both horse and rider. +And he may then see that it was an instinct wiser than his own which +lead his creature, though in the dark, to leap backward, seeking a +new path along which both might travel. (Is it not recorded that even +Balaam’s ass on which he rode saw the angel with flaming sword, but +Balaam saw it not?) + +In the confusion and darkness of the present, it may well seem to +some, that woman, in her desire to seek for new paths of labour and +employment, is guided only by an irresponsible impulse; or that she +seeks selfishly only her own good, at the cost of that of the race, +which she has so long and faithfully borne onward. But, when a clearer +future shall have arisen and the obscuring mists of the present have +been dissipated, may it not then be clearly manifest that not for +herself alone, but for her entire race, has woman sought her new paths? + +For let it be noted exactly what our position is, who today, as +women, are demanding new fields of labour and a reconstruction of our +relationship with life. + +It is often said that the labour problem before the modern woman and +that before the unemployed or partially or almost uselessly employed +male, are absolutely identical; and that therefore, when the male labour +problem of our age solves itself, that of the woman will of necessity +have met its solution also. + +This statement, with a certain specious semblance of truth, is yet, we +believe, radically and fundamentally false. It is true that both the +male and the female problems of our age have taken their rise largely +in the same rapid material changes which during the last centuries, +and more especially the last ninety years, have altered the face of the +human world. Both men and women have been robbed by those changes of +their ancient remunerative fields of social work: here the resemblance +stops. The male, from whom the changes of modern civilisation have taken +his ancient field of labour, has but one choice before him: he must find +new fields of labour, or he must perish. Society will not ultimately +support him in an absolutely quiescent and almost useless condition. +If he does not vigorously exert himself in some direction or other (the +direction may even be predatory) he must ultimately be annihilated. +Individual drones, both among the wealthiest and the poorest classes +(millionaires’ sons, dukes, or tramps), may in isolated cases be +preserved, and allowed to reproduce themselves without any exertion +or activity of mind or body, but a vast body of males who, having lost +their old forms of social employment, should refuse in any way to exert +themselves or seek for new, would at no great length of time become +extinct. There never has been, and as far as can be seen, there never +will be, a time when the majority of the males in any society will be +supported by the rest of the males in a condition of perfect mental and +physical inactivity. “Find labour or die,” is the choice ultimately put +before the human male today, as in the past; and this constitutes his +labour problem. (The nearest approach to complete parasitism on the part +of a vast body of males occurred, perhaps, in ancient Rome at the +time of the decay and downfall of the Empire, when the bulk of the +population, male as well as female, was fed on imported corn, wine, +and oil, and supplied even with entertainment, almost entirely without +exertion or labour of any kind; but this condition was of short +duration, and speedily contributed to the downfall of the diseased +Empire itself. Among the wealthy and so-called upper classes, the males +of various aristocracies have frequently tended to become completely +parasitic after a lapse of time, but such a condition has always been +met by a short and sharp remedy; and the class has fallen, or become +extinct. The condition of the males of the upper classes in France +before the Revolution affords an interesting illustration of this +point.) + +The labour of the man may not always be useful in the highest sense to +his society, or it may even be distinctly harmful and antisocial, as in +the case of the robber-barons of the Middle Ages, who lived by capturing +and despoiling all who passed by their castles; or as in the case of +the share speculators, stock-jobbers, ring-and-corner capitalists, and +monopolists of the present day, who feed upon the productive labours of +society without contributing anything to its welfare. But even males so +occupied are compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a +low intelligence in their callings; and, however injurious to their +societies, they run no personal risk of handing down effete and +enervated constitutions to their race. Whether beneficially or +unbeneficially, the human male must, generally speaking, employ his +intellect, or his muscle, or die. + +The position of the unemployed modern female is one wholly different. +The choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labour slip +from her, is not generally or often at the present day the choice +between finding new fields of labour, or death; but one far more serious +in its ultimate reaction on humanity as a whole--it is the choice +between finding new forms of labour or sinking slowly into a condition +of more or less complete and passive sex-parasitism! (It is not without +profound interest to note the varying phenomena of sex-parasitism as +they present themselves in the animal world, both in the male and in the +female form. Though among the greater number of species in the animal +world the female form is larger and more powerful rather than the male +(e.g., among birds of prey, such as eagles, falcons, vultures, &c., and +among fishes, insects, &c.), yet sex-parasitism appears among both sex +forms. In certain sea-creatures, for example, the female carries about +in the folds of her covering three or four minute and quite inactive +males, who are entirely passive and dependent upon her. Among termites, +on the other hand, the female has so far degenerated that she has +entirely lost the power of locomotion; she can no longer provide herself +or her offspring with nourishment, or defend or even clean herself; she +has become a mere passive, distended bag of eggs, without intelligence +or activity, she and her offspring existing through the exertions of +the workers of the community. Among other insects, such, for example, as +certain ticks, another form of female parasitism prevails, and while the +male remains a complex, highly active, and winded creature, the female, +fastening herself by the head into the flesh of some living animal +and sucking its blood, has lost wings and all activity, and power of +locomotion; having become a mere distended bladder, which when filled +with eggs bursts and ends a parasitic existence which has hardly been +life. It is not impossible, and it appears, indeed, highly probable, +that it has been this degeneration and parasitism on the part of the +female which has set its limitation to the evolution of ants, creatures +which, having reached a point of mental development in some respects +almost as high as that of man, have yet become curiously and immovably +arrested. The whole question of sex-parasitism among the lower animals +is one throwing suggestive and instructive side-lights on human social +problems, but is too extensive to be here entered on.) + +Again and again in the history of the past, when among human creatures +a certain stage of material civilisation has been reached, a curious +tendency has manifested itself for the human female to become more +or less parasitic; social conditions tend to rob her of all forms +of active, conscious, social labour, and to reduce her, like the +field-tick, to the passive exercise of her sex functions alone. And the +result of this parasitism has invariably been the decay in vitality and +intelligence of the female, followed after a longer or shorter period by +that of her male descendants and her entire society. + +Nevertheless, in the history of the past the dangers of the +sex-parasitism have never threatened more than a small section of the +females of the human race, those exclusively of some comparatively +small dominant race or class; the mass of women beneath them being +still compelled to assume many forms of strenuous activity. It is at +the present day, and under the peculiar conditions of our modern +civilisation, that for the first time sex-parasitism has become a +danger, more or less remote, to the mass of civilised women, perhaps +ultimately to all. + +In the very early stages of human growth, the sexual parasitism and +degeneration of the female formed no possible source of social danger. +Where the conditions of life rendered it inevitable that all the labour +of a community should be performed by the members of that community for +themselves, without the assistance of slaves or machinery, the tendency +has always been rather to throw an excessive amount of social labour on +the female. Under no conditions, at no time, in no place, in the history +of the world have the males of any period, of any nation, or of any +class, shown the slightest inclination to allow their own females to +become inactive or parasitic, so long as the actual muscular labour +of feeding and clothing them would in that case have devolved upon +themselves! + +The parasitism of the human female becomes a possibility only when a +point in civilisation is reached (such as that which was attained in the +ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome, Persia, Assyria, India, and such +as today exists in many of the civilisations of the East, such as those +of China and Turkey), when, owing to the extensive employment of the +labour of slaves, or of subject races or classes, the dominant race or +class has become so liberally supplied with the material goods of life, +that mere physical toil on the part of its own female members has become +unnecessary. It is when this point has been reached, and never +before, that the symptoms of female parasitism have in the past almost +invariably tended to manifest themselves, and have become a social +danger. The males of the dominant class have almost always contrived to +absorb to themselves the new intellectual occupations, with the absence +of necessity for the old forms of physical toil made possible in their +societies; and the females of the dominant class or race, for whose +muscular labours there was now also no longer any need, not succeeding +in grasping or attaining to these new forms of labour, have sunk into a +state in which, performing no species of active social duty, they have +existed through the passive performance of sexual functions alone, with +how much or how little of discontent will now never be known, since no +literary record has been made by the woman of the past, of her desires +or sorrows. Then, in place of the active labouring woman, upholding +society by her toil, has come the effete wife, concubine, or prostitute, +clad in fine raiment, the work of others’ fingers; fed on luxurious +viands, the result of others’ toil, waited on and tended by the labour +of others. The need for her physical labour having gone, and mental +industry not having taken its place, she bedecked and scented her +person, or had it bedecked and scented for her, she lay upon her sofa, +or drove or was carried out in her vehicle, and, loaded with jewels, she +sought by dissipations and amusements to fill up the inordinate blank +left by the lack of productive activity. And as the hand whitened and +frame softened, till, at last, the very duties of motherhood, which were +all the constitution of her life left her, became distasteful, and, from +the instant when her infant came damp from her womb, it passed into the +hands of others, to be tended and reared by them; and from youth to age +her offspring often owed nothing to her personal toil. In many cases so +complete was her enervation, that at last the very joy of giving life, +the glory and beatitude of a virile womanhood, became distasteful; +and she sought to evade it, not because of its interference with more +imperious duties to those already born of her, or to her society, +but because her existence of inactivity had robbed her of all joy in +strenuous exertion and endurance in any form. Finely clad, tenderly +housed, life became for her merely the gratification of her own physical +and sexual appetites, and the appetites of the male, through the +stimulation of which she could maintain herself. And, whether as kept +wife, kept mistress, or prostitute, she contributed nothing to the +active and sustaining labours of her society. She had attained to the +full development of that type which, whether in modern Paris or New York +or London, or in ancient Greece, Assyria, or Rome, is essentially one in +its features, its nature, and its results. She was the “fine lady,” + the human female parasite--the most deadly microbe which can make its +appearance on the surface of any social organism. (The relation of +female parasitism generally, to the peculiar phenomenon of prostitution, +is fundamental. Prostitution can never be adequately dealt with, either +from the moral or the scientific standpoint, unless its relation to the +general phenomenon of female parasitism be fully recognised. It is the +failure to do this which leaves so painful a sense of abortion on the +mind, after listening to most modern utterances on the question, +whether made from the emotional platform of the moral reformer, or the +intellectual platform of the would-be scientist. We are left with a +feeling that the matter has been handled but not dealt with: that the +knife has not reached the core.) + +Wherever in the history of the past this type has reached its full +development and has comprised the bulk of the females belonging to any +dominant class or race, it has heralded its decay. In Assyria, Greece, +Rome, Persia, as in Turkey today, the same material conditions have +produced the same social disease among wealthy and dominant races; and +again and again when the nation so affected has come into contact +with nations more healthily constituted, this diseased condition has +contributed to its destruction. + +In ancient Greece, in its superb and virile youth, its womanhood was +richly and even heavily endowed with duties and occupations. Not the +mass of the woman alone, but the king’s wife and the prince’s daughter +do we find going to the well to bear water, cleansing the household +linen in the streams, feeding and doctoring their households, +manufacturing the clothing of their race, and performing even a share +of the highest social functions as priestesses and prophetesses. It was +from the bodies of such women as these that sprang that race of heroes, +thinkers, and artists who laid the foundations of Grecian greatness. +These females underlay their society as the solid and deeply buried +foundations underlay the more visible and ornate portions of a great +temple, making its structure and persistence possible. In Greece, after +a certain lapse of time, these virile labouring women in the upper +classes were to be found no more. The accumulated wealth of the dominant +race, gathered through the labour of slaves and subject people, had so +immensely increased that there was no longer a call for physical labour +on the part of the dominant womanhood; immured within the walls of their +houses as wives or mistresses, waited on by slaves and dependents, they +no longer sustained by their exertion either their own life or the life +of their people. The males absorbed the intellectual labours of life; +slaves and dependents the physical. For a moment, at the end of the +fifth and beginning of the fourth century, when the womanhood of +Greece had already internally decayed, there was indeed a brilliant +intellectual efflorescence among her males, like to the gorgeous colours +in the sunset sky when the sun is already sinking; but the heart +of Greece was already rotting and her vigour failing. Increasingly, +division and dissimilarity arose between male and female, as the male +advanced in culture and entered upon new fields of intellectual toil +while the female sank passively backward and lower in the scale of life, +and thus was made ultimately a chasm which even sexual love could not +bridge. The abnormal institution of avowed inter-male sexual relations +upon the highest plane was one, and the most serious result, of this +severance. The inevitable and invincible desire of all highly developed +human natures, to blend with their sexual relationships their highest +intellectual interests and sympathies, could find no satisfaction or +response in the relationship between the immured, comparatively ignorant +and helpless females of the upper classes, in Greece, and the brilliant, +cultured, and many-sided males who formed its dominant class in the +fifth and fourth centuries. Man turned towards man; and parenthood, the +divine gift of imparting human life, was severed from the loftiest and +profoundest phases of human emotion: Xanthippe fretted out her ignorant +and miserable little life between the walls of her house, and Socrates +lay in the Agora, discussing philosophy and morals with Alcibiades; +and the race decayed at its core. (See Jowett’s translation of Plato’s +“Banquet”; but for full light on this important question the entire +literature of Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. should be +studied.) Here and there an Aspasia, or earlier still a Sappho, burst +through the confining bonds of woman’s environment, and with the force +of irresistible genius broke triumphantly into new fields of action and +powerful mental activity, standing side by side with the male; but their +cases were exceptional. Had they, or such as they, been able to tread +down a pathway, along which the mass of Grecian women might have +followed them; had it been possible for the bulk of the women of the +dominant race in Greece at the end of the fifth century to rise from +their condition of supine inaction and ignorance and to have taken their +share in the intellectual labours and stern activities of their race, +Greece would never have fallen, as she fell at the end of the fourth +century, instantaneously and completely, as a rotten puff-ball falls in +at the touch of a healthy finger; first, before the briberies of Philip, +and then yet more completely before the arms of his yet more warlike +son, who was also the son of the fierce, virile, and indomitable +Olympia. (Like almost all men remarkable for either good or evil, +Alexander inherited from his mother his most notable qualities--his +courage, his intellectual activity, and an ambition indifferent to any +means that made for his own end. Fearless in her life, she fearlessly +met death “with a courage worthy of her rank and domineering character, +when her hour of retribution came”; and Alexander is incomprehensible +till we recognise him as rising from the womb of Olympia.) Nor could +she have been swept clean, a few hundred years later, from Thessaly to +Sparta, from Corinth to Ephesus, her temples destroyed, her effete women +captured by the hordes of the Goths--a people less skilfully armed +and less civilised than the descendants of the race of Pericles and +Leonidas, but who were a branch of that great Teutonic folk whose +monogamous domestic life was sound at the core, and whose fearless, +labouring, and resolute women yet bore for the men they followed to the +ends of the earth, what Spartan women once said they alone bore--men. + +In Rome, in the days of her virtue and vigour, the Roman matron laboured +mightily, and bore on her shoulders her full half of the social burden, +though her sphere of labour and influence was even somewhat smaller +than that of the Teutonic sisterhood whose descendants were finally to +supplant her own. From the vestal virgin to the matron, the Roman woman +in the days of the nation’s health and growth fulfilled lofty functions +and bore the whole weight of domestic toil. From the days of Lucretia, +the great Roman dame whom we find spinning with her handmaidens deep +into the night, and whose personal dignity was so dear to her that, +violated, she sought only death, to those of the mother of the Gracchi, +one of the last of the great line, we find everywhere, erect, labouring, +and resolute, the Roman woman who gave birth to the men who built up +Roman greatness. A few centuries later, and Rome also had reached that +dangerous spot in the order of social change which Greece had reached +centuries before her. Slave labour and the enjoyment of the unlimited +spoils of subject races had done away for ever with the demand for +physical labour on the part of the members of the dominant race. Then +came the period when the male still occupied himself with the duties +of war and government, of legislation and self-culture; but the Roman +matron had already ceased for ever from her toils. Decked in jewels and +fine clothing, brought at the cost of infinite human labour from the +ends of the earth, nourished on delicate victuals, prepared by others’ +hands, she sought now only with amusement to pass away a life that no +longer offered her the excitement and joy of active productive exertion. +She frequented theatres or baths, or reclined on her sofa, or drove in +her chariot; and like more modern counterparts, painted herself, wore +patches, affected an artistic walk, and a handshake with the elbow +raised and the fingers hanging down. Her children were reared by +dependents; and in the intellectual labour and government of her age +she took small part, and was fit to take none. There were not wanting +writers and thinkers who saw clearly the end to which the enervation of +the female was tending, and who were not sparing in their denunciations. +“Time was,” cries one Roman writer of that age, “when the matron turned +the spindle with the hand and kept at the same time the pot in her eye +that the pottage might not be singed, but now,” he adds bitterly, +“when the wife, loaded with jewels, reposes among pillows, or seeks the +dissipation of baths and theatres, all things go downward and the state +decays.” Yet neither he nor that large body of writers and thinkers who +saw the condition towards which the parasitism of woman was tending +to reduce society, preached any adequate remedy. (Indeed, must not +the protest and the remedy in all such cases, if they are to be of any +avail, take their rise within the diseased class itself?) + +Thoughtful men sighed over the present and yearned for the past, nor +seem to have perceived that it was irrevocably gone; that the Roman +lady who, with a hundred servants standing idle about her, should, in +imitation of her ancestress, have gone out with her pitcher on her head +to draw water from the well, while in all her own courtyards pipe-led +streams gushed forth, would have acted the part of the pretender; that +had she insisted on resuscitating her loom and had sat up all night +to spin, she could never have produced those fabrics which alone her +household demanded, and would have been but a puerile actor; that it was +not by attempting to return to the ancient and for ever closed fields of +toil, but by entering upon new, that she could alone serve her race +and retain her own dignity and virility. That not by bearing water and +weaving linen, but by so training and disciplining herself that she +should be fitted to bear her share in the labour necessary to the just +and wise guidance of a great empire, and be capable of training a race +of men adequate to exercise an enlightened, merciful, and beneficent +rule over the vast masses of subject people--that so, and so only, +could she fulfil her duty toward the new society about her, and bear its +burden together with man, as her ancestresses of bygone generations had +borne the burden of theirs. + +That in this direction, and this alone, lay the only possible remedy for +the evils of woman’s condition, was a conception apparently grasped +by none; and the female sank lower and lower, till the image of the +parasitic woman of Rome (with a rag of the old Roman intensity left +even in her degradation!)--seeking madly by pursuit of pleasure and +sensuality to fill the void left by the lack of honourable activity; +accepting lust in the place of love, ease in the place of exertion, and +an unlimited consumption in the place of production; too enervated at +last to care even to produce offspring, and shrinking from every form +of endurance--remains, even to the present day, the most perfect, and +therefore the most appalling, picture of the parasite female that earth +has produced--a picture only less terrible than it is pathetic. + +We recognise that it was inevitable that this womanhood--born it would +seem from its elevation to guide and enlighten a world, and in place +thereof feeding on it--should at last have given birth to a manhood as +effete as itself, and that both should in the end have been swept away +before the march of those Teutonic folk, whose women were virile and +could give birth to men; a folk among whom the woman received on the +morning of her marriage, from the man who was to be her companion +through life, no contemptible trinket to hang about her throat or limbs, +but a shield, a spear, a sword, and a yoke of oxen, while she bestowed +on him in return a suit of armour, in token that they two were +henceforth to be one in toil and in the facing of danger; that she too +should dare with him in war and suffer with him in peace; and of whom +another writer tells us, that their women not only bore the race and +fed it at their breasts without the help of others’ hands, but that they +undertook the whole management of house and lands, leaving the males +free for war and chase; of whom Suetonius tells us, that when Augustus +Caesar demanded hostages from a tribe, he took women, not men, because +he found by experience that the women were more regarded than men, and +of whom Strabo says, that so highly did the Germanic races value the +intellect of their women that they regarded them as inspired, and +entered into no war or great undertaking without their advice and +counsel; while among the Cimbrian women who accompanied their husbands +in the invasion of Italy were certain who marched barefooted in the +midst of the lines, distinguished by their white hair and milk-white +robes, and who were regarded as inspired, and of whom Florus, describing +an early Roman victory, says, “The conflict was not less fierce and +obstinate with the wives of the vanquished; in their carts and wagons +they formed a line of battle, and from their elevated situation, as from +so many turrets, annoyed the Romans with their poles and lances. (The +South African Boer woman after two thousand years appears not wholly to +have forgotten the ancestral tactics.) Their death was as glorious as +their martial spirit. Finding that all was lost, they strangled their +children, and either destroyed themselves in one scene of mutual +slaughter, or with the sashes that bound up their hair suspended +themselves by the neck to the boughs of trees or the tops of their +wagons.” It is of these women that Valerius Maximus says, that, “If the +gods on the day of battle had inspired the men with equal fortitude, +Marius would never have boasted of his Teutonic victory;” and of whom +Tacitus, speaking of those women who accompanied their husbands to war, +remarks, “These are the darling witnesses of his conduct, the applauders +of his valour, at once beloved and valued. The wounded seek their +mothers and their wives; undismayed at the sight, the women count each +honourable scar and suck the gushing blood. They are even hardy enough +to mix with the combatants, administering refreshment and exhorting them +to deeds of valour,” and adds moreover, that “To be contented with one +wife was peculiar to the Germans; while the woman was contented with one +husband, as with one life, one mind, one body.” + +It was inevitable that before the sons of women such as these, the sons +of the parasitic Roman should be swept from existence, as the offspring +of the caged canary would fall in conflict with the offspring of the +free. + +Again and again with wearisome reiteration, the same story repeats +itself. Among the Jews in the days of their health and growth, we find +their women bearing the major weight of agricultural and domestic toil, +full always of labour and care--from Rachel, whom Jacob met and loved +as she watered her father’s flocks, to Ruth, the ancestress of a line of +kings and heroes, whom her Boas noted labouring in the harvest-fields; +from Sarah, kneading and baking cakes for Abraham’s prophetic visitors, +to Miriam, prophetess and singer, and Deborah, who judging Israel +from beneath her palm-tree, “and the land had rest for forty years.” + Everywhere the ancient Jewish woman appears, an active sustaining power +among her people; and perhaps the noblest picture of the labouring +woman to be found in any literature is contained in the Jewish writings, +indited possibly at the very time when the labouring woman was for the +first time tending among a section of the Jews to become a thing of the +past; when already Solomon, with his seven hundred parasitic wives and +three hundred parasitic concubines, loomed large on the horizon of the +national life, to take the place of flock-tending Rachel and gleaning +Ruth, and to produce amid their palaces of cedar and gold, among them +all, no Joseph or David, but in the way of descendant only a Rehoboam, +under whose hand the kingdom was to totter to its fall. (The picture +of the labouring as opposed to the parasitic ideal of womanhood appears +under the heading, “The words of King Lemuel; the oracle which his +mother taught him.”) At risk of presenting the reader with that with +which he is already painfully familiar, we here transcribe the +passage; which, allowing for differences in material and intellectual +surroundings, paints also the ideal of the labouring womanhood of the +present and of the future:-- + + “Her price is far above rubies, + The heart of her husband trusteth in her, + And he shall have no lack of gain, + She doeth him good and not evil + All the days of her life, + She seeketh wool and flax, + And worketh willingly with her hands, + She is like the merchant ships; + She bringeth her food, from afar, + She riseth up while it is yet night + And giveth meat to her household, + And their task to her maidens, + She considereth a field, and buyeth it; + With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. + She girdeth her loins with strength, + And maketh strong her arms. + She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable; + Her lamp goeth not out by night, + She layeth her hands to the distaff, + And her hands hold the spindle. + She spreadeth out her hand to the poor: + Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, + She is not afraid of the snow for her household, + For all her household are clothed with scarlet. + She maketh herself carpets of tapestry; + Her clothing is fine and purple. + Her husband is known in the gates, + When he sitteth among the elders of the land, + She maketh linen garments and selleth them, + And delivereth girdles unto the merchant. + Strength and dignity are her clothing; + And she laugheth at the time to come. + She openeth her mouth with wisdom, + And the law of kindness is on her tongue, + She looketh well to the ways of her household, + And eateth not the bread of idleness. + Her children rise up and call her blessed, + Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, + Many daughters have done virtuously, + But thou excellest them all, + Give her the fruit of her hand, + And let her works praise her in the gate.” + +In the East today the same story has wearisomely written itself: in +China, where the present vitality and power of the most ancient of +existing civilisations may be measured accurately by the length of its +woman’s shoes; in Turkish harems, where one of the noblest dominant +Aryan races the world has yet produced, is being slowly suffocated in +the arms of a parasite womanhood, and might, indeed, along ago have been +obliterated, had not a certain virility and strength been continually +reinfused into it through the persons of purchased wives, who in early +childhood and youth had been themselves active labouring peasants. +Everywhere, in the past as in the present, the parasitism of the female +heralds the decay of a nation or class, and as invariably indicates +disease as the pustules of smallpox upon the skin indicate the existence +of a purulent virus in the system. + +We are, indeed, far from asserting that the civilisations of the past +which have decayed, have decayed alone through the parasitism of their +females. Vast, far-reaching social phenomena have invariably causes and +reactions immeasurably too complex to be summed up under one so simple a +term. Behind the phenomenon of female parasitism has always lain another +and yet larger social phenomenon; it has invariably been preceded, as we +have seen, by the subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, +either as slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the +excessive labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation +of unearned wealth in the hands of the dominant class or race. It has +invariably been by feeding on this wealth, the result of forced or +ill-paid labour, that the female of the dominant race or class has in +the past lost her activity and has come to exist purely through the +passive performance of her sexual functions. Without slaves or subject +classes to perform the crude physical labours of life and produce +superfluous wealth, the parasitism of the female would, in the past, +have been an impossibility. + +There is, therefore, a profound truth in that universal saw which states +that the decay of the great nations and civilisations of the past has +resulted from the enervation caused by excessive wealth and luxury; and +there is a further, and if possible more profound, truth underlying the +statement that their destruction has ultimately been the result of the +enervation of the entire race, male and female. + +But when we come further to inquire how, exactly, this process of decay +took place, we shall find that the part which the parasitism of the +female has played has been fundamental. The mere use of any of the +material products of labour, which we term wealth, can never in itself +produce that decay, physical or mental, which precedes the downfall of +great civilised nations. The eating of salmon at ten shillings a pound +can in itself no more debilitate and corrupt the moral, intellectual, +and physical constitution of the man consuming it, than it could +enervate his naked forefathers who speared it in their rivers for food; +the fact that an individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a +worm, can no more deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than +were it made of sheep’s wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces, +faring delicately, and clad in silks, and surrounded by the noblest +products of literature and plastic art, so those palaces, viands, +garments, and products of art were the result of their own labours, +could never be enervated by them. The debilitating effect of wealth +sets in at that point exactly (and never before) at which the supply of +material necessaries and comforts, and of aesthetic enjoyments, clogs +the individuality, causing it to rest satisfied in the mere passive +possession of the results of the labour of others, without feeling any +necessity or desire for further productive activity of its own. (Of the +other deleterious effects of unearned wealth on the individual or class +possessing it, such as its power of lessening human sympathy, &c., &c., +we do not now speak, as while ultimately and indirectly, undoubtedly, +tending to disintegrate a society, they do not necessarily and +immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point we are here +considering.) + +The exact material condition at which this point will be reached will +vary, not only with the race and the age, but with the individual. A +Marcus Aurelius in a palace of gold and marble was able to retain +his simplicity and virility as completely as though he had lived in a +cow-herd’s hut; while on the other hand, it is quite possible for the +wife of a savage chief who has but four slaves to bring her her corn +and milk and spread her skins in the sun, to become almost as purely +parasitic as the most delicately pampered female of fashion in ancient +Rome, or modern Paris, London, or New York; while the exact amount of +unearned material wealth which will emasculate individuals in the same +society, will vary exactly as their intellectual and moral fibre and +natural activity are strong or weak. (It is not uncommon in modern +societies to find women of a class relatively very moderately wealthy, +the wives and daughters of shopkeepers or professional men, who if their +male relations will supply them with a very limited amount of money +without exertion on their part, will become as completely parasitic and +useless as women with untold wealth at their command.) + +The debilitating effect of unlaboured-for wealth lies, then, not in the +nature of any material adjunct to life in itself, but in the power it +may possess of robbing the individual of all incentive to exertion, thus +destroying the intellectual, the physical, and finally, the moral fibre. + +In all the civilisations of the past examination will show that almost +invariably it has been the female who has tended first to reach this +point, and we think examination will show that it has almost invariably +been from the woman to the man that enervation and decay have spread. + +Why this should be so is obvious. Firstly, it is in the sphere of +domestic labour that slave or hired labour most easily and insidiously +penetrates. The force of blows or hireling gold can far more easily +supply labourers as the preparers of food and clothing, and even as the +rearers of children, than it can supply labourers fitted to be entrusted +with the toils of war and government, which have in the past been the +especial sphere of male toil. The Roman woman had for generations been +supplanted in the sphere of her domestic labours and in the toil of +rearing and educating her offspring, and had long become abjectly +parasitic, before the Roman male had been able to substitute the labour +of the hireling and barbarian for his own, in the army, and in the +drudgeries of governmental toil. + +Secondly, the female having one all-important though passive function +which cannot be taken from her, and which is peculiarly connected +with her own person, in the act of child-bearing, and her mere sexual +attributes being an object of desire and cupidity to the male, she is +liable in a peculiarly insidious and gradual manner to become dependent +on this one sexual function alone for her support. So much is this the +case, that even when she does not in any way perform this function there +is still a curious tendency for the kudos of the function still to hang +about her, and for her mere potentiality in the direction of a duty +which she may never fulfil, to be confused in her own estimation and +that of society with the actual fulfilment of that function. Under the +mighty aegis of the woman who bears and rears offspring and in other +directions labours greatly and actively for her race, creeps in +gradually and unnoticed the woman who does none of these things. From +the mighty labouring woman who bears human creatures to the full extent +of her power, rears her offspring unaided, and performs at the same +time severe social labour in other directions (and who is, undoubtedly, +wherever found, the most productive toiler known to the race); it is but +one step, though a long one, from this woman to the woman who produces +offspring freely but does not herself rear them, and performs no +compensatory social labour. While from this woman, again, to the one who +bears few or no children, but who, whether as a wife or mistress, lives +by the exercise of her sex function alone, the step is short. There +is but one step farther to the prostitute, who affects no form of +productive labour, and who, in place of life, is recognised as producing +disease and death, but who exists parasitically through her sexual +attribute. Enormous as is the distance between the women at the two +extremes of this series, and sharply opposed as their relation to the +world is, there is yet, in actual life, no sharp, clear, sudden-drawn +line dividing the women of the one type from those of the other. They +shade off into each other by delicate and in sensible degrees. And it +is down this inclined plane that the women of civilised races are +peculiarly tempted, unconsciously, to slip; from the noble height of +a condition of the most strenuous social activity, into a condition of +complete, helpless, and inactive parasitism, without being clearly aware +of the fact themselves, and without society’s becoming so--the woman +who has ceased to rear her own offspring, or who has ceased to bear +offspring at all, and who performs no other productive social function, +yet shields the fact from her own eyes by dwelling on the fact that she +is a woman, in whom the capacity is at least latent. (There is, indeed, +an interesting analogous tendency on the part of the parasitic male, +wherever found, to shield his true condition from his own eyes and those +of the world by playing at the ancient ancestral forms of male labour. +He is almost always found talking loudly of the protection he affords to +helpless females and to society, though he is in truth himself protected +through the exertion of soldiers, policemen, magistrates, and society +generally; and he is almost invariably fond of dangling a sword or +other weapon, and wearing some kind of uniform, for the assumption of +militarism without severe toil delights him. But it is in a degenerate +travesty of the ancient labour of hunting where, at terrible risk to +himself, and with endless fatigue, his ancestors supplied the race with +its meat and defended it from destruction by wild beasts) that he finds +his greatest satisfaction; it serves to render the degradation and +uselessness of his existence less obvious to himself and to others than +if he passed his life reclining in an armchair. + +On Yorkshire moors today may be seen walls of sod, behind which hide +certain human males, while hard-labouring men are employed from early +dawn in driving birds towards them. As the birds are driven up to him, +the hunter behind his wall raises his deadly weapon, and the bird, which +it had taken so much human labour to rear and provide, falls dead at his +feet; thereby greatly to the increase of the hunter’s glory, when, the +toils of the chase over, he returns to his city haunts to record his +bag. One might almost fancy one saw arise from the heathery turf the +shade of some ancient Teutonic ancestor, whose dust has long reposed +there, pointing a finger of scorn at his degenerate descendant, as he +leers out from behind the sod wall. During the the later Roman Empire, +Commodus, in the degenerate days of Rome, at great expense had wild +beasts brought from distant lands that he might have the glory of +slaying them in the Roman circus; and medals representing himself as +Hercules slaying the Nemean lion were struck at his orders. We are not +aware that any representation has yet been made in the region of plastic +art of the hero of the sod wall; but history repeats itself--and that +also may come. It is to be noted that these hunters are not youths, +but often ripely adult men, before whom all the lofty enjoyments and +employments possible to the male in modern life, lie open.) + +These peculiarities in her condition have in all civilised societies +laid the female more early and seriously open to the attacks of +parasitism than the male. And while the accumulation of wealth has +always been the antecedent condition, and the degeneracy and effeteness +of the male the final and obvious cause, of the decay of the great +dominant races of the past; yet, between these two has always lain, as a +great middle term, the parasitism of the female, without which the first +would have been inoperative and the last impossible. + +Not slavery, nor the most vast accumulations of wealth, could destroy +a nation by enervation, whose women remained active, virile, and +laborious. + +The conception which again and again appears to have haunted successive +societies, that it was a possibility for the human male to advance +in physical power and intellectual vigour, while his companion female +became stationary and inactive, taking no share in the labours of +society beyond the passive fulfilment of sexual functions, has always +been negated. It has ended as would end the experiment of a man +seeking to raise a breed of winning race-horses out of unexercised, +short-winded, knock-kneed mares. No, more disastrously! For while the +female animal transmits herself to her descendant only or mainly by +means of germinal inheritance, and through the influence she may +exert over it during gestation, the human female, by producing the +intellectual and moral atmosphere in which the early infant years +of life are passed, impresses herself far more indelibly on her +descendants. Only an able and labouring womanhood can permanently +produce an able and labouring manhood; only an effete and inactive male +can ultimately be produced by an effete and inactive womanhood. The +curled darling, scented and languid, with his drawl, his delicate +apparel, his devotion to the rarity and variety of his viands, whose +severest labour is the search after pleasure, and for whom even the +chase, which was for his remote ancestor an invigorating and manly toil +essential for the meat and life of his people, becomes a luxurious and +farcical amusement;--this male, whether found in the later Roman +Empire, the Turkish harem of today, or in our Northern civilisations, is +possible only because generations of parasitic women have preceded him. +More repulsive than the parasite female herself, because a yet further +product of decay, it is yet only the scent of his mother’s boudoir that +we smell in his hair. He is like to the bald patches and rotten wool on +the back of a scabby sheep; which indeed indicate that, deep beneath the +surface, a parasite insect is eating its way into the flesh, but which +are not so much the cause of disease, as its final manifestation. + +As we have said it is the power of the human female to impress +herself on her descendants, male and female, not only through germinal +inheritance, through influence during the period of gestation, but +above all by producing the mental atmosphere in which the impressionable +infant years of life are passed, which makes the condition of the +child-bearing female one of paramount interest of the race. It is this +fact which causes even prostitution (in many other respects the most +repulsive of all the forms of female parasitism which afflicts humanity) +to be, probably, not more adverse to the advance and even to the +conservation of a healthy and powerful society, than the parasitism +of its child-bearing women. For the prostitute, heavily as she weights +society for her support, returning disease and mental and emotional +disintegration for what she consumes, does not yet so immediately affect +the next generation as the kept wife, or kept mistress, who impresses +her effete image indelibly on the generations succeeding. (It cannot be +too often repeated that the woman who merely bears and brings a child +into the world, and then leaves it to be fed and reared by the hands +of another, has performed very much less than half of the labour of +producing adult humans; in such cases it is the nurse and not the mother +who is the most important labourer.) + +No man ever yet entered life farther than the length of one navel-cord +from the body of the woman who bore him. It is the woman who is the +final standard of the race, from which there can be no departure for any +distance for any length of time, in any direction: as her brain weakens, +weakens the man’s she bears; as her muscle softens, softens his; as she +decays, decays the people. + +Other causes may, and do, lead to the enervation and degeneration of a +class or race; the parasitism of its child-bearing women must. + +We, the European women of this age, stand today where again and again, +in the history of the past, women of other races have stood; but our +condition is yet more grave, and of wider import to humanity as a whole +than theirs ever was. Let us again consider more closely why this is so. + + + +Chapter III. Parasitism (continued). + +We have seen that, in the past, no such thing as the parasitism of the +entire body or large majority of the females inhabiting any territory +was possible. Beneath that body of women of the dominant class or race, +who did not labour either mentally or physically, there has always been +of necessity a far more vast body of females who not only performed the +crude physical toil essential to the existence of society before the +introduction of mechanical methods of production, but who were compelled +to labour the more intensely because there was a parasite class above +them to be maintained by their physical toil. The more the female +parasite flourished of old, in one class or race, the more certainly +all women of other classes or races were compelled to labour only too +excessively; and ultimately these females and their descendants were +apt to supplant the more enervated class or race. In the absence of +machinery and of a vast employment of the motor-forces of nature, +parasitism could only threaten a comparatively small section of any +community, and a minute section of the human race as a whole. Female +parasitism in the past resembled gout--a disease dangerous only to the +over-fed, pampered, and few, never to the population of any society as a +whole. + +At the present day, so enormous has been the advance made in the +substitution of mechanical force for crude, physical, human exertion +(mechanical force being employed today even in the shaping of +feeding-bottles and the creation of artificial foods as substitutes +for mother’s milk!), that it is now possible not only for a small and +wealthy section of women in each civilised community to be maintained +without performing any of the ancient, crude, physical labours of their +sex, and without depending on the slavery of, or any vast increase in +the labour of, other classes of females; but this condition has already +been reached, or is tending to be reached, by that large mass of women +in civilised societies, who form the intermediate class between poor +and rich. During the next fifty years, so rapid will undoubtedly be the +spread of the material conditions of civilisation, both in the societies +at present civilised and in the societies at present unpermeated by +our material civilisation, that the ancient forms of female, domestic, +physical labour of even the women of the poorest classes will be little +required, their place being taken, not by other females, but by always +increasingly perfected labour-saving machinery. + +Thus, female parasitism, which in the past threatened only a minute +section of earth’s women, under existing conditions threatens vast +masses, and may, under future conditions, threaten the entire body. + +If woman is content to leave to the male all labour in the new and +all-important fields which are rapidly opening before the human race; +if, as the old forms of domestic labour slip from her for ever +and evitably, she does not grasp the new, it is inevitable, that, +ultimately, not merely a class, but the whole bodies of females in +civilised societies, must sink into a state of more or less absolute +dependence on their sexual functions alone. (How real is this apparently +very remote danger is interestingly illustrated by a proposition gravely +made a few years ago by a man of note in England. He proposed that a +compulsory provision should be made for at least the women of the upper +and middle classes, by which they might be maintained through life +entirely without regard to any productive labour they might perform, +not even the passive labour of sexual reproduction being of necessity +required of them. That this proposal was received by the women striving +to reconstruct the relation of the modern woman to life without +acclamation and with scorn, may have surprised its maker; but with no +more reason than that man would have for feeling surprise who, seeing +a number of persons anxious to escape the infection of some contagious +disease, should propose as a cure to inoculate them all with it in its +most virulent form!) + +As new forms of natural force are mastered and mechanical appliances +perfected, it will be quite possible for the male half of all civilised +races (and therefore ultimately of all) to absorb the entire fields of +intellectual and highly trained manual labour; and it would be entirely +possible for the female half of the race, whether as prostitutes, as +kept mistresses, or as kept wives, to cease from all forms of active +toil, and, as the passive tools of sexual reproduction, or, more +decadently still, as the mere instruments of sexual indulgence, to sink +into a condition of complete and helpless sex-parasitism. + +Sex-parasitism, therefore, presents itself at the end of the nineteenth +century and beginning of the twentieth in a guise which it has never +before worn. We, the European women of the nineteenth and twentieth +centuries, stand therefore in a position the gravity and importance of +which was not equalled by that of any of our forerunners in the ancient +civilisation. As we master and rise above, or fall and are conquered by, +the difficulties of our position, so also will be the future, not merely +of our own class, or even of our own race alone, but also of those +vast masses who are following on in the wake of our civilisation. The +decision we are called on to make is a decision for the race; behind us +comes on the tread of incalculable millions of feet. + +There is thus no truth in the assertion so often made, even by +thoughtful persons, that the male labour question and the woman’s +question of our day are completely one, and that, would the women of +the European race of today but wait peacefully till the males alone had +solved their problem, they would find that their own had been solved at +the same time. + +Were the entire male labour problem of this age satisfactorily settled +tomorrow; were all the unemployed or uselessly employed males at both +ends of societies, whom the changes of modern civilisation have robbed +of their ancient forms of labour, so educated and trained that they were +perfectly fitted for the new conditions of life; and were the material +benefit and intellectual possibilities, which the substitution of +mechanical for human labour now makes possible to humanity, no longer +absorbed by the few but dispersed among the whole mass of males in +return for their trained labour, yet the woman’s problem might be +further from satisfactory solution than it is today; and, if it were +affected at all, might be affected for the worse. It is wholly untrue +that fifty pounds, or two thousand, earned by the male as the result of +his physical or mental toil, if part of it be spent by him in supporting +non-labouring females, whether as prostitutes, wives, or mistresses, is +the same thing to the female or to the race as though that sum had been +earned by her own exertion, either directly as wages or indirectly by +toiling for the man whose wages supported her. For the moment, truly, +the woman so tended lies softer and warmer than had she been compelled +to exert herself; ultimately, intellectually, morally, and even +physically, the difference in the effect upon her as an individual and +on the race is the difference between advance and degradation, between +life and death. The increased wealth of the male no more of necessity +benefits and raises the female upon whom he expends it, than the +increased wealth of his mistress necessarily benefits mentally or +physically a poodle because she can give him a down cushion in place of +one of feathers, and chicken in place of beef. The wealthier the males +of a society become, the greater the temptation, both to themselves and +to the females connected with them, to drift toward female parasitism. + +The readjustment of the position of the male worker, if it led to a +more equitable distribution of wealth among males, might indeed diminish +slightly the accompanying tendency to parasitism in the very wealthiest +female class; but it would, on the other hand, open up exactly those +conditions which make parasitism possible to millions of women today +leading healthy and active lives. (The fact cannot be too often dwelt +upon that parasitism is not connected with any definite amount of +wealth. Any sum supplied to an individual which will so far satisfy +him or her as to enable them to live without exertion may absolutely +parasitise them; while vast wealth unhealthy as its effects generally +tend to be) may, upon certain rare and noble natures, exert hardly any +enervating or deleterious influence. An amusing illustration of the +different points at which enervation is reached by different females +came under our own observation. The wife of an American millionaire +was visited by a woman, the daughter and also the widow of small +professional men. She stated that she was in need of both food and +clothing. The millionaire’s wife gave her a leg of mutton and two +valuable dresses. The woman proceeded to whine, though in vigorous +health, that she had no one to carry them home for her, and could +not think of carrying them herself. The American, the descendant of +generations of able, labouring, New England, Puritan women, tucked the +leg of mutton under one arm and the bundle of clothes under the other +and walked off down the city street towards the woman’s dwelling, +followed by the astonished pauper parasite. + +The most helpless case of female degeneration we ever came into contact +with was that of a daughter of a poor English officer on half-pay and +who had to exist on a few hundreds a year. This woman could neither +cook her own food nor make her own clothes, nor was she engaged in any +social, political, or intellectual or artistic labour. Though able to +dance for a night or play tennis for an afternoon, she was yet hardly +able to do her own hair or attire herself, and appeared absolutely to +have lost all power of compelling herself to do anything which was at +the moment fatiguing or displeasing, as all labour is apt to be, however +great its ultimate reward. In a life of twenty-eight years this +woman had probably not contributed one hour’s earnest toil, mental or +physical, to the increase of the sum total of productive human labour. +Surrounded with acres of cultivable land, she would possibly have +preferred to lie down and die of hunger rather than have cultivated half +an acre for food. This is an extreme case; but the ultimate effect of +parasitism is always a paralysis of the will and an inability to compel +oneself into any course of action for the moment unpleasurable and +exhaustive. + +That the two problems are not identical is shown, if indeed evidence +were needed, by the fact that those males most actively employed in +attempting to readjust the relations of the mass of labouring males to +the new conditions of life, are sometimes precisely those males who +are most bitterly opposed to woman in her attempt to readjust her +own position. Not even by the members of those professions, generally +regarded as the strongholds of obstructionism and prejudice, has a more +short-sighted opposition often been made to the attempts of woman to +enter new fields of labour, than have again and again been made by male +hand-workers, whether as isolated individuals or in their corporate +capacity as trade unions. They have, at least in some certain instances, +endeavoured to exclude women, not merely from new fields of intellectual +and social labour, but even from those ancient fields of textile +manufacture and handicraft, which have through all generations of the +past been woman’s. The patent and undeniable fact, that where the male +labour movement flourishes the woman movement also flourishes, rises +not from the fact that they are identical, but that the same healthy and +virile condition in a race or society gives rise to both. + +As two streams rising from one fountain-head and running a parallel +course through long reaches may yet remain wholly distinct, one finding +its way satisfactorily to the sea, while the other loses itself in sand +or becomes a stagnant marsh, so our modern male and female movements, +taking their rise from the same material conditions in modern +civilisation, and presenting endless and close analogies with one +another in their cause of development, yet remain fundamentally +distinct. By both movements the future of the race must be profoundly +modified for good or evil; both touch the race in a manner absolutely +vital; but both will have to be fought out on their own ground, +and independently: and it can be only by determined, conscious, and +persistent action on the part of woman that the solution of her own +labour problems will proceed co-extensively with that of the other. + +How distinct, though similar, is the underlying motive of the two +movements, is manifested most clearly by this fact, that, while the male +labour movement takes its rise mainly among the poor and hand-labouring +classes, where the material pressure of the modern conditions of life +fall heaviest, and where the danger of physical suffering and even +extinction under that pressure is most felt; the Woman Labour Movement +has taken its rise almost as exclusively among the wealthy, cultured, +and brain-labouring classes, where alone, at the present day, the +danger of enervation through non-employment, and of degeneration through +dependence on the sex function exists. The female labour movement of our +day is, in its ultimate essence, an endeavour on the part of a section +of the race to save itself from inactivity and degeneration, and this, +even at the immediate cost of most heavy loss in material comfort and +ease to the individuals composing it. The male labour movement +is, directly and in the first place, material; and, or at least +superficially, more or less self-seeking, though its ultimate reaction +on society by saving the poorer members from degradation and dependency +and want is undoubtedly wholly social and absolutely essential for +the health and continued development of the human race. In the Woman’s +Labour Movement of our day, which has essentially taken its rise among +women of the more cultured and wealthy classes, and which consists +mainly in a demand to have the doors leading to professional, political, +and highly skilled labour thrown open to them, the ultimate end can only +be attained at the cost of more or less intense, immediate, personal +suffering and renunciation, though eventually, if brought to a +satisfactory conclusion, it will undoubtedly tend to the material and +physical well-being of woman herself, as well as to that of her male +companions and descendants. + +The coming half-century will be a time of peculiar strain, as mankind +seeks rapidly to adjust moral ideals and social relationships and the +general ordering of life to the new and continually unfolding material +conditions. If these two great movements of our age, having this as +their object, can be brought into close harmony and co-operation, the +readjustment will be the sooner and more painlessly accomplished; but, +for the moment, the two movements alike in their origin and alike in +many of their methods of procedure, remain distinct. + +It is this fact, the consciousness on the part of the women taking their +share in the Woman’s Movement of our age, that their efforts are not, +and cannot be, of immediate advantage to themselves, but that they +almost of necessity and immediately lead to loss and renunciation, which +gives to this movement its very peculiar tone; setting it apart from the +large mass of economic movements, placing it rather in a line with those +vast religious developments which at the interval of ages have swept +across humanity, irresistibly modifying and reorganising it. + +It is the perception of this fact, that, not for herself, nor even for +fellow-women alone, but for the benefit of humanity at large, it is +necessary she should seek to readjust herself to life, which lends to +the modern woman’s most superficial and seemingly trivial attempts at +readjustment, a certain dignity and importance. + +It is this profound hidden conviction which removes from the sphere of +the ridiculous the attitude of even the feeblest woman who waves her +poor little “Woman’s rights” flag on the edge of a platform, and which +causes us to forgive even the passionate denunciations, not always +wisely thought out, in which she would represent the suffering and evils +of woman’s condition, as wrongs intentionally inflicted upon her, where +they are merely the inevitable results of ages of social movement. + +It is this over-shadowing consciousness of a large impersonal +obligation, which removes from the sphere of the contemptible and +insignificant even the action of the individual young girl, who leaves +a home of comfort or luxury for a city garret, where in solitude, and +under that stern pressure which is felt by all individuals in arms +against the trend of their environment, she seeks to acquire the +knowledge necessary for entering on a new form of labour. It is this +profound consciousness which makes not less than heroic the figure of +the little half-starved student, battling against gigantic odds to take +her place beside man in the fields of modern intellectual toil, and +which, whether she succeed or fail, makes her a landmark in the course +of our human evolution. It is this consciousness of large impersonal +ends to be attained, and to the attainment of which each individual is +bound to play her part, however small, which removes from the domain of +the unnecessary, and raises to importance, the action of each woman +who resists the tyranny of fashions in dress or bearing or custom which +impedes her in her strife towards the new adjustment. + +It is this consciousness which renders almost of solemn import the +efforts of the individual female after physical or mental self-culture +and expansion; this, which fills with a lofty enthusiasm the heart of +the young girl, who, it may be, in some solitary farm-house, in some +distant wild of Africa or America, deep into the night bends over her +books with the passion and fervour with which an early Christian may +have bent over the pages of his Scriptures; feeling that, it may be, she +fits herself by each increase of knowledge for she knows not what duties +towards the world, in the years to come. It is this consciousness of +great impersonal ends, to be brought, even if slowly and imperceptibly, +a little nearer by her action, which gives to many a woman strength +for renunciation, when she puts from her the lower type of sexual +relationship, even if bound up with all the external honour a legal bond +can confer, if it offers her only enervation and parasitism; and which +enables her often to accept poverty, toil, and sexual isolation (an +isolation even more terrible to the woman than to any male), and the +renunciation of motherhood, that crowning beatitude of the woman’s +existence, which, and which alone, fully compensates her for the organic +sufferings of womanhood--in the conviction that, by so doing, she makes +more possible a fuller and higher attainment of motherhood and wifehood +to the women who will follow her. It is this consciousness which makes +of solemn importance the knock of the humblest woman at the closed +door which shuts off a new field of labour, physical or mental: is she +convinced that, not for herself, but in the service of the whole race, +she knocks. + +It is this abiding consciousness of an end to be attained, reaching +beyond her personal life and individual interests, which constitutes the +religious element of the Woman’s Movement of our day, and binds with the +common bond of an impersonal enthusiasm into one solid body the women +of whatsoever race, class, and nation who are struggling after the +readjustment of woman to life. + +This it is also, which in spite of defects and failures on the part of +individuals, yet makes the body who these women compose, as a whole, one +of the most impressive and irresistible of modern forces. The private +soldier of the great victorious army is not always an imposing object as +he walks down the village street, cap on side of head and sword dangling +between his legs, nor is he always impressive even when he burnishes up +his accoutrements or cleans his pannikins; but it is of individuals +such as these that the great army is made, which tomorrow, when it is +gathered together, may shake the world with its tread. + +Possibly not one woman in ten, or even one woman in twenty thousand +among those taking part in this struggle, could draw up a clear and +succinct account of the causes which have led to the disco-ordination in +woman’s present position, or give a full account of the benefits to flow +from readjustment; as probably not one private soldier in an army of ten +or even of twenty thousand, though he is willing to give his life for +his land, would yet be able to draw up a clear and succinct account of +his land’s history in the past and of the conditions which have made +war inevitable; and almost as little can he often paint an exact and +detailed picture of the benefits to flow from his efts. He knows his +land has need of him; he knows his own small place and work. + +It is possible that not one woman in ten thousand has grasped with +scientific exactitude, and still less could express with verbal +sharpness, the great central conditions which yet compel and animate her +into action. + +Even the great, central fact, that with each generation the entire race +passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing +with the indelible marks of that mould upon it, that as the os cervix of +woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms +a ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human head, a +size which could only increase if in the course of ages the os cervix of +woman should itself slowly expand; and that so exactly the intellectual +capacity, the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms +also an untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive +generation the limits of the expansion of the human race;--even this +fact she may not so clearly have grasped intellectually as to be able to +throw it into the form of a logical statement. The profound truth, that +the continued development of the human race on earth (a development +which, as the old myths and dreams of a narrow personal heaven fade +from our view, becomes increasingly for many of us the spiritual hope by +light of which we continue to live), a development which we hope shall +make the humanity of a distant future as much higher in intellectual +power and wider in social sympathy than the highest human units of +our day, as that is higher than the first primeval ancestor who +with quivering limb strove to walk upright and shape his lips to the +expression of a word, is possible only if the male and female halves of +humanity progress together, expanding side by side in the future as they +have done in the past--even this truth it is possible few women have +exactly and logically grasped as the basis of their action. The truth +that, as the first primitive human males and females, unable to count +farther than their fingers, or grasp an abstract idea, or feel the +controlling power of social emotion, could only develop into the +Sapphos, Aristotles, and Shelleys of a more expanded civilisation, if +side by side, and line by line, male and female forms have expanded +together; if, as the convolutions of his brain increased in complexity, +so increased the convolutions in hers; if, as her forehead grew higher, +so developed his; and that, if the long upward march of the future is +ever to be accomplished by the race, male and female must march side by +side, acting and reacting on each other through inheritance; or progress +is impossible. The truth that, as the existence of even the male Bushman +would be impossible without the existence of the analogous Bushwoman +with the same gifts; and that as races which can produce among their +males a William Kingdon Clifford, a Tolstoy, or a Robert Browning, would +be inconceivable and impossible, unless among its females it could also +produce a Sophia Kovalevsky, a George Eliot, or a Louise Michel; so, +also, in the future, that higher and more socialised human race we dream +of can only come into existence, because in both the sex forms have +evolved together, now this sex and then that, so to speak, catching +up the ball of life and throwing it back to the other, slightly if +imperceptibly enlarging and beautifying it as it passes through their +hands. The fact that without the reaction of interevolution between the +sexes, there can be no real and permanent human advance; without the +enlarged deep-thinking Eve to bear him, no enlarged Adam; without the +enlarged widely sympathising Adam to beget her, no enlarged widely +comprehending Eve; without an enlarged Adam and an enlarged Eve, no +enlarged and beautified generation of mankind on earth; that an arrest +in one form is an arrest in both; and in the upward march of the entire +human family. The truth that, if at the present day, woman, after her +long upward march side by side with man, developing with him through +the countless ages, by means of the endless exercise of the faculties of +mind and body, has now, at last, reached her ultimate limit of growth, +and can progress no farther; that, then, here also, today, the growth +of the human spirit is to be stayed; that here, on the spot of woman’s +arrest, is the standard of the race to be finally planted, to move +forward no more, for ever:--that, if the parasite woman on her couch, +loaded with gewgaws, the plaything and amusement of man, be the +permanent and final manifestation of female human life on the globe, +then that couch is also the death-bed of human evolution. These profound +underlying truths, perhaps, not one woman in twenty thousand of those +actively engaged in the struggle for readjustment has so closely and +keenly grasped that she can readily throw them into the form of exact +language; and yet, probably, not the feeblest woman taking share in our +endeavour toward readjustment and expansion fails to be animated by a +vague but profound consciousness of their existence. Beyond the small +evils, which she seeks by her immediate, personal action to remedy, lie, +she feels; large ills of which they form but an off-shoot; beyond the +small good which she seeks to effect, lies, she believes, a great and +universal beatitude to be attained; beyond the little struggle of today, +lies the larger struggle of the centuries, in which neither she alone +nor her sex alone are concerned, but all mankind. + +That such should be the mental attitude of the average woman taking part +in the readjustive sexual movement of today; that so often on the public +platform and in literature adduces merely secondary arguments, and +is wholly unable logically to give an account of the great propelling +conditions behind it, is sometimes taken as an indication of the +inefficiency, and probably the ultimate failure, of the movement in +which she takes part. But in truth, that is not so. It is rather +an indication which shows how healthy, and deeply implanted in the +substance of human life, are the roots of this movement; and it places +it in a line with all those vast controlling movements which have in the +course of the ages reorganised human life. + +For those great movements which have permanently modified the condition +of humanity have never taken their rise amid the chopped logic of +schools; they have never drawn their vitality from a series of purely +intellectual and abstract inductions. They have arisen always through +the action of widely spread material and spiritual conditions, creating +widespread human needs; which, pressing upon the isolated individuals, +awakens at last continuous, if often vague and uncertain, social +movement in a given direction. Mere intellectual comprehension may +guide, retard, or accelerate the great human movements; it has never +created them. It may even be questioned whether those very leaders, who +have superficially appeared to create and organise great and successful +social movements, have themselves, in most cases, perhaps in any, fully +understood in all their complexity the movements they themselves have +appeared to rule. They have been, rather, themselves permeated by the +great common need; and being possessed of more will, passion, intensity, +or intellect, they have been able to give voice to that which in +others was dumb, and conscious direction to that which in others was +unconscious desire: they have been but the foremost crest of a great +wave of human necessity: they have not themselves created the wave which +bears themselves, and humanity, onwards. The artificial social movements +which have had their origin in the arbitrary will of individuals, guided +with however much determination and reason, have of necessity proved +ephemeral and abortive. An Alexander might will to weld a Greece and +an Asia into one; a Napoleon might resolve to create of a diversified +Europe one consolidated state; and by dint of skill and determination +they might for a moment appear to be accomplishing that which they +desired; but the constraining individual will being withdrawn, the +object of their toil has melted away, as the little heap of damp sand +gathered under the palm of a child’s hand on the sea-shore, melts away, +scattered by the wind and washed out by the waves, the moment the hand +that shaped it is withdrawn; while the small, soft, indefinite, watery +fragment of jelly-fish lying beside it, though tossed hither and +thither by water and wind, yet retains its shape and grows, because its +particles are bound by an internal and organic force. + +Our woman’s movement resembles strongly, in this matter, the gigantic +religious and intellectual movement which for centuries convulsed the +life of Europe; and had, as its ultimate outcome, the final emancipation +of the human intellect and the freedom of the human spirit. Looked +back upon from the vantage-point of the present, this past presents the +appearance of one vast, steady, persistent movement proceeding always +in one ultimate direction, as though guided by some controlling human +intellect. But, to the mass of human individuals taking part in it, it +presented an appearance far otherwise. It was fought out, now here, +now there, by isolated individuals and small groups, and often for +what appeared small and almost personal ends, having sometimes, +superficially, little in common. Now it was a Giordano Bruno, burnt +in Rome in defence of abstract theory with regard to the nature of the +First Cause; then an Albigense hurled from his rocks because he refused +to part with the leaves of his old Bible; now a Dutch peasant woman, +walking serenely to the stake because she refused to bow her head before +two crossed rods; then a Servetus burnt by Protestant Calvin at Geneva; +or a Spinoza cut off from his tribe and people because he could +see nothing but God anywhere; and then it was an exiled Rousseau or +Voltaire, or a persecuted Bradlaugh; till, in our own day the last +sounds of the long fight are dying about us, as fading echoes, in the +guise of a few puerile attempts to enforce trivial disabilities on the +ground of abstract convictions. The vanguard of humanity has won its +battle for freedom of thought. + +But, to the men and women taking part in that mighty movement during +the long centuries of the past, probably nothing was quite clear, in the +majority of cases, but their own immediate move. Not the leaders--most +certainly not good old Martin Luther, even when he gave utterance to +his immortal “I can no otherwise” (the eternal justification of all +reformers and social innovators!), understood the whole breadth of the +battlefield on which they were engaged, or grasped with precision the +issues which were involved. The valiant Englishman, who, as the flames +shot up about him, cried to his companion in death, “Play the man, +Master Ridley; we shall by God’s grace this day light such a candle +in England, as shall never be put out!” undoubtedly believed that +the candle lighted was the mere tallow rushlight of a small sectarian +freedom for England alone; nor perceived that what he lighted was but +one ray of the vast, universal aurora of intellectual and spiritual +liberty, whose light was ultimately to stream, not only across England, +but across the earth. Nevertheless, undoubtedly, behind all these +limited efforts, for what appeared, superficially, limited causes, +lay, in the hearts of the men and women concerned, through the ages, a +profound if vague consciousness of ends larger than they clearly knew, +to be subserved by their action; of a universal social duty and a great +necessity. + +That the Woman’s Movement of our day has not taken its origin from any +mere process of theoretic argument; that it breaks out, now here and +now there, in forms divergent and at times superficially almost +irreconcilable; that the majority of those taking part in it are driven +into action as the result of the immediate pressure of the conditions +of life, and are not always able logically to state the nature of all +causes which propel them, or to paint clearly all results of their +action; so far from removing it from the category of the vast +reorganising movements of humanity, places it in a line with them, +showing how vital, spontaneous, and wholly organic and unartificial is +its nature. + +The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate, and +at times almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and +social duties; while at another it makes itself felt as a determined +endeavour after self-culture; that in one land it embodies itself mainly +in a resolute endeavour to enlarge the sphere of remunerative labour +for women; while in another it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to +recoordinate the personal relation of the sexes; that in one individual +it manifests itself as a passionate and sometimes noisy struggle for +liberty of personal action; while in another it is being fought out +silently in the depth of the individual consciousness--that primal +battle-ground, in which all questions of reform and human advance must +ultimately be fought and decided;--all this diversity, and the fact +that the average woman is entirely concerned in labour in her own little +field, shows, not the weakness, but the strength of the movement; which, +taken as a whole, is a movement steady and persistent in one direction, +the direction of increased activity and culture, and towards the +negation of all possibility of parasitism in the human female. Slowly, +and unconsciously, as the child is shaped in the womb, this movement +shapes itself in the bosom of our time, taking its place beside those +vast human developments, of which men, noting their spontaneity and the +co-ordination of their parts, have said, in the phraseology of old days, +“This thing is not of man, but of God.” + +He who today looks at some great Gothic cathedral in its final form, +seems to be looking at that which might have been the incarnation of the +dream of some single soul of genius. But in truth, its origin was far +otherwise. Ages elapsed from the time the first rough stone was laid as +a foundation till the last spire and pinnacle were shaped, and the hand +which laid the foundation-stone was never the same as that which set +the last stone upon the coping. Generations often succeeded one another, +labouring at gargoyle, rose-window, and shaft, and died, leaving the +work to others; the master-builder who drew up the first rough outline +passed away, and was succeeded by others, and the details of the work as +completed bore sometimes but faint resemblance to the work as he devised +it; no man fully understood all that others had done or were doing, +but each laboured in his place; and the work as completed had unity; +it expressed not the desire and necessity of one mind, but of the human +spirit of that age; and not less essential to the existence of the +building was the labour of the workman who passed a life of devotion +in carving gargoyles or shaping rose-windows, than that of the greatest +master who drew general outlines: perhaps it was yet more heroic; for, +for the master-builder, who, even if it were but vaguely, had an image +of what the work would be when the last stone was laid and the last +spire raised, it was easy to labour with devotion and zeal, though well +he might know that the placing of that last stone and the raising of +that last spire would not be his, and that the building in its full +beauty and strength he should never see; but for the journeyman labourer +who carried on his duties and month by month toiled at carving his own +little gargoyle or shaping the traceries in his own little oriel window, +without any complete vision, it was not so easy; nevertheless, it was +through the conscientious labours of such alone, through their heaps of +chipped and spoiled stones, which may have lain thick about them, that +at the last the pile was reared in its strength and beauty. + +For a Moses who could climb Pisgah, and, though it were through a +mist of bitter tears, could see stretching before him the land of the +inheritance, a land which his feet should never tread and whose fruit +his hand should never touch, it was yet, perhaps, not so hard to turn +round and die; for, as in a dream, he had seen the land: but for the +thousands who could climb no Pisgah, who were to leave their bones +whitening in the desert, having even from afar never seen the true +outline of the land; those who, on that long march, had not even borne +the Ark nor struck the timbrel, but carried only their small household +vessels and possessions, for these it was perhaps not so easy to lie +down and perish in the desert, knowing only that far ahead somewhere, +lay a Land of Promise. Nevertheless, it was by the slow and sometimes +wavering march of such as these, that the land was reached by the people +at last. + +For her, whose insight enables her to see, through the distance, those +large beatitudes towards which the struggles and suffering of the women +of today may tend; who sees beyond the present, though in a future which +she knows she will never enter, an enlarged and strengthened womanhood +bearing forward with it a strengthened and expanded race, it is not so +hard to renounce and labour with unshaken purpose: but for those +who have not that view, and struggle on, animated at most by a vague +consciousness that somewhere ahead lies a large end, towards which their +efforts tend; who labour year after year at some poor little gargoyle of +a Franchise Bill, or the shaping of some rough little foundation-stone +of reform in education, or dress a stone (which perhaps never quite fits +the spot it was intended for, and has to be thrown aside!); or who +carve away all their lives to produce a corbel of some reform in sexual +relations, in the end to find it break under the chisel; who, out of +many failures attain, perhaps, to no success, or but to one, and that +so small and set so much in the shade that no eye will ever see it; +for such as these, it is perhaps not so easy to labour without growing +weary. Nevertheless, it is through the labours of these myriad toilers, +each working in her own minute sphere, with her own small outlook, and +out of endless failures and miscarriages, that at last the enwidened +and beautified relations of woman to life must rise, if they are ever to +come. + +When a starfish lies on the ground at the bottom of a sloping rock it +has to climb, it seems to the onlooker as though there were nothing +which could stir the inert mass and no means for taking it to the top. +Yet watch it. Beneath its lower side, hidden from sight, are a million +fine tentacles; impulses of will from the central nerve radiate +throughout the whole body, and each tiny fibre, fine as a hair, slowly +extends itself, and seizes on the minute particle of rough rock nearest +to it; now a small tentacle slips its hold, and then it holds firmly, +and then slowly and slowly the whole inert mass rises to the top. + +It is often said of those who lead in this attempt at the readaption +of woman’s relation to life, that they are “New Women”; and they are +at times spoken of as though they were a something portentous and +unheard-of in the order of human life. + +But, the truth is, we are not new. We who lead in this movement today +are of that old, old Teutonic womanhood, which twenty centuries ago +ploughed its march through European forests and morasses beside its male +companion; which marched with the Cimbri to Italy, and with the Franks +across the Rhine, with the Varagians into Russia, and the Alamani into +Switzerland; which peopled Scandinavia, and penetrated to Britain; whose +priestesses had their shrines in German forests, and gave out the oracle +for peace or war. We have in us the blood of a womanhood that was never +bought and never sold; that wore no veil, and had no foot bound; whose +realised ideal of marriage was sexual companionship and an equality in +duty and labour; who stood side by side with the males they loved in +peace or war, and whose children, when they had borne them, sucked +manhood from their breasts, and even through their foetal existence +heard a brave heart beat above them. We are women of a breed whose +racial ideal was no Helen of Troy, passed passively from male hand +to male hand, as men pass gold or lead; but that Brynhild whom Segurd +found, clad in helm and byrne, the warrior maid, who gave him counsel +“the deepest that ever yet was given to living man,” and “wrought on him +to the performing of great deeds;” who, when he died, raised high the +funeral pyre and lay down on it beside him, crying, “Nor shall the door +swing to at the heel of him as I go in beside him!” We are of a race +of women that of old knew no fear, and feared no death, and lived great +lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of us have fallen on evil +and degenerate times, there moves in us yet the throb of the old blood. + +If it be today on no physical battlefield that we stand beside our men, +and on no march through no external forest or morass that we have to +lead; it is yet the old spirit which, undimmed by two thousand years, +stirs within us in deeper and subtler ways; it is yet the cry of +the old, free Northern woman which makes the world today. Though the +battlefield be now for us all, in the laboratory or the workshop, in the +forum or the study, in the assembly and in the mart and the political +arena, with the pen and not the sword, of the head and not the arm, we +still stand side by side with the men we love, “to dare with them in +war and to suffer with them in peace,” as the Roman wrote of our old +Northern womanhood. + +Those women, of whom the old writers tell us, who, barefooted and +white robed, led their Northern hosts on that long march to Italy, were +animated by the thought that they led their people to a land of warmer +sunshine and richer fruitage; we, today, believe we have caught sight +of a land bathed in a nobler than any material sunlight, with a fruitage +richer than any which the senses only can grasp: and behind us, we +believe there follows a longer train than any composed of our own race +and people; the sound of the tread we hear behind us is that of all +earth’s women, bearing within them the entire race. The footpath, yet +hardly perceptible, which we tread down today, will, we believe, be +life’s broadest and straightest road, along which the children of men +will pass to a higher co-ordination and harmony. The banner which +we unfurl today is not new: it is the standard of the old, free, +monogamous, labouring woman, which, twenty hundred years ago, floated +over the forests of Europe. We shall bear it on, each generation as it +falls passing it into the hand of that which follows, till we plant it +so high that all nations of the world shall see it; till the women of +the humblest human races shall be gathered beneath its folds, and no +child enter life that was not born within its shade. + +We are not new! If you would understand us, go back two thousand +years, and study our descent; our breed is our explanation. We are the +daughters of our fathers as well as of our mothers. In our dreams we +still hear the clash of the shields of our forefathers as they struck +them together before battle and raised the shout of “Freedom!” In our +dreams it is with us still, and when we wake it breaks from our own +lips! We are the daughters of those men. + +But, it may be said, “Are there not women among you who would use the +shibboleth, of freedom and labour, merely as a means for opening a +door to a greater and more highly flavoured self-indulgence, to a more +lucrative and enjoyable parasitism? Are there not women who, under the +guise of ‘work,’ are seeking only increased means of sensuous pleasure +and self-indulgence; to whom intellectual training and the opening to +new fields of labour side by side with man, mean merely new means of +self-advertisement and parasitic success?” We answer: There may be +such, truly; among us--but not of us! This at least is true, that we, +ourselves, are seldom deceived by them; the sheep generally recognise +the wolf however carefully fitted the sheepskin under which he hides, +though the onlookers may not; and though not always be able to drive him +from the flock! The outer world may be misled; we, who stand shoulder to +shoulder with them, know them; they are not many; neither are they +new. They are one of the oldest survivals, and among the most primitive +relics in the race. They are as old as Loki among the gods, as Lucifer +among the Sons of the Morning, as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as +pain and dislocation in the web of human life. + +Such women are as old as that first primitive woman who, when she went +with her fellows to gather wood for the common household, put grass in +the centre of the bundle that she might appear to carry as much as they, +yet carry nothing; she is as old as the first man who threw away his +shield in battle, and yet, when it was over, gathered with the victors +to share the spoils, as old as cowardice and lust in the human and +animal world; only to cease from being when, perhaps, an enlarged and +expanded humanity shall have cast the last slough of its primitive skin. + +Every army has its camp-followers, not among its accredited soldiers, +but who follow in its train, ready to attack and rifle the fallen on +either side. To lookers on, they may appear soldiers; but the soldier +knows who they are. At the Judean supper there was one Master, and to +the onlooker there may have seemed twelve apostles; in truth only twelve +were of the company, and one was not of it. There has always been this +thirteenth figure at every sacramental gathering, since the world began, +wherever the upholders of a great cause have broken spiritual bread; but +it may be questioned whether in any instance this thirteenth figure +has been able to destroy, or even vitally to retard, any great human +movement. Judas could hang his Master by a kiss; but he could not +silence the voice which for a thousand years rang out of that Judean +grave. Again and again, in social, political, and intellectual +movements, the betrayer betrays;--and the cause marches on over the body +of the man. + +There are women, as there are men, whose political, social, +intellectual, or philanthropic labours are put on, as the harlot puts +on paint, and for the same purpose: but they can no more retard the +progress of the great bulk of vital and sincere womanhood, than the +driftwood on the surface of a mighty river can ultimately prevent its +waters from reaching the sea. + + + +Chapter IV. Woman and War. + +But it may also be said, “Granting fully that you are right, that, as +woman’s old fields of labour slip from her, she must grasp the new, or +must become wholly dependent on her sexual function alone, all the other +elements of human nature in her becoming atrophied and arrested through +lack of exercise: and, granting that her evolution being arrested, +the evolution of the whole race will be also arrested in her person: +granting all this to the full, and allowing that the bulk of human +labour tends to become more and more intellectual and less and less +purely mechanical, as perfected machinery takes the place of crude human +exertion; and that therefore if woman is to be saved from degeneration +and parasitism, and the body of humanity from arrest, she must receive a +training which will cultivate all the intellectual and all the physical +faculties with which she is endowed, and be allowed freely to employ +them; nevertheless, would it not be possible, and perhaps be well, that +a dividing line of some kind should be drawn between the occupations +of men and of women? Would it not, for example, be possible that +woman should retain agriculture, textile manufacture, trade, domestic +management, the education of youth, and medicine, in addition to +child-bearing, as her exclusive fields of toil; while, to the male, +should be left the study of abstract science, law and war, and +statecraft; as of old, man took war and the chase, and woman absorbed +the further labours of life? Why should there not be again a fair and +even division in the field of social labour?” + +Superficially, this suggestion appears rational, having at least this +to recommend it, that it appears to harmonise with the course of human +evolution in the past; but closely examined, it will, we think, be found +to have no practical or scientific basis, and to be out of harmony with +the conditions of modern life. In ancient and primitive societies, the +mere larger size and muscular strength of man, and woman’s incessant +physical activity in child-bearing and suckling and rearing the young, +made almost inevitable a certain sexual division of labour in almost +all countries, save perhaps in ancient Egypt. (The division of labour +between the sexes in Ancient Egypt and other exceptional countries, is +a matter of much interest, which cannot here be entered on.) Woman +naturally took the heavy agricultural and domestic labours, which were +yet more consistent with the continual dependence of infant life on +her own, than those of man in war and the chase. There was nothing +artificial in such a division; it threw the heaviest burden of the most +wearying and unexciting forms of social labour on woman, but under it +both sexes laboured in a manner essential to the existence of society, +and each transmitted to the other, through inheritance, the fruit of its +slowly expanding and always exerted powers; and the race progressed. + +Individual women might sometimes, and even often, become the warrior +chief of a tribe; the King of Ashantee might train his terrible regiment +of females; and men might now and again plant and weave for their +children: but in the main, and in most societies, the division of +labour was just, natural, beneficial; and it was inevitable that such a +division should take place. Were today a band of civilised men, women, +and infants thrown down absolutely naked and defenceless in some desert, +and cut off hopelessly from all external civilised life, undoubtedly +very much the old division of labour would, at least for a time, +reassert itself; men would look about for stones and sticks with which +to make weapons to repel wild beasts and enemies, and would go a-hunting +meat and fighting savage enemies and tend the beasts when tamed: (The +young captured animals would probably be tamed and reared by the women.) +women would suckle their children, cook the meat men brought, build +shelters, look for roots and if possible cultivate them; there certainly +would be no parasite in the society; the woman who refused to labour for +her offspring, and the man who refused to hunt or defend society, would +not be supported by their fellows, would soon be extinguished by want. +As wild beasts were extinguished and others tamed and the materials for +war improved, fewer men would be needed for hunting and war; then they +would remain at home and aid in building and planting; many women would +retire into the house to perfect domestic toil and handicrafts, and on +a small scale the common ancient evolution of society would probably +practically repeat itself. But for the present, we see no such natural +and spontaneous division of labour based on natural sexual distinctions +in the new fields of intellectual or delicately skilled manual labour, +which are taking the place of the old. + +It is possible, though at present there is nothing to give indication of +such a fact, and it seems highly improbable, that, in some subtle +manner now incomprehensible, there might tend to be a subtle correlation +between that condition of the brain and nervous system which accompanies +ability in the direction of certain modern forms of mental, social +labour, and the particular form of reproductive function possessed by +an individual. It may be that, inexplicable as it seems, there may +ultimately be found to be some connection between that condition of the +brain and nervous system which fits the individual for the study of the +higher mathematics, let us say, and the nature of their sex attributes. +The mere fact that, of the handful of women who, up to the present, +have received training and been allowed to devote themselves to abstract +study, several have excelled in the higher mathematics, proves of +necessity no pre-eminent tendency on the part of the female sex in +the direction of mathematics, as compared to labour in the fields of +statesmanship, administration, or law; as into these fields there has +been practically no admittance for women. It is sometimes stated, +that as several women of genius in modern times have sought to find +expression for their creative powers in the art of fiction, there must +be some inherent connection in the human brain between the ovarian sex +function and the art of fiction. The fact is, that modern fiction being +merely a description of human life in any of its phases, and being +the only art that can be exercised without special training or special +appliances, and produced in the moments stolen from the multifarious, +brain-destroying occupations which fill the average woman’s life, they +have been driven to find this outlet for their powers as the only one +presenting itself. How far otherwise might have been the directions in +which their genius would naturally have expressed itself can be known +only partially even to the women themselves; what the world has lost by +that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have been +its most natural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one +can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber +the ground, we see often a pathetic figure, when we recognise that +beneath that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie buried +a sound legislator, an able architect, an original scientific +investigator, or a good judge. Scientifically speaking, it is as +unproven that there is any organic relation between the brain of the +female and the production of art in the form of fiction, as that there +is an organic relation between the hand of woman and a typewriting +machine. Both the creative writer and the typist, in their respective +spheres, are merely finding outlets for their powers in the direction of +least resistance. The tendency of women at the present day to undertake +certain forms of labour, proves only that in the crabbed, walled-in, +and bound conditions surrounding woman at the present day, these are the +lines along which action is most possible to her. + +It may possibly be that in future ages, when the male and female forms +have been placed in like intellectual conditions, with like stimuli, +like training, and like rewards, that some aptitudes may be found +running parallel with the line of sex function when humanity is viewed +as a whole. It may possibly be that, when the historian of the future +looks back over the history of the intellectually freed and active +sexes for countless generations, that a decided preference of the female +intellect for mathematics, engineering, or statecraft may be made clear; +and that a like marked inclination in the male to excel in acting, +music, or astronomy may by careful and large comparison be shown. But, +for the present, we have no adequate scientific data from which to draw +any conclusion, and any attempt to divide the occupations in which male +and female intellects and wills should be employed, must be to attempt +a purely artificial and arbitrary division: a division not more rational +and scientific than an attempt to determine by the colour of his eyes +and the shape and strength of his legs, whether a lad should be an +astronomer or an engraver. Those physical differences among mankind +which divide races and nations--not merely those differences, enormously +greater as they are generally, than any physical differences between +male and female of the same race, which divide the Jew and the Swede, +the Japanese and the Englishman, but even those subtle physical +differences which divide closely allied races such as the English and +German--often appear to be allied with certain subtle differences in +intellectual aptitudes. Yet even with regard to these differences, it +is almost impossible to determine scientifically in how far they are the +result of national traditions, environment, and education, and in how +far the result of real differences in organic conformation. (In thinking +of physical sex differences, the civilised man of modern times has +always to guard himself against being unconsciously misled by the very +exaggerated external sex differences which our unnatural method of sex +clothing and dressing the hair produces. The unclothed and natural human +male and female bodies are not more divided from each other than those +of the lion and lioness. Our remote Saxon ancestors, with their great, +almost naked, white bodies and flowing hair worn long by both sexes, +were but little distinguished from each other; while among their modern +descendants the short hair, darkly clothed, manifestly two-legged male +differs absolutely from the usually long-haired, colour bedizened, +much beskirted female. Were the structural differences between male and +female really one half as marked as the artificial visual differences, +they would be greater than those dividing, not merely any species of man +from another, but as great as those which divide orders in the animal +world. Only a mind exceedingly alert and analytical can fail ultimately +to be misled by habitual visual misrepresentation. There is not, +probably, one man or woman in twenty thousand who is not powerfully +influenced in modern life in their conception of the differences, +physical and intellectual, dividing the human male and female, by the +grotesque exaggerations of modern attire and artificial manners.) + +No study of the mere physical differences between individuals of +different races would have enabled us to arrive at any knowledge of +their mental aptitude; nor does the fact that certain individuals of a +given human variety have certain aptitudes form a rational ground for +compelling all individuals of that variety to undertake a certain form +of labour. + +No analysis, however subtle, of the physical conformation of the Jew +could have suggested a priori, and still less could have proved, apart +from ages of practical experience, that, running parallel with any +physical characteristics which may distinguish him from his fellows, was +an innate and unique intellectual gift in the direction of religion. The +fact that, during three thousand years, from Moses to Isaiah, through +Jesus and Paul on to Spinoza, the Jewish race has produced men who +have given half the world its religious faith and impetus, proves that, +somewhere and somehow, whether connected organically with that physical +organisation that marks the Jew, or as the result of his traditions and +training, there does go this gift in the matter of religion. Yet, on +the other hand, we find millions of Jews who are totally and markedly +deficient in it, and to base any practical legislation for the +individual even on this proven intellectual aptitude of the race as a +whole would be manifestly as ridiculous as abortive. Yet more markedly, +with the German--no consideration of his physical peculiarities, though +it proceeded to the subtlest analysis of nerve, bone, and muscle, could +in the present stage of our knowledge have proved to us what generations +of experience appear to have proved, that, with that organisation which +constitutes the German, goes an unique aptitude for music. There is +always the possibility of mistaking the result of training and external +circumstance for inherent tendency, but when we consider the passion for +music which the German has shown, and when we consider that the greatest +musicians the world has seen, from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to +Wagner, have been of that race, it appears highly probable that such a +correlation between the German organisation and the intellectual gift of +music does exist. Similar intellectual peculiarities seem to be connoted +by the external differences which mark off other races from each other. +Nevertheless, were persons of all of these nationalities gathered in one +colony, any attempt to legislate for their restriction to certain forms +of intellectual labour on the ground of their apparently proved national +aptitudes or disabilities, would be regarded as insane. To insist that +all Jews, and none but Jews, should lead and instruct in religious +matters; that all Englishmen, and none but Englishmen, should engage in +trade; that each German should make his living by music, and none but +a German allowed to practise it, would drive to despair the unfortunate +individual Englishman, whose most marked deficiency might be in the +direction of finance and bartering trade power; the Jew, whose religious +instincts might be entirely rudimentary; or the German, who could not +distinguish one note from another; and the society as a whole would be +an irremediable loser, in one of the heaviest of all forms of social +loss--the loss of the full use of the highest capacities of all its +members. + +It may be that with sexes as with races, the subtlest physical +difference between them may have their fine mental correlatives; but no +abstract consideration of the human body in relation to its functions +of sex can, in the present state of our knowledge, show us what +intellectual capacities tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing +in the present or past condition of male and female give us more +than the very faintest possible indication of the relation of their +intellectual aptitudes and their sexual functions. And even were it +proved by centuries of experiment that with the possession of the +uterine function of sex tends to go exceptional intellectual capacity +in the direction of mathematics rather than natural history, or an +inclination for statecraft rather than for mechanical invention; were it +proved that, generally speaking and as a whole, out of twenty thousand +women devoting themselves to law and twenty thousand to medicine, they +tended to achieve relatively more in the field of law than of +medicine, there would yet be no possible healthy or rational ground +for restricting the activities of the individual female to that line +in which the average female appeared rather more frequently to excel. +(Minds not keenly analytical are always apt to mistake mere correlation +of appearance with causative sequence. We have heard it gravely asserted +that between potatoes, pigs, mud cabins and Irishmen there was an +organic connection: but we who have lived in Colonies, know that within +two generations the pure-bred descendant of the mud cabiner becomes +often the successful politician, wealthy financier, or great judge; and +shows no more predilection for potatoes, pigs, and mud cabins than men +of any other race.) + +That even one individual in a society should be debarred from +undertaking that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes +an unnecessary deficit in the general social assets. That one male +Froebel should be prohibited or hampered in his labour as an educator of +infancy, on the ground that infantile instruction was the field of +the female; that one female with gifts in the direction of state +administration, should be compelled to instruct an infants’ school, +perhaps without the slightest gift for so doing, is a running to waste +of social life-blood. + +Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, +is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be +determined. And our demand today is that natural conditions, inexorably, +but beneficently, may determine the labours of each individual, and not +artificial restrictions. + +As there is no need to legislate that Hindus, being generally supposed +to have a natural incapacity for field sports, shall not betake +themselves to them--for, if they have no capacity, they will fail; and, +as in spite of the Hindus’ supposed general incapacity for sport, it is +possible for an individual Hindu to become the noted batsman of his age; +so, also, there is no need to legislate that women should be restricted +in her choice of fields of labour; for the organic incapacity of the +individual, if it exist, will legislate far more powerfully than any +artificial, legal, or social obstruction can do; and it may be that the +one individual in ten thousand who selects a field not generally sought +by his fellows will enrich humanity by the result of an especial genius. +Allowing all to start from the one point in the world of intellectual +culture and labour, with our ancient Mother Nature sitting as umpire, +distributing the prizes and scratching from the lists the incompetent, +is all we demand, but we demand it determinedly. Throw the puppy into +the water: if it swims, well; if it sinks, well; but do not tie a +rope round its throat and weight it with a brick, and then assert its +incapacity to keep afloat. + +For the present our cry is, “We take all labour for our province!” + +From the judge’s seat to the legislator’s chair; from the statesman’s +closet to the merchant’s office; from the chemist’s laboratory to the +astronomer’s tower, there is no post or form of toil for which it is not +our intention to attempt to fit ourselves; and there is no closed door +we do not intend to force open; and there is no fruit in the garden of +knowledge it is not our determination to eat. Acting in us, and through +us, nature we know will mercilessly expose to us our deficiencies in +the field of human toil, and reveal to us our powers. And, for today, we +take all labour for our province! + +But, it may then be said: “What of war, that struggle of the human +creature to attain its ends by physical force and at the price of the +life of others: will you take part in that also?” We reply: Yes; more +particularly in that field we intend to play our part. We have always +borne part of the weight of war, and the major part. It is not merely +that in primitive times we suffered from the destruction of the fields +we tilled and the houses we built; or that in later times as domestic +labourers and producers, though unwaged, we, in taxes and material loss +and additional labour, paid as much as our males towards the cost of +war; nor is it that in a comparatively insignificant manner, as +nurses of the wounded in modern times, or now and again as warrior +chieftainesses and leaders in primitive and other societies, we have +borne our part; nor is it even because the spirit of resolution in its +women, and their willingness to endure, has in all ages again and again +largely determined the fate of a race that goes to war, that we demand +our controlling right where war is concerned. Our relation to war is +far more intimate, personal, and indissoluble than this. Men have made +boomerangs, bows, swords, or guns with which to destroy one another; we +have made the men who destroyed and were destroyed! We have in all ages +produced, at an enormous cost, the primal munition of war, without which +no other would exist. There is no battlefield on earth, nor ever has +been, howsoever covered with slain, which is has not cost the women of +the race more in actual bloodshed and anguish to supply, then it has +cost the men who lie there. We pay the first cost on all human life. + +In supplying the men for the carnage of a battlefield, women have not +merely lost actually more blood, and gone through a more acute anguish +and weariness, in the long months of bearing and in the final agony of +childbirth, than has been experienced by the men who cover it; but, in +the long months and years of rearing that follow, the women of the race +go through a long, patiently endured strain which no knapsacked soldier +on his longest march has ever more than equalled; while, even in the +matter of death, in all civilised societies, the probability that the +average woman will die in childbirth is immeasurably greater than the +probability that the average male will die in battle. + +There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have borne children, or +be merely potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a +battlefield covered with slain, but the thought would rise in her, “So +many mothers’ sons! So many bodies brought into the world to lie there! +So many months of weariness and pain while bones and muscles were shaped +within; so many hours of anguish and struggle that breath might be; so +many baby mouths drawing life at woman’s breasts;--all this, that men +might lie with glazed eyeballs, and swollen bodies, and fixed, blue, +unclosed mouths, and great limbs tossed--this, that an acre of ground +might be manured with human flesh, that next year’s grass or poppies or +karoo bushes may spring up greener and redder, where they have lain, or +that the sand of a plain may have a glint of white bones!” And we cry, +“Without an inexorable cause, this should not be!” No woman who is a +woman says of a human body, “It is nothing!” + +On that day, when the woman takes her place beside the man in the +governance and arrangement of external affairs of her race will also +be that day that heralds the death of war as a means of arranging human +differences. No tinsel of trumpets and flags will ultimately seduce +women into the insanity of recklessly destroying life, or gild the +wilful taking of life with any other name than that of murder, whether +it be the slaughter of the million or of one by one. And this will be, +not because with the sexual function of maternity necessarily goes in +the human creature a deeper moral insight, or a loftier type of social +instinct than that which accompanies the paternal. Men have in all ages +led as nobly as women in many paths of heroic virtue, and toward the +higher social sympathies; in certain ages, being freer and more widely +cultured, they have led further and better. The fact that woman has +no inherent all-round moral superiority over her male companion, or +naturally on all points any higher social instinct, is perhaps most +clearly exemplified by one curious very small fact: the two terms +signifying intimate human relationships which in almost all human +languages bear the most sinister and antisocial significance are both +terms which have as their root the term “mother,” and denote feminine +relationships--the words “mother-in-law” and “step-mother.” + +In general humanity, in the sense of social solidarity, and in +magnanimity, the male has continually proved himself at least the equal +of the female. + +Nor will women shrink from war because they lack courage. Earth’s women +of every generation have faced suffering and death with an equanimity +that no soldier on a battlefield has ever surpassed and few have +equalled; and where war has been to preserve life, or land, or freedom, +unparasitised and labouring women have in all ages known how to bear an +active part, and die. + +Nor will woman’s influence militate against war because in the future +woman will not be able physically to bear her part in it. The smaller +size of her muscle, which would severely have disadvantaged her when +war was conducted with a battle-axe or sword and hand to hand, would now +little or at all affect her. If intent on training for war, she might +acquire the skill for guiding a Maxim or shooting down a foe with a +Lee-Metford at four thousand yards as ably as any male; and undoubtedly, +it has not been only the peasant girl of France, who has carried latent +and hid within her person the gifts that make the supreme general. If +our European nations should continue in their present semi-civilised +condition, which makes war possible, for a few generations longer, it +is highly probable that as financiers, as managers of the commissariat +department, as inspectors of provisions and clothing for the army, women +will play a very leading part; and that the nation which is the first to +employ its women so may be placed at a vast advantage over its fellows +in time of war. It is not because of woman’s cowardice, incapacity, nor, +above all, because of her general superior virtue, that she will end war +when her voice is fully, finally, and clearly heard in the governance +of states--it is because, on this one point, and on this point almost +alone, the knowledge of woman, simply as woman, is superior to that of +man; she knows the history of human flesh; she knows its cost; he +does not. (It is noteworthy that even Catharine of Russia, a ruler and +statesman of a virile and uncompromising type, and not usually troubled +with moral scruples, yet refused with indignation the offer of Frederick +of Prussia to pay her heavily for a small number of Russian recruits in +an age when the hiring out of soldiers was common among the sovereigns +of Europe.) + +In a besieged city, it might well happen that men in the streets +might seize upon statues and marble carvings from public buildings and +galleries and hurl them in to stop the breaches made in their ramparts +by the enemy, unconsideringly and merely because they came first to +hand, not valuing them more than had they been paving-stones. But one +man could not do this--the sculptor! He, who, though there might be no +work of his own chisel among them, yet knew what each of these works of +art had cost, knew by experience the long years of struggle and study +and the infinitude of toil which had gone to the shaping of even one +limb, to the carving of even one perfected outline, he could never so +use them without thought or care. Instinctively he would seek to throw +in household goods, even gold and silver, all the city held, before he +sacrificed its works of art! + +Men’s bodies are our woman’s works of art. Given to us power of control, +we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human +relationships made by international ambitions and greeds. The thought +would never come to us as woman, “Cast in men’s bodies; settle the thing +so!” Arbitration and compensation would as naturally occur to her +as cheaper and simpler methods of bridging the gaps in national +relationships, as to the sculptor it would occur to throw in anything +rather than statuary, though he might be driven to that at last! + +This is one of those phases of human life, not very numerous, but very +important, towards which the man as man, and the woman as woman, on +the mere ground of their different sexual function with regard to +reproduction, stand, and must stand, at a somewhat differing angle. +The physical creation of human life, which, in as far as the male is +concerned, consists in a few moments of physical pleasure; to the female +must always signify months of pressure and physical endurance, crowned +with danger to life. To the male, the giving of life is a laugh; to the +female, blood, anguish, and sometimes death. Here we touch one of the +few yet important differences between man and woman as such. + +The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean, +to the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be +borne within them for months, given birth to in anguish, fed from +their breasts and reared with toil, if the numbers of the tribe and the +strength of the nation are to be maintained. In nations continually at +war, incessant and unbroken child-bearing is by war imposed on all women +if the state is to survive; and whenever war occurs, if numbers are to +be maintained, there must be an increased child-bearing and rearing. +This throws upon woman as woman a war tax, compared with which all that +the male expends in military preparations is comparatively light. + +The relations of the female towards the production of human life +influences undoubtedly even her relation towards animal and all life. +“It is a fine day, let us go out and kill something!” cries the typical +male of certain races, instinctively. “There is a living thing, it will +die if it is not cared for,” says the average woman, almost equally +instinctively. It is true, that the woman will sacrifice as mercilessly, +as cruelly, the life of a hated rival or an enemy, as any male; but she +always knows what she is doing, and the value of the life she takes! +There is no light-hearted, careless enjoyment in the sacrifice of life +to the normal woman; her instinct, instructed by practical experience, +steps in to prevent it. She always knows what life costs; and that it is +more easy to destroy than create it. + +It is also true, that, from the loftiest standpoint, the condemnation +of war which has arisen in the advancing human spirit, is in no sense +related to any particular form of sex function. The man and the woman +alike, who with Isaiah on the hills of Palestine, or the Indian Buddha +under his bo-tree, have seen the essential unity of all sentient +life; and who therefore see in war but a symptom of that crude +disco-ordination of life on earth, not yet at one with itself, which +affects humanity in these early stages of its growth: and who are +compelled to regard as the ultimate goal of the race, though yet perhaps +far distant across the ridges of innumerable coming ages, that harmony +between all forms of conscious life, metaphorically prefigured by the +ancient Hebrew, when he cried, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb; and +the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion +and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them!”--to that +individual, whether man or woman, who has reached this standpoint, there +is no need for enlightenment from the instincts of the child-bearers of +society as such; their condemnation of war, rising not so much from the +fact that it is a wasteful destruction of human flesh, as that it is an +indication of the non-existence of that co-ordination, the harmony which +is summed up in the cry, “My little children, love one another.” + +But for the vast bulk of humanity, probably for generations to come, the +instinctive antagonism of the human child-bearer to reckless destruction +of that which she has at so much cost produced, will be necessary to +educate the race to any clear conception of the bestiality and insanity +of war. + +War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible +to the female an equal share in the control and governance of modern +national life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its +extinction will not be delayed much longer. + +It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men’s +bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour +and ardour of battle, but singly, and alone, with a three-in-the-morning +courage, shed our blood and face death that the battlefield may have +its food, a food more precious to us than our heart’s blood; it is we +especially, who in the domain of war, have our word to say, a word no +man can say for us. It is our intention to enter into the domain of +war and to labour there till in the course of generations we have +extinguished it. + +If today we claim all labour for our province, yet more especially do we +claim those fields in which the difference in the reproductive function +between man and woman may place male and female at a slightly different +angle with regard to certain phases of human life. + + + +Chapter V. Sex Differences. + +If we examine the physical phenomenon of sex as it manifests itself in +the human creature, we find, in the first stages of the individual’s +existence, no difference discernible, by any means we have at present at +our command, between those germs which are ultimately to become male or +female. Later, in the foetal life, at birth, and through infancy though +the organs of sex serve to distinguish the male from the female, there +is in the general structure and working of the organism little or +nothing to divide the sexes. + +Even when puberty is reached, with its enormous development of sexual +and reproductive activity modifying those parts of the organism +with which it is concerned, and producing certain secondary sexual +characteristics, there yet remains the major extent of the human +body and of physical function little, or not at all, affected by sex +modification. The eye, the ear, the sense of touch, the general organs +of nutrition and respiration and volition are in the main identical, +and often differ far more in persons of the same sex than in those of +opposite sexes; and even on the dissecting-table the tissues of the male +and female are often wholly indistinguishable. + +It is when we consider the reproductive organs themselves and their +forms of activity, and such parts of the organism modified directly +in relation to them, that a real and important difference is found +to exist, radical though absolutely complemental. It is exactly as we +approach the reproductive functions that the male and female bodies +differ; exactly as we recede from them that they become more and more +similar, and even absolutely identical. Taking the eye, perhaps the most +highly developed, complex organ in the body, and, if of an organ the +term may be allowed, the most intellectual organ of sense, we find it +remains the same in male and female in structure, in appearance, and +in function throughout life; while the breast, closely connected with +reproduction, though absolutely identical in both forms in infancy, +assumes a widely different organisation when reproductive activity is +actually concerned. + +When we turn to the psychic phase of human life an exactly analogous +phenomenon presents itself. The intelligence, emotions, and desires of +the human infant at birth differ not at all perceptibly, as its sex may +be male or female; and such psychic differences as appear to exist in +later childhood are undoubtedly very largely the result of artificial +training, forcing on the appearance of psychic sexual divergencies long +before they would tend spontaneously to appear; as where sports and +occupations are interdicted to young children on the ground of their +supposed sexual unfitness; as when an infant female is forcibly +prevented from climbing or shouting, and the infant male from amusing +himself with needle and thread or dolls. Even in the fully adult human, +and in spite of differences of training, the psychic activities over +a large extent of life appear to be absolutely identical. The male and +female brains acquire languages, solve mathematical problems, and master +scientific detail in a manner wholly indistinguishable: as illustrated +by the fact that in modern universities the papers sent in by male and +female candidates are as a rule absolutely identical in type. Placed in +like external conditions, their tastes and emotions, over a vast part of +the surface of life, are identical; and, in an immense number of those +cases where psychic sex differences appear to exist, subject to rigid +analysis they are found to be purely artificial creations, for, when +other races or classes are studied, they are found non-existent as +sexual characteristics; as when the female is supposed by ignorant +persons in modern European societies to have an inherent love for bright +colours and ornaments, not shared by the male; while experience of other +societies and past social conditions prove that it is as often the male +who has been even more desirous of attiring himself in bright raiment +and adorning himself with brilliant jewels; or as when, among certain +tribes of savages, the use of tobacco is supposed to be a peculiarly +female prerogative, while, in some modern societies, it is supposed +to have some relation to masculinity. (The savage male of today +when attired in his paint, feathers, cats’ tails and necklaces is an +immeasurably more ornamented and imposing figure than his female, even +when fully attired for a dance in beads and bangles: the Oriental +male has sometimes scarcely been able to walk under the weight of his +ornaments; and the males of Europe a couple of centuries ago, with their +powdered wigs, lace ruffles and cuffs, paste buckles, feathered cocked +hats, and patches were quite as ridiculous in their excess of adornment +as the complementary females of their own day, or the most parasitic +females of this. Both in the class and the individual, whether male or +female, an intense love of dress and meretricious external adornment is +almost invariably the concomitant and outcome of parasitism. Were the +parasite female class in our own societies today to pass away, French +fashions with their easeless and grotesque variations (shaped not for +use or beauty, but the attracting of attention) would die out. And the +extent to which any woman today, not herself belonging to the parasite +class and still labouring, attempts to follow afar off the fashions of +the parasite, may be taken generally as an almost certain indication +of the ease with which she would accept parasitism were its conditions +offered her. The tendency of the cultured and intellectually labouring +woman of today to adopt a more rational type of attire, less shaped to +attract attention to the individual than to confer comfort and abstain +from impeding activity, is often spoken of as an attempt on the part +of woman slavishly to imitate man. What is really taking place is, that +like causes are producing like effects on human creatures with common +characteristics.) + +But there remain certain psychic differences in attitude, on the part of +male and female as such, which are inherent and not artificial: and, +in the psychic human world, it is exactly as we approach the sphere +of sexual and reproductive activity, with those emotions and instincts +connected directly with sex and the reproduction of the race, that a +difference does appear. + +In the animal world all forms of psychic variations are found allying +themselves now with the male sex form, and then with the female. In the +insect and fish worlds, where the female forms are generally larger +and stronger than the male, the female is generally more pugnacious and +predatory than the male. Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form +is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem +very small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly +monogamous, the affection of the female for the male is so great that +she is said never to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over +and care for the young with extreme solicitude. The ostrich male form, +though perhaps larger than the female, shares with her the labour of +hatching the eggs, relieving the hen of her duty at a fixed hour daily: +and his care for the young when hatched is as tender as hers. Among +song-birds, in which the male and female forms are so alike as sometimes +to be indistinguishable, and which are also monogamous, the male and +female forms not only exhibit the same passionate affection for each +other (in the case of the South African cock-o-veet, they have one +answering love-song between them; the male sounding two or three notes +and the female completing it with two or three more), but they build the +nest together and rear the young with an equal devotion. In the case of +the little kapok bird of the Cape, a beautiful, white, fluffy round +nest is made by both out of the white down of a certain plant, and +immediately below the entrance to the cavity in which the little female +sits on the eggs is a small shelf or basket, in which the tiny male sits +to watch over and guard them. It is among certain orders of birds that +sex manifestations appear to assume their most harmonious and poetical +forms on earth. Among gallinaceous birds, on the other hand, where the +cock is much larger and more pugnacious than the female, and which are +polygamous, the cock does not court the female by song, but seizes her +by force, and shows little or no interest in his offspring, neither +sharing in the brooding nor feeding the young; and even at times seizing +any tempting morsel which the young or the hen may have discovered. + +Among mammals the male form tends to be slightly larger than the female, +though not always (the female whale, for instance, being larger than the +male); the male also tends to be more pugnacious and less careful of the +young; though to this rule also there are exceptions. In the case of +the South African mierkat, for instance, the female is generally more +combative and more difficult to tame than the male; and it is the +males who from the moment of birth watch over the young with the most +passionate and tender solicitude, keeping them warm under their persons, +carrying them to places of safety in their mouths, and feeding them till +full grown; and this they do not only for their own young, but to any +young who may be brought in contact with them. We have known a male +mierkat so assiduous in feeding young that were quite unrelated to +himself, taking to them every morsel of food given him, that we have +been compelled to shut him up in a room alone when feeding him, to +prevent his starving himself to death: the male mierkat thus exhibiting +exactly those psychic qualities which are generally regarded as +peculiarly feminine; the females, on the other hand, being far more +pugnacious towards each other than are the males. + +Among mammals generally, except the tendency to greater pugnacity shown +by the male towards other males, and the greater solicitude for the +young shown generally by the female form, but not always; the psychic +differences between the two sex forms are not great. Between the male +and female pointer as puppies, there is as little difference in mental +activity as in physical; and even when adult, on the hunting ground, +that great non-sexual field in which their highest mental and physical +activities are displayed, there is little or nothing which distinguishes +materially between the male and female; in method, manner, and quickness +they are alike; in devotion to man, they are psychically identical. (It +is often said the female dog is more intelligent than the male; but I +am almost inclined to doubt this, after long and close study of both +forms.) It is at the moment when the reproductive element comes fully +into play that similarity and identity cease. In the intensity of +initial sex instinct they are alike; the female will leap from windows, +climb walls, and almost endanger her life to reach the male who waits +for her, as readily as he will to gain her. It is when the bitch lies +with her six young drawing life from her breast, and gazing with wistful +and anguished solicitude at every hand stretched out to touch them, a +world of emotion concentrated on the sightless creatures, and a whole +body of new mental aptitudes brought into play in caring for them, it is +then that between her and the male who begot them, but cares nothing for +them, there does rise a psychic difference that is real and wide. Alike +in the sports of puppydom and the non-sexual activities of adult age; +alike in the possession of the initial sexual instinct which draws the +sex to the sex, the moment active sexual reproduction is concerned, +there is opened to the female a certain world of sensations and +experiences, from which her male companion is for ever excluded. + +So also is our human world: alike in the sports, and joys, and sorrows +of infancy; alike in the non-sexual labours of life; alike even in the +possession of that initial instinct which draws sex to sex, and which, +differing slightly in its forms of manifestation is of corresponding +intensity in both; the moment actual reproduction begins to take place, +the man and the woman enter spheres of sensation, perception, emotion, +desire, and knowledge which are not, and cannot be, absolutely +identical. Between the man who, in an instant of light-hearted +enjoyment, begets the infant (who may even beget it in a state of +half-drunken unconsciousness, and may easily know nothing of its +existence for months or years after it is born, or never at all; and who +under no circumstances can have any direct sensational knowledge of its +relation to himself) and the woman who bears it continuously for months +within her body, and who gives birth to it in pain, and who, if it is to +live, is compelled, or was in primitive times, to nourish it for +months from the blood of her own being--between these, there exists of +necessity, towards a limited but all-important body of human interests +and phenomena, a certain distinct psychic attitude. At this one point, +the two great halves of humanity stand confronting certain great +elements in human existence, from angles that are not identical. From +the moment the universal initial attraction of sex to sex becomes +incarnate in the first concrete sexual act till the developed offspring +attains maturity, no step in the reproductive journey, or in their +relation to their offspring, has been quite identical for the man and +the woman. And this divergence of experiences in human relations must +react on their attitude towards that particular body of human concerns +which directly is connected with the sexual reproduction of the race; +and, it is exactly in these fields of human activity, where sex as sex +is concerned, that woman as woman has a part to play which she cannot +resign into the hands of others. + +It may be truly said that in the laboratory, the designing-room, the +factory, the mart, the mathematician’s study, and in all fields of +purely abstract or impersonal labour, while the entrance of woman would +add to the net result of human labour in those fields, and though a +grave injustice is done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps +the only field she is fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman +has probably little or nothing to contribute in those fields that is +radically distinct from that which man might supply; there would be a +difference in quantity but probably none in kind, in the work done for +the race. + +But in those spheres of social activity, dealing especially with +certain relations between human creatures because of their diverse if +complementary relation to the production of human life, the sexes as +sexes have often each a part to play which the other cannot play for +them; have each a knowledge gained from phases of human experience, +which the other cannot supply; here woman as woman has something +radically distinct to contribute to the sum-total of human knowledge, +and her activity is of importance, not merely individually, but +collectively, and as a class. + +That demand, which today in all democratic self-governing countries is +being made by women, to be accorded their share in the electoral, and +ultimately in the legislative and executive duties of government, is +based on two grounds: the wider, and more important, that they find +nothing in the nature of their sex-function which exonerates them, +as human beings, from their obligation to take part in the labours of +guidance and government in their state: the narrower, but yet important +ground, that, in as far as in one direction, i.e., in the special form +of their sex function takes, they do differ from the male, they, in so +far, form a class and are bound to represent the interests of, and to +give the state the benefit of, the insight of their class, in certain +directions. + +Those persons who imagine that the balance of great political parties +in almost any society would be seriously changed by the admission of its +women in public functions are undoubtedly wholly wrong. The fundamental +division of humans into those inclined to hold by the past and defend +whatever is, and those hopeful of the future and inclined to introduce +change, would probably be found to exist in much the same proportion +were the males or the females of any given society compared: and the +males and females of each class will in the main share the faults, the +virtues, and the prejudices of their class. The individuals may lose by +being excluded on the ground of sex from a share of public labour, and +by being robbed of a portion of their lawful individual weight in their +own society; and the society as a whole may lose by having a smaller +number to select its chosen labourers from; yet, undoubtedly, on the +mass of social, political, and international questions, the conclusions +arrived at by one sex would be exactly those arrived at by the other. + +Were a body of humans elected to adjudicate upon Greek accents, or to +pass a decision on the relative fineness of woollens and linens, the +form of sex of the persons composing it would probably have no bearing +on the result; there is no rational ground for supposing that, on a +question of Greek accents or the thickness of cloths, equally instructed +males and females would differ. Here sex plays no part. The experience +and instructedness of the individuals would tell: their sexual +attributes would be indifferent. + +But there are points, comparatively small, even very small, in number, +yet of vital importance to human life, in which sex does play a part. + +It is not a matter of indifference whether the body called to adjudicate +upon the questions, whether the temporary sale of the female body for +sexual purposes shall or shall not be a form of traffic encouraged +and recognised by the state; or whether one law shall exist for the +licentious human female and another for the licentious human male; +whether the claim of the female to the offspring she bears shall or +shall not equal that of the male who begets it; whether an act of +infidelity on the part of the male shall or shall not terminate the +contract which binds his female companion to him, as completely as an +act of infidelity on her part would terminate her claim on him; it is +not a matter of indifference whether a body elected to adjudicate on +such points as these consists of males solely, or females solely, or of +both combined. As it consists of one, or the other, or of both, so not +only will the answers vary, but, in some cases, will they be completely +diverse. Here we come into that very narrow, but important, region, +where sex as sex manifestly plays its part; where the male as male +and the female as female have each their body of perceptions and +experiences, which they do not hold in common; here one sex cannot +adequately represent the other. It is here that each sexual part has +something radically distinct to contribute to the wisdom of the race. + +We, today, take all labour for our province! We seek to enter the +non-sexual fields of intellectual or physical toil, because we are +unable to see today, with regard to them, any dividing wall raised by +sex which excludes us from them. We are yet equally determined to enter +those in which sex difference does play its part, because it is here +that woman, the bearer of the race, must stand side by side with man, +the begetter; if a completed human wisdom, an insight that misses no +aspect of human life, and an activity that is in harmony with the entire +knowledge and the entire instinct of the entire human race, is to exist. +It is here that the man cannot act for the woman nor the woman for the +man; but both must interact. It is here that each sexual half of the +race, so closely and indistinguishably blended elsewhere, has its own +distinct contribution to make to the sum total of human knowledge and +human wisdom. Neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without +the woman, the completed human intelligence. + +Therefore;--We claim, today, all labour for our province! Those large +fields in which it would appear sex plays no part, and equally those +smaller in which it plays a part. + + + +Chapter VI. Certain Objections. + +It has been stated sometimes, though more often implicitly than in any +direct or logical form, (this statement being one it is not easy to make +definitely without its reducing itself to nullity!) that woman should +seek no fields of labour in the new world of social conditions that +is arising about us, as she has still her function as child-bearer: a +labour which, by her own showing, is arduous and dangerous, though she +may love it as a soldier loves his battlefield; and that woman should +perform her sex functions only, allowing man or the state to support +her, even when she is only potentially a child-bearer and bears no +children. (Such a scheme, as has before been stated, was actually put +forward by a literary man in England some years ago: but he had the +sense to state that it should apply only to women of the upper classes, +the mass of labouring women, who form the vast bulk of the English women +of the present day, being left to their ill-paid drudgery and their +child-bearing as well!) + +There is some difficulty in replying to a theorist so wholly delusive. +Not only is he to be met by all the arguments against parasitism of +class or race; but, at the present day, when probably much more than +half the world’s most laborious and ill-paid labour is still performed +by women, from tea pickers and cocoa tenders in India and the islands, +to the washerwomen, cooks, and drudging labouring men’s wives, who +in addition to the sternest and most unending toil, throw in their +child-bearing as a little addition; and when, in some civilised +countries women exceed the males in numbers by one million, so +that there would still be one million females for whom there was no +legitimate sexual outlet, though each male in the nation supported a +female, it is somewhat difficult to reply with gravity to the assertion, +“Let Woman be content to be the ‘Divine Child-bearer,’ and ask no more.” + +Were it worth replying gravely to so idle a theorist, we might +answer:--Through all the ages of the past, when, with heavy womb and +hard labour-worn hands, we physically toiled beside man, bearing up by +the labour of our bodies the world about us, it was never suggested to +us, “You, the child-bearers of the race, have in that one function a +labour that equals all others combined; therefore, toil no more in other +directions, we pray of you; neither plant, nor build, nor bend over +the grindstone; nor far into the night, while we sleep, sit weaving the +clothing we and our children are to wear! Leave it to us, to plant, to +reap, to weave, to work, to toil for you, O sacred child-bearer! Work no +more; every man of the race will work for you!” This cry in all the grim +ages of our past toil we never heard. + +And today, when the lofty theorist, who tonight stands before the +drawing-room fire in spotless shirtfront and perfectly fitting clothes, +and declaims upon the amplitude of woman’s work in life as child-bearer, +and the mighty value of that labour which exceeds all other, making +it unnecessary for her to share man’s grosser and lower toils: is it +certain he always in practical life remembers his theory? When waking +tomorrow morning, he finds that the elderly house drudge, who rises +at dawn while he yet sleeps to make his tea and clean his boots, has +brought his tea late, and polished his boots ill; may he not even +sharply condemn her, and assure her she will have to leave unless +she works harder and rises earlier? Does he exclaim to her, “Divine +child-bearer! Potential mother of the race! Why should you clean my +boots or bring up my tea, while I lie warm in bed? Is it not enough you +should have the holy and mysterious power of bringing the race to life? +Let that content you. Henceforth I shall get up at dawn and make my own +tea and clean my own boots, and pay you just the same!” Or, should his +landlady, now about to give birth to her ninth child, send him up a +poorly-cooked dinner or forget to bring up his scuttle of coals, does he +send for her and thus apostrophise the astonished matron: “Child-bearer +of the race! Producer of men! Cannot you be contented with so noble and +lofty a function in life without toiling and moiling? Why carry up heavy +coal-scuttles from the cellar and bend over hot fires, wearing out nerve +and brain and muscle that should be reserved for higher duties? We, we, +the men of the race, will perform its mean, its sordid, its grinding +toil! For woman is beauty, peace, repose! Your function is to give life, +not to support it by labour. The Mother, the Mother! How wonderful it +sounds! Toil no more! Rest is for you; labour and drudgery for +us!” Would he not rather assure her that, unless she laboured more +assiduously and sternly, she would lose his custom and so be unable to +pay her month’s rent; and perhaps so, with children and an invalid or +drunken husband whom she supports, be turned out into the streets? For, +it is remarkable, that, with theorists of this class, it is not toil, or +the amount of toil, crushing alike to brain and body, which the female +undertakes that is objected to; it is the form and the amount of the +reward. It is not the hand-labouring woman, even in his own society, +worn out and prematurely aged at forty with grinding domestic toil, that +has no beginning and knows no end-- + + “Man’s work is from sun to sun, + But the woman’s work is never done”-- + +it is not the haggard, work-crushed woman and mother who irons his +shirts, or the potential mother who destroys health and youth in +the sweater’s den where she sews the garments in which he appears so +radiantly in the drawing-room which disturbs him. It is the thought +of the woman-doctor with an income of some hundreds a year, who drives +round in her carriage to see her patients, or receives them in her +consulting-rooms, and who spends the evening smoking and reading before +her study fire or receiving her guests; it is the thought of the woman +who, as legislator, may loll for perhaps six hours of the day on the +padded seat of legislative bench, relieving the tedium now and then by +a turn in the billiard- or refreshment-room, when she is not needed to +vote or speak; it is the thought of the woman as Greek professor, with +three or four hundred a year, who gives half a dozen lectures a week, +and has leisure to enjoy the society of her husband and children, and +to devote to her own study and life of thought; it is she who wrings his +heart. It is not the woman, who, on hands and knees, at tenpence a day, +scrubs the floors of the public buildings, or private dwellings, that +fills him with anguish for womanhood: that somewhat quadrupedal posture +is for him truly feminine, and does not interfere with his ideal of the +mother and child-bearer; and that, in some other man’s house, or perhaps +his own, while he and the wife he keeps for his pleasures are visiting +concert or entertainment, some weary woman paces till far into the night +bearing with aching back and tired head the fretful, teething child +he brought into the world, for a pittance of twenty or thirty pounds +a year, does not distress him. But that the same woman by work in an +office should earn one hundred and fifty pounds, be able to have a +comfortable home of her own, and her evening free for study or pleasure, +distresses him deeply. It is not the labour, or the amount of labour, +so much as the amount of reward that interferes with his ideal of the +eternal womanly; he is as a rule quite contented that the women of the +race should labour for him, whether as tea-pickers or washerwomen, or +toilers for the children he brings into the world, provided the reward +they receive is not large, nor in such fields as he might himself at any +time desire to enter. + +When master and ass, drawing a heavy burden between them, have climbed +a steep mountain range together; clambering over sharp rocks and across +sliding gravel where no water is, and herbage is scant; if, when they +were come out on the top of the mountain, and before them stretch broad, +green lands, and through wide half-open gates they catch the glimpse of +trees waving, and there comes the sound of running waters, if then, the +master should say to his ass, “Good beast of mine, lie down! I can push +the whole burden myself now: lie down here; lie down, my creature; you +have toiled enough; I will go on alone!” then it might be even the beast +would whisper (with that glimpse through the swinging gates of the green +fields beyond)--“Good master, we two have climbed this mighty mountain +together, and the stones have cut my hoofs as they cut your feet. +Perhaps, if when we were at the foot you had found out that the burden +was two heavy for me, and had then said to me, ‘Lie down, my beastie; +I will carry on the burden alone; lie down and rest!’ I might then have +listened. But now, just here, where I see the gates swinging open, a +smooth road, and green fields before us, I think I shall go on a little +farther. We two have climbed together; maybe we shall go on yet, side by +side.” + +For the heart of labouring womanhood cries out today to the man who +would suggest she need not seek new fields of labour, that child-bearing +is enough for her share in life’s labour, “Do you dare say to us +now, that we are fit to do nothing but child-bear, that when that is +performed our powers are exhausted? To us, who yet through all the ages +of the past, when child-bearing was persistent and incessant, regarded +it hardly as a toil, but rather as the reward of labour; has our right +hand lost its cunning and our heart its strength, that today, when human +labour is easier and humanity’s work grows fairer, you say to us, ‘You +can do nothing now but child-bear’? Do you dare to say this, to us, when +the upward path of the race has been watered by the sweat of our brow, +and the sides of the road by which humanity has climbed are whitened on +either hand by the bones of the womanhood that has fallen there, toiling +beside man? Do you dare say this, to us, when even today the food you +eat, the clothes you wear, the comfort you enjoy, is largely given you +by the unending muscular toil of woman?” + +As the women of old planted and reaped and ground the grain that the +children they bore might eat; as the maidens of old spun that they might +make linen for their households and obtain the right to bear men; so, +though we bend no more over grindstones, or labour in the fields, +or weave by hand, it is our intention to enter all the new fields of +labour, that we also may have the power and right to bring men into the +world. It is our faith that the day comes in which not only shall no man +dare to say, “It is enough portion for a woman in life that she bear +a child,” but when it will rather be said, “What noble labour has that +woman performed, that she should have the privilege of bringing a man or +woman child into the world?” + +But, it has also been objected, “What, and if the female half of +humanity, though able, in addition to the exercise of its reproductive +functions, to bear its share in the new fields of social labour as it +did in the old, be yet in certain directions a less productive labourer +than the male? What if, in the main, the result of the labour of the two +halves of humanity should not be found to be exactly equal?” + +To this it may be answered, that it is within the range of possibility +that, mysteriously co-ordinated with the male reproductive function in +the human, there may also be in some directions a tendency to possess +gifts for labour useful and beneficial to the race in the stage of +growth it has now reached, in excess of those possessed by the female. +We see no reason why this should be so, and, in the present state of our +knowledge, this is a point on which no sane person would dogmatise; but +it is possible! It may, on the other hand be, that, taken in the bulk, +when all the branches of productive labour be considered, as the ages +pass, the value of the labour of the two halves of humanity will be +found so identical and so closely to balance, that no superiority can +possibly be asserted of either, as the result of the closest analysis. +This also is possible. + +But, it may also be, that, when the bulk and sum-total of human +activities is surveyed in future ages, it will be found that the value +of the labour of the female in the world that is rising about us, has +exceeded in quality or in quantity that of the male. We see no reason +either, why this should be; there is nothing in the nature of the +reproductive function in the female human which of necessity implies +such superiority. + +Yet it may be, that, with the smaller general bulk and the muscular +fineness, and the preponderance of brain and nervous system in net bulk +over the fleshy and osseous parts of the organism, which generally, +though by no means always, characterises the female as distinguished +from the male of the human species, there do go mental qualities which +will peculiarly fit her for the labours of the future. It may be, that +her lesser possession of the mere muscular and osseous strength, which +were the elements of primary importance and which gave dominance in one +stage of human growth, and which placed woman at a social disadvantage +as compared with her companion, will, under new conditions of life, in +which the value of crude mechanical strength as distinguished from high +vitality and strong nervous activity is passing away, prove as largely +to her advantage, as his muscular bulk and strength in the past proved +to the male. It is quite possible, in the new world which is arising +about us, that the type of human most useful to society and best fitted +for its future conditions, and who will excel in the most numerous forms +of activity, will be, not merely the muscularly powerful and bulky, but +the highly versatile, active, vital, adaptive, sensitive, physically +fine-drawn type; and, as that type, though, like the muscularly heavy +and powerful, by no means peculiar to and confined to one sex, is yet +rather more commonly found in conjunction with a female organism, it is +quite possible that, taken in the bulk and on the whole, the female half +of humanity may, by virtue of its structural adaptions, be found most +fitted for the bulk of human labours in the future! + +As with individuals and races, so also with sexes, changed social +conditions may render exactly those subtile qualities, which in one +social state were a disadvantage, of the highest social advantage in +another. + +The skilled diplomatist or politician, so powerful in his own element, +on board ship during a storm becomes at once of less general value or +consideration than the meanest sailor who can reef a sail or guide a +wheel; and, were we to be reduced again suddenly to a state of nature, +a company of highly civilised men and women would at once, as we have +before remarked, find their social value completely inverted; landed on +a desert shore, unarmed and naked, to encounter wild beasts and savages, +and to combat nature for food, the primitive scale of human values would +at once reassert itself. It would not then be the mighty financier, the +learned judge, or great poet and scholar who would be sought after, but +the thickest-headed navvy who could throw a stone so exactly that he +brought down a bird, and who could in a day raise a wall which would +shelter the group; and the man so powerful that he could surely strike +an enemy or wild beast dead with his club, would at once be objects of +social regard and attain individual eminence, and perhaps dominance. It +would not be the skilled dancer, who in one night in a civilised state +earns her hundreds, nor yet the fragile clinging beauty, but the girl +of the broad back and the strong limb, who could collect wood and carry +water, who would be the much considered and much sought after female in +such a community. Even in the animal world, there is the same inversion +in values, according as the external conditions vary. The lion, while +ruling over every other creature in his primitive wilds, by right of his +untamable ferocity, size, and rapacity, is yet bound to become a prey +to destruction and extermination when he comes into contact with the +new condition brought by man; while the wild dog, so immeasurably +his inferior in size and ferocity, is tamed, survives and multiplies, +exactly because he has been driven by his smaller structure and lesser +physical force to develop those social instincts and those forms of +intelligence which make him amenable to the new condition of life and +valuable in them. The same inversion in the value of qualities may be +traced in the history of human species. The Jews, whose history has been +one long story of oppression at the hands of more muscular, physically +powerful and pugilistic peoples; whom we find first making bricks under +the lash of the Egyptian, and later hanging his harp as an exile among +the willow-trees of Babylon; who, for eighteen hundred years, has been +trampled, tortured, and despised beneath the feet of the more physically +powerful and pugilistic, but not more vital, keen, intelligent, or +persistent races of Europe; has, today, by the slow turning of the +wheel of life, come uppermost. The Egyptian task-master and warrior +have passed; what the Babylonian was we know no more, save for a few mud +tablets and rock inscriptions recording the martial victories; but the +once captive Jew we see today in every city and every street; until at +last, the descendants of those men who spat when they spoke his +name, and forcibly drew his teeth to extract his money from him, wait +patiently behind each other for admission to his offices and palaces; +while nobles solicit his daughters in marriage and kings are proud to be +summoned to his table in hope of golden crumbs, and great questions +of peace and war are often held balanced in the hand of one little +asthmatic Jew. After long ages of disgrace and pariahism, the time has +come, whether for good or for evil, when just those qualities which the +Jew possesses and which subtilely distinguish him from others, are in +demand; while those he has not are sinking into disuse; exactly that +domination of the reflective faculties over the combative, which once +made him slave, also saved him from becoming extinct in wars; and the +intellectual quickness, the far-sighted keenness, the persistent mental +activity and self-control, which could not in those ages save him from +degradation or compensate for his lack of bone and muscle and combative +instinct, are the very qualities the modern world demands and crowns. +The day of Goliath with his club and his oaths is fast passing, and the +day of David with his harp and skilfully constructed sling is coming +near and yet nearer. + +The qualities which give an animal, a race, or an individual, a higher +utility or social dominance must always be influenced by any change in +the environment. As the wheel of life slowly revolves, that which was +lowest comes continually uppermost, and that which was dominant becomes +subservient. + +It is possible, that women, after countless ages, during which that +smaller relative development in weight and muscularity which is incident +to almost all females which suckle their young, and that lesser desire +for pugilism inherent in almost all females who bear their young alive, +rendered her lacking in the two qualities which made for individual +dominance in her societies, may yet, in the future, discover that those +changes in human conditions, which have done away with the primary +necessity for muscular force and pugilistic arts, have also inverted her +place in the scale of social values. + +It is possible, that the human female, like the Jew, the male of that +type farthest removed from the dominant male type of the past, may in +the future find, that, so far from those qualities which, in an earlier +condition, lessened her social value and power of labour, continuing to +do so, they will increase it. That the delicacy of hand, lightness of +structure which were fatal when the dominant labour of life was to +wield a battle-axe or move a weight, may be no restraint but even an +assistance in the intellectual and more delicate mechanical fields of +labour; that the preponderance of nervous and cerebral over muscular +material, and the tendency towards preservative and creative activity +over pugilistic and destructive, so far from shutting her off from the +most important fields of human toil, may increase her fitness for them! +We have no certain proof that it is so at present; but, if woman’s +long years of servitude and physical subjection, and her experience as +child-bearer and protector of infancy, should, in any way, be found +in the future to have endowed her, as a kind of secondary sexual +characteristic, with any additional strength of social instinct, +with any exceptional width of human sympathy and any instinctive +comprehension; then, it is not merely possible, but certain, that, in +the ages that are coming, in which the labour of the human race will be +not mainly destructive but conservative, in which the building up and +developing of humanity, and not continually the inter-destruction of +part by part, will be the dominant activity of the race, that woman as +woman, and by right of that wherein she differs from the male, will have +an all-important part to play in the activity of the race. + +The matter is one of curious and subtle interest, but what practically +concerns the human race is, not which of the two sexual halves which +must always coexist is best fitted to excel in certain human labours in +this or that direction, at this or that time, nor even which has most +to contribute to the sum-total of human activities; but it is this, that +every individual unit humanity contains, irrespective of race, sex, or +type, should find exactly that field of labour which may most contribute +to its development, happiness, and health, and in which its peculiar +faculties and gifts shall be most effectively and beneficially exerted +for its fellows. + +It matters nothing, and less than nothing, to us as women, whether, of +those children we bring into the world, our sons should excel in virtue, +intelligence, and activity, our daughters, or our daughters our sons; +so that, in each child we bring to life, not one potentiality shall be +lost, nor squandered on a lesser when it might have been expended on a +higher and more beneficent task. So that not one desirable faculty +of the marvellous creatures we suffer to bring into existence be left +uncultivated, to us, as women, it matters nothing and less than nothing, +which sex type excels in action, in knowledge, or in virtue, so both +attain their best. There is one thing only on earth, as precious to +woman as the daughter who springs from her body--it is the son. There +is one thing only dearer to the woman than herself--it is the man. As no +sane human concerns himself as to whether the right or left ventricle +of his heart works most satisfactorily, or is most essential to his +well-being, so both be perfect in health and activity; as no sane woman +distresses herself lest her right breast should not excel the left in +beauty and use; so no sane man or woman questions anxiously over the +relative perfections of male and female. In love there is no first nor +last. What we request of life is that the tools should be given to his +hand or hers who can best handle them; that the least efficient +should not be forced into the place of the more efficient, and that +an artificially drawn line should never repress the activities of the +individual creature, which we as women bring into the world. + +But it may also be said to us, “What, and if, all your dreams and hopes +for woman and the future of the race be based on air? What, and if, +desirable as it is that woman should not become practically dependent on +her sexual function alone, and should play at least as great a part in +the productive labour of the race in the future as she played in that of +the past--what, if woman cannot take the same vast share in the complex +and largely mental labour fields of the future, as in the largely +physical fields of the past? What, and if, in spite of all her effort +and sacrifice to attain this end, exactly now and when the labour of +civilised societies becomes mental rather than mechanical, woman be +found wanting?” + +In Swiss valleys today the traveller comes sometimes on the figure of +a solitary woman climbing the mountain-side, on her broad shoulders a +mighty burden of fodder or manure she is bearing up for the cattle, or +to some patch of cultivated land. Steady, unshrinking eyes look out +at you from beneath the deeply seamed forehead, and a strand of hair, +perhaps almost as white as the mountain snows on the peaks above, +escapes from under the edge of the binding handkerchief. The face is +seamed and seared with the stern marks of toil and endurance, as the +mountain-side is with marks of storm and avalanche. It is the face of +one who has brought men into the world in labour and sorrow, and toiled +mightily to sustain them; and dead must be the mind to the phases of +human existence, who does not see in that toilworn figure one of the +mighty pillars, which have in the long ages of the past sustained the +life of humanity on earth, and made possible its later development; and +much must the tinsel of life have dazzled him, who fails to mark it with +reverence and, metaphorically, to bow his head before it--the type of +the mighty labouring woman who has built up life. + +But, it may be said, what if, in the ages to come, it should never again +be possible for any man to stand bowed with the same respect in the +presence of any other of earth’s mighty toilers, who should also be +mother and woman? What, if she, who could combine motherhood with the +most unending muscular toil, will fall flaccid and helpless where the +labour becomes mental? What if, struggle as she will, she can become +nothing in the future but the pet pug-dog of the race, lying on its +sofa, or the Italian greyhound, shivering in its silken coat? What +if woman, in spite of her most earnest aspirations and determined +struggles, be destined to failure in the new world that is rising +because of inherent mental incapacity? + +There are many replies which may be made to such a suggestion. It is +often said with truth, that the ordinary occupations of woman in the +past and present, and in all classes of society in which she is not +parasitic, do demand, and have always demanded, a very high versatility +and mental activity, as well as physical: that the mediaeval baron’s +wife who guided her large household probably had to expend far more pure +intellect in doing so than the baron in his hunting and fighting; that +the wife of the city accountant probably expends today more reason, +imagination, forethought, and memory on the management of her small +household, than he in his far simpler, monotonous arithmetical toil; +that, as there is no cause for supposing that the tailor or shoemaker +needs less intellect in his calling than the soldier or prize-fighter, +so there is nothing to suggest that, in the past, woman has not expended +as much pure intellect in the mass of her callings as the man in his; +while in those highly specialised intellectual occupations, in which +long and uninterrupted training tending to one point is necessary, +such as the liberal professions and arts, that, although woman has +practically been excluded from the requisite training, and the freedom +to place herself in the positions in which they can be pursued, that +yet, by force of innate genius and gifts in such directions, she has +continually broken through the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and +again and again taken her place beside man in those fields of labour; +showing thereby not merely aptitude but passionate and determined +inclination in those directions. With equal truth, it is often remarked +that, when as an independent hereditary sovereign, woman has been placed +in the only position in which she has ever been able freely and fully +to express her own individuality, and though selected at random by fate +from the mass of women, by the mere accident of birth or marriage, she +has shown in a large percentage of cases that the female has the power +to command, organise, and succeed in one of the most exacting and +complex of human employments, the government of nations; that from the +days of Amalasontha to Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth of England, and +Catharine of Russia, women have not failed to grasp the large impersonal +aspects of life, and successfully and powerfully to control them, when +placed in the supreme position in which it was demanded. It may also +be stated, and is sometimes, with so much iteration as to become almost +wearisome, that women’s adequacy in the modern fields of intellectual or +skilled manual labour is no more today an open matter for debate, than +the number of modern women who, as senior wranglers, doctors, &c., +have already successfully entered the new fields, and the high standard +attained by women in all university examinations to which they are +admitted, and their universal success in the administration of parochial +matters, wherever they have been allowed to share it, proves their +intellectual and moral fitness for the new forms of labour. + +All these statements are certainly interesting, and may be unanswerable. +And yet--if the truth be told, it is not ultimately on these grounds +that many of us base our hope and our certitude with regard to the +future of woman. Our conviction as to the plenitude of her powers for +the adequate performance of lofty labours in these new fields, springs +not at all from a categorical enumeration of the attainments or +performances of individual women or bodies of women in the past or +present; it has another source. + +There was a bird’s egg once, picked up by chance upon the ground, and +those who found it bore it home and placed it under a barn-door fowl. +And in time the chick bred out, and those who had found it chained it by +the leg to a log, lest it should stray and be lost. And by and by they +gathered round it, and speculated as to what the bird might be. One +said, “It is surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we +took it to the water it would swim and gabble.” But another said, “It +has no webs to its feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose +it will scratch and cackle with the others on the dung-heap.” But a +third speculated, “Look now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, +and can crack nuts!” But a fourth said, “No, but look at its wings; +perhaps it is a bird of great flight.” But several cried, “Nonsense! +No one has ever seen it fly! Why should it fly? Can you suppose that +a thing can do a thing which no one has ever seen it do?” And the +bird--the bird--with its leg chained close to the log, preened its wing. +So they sat about it, speculating, and discussing it: and one said +this, and another that. And all the while as they talked the bird sat +motionless, with its gaze fixed on the clear, blue sky above it. And one +said, “Suppose we let the creature loose to see what it will do?”--and +the bird shivered. But the others cried, “It is too valuable; it might +get lost. If it were to try to fly it might fall down and break its +neck.” And the bird, with its foot chained to the log, sat looking +upward into the clear blue sky; the sky, in which it had never been--for +the bird--the bird, knew what it would do--because it was an eaglet! + +There is one woman known to many of us, as each human creature knows but +one on earth; and it is upon our knowledge of that woman that we base +our certitude. + +For those who do not know her, and have not this ground, it is probably +profitable and necessary that they painfully collect isolated facts and +then speculate upon them, and base whatever views they should form upon +these collections. It might even be profitable that they should form no +definite opinions at all, but wait till the ages of practical experience +have put doubt to rest. For those of us who have a ground of knowledge +which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to +act fearlessly than to argue. + +Finally, it may be objected to the entrance of woman to the new fields +of labour, and in effect it is often said--“What, and if, all you have +sought be granted you--if it be fully agreed that woman’s ancient fields +of toil are slipping from her, and that, if she do not find new, +she must fall into a state of sexual parasitism, dependent on her +reproductive functions alone; and granted, that, doing this, she must +degenerate, and that from her degeneration must arise the degeneration +and arrest of development of the males as well as of the females of her +race; and granting also, fully, that in the past woman has borne one +full half, and often more than one half, of the weight of the productive +labours of her societies, in addition to child-bearing; and allowing +more fully that she may be as well able to sustain her share in the +intellectual labours of the future as in the more mechanical labours of +the past; granting all this, may there not be one aspect of the question +left out of consideration which may reverse all conclusions as to the +desirability, and the human good to be attained by woman’s enlarged +freedom and her entering into the new fields of toil? What if, the +increased culture and mental activity of woman necessary for her +entrance into the new fields, however desirable in other ways for +herself and the race, should result in a diminution, or in an absolute +abolition of the sexual attraction and affection, which in all ages of +the past has bound the two halves of humanity together? What if, though +the stern and unlovely manual labours of the past have never affected +her attractiveness for the male of her own society, nor his for her; +yet the performance by woman of intellectual labours, or complex and +interesting manual labour, and her increased intelligence and width, +should render the male objectionable to her, and the woman undesirable +to the male; so that the very race itself might become extinct through +the dearth of sexual affection? What, and if, the woman ceases to value +the son she bears, and to feel desire for and tenderness to the man who +begets him; and the man to value and desire the woman and her offspring? +Would not such a result exceed, or at least equal, in its evil to +humanity, anything which could result from the degeneration and +parasitism of woman? Would it not be well, if there exist any +possibility of this danger, that woman, however conscious that she can +perform social labour as nobly and successfully under the new conditions +of life as the old, should yet consciously, and deliberately, with her +eyes open, sink into a state of pure intellectual torpor, with all its +attendant evils, rather than face the more irreparable loss which her +development and the exercise of her gifts might entail? Would it not be +well she should deliberately determine, as the lesser of two evils, +to dwarf herself and limit her activities and the expansion of her +faculties, rather than that any risk should be run of the bond of desire +and emotion between the two sexual halves of humanity being severed? If +the race is to decay and become extinct on earth, might it not as well +be through the parasitism and decay of woman, as through the decay of +the sexual instinct?” + +It is not easy to reply with rationality, or even gravity, to a +supposition, which appears to be based on the conception that a sudden +and entire subversion of the deepest of those elements on which human, +and even animal, life on the globe is based, is possible from so +inadequate a cause: and it might well be passed silently, were it not +that, under some form or other, this argument frequently recurs, now +in a more rational and then in a more irrational form; constituting +sometimes an objection in even moderately intelligent minds, to the +entrance of woman into the new fields of labour. + +It must be at once frankly admitted that, were there the smallest +possible danger in this direction, the sooner woman laid aside all +endeavour in the direction of increased knowledge and the attainment of +new fields of activity, the better for herself and for the race. + +When one considers the part which sexual attraction plays in the order +of sentient life on the globe, from the almost unconscious attractions +which draw amoeboid globule to amoeboid globule, on through the endless +progressive forms of life; till in monogamous birds it expresses itself +in song and complex courtship and sometimes in the life-long conjugal +affection of mates; and which in the human race itself, passing through +various forms, from the imperative but almost purely physical attraction +of savage male and female for each other, till in the highly developed +male and female it assumes its aesthetic and intellectual but not less +imperative form, couching itself in the songs of poet, and the sometimes +deathless fidelity of richly developed man and woman to each other, we +find it not only everywhere, but forming the very groundwork on which is +based sentient existence; never eradicable, though infinitely varied +in its external forms of expression. When we consider that in the human +world, from the battles and dances of savages to the intrigues and +entertainments of modern Courts and palaces, the attraction of man and +woman for each other has played an unending part; and, that the most +fierce ascetic religious enthusiasm through the ages, the flagellations +and starvations in endless nunneries and monasteries, have never been +able to extirpate nor seriously to weaken for one moment the master +dominance of this emotion; that the lowest and most brutal ignorance, +and the highest intellectual culture leave mankind, equally, though in +different forms, amenable to its mastery; that, whether in the brutal +guffaw of sex laughter which rings across the drinking bars of our +modern cities, and rises from the comfortable armchairs in fashionable +clubs; or in the poet’s dreams, and the noblest conjugal relations of +men and women linked together for life, it plays still today on earth +the vast part it played when hoary monsters ploughed after each other +through Silurian slime, and that still it forms as ever the warp on +which in the loom of human life the web is woven, and runs as a thread +never absent through every design and pattern which constitutes the +individual existence on earth, it appears not merely as ineradicable; +but it is inconceivable to suppose that that attraction of sex towards +sex, which, with hunger and thirst, lie, as the triune instincts, at +the base of animal life on earth, should ever be exterminable by the +comparatively superficial changes resulting from the performance of this +or that form of labour, or the little more or less of knowledge in one +direction or another. + +That the female who drives steam-driven looms, producing scores of yards +of linen in a day, should therefore desire less the fellowship of her +corresponding male than had she toiled at a spinning-wheel with hand +and foot to produce one yard; that the male should desire less of the +companionship of the woman who spends the morning in doctoring babies in +her consulting-room, according to the formularies of the pharmacopoeia, +than she who of old spent it on the hillside collecting simples for +remedies; that the woman who paints a modern picture or designs a modern +vase should be less lovable by man, than her ancestor who shaped the +first primitive pot and ornamented it with zigzag patterns was to the +man of her day and age; that the woman who contributes to the support +of her family by giving legal opinions will less desire motherhood and +wifehood than she who in the past contributed to the support of +her household by bending on hands and knees over her grindstone, or +scrubbing floors, and that the former should be less valued by man than +the latter--these are suppositions which it is difficult to regard as +consonant with any knowledge of human nature and the laws by which it is +dominated. + +On the other hand, if it be supposed that the possession of wealth or +the means of earning it makes the human female objectionable to the +male, all history and all daily experience negates it. The eager hunt +for heiresses in all ages and social conditions, make it obvious +that the human male has a strong tendency to value the female who can +contribute to the family expenditure; and the case is yet, we believe, +unrecorded of a male who, attracted to a female, becomes averse to her +on finding she has material good. The female doctor or lawyer earning a +thousand a year will always, and today certainly does, find more suitors +than had she remained a governess or cook, labouring as hard, earning +thirty pounds. + +While, if the statement that the female entering on new fields of labour +will cease to be lovable to the male be based on the fact that she will +then be free, all history and all human experience yet more negates its +truth. The study of all races in all ages, proves that the greater the +freedom of woman in any society, the higher the sexual value put upon +her by the males of that society. The three squaws who walk behind the +Indian, and whom he has captured in battle or bought for a few axes or +lengths of tobacco, and over whom he exercises the despotic right of +life and death, are probably all three of infinitesimal value in his +eyes, compared with the value of his single, free wife to one of our +ancient, monogamous German ancestors; while the hundred wives and +concubines purchased by a Turkish pasha have probably not even an +approximate value in his eyes, when compared with the value which +thousands of modern European males set upon the one comparatively free +woman, whom they may have won, often only after a long and tedious +courtship. + +So axiomatic is the statement that the value of the female to the male +varies as her freedom, that, given an account of any human society in +which the individual female is highly valued, it will be perfectly safe +to infer the comparative social freedom of woman; and, given a statement +as to the high degree of freedom of woman in a society, it will be safe +to infer the great sexual value of the individual woman to man. + +Finally, if the suggestion, that men and women will cease to be +attractive to one another if women enter modern fields of labour, be +based on the fact that her doing so may increase her intelligence and +enlarge her intellectual horizon, it must be replied that the whole +trend of human history absolutely negates the supposition. There is +absolutely no ground for the assumption that increased intelligence and +intellectual power diminishes sexual emotion in the human creature of +either sex. The ignorant savage, whether in ancient or modern societies, +who violates and then clubs a female into submission, may be dominated, +and is, by sex emotions of a certain class; but not less dominated +have been the most cultured, powerful, and highly differentiated male +intelligences that the race has produced. A Mill, a Shelley, a Goethe, +a Schiller, a Pericles, have not been more noted for vast intellectual +powers, than for the depth and intensity of their sexual emotions. And, +if possible, with the human female, the relation between intensity of +sexual emotion and high intellectual gifts has been yet closer. The life +of a Sophia Kovalevsky, a George Eliot, an Elizabeth Browning have not +been more marked by a rare development of the intellect than by deep +passionate sexual emotions. Nor throughout the history of the race has +high intelligence and intellectual power ever tended to make either male +or female unattractive to those of the opposite sex. + +The merely brilliantly attired and unintelligent woman, probably never +awakened the same intensity of profound sex emotion even among the men +of her own type, which followed a George Sand; who attracted to herself +with deathless force some of the most noted men of her generation, even +when, nearing middle age, stout, and attired in rusty and inartistic +black, she was to be found rolling her cigarettes in a dingy office, +scorning all the external adornments with which less attractive females +seek to supply a hidden deficiency. Probably no more hopeless mistake +could be made by an ascetic seeking to extirpate sex emotion and the +attraction of the sexes for one another, than were he to imagine that +in increasing virility, intelligence, and knowledge this end could be +attained. He might thereby differentiate and greatly concentrate the +emotions, but they would be intensified; as a widely spread, shallow, +sluggish stream would not be annihilated but increased in force and +activity by being turned into a sharply defined, clear-cut course. + +And if, further, we turn to those secondary manifestations of sexual +emotion, which express themselves in the relations of human progenitors +to their offspring, we shall find, if possible more markedly, that +increase of intelligence and virility does not diminish but increases +the strength of the affections. As the primitive, ignorant male, often +willingly selling his offspring or exposing his female infants to death, +often develops, with the increase of culture and intelligence, into +the extremely devoted and self-sacrificing male progenitor of civilised +societies; so, yet even more markedly, does the female relation with her +offspring, become intensified and permanent, as culture and intelligence +and virility increase. The Bushwoman, like the lowest female barbarians +in our own societies, will often readily dispose of her infant son for +a bottle of spirits or a little coin; and even among somewhat more +mentally developed females, strong as is the affection of the average +female for her new born offspring, the closeness of the relation between +mother and child tends rapidly to shrink as time passes, so that by +the time of adolescence is reached the relation between mother and son +becomes little more than a remembrance of a close inter-union which +once existed. It is, perhaps, seldom, till the very highest point of +intellectual growth and mental virility has been reached by the human +female, that her relation with her male offspring becomes a permanent +and active and dominant factor in the lives of both. The concentrated +and all-absorbing affection and fellowship which existed between the +greatest female intellect France has produced and the son she bore, +dominating both lives to the end, the fellowship of the English +historian with his mother, who remained his chosen companion and the +sharer of all his labours through life, the relation of St. Augustine +to his mother, and those of countless others, are relations almost +inconceivable where the woman is not of commanding and active +intelligence, and where the passion of mere physical instinct is +completed by the passion of the intellect and spirit. + +There appears, then, from the study of human nature in the past, no +ground for supposing that if, as a result of woman’s adopting new forms +of labour, she should become more free, more wealthy, or more actively +intelligent, that this could in any way diminish her need of the +physical and mental comradeship of man, nor his need of her; nor that +it would affect their secondary sexual relations as progenitors, save +by deepening, concentrating, and extending throughout life the parental +emotions. The conception that man’s and woman’s need of each other could +be touched, or the emotions binding the sexes obliterated, by any mere +change in the form of labour performed by the woman of the race, is as +grotesque in its impossibility, as the suggestion that the placing of a +shell on the seashore this way or that might destroy the action of the +earth’s great tidal wave. + +But, it may be objected, “If there be absolutely no ground for the +formation of such an opinion, how comes it that, in one form or another, +it is so often expressed by persons who object to the entrance of woman +into new or intellectual fields of labour? Where there is smoke must +there not also be fire?” To which it must be replied, “Without fire, no +smoke; but very often the appearance of smoke where neither smoke nor +fire exist!” + +The fact that a statement is frequently made or a view held forms no +presumptive ground of its truth; but it is undoubtedly a ground for +supposing that there is an appearance or semblance which makes it appear +truth, and which suggests it. The universally entertained conception +that the sun moved round the world was not merely false, but the reverse +of the truth; all that was required for its inception was a fallacious +appearance suggesting it. + +When we examine narrowly the statement, that the entrance of woman into +the new fields of labour, with its probably resulting greater freedom +of action, economic independence and wider culture, may result in a +severance between the sexes, it becomes clear what that fallacious +appearance is, which suggests this. + +The entrance of a woman into new fields of labour, though bringing her +increased freedom and economic independence, and necessitating increased +mental training and wider knowledge, could not extinguish the primordial +physical instinct which draws sex to sex throughout all the orders of +sentient life; and still less could it annihilate that subtler mental +need, which, as humanity develops, draws sex to sex for emotional +fellowship and close intercourse; but, it might, and undoubtedly would, +powerfully react and readjust the relations of certain men with certain +women! + +While the attraction, physical and intellectual, which binds sex to sex +would remain the same in volume and intensity, the forms in which it +would express itself, and, above all, the relative power of individuals +to command the gratification of their instincts and desires, would be +fundamentally altered, and in many cases inverted. + +In the barbarian state of societies, where physical force dominates, +it is the most muscular and pugilistically and brutally and animally +successful male who captures and possesses the largest number of +females; and no doubt he would be justified in regarding any social +change which gave to woman a larger freedom of choice, and which would +so perhaps give to the less brutal but perhaps more intelligent male, +whom the woman might select, an equal opportunity for the gratification +of his sexual wishes and for the producing of offspring, as a serious +loss. And, from the purely personal standpoint, he would undoubtedly +be right in dreading anything which tended to free woman. But he would +manifestly not have been justified in asserting, that woman’s increased +freedom of choice, or the fact that the other men would share his +advantage in the matter of obtaining female companionship, would in any +way lessen the amount of sexual emotion or the tenderness of relation +between the two halves of humanity. He would not by brute force possess +himself of so many females, nor have so large a circle of choice, +under the new conditions; but what he lost, others would gain; and +the intensity of the sex emotions and the nearness and passion of the +relation between the sexes be in no way touched. + +In our more civilised societies, as they exist today, woman possesses +(more often perhaps in appearance than reality!) a somewhat greater +freedom of sexual selection; she is no longer captured by muscular +force, but there are still conditions entirely unconnected with +sex attractions and affections, which yet largely dominate the sex +relations. + +It is not the man of the strong arm, but the man of the long purse, +who unduly and artificially dominates in the sexual world today. +Practically, wherever in the modern world woman is wholly or partially +dependent for her means of support on the exercise of her sexual +functions, she is dependent more or less on the male’s power to support +her in their exercise, and her freedom of choice is practically so far +absolutely limited. Probably three-fourths of the sexual unions in our +modern European societies, whether in the illegal or recognised legal +forms, are dominated by or largely influenced by the sex purchasing +power of the male. With regard to the large and savage institution of +prostitution, which still lies as the cancer embedded in the heart of +all our modern civilised societies, this is obviously and nakedly the +case; the wealth of the male as compared to the female being, with +hideous obtrusiveness, its foundation and source of life. But the +purchasing power of the male as compared with the poverty of the female +is not less painfully, if a little less obtrusively, displayed in those +layers of society lying nearer the surface. From the fair, effete young +girl of the wealthier classes in her city boudoir, who weeps copiously +as she tells you she cannot marry the man she loves, because he says he +has only two hundred a year and cannot afford to keep her; to the father +who demands frankly of his daughter’s suitor how much he can settle on +her before consenting to his acceptance, the fact remains, that, under +existing conditions, not the amount of sex affection, passion, and +attraction, but the extraneous question of the material possessions of +the male, determines to a large extent the relation of the sexes. The +parasitic, helpless youth who has failed in his studies, who possesses +neither virility, nor charm of person, nor strength of mind, but who +possesses wealth, has a far greater chance of securing unlimited sexual +indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest maid, than her +brother’s tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and physical grace +and mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of nothing but +material good, has, especially among the so-called upper classes of our +societies, a far greater chance of securing the sex companionship of +any woman he desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, than the most +physically attractive and mentally developed male, who may have nothing +to offer to the dependent female but affection and sexual companionship. + +To the male, whenever and wherever he exists in our societies, who +depends mainly for his power for procuring the sex relation he desires, +not on his power of winning and retaining personal affection, but, on +the purchasing power of his possessions as compared to the poverty of +the females of his society, the personal loss would be seriously and +at once felt, of any social change which gave to the woman a larger +economic independence and therefore greater freedom of sexual choice. It +is not an imaginary danger which the young dude, of a certain type which +sits often in the front row of the stalls in a theatre, with sloping +forehead and feeble jaw, watching the unhappy women who dance for +gold--sees looming before him, as he lisps out his deep disapproval +of increased knowledge and the freedom of obtaining the means of +subsistence in intellectual fields by woman, and expresses his vast +preference for the uncultured ballet-girl over all types of cultured and +productive labouring womenhood in the universe. A subtle and profound +instinct warns him, that with the increased intelligence and economic +freedom of woman, he, and such as he, might ultimately be left sexually +companionless; the undesirable, the residuary, male old-maids of the +human race. + +On the other hand, there is undoubtedly a certain body of females who +would lose, or imagine they would lose, heavily by the advance of woman +as a whole to a condition of free labour and economic independence. That +female, wilfully or organically belonging to the parasite class, having +neither the vigour of intellect nor the vitality of body to undertake +any form of productive labour, and desiring to be dependent only upon +the passive performance of sex function merely, would, whether as +prostitute or wife, undoubtedly lose heavily by any social change which +demanded of woman increased knowledge and activity. (She would lose +in two directions: by the social disapprobation which, as the new +conditions became general, would rest on her; and yet more by the +competition of the more developed forms. She would practically become +non-existent.) + +It is exactly by these two classes of persons that the objection is +raised that the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour and her +increased freedom and intelligence will dislocate the relations of +the sexes; and, while from the purely personal standpoint, they +are undoubtedly right, viewing human society as a whole they are +fundamentally wrong. The loss of a small and unhealthy section will be +the gain of human society as a whole. + +In the male voluptuary of feeble intellect and unattractive +individuality, who depends for the gratification of his sexual +instincts, not on his power of winning and retaining the personal +affection and admiration of woman, but on her purchaseable condition, +either in the blatantly barbarous field of sex traffic that lies beyond +the pale of legal marriage, or the not less barbarous though more veiled +traffic within that pale, the entrance of woman into the new fields of +labour, with an increased intellectual culture and economic freedom, +means little less than social extinction. But, to those males who, even +at the present day, constitute the majority in our societies, and who +desire the affection and fellowship of woman rather than a mere material +possession; for the male who has the attributes and gifts of mind or +body, which, apart from any weight of material advantage, would fit him +to hold the affection of woman, however great her freedom of choice, +the gain will be correspondingly great. Given a society in which the +majority of women should be so far self-supporting, that, having their +free share open to them in the modern fields of labour, and reaping the +full economic rewards of their labour, marriage or some form of sexual +sale was no more a matter of necessity to them; so far from this +condition causing a diminution in the number of permanent sex unions, +one of the heaviest bars to them would be removed. It is universally +allowed that one of the disease spots in our modern social condition is +the increasing difficulty which bars conscientious men from entering +on marriage and rearing families, if limited means would in the case of +their death or disablement throw the woman and their common offspring +comparatively helpless into the fierce stream of our modern economic +life. If the woman could justifiably be looked to, in case of the man’s +disablement or death, to take his place as an earner, thousands of +valuable marriages which cannot now be contracted could be entered on; +and the serious social evil, which arises from the fact that while the +self-indulgent and selfish freely marry and produce large families, +the restrained and conscientious are often unable to do so, would +be removed. For the first time in the history of the modern world, +prostitution, using that term in its broadest sense to cover all forced +sexual relationships based, not on the spontaneous affection of the +woman for the man, but on the necessitous acceptance by woman of +material good in exchange for the exercise of her sexual functions, +would be extinct; and the relation between men and women become a +co-partnership between freemen. + +So far from the economic freedom and social independence of the woman +exterminating sexual love between man and woman, it would for the first +time fully enfranchise it. The element of physical force and capture +which dominated the most primitive sex relations, the more degrading +element of seduction and purchase by means of wealth or material good +offered to woman in our modern societies, would then give place to the +untrammelled action of attraction and affection alone between the sexes, +and sexual love, after its long pilgrimage in the deserts, would be +enabled to return at last, a king crowned. + +But, apart from the two classes of persons whose objection to the +entrance of woman to new fields of labour is based more or less +instinctively on the fear of personal loss, there is undoubtedly a +small, if a very small, number of sincere persons whose fear as to +severance between the sexes to result from woman’s entrance into the new +field, is based upon a more abstract and impersonal ground. + +It is not easy to do full justice in an exact statement to views held +generally rather nebulously and vaguely, but we believe we should not +mistake this view, by saying that there are a certain class of perfectly +sincere and even moderately intelligent folk who hold a view which, +expressed exactly, would come to something like this--that the entrance +of woman into new fields would necessitate so large a mental culture and +such a development of activity, mental and physical, in the woman, that +she might ultimately develop into a being so superior to the male and +so widely different from the man, that the bond of sympathy between the +sexes might ultimately be broken and the man cease to be an object of +affection and attraction to the woman, and the woman to the man through +mere dissimilarity. The future these persons seem to see, more or less +vaguely, is of a social condition, in which, the males of the race +remaining precisely as they are today, the corresponding females shall +have advanced to undreamed of heights of culture and intelligence; a +condition in which the hand-worker, and the ordinary official, and +small farmer, shall be confronted with the female astronomer or Greek +professor of astonishing learning and gifts as his only possible +complementary sex companion; and the vision naturally awakens in these +good folk certain misgivings as to sympathy between and suitability for +each other, of these two widely dissimilar parts of humanity. + +It must of course at once be admitted, that, were the two sexual halves +of humanity distinct species, which, having once entered on a course +of evolution and differentiation, might continue to develop along those +distinct lines for countless ages or even for a number of generations, +without reacting through inheritance on each other, the consequences of +such development might ultimately almost completely sever them. + +The development of distinct branches of humanity has already brought +about such a severance between races and classes which are in totally +distinct stages of evolution. So wide is the hiatus between them often, +that the lowest form of sex attraction can hardly cross it; and the more +highly developed mental and emotional sex passion cannot possibly bridge +it. In the world of sex, kind seeks kind, and too wide a dissimilarity +completely bars the existence of the highest forms of sex emotion, and +often even the lower and more purely animal. + +Were it possible to place a company of the most highly evolved human +females--George Sands, Sophia Kovalevskys, or even the average cultured +females of a highly evolved race--on an island where the only males +were savages of the Fugean type, who should meet them on the shores +with matted hair and prognathous jaws, and with wild shouts, brandishing +their implements of death, to greet and welcome them, it is an undoubted +fact that, so great would be the horror felt by the females towards +them, that not only would the race become extinct, but if it depended +for its continuance on any approach to sex affection on the part of the +women, that death would certainly be accepted by all, as the lesser of +two evils. Hardly less marked would be the sexual division if, in place +of cultured and developed females, we imagine males of the same highly +evolved class thrown into contact with the lowest form of primitive +females. A Darwin, a Schiller, a Keats, though all men capable of the +strongest sex emotion and of the most durable sex affections, would +probably be untouched by any emotion but horror, cast into the company +of a circle of Bushmen females with greased bodies and twinkling eyes, +devouring the raw entrails of slaughtered beasts. + +But leaving out even such extreme instances of diversity, the mere +division in culture and mental habits, dividing individuals of the same +race but of different classes, tends largely to exclude the possibility +of at least the nobler and more enduring forms of sex emotion. The +highly cultured denizen of a modern society, though he may enter into +passing and temporary and animal relations with the uncultured peasant +or woman of the street, seldom finds awakened within him in such cases +the depth of emotion and sympathy which is necessary for the enjoyment +of the closer tie of conjugal life; and it may be doubted whether the +highest, most permanent, and intimate forms of sexual affection ever +exist except among humans very largely identical in tastes, habits +of thought, and moral and physical education. (In Greece at a certain +period (as we have before noted) there does appear to have been a +temporary advance of the male, so far in advance of the female as to +make the difference between them almost immeasurable; but he quickly +fell back to the level of the woman.) Were it possible that the entrance +of woman into the new fields of labour should produce any increased +divergence between man and woman in ideals, culture, or tastes, there +would undoubtedly be a dangerous responsibility incurred by any who +fostered such a movement. + +But the most superficial study of human life and the relation of the +sexes negates such a conception. + +The two sexes are not distinct species but the two halves of one whole, +always acting and interacting on each other through inheritance, and +reproducing and blending with each other in each generation. The human +female is bound organically in two ways to the males of her society: +collaterally they are her companions and the co-progenitors with her +of the race; but she is also the mother of the males of each succeeding +generation, bearing, shaping, and impressing her personality upon them. +The males and females of each human society resemble two oxen tethered +to one yoke: for a moment one may move slightly forward and the other +remain stationary; but they can never move farther from each other than +the length of the yoke that binds them; and they must ultimately +remain stationary or move forward together. That which the women of one +generation are mentally or physically, that by inheritance and education +the males of the next tend to be: there can be no movement or change in +one sex which will not instantly have its co-ordinating effect upon the +other; the males of tomorrow are being cast in the mould of the women of +today. If new ideals, new moral conceptions, new methods of action are +found permeating the minds of the women of one generation, they will +reappear in the ideals, moral conceptions, methods of action of the men +of thirty years hence; and the idea that the males of a society can ever +become permanently farther removed from its females than the individual +man is from the mother who bore and reared him, is at variance with +every law of human inheritance. + +If, further, we turn from an abstract consideration of this supposition, +and examine practically in the modern world men and women as they exist +today, the irrationality of the supposition is yet more evident. + +Not merely is the Woman’s Movement of our age not a sporadic and +abnormal growth, like a cancer bearing no organic relation to the +development of the rest of the social organism, but it is essentially +but one important phase of a general modification which the whole of +modern life is undergoing. Further, careful study of the movement will +show that, not only is it not a movement on the part of woman leading to +severance and separation between the woman and the man, but that it +is essentially a movement of the woman towards the man, of the sexes +towards closer union. + +Much is said at the present day on the subject of the “New Woman” (who, +as we have seen, is essentially but the old non-parasitic woman of the +remote past, preparing to draw on her new twentieth-century garb): +and it cannot truly be said that her attitude finds a lack of social +attention. On every hand she is examined, praised, blamed, mistaken for +her counterfeit, ridiculed, or deified--but nowhere can it be said, that +the phenomenon of her existence is overlooked. + +But there exists at the present day another body of social phenomena, +quite as important, as radical, and if possible more far-reaching in its +effects on the present and future, which yet attracts little conscious +attention or animadversion, though it makes itself everywhere felt; as +the shade of a growing tree may be sat under year after year by persons +who never remark its silent growth. + +Side by side with the “New Woman,” corresponding to her, as the two +sides of a coin cast in one mould, though differing from each other in +superficial detail, are yet of one metal, one size, and one value; old +in the sense in which she is old, being merely the reincarnation under +the pressure of new conditions of the ancient forms of his race; new in +the sense in which she is new, in that he is an adaptation to material +and social conditions which have no exact counterpart in the past; more +diverse from his immediate progenitors than even the woman is from hers, +side by side with her today in every society and in every class in which +she is found, stands--the New Man! + +If it be asked, How comes it to pass, if, under the pressure of social +conditions, man shows an analogous change of attitude toward life, +that the change in woman should attract universal attention, while +the corresponding change in the man of her society passes almost +unnoticed?--it would seem that the explanation lies in the fact that, +owing to woman’s less independence of action in the past, any attempt +at change or readaptation on her part has had to overcome greater +resistance, and it is the noise and friction of resistance, more than +the amount of actual change which has taken place, which attracts +attention; as when an Alpine stream, after a long winter frost, breaks +the ice, and with a crash and roar sweeps away the obstructions which +have gathered in its bed, all men’s attention is attracted to it, though +when later a much larger body of water silently forces its way down, no +man observes it. (An interesting practical illustration of this fact +is found in the vast attention and uproar created when the first three +women in England, some thirty odd years ago, sought to enter the medical +profession. At the present day scores of women prepare to enter it +yearly without attracting any general attention; not that the change +which is going on is not far more in volume and social importance, but +that, having overcome the first obstruction, it is now noiseless.) + +Between the Emilias and Sophy Westerns of a bygone generation and the +most typical of modern women, there exists no greater gap (probably not +so great a one) as that which exists between the Tom Joneses and Squire +Westerns of that day and the most typical of entirely modern men. + +The sexual and social ideals which dominated the fox-hunting, +hard-drinking, high-playing, recklessly loose-living country squire, +clergyman, lawyer, and politician who headed the social organism of the +past, are at least as distinct from the ideals which dominate thousands +of their male descendants holding corresponding positions in the +societies of today, as are the ideals of her great-great-grand mother’s +remote from those dominating the most modern of New Women. + +That which most forces itself upon us as the result of a close personal +study of those sections of modern European societies in which change +and adaptation to the new conditions of life are now most rapidly +progressing, is, not merely that equally large bodies of men and women +are being rapidly modified as to their sexual and social ideals and as +to their mode of life, but that this change is strictly complementary. + +If the ideal of the modern woman becomes increasingly one inconsistent +with the passive existence of woman on the remuneration which her sexual +attributes may win from man, and marriage becomes for her increasingly +a fellowship of comrades, rather than the relationship of the owner and +the bought, the keeper and the kept; the ideal of the typically modern +man departs quite as strongly from that of his forefathers in the +direction of finding in woman active companionship and co-operation +rather than passive submission. If the New Woman’s conception of +parenthood differs from the old in the greater sense of the gravity and +obligation resting on those who are responsible for the production of +the individual life, making her attitude toward the production of her +race widely unlike the reckless, unreasoning, maternal reproduction of +the woman of the past, the most typical male tends to feel in at least +the same degree the moral and social obligation entailed by awakening +lifehood: if the ideal which the New Woman shapes for herself of a male +companion excludes the crudely animal hard-drinking, hard-swearing, +licentious, even if materially wealthy gallant of the past; the most +typically modern male’s ideal for himself excludes at least equally +this type. The brothel, the race-course, the gaming-table, and habits +of physical excess among men are still with us; but the most superficial +study of our societies will show that these have fallen into a new place +in the scale of social institutions and manners. The politician, the +clergyman, or the lawyer does not improve his social or public standing +by violent addictions in these directions; to drink his companions +under the table, to be known to have the largest number of illicit sex +relations, to be recognised as an habitual visitant of the gambling +saloon, does not, even in the case of a crowned head, much enhance his +reputation, and with the ordinary man may ultimately prove a bar to all +success. If the New Woman’s conception of love between the sexes is one +more largely psychic and intellectual than crudely and purely physical, +and wholly of an affection between companions; the New Man’s conception +as expressed in the most typical literature and art, produced by +typically modern males, gives voice with a force no woman has surpassed +to the same new ideal. If to the typical modern woman the lifelong +companionship of a Tom Jones or Squire Western would be more intolerable +than death or the most complete celibacy, not less would the most +typical of modern men shrink from the prospect of a lifelong fetterment +to the companionship of an always fainting, weeping, and terrified +Emilia or a Sophia of a bygone epoch. + +If anywhere on earth exists the perfect ideal of that which the modern +woman desires to be--of a labouring and virile womanhood, free, strong, +fearless and tender--it will probably be found imaged in the heart of +the New Man; engendered there by his own highest needs and aspirations; +and nowhere would the most highly developed modern male find an image of +that which forms his ideal of the most fully developed manhood, than in +the ideal of man which haunts the heart of the New Woman. + +Those have strangely overlooked some of the most important phenomena +of our modern world, who see in the Woman’s Movement of our day any +emotional movement of the female against the male, of the woman away +from the man. + +We have called the Woman’s Movement of our age an endeavour on the part +of women among modern civilised races to find new fields of labour as +the old slip from them, as an attempt to escape from parasitism and an +inactive dependence upon sex function alone; but, viewed from another +side, the Woman’s Movement might not less justly be called a part of +a great movement of the sexes towards each other, a movement towards +common occupations, common interests, common ideals, and towards an +emotional sympathy between the sexes more deeply founded and more +indestructible than any the world has yet seen. + +But it may be suggested, and the perception of a certain profound truth +underlies this suggestion; How is it, if there be this close reciprocity +between the lines along which the advanced and typical modern males and +females are developing, that there does exist in our modern societies, +and often among the very classes forming our typically advanced +sections, so much of pain, unrest, and sexual disco-ordination at the +present day? + +The reply to this pertinent suggestion is, that the disco-ordination, +struggle, and consequent suffering which undoubtedly do exist when +we regard the world of sexual relationships and ideals in our modern +societies, do not arise in any way from a disco-ordination between the +sexes as such, but are a part of the general upheaval, of the conflict +between old ideals and new; a struggle which is going on in every branch +the human life in our modern societies, and in which the determining +element is not sex, but the point of evolution which the race or the +individual has reached. + +It cannot be too often repeated, even at the risk of the most wearisome +reiteration, that our societies are societies in a state of rapid +evolution and change. The continually changing material conditions of +life, with their reaction on the intellectual, emotional, and moral +aspects of human affairs, render our societies the most complex and +probably the most mobile and unsettled which the world has ever seen. +As the result of this rapidity of change and complexity, there must +continually exist a large amount of disco-ordination, and consequently, +of suffering. + +In a stationary society where generation has succeeded generation for +hundreds, or it may be for thousands, of years, with little or no change +in the material conditions of life, the desires, institutions, and moral +principles of men, their religious, political, domestic, and sexual +institutions, have gradually shaped themselves in accordance with these +conditions; and a certain harmony, and homogeneity, and tranquillity, +pervades the society. + +In societies in that rapid state of change in which our modern societies +find themselves, where not merely each decade, but each year, and almost +day brings new forces and conditions to bear on life, not only is the +amount of suffering and social rupture, which all rapid, excessive, +and sudden change entails on an organism, inevitable; but, the new +conditions, acting at different angles of intensity on the different +individual members composing the society, according to their positions +and varying intelligence, are producing a society of such marvellous +complexity and dissimilarity in the different individual parts, that +the intensest rupture and disco-ordination between individuals is +inevitable; and sexual ideals and relationships must share in the +universal condition. + +In a primitive society (if a somewhat prolix illustration may be +allowed) where for countless generations the conditions of life had +remained absolutely unchanged; where for ages it had been necessary that +all males should employ themselves in subduing wild beasts and meeting +dangerous foes, polygamy might universally have been a necessity, if the +race were to exist and its numbers be kept up; and society, recognising +this, polygamy would be an institution universally approved and +submitted to, however much suffering it entailed. If food were scarce, +the destruction of superfluous infants and of the aged might also always +have been necessary for the good of the individuals themselves as well +as of society, and the whole society would acquiesce in it without any +moral doubt. If an eclipse of the sun had once occurred in connection +with the appearance of a certain new insect, they mighty universally +regard that insect as a god causing it; and ages might pass without +anything arising to disprove their belief. There would be no social or +religious problem; and the view of one man would be the view of all +men; and all would be more or less in harmony with the established +institution and customs. + +But, supposing the sudden arrival of strangers armed with superior +weapons and knowledge, who should exterminate all wild beasts and render +war and the consequent loss of male life a thing of the past; not only +would the male be driven to encroach on the female’s domain of domestic +agriculture and labour generally, but the males, not being so largely +destroyed, they would soon equal and surpass in numbers the females; and +not only would it then become a moot matter, “a problem,” which labours +were or were not to be performed by man and which by woman, but very +soon, not the woman alone nor the man alone, but both, would be driven +to speculate as to the desirability or necessity of polygamy, which, +were men as numerous as women, would leave many males without sex +companions. The more intelligent and progressive individuals in the +community would almost at once arrive at the conclusion that polygamy +was objectionable; the most fearless would seek to carry their theory +into action; the most ignorant and unprogressive would determinately +stick to the old institutions as inherited from the past, without reason +or question; differences of ideal would cause conflict and dissension +in all parts of the body social, and suffering would ensue, where all +before was fixed and determinate. So also if the strangers introduced +new and improved methods of agriculture, and food became abundant, it +would then at once strike the most far-seeing and readily adaptable +members of the community, both male and female, that there was no +necessity for the destruction of their offspring; old men and women +would begin seriously to object to being hastened to death when they +realised that starvation did not necessarily stare them in the face +if they survived to an extreme old age; the most stupid and hide-bound +members of the community would still continue to sacrifice parents and +offspring long after the necessity had ceased, under the influence of +traditional bias; many persons would be in a state of much moral doubt +as to which course of action to pursue, the old or the new; and bitter +conflict might rage in the community on all these points. Were the +strangers to bring with them telescopes, looking through which it might +at once clearly be seen that an eclipse of the sun was caused merely by +the moon’s passing over its face, the more intelligent members of the +community would at once come to the conclusion that the insect was not +the cause of eclipses, would cease to regard it as a god, and might even +kill it; the more stupid and immobile section of the community might +refuse to look through the telescope, or looking might refuse to see +that it was the moon which caused the eclipse, and their deep-seated +reverence for the insect, which was the growth of ages, would lead them +to regard as impious those individuals who denied its godhead, and might +even lead to the physical destruction of the first unbelievers. The +society, once so homogeneous and co-ordinated in all its parts, would +become at once a society rent by moral and social problems; and endless +suffering must arise to individuals in the attempt to co-ordinate the +ideals, manners, and institutions of the society to the new conditions! +There might be immense gain in many directions; lives otherwise +sacrificed would be spared, a higher and more satisfactory stage of +existence might be entered on; but the disco-ordination and struggle +would be inevitable until the society had established an equilibrium +between its knowledge, its material conditions, and its social, sexual, +and religious ideals and institutions. + +An analogous condition, but of a far more complex kind, exists at the +present day in our own societies. Our material environment differs in +every respect from that of our grandparents, and bears little or no +resemblance to that of a few centuries ago. Here and there, even in our +civilised societies in remote agricultural districts, the old social +conditions may remain partly undisturbed; but throughout the bulk of +our societies the substitution of mechanical for hand-labour, the +wide diffusion of knowledge through the always increasing cheap +printing-press; the rapidly increasing gathering of human creatures into +vast cities, where not merely thousands but millions of individuals are +collected together under physical and mental conditions of life which +invert every social condition of the past; the increasingly rapid means +of locomotion; the increasing intercourse between distant races and +lands, brought about by rapid means of intercommunication, widening +and changing in every direction the human horizon--all these produce a +society, so complex and so rapidly altering, that social co-ordination +between all its parts is impossible; and social unrest, and the strife +of ideals of faiths, of institutions, and consequent human suffering is +inevitable. + +If the ancient guns and agricultural implements which our fathers +taught us to use are valueless in the hands of their descendants, if the +samplers our mothers worked and the stockings they knitted are become +superfluous through the action of the modern loom, yet more are their +social institutions, faiths, and manners of life become daily and +increasingly unfitted to our use; and friction and suffering inevitable, +especially for the most advanced and modified individuals in our +societies. This suffering, if we analyse it closely, rises from three +causes. + +Firstly, it is caused by the fact that mere excessive rapidity of change +tends always easily to become painful, by rupturing violently already +hardened habits and modes of thought, as a very rapidly growing tree +ruptures its bark and exudes its internal juices. + +Secondly, it arises from the fact that individuals of the same human +society, not adapting themselves at the same rate to the new conditions, +or being exposed to them in different degrees, a wide and almost +unparalleled dissimilarity has today arisen between the different +individuals composing our societies; where, side by side with men and +women who have rapidly adapted or are so successfully seeking to adapt +themselves to the new conditions of knowledge and new conditions of +life, that, were they to reappear in future ages in more co-ordinated +societies, they might perhaps hardly appear wholly antiquated, are to be +found men and women whose social, religious, and moral ideals would not +constitute them out of harmony if returned to the primitive camps of the +remote forbears of the human race; while, between these extreme classes +lies that large mass of persons in an intermediate state of development. +This diversity is bound to cause friction and suffering in the +interactions of the members of our societies; more especially, as the +individuals composing each type are not sorted out into classes and +families, but are found scattered through all classes and grades in our +societies. (One of the women holding the most advanced and modern view +of the relation of woman to life whom we have met was the wife of a +Northamptonshire shoemaker; herself engaged in making her living by the +sewing of the uppers of men’s boots.) Persons bound by the closest ties +of blood or social contiguity and compelled to a continual intercourse, +are often those most widely dissevered in their amount of adaptation +to the new conditions of life; and the amount of social friction and +consequent human suffering arising from this fact is so subtle and +almost incalculable, that perhaps it is impossible adequately to portray +it in dry didactic language: it is only truly describable in the medium +of art, where actual concrete individuals are shown acting and reacting +on each other--as in the novel or the drama. We are like a company of +chess-men, not sorted out in kinds, pawns together, kings and queens +together, and knights and rooks together, but simply thrown at haphazard +into a box, and jumbled side by side. In the stationary societies, where +all individuals were permeated by the same political, religious, moral, +and social ideas; and where each class had its own hereditary and fixed +traditions of action and manners, this cause of friction and suffering +had of necessity no existence; individual differences and discord might +be occasioned by personal greeds, ambitions, and selfishnesses, but +not by conflicting conceptions of right and wrong, of the desirable and +undesirable, in all branches of human life. (Only those who have been +thrown into contact with a stationary and homogeneous society such +as that of primitive African tribes before coming in contact with +Europeans; or such as the up-country Boers of South Africa were twenty +years ago, can realise adequately how wholly free from moral and social +problems and social friction such a society can be. It is in studying +such societies that the truth is vividly forced on one, that the key to +half, and more than half, of the phenomena in our own social condition, +can be found only in our rapidly changing conditions necessitating +equally rapid change in our conceptions, ideals, and institutions.) + +Thirdly, the unrest and suffering peculiar to our age is caused by +conflict going on within the individual himself. So intensely rapid is +the change which is taking place in our environment and knowledge that +in the course of a single life a man may pass through half a dozen +phases of growth. Born and reared in possession of certain ideas and +manners of action, he or she may, before middle life is reached, have +had occasion repeatedly to modify, enlarge, and alter, or completely +throw aside those traditions. Within the individuality itself of such +persons, goes on, in an intensified form, that very struggle, conflict, +and disco-ordination which is going on in society at large between its +different members and sections; and agonising moments must arise, when +the individual, seeing the necessity for adopting new courses of action, +or for accepting new truths, or conforming to new conditions, will yet +be tortured by the hold of traditional convictions; and the man or woman +who attempts to adapt their life to the new material conditions and to +harmony with the new knowledge, is almost bound at some time to rupture +the continuity of their own psychological existence. + +It is these conditions which give rise to the fact so often noticed, +that the art of our age tends persistently to deal with subtle social +problems, religious, political, and sexual, to which the art of the past +holds no parallel; and it is so inevitably, because the artist who would +obey the artistic instinct to portray faithfully the world about him, +must portray that which lies at the core of its life. The “problem” + play, novel, and poem are as inevitable in this age, as it was +inevitable that the artist of the eleventh century should portray +tournaments, physical battles, and chivalry, because they were the +dominant element in the life about him. + +It is also inevitable that this suffering and conflict must make itself +felt in its acutest form in the person of the most advanced individual +of our societies. It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen +stream who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it +broken, and the last find it gone. It is the man or woman who first +treads down the path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, +who must find themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is +deadly. The fact that any course of human action leading to adjustment, +leads also to immediate suffering, by dividing the individual from +the bulk of his fellows; is no argument against it; that solitude and +suffering is the crown of thorns which marks the kingship of earth’s +Messiahs: it is the mark of the leader. + +Thus, social disco-ordination, and subjective conflict and suffering, +pervade the life of our age, making themselves felt in every division +of human life, religious, political, and domestic; and, if they are more +noticeable, and make themselves more keenly felt in the region of sex +than in any other, even the religious, it is because when we enter the +region of sex we touch, as it were, the spinal cord of human existence, +its great nerve centre, where sensation is most acute, and pain and +pleasure most keenly felt. It is not sex disco-ordination that is at the +root of our social unrest; it is the universal disco-ordination which +affects even the world of sex phenomena. + +Also it is necessary to note that the line which divides the progressive +sections of our communities, seeking to co-ordinate themselves to the +new conditions of life, from the retrogressive, is not a line running +coincidentally with the line of sex. A George Sand and a Henrik Ibsen +belong more essentially to the same class in the order of modern +development, than either belongs to any class composed entirely of their +own sex. If we divide humanity into classes according to type, in each +division will be found the male with his complementary female. Side by +side with the old harlot at the street corner anxious to sell herself, +stands the old aboriginal male, whether covered or not with a veneer of +civilisation, eager and desiring to buy. Side by side with the parasitic +woman, seeking only increased pleasure and luxury from her relations +with man, stands the male seeking only pleasure and self-indulgence from +his relations with her. Side by side with the New Woman, anxious for +labour and seeking from man only such love and fellowship as she gives, +stands the New Man, anxious to possess her only on the terms she offers. +If the social movement, through which the most advanced women of our +day are attempting to bring themselves into co-ordination with the new +conditions of life, removes them immeasurably from certain types of the +primitive male; the same movement equally removes the new male from the +old female. The sexual tragedy of modern life lies, not in the fact that +woman as such is tending to differ fundamentally from man as such; but +that, in the unassorted confusion of our modern life, it is continually +the modified type of man or woman who is thrown into the closest +personal relations with the antiquated type of the opposite sex; that +between father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, husband +and wife, may sometimes be found to intervene not merely years, but even +centuries of social evolution. + +It is not man as man who opposes the attempt of woman to readjust +herself to the new conditions of life: that opposition arises, perhaps +more often, from the retrogressive members of her own sex. And it is a +fact which will surprise no one who has studied the conditions of modern +life; that among the works of literature in all European languages, +which most powerfully advocate the entrance of woman into the new fields +of labour, and which most uncompromisingly demand for her the widest +training and freedom of action, and which most passionately seek for +the breaking down of all artificial lines which sever the woman from the +man, many of the ablest and most uncompromising are the works of males. + +The New Man and Woman do not resemble two people, who, standing on a +level plain, set out on two roads, which diverging at different angles +and continued in straight lines, must continue to take them farther and +farther from each other the longer they proceed in them; rather, they +resemble two persons who start to climb a spur of the same mountain from +opposite sides; where, the higher they climb the nearer they come to +each other, being bound ultimately to meet at the top. + +Even that opposition often made by males to the entrance of woman into +the new fields of labour, of which they at present hold the monopoly, +is not fundamentally sexual in its nature. The male who opposes the +entrance of woman into the trade or profession in which he holds more +or less a monopoly, would oppose with equal, and perhaps even greater +bitterness, the opening of its doors to numbers of his own sex who +had before been excluded, and who would limit his gains and share his +privileges. It is the primitive brute instinct to retain as much +as possible for the ego, irrespective of justice or humanity, which +dominates all the lower moral types of humanity, both male and female, +which acts here. The lawyer or physician who objects to the entrance of +women to his highly fenced professional enclosure, would probably object +yet more strenuously if it were proposed to throw down the barriers of +restraint and monetary charges, which would result in the flooding +of his profession by other males: while the mechanic, who resists the +entrance of woman into his especial field, is invariably found even +more persistently to oppose any attempt at entrance on the part of other +males, when he finds it possible to do so. + +This opposition of the smaller type of male, to the entrance of woman +into the callings hitherto apportioned to himself, is sometimes taken as +implying the impossibility of fellowship and affection existing between +the men and women employed in common labour, that the professional +jealousy of the man must necessitate his feeling a hatred and antagonism +towards any one who shares his fields of toil. But the most superficial +study of human life negates such a supposition. Among men, in spite +of the occasional existence of the petty professional jealousies and +antagonism, we find, viewing society as a whole, that common interests, +and above all common labours, are the most potent means of bringing them +into close and friendly relations; and, in fact, they seem generally +essential for the formation of the closest and most permanent human +friendships. In every walk of human life, whether trade, or profession, +we find men associating by choice mainly with, and entertaining often +the profoundest and most permanent friendships for, men engaged in +their own callings. The inner circle of a barrister’s friendships almost +always consists of his fellow-barristers; the city man, who is free to +select his society where he will, will be oftenest found in company with +his fellow-man of business; the medical man’s closest friendship is, in +a large number of cases, for some man who was once his fellow-student +and has passed through the different stages of his professional life +with him; the friends and chosen companions of the actor are commonly +actors; of the savant, savants; of the farmer, farmers; of the sailor, +sailors. So generally is this the case that it would almost attract +attention and cause amusement were the boon companion of the sea captain +a leading politician, and the intimate friend of the clergyman an actor, +or the dearest friend of the farmer an astronomer. Kind seeks kind. +The majority of men by choice frequent clubs where those of their own +calling are found, and especially as life advances and men sink deeper +into their professional grooves, they are found to seek fellowship +mainly among their fellow-workers. That this should be so is inevitable; +common amusements may create a certain bond between the young, but +the performance of common labours, necessitating identical knowledge, +identical habits, and modes of thought, forms a far stronger bond, +drawing men far more powerfully towards social intercourse and personal +friendship and affection than the centrifugal force of professional +jealousies can divide them. + +That the same condition would prevail where women became fellow-workers +with men might be inferred on abstract grounds: but practical experience +confirms this. The actor oftenest marries the actress, the male musician +the female; the reception-room of the literary woman or female +painter is found continually frequented by men of her own calling; the +woman-doctor associates continually with and often marries one of her +own confreres; and as women in increasing numbers share the fields of +labour with men, which have hitherto been apportioned to them alone, the +nature and strength of the sympathy arising from common labours will be +increasingly clear. + +The sharing by men and women of the same labours, necessitating a common +culture and therefore common habits of thought and interests, would +tend to fill that painful hiatus which arises so continually in modern +conjugal life, dividing the man and woman as soon as the first sheen of +physical sexual attraction which glints only over the unknown begins to +fade, and from which springs so large a part of the tragedy of modern +conjugal relations. The primitive male might discuss with her his +success in hunting and her success in finding roots; as the primitive +peasant may discuss today with his wife the crops and cows in which both +are equally interested and which both understand; there is nothing in +their order of life to produce always increasingly divergent habits of +thought and interest. + +In modern civilised life, in many sections, the lack of any common +labour and interests and the wide dissimilarity of the life led by the +man and the woman, tend continually to produce increasing divergence; so +that, long before middle life is reached, they are left without any +bond of co-cohesion but that of habit. The comradeship and continual +stimulation, rising from intercourse with those sharing our closest +interests and regarding life from the same standpoint, the man tends to +seek in his club and among his male companions, and the woman accepts +solitude, or seeks dissipations which tend yet farther to disrupt the +common conjugal life. A certain mental camaraderie and community of +impersonal interests is imperative in conjugal life in addition to a +purely sexual relation, if the union is to remain a living and always +growing reality. It is more especially because the sharing by woman of +the labours of man will tend to promote camaraderie and the existence of +common, impersonal interests and like habits of thought and life, that +the entrance of women into the very fields shared by men, and not into +others peculiarly reserved for her, is so desirable. (The reply once +given by the wife of a leading barrister, when reference was made to the +fact that she and her husband were seldom found in each other’s society, +throws a painful but true light on certain aspects of modern life, +against which the entire woman’s movement of our age is a rebellion. +“My husband,” she said, “is always increasingly absorbed in his legal +duties, of which I understand nothing, and which so do not interest me. +My children are all growing up and at school. I have servants enough to +attend to my house. When he comes home in the evening, if I try to amuse +him by telling him of the things I have been doing during the day, of +the bazaars I am working for, the shopping I have done, the visits I +have paid, he is bored. He is anxious to get away to his study, his +books, and his men friends, and I am left utterly alone. If it were not +for the society of women and other men with whom I have more in common, +I could not bear my life. When we first met as boy and girl, and fell +in love, we danced and rode together and seemed to have everything in +common; now we have nothing. I respect him and I believe he respects me, +but that is all!” It is, perhaps, only in close confidences between +man and man and woman and woman that this open sore, rising from the +divergence in training, habits of life, and occupation between men +and women is spoken of; but it lies as a tragic element at the core of +millions of modern conjugal relations, beneath the smooth superficial +surface of our modern life; breaking out to the surface only +occasionally in the revelations of our divorce courts.) + +It is a gracious fact, to which every woman who has achieved success or +accomplished good work in any of the fields generally apportioned to men +will bear witness, whether that work be in the field of literature, of +science, or the organised professions, that the hands which have been +most eagerly stretched our to welcome her have been those of men; that +the voices which have most generously acclaimed her success have been +those of male fellow-workers in the fields into which she has entered. + +There is no door at which the hand of woman has knocked for admission +into a new field of toil but there have been found on the other side the +hands of strong and generous men eager to turn it for her, almost before +she knocks. + +To those of us who, at the beginning of a new century, stand with shaded +eyes, gazing into the future, striving to descry the outlines of the +shadowy figures which loom before us in the distance, nothing seems of +so gracious a promise, as the outline we seem to discern of a condition +of human life in which a closer union than the world has yet seen shall +exist between the man and the woman: where the Walhalla of our old +Northern ancestors shall find its realisation in a concrete reality, +and the Walkurie and her hero feast together at one board, in a brave +fellowship. + +Always in our dreams we hear the turn of the key that shall close the +door of the last brothel; the clink of the last coin that pays for the +body and soul of a woman; the falling of the last wall that encloses +artificially the activity of woman and divides her from man; always we +picture the love of the sexes, as, once a dull, slow, creeping worm; +then a torpid, earthy chrysalis; at last the full-winged insect, +glorious in the sunshine of the future. + +Today, as we row hard against the stream of life, is it only a blindness +in our eyes, which have been too long strained, which makes us see, far +up the river where it fades into the distance, through all the mists +that rise from the river-banks, a clear, a golden light? Is it only a +delusion of the eyes which makes us grasp our oars more lightly and bend +our backs lower; though we know well that long before the boat reaches +those stretches, other hands than ours will man the oars and guide its +helm? Is it all a dream? + +The ancient Chaldean seer had a vision of a Garden of Eden which lay in +a remote past. It was dreamed that man and woman once lived in joy and +fellowship, till woman ate of the tree of knowledge and gave to man to +eat; and that both were driven forth to wander, to toil in bitterness; +because they had eaten of the fruit. + +We also have our dream of a Garden: but it lies in a distant future. We +dream that woman shall eat of the tree of knowledge together with man, +and that side by side and hand close to hand, through ages of much toil +and labour, they shall together raise about them an Eden nobler than any +the Chaldean dreamed of; an Eden created by their own labour and made +beautiful by their own fellowship. + +In his apocalypse there was one who saw a new heaven and a new earth; +we see a new earth; but therein dwells love--the love of comrades and +co-workers. + +It is because so wide and gracious to us are the possibilities of the +future; so impossible is a return to the past, so deadly is a passive +acquiescence in the present, that today we are found everywhere raising +our strange new cry--“Labour and the training that fits us for labour!” + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman and Labour, by Olive Schreiner + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1440 *** diff --git a/1440-h/1440-h.htm b/1440-h/1440-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b33f918 --- /dev/null +++ b/1440-h/1440-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5504 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + Woman and Labour, by Olive Schreiner + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1440 ***</div> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h1> + WOMAN AND LABOUR + </h1> + <h2> + by Olive Schreiner + </h2> + <h4> + Author of “Dreams,” “The Story of an African Farm,"<br /> “Trooper Peter + Halket,” “Dream Life and Real Life,” etc. etc. + </h4> + <p> + <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Dedicated to Constance Lytton + + “Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, + Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea— + Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong— + Nay, but she aim’d not at glory, no lover of glory she: + Give her the glory of going on and still to be.” + + Tennyson. + + Olive Schreiner. + De Aar, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. 1911. +</pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h3> + Contents + </h3> + <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + <tr> + <td> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_INTR"> Introduction. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0001"> Chapter I. Parasitism. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0002"> Chapter II. Parasitism (continued). </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0003"> Chapter III. Parasitism (continued). </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0004"> Chapter IV. Woman and War. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0005"> Chapter V. Sex Differences. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0006"> Chapter VI. Certain Objections. </a> + </p> + </td> + </tr> + </table> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + Introduction. + </h2> + <p> + It is necessary to say a few words to explain this book. The original + title of the book was “Musings on Woman and Labour.” + </p> + <p> + It is, what its name implies, a collection of musings on some of the + points connected with woman’s work. + </p> + <p> + In my early youth I began a book on Woman. I continued the work till ten + years ago. It necessarily touched on most matters in which sex has a part, + however incompletely. + </p> + <p> + It began by tracing the differences of sex function to their earliest + appearances in life on the globe; not only as when in the animal world, + two amoeboid globules coalesce, and the process of sexual generation + almost unconsciously begins; but to its yet more primitive manifestations + in plant life. In the first three chapters I traced, as far as I was able, + the evolution of sex in different branches of non-human life. Many large + facts surprised me in following this line of thought by their bearing on + the whole modern sex problem. Such facts as this; that, in the great + majority of species on the earth the female form exceeds the male in size + and strength and often in predatory instinct; and that sex relationships + may assume almost any form on earth as the conditions of life vary; and + that, even in their sexual relations towards offspring, those differences + which we, conventionally, are apt to suppose are inherent in the paternal + or the maternal sex form, are not inherent—as when one studies the + lives of certain toads, where the female deposits her eggs in cavities on + the back of the male, where the eggs are preserved and hatched; or, of + certain sea animals, in which the male carries the young about with him + and rears them in a pouch formed of his own substance; and countless other + such. And above all, this important fact, which had first impressed me + when as a child I wandered alone in the African bush and watched + cock-o-veets singing their inter-knit love-songs, and small singing birds + building their nests together, and caring for and watching over, not only + their young, but each other, and which has powerfully influenced all I + have thought and felt on sex matters since;—the fact that, along the + line of bird life and among certain of its species sex has attained its + highest and aesthetic, and one might almost say intellectual, development + on earth: a point of development to which no human race as a whole has yet + reached, and which represents the realisation of the highest sexual ideal + which haunts humanity. + </p> + <p> + When these three chapters we ended I went on to deal, as far as possible, + with woman’s condition in the most primitive, in the savage and in the + semi-savage states. I had always been strangely interested from childhood + in watching the condition of the native African women in their primitive + society about me. When I was eighteen I had a conversation with a Kafir + woman still in her untouched primitive condition, a conversation which + made a more profound impression on my mind than any but one other incident + connected with the position of woman has ever done. She was a woman whom I + cannot think of otherwise than as a person of genius. In language more + eloquent and intense than I have ever heard from the lips of any other + woman, she painted the condition of the women of her race; the labour of + women, the anguish of woman as she grew older, and the limitations of her + life closed in about her, her sufferings under the condition of polygamy + and subjection; all this she painted with a passion and intensity I have + not known equalled; and yet, and this was the interesting point, when I + went on to question her, combined with a deep and almost fierce bitterness + against life and the unseen powers which had shaped woman and her + conditions as they were, there was not one word of bitterness against the + individual man, nor any will or intention to revolt; rather, there was a + stern and almost majestic attitude of acceptance of the inevitable; life + and the conditions of her race being what they were. It was this + conversation which first forced upon me a truth, which I have since come + to regard as almost axiomatic, that, the women of no race or class will + ever rise in revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment + of their relation to their society, however intense their suffering and + however clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of + their society requires their submission: that, wherever there is a general + attempt on the part of the women of any society to readjust their position + in it, a close analysis will always show that the changed or changing + conditions of that society have made woman’s acquiescence no longer + necessary or desirable. + </p> + <p> + Another point which it was attempted to deal with in this division of the + book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that woman’s + physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain other directions + was the price which woman has been compelled to pay for the passing of the + race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state to the erect; and which + was essential if humanity as we know it was to exist (this of course was + dealt with by a physiological study of woman’s structure); and also, to + deal with the highly probable, though unproved and perhaps unprovable, + suggestion, that it was largely the necessity which woman was under of + bearing her helpless young in her arms while procuring food for them and + herself, and of carrying them when escaping from enemies, that led to the + entirely erect position being forced on developing humanity. + </p> + <p> + These and many other points throwing an interesting light on the later + development of women (such as the relation between agriculture and the + subjection of women) were gone into in this division of the book dealing + with primitive and semi-barbarous womanhood. + </p> + <p> + When this division was ended, I had them type-written, and with the first + three chapters bound in one volume about the year 1888; and then went on + to work at the last division, which I had already begun. + </p> + <p> + This dealt with what is more popularly known as the women’s question: with + the causes which in modern European societies are leading women to attempt + readjustment in their relation to their social organism; with the + direction in which such readjustments are taking place; and with the + results which in the future it appears likely such readjustments will + produce. + </p> + <p> + After eleven years, 1899, these chapters were finished and bound in a + large volume with the first two divisions. There then only remained to + revise the book and write a preface. In addition to the prose argument I + had in each chapter one or more allegories; because while it is easy + clearly to express abstract thoughts in argumentative prose, whatever + emotion those thoughts awaken I have not felt myself able adequately to + express except in the other form. (The allegory “Three Dreams in a Desert” + which I published about nineteen years ago was taken from this book; and I + have felt that perhaps being taken from its context it was not quite clear + to every one.) I had also tried throughout to illustrate the subject with + exactly those particular facts in the animal and human world, with which I + had come into personal contact and which had helped to form the + conclusions which were given; as it has always seemed to me that in + dealing with sociological questions a knowledge of the exact manner in + which any writer has arrived at his view is necessary in measuring its + worth. The work had occupied a large part of my life, and I had hoped, + whatever its deficiencies, that it might at least stimulate other minds, + perhaps more happily situated, to an enlarged study of the question. + </p> + <p> + In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was + ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of two + months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I arrived + at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but Martial Law had already + been proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to allow my + return to my home in Johannesburg and sent me to the Colony; nor was I + allowed to send any communication through, to any person, who might have + extended some care over my possessions. Some eight months after, when the + British troops had taken and entered Johannesburg; a friend, who, being on + the British side, had been allowed to go up, wrote me that he had visited + my house and found it looted, that all that was of value had been taken or + destroyed; that my desk had been forced open and broken up, and its + contents set on fire in the centre of the room, so that the roof was + blackened over the pile of burnt papers. He added that there was little in + the remnants of paper of which I could make any use, but that he had + gathered and stored the fragments till such time as I might be allowed to + come and see them. I thus knew my book had been destroyed. + </p> + <p> + Some months later in the war when confined in a little up-country hamlet, + many hundreds of miles from the coast and from Johannesburg; with the + brunt of the war at that time breaking around us, de Wet having crossed + the Orange River and being said to have been within a few miles of us, and + the British columns moving hither and thither, I was living in a little + house on the outskirts of the village, in a single room, with a stretcher + and two packing-cases as furniture, and with my little dog for company. + Thirty-six armed African natives were set to guard night and day at the + doors and windows of the house; and I was only allowed to go out during + certain hours in the middle of the day to fetch water from the fountain, + or to buy what I needed, and I was allowed to receive no books, newspapers + or magazines. A high barbed wire fence, guarded by armed natives, + surrounded the village, through which it would have been death to try to + escape. All day the pompoms from the armoured trains, that paraded on the + railway line nine miles distant, could be heard at intervals; and at night + the talk of the armed natives as they pressed against the windows, and the + tramp of the watch with the endless “Who goes there?” as they walked round + the wire fence through the long, dark hours, when one was allowed neither + to light a candle nor strike a match. When a conflict was fought near by, + the dying and wounded were brought in; three men belonging to our little + village were led out to execution; death sentences were read in our little + market-place; our prison was filled with our fellow-countrymen; and we did + not know from hour to hour what the next would bring to any of us. Under + these conditions I felt it necessary I should resolutely force my thought + at times from the horror of the world around me, to dwell on some abstract + question, and it was under these circumstances that this little book was + written; being a remembrance mainly drawn from one chapter of the larger + book. The armed native guards standing against the uncurtained windows, it + was impossible to open the shutters, and the room was therefore always so + dark that even the physical act of writing was difficult. + </p> + <p> + A year and a half after, when the war was over and peace had been + proclaimed for above four months, I with difficulty obtained a permit to + visit the Transvaal. I found among the burnt fragments the leathern back + of my book intact, the front half of the leaves burnt away; the back half + of the leaves next to the cover still all there, but so browned and + scorched with the flames that they broke as you touched them; and there + was nothing left but to destroy it. I even then felt a hope that at some + future time I might yet rewrite the entire book. But life is short; and I + have found that not only shall I never rewrite the book, but I shall not + have the health even to fill out and harmonise this little remembrance + from it. + </p> + <p> + It is therefore with considerable pain that I give out this fragment. I am + only comforted by the thought that perhaps, all sincere and earnest search + after truth, even where it fails to reach it, yet, often comes so near to + it, that other minds more happily situated may be led, by pointing out its + very limitations and errors, to obtain a larger view. + </p> + <p> + I have dared to give this long and very uninteresting explanation, not at + all because I have wished by giving the conditions under which this little + book was written, to make excuse for any repetitions or lack of literary + perfection, for these things matter very little; but, because (and this + matters very much) it might lead to misconception on the subject-matter + itself if its genesis were not exactly understood. + </p> + <p> + Not only is this book not a general view of the whole vast body of + phenomena connected with woman’s position; but it is not even a bird’s-eye + view of the whole question of woman’s relation to labour. + </p> + <p> + In the original book the matter of the parasitism of woman filled only one + chapter out of twelve, and it was mainly from this chapter that this book + was drawn. The question of the parasitism of woman is, I think, very + vital, very important; it explains many phenomena which nothing else + explains; and it will be of increasing importance. But for the moment + there are other aspects of woman’s relation to labour practically quite as + pressing. In the larger book I had devoted one chapter entirely to an + examination of the work woman has done and still does in the modern world, + and the gigantic evils which arise from the fact that her labour, + especially domestic labour, often the most wearisome and unending known to + any section of the human race, is not adequately recognised or + recompensed. Especially on this point I have feared this book might lead + to a misconception, if by its great insistence on the problem of sex + parasitism, and the lighter dealing with other aspects, it should lead to + the impression that woman’s domestic labour at the present day (something + quite distinct from, though indirectly connected with, the sexual relation + between man and woman) should not be highly and most highly recognised and + recompensed. I believe it will be in the future, and then when woman gives + up her independent field of labour for domestic or marital duty of any + kind, she will not receive her share of the earnings of the man as a more + or less eleemosynary benefaction, placing her in a position of subjection, + but an equal share, as the fair division, in an equal partnership. (It may + be objected that where a man and woman have valued each other sufficiently + to select one another from all other humans for a lifelong physical union, + it is an impertinence to suppose there could be any necessity to adjust + economic relations. In love there is no first nor last! And that the + desire of each must be to excel the other in service. That this should be + so is true; that it is so now, in the case of union between two perfectly + morally developed humans, is also true, and that this condition may in a + distant future be almost universal is certainly true. But dealing with + this matter as a practical question today, we have to consider not what + should be, or what may be, but what, given traditions and institutions of + our societies, is, today.) Especially I have feared that the points dealt + with in this little book, when taken apart from other aspects of the + question, might lead to the conception that it was intended to express the + thought, that it was possible or desirable that woman in addition to her + child-bearing should take from man his share in the support and care of + his offspring or of the woman who fulfilled with regard to himself + domestic duties of any kind. In that chapter in the original book devoted + to the consideration of man’s labour in connection with woman and with his + offspring more than one hundred pages were devoted to illustrating how + essential to the humanising and civilising of man, and therefore of the + whole race, was an increased sense of sexual and paternal responsibility, + and an increased justice towards woman as a domestic labourer. In the last + half of the same chapter I dealt at great length with what seems to me an + even more pressing practical sex question at this moment—man’s + attitude towards those women who are not engaged in domestic labour; + toward that vast and always increasing body of women, who as modern + conditions develop are thrown out into the stream of modern economic life + to sustain themselves and often others by their own labour; and who yet + are there bound hand and foot, not by the intellectual or physical + limitations of their nature, but by artificial constrictions and + conventions, the remnants of a past condition of society. It is largely + this maladjustment, which, deeply studied in all its ramifications, will + be found to lie as the taproot and central source of the most terrible of + the social diseases that afflict us. + </p> + <p> + The fact that for equal work equally well performed by a man and by a + woman, it is ordained that the woman on the ground of her sex alone shall + receive a less recompense, is the nearest approach to a wilful and + unqualified “wrong” in the whole relation of woman to society today. That + males of enlightenment and equity can for an hour tolerate the existence + of this inequality has seemed to me always incomprehensible; and it is + only explainable when one regards it as a result of the blinding effects + of custom and habit. Personally, I have felt so profoundly on this + subject, that this, with one other point connected with woman’s sexual + relation to man, are the only matters connected with woman’s position, in + thinking of which I have always felt it necessary almost fiercely to crush + down indignation and to restrain it, if I would maintain an impartiality + of outlook. I should therefore much regret if the light and passing manner + in which this question has been touched on in this little book made it + seem of less vital importance than I hold it. + </p> + <p> + In the last chapter of the original book, the longest, and I believe the + most important, I dealt with the problems connected with marriage and the + personal relations of men and women in the modern world. In it I tried to + give expression to that which I hold to be a great truth, and one on which + I should not fear to challenge the verdict of long future generations—that, + the direction in which the endeavour of woman to readjust herself to the + new conditions of life is leading today, is not towards a greater sexual + laxity, or promiscuity, or to an increased self-indulgence, but toward a + higher appreciation of the sacredness of all sex relations, and a clearer + perception of the sex relation between man and woman as the basis of human + society, on whose integrity, beauty and healthfulness depend the health + and beauty of human life, as a whole. Above all, that it will lead to a + closer, more permanent, more emotionally and intellectually complete and + intimate relation between the individual man and woman. And if in the + present disco-ordinate transitional stage of our social growth it is found + necessary to allow of readjustment by means of divorce, it will not be + because such readjustments will be regarded lightly, but rather, as when, + in a complex and delicate mechanism moved by a central spring, we allow in + the structure for the readjustment and regulation of that spring, because + on its absolute perfection of action depends the movement of the whole + mechanism. In the last pages of the book, I tried to express what seems to + me a most profound truth often overlooked—that as humanity and human + societies pass on slowly from their present barbarous and semi-savage + condition in matters of sex into a higher, it will be found increasingly, + that over and above its function in producing and sending onward the + physical stream of life (a function which humanity shares with the most + lowly animal and vegetable forms of life, and which even by some noted + thinkers of the present day seems to be regarded as its only possible + function,) that sex and the sexual relation between man and woman have + distinct aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual functions and ends, apart + entirely from physical reproduction. That noble as is the function of the + physical reproduction of humanity by the union of man and woman, rightly + viewed, that union has in it latent, other, and even higher forms, of + creative energy and life-dispensing power, and that its history on earth + has only begun. As the first wild rose when it hung from its stem with its + centre of stamens and pistils and its single whorl of pale petals, had + only begun its course, and was destined, as the ages passed, to develop + stamen upon stamen and petal upon petal, till it assumed a hundred forms + of joy and beauty. + </p> + <p> + And, it would indeed almost seem, that, on the path toward the higher + development of sexual life on earth, as man has so often had to lead in + other paths, that here it is perhaps woman, by reason of those very sexual + conditions which in the past have crushed and trammelled her, who is bound + to lead the way, and man to follow. So that it may be at last, that sexual + love—that tired angel who through the ages has presided over the + march of humanity, with distraught eyes, and feather-shafts broken, and + wings drabbled in the mires of lust and greed, and golden locks caked over + with the dust of injustice and oppression—till those looking at him + have sometimes cried in terror, “He is the Evil and not the Good of life!” + and have sought, if it were not possible, to exterminate him—shall + yet, at last, bathed from the mire and dust of ages in the streams of + friendship and freedom, leap upwards, with white wings spread, resplendent + in the sunshine of a distant future—the essentially Good and + Beautiful of human existence. + </p> + <p> + I have given this long and very wearisome explanation of the scope and + origin of this little book, because I feel that it might lead to grave + misunderstanding were it not understood how it came to be written. + </p> + <p> + I have inscribed it to my friend, Lady Constance Lytton; not because I + think it worthy of her, nor yet because of the splendid part she has + played in the struggle of the women fighting today in England for certain + forms of freedom for all women. It is, if I may be allowed without + violating the sanctity of a close personal friendship so to say, because + she, with one or two other men and women I have known, have embodied for + me the highest ideal of human nature, in which intellectual power and + strength of will are combined with an infinite tenderness and a wide human + sympathy; a combination which, whether in the person of the man or the + woman, is essential to the existence of the fully rounded and harmonised + human creature; and which an English woman of genius summed in one line + when she cried in her invocation of her great French sister:— + </p> + <p> + “Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man!” + </p> + <p> + One word more I should like to add, as I may not again speak or write on + this subject. I should like to say to the men and women of the generations + which will come after us—“You will look back at us with + astonishment! You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished so + little; at the, to you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did not + take; at the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we sat + down passive; at the great truths staring us in the face, which we failed + to see; at the truths we grasped at, but could never quite get our fingers + round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so little—but, + what you will never know is how it was thinking of you and for you, that + we struggled as we did and accomplished the little which we have done; + that it was in the thought of your larger realisation and fuller life, + that we found consolation for the futilities of our own.” + </p> + <p> + “What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me.” + </p> + <p> + O.S. <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter I. Parasitism. + </h2> + <p> + In that clamour which has arisen in the modern world, where now this, and + then that, is demanded for and by large bodies of modern women, he who + listens carefully may detect as a keynote, beneath all the clamour, a + demand which may be embodied in such a cry as this: Give us labour and the + training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves alone, + but for the race. + </p> + <p> + If this demand be logically expanded, it will take such form as this: Give + us labour! For countless ages, for thousands, millions it may be, we have + laboured. When first man wandered, the naked, newly-erected savage, and + hunted and fought, we wandered with him: each step of his was ours. Within + our bodies we bore the race, on our shoulders we carried it; we sought the + roots and plants for its food; and, when man’s barbed arrow or hook + brought the game, our hands dressed it. Side by side, the savage man and + the savage woman, we wandered free together and laboured free together. + And we were contented! + </p> + <p> + Then a change came. + </p> + <p> + We ceased from our wanderings, and, camping upon one spot of earth, again + the labours of life were divided between us. While man went forth to hunt, + or to battle with the foe who would have dispossessed us of all, we + laboured on the land. We hoed the earth, we reaped the grain, we shaped + the dwellings, we wove the clothing, we modelled the earthen vessels and + drew the lines upon them, which were humanity’s first attempt at domestic + art; we studied the properties and uses of plants, and our old women were + the first physicians of the race, as, often, its first priests and + prophets. + </p> + <p> + We fed the race at our breast, we bore it on our shoulders; through us it + was shaped, fed, and clothed. Labour more toilsome and unending than that + of man was ours; yet did we never cry out that it was too heavy for us. + While savage man lay in the sunshine on his skins, resting, that he might + be fitted for war or the chase, or while he shaped his weapons of death, + he ate and drank that which our hands had provided for him; and while we + knelt over our grindstone, or hoed in the fields, with one child in our + womb, perhaps, and one on our back, toiling till the young body was old + before its time—did we ever cry out that the labour allotted to us + was too hard for us? Did we not know that the woman who threw down her + burden was as a man who cast away his shield in battle—a coward and + a traitor to his race? Man fought—that was his work; we fed and + nurtured the race—that was ours. We knew that upon our labours, even + as upon man’s, depended the life and well-being of the people whom we + bore. We endured our toil, as man bore his wounds, silently; and we were + content. + </p> + <p> + Then again a change came. + </p> + <p> + Ages passed, and time was when it was no longer necessary that all men + should go to the hunt or the field of war; and when only one in five, or + one in ten, or but one in twenty, was needed continually for these + labours. Then our fellow-man, having no longer full occupation in his old + fields of labour, began to take his share in ours. He too began to + cultivate the field, to build the house, to grind the corn (or make his + male slaves do it); and the hoe, and the potter’s tools, and the + thatching-needle, and at last even the grindstones which we first had + picked up and smoothed to grind the food for our children, began to pass + from our hands into his. The old, sweet life of the open fields was ours + no more; we moved within the gates, where the time passes more slowly and + the world is sadder than in the air outside; but we had our own work + still, and were content. + </p> + <p> + If, indeed, we might no longer grow the food for our people, we were still + its dressers; if we did not always plant and prepare the flax and hemp, we + still wove the garments for our race; if we did no longer raise the house + walls, the tapestries that covered them were the work of our hands; we + brewed the ale, and the simples which were used as medicines we distilled + and prescribed; and, close about our feet, from birth to manhood, grew up + the children whom we had borne; their voices were always in our ears. At + the doors of our houses we sat with our spinning-wheels, and we looked out + across the fields that were once ours to labour in—and were + contented. Lord’s wife, peasant’s, or burgher’s, we all still had our work + to do! + </p> + <p> + A thousand years ago, had one gone to some great dame, questioning her why + she did not go out a-hunting or a-fighting, or enter the great hall to + dispense justice and confer upon the making of laws, she would have + answered: “Am I a fool that you put to me such questions? Have I not a + hundred maidens to keep at work at spinning-wheels and needles? With my + own hands daily do I not dispense bread to over a hundred folk? In the + great hall go and see the tapestries I with my maidens have created by the + labour of years, and which we shall labour over for twenty more, that my + children’s children may see recorded the great deeds of their forefathers. + In my store-room are there not salves and simples, that my own hands have + prepared for the healing of my household and the sick in the country + round? Ill would it go indeed, if when the folk came home from war and the + chase of wild beasts, weary or wounded, they found all the womenfolk gone + out a-hunting and a-fighting, and none there to dress their wounds, or + prepare their meat, or guide and rule the household! Better far might my + lord and his followers come and help us with our work, than that we should + go to help them! You are surely bereft of all wit. What becomes of the + country if the women forsake their toil?” + </p> + <p> + And the burgher’s wife, asked why she did not go to labour in her + husband’s workshop, or away into the market-place, or go a-trading to + foreign countries, would certainly have answered: “I am too busy to speak + with such as you! The bread is in the oven (already I smell it a-burning), + the winter is coming on, and my children lack good woollen hose and my + husband needs a warm coat. I have six vats of ale all a-brewing, and I + have daughters whom I must teach to spin and sew, and the babies are + clinging round my knees. And you ask me why I do not go abroad to seek for + new labours! Godsooth! Would you have me to leave my household to starve + in summer and die of cold in winter, and my children to go untrained, + while I gad about to seek for other work? A man must have his belly full + and his back covered before all things in life. Who, think you, would spin + and bake and brew, and rear and train my babes, if I went abroad? New + labour, indeed, when the days are not long enough, and I have to toil far + into the night! I have no time to talk with fools! Who will rear and shape + the nation if I do not?” + </p> + <p> + And the young maiden at the cottage door, beside her wheel, asked why she + was content and did not seek new fields of labour, would surely have + answered: “Go away, I have no time to listen to you. Do you not see that I + am spinning here that I too may have a home of my own? I am weaving the + linen garments that shall clothe my household in the long years to come! I + cannot marry till the chest upstairs be full. You cannot hear it, but as I + sit here alone, spinning, far off across the hum of my spinning-wheel I + hear the voices of my little unborn children calling to me—‘O + mother, mother, make haste, that we may be!’—and sometimes, when I + seem to be looking out across my wheel into the sunshine, it is the blaze + of my own fireside that I see, and the light shines on the faces round it; + and I spin on the faster and the steadier when I think of what shall come. + Do you ask me why I do not go out and labour in the fields with the lad + whom I have chosen? Is his work, then, indeed more needed than mine for + the raising of that home that shall be ours? Oh, very hard I will labour, + for him and for my children, in the long years to come. But I cannot stop + to talk to you now. Far off, over the hum of my spinning-wheel, I hear the + voices of my children calling, and I must hurry on. Do you ask me why I do + not seek for labour whose hands are full to bursting? Who will give folk + to the nation if I do not?” + </p> + <p> + Such would have been our answer in Europe in the ages of the past, if + asked the question why we were contented with our field of labour and + sought no other. Man had his work; we had ours. We knew that we upbore our + world on our shoulders; and that through the labour of our hands it was + sustained and strengthened—and we were contented. + </p> + <p> + But now, again a change has come. + </p> + <p> + Something that is entirely new has entered into the field of human labour, + and left nothing as it was. + </p> + <p> + In man’s fields of toil, change has accomplished, and is yet more quickly + accomplishing, itself. + </p> + <p> + On lands where once fifty men and youths toiled with their cattle, today + one steam-plough, guided by but two pair of hands, passes swiftly; and an + automatic reaper in one day reaps and binds and prepares for the garner + the produce of fields it would have taken a hundred strong male arms to + harvest in the past. The iron tools and weapons, only one of which it took + an ancient father of our race long months of stern exertion to extract + from ore and bring to shape and temper, are now poured forth by + steam-driven machinery as a millpond pours forth its water; and even in + war, the male’s ancient and especial field of labour, a complete reversal + of the ancient order has taken place. Time was when the size and strength + of the muscles in a man’s legs and arms, and the strength and size of his + body, largely determined his fighting powers, and an Achilles or a Richard + Coeur de Lion, armed only with his spear or battle-axe, made a host fly + before him; today the puniest mannikin behind a modern Maxim gun may mow + down in perfect safety a phalanx of heroes whose legs and arms and + physical powers a Greek god might have envied, but who, having not the + modern machinery of war, fall powerless. The day of the primary import to + humanity of the strength in man’s extensor and flexor muscles, whether in + labours of war or of peace, is gone by for ever; and the day of the + all-importance of the culture and activity of man’s brain and nerve has + already come. + </p> + <p> + The brain of one consumptive German chemist, who in his laboratory + compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of the modern + peoples than ten thousand soldierly legs and arms; and the man who invents + one new labour-saving machine may, through the cerebration of a few days, + have performed the labour it would otherwise have taken hundreds of + thousands of his lusty fellows decades to accomplish. + </p> + <p> + Year by year, month by month, and almost hour by hour, this change is + increasingly showing itself in the field of the modern labour; and crude + muscular force, whether in man or beast, sinks continually in its value in + the world of human toil; while intellectual power, virility, and activity, + and that culture which leads to the mastery of the inanimate forces of + nature, to the invention of machinery, and to that delicate manipulative + skill often required in guiding it, becomes ever of greater and greater + importance to the race. Already today we tremble on the verge of a + discovery, which may come tomorrow or the next day, when, through the + attainment of a simple and cheap method of controlling some widely + diffused, everywhere accessible, natural force (such, for instance, as the + force of the great tidal wave) there will at once and for ever pass away + even that comparatively small value which still, in our present stage of + material civilisation, clings to the expenditure of mere crude, + mechanical, human energy; and the creature, however physically powerful, + who can merely pull, push, and lift, much after the manner of a machine, + will have no further value in the field of human labour. + </p> + <p> + Therefore, even today, we find that wherever that condition which we call + modern civilisation prevails, and in proportion as it tends to prevail—wherever + steam-power, electricity, or the forces of wind and water, are compelled + by man’s intellectual activity to act as the motor-powers in the + accomplishment of human toil, wherever the delicate adaptions of + scientifically constructed machinery are taking the place of the simple + manipulation of the human hand—there has arisen, all the world over, + a large body of males who find that their ancient fields of labour have + slipped or are slipping from them, and who discover that the modern world + has no place or need for them. At the gates of our dockyards, in our + streets, and in our fields, are to be found everywhere, in proportion as + modern civilisation is really dominant, men whose bulk and mere animal + strength would have made them as warriors invaluable members of any + primitive community, and who would have been valuable even in any simpler + civilisation than our own, as machines of toil; but who, owing to lack of + intellectual or delicate manual training, have now no form of labour to + offer society which it stands really in need of, and who therefore tend to + form our Great Male Unemployed—a body which finds the only powers it + possesses so little needed by its fellows that, in return for its + intensest physical labour, it hardly earns the poorest sustenance. The + material conditions of life have been rapidly modified, and the man has + not been modified with them; machinery has largely filled his place in his + old field of labour, and he has found no new one. + </p> + <p> + It is from these men, men who, viewed from the broad humanitarian + standpoint, are often of the most lovable and interesting type, and who + might in a simpler state of society, where physical force was the + dominating factor, have been the heroes, leaders, and chiefs of their + people, that there arises in the modern world the bitter cry of the male + unemployed: “Give us labour or we die!” (The problem of the unemployed + male is, of course, not nearly so modern as that of the unemployed female. + It may be said in England to have taken its rise in almost its present + form as early as the fifteenth century, when economic changes began to + sever the agricultural labourer from the land, and rob him of his ancient + forms of social toil. Still, in its most acute form, it may be called a + modern problem.) + </p> + <p> + Yet it is only upon one, and a comparatively small, section of the males + of the modern civilised world that these changes in the material + conditions of life have told in such fashion as to take all useful + occupation from them and render them wholly or partly worthless to + society. If the modern man’s field of labour has contracted at one end + (the physical), at the other (the intellectual) it has immeasurably + expanded! If machinery and the command of inanimate motor-forces have + rendered of comparatively little value the male’s mere physical + motor-power, the demand upon his intellectual faculties, the call for the + expenditure of nervous energy, and the exercise of delicate manipulative + skill in the labour of human life, have immeasurably increased. + </p> + <p> + In a million new directions forms of honoured and remunerative social + labour are opening up before the feet of the modern man, which his + ancestors never dreamed of; and day by day they yet increase in numbers + and importance. The steamship, the hydraulic lift, the patent road-maker, + the railway-train, the electric tram-car, the steam-driven mill, the Maxim + gun and the torpedo boat, once made, may perform their labours with the + guidance and assistance of comparatively few hands; but a whole army of + men of science, engineers, clerks, and highly-trained workmen is necessary + for their invention, construction, and maintenance. In the domains of art, + of science, of literature, and above all in the field of politics and + government, an almost infinite extension has taken place in the fields of + male labour. Where in primitive times woman was often the only builder, + and patterns she daubed on her hut walls or traced on her earthen vessels + the only attempts at domestic art; and where later but an individual here + and there was required to design a king’s palace or a god’s temple or to + ornament it with statues or paintings, today a mighty army of men, a + million strong, is employed in producing plastic art alone, both high and + low, from the traceries on wall-paper and the illustrations in penny + journals, to the production of the pictures and statues which adorn the + national collections, and a mighty new field of toil has opened before the + anciently hunting and fighting male. Where once one ancient witch-doctress + may have been the only creature in a whole district who studied the nature + of herbs and earths, or a solitary wizard experimenting on poisons was the + only individual in a whole territory interrogating nature; and where + later, a few score of alchemists and astrologers only were engaged in + examining the structure of substances, or the movement of planets, today + thousands of men in every civilised community are labouring to unravel the + mysteries of nature, and the practical chemist, the physician, the + anatomist, the engineer, the astronomer, the mathematician, the + electrician, form a mighty and always increasingly important army of male + labourers. Where once an isolated bard supplied a nation with its + literatures, or where later a few thousand priests and men of letters + wrote and transcribed for the few to read, today literature gives labour + to a multitude almost as countless as a swarm of locusts. From the + penny-a-liner to the artist and thinker, the demand for their labour + continually increases. Where one town-crier with stout legs and lusty + lungs was once all-sufficient to spread the town and country news, a score + of men now sit daily pen in hand, preparing the columns of the morning’s + paper, and far into the night a hundred compositors are engaged in a + labour which requires a higher culture of brain and finger than most + ancient kings and rulers possessed. Even in the labours of war, the most + brutal and primitive of the occupations lingering on into civilised life + from the savage state, the new demand for labour of an intellectual kind + is enormous. The invention, construction, and working of one Krupp gun, + though its mere discharge hardly demands more crude muscular exertion than + a savage expends in throwing his boomerang, yet represents an infinitude + of intellectual care and thought, far greater than that which went to the + shaping of all the weapons of a primitive army. Above all, in the domain + of politics and government, where once a king or queen, aided by a handful + of councillors, was alone practically concerned in the labours of national + guidance or legislation; today, owing to the rapid means of + intercommunication, printing, and the consequent diffusion of political + and social information throughout a territory, it has become possible, for + the first time, for all adults in a large community to keep themselves + closely informed on all national affairs; and in every highly-civilised + state the ordinary male has been almost compelled to take his share, + however small, in the duties and labours of legislation and government. + Thus there has opened before the mass of men a vast new sphere of labour + undreamed of by their ancestors. In every direction the change which + material civilisation has wrought, while it has militated against that + comparatively small section of males who have nothing to offer society but + the expenditure of their untrained muscular energy (inflicting much and + often completely unmerited suffering upon them), has immeasurably extended + the field of male labour as a whole. Never before in the history of the + earth has the man’s field of remunerative toil been so wide, so + interesting, so complex, and in its results so all-important to society; + never before has the male sex, taken as a whole, been so fully and + strenuously employed. + </p> + <p> + So much is this the case, that, exactly as in the earlier conditions of + society an excessive and almost crushing amount of the most important + physical labour generally devolved upon the female, so under modern + civilised conditions among the wealthier and fully civilised classes, an + unduly excessive share of labour tends to devolve upon the male. That + almost entirely modern, morbid condition, affecting brain and nervous + system, and shortening the lives of thousands in modern civilised + societies, which is vulgarly known as “overwork” or “nervous breakdown,” + is but one evidence of the even excessive share of mental toil devolving + upon the modern male of the cultured classes, who, in addition to + maintaining himself, has frequently dependent upon him a larger or smaller + number of entirely parasitic females. But, whatever the result of the + changes of modern civilisation may be with regard to the male, he + certainly cannot complain that they have as a whole robbed him of his + fields of labour, diminished his share in the conduct of life, or reduced + him to a condition of morbid inactivity. + </p> + <p> + In our woman’s field of labour, matters have tended to shape themselves + wholly otherwise! The changes which have taken place during the last + centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term “modern + civilisation,” have tended to rob woman, not merely in part but almost + wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and + social labour; and, where there has not been a determined and conscious + resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to + her new and compensatory fields. + </p> + <p> + It is this fact which constitutes our modern “Woman’s Labour Problem.” + </p> + <p> + Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings + steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often + those of men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no + longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our peoples. + </p> + <p> + Our hoes and our grindstones passed from us long ago, when the ploughman + and the miller took our place; but for a time we kept fast possession of + the kneading-trough and the brewing-vat. Today, steam often shapes our + bread, and the loaves are set down at our very door—it may be by a + man-driven motor-car! The history of our household drinks we know no + longer; we merely see them set before us at our tables. Day by day + machine-prepared and factory-produced viands take a larger and larger + place in the dietary of rich and poor, till the working man’s wife places + before her household little that is of her own preparation; while among + the wealthier classes, so far has domestic change gone that men are not + unfrequently found labouring in our houses and kitchens, and even standing + behind our chairs ready to do all but actually place the morsels of food + between our feminine lips. The army of rosy milkmaids has passed away for + ever, to give place to the cream-separator and the, largely, + male-and-machinery manipulated butter pat. In every direction the ancient + saw, that it was exclusively the woman’s sphere to prepare the viands for + her household, has become, in proportion as civilisation has perfected + itself, an antiquated lie. + </p> + <p> + Even the minor domestic operations are tending to pass out of the circle + of woman’s labour. In modern cities our carpets are beaten, our windows + cleaned, our floors polished, by machinery, or extra domestic, and often + male labour. Change has gone much farther than to the mere taking from us + of the preparation of the materials from which the clothing is formed. + Already the domestic sewing-machine, which has supplanted almost entirely + the ancient needle, begins to become antiquated, and a thousand machines + driven in factories by central engines are supplying not only the husband + and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of clothing from + vest to jacket; while among the wealthy classes, the male dress-designer + with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers is helping finally to + explode the ancient myth, that it is woman’s exclusive sphere, and a part + of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the garments she or her household + wear. + </p> + <p> + Year by year, day by day, there is a silently working but determined + tendency for the sphere of woman’s domestic labours to contract itself; + and the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex + condition which we term “modern civilisation” is advanced. + </p> + <p> + It manifests itself more in England and America than in Italy and Spain, + more in great cities than in country places, more among the wealthier + classes than the poorer, and is an unfailing indication of advancing + modern civilisation. (There is, indeed, often something pathetic in the + attitude of many a good old mother of the race, who having survived, here + and there, into the heart of our modern civilisation, is sorely puzzled by + the change in woman’s duties and obligations. She may be found looking + into the eyes of some ancient crone, who, like herself, has survived from + a previous state of civilisation, seeking there a confirmation of a view + of life of which a troublous doubt has crept even into her own soul. “I,” + she cries, “always cured my own hams, and knitted my own socks, and made + up all the linen by hand. We always did it when we were girls—but + now my daughters object!” And her old crone answers her? “Yes, we did it; + it’s the right thing; but it’s so expensive. It’s so much cheaper to buy + things ready made!” And they shake their heads and go their ways, feeling + that the world is strangely out of joint when duty seems no more duty. + Such women are, in truth, like a good old mother duck, who, having for + years led her ducklings to the same pond, when that pond has been drained + and nothing is left but baked mud, will still persist in bringing her + younglings down to it, and walks about with flapping wings and anxious + quack, trying to induce them to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh + young instincts, hear far off the delicious drippings from the new dam + which has been built higher up to catch the water, and they smell the + chickweed and the long grass that is growing up beside it; and absolutely + refuse to disport themselves on the baked mud or to pretend to seek for + worms where no worms are. And they leave the ancient mother quacking + beside her pond and set out to seek for new pastures—perhaps to lose + themselves upon the way?—perhaps to find them? To the old mother one + is inclined to say, “Ah, good old mother duck, can you not see the world + has changed? You cannot bring the water back into the dried-up pond! + Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was there, but it has gone for + ever; and, would you and yours swim again, it must be in other waters.” + New machinery, new duties.) + </p> + <p> + But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women’s material + domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient field + of labour. + </p> + <p> + Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult + years were reached. Hers was the training and influence which shaped them. + From the moment when the infant first lay on her breast, till her + daughters left her for marriage and her sons went to take share in man’s + labour, they were continually under the mother’s influence. Today, so + complex have become even the technical and simpler branches of education, + so mighty and inexorable are the demands which modern civilisation makes + for specialised instruction and training for all individuals who are to + survive and retain their usefulness under modern conditions, that, from + the earliest years of its life, the child is of necessity largely removed + from the hands of the mother, and placed in those of the specialised + instructor. Among the wealthier classes, scarcely is the infant born when + it passes into the hands of the trained nurse, and from hers on into the + hands of the qualified teacher; till, at nine or ten, the son in certain + countries often leaves his home for ever for the public school, to pass on + to the college and university; while the daughter, in the hands of trained + instructors and dependents, owes in the majority of cases hardly more of + her education or formation to maternal toil. While even among our poorer + classes, the infant school, and the public school; and later on the + necessity for manual training, takes the son and often the daughter as + completely, and always increasingly as civilisation advances, from the + mother’s control. So marked has this change in woman’s ancient field of + labour become, that a woman of almost any class may have borne many + children and yet in early middle age be found sitting alone in an empty + house, all her offspring gone from her to receive training and instruction + at the hands of others. The ancient statement that the training and + education of her offspring is exclusively the duty of the mother, however + true it may have been with regard to a remote past, has become an absolute + misstatement; and the woman who should at the present day insist on + entirely educating her own offspring would, in nine cases out of ten, + inflict an irreparable injury on them, because she is incompetent. + </p> + <p> + But, if possible, yet more deeply and radically have the changes of modern + civilisation touched our ancient field of labour in another direction—in + that very portion of the field of human labour which is peculiarly and + organically ours, and which can never be wholly taken from us. Here the + shrinkage has been larger than in any other direction, and touches us as + women more vitally. + </p> + <p> + Time was, and still is, among almost all primitive and savage folk, when + the first and all-important duty of the female to her society was to bear, + to bear much, and to bear unceasingly! On her adequate and persistent + performance of this passive form of labour, and of her successful feeding + of her young from her own breast, and rearing it, depended, not merely the + welfare, but often the very existence, of her tribe or nation. Where, as + is the case among almost all barbarous peoples, the rate of infant + mortality is high; where the unceasing casualties resulting from war, the + chase, and acts of personal violence tend continually to reduce the number + of adult males; where, surgical knowledge being still in its infancy, most + wounds are fatal; where, above all, recurrent pestilence and famine, + unfailing if of irregular recurrence, decimated the people, it has been + all important that woman should employ her creative power to its very + uttermost limits if the race were not at once to dwindle and die out. “May + thy wife’s womb never cease from bearing,” is still today the highest + expression of goodwill on the part of a native African chief to his + departing guest. For, not only does the prolific woman in the primitive + state contribute to the wealth and strength of her nation as a whole, but + to that of her own male companion and of her family. Where the social + conditions of life are so simple that, in addition to bearing and suckling + the child, it is reared and nourished through childhood almost entirely + through the labour and care of the mother, requiring no expenditure of + tribal or family wealth on its training or education, its value as an + adult enormously outweighs, both to the state and the male, the trouble + and expense of rearing it, which falls almost entirely on the individual + woman who bears it. The man who has twenty children to become warriors and + labourers is by so much the richer and the more powerful than he who has + but one; while the state whose women are prolific and labour for and rear + their children stands so far insured against destruction. Incessant and + persistent child-bearing is thus truly the highest duty and the most + socially esteemed occupation of the primitive woman, equalling fully in + social importance the labour of the man as hunter and warrior. + </p> + <p> + Even under those conditions of civilisation which have existed in the + centuries which divide primitive savagery from high civilisation, the + demand for continuous, unbroken child-bearing on the part of the woman as + her loftiest social duty has generally been hardly less imperious. + Throughout the Middle Ages of Europe, and down almost to our own day, the + rate of infant mortality was almost as large as in a savage state; medical + ignorance destroyed innumerable lives; antiseptic surgery being unknown, + serious wounds were still almost always fatal; in the low state of + sanitary science, plagues such as those which in the reign of Justinian + swept across the civilised world from India to Northern Europe, well nigh + depopulating the globe, or the Black Death of 1349, which in England alone + swept away more than half the population of the island, were but extreme + forms of the destruction of population going on continually as the result + of zymotic disease; while wars were not merely far more common but, owing + to the famines which almost invariably followed them, were far more + destructive to human life than in our own days, and deaths by violence, + whether at the hands of the state or as the result of personal enmity, + were of daily occurrence in all lands. Under these conditions abstinence + on the part of woman from incessant child-bearing might have led to almost + the same serious diminution or even extinction of her people, as in the + savage state; while the very existence of her civilisation depended on the + production of an immense number of individuals as beasts of burden, + without the expenditure of whose crude muscular force in physical labour + of agriculture and manufacture those intermediate civilisations would, in + the absence of machinery, have been impossible. Twenty men had to be born, + fed at the breast, and reared by women to perform the crude brute labour + which is performed today by one small, well-adjusted steam crane; and the + demand for large masses of human creatures as mere reservoirs of motor + force for accomplishing the simplest processes was imperative. So strong, + indeed, was the consciousness of the importance to society of continuous + child-bearing on the part of woman, that as late as the middle of the + sixteenth century Martin Luther wrote: “If a woman becomes weary or at + last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, + she is there to do it;” and he doubtless gave expression, in a crude and + somewhat brutal form, to a conviction common to the bulk of his + contemporaries, both male and female. + </p> + <p> + Today, this condition has almost completely reversed itself. + </p> + <p> + The advance of science and the amelioration of the physical conditions of + life tend rapidly toward a diminution of human mortality. The infant + death-rate among the upper classes in modern civilisations has fallen by + more than one-half; while among poorer classes it is already, though + slowly, falling: the increased knowledge of the laws of sanitation has + made among all highly civilised peoples the depopulation by plague a thing + of the past, and the discoveries of the next twenty or thirty years will + probably do away for ever with the danger to man of zymotic disease. + Famines of the old desolating type have become an impossibility where + rapid means of transportation convey the superfluity of one land to supply + the lack of another; and war and deeds of violence, though still lingering + among us, have already become episodal in the lives of nations as of + individuals; while the vast advances in antiseptic surgery have caused + even the effects of wounds and dismemberments to become only very + partially fatal to human life. All these changes have tended to diminish + human mortality and protract human life; and they have today already made + it possible for a race not only to maintain its numbers, but even to + increase them, with a comparatively small expenditure of woman’s vitality + in the passive labour of child-bearing. + </p> + <p> + But yet more seriously has the demand for woman’s labour as child-bearer + been diminished by change in another direction. + </p> + <p> + Every mechanical invention which lessens the necessity for rough, + untrained, muscular, human labour, diminishes also the social demand upon + woman as the producer in large masses of such labourers. Already + throughout the modern civilised world we have reached a point at which the + social demand is not merely for human creatures in the bulk for use as + beasts of burden, but, rather, and only, for such human creatures as shall + be so trained and cultured as to be fitted for the performance of the more + complex duties of modern life. Not, now, merely for many men, but, rather, + for few men, and those few, well born and well instructed, is the modern + demand. And the woman who today merely produces twelve children and + suckles them, and then turns them loose on her society and family, is + regarded, and rightly so, as a curse and down draught, and not the + productive labourer, of her community. Indeed, so difficult and expensive + has become in the modern world the rearing and training of even one + individual, in a manner suited to fit it for coping with the complexities + and difficulties of civilised life, that, to the family as well as to the + state, unlimited fecundity on the part of the female has already, in most + cases, become irremediable evil; whether it be in the case of the artisan, + who at the cost of immense self-sacrifice must support and train his + children till their twelfth or fourteenth year, if they are ever to become + even skilled manual labourers, and who if his family be large often sinks + beneath the burden, allowing his offspring, untaught and untrained, to + become waste products of human life; or, in that of the professional man, + who by his mental toil is compelled to support and educate, at immense + expense, his sons till they are twenty or older, and to sustain his + daughters, often throughout their whole lives should they not marry, and + to whom a large family proves often no less disastrous; while the state + whose women produce recklessly large masses of individuals in excess of + those for whom they can provide instruction and nourishment is a state, in + so far, tending toward deterioration. The commandment to the modern woman + is now not simply “Thou shalt bear,” but rather, “Thou shalt not bear in + excess of thy power to rear and train satisfactorily;” and the woman who + should today appear at the door of a workhouse or the tribunal of the + poor-law guardians followed by her twelve infants, demanding honourable + sustenance for them and herself in return for the labour she had undergone + in producing them, would meet with but short shrift. And the modern man + who on his wedding-day should be greeted with the ancient good wish, that + he might become the father of twenty sons and twenty daughters, would + regard it as a malediction rather than a blessing. It is certain that the + time is now rapidly approaching when child-bearing will be regarded rather + as a lofty privilege, permissible only to those who have shown their power + rightly to train and provide for their offspring, than a labour which in + itself, and under whatever conditions performed, is beneficial to society. + (The difference between the primitive and modern view on this matter is + aptly and quaintly illustrated by two incidents. Seeing a certain Bantu + woman who appeared better cared for, less hard worked, and happier than + the mass of her companions, we made inquiry, and found that she had two + impotent brothers; because of this she herself had not married, but had + borne by different men fourteen children, all of whom when grown she had + given to her brothers. “They are fond of me because I have given them so + many children, therefore I have not to work like the other women; and my + brothers give me plenty of mealies and milk,” she replied, complacently, + when questioned, “and our family will not die out.” And this person, whose + conduct was so emphatically anti-social on all sides when viewed from the + modern standpoint, was evidently regarded as pre-eminently of value to her + family and to society because of her mere fecundity. On the other hand, a + few weeks back appeared an account in the London papers of an individual + who, taken up at the East End for some brutal offence, blubbered out in + court that she was the mother of twenty children. “You should be ashamed + of yourself!” responded the magistrate; “a woman capable of such conduct + would be capable of doing anything!” and the fine was remorselessly + inflicted. Undoubtedly, if somewhat brutally, the magistrate yet gave true + voice to the modern view on the subject of excessive and reckless + child-bearing.) + </p> + <p> + Further, owing partly to the diminished demand for child-bearing, rising + from the extreme difficulty and expense of rearing and education, and to + many other complex social causes, to which we shall return later, millions + of women in our modern societies are so placed as to be absolutely + compelled to go through life not merely childless, but without sex + relationship in any form whatever; while another mighty army of women is + reduced by the dislocations of our civilisation to accepting sexual + relationships which practically negate child-bearing, and whose only + product is physical and moral disease. + </p> + <p> + Thus, it has come to pass that vast numbers of us are, by modern social + conditions, prohibited from child-bearing at all; and that even those + among us who are child-bearers are required, in proportion as the class of + race to which we belong stands high in the scale of civilisation, to + produce in most cases a limited number of offspring; so that even for + these of us, child-bearing and suckling, instead of filling the entire + circle of female life from the first appearance of puberty to the end of + middle age, becomes an episodal occupation, employing from three or four + to ten or twenty of the threescore-and-ten-years which are allotted to + human life. In such societies the statement (so profoundly true when made + with regard to most savage societies, and even largely true with regard to + those in the intermediate stages of civilisation) that the main and + continuous occupation of all women from puberty to age is the bearing and + suckling of children, and that this occupation must fully satisfy all her + needs for social labour and activity, becomes an antiquated and + unmitigated misstatement. + </p> + <p> + Not only are millions of our women precluded from ever bearing a child, + but for those of us who do bear the demand is ever increasingly in + civilised societies coupled with the condition that if we would act + socially we must restrict our powers. (As regards modern civilised + nations, we find that those whose birthrate is the highest per woman are + by no means the happiest, most enlightened, or powerful; nor do we even + find that the population always increases in proportion to the births. + France, which in many respects leads in the van of civilisation, has one + of the lowest birthrates per woman in Europe; and among the free and + enlightened population of Switzerland and Scandinavia the birthrate is + often exceedingly low; while Ireland, one of the most unhappy and weak of + European nations, had long one of the highest birthrates, without any + proportional increase in population or power. With regard to the different + classes in one community, the same effect is observable. The birthrate per + woman is higher among the lowest and most ignorant classes in the back + slums of our great cities, than among the women of the upper and cultured + classes, mainly because the age at which marriages are contracted always + tends to become higher as the culture and intelligence of individuals + rises, but also because of the regulation of the number of births after + marriage. Yet the number of children reared to adult years among the more + intelligent classes probably equals or exceeds those of the lowest, owing + to the high rate of infant mortality where births are excessive.) + </p> + <p> + Looking round, then, with the uttermost impartiality we can command, on + the entire field of woman’s ancient and traditional labours, we find that + fully three-fourths of it have shrunk away for ever, and that the + remaining fourth still tends to shrink. + </p> + <p> + It is this great fact, so often and so completely overlooked, which lies + as the propelling force behind that vast and restless “Woman’s Movement” + which marks our day. It is this fact, whether clearly and intellectually + grasped, or, as is more often the case, vaguely and painfully felt, which + awakes in the hearts of the ablest modern European women their passionate, + and at times it would seem almost incoherent, cry for new forms of labour + and new fields for the exercise of their powers. + </p> + <p> + Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this: We do not ask that + the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life flow + backward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning-wheels be again + resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old + grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake + himself entirely to his ancient province of war and the chase, leaving to + us all domestic and civil labour. We do not even demand that society shall + immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a + child-bearer (deep and over-mastering as lies the hunger for motherhood in + every virile woman’s heart!); neither do we demand that the children whom + we bear shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. This, we + know, cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone for ever; + no will of man can recall them; but this is our demand: We demand that, in + that strange new world that is arising alike upon the man and the woman, + where nothing is as it was, and all things are assuming new shapes and + relations, that in this new world we also shall have our share of honoured + and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labour of the + Children of Woman. We demand nothing more than this, and we will take + nothing less. This is our “WOMAN’S RIGHT!” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter II. Parasitism (continued). + </h2> + <p> + Is it to be, that, in the future, machinery and the captive motor-forces + of nature are largely to take the place of human hand and foot in the + labour of clothing and feeding the nations; are these branches of industry + to be no longer domestic labours?—then, we demand in the factory, + the warehouse, and the field, wherever machinery has usurped our ancient + labour-ground, that we also should have our place, as guiders, + controllers, and possessors. Is child-bearing to become the labour of but + a portion of our sex?—then we demand for those among us who are + allowed to take no share in it, compensatory and equally honourable and + important fields of social toil. Is the training of human creatures to + become a yet more and more onerous and laborious occupation, their + education and culture to become increasingly a high art, complex and + scientific?—if so, then, we demand that high and complex culture and + training which shall fit us for instructing the race which we bring into + the world. Is the demand for child-bearing to become so diminished that, + even in the lives of those among us who are child-bearers, it shall fill + no more than half a dozen years out of the three-score-and-ten of human + life?—then we demand that an additional outlet be ours which shall + fill up with dignity and value the tale of the years not so employed. Is + intellectual labour to take ever and increasingly the place of crude + muscular exertion in the labour of life?—then we demand for + ourselves that culture and the freedom of action which alone can yield us + the knowledge of life and the intellectual vigour and strength which will + enable us to undertake the same share of mental which we have borne in the + past in physical labours of life. Are the rulers of the race to be no more + its kings and queens, but the mass of the peoples?—then we, one-half + of the nations, demand our full queens’ share in the duties and labours of + government and legislation. Slowly but determinately, as the old fields of + labour close up and are submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the + new. + </p> + <p> + We make this demand, not for our own sakes alone, but for the succour of + the race. + </p> + <p> + A horseman, riding along on a dark night in an unknown land, may chance to + feel his horse start beneath him; rearing, it may almost hurl him to the + earth: in the darkness he may curse his beast, and believe its aim is + simply to cast him off, and free itself for ever of its burden. But when + the morning dawns and lights the hills and valleys he has travelled, + looking backward, he may perceive that the spot where his beast reared, + planting its feet into the earth, and where it refused to move farther on + the old road, was indeed the edge of a mighty precipice, down which one + step more would have precipitated both horse and rider. And he may then + see that it was an instinct wiser than his own which lead his creature, + though in the dark, to leap backward, seeking a new path along which both + might travel. (Is it not recorded that even Balaam’s ass on which he rode + saw the angel with flaming sword, but Balaam saw it not?) + </p> + <p> + In the confusion and darkness of the present, it may well seem to some, + that woman, in her desire to seek for new paths of labour and employment, + is guided only by an irresponsible impulse; or that she seeks selfishly + only her own good, at the cost of that of the race, which she has so long + and faithfully borne onward. But, when a clearer future shall have arisen + and the obscuring mists of the present have been dissipated, may it not + then be clearly manifest that not for herself alone, but for her entire + race, has woman sought her new paths? + </p> + <p> + For let it be noted exactly what our position is, who today, as women, are + demanding new fields of labour and a reconstruction of our relationship + with life. + </p> + <p> + It is often said that the labour problem before the modern woman and that + before the unemployed or partially or almost uselessly employed male, are + absolutely identical; and that therefore, when the male labour problem of + our age solves itself, that of the woman will of necessity have met its + solution also. + </p> + <p> + This statement, with a certain specious semblance of truth, is yet, we + believe, radically and fundamentally false. It is true that both the male + and the female problems of our age have taken their rise largely in the + same rapid material changes which during the last centuries, and more + especially the last ninety years, have altered the face of the human + world. Both men and women have been robbed by those changes of their + ancient remunerative fields of social work: here the resemblance stops. + The male, from whom the changes of modern civilisation have taken his + ancient field of labour, has but one choice before him: he must find new + fields of labour, or he must perish. Society will not ultimately support + him in an absolutely quiescent and almost useless condition. If he does + not vigorously exert himself in some direction or other (the direction may + even be predatory) he must ultimately be annihilated. Individual drones, + both among the wealthiest and the poorest classes (millionaires’ sons, + dukes, or tramps), may in isolated cases be preserved, and allowed to + reproduce themselves without any exertion or activity of mind or body, but + a vast body of males who, having lost their old forms of social + employment, should refuse in any way to exert themselves or seek for new, + would at no great length of time become extinct. There never has been, and + as far as can be seen, there never will be, a time when the majority of + the males in any society will be supported by the rest of the males in a + condition of perfect mental and physical inactivity. “Find labour or die,” + is the choice ultimately put before the human male today, as in the past; + and this constitutes his labour problem. (The nearest approach to complete + parasitism on the part of a vast body of males occurred, perhaps, in + ancient Rome at the time of the decay and downfall of the Empire, when the + bulk of the population, male as well as female, was fed on imported corn, + wine, and oil, and supplied even with entertainment, almost entirely + without exertion or labour of any kind; but this condition was of short + duration, and speedily contributed to the downfall of the diseased Empire + itself. Among the wealthy and so-called upper classes, the males of + various aristocracies have frequently tended to become completely + parasitic after a lapse of time, but such a condition has always been met + by a short and sharp remedy; and the class has fallen, or become extinct. + The condition of the males of the upper classes in France before the + Revolution affords an interesting illustration of this point.) + </p> + <p> + The labour of the man may not always be useful in the highest sense to his + society, or it may even be distinctly harmful and antisocial, as in the + case of the robber-barons of the Middle Ages, who lived by capturing and + despoiling all who passed by their castles; or as in the case of the share + speculators, stock-jobbers, ring-and-corner capitalists, and monopolists + of the present day, who feed upon the productive labours of society + without contributing anything to its welfare. But even males so occupied + are compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a low + intelligence in their callings; and, however injurious to their societies, + they run no personal risk of handing down effete and enervated + constitutions to their race. Whether beneficially or unbeneficially, the + human male must, generally speaking, employ his intellect, or his muscle, + or die. + </p> + <p> + The position of the unemployed modern female is one wholly different. The + choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labour slip from her, + is not generally or often at the present day the choice between finding + new fields of labour, or death; but one far more serious in its ultimate + reaction on humanity as a whole—it is the choice between finding new + forms of labour or sinking slowly into a condition of more or less + complete and passive sex-parasitism! (It is not without profound interest + to note the varying phenomena of sex-parasitism as they present themselves + in the animal world, both in the male and in the female form. Though among + the greater number of species in the animal world the female form is + larger and more powerful rather than the male (e.g., among birds of prey, + such as eagles, falcons, vultures, &c., and among fishes, insects, + &c.), yet sex-parasitism appears among both sex forms. In certain + sea-creatures, for example, the female carries about in the folds of her + covering three or four minute and quite inactive males, who are entirely + passive and dependent upon her. Among termites, on the other hand, the + female has so far degenerated that she has entirely lost the power of + locomotion; she can no longer provide herself or her offspring with + nourishment, or defend or even clean herself; she has become a mere + passive, distended bag of eggs, without intelligence or activity, she and + her offspring existing through the exertions of the workers of the + community. Among other insects, such, for example, as certain ticks, + another form of female parasitism prevails, and while the male remains a + complex, highly active, and winded creature, the female, fastening herself + by the head into the flesh of some living animal and sucking its blood, + has lost wings and all activity, and power of locomotion; having become a + mere distended bladder, which when filled with eggs bursts and ends a + parasitic existence which has hardly been life. It is not impossible, and + it appears, indeed, highly probable, that it has been this degeneration + and parasitism on the part of the female which has set its limitation to + the evolution of ants, creatures which, having reached a point of mental + development in some respects almost as high as that of man, have yet + become curiously and immovably arrested. The whole question of + sex-parasitism among the lower animals is one throwing suggestive and + instructive side-lights on human social problems, but is too extensive to + be here entered on.) + </p> + <p> + Again and again in the history of the past, when among human creatures a + certain stage of material civilisation has been reached, a curious + tendency has manifested itself for the human female to become more or less + parasitic; social conditions tend to rob her of all forms of active, + conscious, social labour, and to reduce her, like the field-tick, to the + passive exercise of her sex functions alone. And the result of this + parasitism has invariably been the decay in vitality and intelligence of + the female, followed after a longer or shorter period by that of her male + descendants and her entire society. + </p> + <p> + Nevertheless, in the history of the past the dangers of the sex-parasitism + have never threatened more than a small section of the females of the + human race, those exclusively of some comparatively small dominant race or + class; the mass of women beneath them being still compelled to assume many + forms of strenuous activity. It is at the present day, and under the + peculiar conditions of our modern civilisation, that for the first time + sex-parasitism has become a danger, more or less remote, to the mass of + civilised women, perhaps ultimately to all. + </p> + <p> + In the very early stages of human growth, the sexual parasitism and + degeneration of the female formed no possible source of social danger. + Where the conditions of life rendered it inevitable that all the labour of + a community should be performed by the members of that community for + themselves, without the assistance of slaves or machinery, the tendency + has always been rather to throw an excessive amount of social labour on + the female. Under no conditions, at no time, in no place, in the history + of the world have the males of any period, of any nation, or of any class, + shown the slightest inclination to allow their own females to become + inactive or parasitic, so long as the actual muscular labour of feeding + and clothing them would in that case have devolved upon themselves! + </p> + <p> + The parasitism of the human female becomes a possibility only when a point + in civilisation is reached (such as that which was attained in the ancient + civilisations of Greece, Rome, Persia, Assyria, India, and such as today + exists in many of the civilisations of the East, such as those of China + and Turkey), when, owing to the extensive employment of the labour of + slaves, or of subject races or classes, the dominant race or class has + become so liberally supplied with the material goods of life, that mere + physical toil on the part of its own female members has become + unnecessary. It is when this point has been reached, and never before, + that the symptoms of female parasitism have in the past almost invariably + tended to manifest themselves, and have become a social danger. The males + of the dominant class have almost always contrived to absorb to themselves + the new intellectual occupations, with the absence of necessity for the + old forms of physical toil made possible in their societies; and the + females of the dominant class or race, for whose muscular labours there + was now also no longer any need, not succeeding in grasping or attaining + to these new forms of labour, have sunk into a state in which, performing + no species of active social duty, they have existed through the passive + performance of sexual functions alone, with how much or how little of + discontent will now never be known, since no literary record has been made + by the woman of the past, of her desires or sorrows. Then, in place of the + active labouring woman, upholding society by her toil, has come the effete + wife, concubine, or prostitute, clad in fine raiment, the work of others’ + fingers; fed on luxurious viands, the result of others’ toil, waited on + and tended by the labour of others. The need for her physical labour + having gone, and mental industry not having taken its place, she bedecked + and scented her person, or had it bedecked and scented for her, she lay + upon her sofa, or drove or was carried out in her vehicle, and, loaded + with jewels, she sought by dissipations and amusements to fill up the + inordinate blank left by the lack of productive activity. And as the hand + whitened and frame softened, till, at last, the very duties of motherhood, + which were all the constitution of her life left her, became distasteful, + and, from the instant when her infant came damp from her womb, it passed + into the hands of others, to be tended and reared by them; and from youth + to age her offspring often owed nothing to her personal toil. In many + cases so complete was her enervation, that at last the very joy of giving + life, the glory and beatitude of a virile womanhood, became distasteful; + and she sought to evade it, not because of its interference with more + imperious duties to those already born of her, or to her society, but + because her existence of inactivity had robbed her of all joy in strenuous + exertion and endurance in any form. Finely clad, tenderly housed, life + became for her merely the gratification of her own physical and sexual + appetites, and the appetites of the male, through the stimulation of which + she could maintain herself. And, whether as kept wife, kept mistress, or + prostitute, she contributed nothing to the active and sustaining labours + of her society. She had attained to the full development of that type + which, whether in modern Paris or New York or London, or in ancient + Greece, Assyria, or Rome, is essentially one in its features, its nature, + and its results. She was the “fine lady,” the human female parasite—the + most deadly microbe which can make its appearance on the surface of any + social organism. (The relation of female parasitism generally, to the + peculiar phenomenon of prostitution, is fundamental. Prostitution can + never be adequately dealt with, either from the moral or the scientific + standpoint, unless its relation to the general phenomenon of female + parasitism be fully recognised. It is the failure to do this which leaves + so painful a sense of abortion on the mind, after listening to most modern + utterances on the question, whether made from the emotional platform of + the moral reformer, or the intellectual platform of the would-be + scientist. We are left with a feeling that the matter has been handled but + not dealt with: that the knife has not reached the core.) + </p> + <p> + Wherever in the history of the past this type has reached its full + development and has comprised the bulk of the females belonging to any + dominant class or race, it has heralded its decay. In Assyria, Greece, + Rome, Persia, as in Turkey today, the same material conditions have + produced the same social disease among wealthy and dominant races; and + again and again when the nation so affected has come into contact with + nations more healthily constituted, this diseased condition has + contributed to its destruction. + </p> + <p> + In ancient Greece, in its superb and virile youth, its womanhood was + richly and even heavily endowed with duties and occupations. Not the mass + of the woman alone, but the king’s wife and the prince’s daughter do we + find going to the well to bear water, cleansing the household linen in the + streams, feeding and doctoring their households, manufacturing the + clothing of their race, and performing even a share of the highest social + functions as priestesses and prophetesses. It was from the bodies of such + women as these that sprang that race of heroes, thinkers, and artists who + laid the foundations of Grecian greatness. These females underlay their + society as the solid and deeply buried foundations underlay the more + visible and ornate portions of a great temple, making its structure and + persistence possible. In Greece, after a certain lapse of time, these + virile labouring women in the upper classes were to be found no more. The + accumulated wealth of the dominant race, gathered through the labour of + slaves and subject people, had so immensely increased that there was no + longer a call for physical labour on the part of the dominant womanhood; + immured within the walls of their houses as wives or mistresses, waited on + by slaves and dependents, they no longer sustained by their exertion + either their own life or the life of their people. The males absorbed the + intellectual labours of life; slaves and dependents the physical. For a + moment, at the end of the fifth and beginning of the fourth century, when + the womanhood of Greece had already internally decayed, there was indeed a + brilliant intellectual efflorescence among her males, like to the gorgeous + colours in the sunset sky when the sun is already sinking; but the heart + of Greece was already rotting and her vigour failing. Increasingly, + division and dissimilarity arose between male and female, as the male + advanced in culture and entered upon new fields of intellectual toil while + the female sank passively backward and lower in the scale of life, and + thus was made ultimately a chasm which even sexual love could not bridge. + The abnormal institution of avowed inter-male sexual relations upon the + highest plane was one, and the most serious result, of this severance. The + inevitable and invincible desire of all highly developed human natures, to + blend with their sexual relationships their highest intellectual interests + and sympathies, could find no satisfaction or response in the relationship + between the immured, comparatively ignorant and helpless females of the + upper classes, in Greece, and the brilliant, cultured, and many-sided + males who formed its dominant class in the fifth and fourth centuries. Man + turned towards man; and parenthood, the divine gift of imparting human + life, was severed from the loftiest and profoundest phases of human + emotion: Xanthippe fretted out her ignorant and miserable little life + between the walls of her house, and Socrates lay in the Agora, discussing + philosophy and morals with Alcibiades; and the race decayed at its core. + (See Jowett’s translation of Plato’s “Banquet”; but for full light on this + important question the entire literature of Greece in the fifth and fourth + centuries B.C. should be studied.) Here and there an Aspasia, or earlier + still a Sappho, burst through the confining bonds of woman’s environment, + and with the force of irresistible genius broke triumphantly into new + fields of action and powerful mental activity, standing side by side with + the male; but their cases were exceptional. Had they, or such as they, + been able to tread down a pathway, along which the mass of Grecian women + might have followed them; had it been possible for the bulk of the women + of the dominant race in Greece at the end of the fifth century to rise + from their condition of supine inaction and ignorance and to have taken + their share in the intellectual labours and stern activities of their + race, Greece would never have fallen, as she fell at the end of the fourth + century, instantaneously and completely, as a rotten puff-ball falls in at + the touch of a healthy finger; first, before the briberies of Philip, and + then yet more completely before the arms of his yet more warlike son, who + was also the son of the fierce, virile, and indomitable Olympia. (Like + almost all men remarkable for either good or evil, Alexander inherited + from his mother his most notable qualities—his courage, his + intellectual activity, and an ambition indifferent to any means that made + for his own end. Fearless in her life, she fearlessly met death “with a + courage worthy of her rank and domineering character, when her hour of + retribution came”; and Alexander is incomprehensible till we recognise him + as rising from the womb of Olympia.) Nor could she have been swept clean, + a few hundred years later, from Thessaly to Sparta, from Corinth to + Ephesus, her temples destroyed, her effete women captured by the hordes of + the Goths—a people less skilfully armed and less civilised than the + descendants of the race of Pericles and Leonidas, but who were a branch of + that great Teutonic folk whose monogamous domestic life was sound at the + core, and whose fearless, labouring, and resolute women yet bore for the + men they followed to the ends of the earth, what Spartan women once said + they alone bore—men. + </p> + <p> + In Rome, in the days of her virtue and vigour, the Roman matron laboured + mightily, and bore on her shoulders her full half of the social burden, + though her sphere of labour and influence was even somewhat smaller than + that of the Teutonic sisterhood whose descendants were finally to supplant + her own. From the vestal virgin to the matron, the Roman woman in the days + of the nation’s health and growth fulfilled lofty functions and bore the + whole weight of domestic toil. From the days of Lucretia, the great Roman + dame whom we find spinning with her handmaidens deep into the night, and + whose personal dignity was so dear to her that, violated, she sought only + death, to those of the mother of the Gracchi, one of the last of the great + line, we find everywhere, erect, labouring, and resolute, the Roman woman + who gave birth to the men who built up Roman greatness. A few centuries + later, and Rome also had reached that dangerous spot in the order of + social change which Greece had reached centuries before her. Slave labour + and the enjoyment of the unlimited spoils of subject races had done away + for ever with the demand for physical labour on the part of the members of + the dominant race. Then came the period when the male still occupied + himself with the duties of war and government, of legislation and + self-culture; but the Roman matron had already ceased for ever from her + toils. Decked in jewels and fine clothing, brought at the cost of infinite + human labour from the ends of the earth, nourished on delicate victuals, + prepared by others’ hands, she sought now only with amusement to pass away + a life that no longer offered her the excitement and joy of active + productive exertion. She frequented theatres or baths, or reclined on her + sofa, or drove in her chariot; and like more modern counterparts, painted + herself, wore patches, affected an artistic walk, and a handshake with the + elbow raised and the fingers hanging down. Her children were reared by + dependents; and in the intellectual labour and government of her age she + took small part, and was fit to take none. There were not wanting writers + and thinkers who saw clearly the end to which the enervation of the female + was tending, and who were not sparing in their denunciations. “Time was,” + cries one Roman writer of that age, “when the matron turned the spindle + with the hand and kept at the same time the pot in her eye that the + pottage might not be singed, but now,” he adds bitterly, “when the wife, + loaded with jewels, reposes among pillows, or seeks the dissipation of + baths and theatres, all things go downward and the state decays.” Yet + neither he nor that large body of writers and thinkers who saw the + condition towards which the parasitism of woman was tending to reduce + society, preached any adequate remedy. (Indeed, must not the protest and + the remedy in all such cases, if they are to be of any avail, take their + rise within the diseased class itself?) + </p> + <p> + Thoughtful men sighed over the present and yearned for the past, nor seem + to have perceived that it was irrevocably gone; that the Roman lady who, + with a hundred servants standing idle about her, should, in imitation of + her ancestress, have gone out with her pitcher on her head to draw water + from the well, while in all her own courtyards pipe-led streams gushed + forth, would have acted the part of the pretender; that had she insisted + on resuscitating her loom and had sat up all night to spin, she could + never have produced those fabrics which alone her household demanded, and + would have been but a puerile actor; that it was not by attempting to + return to the ancient and for ever closed fields of toil, but by entering + upon new, that she could alone serve her race and retain her own dignity + and virility. That not by bearing water and weaving linen, but by so + training and disciplining herself that she should be fitted to bear her + share in the labour necessary to the just and wise guidance of a great + empire, and be capable of training a race of men adequate to exercise an + enlightened, merciful, and beneficent rule over the vast masses of subject + people—that so, and so only, could she fulfil her duty toward the + new society about her, and bear its burden together with man, as her + ancestresses of bygone generations had borne the burden of theirs. + </p> + <p> + That in this direction, and this alone, lay the only possible remedy for + the evils of woman’s condition, was a conception apparently grasped by + none; and the female sank lower and lower, till the image of the parasitic + woman of Rome (with a rag of the old Roman intensity left even in her + degradation!)—seeking madly by pursuit of pleasure and sensuality to + fill the void left by the lack of honourable activity; accepting lust in + the place of love, ease in the place of exertion, and an unlimited + consumption in the place of production; too enervated at last to care even + to produce offspring, and shrinking from every form of endurance—remains, + even to the present day, the most perfect, and therefore the most + appalling, picture of the parasite female that earth has produced—a + picture only less terrible than it is pathetic. + </p> + <p> + We recognise that it was inevitable that this womanhood—born it + would seem from its elevation to guide and enlighten a world, and in place + thereof feeding on it—should at last have given birth to a manhood + as effete as itself, and that both should in the end have been swept away + before the march of those Teutonic folk, whose women were virile and could + give birth to men; a folk among whom the woman received on the morning of + her marriage, from the man who was to be her companion through life, no + contemptible trinket to hang about her throat or limbs, but a shield, a + spear, a sword, and a yoke of oxen, while she bestowed on him in return a + suit of armour, in token that they two were henceforth to be one in toil + and in the facing of danger; that she too should dare with him in war and + suffer with him in peace; and of whom another writer tells us, that their + women not only bore the race and fed it at their breasts without the help + of others’ hands, but that they undertook the whole management of house + and lands, leaving the males free for war and chase; of whom Suetonius + tells us, that when Augustus Caesar demanded hostages from a tribe, he + took women, not men, because he found by experience that the women were + more regarded than men, and of whom Strabo says, that so highly did the + Germanic races value the intellect of their women that they regarded them + as inspired, and entered into no war or great undertaking without their + advice and counsel; while among the Cimbrian women who accompanied their + husbands in the invasion of Italy were certain who marched barefooted in + the midst of the lines, distinguished by their white hair and milk-white + robes, and who were regarded as inspired, and of whom Florus, describing + an early Roman victory, says, “The conflict was not less fierce and + obstinate with the wives of the vanquished; in their carts and wagons they + formed a line of battle, and from their elevated situation, as from so + many turrets, annoyed the Romans with their poles and lances. (The South + African Boer woman after two thousand years appears not wholly to have + forgotten the ancestral tactics.) Their death was as glorious as their + martial spirit. Finding that all was lost, they strangled their children, + and either destroyed themselves in one scene of mutual slaughter, or with + the sashes that bound up their hair suspended themselves by the neck to + the boughs of trees or the tops of their wagons.” It is of these women + that Valerius Maximus says, that, “If the gods on the day of battle had + inspired the men with equal fortitude, Marius would never have boasted of + his Teutonic victory;” and of whom Tacitus, speaking of those women who + accompanied their husbands to war, remarks, “These are the darling + witnesses of his conduct, the applauders of his valour, at once beloved + and valued. The wounded seek their mothers and their wives; undismayed at + the sight, the women count each honourable scar and suck the gushing + blood. They are even hardy enough to mix with the combatants, + administering refreshment and exhorting them to deeds of valour,” and adds + moreover, that “To be contented with one wife was peculiar to the Germans; + while the woman was contented with one husband, as with one life, one + mind, one body.” + </p> + <p> + It was inevitable that before the sons of women such as these, the sons of + the parasitic Roman should be swept from existence, as the offspring of + the caged canary would fall in conflict with the offspring of the free. + </p> + <p> + Again and again with wearisome reiteration, the same story repeats itself. + Among the Jews in the days of their health and growth, we find their women + bearing the major weight of agricultural and domestic toil, full always of + labour and care—from Rachel, whom Jacob met and loved as she watered + her father’s flocks, to Ruth, the ancestress of a line of kings and + heroes, whom her Boas noted labouring in the harvest-fields; from Sarah, + kneading and baking cakes for Abraham’s prophetic visitors, to Miriam, + prophetess and singer, and Deborah, who judging Israel from beneath her + palm-tree, “and the land had rest for forty years.” Everywhere the ancient + Jewish woman appears, an active sustaining power among her people; and + perhaps the noblest picture of the labouring woman to be found in any + literature is contained in the Jewish writings, indited possibly at the + very time when the labouring woman was for the first time tending among a + section of the Jews to become a thing of the past; when already Solomon, + with his seven hundred parasitic wives and three hundred parasitic + concubines, loomed large on the horizon of the national life, to take the + place of flock-tending Rachel and gleaning Ruth, and to produce amid their + palaces of cedar and gold, among them all, no Joseph or David, but in the + way of descendant only a Rehoboam, under whose hand the kingdom was to + totter to its fall. (The picture of the labouring as opposed to the + parasitic ideal of womanhood appears under the heading, “The words of King + Lemuel; the oracle which his mother taught him.”) At risk of presenting + the reader with that with which he is already painfully familiar, we here + transcribe the passage; which, allowing for differences in material and + intellectual surroundings, paints also the ideal of the labouring + womanhood of the present and of the future:— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Her price is far above rubies, + The heart of her husband trusteth in her, + And he shall have no lack of gain, + She doeth him good and not evil + All the days of her life, + She seeketh wool and flax, + And worketh willingly with her hands, + She is like the merchant ships; + She bringeth her food, from afar, + She riseth up while it is yet night + And giveth meat to her household, + And their task to her maidens, + She considereth a field, and buyeth it; + With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. + She girdeth her loins with strength, + And maketh strong her arms. + She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable; + Her lamp goeth not out by night, + She layeth her hands to the distaff, + And her hands hold the spindle. + She spreadeth out her hand to the poor: + Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, + She is not afraid of the snow for her household, + For all her household are clothed with scarlet. + She maketh herself carpets of tapestry; + Her clothing is fine and purple. + Her husband is known in the gates, + When he sitteth among the elders of the land, + She maketh linen garments and selleth them, + And delivereth girdles unto the merchant. + Strength and dignity are her clothing; + And she laugheth at the time to come. + She openeth her mouth with wisdom, + And the law of kindness is on her tongue, + She looketh well to the ways of her household, + And eateth not the bread of idleness. + Her children rise up and call her blessed, + Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, + Many daughters have done virtuously, + But thou excellest them all, + Give her the fruit of her hand, + And let her works praise her in the gate.” + </pre> + <p> + In the East today the same story has wearisomely written itself: in China, + where the present vitality and power of the most ancient of existing + civilisations may be measured accurately by the length of its woman’s + shoes; in Turkish harems, where one of the noblest dominant Aryan races + the world has yet produced, is being slowly suffocated in the arms of a + parasite womanhood, and might, indeed, along ago have been obliterated, + had not a certain virility and strength been continually reinfused into it + through the persons of purchased wives, who in early childhood and youth + had been themselves active labouring peasants. Everywhere, in the past as + in the present, the parasitism of the female heralds the decay of a nation + or class, and as invariably indicates disease as the pustules of smallpox + upon the skin indicate the existence of a purulent virus in the system. + </p> + <p> + We are, indeed, far from asserting that the civilisations of the past + which have decayed, have decayed alone through the parasitism of their + females. Vast, far-reaching social phenomena have invariably causes and + reactions immeasurably too complex to be summed up under one so simple a + term. Behind the phenomenon of female parasitism has always lain another + and yet larger social phenomenon; it has invariably been preceded, as we + have seen, by the subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, + either as slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the + excessive labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation + of unearned wealth in the hands of the dominant class or race. It has + invariably been by feeding on this wealth, the result of forced or + ill-paid labour, that the female of the dominant race or class has in the + past lost her activity and has come to exist purely through the passive + performance of her sexual functions. Without slaves or subject classes to + perform the crude physical labours of life and produce superfluous wealth, + the parasitism of the female would, in the past, have been an + impossibility. + </p> + <p> + There is, therefore, a profound truth in that universal saw which states + that the decay of the great nations and civilisations of the past has + resulted from the enervation caused by excessive wealth and luxury; and + there is a further, and if possible more profound, truth underlying the + statement that their destruction has ultimately been the result of the + enervation of the entire race, male and female. + </p> + <p> + But when we come further to inquire how, exactly, this process of decay + took place, we shall find that the part which the parasitism of the female + has played has been fundamental. The mere use of any of the material + products of labour, which we term wealth, can never in itself produce that + decay, physical or mental, which precedes the downfall of great civilised + nations. The eating of salmon at ten shillings a pound can in itself no + more debilitate and corrupt the moral, intellectual, and physical + constitution of the man consuming it, than it could enervate his naked + forefathers who speared it in their rivers for food; the fact that an + individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a worm, can no more + deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than were it made of sheep’s + wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces, faring delicately, and + clad in silks, and surrounded by the noblest products of literature and + plastic art, so those palaces, viands, garments, and products of art were + the result of their own labours, could never be enervated by them. The + debilitating effect of wealth sets in at that point exactly (and never + before) at which the supply of material necessaries and comforts, and of + aesthetic enjoyments, clogs the individuality, causing it to rest + satisfied in the mere passive possession of the results of the labour of + others, without feeling any necessity or desire for further productive + activity of its own. (Of the other deleterious effects of unearned wealth + on the individual or class possessing it, such as its power of lessening + human sympathy, &c., &c., we do not now speak, as while ultimately + and indirectly, undoubtedly, tending to disintegrate a society, they do + not necessarily and immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point + we are here considering.) + </p> + <p> + The exact material condition at which this point will be reached will + vary, not only with the race and the age, but with the individual. A + Marcus Aurelius in a palace of gold and marble was able to retain his + simplicity and virility as completely as though he had lived in a + cow-herd’s hut; while on the other hand, it is quite possible for the wife + of a savage chief who has but four slaves to bring her her corn and milk + and spread her skins in the sun, to become almost as purely parasitic as + the most delicately pampered female of fashion in ancient Rome, or modern + Paris, London, or New York; while the exact amount of unearned material + wealth which will emasculate individuals in the same society, will vary + exactly as their intellectual and moral fibre and natural activity are + strong or weak. (It is not uncommon in modern societies to find women of a + class relatively very moderately wealthy, the wives and daughters of + shopkeepers or professional men, who if their male relations will supply + them with a very limited amount of money without exertion on their part, + will become as completely parasitic and useless as women with untold + wealth at their command.) + </p> + <p> + The debilitating effect of unlaboured-for wealth lies, then, not in the + nature of any material adjunct to life in itself, but in the power it may + possess of robbing the individual of all incentive to exertion, thus + destroying the intellectual, the physical, and finally, the moral fibre. + </p> + <p> + In all the civilisations of the past examination will show that almost + invariably it has been the female who has tended first to reach this + point, and we think examination will show that it has almost invariably + been from the woman to the man that enervation and decay have spread. + </p> + <p> + Why this should be so is obvious. Firstly, it is in the sphere of domestic + labour that slave or hired labour most easily and insidiously penetrates. + The force of blows or hireling gold can far more easily supply labourers + as the preparers of food and clothing, and even as the rearers of + children, than it can supply labourers fitted to be entrusted with the + toils of war and government, which have in the past been the especial + sphere of male toil. The Roman woman had for generations been supplanted + in the sphere of her domestic labours and in the toil of rearing and + educating her offspring, and had long become abjectly parasitic, before + the Roman male had been able to substitute the labour of the hireling and + barbarian for his own, in the army, and in the drudgeries of governmental + toil. + </p> + <p> + Secondly, the female having one all-important though passive function + which cannot be taken from her, and which is peculiarly connected with her + own person, in the act of child-bearing, and her mere sexual attributes + being an object of desire and cupidity to the male, she is liable in a + peculiarly insidious and gradual manner to become dependent on this one + sexual function alone for her support. So much is this the case, that even + when she does not in any way perform this function there is still a + curious tendency for the kudos of the function still to hang about her, + and for her mere potentiality in the direction of a duty which she may + never fulfil, to be confused in her own estimation and that of society + with the actual fulfilment of that function. Under the mighty aegis of the + woman who bears and rears offspring and in other directions labours + greatly and actively for her race, creeps in gradually and unnoticed the + woman who does none of these things. From the mighty labouring woman who + bears human creatures to the full extent of her power, rears her offspring + unaided, and performs at the same time severe social labour in other + directions (and who is, undoubtedly, wherever found, the most productive + toiler known to the race); it is but one step, though a long one, from + this woman to the woman who produces offspring freely but does not herself + rear them, and performs no compensatory social labour. While from this + woman, again, to the one who bears few or no children, but who, whether as + a wife or mistress, lives by the exercise of her sex function alone, the + step is short. There is but one step farther to the prostitute, who + affects no form of productive labour, and who, in place of life, is + recognised as producing disease and death, but who exists parasitically + through her sexual attribute. Enormous as is the distance between the + women at the two extremes of this series, and sharply opposed as their + relation to the world is, there is yet, in actual life, no sharp, clear, + sudden-drawn line dividing the women of the one type from those of the + other. They shade off into each other by delicate and in sensible degrees. + And it is down this inclined plane that the women of civilised races are + peculiarly tempted, unconsciously, to slip; from the noble height of a + condition of the most strenuous social activity, into a condition of + complete, helpless, and inactive parasitism, without being clearly aware + of the fact themselves, and without society’s becoming so—the woman + who has ceased to rear her own offspring, or who has ceased to bear + offspring at all, and who performs no other productive social function, + yet shields the fact from her own eyes by dwelling on the fact that she is + a woman, in whom the capacity is at least latent. (There is, indeed, an + interesting analogous tendency on the part of the parasitic male, wherever + found, to shield his true condition from his own eyes and those of the + world by playing at the ancient ancestral forms of male labour. He is + almost always found talking loudly of the protection he affords to + helpless females and to society, though he is in truth himself protected + through the exertion of soldiers, policemen, magistrates, and society + generally; and he is almost invariably fond of dangling a sword or other + weapon, and wearing some kind of uniform, for the assumption of militarism + without severe toil delights him. But it is in a degenerate travesty of + the ancient labour of hunting where, at terrible risk to himself, and with + endless fatigue, his ancestors supplied the race with its meat and + defended it from destruction by wild beasts) that he finds his greatest + satisfaction; it serves to render the degradation and uselessness of his + existence less obvious to himself and to others than if he passed his life + reclining in an armchair. + </p> + <p> + On Yorkshire moors today may be seen walls of sod, behind which hide + certain human males, while hard-labouring men are employed from early dawn + in driving birds towards them. As the birds are driven up to him, the + hunter behind his wall raises his deadly weapon, and the bird, which it + had taken so much human labour to rear and provide, falls dead at his + feet; thereby greatly to the increase of the hunter’s glory, when, the + toils of the chase over, he returns to his city haunts to record his bag. + One might almost fancy one saw arise from the heathery turf the shade of + some ancient Teutonic ancestor, whose dust has long reposed there, + pointing a finger of scorn at his degenerate descendant, as he leers out + from behind the sod wall. During the the later Roman Empire, Commodus, in + the degenerate days of Rome, at great expense had wild beasts brought from + distant lands that he might have the glory of slaying them in the Roman + circus; and medals representing himself as Hercules slaying the Nemean + lion were struck at his orders. We are not aware that any representation + has yet been made in the region of plastic art of the hero of the sod + wall; but history repeats itself—and that also may come. It is to be + noted that these hunters are not youths, but often ripely adult men, + before whom all the lofty enjoyments and employments possible to the male + in modern life, lie open.) + </p> + <p> + These peculiarities in her condition have in all civilised societies laid + the female more early and seriously open to the attacks of parasitism than + the male. And while the accumulation of wealth has always been the + antecedent condition, and the degeneracy and effeteness of the male the + final and obvious cause, of the decay of the great dominant races of the + past; yet, between these two has always lain, as a great middle term, the + parasitism of the female, without which the first would have been + inoperative and the last impossible. + </p> + <p> + Not slavery, nor the most vast accumulations of wealth, could destroy a + nation by enervation, whose women remained active, virile, and laborious. + </p> + <p> + The conception which again and again appears to have haunted successive + societies, that it was a possibility for the human male to advance in + physical power and intellectual vigour, while his companion female became + stationary and inactive, taking no share in the labours of society beyond + the passive fulfilment of sexual functions, has always been negated. It + has ended as would end the experiment of a man seeking to raise a breed of + winning race-horses out of unexercised, short-winded, knock-kneed mares. + No, more disastrously! For while the female animal transmits herself to + her descendant only or mainly by means of germinal inheritance, and + through the influence she may exert over it during gestation, the human + female, by producing the intellectual and moral atmosphere in which the + early infant years of life are passed, impresses herself far more + indelibly on her descendants. Only an able and labouring womanhood can + permanently produce an able and labouring manhood; only an effete and + inactive male can ultimately be produced by an effete and inactive + womanhood. The curled darling, scented and languid, with his drawl, his + delicate apparel, his devotion to the rarity and variety of his viands, + whose severest labour is the search after pleasure, and for whom even the + chase, which was for his remote ancestor an invigorating and manly toil + essential for the meat and life of his people, becomes a luxurious and + farcical amusement;—this male, whether found in the later Roman + Empire, the Turkish harem of today, or in our Northern civilisations, is + possible only because generations of parasitic women have preceded him. + More repulsive than the parasite female herself, because a yet further + product of decay, it is yet only the scent of his mother’s boudoir that we + smell in his hair. He is like to the bald patches and rotten wool on the + back of a scabby sheep; which indeed indicate that, deep beneath the + surface, a parasite insect is eating its way into the flesh, but which are + not so much the cause of disease, as its final manifestation. + </p> + <p> + As we have said it is the power of the human female to impress herself on + her descendants, male and female, not only through germinal inheritance, + through influence during the period of gestation, but above all by + producing the mental atmosphere in which the impressionable infant years + of life are passed, which makes the condition of the child-bearing female + one of paramount interest of the race. It is this fact which causes even + prostitution (in many other respects the most repulsive of all the forms + of female parasitism which afflicts humanity) to be, probably, not more + adverse to the advance and even to the conservation of a healthy and + powerful society, than the parasitism of its child-bearing women. For the + prostitute, heavily as she weights society for her support, returning + disease and mental and emotional disintegration for what she consumes, + does not yet so immediately affect the next generation as the kept wife, + or kept mistress, who impresses her effete image indelibly on the + generations succeeding. (It cannot be too often repeated that the woman + who merely bears and brings a child into the world, and then leaves it to + be fed and reared by the hands of another, has performed very much less + than half of the labour of producing adult humans; in such cases it is the + nurse and not the mother who is the most important labourer.) + </p> + <p> + No man ever yet entered life farther than the length of one navel-cord + from the body of the woman who bore him. It is the woman who is the final + standard of the race, from which there can be no departure for any + distance for any length of time, in any direction: as her brain weakens, + weakens the man’s she bears; as her muscle softens, softens his; as she + decays, decays the people. + </p> + <p> + Other causes may, and do, lead to the enervation and degeneration of a + class or race; the parasitism of its child-bearing women must. + </p> + <p> + We, the European women of this age, stand today where again and again, in + the history of the past, women of other races have stood; but our + condition is yet more grave, and of wider import to humanity as a whole + than theirs ever was. Let us again consider more closely why this is so. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter III. Parasitism (continued). + </h2> + <p> + We have seen that, in the past, no such thing as the parasitism of the + entire body or large majority of the females inhabiting any territory was + possible. Beneath that body of women of the dominant class or race, who + did not labour either mentally or physically, there has always been of + necessity a far more vast body of females who not only performed the crude + physical toil essential to the existence of society before the + introduction of mechanical methods of production, but who were compelled + to labour the more intensely because there was a parasite class above them + to be maintained by their physical toil. The more the female parasite + flourished of old, in one class or race, the more certainly all women of + other classes or races were compelled to labour only too excessively; and + ultimately these females and their descendants were apt to supplant the + more enervated class or race. In the absence of machinery and of a vast + employment of the motor-forces of nature, parasitism could only threaten a + comparatively small section of any community, and a minute section of the + human race as a whole. Female parasitism in the past resembled gout—a + disease dangerous only to the over-fed, pampered, and few, never to the + population of any society as a whole. + </p> + <p> + At the present day, so enormous has been the advance made in the + substitution of mechanical force for crude, physical, human exertion + (mechanical force being employed today even in the shaping of + feeding-bottles and the creation of artificial foods as substitutes for + mother’s milk!), that it is now possible not only for a small and wealthy + section of women in each civilised community to be maintained without + performing any of the ancient, crude, physical labours of their sex, and + without depending on the slavery of, or any vast increase in the labour + of, other classes of females; but this condition has already been reached, + or is tending to be reached, by that large mass of women in civilised + societies, who form the intermediate class between poor and rich. During + the next fifty years, so rapid will undoubtedly be the spread of the + material conditions of civilisation, both in the societies at present + civilised and in the societies at present unpermeated by our material + civilisation, that the ancient forms of female, domestic, physical labour + of even the women of the poorest classes will be little required, their + place being taken, not by other females, but by always increasingly + perfected labour-saving machinery. + </p> + <p> + Thus, female parasitism, which in the past threatened only a minute + section of earth’s women, under existing conditions threatens vast masses, + and may, under future conditions, threaten the entire body. + </p> + <p> + If woman is content to leave to the male all labour in the new and + all-important fields which are rapidly opening before the human race; if, + as the old forms of domestic labour slip from her for ever and evitably, + she does not grasp the new, it is inevitable, that, ultimately, not merely + a class, but the whole bodies of females in civilised societies, must sink + into a state of more or less absolute dependence on their sexual functions + alone. (How real is this apparently very remote danger is interestingly + illustrated by a proposition gravely made a few years ago by a man of note + in England. He proposed that a compulsory provision should be made for at + least the women of the upper and middle classes, by which they might be + maintained through life entirely without regard to any productive labour + they might perform, not even the passive labour of sexual reproduction + being of necessity required of them. That this proposal was received by + the women striving to reconstruct the relation of the modern woman to life + without acclamation and with scorn, may have surprised its maker; but with + no more reason than that man would have for feeling surprise who, seeing a + number of persons anxious to escape the infection of some contagious + disease, should propose as a cure to inoculate them all with it in its + most virulent form!) + </p> + <p> + As new forms of natural force are mastered and mechanical appliances + perfected, it will be quite possible for the male half of all civilised + races (and therefore ultimately of all) to absorb the entire fields of + intellectual and highly trained manual labour; and it would be entirely + possible for the female half of the race, whether as prostitutes, as kept + mistresses, or as kept wives, to cease from all forms of active toil, and, + as the passive tools of sexual reproduction, or, more decadently still, as + the mere instruments of sexual indulgence, to sink into a condition of + complete and helpless sex-parasitism. + </p> + <p> + Sex-parasitism, therefore, presents itself at the end of the nineteenth + century and beginning of the twentieth in a guise which it has never + before worn. We, the European women of the nineteenth and twentieth + centuries, stand therefore in a position the gravity and importance of + which was not equalled by that of any of our forerunners in the ancient + civilisation. As we master and rise above, or fall and are conquered by, + the difficulties of our position, so also will be the future, not merely + of our own class, or even of our own race alone, but also of those vast + masses who are following on in the wake of our civilisation. The decision + we are called on to make is a decision for the race; behind us comes on + the tread of incalculable millions of feet. + </p> + <p> + There is thus no truth in the assertion so often made, even by thoughtful + persons, that the male labour question and the woman’s question of our day + are completely one, and that, would the women of the European race of + today but wait peacefully till the males alone had solved their problem, + they would find that their own had been solved at the same time. + </p> + <p> + Were the entire male labour problem of this age satisfactorily settled + tomorrow; were all the unemployed or uselessly employed males at both ends + of societies, whom the changes of modern civilisation have robbed of their + ancient forms of labour, so educated and trained that they were perfectly + fitted for the new conditions of life; and were the material benefit and + intellectual possibilities, which the substitution of mechanical for human + labour now makes possible to humanity, no longer absorbed by the few but + dispersed among the whole mass of males in return for their trained + labour, yet the woman’s problem might be further from satisfactory + solution than it is today; and, if it were affected at all, might be + affected for the worse. It is wholly untrue that fifty pounds, or two + thousand, earned by the male as the result of his physical or mental toil, + if part of it be spent by him in supporting non-labouring females, whether + as prostitutes, wives, or mistresses, is the same thing to the female or + to the race as though that sum had been earned by her own exertion, either + directly as wages or indirectly by toiling for the man whose wages + supported her. For the moment, truly, the woman so tended lies softer and + warmer than had she been compelled to exert herself; ultimately, + intellectually, morally, and even physically, the difference in the effect + upon her as an individual and on the race is the difference between + advance and degradation, between life and death. The increased wealth of + the male no more of necessity benefits and raises the female upon whom he + expends it, than the increased wealth of his mistress necessarily benefits + mentally or physically a poodle because she can give him a down cushion in + place of one of feathers, and chicken in place of beef. The wealthier the + males of a society become, the greater the temptation, both to themselves + and to the females connected with them, to drift toward female parasitism. + </p> + <p> + The readjustment of the position of the male worker, if it led to a more + equitable distribution of wealth among males, might indeed diminish + slightly the accompanying tendency to parasitism in the very wealthiest + female class; but it would, on the other hand, open up exactly those + conditions which make parasitism possible to millions of women today + leading healthy and active lives. (The fact cannot be too often dwelt upon + that parasitism is not connected with any definite amount of wealth. Any + sum supplied to an individual which will so far satisfy him or her as to + enable them to live without exertion may absolutely parasitise them; while + vast wealth unhealthy as its effects generally tend to be) may, upon + certain rare and noble natures, exert hardly any enervating or deleterious + influence. An amusing illustration of the different points at which + enervation is reached by different females came under our own observation. + The wife of an American millionaire was visited by a woman, the daughter + and also the widow of small professional men. She stated that she was in + need of both food and clothing. The millionaire’s wife gave her a leg of + mutton and two valuable dresses. The woman proceeded to whine, though in + vigorous health, that she had no one to carry them home for her, and could + not think of carrying them herself. The American, the descendant of + generations of able, labouring, New England, Puritan women, tucked the leg + of mutton under one arm and the bundle of clothes under the other and + walked off down the city street towards the woman’s dwelling, followed by + the astonished pauper parasite. + </p> + <p> + The most helpless case of female degeneration we ever came into contact + with was that of a daughter of a poor English officer on half-pay and who + had to exist on a few hundreds a year. This woman could neither cook her + own food nor make her own clothes, nor was she engaged in any social, + political, or intellectual or artistic labour. Though able to dance for a + night or play tennis for an afternoon, she was yet hardly able to do her + own hair or attire herself, and appeared absolutely to have lost all power + of compelling herself to do anything which was at the moment fatiguing or + displeasing, as all labour is apt to be, however great its ultimate + reward. In a life of twenty-eight years this woman had probably not + contributed one hour’s earnest toil, mental or physical, to the increase + of the sum total of productive human labour. Surrounded with acres of + cultivable land, she would possibly have preferred to lie down and die of + hunger rather than have cultivated half an acre for food. This is an + extreme case; but the ultimate effect of parasitism is always a paralysis + of the will and an inability to compel oneself into any course of action + for the moment unpleasurable and exhaustive. + </p> + <p> + That the two problems are not identical is shown, if indeed evidence were + needed, by the fact that those males most actively employed in attempting + to readjust the relations of the mass of labouring males to the new + conditions of life, are sometimes precisely those males who are most + bitterly opposed to woman in her attempt to readjust her own position. Not + even by the members of those professions, generally regarded as the + strongholds of obstructionism and prejudice, has a more short-sighted + opposition often been made to the attempts of woman to enter new fields of + labour, than have again and again been made by male hand-workers, whether + as isolated individuals or in their corporate capacity as trade unions. + They have, at least in some certain instances, endeavoured to exclude + women, not merely from new fields of intellectual and social labour, but + even from those ancient fields of textile manufacture and handicraft, + which have through all generations of the past been woman’s. The patent + and undeniable fact, that where the male labour movement flourishes the + woman movement also flourishes, rises not from the fact that they are + identical, but that the same healthy and virile condition in a race or + society gives rise to both. + </p> + <p> + As two streams rising from one fountain-head and running a parallel course + through long reaches may yet remain wholly distinct, one finding its way + satisfactorily to the sea, while the other loses itself in sand or becomes + a stagnant marsh, so our modern male and female movements, taking their + rise from the same material conditions in modern civilisation, and + presenting endless and close analogies with one another in their cause of + development, yet remain fundamentally distinct. By both movements the + future of the race must be profoundly modified for good or evil; both + touch the race in a manner absolutely vital; but both will have to be + fought out on their own ground, and independently: and it can be only by + determined, conscious, and persistent action on the part of woman that the + solution of her own labour problems will proceed co-extensively with that + of the other. + </p> + <p> + How distinct, though similar, is the underlying motive of the two + movements, is manifested most clearly by this fact, that, while the male + labour movement takes its rise mainly among the poor and hand-labouring + classes, where the material pressure of the modern conditions of life fall + heaviest, and where the danger of physical suffering and even extinction + under that pressure is most felt; the Woman Labour Movement has taken its + rise almost as exclusively among the wealthy, cultured, and + brain-labouring classes, where alone, at the present day, the danger of + enervation through non-employment, and of degeneration through dependence + on the sex function exists. The female labour movement of our day is, in + its ultimate essence, an endeavour on the part of a section of the race to + save itself from inactivity and degeneration, and this, even at the + immediate cost of most heavy loss in material comfort and ease to the + individuals composing it. The male labour movement is, directly and in the + first place, material; and, or at least superficially, more or less + self-seeking, though its ultimate reaction on society by saving the poorer + members from degradation and dependency and want is undoubtedly wholly + social and absolutely essential for the health and continued development + of the human race. In the Woman’s Labour Movement of our day, which has + essentially taken its rise among women of the more cultured and wealthy + classes, and which consists mainly in a demand to have the doors leading + to professional, political, and highly skilled labour thrown open to them, + the ultimate end can only be attained at the cost of more or less intense, + immediate, personal suffering and renunciation, though eventually, if + brought to a satisfactory conclusion, it will undoubtedly tend to the + material and physical well-being of woman herself, as well as to that of + her male companions and descendants. + </p> + <p> + The coming half-century will be a time of peculiar strain, as mankind + seeks rapidly to adjust moral ideals and social relationships and the + general ordering of life to the new and continually unfolding material + conditions. If these two great movements of our age, having this as their + object, can be brought into close harmony and co-operation, the + readjustment will be the sooner and more painlessly accomplished; but, for + the moment, the two movements alike in their origin and alike in many of + their methods of procedure, remain distinct. + </p> + <p> + It is this fact, the consciousness on the part of the women taking their + share in the Woman’s Movement of our age, that their efforts are not, and + cannot be, of immediate advantage to themselves, but that they almost of + necessity and immediately lead to loss and renunciation, which gives to + this movement its very peculiar tone; setting it apart from the large mass + of economic movements, placing it rather in a line with those vast + religious developments which at the interval of ages have swept across + humanity, irresistibly modifying and reorganising it. + </p> + <p> + It is the perception of this fact, that, not for herself, nor even for + fellow-women alone, but for the benefit of humanity at large, it is + necessary she should seek to readjust herself to life, which lends to the + modern woman’s most superficial and seemingly trivial attempts at + readjustment, a certain dignity and importance. + </p> + <p> + It is this profound hidden conviction which removes from the sphere of the + ridiculous the attitude of even the feeblest woman who waves her poor + little “Woman’s rights” flag on the edge of a platform, and which causes + us to forgive even the passionate denunciations, not always wisely thought + out, in which she would represent the suffering and evils of woman’s + condition, as wrongs intentionally inflicted upon her, where they are + merely the inevitable results of ages of social movement. + </p> + <p> + It is this over-shadowing consciousness of a large impersonal obligation, + which removes from the sphere of the contemptible and insignificant even + the action of the individual young girl, who leaves a home of comfort or + luxury for a city garret, where in solitude, and under that stern pressure + which is felt by all individuals in arms against the trend of their + environment, she seeks to acquire the knowledge necessary for entering on + a new form of labour. It is this profound consciousness which makes not + less than heroic the figure of the little half-starved student, battling + against gigantic odds to take her place beside man in the fields of modern + intellectual toil, and which, whether she succeed or fail, makes her a + landmark in the course of our human evolution. It is this consciousness of + large impersonal ends to be attained, and to the attainment of which each + individual is bound to play her part, however small, which removes from + the domain of the unnecessary, and raises to importance, the action of + each woman who resists the tyranny of fashions in dress or bearing or + custom which impedes her in her strife towards the new adjustment. + </p> + <p> + It is this consciousness which renders almost of solemn import the efforts + of the individual female after physical or mental self-culture and + expansion; this, which fills with a lofty enthusiasm the heart of the + young girl, who, it may be, in some solitary farm-house, in some distant + wild of Africa or America, deep into the night bends over her books with + the passion and fervour with which an early Christian may have bent over + the pages of his Scriptures; feeling that, it may be, she fits herself by + each increase of knowledge for she knows not what duties towards the + world, in the years to come. It is this consciousness of great impersonal + ends, to be brought, even if slowly and imperceptibly, a little nearer by + her action, which gives to many a woman strength for renunciation, when + she puts from her the lower type of sexual relationship, even if bound up + with all the external honour a legal bond can confer, if it offers her + only enervation and parasitism; and which enables her often to accept + poverty, toil, and sexual isolation (an isolation even more terrible to + the woman than to any male), and the renunciation of motherhood, that + crowning beatitude of the woman’s existence, which, and which alone, fully + compensates her for the organic sufferings of womanhood—in the + conviction that, by so doing, she makes more possible a fuller and higher + attainment of motherhood and wifehood to the women who will follow her. It + is this consciousness which makes of solemn importance the knock of the + humblest woman at the closed door which shuts off a new field of labour, + physical or mental: is she convinced that, not for herself, but in the + service of the whole race, she knocks. + </p> + <p> + It is this abiding consciousness of an end to be attained, reaching beyond + her personal life and individual interests, which constitutes the + religious element of the Woman’s Movement of our day, and binds with the + common bond of an impersonal enthusiasm into one solid body the women of + whatsoever race, class, and nation who are struggling after the + readjustment of woman to life. + </p> + <p> + This it is also, which in spite of defects and failures on the part of + individuals, yet makes the body who these women compose, as a whole, one + of the most impressive and irresistible of modern forces. The private + soldier of the great victorious army is not always an imposing object as + he walks down the village street, cap on side of head and sword dangling + between his legs, nor is he always impressive even when he burnishes up + his accoutrements or cleans his pannikins; but it is of individuals such + as these that the great army is made, which tomorrow, when it is gathered + together, may shake the world with its tread. + </p> + <p> + Possibly not one woman in ten, or even one woman in twenty thousand among + those taking part in this struggle, could draw up a clear and succinct + account of the causes which have led to the disco-ordination in woman’s + present position, or give a full account of the benefits to flow from + readjustment; as probably not one private soldier in an army of ten or + even of twenty thousand, though he is willing to give his life for his + land, would yet be able to draw up a clear and succinct account of his + land’s history in the past and of the conditions which have made war + inevitable; and almost as little can he often paint an exact and detailed + picture of the benefits to flow from his efts. He knows his land has need + of him; he knows his own small place and work. + </p> + <p> + It is possible that not one woman in ten thousand has grasped with + scientific exactitude, and still less could express with verbal sharpness, + the great central conditions which yet compel and animate her into action. + </p> + <p> + Even the great, central fact, that with each generation the entire race + passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing + with the indelible marks of that mould upon it, that as the os cervix of + woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms a + ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human head, a size + which could only increase if in the course of ages the os cervix of woman + should itself slowly expand; and that so exactly the intellectual + capacity, the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms also an + untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive generation the + limits of the expansion of the human race;—even this fact she may + not so clearly have grasped intellectually as to be able to throw it into + the form of a logical statement. The profound truth, that the continued + development of the human race on earth (a development which, as the old + myths and dreams of a narrow personal heaven fade from our view, becomes + increasingly for many of us the spiritual hope by light of which we + continue to live), a development which we hope shall make the humanity of + a distant future as much higher in intellectual power and wider in social + sympathy than the highest human units of our day, as that is higher than + the first primeval ancestor who with quivering limb strove to walk upright + and shape his lips to the expression of a word, is possible only if the + male and female halves of humanity progress together, expanding side by + side in the future as they have done in the past—even this truth it + is possible few women have exactly and logically grasped as the basis of + their action. The truth that, as the first primitive human males and + females, unable to count farther than their fingers, or grasp an abstract + idea, or feel the controlling power of social emotion, could only develop + into the Sapphos, Aristotles, and Shelleys of a more expanded + civilisation, if side by side, and line by line, male and female forms + have expanded together; if, as the convolutions of his brain increased in + complexity, so increased the convolutions in hers; if, as her forehead + grew higher, so developed his; and that, if the long upward march of the + future is ever to be accomplished by the race, male and female must march + side by side, acting and reacting on each other through inheritance; or + progress is impossible. The truth that, as the existence of even the male + Bushman would be impossible without the existence of the analogous + Bushwoman with the same gifts; and that as races which can produce among + their males a William Kingdon Clifford, a Tolstoy, or a Robert Browning, + would be inconceivable and impossible, unless among its females it could + also produce a Sophia Kovalevsky, a George Eliot, or a Louise Michel; so, + also, in the future, that higher and more socialised human race we dream + of can only come into existence, because in both the sex forms have + evolved together, now this sex and then that, so to speak, catching up the + ball of life and throwing it back to the other, slightly if imperceptibly + enlarging and beautifying it as it passes through their hands. The fact + that without the reaction of interevolution between the sexes, there can + be no real and permanent human advance; without the enlarged deep-thinking + Eve to bear him, no enlarged Adam; without the enlarged widely + sympathising Adam to beget her, no enlarged widely comprehending Eve; + without an enlarged Adam and an enlarged Eve, no enlarged and beautified + generation of mankind on earth; that an arrest in one form is an arrest in + both; and in the upward march of the entire human family. The truth that, + if at the present day, woman, after her long upward march side by side + with man, developing with him through the countless ages, by means of the + endless exercise of the faculties of mind and body, has now, at last, + reached her ultimate limit of growth, and can progress no farther; that, + then, here also, today, the growth of the human spirit is to be stayed; + that here, on the spot of woman’s arrest, is the standard of the race to + be finally planted, to move forward no more, for ever:—that, if the + parasite woman on her couch, loaded with gewgaws, the plaything and + amusement of man, be the permanent and final manifestation of female human + life on the globe, then that couch is also the death-bed of human + evolution. These profound underlying truths, perhaps, not one woman in + twenty thousand of those actively engaged in the struggle for readjustment + has so closely and keenly grasped that she can readily throw them into the + form of exact language; and yet, probably, not the feeblest woman taking + share in our endeavour toward readjustment and expansion fails to be + animated by a vague but profound consciousness of their existence. Beyond + the small evils, which she seeks by her immediate, personal action to + remedy, lie, she feels; large ills of which they form but an off-shoot; + beyond the small good which she seeks to effect, lies, she believes, a + great and universal beatitude to be attained; beyond the little struggle + of today, lies the larger struggle of the centuries, in which neither she + alone nor her sex alone are concerned, but all mankind. + </p> + <p> + That such should be the mental attitude of the average woman taking part + in the readjustive sexual movement of today; that so often on the public + platform and in literature adduces merely secondary arguments, and is + wholly unable logically to give an account of the great propelling + conditions behind it, is sometimes taken as an indication of the + inefficiency, and probably the ultimate failure, of the movement in which + she takes part. But in truth, that is not so. It is rather an indication + which shows how healthy, and deeply implanted in the substance of human + life, are the roots of this movement; and it places it in a line with all + those vast controlling movements which have in the course of the ages + reorganised human life. + </p> + <p> + For those great movements which have permanently modified the condition of + humanity have never taken their rise amid the chopped logic of schools; + they have never drawn their vitality from a series of purely intellectual + and abstract inductions. They have arisen always through the action of + widely spread material and spiritual conditions, creating widespread human + needs; which, pressing upon the isolated individuals, awakens at last + continuous, if often vague and uncertain, social movement in a given + direction. Mere intellectual comprehension may guide, retard, or + accelerate the great human movements; it has never created them. It may + even be questioned whether those very leaders, who have superficially + appeared to create and organise great and successful social movements, + have themselves, in most cases, perhaps in any, fully understood in all + their complexity the movements they themselves have appeared to rule. They + have been, rather, themselves permeated by the great common need; and + being possessed of more will, passion, intensity, or intellect, they have + been able to give voice to that which in others was dumb, and conscious + direction to that which in others was unconscious desire: they have been + but the foremost crest of a great wave of human necessity: they have not + themselves created the wave which bears themselves, and humanity, onwards. + The artificial social movements which have had their origin in the + arbitrary will of individuals, guided with however much determination and + reason, have of necessity proved ephemeral and abortive. An Alexander + might will to weld a Greece and an Asia into one; a Napoleon might resolve + to create of a diversified Europe one consolidated state; and by dint of + skill and determination they might for a moment appear to be accomplishing + that which they desired; but the constraining individual will being + withdrawn, the object of their toil has melted away, as the little heap of + damp sand gathered under the palm of a child’s hand on the sea-shore, + melts away, scattered by the wind and washed out by the waves, the moment + the hand that shaped it is withdrawn; while the small, soft, indefinite, + watery fragment of jelly-fish lying beside it, though tossed hither and + thither by water and wind, yet retains its shape and grows, because its + particles are bound by an internal and organic force. + </p> + <p> + Our woman’s movement resembles strongly, in this matter, the gigantic + religious and intellectual movement which for centuries convulsed the life + of Europe; and had, as its ultimate outcome, the final emancipation of the + human intellect and the freedom of the human spirit. Looked back upon from + the vantage-point of the present, this past presents the appearance of one + vast, steady, persistent movement proceeding always in one ultimate + direction, as though guided by some controlling human intellect. But, to + the mass of human individuals taking part in it, it presented an + appearance far otherwise. It was fought out, now here, now there, by + isolated individuals and small groups, and often for what appeared small + and almost personal ends, having sometimes, superficially, little in + common. Now it was a Giordano Bruno, burnt in Rome in defence of abstract + theory with regard to the nature of the First Cause; then an Albigense + hurled from his rocks because he refused to part with the leaves of his + old Bible; now a Dutch peasant woman, walking serenely to the stake + because she refused to bow her head before two crossed rods; then a + Servetus burnt by Protestant Calvin at Geneva; or a Spinoza cut off from + his tribe and people because he could see nothing but God anywhere; and + then it was an exiled Rousseau or Voltaire, or a persecuted Bradlaugh; + till, in our own day the last sounds of the long fight are dying about us, + as fading echoes, in the guise of a few puerile attempts to enforce + trivial disabilities on the ground of abstract convictions. The vanguard + of humanity has won its battle for freedom of thought. + </p> + <p> + But, to the men and women taking part in that mighty movement during the + long centuries of the past, probably nothing was quite clear, in the + majority of cases, but their own immediate move. Not the leaders—most + certainly not good old Martin Luther, even when he gave utterance to his + immortal “I can no otherwise” (the eternal justification of all reformers + and social innovators!), understood the whole breadth of the battlefield + on which they were engaged, or grasped with precision the issues which + were involved. The valiant Englishman, who, as the flames shot up about + him, cried to his companion in death, “Play the man, Master Ridley; we + shall by God’s grace this day light such a candle in England, as shall + never be put out!” undoubtedly believed that the candle lighted was the + mere tallow rushlight of a small sectarian freedom for England alone; nor + perceived that what he lighted was but one ray of the vast, universal + aurora of intellectual and spiritual liberty, whose light was ultimately + to stream, not only across England, but across the earth. Nevertheless, + undoubtedly, behind all these limited efforts, for what appeared, + superficially, limited causes, lay, in the hearts of the men and women + concerned, through the ages, a profound if vague consciousness of ends + larger than they clearly knew, to be subserved by their action; of a + universal social duty and a great necessity. + </p> + <p> + That the Woman’s Movement of our day has not taken its origin from any + mere process of theoretic argument; that it breaks out, now here and now + there, in forms divergent and at times superficially almost + irreconcilable; that the majority of those taking part in it are driven + into action as the result of the immediate pressure of the conditions of + life, and are not always able logically to state the nature of all causes + which propel them, or to paint clearly all results of their action; so far + from removing it from the category of the vast reorganising movements of + humanity, places it in a line with them, showing how vital, spontaneous, + and wholly organic and unartificial is its nature. + </p> + <p> + The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate, and at + times almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and social + duties; while at another it makes itself felt as a determined endeavour + after self-culture; that in one land it embodies itself mainly in a + resolute endeavour to enlarge the sphere of remunerative labour for women; + while in another it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to recoordinate + the personal relation of the sexes; that in one individual it manifests + itself as a passionate and sometimes noisy struggle for liberty of + personal action; while in another it is being fought out silently in the + depth of the individual consciousness—that primal battle-ground, in + which all questions of reform and human advance must ultimately be fought + and decided;—all this diversity, and the fact that the average woman + is entirely concerned in labour in her own little field, shows, not the + weakness, but the strength of the movement; which, taken as a whole, is a + movement steady and persistent in one direction, the direction of + increased activity and culture, and towards the negation of all + possibility of parasitism in the human female. Slowly, and unconsciously, + as the child is shaped in the womb, this movement shapes itself in the + bosom of our time, taking its place beside those vast human developments, + of which men, noting their spontaneity and the co-ordination of their + parts, have said, in the phraseology of old days, “This thing is not of + man, but of God.” + </p> + <p> + He who today looks at some great Gothic cathedral in its final form, seems + to be looking at that which might have been the incarnation of the dream + of some single soul of genius. But in truth, its origin was far otherwise. + Ages elapsed from the time the first rough stone was laid as a foundation + till the last spire and pinnacle were shaped, and the hand which laid the + foundation-stone was never the same as that which set the last stone upon + the coping. Generations often succeeded one another, labouring at + gargoyle, rose-window, and shaft, and died, leaving the work to others; + the master-builder who drew up the first rough outline passed away, and + was succeeded by others, and the details of the work as completed bore + sometimes but faint resemblance to the work as he devised it; no man fully + understood all that others had done or were doing, but each laboured in + his place; and the work as completed had unity; it expressed not the + desire and necessity of one mind, but of the human spirit of that age; and + not less essential to the existence of the building was the labour of the + workman who passed a life of devotion in carving gargoyles or shaping + rose-windows, than that of the greatest master who drew general outlines: + perhaps it was yet more heroic; for, for the master-builder, who, even if + it were but vaguely, had an image of what the work would be when the last + stone was laid and the last spire raised, it was easy to labour with + devotion and zeal, though well he might know that the placing of that last + stone and the raising of that last spire would not be his, and that the + building in its full beauty and strength he should never see; but for the + journeyman labourer who carried on his duties and month by month toiled at + carving his own little gargoyle or shaping the traceries in his own little + oriel window, without any complete vision, it was not so easy; + nevertheless, it was through the conscientious labours of such alone, + through their heaps of chipped and spoiled stones, which may have lain + thick about them, that at the last the pile was reared in its strength and + beauty. + </p> + <p> + For a Moses who could climb Pisgah, and, though it were through a mist of + bitter tears, could see stretching before him the land of the inheritance, + a land which his feet should never tread and whose fruit his hand should + never touch, it was yet, perhaps, not so hard to turn round and die; for, + as in a dream, he had seen the land: but for the thousands who could climb + no Pisgah, who were to leave their bones whitening in the desert, having + even from afar never seen the true outline of the land; those who, on that + long march, had not even borne the Ark nor struck the timbrel, but carried + only their small household vessels and possessions, for these it was + perhaps not so easy to lie down and perish in the desert, knowing only + that far ahead somewhere, lay a Land of Promise. Nevertheless, it was by + the slow and sometimes wavering march of such as these, that the land was + reached by the people at last. + </p> + <p> + For her, whose insight enables her to see, through the distance, those + large beatitudes towards which the struggles and suffering of the women of + today may tend; who sees beyond the present, though in a future which she + knows she will never enter, an enlarged and strengthened womanhood bearing + forward with it a strengthened and expanded race, it is not so hard to + renounce and labour with unshaken purpose: but for those who have not that + view, and struggle on, animated at most by a vague consciousness that + somewhere ahead lies a large end, towards which their efforts tend; who + labour year after year at some poor little gargoyle of a Franchise Bill, + or the shaping of some rough little foundation-stone of reform in + education, or dress a stone (which perhaps never quite fits the spot it + was intended for, and has to be thrown aside!); or who carve away all + their lives to produce a corbel of some reform in sexual relations, in the + end to find it break under the chisel; who, out of many failures attain, + perhaps, to no success, or but to one, and that so small and set so much + in the shade that no eye will ever see it; for such as these, it is + perhaps not so easy to labour without growing weary. Nevertheless, it is + through the labours of these myriad toilers, each working in her own + minute sphere, with her own small outlook, and out of endless failures and + miscarriages, that at last the enwidened and beautified relations of woman + to life must rise, if they are ever to come. + </p> + <p> + When a starfish lies on the ground at the bottom of a sloping rock it has + to climb, it seems to the onlooker as though there were nothing which + could stir the inert mass and no means for taking it to the top. Yet watch + it. Beneath its lower side, hidden from sight, are a million fine + tentacles; impulses of will from the central nerve radiate throughout the + whole body, and each tiny fibre, fine as a hair, slowly extends itself, + and seizes on the minute particle of rough rock nearest to it; now a small + tentacle slips its hold, and then it holds firmly, and then slowly and + slowly the whole inert mass rises to the top. + </p> + <p> + It is often said of those who lead in this attempt at the readaption of + woman’s relation to life, that they are “New Women”; and they are at times + spoken of as though they were a something portentous and unheard-of in the + order of human life. + </p> + <p> + But, the truth is, we are not new. We who lead in this movement today are + of that old, old Teutonic womanhood, which twenty centuries ago ploughed + its march through European forests and morasses beside its male companion; + which marched with the Cimbri to Italy, and with the Franks across the + Rhine, with the Varagians into Russia, and the Alamani into Switzerland; + which peopled Scandinavia, and penetrated to Britain; whose priestesses + had their shrines in German forests, and gave out the oracle for peace or + war. We have in us the blood of a womanhood that was never bought and + never sold; that wore no veil, and had no foot bound; whose realised ideal + of marriage was sexual companionship and an equality in duty and labour; + who stood side by side with the males they loved in peace or war, and + whose children, when they had borne them, sucked manhood from their + breasts, and even through their foetal existence heard a brave heart beat + above them. We are women of a breed whose racial ideal was no Helen of + Troy, passed passively from male hand to male hand, as men pass gold or + lead; but that Brynhild whom Segurd found, clad in helm and byrne, the + warrior maid, who gave him counsel “the deepest that ever yet was given to + living man,” and “wrought on him to the performing of great deeds;” who, + when he died, raised high the funeral pyre and lay down on it beside him, + crying, “Nor shall the door swing to at the heel of him as I go in beside + him!” We are of a race of women that of old knew no fear, and feared no + death, and lived great lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of + us have fallen on evil and degenerate times, there moves in us yet the + throb of the old blood. + </p> + <p> + If it be today on no physical battlefield that we stand beside our men, + and on no march through no external forest or morass that we have to lead; + it is yet the old spirit which, undimmed by two thousand years, stirs + within us in deeper and subtler ways; it is yet the cry of the old, free + Northern woman which makes the world today. Though the battlefield be now + for us all, in the laboratory or the workshop, in the forum or the study, + in the assembly and in the mart and the political arena, with the pen and + not the sword, of the head and not the arm, we still stand side by side + with the men we love, “to dare with them in war and to suffer with them in + peace,” as the Roman wrote of our old Northern womanhood. + </p> + <p> + Those women, of whom the old writers tell us, who, barefooted and white + robed, led their Northern hosts on that long march to Italy, were animated + by the thought that they led their people to a land of warmer sunshine and + richer fruitage; we, today, believe we have caught sight of a land bathed + in a nobler than any material sunlight, with a fruitage richer than any + which the senses only can grasp: and behind us, we believe there follows a + longer train than any composed of our own race and people; the sound of + the tread we hear behind us is that of all earth’s women, bearing within + them the entire race. The footpath, yet hardly perceptible, which we tread + down today, will, we believe, be life’s broadest and straightest road, + along which the children of men will pass to a higher co-ordination and + harmony. The banner which we unfurl today is not new: it is the standard + of the old, free, monogamous, labouring woman, which, twenty hundred years + ago, floated over the forests of Europe. We shall bear it on, each + generation as it falls passing it into the hand of that which follows, + till we plant it so high that all nations of the world shall see it; till + the women of the humblest human races shall be gathered beneath its folds, + and no child enter life that was not born within its shade. + </p> + <p> + We are not new! If you would understand us, go back two thousand years, + and study our descent; our breed is our explanation. We are the daughters + of our fathers as well as of our mothers. In our dreams we still hear the + clash of the shields of our forefathers as they struck them together + before battle and raised the shout of “Freedom!” In our dreams it is with + us still, and when we wake it breaks from our own lips! We are the + daughters of those men. + </p> + <p> + But, it may be said, “Are there not women among you who would use the + shibboleth, of freedom and labour, merely as a means for opening a door to + a greater and more highly flavoured self-indulgence, to a more lucrative + and enjoyable parasitism? Are there not women who, under the guise of + ‘work,’ are seeking only increased means of sensuous pleasure and + self-indulgence; to whom intellectual training and the opening to new + fields of labour side by side with man, mean merely new means of + self-advertisement and parasitic success?” We answer: There may be such, + truly; among us—but not of us! This at least is true, that we, + ourselves, are seldom deceived by them; the sheep generally recognise the + wolf however carefully fitted the sheepskin under which he hides, though + the onlookers may not; and though not always be able to drive him from the + flock! The outer world may be misled; we, who stand shoulder to shoulder + with them, know them; they are not many; neither are they new. They are + one of the oldest survivals, and among the most primitive relics in the + race. They are as old as Loki among the gods, as Lucifer among the Sons of + the Morning, as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as pain and dislocation + in the web of human life. + </p> + <p> + Such women are as old as that first primitive woman who, when she went + with her fellows to gather wood for the common household, put grass in the + centre of the bundle that she might appear to carry as much as they, yet + carry nothing; she is as old as the first man who threw away his shield in + battle, and yet, when it was over, gathered with the victors to share the + spoils, as old as cowardice and lust in the human and animal world; only + to cease from being when, perhaps, an enlarged and expanded humanity shall + have cast the last slough of its primitive skin. + </p> + <p> + Every army has its camp-followers, not among its accredited soldiers, but + who follow in its train, ready to attack and rifle the fallen on either + side. To lookers on, they may appear soldiers; but the soldier knows who + they are. At the Judean supper there was one Master, and to the onlooker + there may have seemed twelve apostles; in truth only twelve were of the + company, and one was not of it. There has always been this thirteenth + figure at every sacramental gathering, since the world began, wherever the + upholders of a great cause have broken spiritual bread; but it may be + questioned whether in any instance this thirteenth figure has been able to + destroy, or even vitally to retard, any great human movement. Judas could + hang his Master by a kiss; but he could not silence the voice which for a + thousand years rang out of that Judean grave. Again and again, in social, + political, and intellectual movements, the betrayer betrays;—and the + cause marches on over the body of the man. + </p> + <p> + There are women, as there are men, whose political, social, intellectual, + or philanthropic labours are put on, as the harlot puts on paint, and for + the same purpose: but they can no more retard the progress of the great + bulk of vital and sincere womanhood, than the driftwood on the surface of + a mighty river can ultimately prevent its waters from reaching the sea. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter IV. Woman and War. + </h2> + <p> + But it may also be said, “Granting fully that you are right, that, as + woman’s old fields of labour slip from her, she must grasp the new, or + must become wholly dependent on her sexual function alone, all the other + elements of human nature in her becoming atrophied and arrested through + lack of exercise: and, granting that her evolution being arrested, the + evolution of the whole race will be also arrested in her person: granting + all this to the full, and allowing that the bulk of human labour tends to + become more and more intellectual and less and less purely mechanical, as + perfected machinery takes the place of crude human exertion; and that + therefore if woman is to be saved from degeneration and parasitism, and + the body of humanity from arrest, she must receive a training which will + cultivate all the intellectual and all the physical faculties with which + she is endowed, and be allowed freely to employ them; nevertheless, would + it not be possible, and perhaps be well, that a dividing line of some kind + should be drawn between the occupations of men and of women? Would it not, + for example, be possible that woman should retain agriculture, textile + manufacture, trade, domestic management, the education of youth, and + medicine, in addition to child-bearing, as her exclusive fields of toil; + while, to the male, should be left the study of abstract science, law and + war, and statecraft; as of old, man took war and the chase, and woman + absorbed the further labours of life? Why should there not be again a fair + and even division in the field of social labour?” + </p> + <p> + Superficially, this suggestion appears rational, having at least this to + recommend it, that it appears to harmonise with the course of human + evolution in the past; but closely examined, it will, we think, be found + to have no practical or scientific basis, and to be out of harmony with + the conditions of modern life. In ancient and primitive societies, the + mere larger size and muscular strength of man, and woman’s incessant + physical activity in child-bearing and suckling and rearing the young, + made almost inevitable a certain sexual division of labour in almost all + countries, save perhaps in ancient Egypt. (The division of labour between + the sexes in Ancient Egypt and other exceptional countries, is a matter of + much interest, which cannot here be entered on.) Woman naturally took the + heavy agricultural and domestic labours, which were yet more consistent + with the continual dependence of infant life on her own, than those of man + in war and the chase. There was nothing artificial in such a division; it + threw the heaviest burden of the most wearying and unexciting forms of + social labour on woman, but under it both sexes laboured in a manner + essential to the existence of society, and each transmitted to the other, + through inheritance, the fruit of its slowly expanding and always exerted + powers; and the race progressed. + </p> + <p> + Individual women might sometimes, and even often, become the warrior chief + of a tribe; the King of Ashantee might train his terrible regiment of + females; and men might now and again plant and weave for their children: + but in the main, and in most societies, the division of labour was just, + natural, beneficial; and it was inevitable that such a division should + take place. Were today a band of civilised men, women, and infants thrown + down absolutely naked and defenceless in some desert, and cut off + hopelessly from all external civilised life, undoubtedly very much the old + division of labour would, at least for a time, reassert itself; men would + look about for stones and sticks with which to make weapons to repel wild + beasts and enemies, and would go a-hunting meat and fighting savage + enemies and tend the beasts when tamed: (The young captured animals would + probably be tamed and reared by the women.) women would suckle their + children, cook the meat men brought, build shelters, look for roots and if + possible cultivate them; there certainly would be no parasite in the + society; the woman who refused to labour for her offspring, and the man + who refused to hunt or defend society, would not be supported by their + fellows, would soon be extinguished by want. As wild beasts were + extinguished and others tamed and the materials for war improved, fewer + men would be needed for hunting and war; then they would remain at home + and aid in building and planting; many women would retire into the house + to perfect domestic toil and handicrafts, and on a small scale the common + ancient evolution of society would probably practically repeat itself. But + for the present, we see no such natural and spontaneous division of labour + based on natural sexual distinctions in the new fields of intellectual or + delicately skilled manual labour, which are taking the place of the old. + </p> + <p> + It is possible, though at present there is nothing to give indication of + such a fact, and it seems highly improbable, that, in some subtle manner + now incomprehensible, there might tend to be a subtle correlation between + that condition of the brain and nervous system which accompanies ability + in the direction of certain modern forms of mental, social labour, and the + particular form of reproductive function possessed by an individual. It + may be that, inexplicable as it seems, there may ultimately be found to be + some connection between that condition of the brain and nervous system + which fits the individual for the study of the higher mathematics, let us + say, and the nature of their sex attributes. The mere fact that, of the + handful of women who, up to the present, have received training and been + allowed to devote themselves to abstract study, several have excelled in + the higher mathematics, proves of necessity no pre-eminent tendency on the + part of the female sex in the direction of mathematics, as compared to + labour in the fields of statesmanship, administration, or law; as into + these fields there has been practically no admittance for women. It is + sometimes stated, that as several women of genius in modern times have + sought to find expression for their creative powers in the art of fiction, + there must be some inherent connection in the human brain between the + ovarian sex function and the art of fiction. The fact is, that modern + fiction being merely a description of human life in any of its phases, and + being the only art that can be exercised without special training or + special appliances, and produced in the moments stolen from the + multifarious, brain-destroying occupations which fill the average woman’s + life, they have been driven to find this outlet for their powers as the + only one presenting itself. How far otherwise might have been the + directions in which their genius would naturally have expressed itself can + be known only partially even to the women themselves; what the world has + lost by that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have + been its most natural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one + can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber + the ground, we see often a pathetic figure, when we recognise that beneath + that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie buried a sound + legislator, an able architect, an original scientific investigator, or a + good judge. Scientifically speaking, it is as unproven that there is any + organic relation between the brain of the female and the production of art + in the form of fiction, as that there is an organic relation between the + hand of woman and a typewriting machine. Both the creative writer and the + typist, in their respective spheres, are merely finding outlets for their + powers in the direction of least resistance. The tendency of women at the + present day to undertake certain forms of labour, proves only that in the + crabbed, walled-in, and bound conditions surrounding woman at the present + day, these are the lines along which action is most possible to her. + </p> + <p> + It may possibly be that in future ages, when the male and female forms + have been placed in like intellectual conditions, with like stimuli, like + training, and like rewards, that some aptitudes may be found running + parallel with the line of sex function when humanity is viewed as a whole. + It may possibly be that, when the historian of the future looks back over + the history of the intellectually freed and active sexes for countless + generations, that a decided preference of the female intellect for + mathematics, engineering, or statecraft may be made clear; and that a like + marked inclination in the male to excel in acting, music, or astronomy may + by careful and large comparison be shown. But, for the present, we have no + adequate scientific data from which to draw any conclusion, and any + attempt to divide the occupations in which male and female intellects and + wills should be employed, must be to attempt a purely artificial and + arbitrary division: a division not more rational and scientific than an + attempt to determine by the colour of his eyes and the shape and strength + of his legs, whether a lad should be an astronomer or an engraver. Those + physical differences among mankind which divide races and nations—not + merely those differences, enormously greater as they are generally, than + any physical differences between male and female of the same race, which + divide the Jew and the Swede, the Japanese and the Englishman, but even + those subtle physical differences which divide closely allied races such + as the English and German—often appear to be allied with certain + subtle differences in intellectual aptitudes. Yet even with regard to + these differences, it is almost impossible to determine scientifically in + how far they are the result of national traditions, environment, and + education, and in how far the result of real differences in organic + conformation. (In thinking of physical sex differences, the civilised man + of modern times has always to guard himself against being unconsciously + misled by the very exaggerated external sex differences which our + unnatural method of sex clothing and dressing the hair produces. The + unclothed and natural human male and female bodies are not more divided + from each other than those of the lion and lioness. Our remote Saxon + ancestors, with their great, almost naked, white bodies and flowing hair + worn long by both sexes, were but little distinguished from each other; + while among their modern descendants the short hair, darkly clothed, + manifestly two-legged male differs absolutely from the usually + long-haired, colour bedizened, much beskirted female. Were the structural + differences between male and female really one half as marked as the + artificial visual differences, they would be greater than those dividing, + not merely any species of man from another, but as great as those which + divide orders in the animal world. Only a mind exceedingly alert and + analytical can fail ultimately to be misled by habitual visual + misrepresentation. There is not, probably, one man or woman in twenty + thousand who is not powerfully influenced in modern life in their + conception of the differences, physical and intellectual, dividing the + human male and female, by the grotesque exaggerations of modern attire and + artificial manners.) + </p> + <p> + No study of the mere physical differences between individuals of different + races would have enabled us to arrive at any knowledge of their mental + aptitude; nor does the fact that certain individuals of a given human + variety have certain aptitudes form a rational ground for compelling all + individuals of that variety to undertake a certain form of labour. + </p> + <p> + No analysis, however subtle, of the physical conformation of the Jew could + have suggested a priori, and still less could have proved, apart from ages + of practical experience, that, running parallel with any physical + characteristics which may distinguish him from his fellows, was an innate + and unique intellectual gift in the direction of religion. The fact that, + during three thousand years, from Moses to Isaiah, through Jesus and Paul + on to Spinoza, the Jewish race has produced men who have given half the + world its religious faith and impetus, proves that, somewhere and somehow, + whether connected organically with that physical organisation that marks + the Jew, or as the result of his traditions and training, there does go + this gift in the matter of religion. Yet, on the other hand, we find + millions of Jews who are totally and markedly deficient in it, and to base + any practical legislation for the individual even on this proven + intellectual aptitude of the race as a whole would be manifestly as + ridiculous as abortive. Yet more markedly, with the German—no + consideration of his physical peculiarities, though it proceeded to the + subtlest analysis of nerve, bone, and muscle, could in the present stage + of our knowledge have proved to us what generations of experience appear + to have proved, that, with that organisation which constitutes the German, + goes an unique aptitude for music. There is always the possibility of + mistaking the result of training and external circumstance for inherent + tendency, but when we consider the passion for music which the German has + shown, and when we consider that the greatest musicians the world has + seen, from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to Wagner, have been of that race, + it appears highly probable that such a correlation between the German + organisation and the intellectual gift of music does exist. Similar + intellectual peculiarities seem to be connoted by the external differences + which mark off other races from each other. Nevertheless, were persons of + all of these nationalities gathered in one colony, any attempt to + legislate for their restriction to certain forms of intellectual labour on + the ground of their apparently proved national aptitudes or disabilities, + would be regarded as insane. To insist that all Jews, and none but Jews, + should lead and instruct in religious matters; that all Englishmen, and + none but Englishmen, should engage in trade; that each German should make + his living by music, and none but a German allowed to practise it, would + drive to despair the unfortunate individual Englishman, whose most marked + deficiency might be in the direction of finance and bartering trade power; + the Jew, whose religious instincts might be entirely rudimentary; or the + German, who could not distinguish one note from another; and the society + as a whole would be an irremediable loser, in one of the heaviest of all + forms of social loss—the loss of the full use of the highest + capacities of all its members. + </p> + <p> + It may be that with sexes as with races, the subtlest physical difference + between them may have their fine mental correlatives; but no abstract + consideration of the human body in relation to its functions of sex can, + in the present state of our knowledge, show us what intellectual + capacities tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing in the present + or past condition of male and female give us more than the very faintest + possible indication of the relation of their intellectual aptitudes and + their sexual functions. And even were it proved by centuries of experiment + that with the possession of the uterine function of sex tends to go + exceptional intellectual capacity in the direction of mathematics rather + than natural history, or an inclination for statecraft rather than for + mechanical invention; were it proved that, generally speaking and as a + whole, out of twenty thousand women devoting themselves to law and twenty + thousand to medicine, they tended to achieve relatively more in the field + of law than of medicine, there would yet be no possible healthy or + rational ground for restricting the activities of the individual female to + that line in which the average female appeared rather more frequently to + excel. (Minds not keenly analytical are always apt to mistake mere + correlation of appearance with causative sequence. We have heard it + gravely asserted that between potatoes, pigs, mud cabins and Irishmen + there was an organic connection: but we who have lived in Colonies, know + that within two generations the pure-bred descendant of the mud cabiner + becomes often the successful politician, wealthy financier, or great + judge; and shows no more predilection for potatoes, pigs, and mud cabins + than men of any other race.) + </p> + <p> + That even one individual in a society should be debarred from undertaking + that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes an unnecessary + deficit in the general social assets. That one male Froebel should be + prohibited or hampered in his labour as an educator of infancy, on the + ground that infantile instruction was the field of the female; that one + female with gifts in the direction of state administration, should be + compelled to instruct an infants’ school, perhaps without the slightest + gift for so doing, is a running to waste of social life-blood. + </p> + <p> + Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, + is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be + determined. And our demand today is that natural conditions, inexorably, + but beneficently, may determine the labours of each individual, and not + artificial restrictions. + </p> + <p> + As there is no need to legislate that Hindus, being generally supposed to + have a natural incapacity for field sports, shall not betake themselves to + them—for, if they have no capacity, they will fail; and, as in spite + of the Hindus’ supposed general incapacity for sport, it is possible for + an individual Hindu to become the noted batsman of his age; so, also, + there is no need to legislate that women should be restricted in her + choice of fields of labour; for the organic incapacity of the individual, + if it exist, will legislate far more powerfully than any artificial, + legal, or social obstruction can do; and it may be that the one individual + in ten thousand who selects a field not generally sought by his fellows + will enrich humanity by the result of an especial genius. Allowing all to + start from the one point in the world of intellectual culture and labour, + with our ancient Mother Nature sitting as umpire, distributing the prizes + and scratching from the lists the incompetent, is all we demand, but we + demand it determinedly. Throw the puppy into the water: if it swims, well; + if it sinks, well; but do not tie a rope round its throat and weight it + with a brick, and then assert its incapacity to keep afloat. + </p> + <p> + For the present our cry is, “We take all labour for our province!” + </p> + <p> + From the judge’s seat to the legislator’s chair; from the statesman’s + closet to the merchant’s office; from the chemist’s laboratory to the + astronomer’s tower, there is no post or form of toil for which it is not + our intention to attempt to fit ourselves; and there is no closed door we + do not intend to force open; and there is no fruit in the garden of + knowledge it is not our determination to eat. Acting in us, and through + us, nature we know will mercilessly expose to us our deficiencies in the + field of human toil, and reveal to us our powers. And, for today, we take + all labour for our province! + </p> + <p> + But, it may then be said: “What of war, that struggle of the human + creature to attain its ends by physical force and at the price of the life + of others: will you take part in that also?” We reply: Yes; more + particularly in that field we intend to play our part. We have always + borne part of the weight of war, and the major part. It is not merely that + in primitive times we suffered from the destruction of the fields we + tilled and the houses we built; or that in later times as domestic + labourers and producers, though unwaged, we, in taxes and material loss + and additional labour, paid as much as our males towards the cost of war; + nor is it that in a comparatively insignificant manner, as nurses of the + wounded in modern times, or now and again as warrior chieftainesses and + leaders in primitive and other societies, we have borne our part; nor is + it even because the spirit of resolution in its women, and their + willingness to endure, has in all ages again and again largely determined + the fate of a race that goes to war, that we demand our controlling right + where war is concerned. Our relation to war is far more intimate, + personal, and indissoluble than this. Men have made boomerangs, bows, + swords, or guns with which to destroy one another; we have made the men + who destroyed and were destroyed! We have in all ages produced, at an + enormous cost, the primal munition of war, without which no other would + exist. There is no battlefield on earth, nor ever has been, howsoever + covered with slain, which is has not cost the women of the race more in + actual bloodshed and anguish to supply, then it has cost the men who lie + there. We pay the first cost on all human life. + </p> + <p> + In supplying the men for the carnage of a battlefield, women have not + merely lost actually more blood, and gone through a more acute anguish and + weariness, in the long months of bearing and in the final agony of + childbirth, than has been experienced by the men who cover it; but, in the + long months and years of rearing that follow, the women of the race go + through a long, patiently endured strain which no knapsacked soldier on + his longest march has ever more than equalled; while, even in the matter + of death, in all civilised societies, the probability that the average + woman will die in childbirth is immeasurably greater than the probability + that the average male will die in battle. + </p> + <p> + There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have borne children, or be merely + potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a battlefield covered + with slain, but the thought would rise in her, “So many mothers’ sons! So + many bodies brought into the world to lie there! So many months of + weariness and pain while bones and muscles were shaped within; so many + hours of anguish and struggle that breath might be; so many baby mouths + drawing life at woman’s breasts;—all this, that men might lie with + glazed eyeballs, and swollen bodies, and fixed, blue, unclosed mouths, and + great limbs tossed—this, that an acre of ground might be manured + with human flesh, that next year’s grass or poppies or karoo bushes may + spring up greener and redder, where they have lain, or that the sand of a + plain may have a glint of white bones!” And we cry, “Without an inexorable + cause, this should not be!” No woman who is a woman says of a human body, + “It is nothing!” + </p> + <p> + On that day, when the woman takes her place beside the man in the + governance and arrangement of external affairs of her race will also be + that day that heralds the death of war as a means of arranging human + differences. No tinsel of trumpets and flags will ultimately seduce women + into the insanity of recklessly destroying life, or gild the wilful taking + of life with any other name than that of murder, whether it be the + slaughter of the million or of one by one. And this will be, not because + with the sexual function of maternity necessarily goes in the human + creature a deeper moral insight, or a loftier type of social instinct than + that which accompanies the paternal. Men have in all ages led as nobly as + women in many paths of heroic virtue, and toward the higher social + sympathies; in certain ages, being freer and more widely cultured, they + have led further and better. The fact that woman has no inherent all-round + moral superiority over her male companion, or naturally on all points any + higher social instinct, is perhaps most clearly exemplified by one curious + very small fact: the two terms signifying intimate human relationships + which in almost all human languages bear the most sinister and antisocial + significance are both terms which have as their root the term “mother,” + and denote feminine relationships—the words “mother-in-law” and + “step-mother.” + </p> + <p> + In general humanity, in the sense of social solidarity, and in + magnanimity, the male has continually proved himself at least the equal of + the female. + </p> + <p> + Nor will women shrink from war because they lack courage. Earth’s women of + every generation have faced suffering and death with an equanimity that no + soldier on a battlefield has ever surpassed and few have equalled; and + where war has been to preserve life, or land, or freedom, unparasitised + and labouring women have in all ages known how to bear an active part, and + die. + </p> + <p> + Nor will woman’s influence militate against war because in the future + woman will not be able physically to bear her part in it. The smaller size + of her muscle, which would severely have disadvantaged her when war was + conducted with a battle-axe or sword and hand to hand, would now little or + at all affect her. If intent on training for war, she might acquire the + skill for guiding a Maxim or shooting down a foe with a Lee-Metford at + four thousand yards as ably as any male; and undoubtedly, it has not been + only the peasant girl of France, who has carried latent and hid within her + person the gifts that make the supreme general. If our European nations + should continue in their present semi-civilised condition, which makes war + possible, for a few generations longer, it is highly probable that as + financiers, as managers of the commissariat department, as inspectors of + provisions and clothing for the army, women will play a very leading part; + and that the nation which is the first to employ its women so may be + placed at a vast advantage over its fellows in time of war. It is not + because of woman’s cowardice, incapacity, nor, above all, because of her + general superior virtue, that she will end war when her voice is fully, + finally, and clearly heard in the governance of states—it is + because, on this one point, and on this point almost alone, the knowledge + of woman, simply as woman, is superior to that of man; she knows the + history of human flesh; she knows its cost; he does not. (It is noteworthy + that even Catharine of Russia, a ruler and statesman of a virile and + uncompromising type, and not usually troubled with moral scruples, yet + refused with indignation the offer of Frederick of Prussia to pay her + heavily for a small number of Russian recruits in an age when the hiring + out of soldiers was common among the sovereigns of Europe.) + </p> + <p> + In a besieged city, it might well happen that men in the streets might + seize upon statues and marble carvings from public buildings and galleries + and hurl them in to stop the breaches made in their ramparts by the enemy, + unconsideringly and merely because they came first to hand, not valuing + them more than had they been paving-stones. But one man could not do this—the + sculptor! He, who, though there might be no work of his own chisel among + them, yet knew what each of these works of art had cost, knew by + experience the long years of struggle and study and the infinitude of toil + which had gone to the shaping of even one limb, to the carving of even one + perfected outline, he could never so use them without thought or care. + Instinctively he would seek to throw in household goods, even gold and + silver, all the city held, before he sacrificed its works of art! + </p> + <p> + Men’s bodies are our woman’s works of art. Given to us power of control, + we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human + relationships made by international ambitions and greeds. The thought + would never come to us as woman, “Cast in men’s bodies; settle the thing + so!” Arbitration and compensation would as naturally occur to her as + cheaper and simpler methods of bridging the gaps in national + relationships, as to the sculptor it would occur to throw in anything + rather than statuary, though he might be driven to that at last! + </p> + <p> + This is one of those phases of human life, not very numerous, but very + important, towards which the man as man, and the woman as woman, on the + mere ground of their different sexual function with regard to + reproduction, stand, and must stand, at a somewhat differing angle. The + physical creation of human life, which, in as far as the male is + concerned, consists in a few moments of physical pleasure; to the female + must always signify months of pressure and physical endurance, crowned + with danger to life. To the male, the giving of life is a laugh; to the + female, blood, anguish, and sometimes death. Here we touch one of the few + yet important differences between man and woman as such. + </p> + <p> + The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean, to + the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be borne + within them for months, given birth to in anguish, fed from their breasts + and reared with toil, if the numbers of the tribe and the strength of the + nation are to be maintained. In nations continually at war, incessant and + unbroken child-bearing is by war imposed on all women if the state is to + survive; and whenever war occurs, if numbers are to be maintained, there + must be an increased child-bearing and rearing. This throws upon woman as + woman a war tax, compared with which all that the male expends in military + preparations is comparatively light. + </p> + <p> + The relations of the female towards the production of human life + influences undoubtedly even her relation towards animal and all life. “It + is a fine day, let us go out and kill something!” cries the typical male + of certain races, instinctively. “There is a living thing, it will die if + it is not cared for,” says the average woman, almost equally + instinctively. It is true, that the woman will sacrifice as mercilessly, + as cruelly, the life of a hated rival or an enemy, as any male; but she + always knows what she is doing, and the value of the life she takes! There + is no light-hearted, careless enjoyment in the sacrifice of life to the + normal woman; her instinct, instructed by practical experience, steps in + to prevent it. She always knows what life costs; and that it is more easy + to destroy than create it. + </p> + <p> + It is also true, that, from the loftiest standpoint, the condemnation of + war which has arisen in the advancing human spirit, is in no sense related + to any particular form of sex function. The man and the woman alike, who + with Isaiah on the hills of Palestine, or the Indian Buddha under his + bo-tree, have seen the essential unity of all sentient life; and who + therefore see in war but a symptom of that crude disco-ordination of life + on earth, not yet at one with itself, which affects humanity in these + early stages of its growth: and who are compelled to regard as the + ultimate goal of the race, though yet perhaps far distant across the + ridges of innumerable coming ages, that harmony between all forms of + conscious life, metaphorically prefigured by the ancient Hebrew, when he + cried, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb; and the leopard shall lie down + with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, + and a little child shall lead them!”—to that individual, whether man + or woman, who has reached this standpoint, there is no need for + enlightenment from the instincts of the child-bearers of society as such; + their condemnation of war, rising not so much from the fact that it is a + wasteful destruction of human flesh, as that it is an indication of the + non-existence of that co-ordination, the harmony which is summed up in the + cry, “My little children, love one another.” + </p> + <p> + But for the vast bulk of humanity, probably for generations to come, the + instinctive antagonism of the human child-bearer to reckless destruction + of that which she has at so much cost produced, will be necessary to + educate the race to any clear conception of the bestiality and insanity of + war. + </p> + <p> + War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to + the female an equal share in the control and governance of modern national + life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its extinction will not + be delayed much longer. + </p> + <p> + It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men’s + bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour + and ardour of battle, but singly, and alone, with a three-in-the-morning + courage, shed our blood and face death that the battlefield may have its + food, a food more precious to us than our heart’s blood; it is we + especially, who in the domain of war, have our word to say, a word no man + can say for us. It is our intention to enter into the domain of war and to + labour there till in the course of generations we have extinguished it. + </p> + <p> + If today we claim all labour for our province, yet more especially do we + claim those fields in which the difference in the reproductive function + between man and woman may place male and female at a slightly different + angle with regard to certain phases of human life. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter V. Sex Differences. + </h2> + <p> + If we examine the physical phenomenon of sex as it manifests itself in the + human creature, we find, in the first stages of the individual’s + existence, no difference discernible, by any means we have at present at + our command, between those germs which are ultimately to become male or + female. Later, in the foetal life, at birth, and through infancy though + the organs of sex serve to distinguish the male from the female, there is + in the general structure and working of the organism little or nothing to + divide the sexes. + </p> + <p> + Even when puberty is reached, with its enormous development of sexual and + reproductive activity modifying those parts of the organism with which it + is concerned, and producing certain secondary sexual characteristics, + there yet remains the major extent of the human body and of physical + function little, or not at all, affected by sex modification. The eye, the + ear, the sense of touch, the general organs of nutrition and respiration + and volition are in the main identical, and often differ far more in + persons of the same sex than in those of opposite sexes; and even on the + dissecting-table the tissues of the male and female are often wholly + indistinguishable. + </p> + <p> + It is when we consider the reproductive organs themselves and their forms + of activity, and such parts of the organism modified directly in relation + to them, that a real and important difference is found to exist, radical + though absolutely complemental. It is exactly as we approach the + reproductive functions that the male and female bodies differ; exactly as + we recede from them that they become more and more similar, and even + absolutely identical. Taking the eye, perhaps the most highly developed, + complex organ in the body, and, if of an organ the term may be allowed, + the most intellectual organ of sense, we find it remains the same in male + and female in structure, in appearance, and in function throughout life; + while the breast, closely connected with reproduction, though absolutely + identical in both forms in infancy, assumes a widely different + organisation when reproductive activity is actually concerned. + </p> + <p> + When we turn to the psychic phase of human life an exactly analogous + phenomenon presents itself. The intelligence, emotions, and desires of the + human infant at birth differ not at all perceptibly, as its sex may be + male or female; and such psychic differences as appear to exist in later + childhood are undoubtedly very largely the result of artificial training, + forcing on the appearance of psychic sexual divergencies long before they + would tend spontaneously to appear; as where sports and occupations are + interdicted to young children on the ground of their supposed sexual + unfitness; as when an infant female is forcibly prevented from climbing or + shouting, and the infant male from amusing himself with needle and thread + or dolls. Even in the fully adult human, and in spite of differences of + training, the psychic activities over a large extent of life appear to be + absolutely identical. The male and female brains acquire languages, solve + mathematical problems, and master scientific detail in a manner wholly + indistinguishable: as illustrated by the fact that in modern universities + the papers sent in by male and female candidates are as a rule absolutely + identical in type. Placed in like external conditions, their tastes and + emotions, over a vast part of the surface of life, are identical; and, in + an immense number of those cases where psychic sex differences appear to + exist, subject to rigid analysis they are found to be purely artificial + creations, for, when other races or classes are studied, they are found + non-existent as sexual characteristics; as when the female is supposed by + ignorant persons in modern European societies to have an inherent love for + bright colours and ornaments, not shared by the male; while experience of + other societies and past social conditions prove that it is as often the + male who has been even more desirous of attiring himself in bright raiment + and adorning himself with brilliant jewels; or as when, among certain + tribes of savages, the use of tobacco is supposed to be a peculiarly + female prerogative, while, in some modern societies, it is supposed to + have some relation to masculinity. (The savage male of today when attired + in his paint, feathers, cats’ tails and necklaces is an immeasurably more + ornamented and imposing figure than his female, even when fully attired + for a dance in beads and bangles: the Oriental male has sometimes scarcely + been able to walk under the weight of his ornaments; and the males of + Europe a couple of centuries ago, with their powdered wigs, lace ruffles + and cuffs, paste buckles, feathered cocked hats, and patches were quite as + ridiculous in their excess of adornment as the complementary females of + their own day, or the most parasitic females of this. Both in the class + and the individual, whether male or female, an intense love of dress and + meretricious external adornment is almost invariably the concomitant and + outcome of parasitism. Were the parasite female class in our own societies + today to pass away, French fashions with their easeless and grotesque + variations (shaped not for use or beauty, but the attracting of attention) + would die out. And the extent to which any woman today, not herself + belonging to the parasite class and still labouring, attempts to follow + afar off the fashions of the parasite, may be taken generally as an almost + certain indication of the ease with which she would accept parasitism were + its conditions offered her. The tendency of the cultured and + intellectually labouring woman of today to adopt a more rational type of + attire, less shaped to attract attention to the individual than to confer + comfort and abstain from impeding activity, is often spoken of as an + attempt on the part of woman slavishly to imitate man. What is really + taking place is, that like causes are producing like effects on human + creatures with common characteristics.) + </p> + <p> + But there remain certain psychic differences in attitude, on the part of + male and female as such, which are inherent and not artificial: and, in + the psychic human world, it is exactly as we approach the sphere of sexual + and reproductive activity, with those emotions and instincts connected + directly with sex and the reproduction of the race, that a difference does + appear. + </p> + <p> + In the animal world all forms of psychic variations are found allying + themselves now with the male sex form, and then with the female. In the + insect and fish worlds, where the female forms are generally larger and + stronger than the male, the female is generally more pugnacious and + predatory than the male. Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form + is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem very + small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly monogamous, + the affection of the female for the male is so great that she is said + never to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over and care for the + young with extreme solicitude. The ostrich male form, though perhaps + larger than the female, shares with her the labour of hatching the eggs, + relieving the hen of her duty at a fixed hour daily: and his care for the + young when hatched is as tender as hers. Among song-birds, in which the + male and female forms are so alike as sometimes to be indistinguishable, + and which are also monogamous, the male and female forms not only exhibit + the same passionate affection for each other (in the case of the South + African cock-o-veet, they have one answering love-song between them; the + male sounding two or three notes and the female completing it with two or + three more), but they build the nest together and rear the young with an + equal devotion. In the case of the little kapok bird of the Cape, a + beautiful, white, fluffy round nest is made by both out of the white down + of a certain plant, and immediately below the entrance to the cavity in + which the little female sits on the eggs is a small shelf or basket, in + which the tiny male sits to watch over and guard them. It is among certain + orders of birds that sex manifestations appear to assume their most + harmonious and poetical forms on earth. Among gallinaceous birds, on the + other hand, where the cock is much larger and more pugnacious than the + female, and which are polygamous, the cock does not court the female by + song, but seizes her by force, and shows little or no interest in his + offspring, neither sharing in the brooding nor feeding the young; and even + at times seizing any tempting morsel which the young or the hen may have + discovered. + </p> + <p> + Among mammals the male form tends to be slightly larger than the female, + though not always (the female whale, for instance, being larger than the + male); the male also tends to be more pugnacious and less careful of the + young; though to this rule also there are exceptions. In the case of the + South African mierkat, for instance, the female is generally more + combative and more difficult to tame than the male; and it is the males + who from the moment of birth watch over the young with the most passionate + and tender solicitude, keeping them warm under their persons, carrying + them to places of safety in their mouths, and feeding them till full + grown; and this they do not only for their own young, but to any young who + may be brought in contact with them. We have known a male mierkat so + assiduous in feeding young that were quite unrelated to himself, taking to + them every morsel of food given him, that we have been compelled to shut + him up in a room alone when feeding him, to prevent his starving himself + to death: the male mierkat thus exhibiting exactly those psychic qualities + which are generally regarded as peculiarly feminine; the females, on the + other hand, being far more pugnacious towards each other than are the + males. + </p> + <p> + Among mammals generally, except the tendency to greater pugnacity shown by + the male towards other males, and the greater solicitude for the young + shown generally by the female form, but not always; the psychic + differences between the two sex forms are not great. Between the male and + female pointer as puppies, there is as little difference in mental + activity as in physical; and even when adult, on the hunting ground, that + great non-sexual field in which their highest mental and physical + activities are displayed, there is little or nothing which distinguishes + materially between the male and female; in method, manner, and quickness + they are alike; in devotion to man, they are psychically identical. (It is + often said the female dog is more intelligent than the male; but I am + almost inclined to doubt this, after long and close study of both forms.) + It is at the moment when the reproductive element comes fully into play + that similarity and identity cease. In the intensity of initial sex + instinct they are alike; the female will leap from windows, climb walls, + and almost endanger her life to reach the male who waits for her, as + readily as he will to gain her. It is when the bitch lies with her six + young drawing life from her breast, and gazing with wistful and anguished + solicitude at every hand stretched out to touch them, a world of emotion + concentrated on the sightless creatures, and a whole body of new mental + aptitudes brought into play in caring for them, it is then that between + her and the male who begot them, but cares nothing for them, there does + rise a psychic difference that is real and wide. Alike in the sports of + puppydom and the non-sexual activities of adult age; alike in the + possession of the initial sexual instinct which draws the sex to the sex, + the moment active sexual reproduction is concerned, there is opened to the + female a certain world of sensations and experiences, from which her male + companion is for ever excluded. + </p> + <p> + So also is our human world: alike in the sports, and joys, and sorrows of + infancy; alike in the non-sexual labours of life; alike even in the + possession of that initial instinct which draws sex to sex, and which, + differing slightly in its forms of manifestation is of corresponding + intensity in both; the moment actual reproduction begins to take place, + the man and the woman enter spheres of sensation, perception, emotion, + desire, and knowledge which are not, and cannot be, absolutely identical. + Between the man who, in an instant of light-hearted enjoyment, begets the + infant (who may even beget it in a state of half-drunken unconsciousness, + and may easily know nothing of its existence for months or years after it + is born, or never at all; and who under no circumstances can have any + direct sensational knowledge of its relation to himself) and the woman who + bears it continuously for months within her body, and who gives birth to + it in pain, and who, if it is to live, is compelled, or was in primitive + times, to nourish it for months from the blood of her own being—between + these, there exists of necessity, towards a limited but all-important body + of human interests and phenomena, a certain distinct psychic attitude. At + this one point, the two great halves of humanity stand confronting certain + great elements in human existence, from angles that are not identical. + From the moment the universal initial attraction of sex to sex becomes + incarnate in the first concrete sexual act till the developed offspring + attains maturity, no step in the reproductive journey, or in their + relation to their offspring, has been quite identical for the man and the + woman. And this divergence of experiences in human relations must react on + their attitude towards that particular body of human concerns which + directly is connected with the sexual reproduction of the race; and, it is + exactly in these fields of human activity, where sex as sex is concerned, + that woman as woman has a part to play which she cannot resign into the + hands of others. + </p> + <p> + It may be truly said that in the laboratory, the designing-room, the + factory, the mart, the mathematician’s study, and in all fields of purely + abstract or impersonal labour, while the entrance of woman would add to + the net result of human labour in those fields, and though a grave + injustice is done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps the only + field she is fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman has probably + little or nothing to contribute in those fields that is radically distinct + from that which man might supply; there would be a difference in quantity + but probably none in kind, in the work done for the race. + </p> + <p> + But in those spheres of social activity, dealing especially with certain + relations between human creatures because of their diverse if + complementary relation to the production of human life, the sexes as sexes + have often each a part to play which the other cannot play for them; have + each a knowledge gained from phases of human experience, which the other + cannot supply; here woman as woman has something radically distinct to + contribute to the sum-total of human knowledge, and her activity is of + importance, not merely individually, but collectively, and as a class. + </p> + <p> + That demand, which today in all democratic self-governing countries is + being made by women, to be accorded their share in the electoral, and + ultimately in the legislative and executive duties of government, is based + on two grounds: the wider, and more important, that they find nothing in + the nature of their sex-function which exonerates them, as human beings, + from their obligation to take part in the labours of guidance and + government in their state: the narrower, but yet important ground, that, + in as far as in one direction, i.e., in the special form of their sex + function takes, they do differ from the male, they, in so far, form a + class and are bound to represent the interests of, and to give the state + the benefit of, the insight of their class, in certain directions. + </p> + <p> + Those persons who imagine that the balance of great political parties in + almost any society would be seriously changed by the admission of its + women in public functions are undoubtedly wholly wrong. The fundamental + division of humans into those inclined to hold by the past and defend + whatever is, and those hopeful of the future and inclined to introduce + change, would probably be found to exist in much the same proportion were + the males or the females of any given society compared: and the males and + females of each class will in the main share the faults, the virtues, and + the prejudices of their class. The individuals may lose by being excluded + on the ground of sex from a share of public labour, and by being robbed of + a portion of their lawful individual weight in their own society; and the + society as a whole may lose by having a smaller number to select its + chosen labourers from; yet, undoubtedly, on the mass of social, political, + and international questions, the conclusions arrived at by one sex would + be exactly those arrived at by the other. + </p> + <p> + Were a body of humans elected to adjudicate upon Greek accents, or to pass + a decision on the relative fineness of woollens and linens, the form of + sex of the persons composing it would probably have no bearing on the + result; there is no rational ground for supposing that, on a question of + Greek accents or the thickness of cloths, equally instructed males and + females would differ. Here sex plays no part. The experience and + instructedness of the individuals would tell: their sexual attributes + would be indifferent. + </p> + <p> + But there are points, comparatively small, even very small, in number, yet + of vital importance to human life, in which sex does play a part. + </p> + <p> + It is not a matter of indifference whether the body called to adjudicate + upon the questions, whether the temporary sale of the female body for + sexual purposes shall or shall not be a form of traffic encouraged and + recognised by the state; or whether one law shall exist for the licentious + human female and another for the licentious human male; whether the claim + of the female to the offspring she bears shall or shall not equal that of + the male who begets it; whether an act of infidelity on the part of the + male shall or shall not terminate the contract which binds his female + companion to him, as completely as an act of infidelity on her part would + terminate her claim on him; it is not a matter of indifference whether a + body elected to adjudicate on such points as these consists of males + solely, or females solely, or of both combined. As it consists of one, or + the other, or of both, so not only will the answers vary, but, in some + cases, will they be completely diverse. Here we come into that very + narrow, but important, region, where sex as sex manifestly plays its part; + where the male as male and the female as female have each their body of + perceptions and experiences, which they do not hold in common; here one + sex cannot adequately represent the other. It is here that each sexual + part has something radically distinct to contribute to the wisdom of the + race. + </p> + <p> + We, today, take all labour for our province! We seek to enter the + non-sexual fields of intellectual or physical toil, because we are unable + to see today, with regard to them, any dividing wall raised by sex which + excludes us from them. We are yet equally determined to enter those in + which sex difference does play its part, because it is here that woman, + the bearer of the race, must stand side by side with man, the begetter; if + a completed human wisdom, an insight that misses no aspect of human life, + and an activity that is in harmony with the entire knowledge and the + entire instinct of the entire human race, is to exist. It is here that the + man cannot act for the woman nor the woman for the man; but both must + interact. It is here that each sexual half of the race, so closely and + indistinguishably blended elsewhere, has its own distinct contribution to + make to the sum total of human knowledge and human wisdom. Neither is the + woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, the completed human + intelligence. + </p> + <p> + Therefore;—We claim, today, all labour for our province! Those large + fields in which it would appear sex plays no part, and equally those + smaller in which it plays a part. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter VI. Certain Objections. + </h2> + <p> + It has been stated sometimes, though more often implicitly than in any + direct or logical form, (this statement being one it is not easy to make + definitely without its reducing itself to nullity!) that woman should seek + no fields of labour in the new world of social conditions that is arising + about us, as she has still her function as child-bearer: a labour which, + by her own showing, is arduous and dangerous, though she may love it as a + soldier loves his battlefield; and that woman should perform her sex + functions only, allowing man or the state to support her, even when she is + only potentially a child-bearer and bears no children. (Such a scheme, as + has before been stated, was actually put forward by a literary man in + England some years ago: but he had the sense to state that it should apply + only to women of the upper classes, the mass of labouring women, who form + the vast bulk of the English women of the present day, being left to their + ill-paid drudgery and their child-bearing as well!) + </p> + <p> + There is some difficulty in replying to a theorist so wholly delusive. Not + only is he to be met by all the arguments against parasitism of class or + race; but, at the present day, when probably much more than half the + world’s most laborious and ill-paid labour is still performed by women, + from tea pickers and cocoa tenders in India and the islands, to the + washerwomen, cooks, and drudging labouring men’s wives, who in addition to + the sternest and most unending toil, throw in their child-bearing as a + little addition; and when, in some civilised countries women exceed the + males in numbers by one million, so that there would still be one million + females for whom there was no legitimate sexual outlet, though each male + in the nation supported a female, it is somewhat difficult to reply with + gravity to the assertion, “Let Woman be content to be the ‘Divine + Child-bearer,’ and ask no more.” + </p> + <p> + Were it worth replying gravely to so idle a theorist, we might answer:—Through + all the ages of the past, when, with heavy womb and hard labour-worn + hands, we physically toiled beside man, bearing up by the labour of our + bodies the world about us, it was never suggested to us, “You, the + child-bearers of the race, have in that one function a labour that equals + all others combined; therefore, toil no more in other directions, we pray + of you; neither plant, nor build, nor bend over the grindstone; nor far + into the night, while we sleep, sit weaving the clothing we and our + children are to wear! Leave it to us, to plant, to reap, to weave, to + work, to toil for you, O sacred child-bearer! Work no more; every man of + the race will work for you!” This cry in all the grim ages of our past + toil we never heard. + </p> + <p> + And today, when the lofty theorist, who tonight stands before the + drawing-room fire in spotless shirtfront and perfectly fitting clothes, + and declaims upon the amplitude of woman’s work in life as child-bearer, + and the mighty value of that labour which exceeds all other, making it + unnecessary for her to share man’s grosser and lower toils: is it certain + he always in practical life remembers his theory? When waking tomorrow + morning, he finds that the elderly house drudge, who rises at dawn while + he yet sleeps to make his tea and clean his boots, has brought his tea + late, and polished his boots ill; may he not even sharply condemn her, and + assure her she will have to leave unless she works harder and rises + earlier? Does he exclaim to her, “Divine child-bearer! Potential mother of + the race! Why should you clean my boots or bring up my tea, while I lie + warm in bed? Is it not enough you should have the holy and mysterious + power of bringing the race to life? Let that content you. Henceforth I + shall get up at dawn and make my own tea and clean my own boots, and pay + you just the same!” Or, should his landlady, now about to give birth to + her ninth child, send him up a poorly-cooked dinner or forget to bring up + his scuttle of coals, does he send for her and thus apostrophise the + astonished matron: “Child-bearer of the race! Producer of men! Cannot you + be contented with so noble and lofty a function in life without toiling + and moiling? Why carry up heavy coal-scuttles from the cellar and bend + over hot fires, wearing out nerve and brain and muscle that should be + reserved for higher duties? We, we, the men of the race, will perform its + mean, its sordid, its grinding toil! For woman is beauty, peace, repose! + Your function is to give life, not to support it by labour. The Mother, + the Mother! How wonderful it sounds! Toil no more! Rest is for you; labour + and drudgery for us!” Would he not rather assure her that, unless she + laboured more assiduously and sternly, she would lose his custom and so be + unable to pay her month’s rent; and perhaps so, with children and an + invalid or drunken husband whom she supports, be turned out into the + streets? For, it is remarkable, that, with theorists of this class, it is + not toil, or the amount of toil, crushing alike to brain and body, which + the female undertakes that is objected to; it is the form and the amount + of the reward. It is not the hand-labouring woman, even in his own + society, worn out and prematurely aged at forty with grinding domestic + toil, that has no beginning and knows no end— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Man’s work is from sun to sun, + But the woman’s work is never done”— +</pre> + <p> + it is not the haggard, work-crushed woman and mother who irons his shirts, + or the potential mother who destroys health and youth in the sweater’s den + where she sews the garments in which he appears so radiantly in the + drawing-room which disturbs him. It is the thought of the woman-doctor + with an income of some hundreds a year, who drives round in her carriage + to see her patients, or receives them in her consulting-rooms, and who + spends the evening smoking and reading before her study fire or receiving + her guests; it is the thought of the woman who, as legislator, may loll + for perhaps six hours of the day on the padded seat of legislative bench, + relieving the tedium now and then by a turn in the billiard- or + refreshment-room, when she is not needed to vote or speak; it is the + thought of the woman as Greek professor, with three or four hundred a + year, who gives half a dozen lectures a week, and has leisure to enjoy the + society of her husband and children, and to devote to her own study and + life of thought; it is she who wrings his heart. It is not the woman, who, + on hands and knees, at tenpence a day, scrubs the floors of the public + buildings, or private dwellings, that fills him with anguish for + womanhood: that somewhat quadrupedal posture is for him truly feminine, + and does not interfere with his ideal of the mother and child-bearer; and + that, in some other man’s house, or perhaps his own, while he and the wife + he keeps for his pleasures are visiting concert or entertainment, some + weary woman paces till far into the night bearing with aching back and + tired head the fretful, teething child he brought into the world, for a + pittance of twenty or thirty pounds a year, does not distress him. But + that the same woman by work in an office should earn one hundred and fifty + pounds, be able to have a comfortable home of her own, and her evening + free for study or pleasure, distresses him deeply. It is not the labour, + or the amount of labour, so much as the amount of reward that interferes + with his ideal of the eternal womanly; he is as a rule quite contented + that the women of the race should labour for him, whether as tea-pickers + or washerwomen, or toilers for the children he brings into the world, + provided the reward they receive is not large, nor in such fields as he + might himself at any time desire to enter. + </p> + <p> + When master and ass, drawing a heavy burden between them, have climbed a + steep mountain range together; clambering over sharp rocks and across + sliding gravel where no water is, and herbage is scant; if, when they were + come out on the top of the mountain, and before them stretch broad, green + lands, and through wide half-open gates they catch the glimpse of trees + waving, and there comes the sound of running waters, if then, the master + should say to his ass, “Good beast of mine, lie down! I can push the whole + burden myself now: lie down here; lie down, my creature; you have toiled + enough; I will go on alone!” then it might be even the beast would whisper + (with that glimpse through the swinging gates of the green fields beyond)—“Good + master, we two have climbed this mighty mountain together, and the stones + have cut my hoofs as they cut your feet. Perhaps, if when we were at the + foot you had found out that the burden was two heavy for me, and had then + said to me, ‘Lie down, my beastie; I will carry on the burden alone; lie + down and rest!’ I might then have listened. But now, just here, where I + see the gates swinging open, a smooth road, and green fields before us, I + think I shall go on a little farther. We two have climbed together; maybe + we shall go on yet, side by side.” + </p> + <p> + For the heart of labouring womanhood cries out today to the man who would + suggest she need not seek new fields of labour, that child-bearing is + enough for her share in life’s labour, “Do you dare say to us now, that we + are fit to do nothing but child-bear, that when that is performed our + powers are exhausted? To us, who yet through all the ages of the past, + when child-bearing was persistent and incessant, regarded it hardly as a + toil, but rather as the reward of labour; has our right hand lost its + cunning and our heart its strength, that today, when human labour is + easier and humanity’s work grows fairer, you say to us, ‘You can do + nothing now but child-bear’? Do you dare to say this, to us, when the + upward path of the race has been watered by the sweat of our brow, and the + sides of the road by which humanity has climbed are whitened on either + hand by the bones of the womanhood that has fallen there, toiling beside + man? Do you dare say this, to us, when even today the food you eat, the + clothes you wear, the comfort you enjoy, is largely given you by the + unending muscular toil of woman?” + </p> + <p> + As the women of old planted and reaped and ground the grain that the + children they bore might eat; as the maidens of old spun that they might + make linen for their households and obtain the right to bear men; so, + though we bend no more over grindstones, or labour in the fields, or weave + by hand, it is our intention to enter all the new fields of labour, that + we also may have the power and right to bring men into the world. It is + our faith that the day comes in which not only shall no man dare to say, + “It is enough portion for a woman in life that she bear a child,” but when + it will rather be said, “What noble labour has that woman performed, that + she should have the privilege of bringing a man or woman child into the + world?” + </p> + <p> + But, it has also been objected, “What, and if the female half of humanity, + though able, in addition to the exercise of its reproductive functions, to + bear its share in the new fields of social labour as it did in the old, be + yet in certain directions a less productive labourer than the male? What + if, in the main, the result of the labour of the two halves of humanity + should not be found to be exactly equal?” + </p> + <p> + To this it may be answered, that it is within the range of possibility + that, mysteriously co-ordinated with the male reproductive function in the + human, there may also be in some directions a tendency to possess gifts + for labour useful and beneficial to the race in the stage of growth it has + now reached, in excess of those possessed by the female. We see no reason + why this should be so, and, in the present state of our knowledge, this is + a point on which no sane person would dogmatise; but it is possible! It + may, on the other hand be, that, taken in the bulk, when all the branches + of productive labour be considered, as the ages pass, the value of the + labour of the two halves of humanity will be found so identical and so + closely to balance, that no superiority can possibly be asserted of + either, as the result of the closest analysis. This also is possible. + </p> + <p> + But, it may also be, that, when the bulk and sum-total of human activities + is surveyed in future ages, it will be found that the value of the labour + of the female in the world that is rising about us, has exceeded in + quality or in quantity that of the male. We see no reason either, why this + should be; there is nothing in the nature of the reproductive function in + the female human which of necessity implies such superiority. + </p> + <p> + Yet it may be, that, with the smaller general bulk and the muscular + fineness, and the preponderance of brain and nervous system in net bulk + over the fleshy and osseous parts of the organism, which generally, though + by no means always, characterises the female as distinguished from the + male of the human species, there do go mental qualities which will + peculiarly fit her for the labours of the future. It may be, that her + lesser possession of the mere muscular and osseous strength, which were + the elements of primary importance and which gave dominance in one stage + of human growth, and which placed woman at a social disadvantage as + compared with her companion, will, under new conditions of life, in which + the value of crude mechanical strength as distinguished from high vitality + and strong nervous activity is passing away, prove as largely to her + advantage, as his muscular bulk and strength in the past proved to the + male. It is quite possible, in the new world which is arising about us, + that the type of human most useful to society and best fitted for its + future conditions, and who will excel in the most numerous forms of + activity, will be, not merely the muscularly powerful and bulky, but the + highly versatile, active, vital, adaptive, sensitive, physically + fine-drawn type; and, as that type, though, like the muscularly heavy and + powerful, by no means peculiar to and confined to one sex, is yet rather + more commonly found in conjunction with a female organism, it is quite + possible that, taken in the bulk and on the whole, the female half of + humanity may, by virtue of its structural adaptions, be found most fitted + for the bulk of human labours in the future! + </p> + <p> + As with individuals and races, so also with sexes, changed social + conditions may render exactly those subtile qualities, which in one social + state were a disadvantage, of the highest social advantage in another. + </p> + <p> + The skilled diplomatist or politician, so powerful in his own element, on + board ship during a storm becomes at once of less general value or + consideration than the meanest sailor who can reef a sail or guide a + wheel; and, were we to be reduced again suddenly to a state of nature, a + company of highly civilised men and women would at once, as we have before + remarked, find their social value completely inverted; landed on a desert + shore, unarmed and naked, to encounter wild beasts and savages, and to + combat nature for food, the primitive scale of human values would at once + reassert itself. It would not then be the mighty financier, the learned + judge, or great poet and scholar who would be sought after, but the + thickest-headed navvy who could throw a stone so exactly that he brought + down a bird, and who could in a day raise a wall which would shelter the + group; and the man so powerful that he could surely strike an enemy or + wild beast dead with his club, would at once be objects of social regard + and attain individual eminence, and perhaps dominance. It would not be the + skilled dancer, who in one night in a civilised state earns her hundreds, + nor yet the fragile clinging beauty, but the girl of the broad back and + the strong limb, who could collect wood and carry water, who would be the + much considered and much sought after female in such a community. Even in + the animal world, there is the same inversion in values, according as the + external conditions vary. The lion, while ruling over every other creature + in his primitive wilds, by right of his untamable ferocity, size, and + rapacity, is yet bound to become a prey to destruction and extermination + when he comes into contact with the new condition brought by man; while + the wild dog, so immeasurably his inferior in size and ferocity, is tamed, + survives and multiplies, exactly because he has been driven by his smaller + structure and lesser physical force to develop those social instincts and + those forms of intelligence which make him amenable to the new condition + of life and valuable in them. The same inversion in the value of qualities + may be traced in the history of human species. The Jews, whose history has + been one long story of oppression at the hands of more muscular, + physically powerful and pugilistic peoples; whom we find first making + bricks under the lash of the Egyptian, and later hanging his harp as an + exile among the willow-trees of Babylon; who, for eighteen hundred years, + has been trampled, tortured, and despised beneath the feet of the more + physically powerful and pugilistic, but not more vital, keen, intelligent, + or persistent races of Europe; has, today, by the slow turning of the + wheel of life, come uppermost. The Egyptian task-master and warrior have + passed; what the Babylonian was we know no more, save for a few mud + tablets and rock inscriptions recording the martial victories; but the + once captive Jew we see today in every city and every street; until at + last, the descendants of those men who spat when they spoke his name, and + forcibly drew his teeth to extract his money from him, wait patiently + behind each other for admission to his offices and palaces; while nobles + solicit his daughters in marriage and kings are proud to be summoned to + his table in hope of golden crumbs, and great questions of peace and war + are often held balanced in the hand of one little asthmatic Jew. After + long ages of disgrace and pariahism, the time has come, whether for good + or for evil, when just those qualities which the Jew possesses and which + subtilely distinguish him from others, are in demand; while those he has + not are sinking into disuse; exactly that domination of the reflective + faculties over the combative, which once made him slave, also saved him + from becoming extinct in wars; and the intellectual quickness, the + far-sighted keenness, the persistent mental activity and self-control, + which could not in those ages save him from degradation or compensate for + his lack of bone and muscle and combative instinct, are the very qualities + the modern world demands and crowns. The day of Goliath with his club and + his oaths is fast passing, and the day of David with his harp and + skilfully constructed sling is coming near and yet nearer. + </p> + <p> + The qualities which give an animal, a race, or an individual, a higher + utility or social dominance must always be influenced by any change in the + environment. As the wheel of life slowly revolves, that which was lowest + comes continually uppermost, and that which was dominant becomes + subservient. + </p> + <p> + It is possible, that women, after countless ages, during which that + smaller relative development in weight and muscularity which is incident + to almost all females which suckle their young, and that lesser desire for + pugilism inherent in almost all females who bear their young alive, + rendered her lacking in the two qualities which made for individual + dominance in her societies, may yet, in the future, discover that those + changes in human conditions, which have done away with the primary + necessity for muscular force and pugilistic arts, have also inverted her + place in the scale of social values. + </p> + <p> + It is possible, that the human female, like the Jew, the male of that type + farthest removed from the dominant male type of the past, may in the + future find, that, so far from those qualities which, in an earlier + condition, lessened her social value and power of labour, continuing to do + so, they will increase it. That the delicacy of hand, lightness of + structure which were fatal when the dominant labour of life was to wield a + battle-axe or move a weight, may be no restraint but even an assistance in + the intellectual and more delicate mechanical fields of labour; that the + preponderance of nervous and cerebral over muscular material, and the + tendency towards preservative and creative activity over pugilistic and + destructive, so far from shutting her off from the most important fields + of human toil, may increase her fitness for them! We have no certain proof + that it is so at present; but, if woman’s long years of servitude and + physical subjection, and her experience as child-bearer and protector of + infancy, should, in any way, be found in the future to have endowed her, + as a kind of secondary sexual characteristic, with any additional strength + of social instinct, with any exceptional width of human sympathy and any + instinctive comprehension; then, it is not merely possible, but certain, + that, in the ages that are coming, in which the labour of the human race + will be not mainly destructive but conservative, in which the building up + and developing of humanity, and not continually the inter-destruction of + part by part, will be the dominant activity of the race, that woman as + woman, and by right of that wherein she differs from the male, will have + an all-important part to play in the activity of the race. + </p> + <p> + The matter is one of curious and subtle interest, but what practically + concerns the human race is, not which of the two sexual halves which must + always coexist is best fitted to excel in certain human labours in this or + that direction, at this or that time, nor even which has most to + contribute to the sum-total of human activities; but it is this, that + every individual unit humanity contains, irrespective of race, sex, or + type, should find exactly that field of labour which may most contribute + to its development, happiness, and health, and in which its peculiar + faculties and gifts shall be most effectively and beneficially exerted for + its fellows. + </p> + <p> + It matters nothing, and less than nothing, to us as women, whether, of + those children we bring into the world, our sons should excel in virtue, + intelligence, and activity, our daughters, or our daughters our sons; so + that, in each child we bring to life, not one potentiality shall be lost, + nor squandered on a lesser when it might have been expended on a higher + and more beneficent task. So that not one desirable faculty of the + marvellous creatures we suffer to bring into existence be left + uncultivated, to us, as women, it matters nothing and less than nothing, + which sex type excels in action, in knowledge, or in virtue, so both + attain their best. There is one thing only on earth, as precious to woman + as the daughter who springs from her body—it is the son. There is + one thing only dearer to the woman than herself—it is the man. As no + sane human concerns himself as to whether the right or left ventricle of + his heart works most satisfactorily, or is most essential to his + well-being, so both be perfect in health and activity; as no sane woman + distresses herself lest her right breast should not excel the left in + beauty and use; so no sane man or woman questions anxiously over the + relative perfections of male and female. In love there is no first nor + last. What we request of life is that the tools should be given to his + hand or hers who can best handle them; that the least efficient should not + be forced into the place of the more efficient, and that an artificially + drawn line should never repress the activities of the individual creature, + which we as women bring into the world. + </p> + <p> + But it may also be said to us, “What, and if, all your dreams and hopes + for woman and the future of the race be based on air? What, and if, + desirable as it is that woman should not become practically dependent on + her sexual function alone, and should play at least as great a part in the + productive labour of the race in the future as she played in that of the + past—what, if woman cannot take the same vast share in the complex + and largely mental labour fields of the future, as in the largely physical + fields of the past? What, and if, in spite of all her effort and sacrifice + to attain this end, exactly now and when the labour of civilised societies + becomes mental rather than mechanical, woman be found wanting?” + </p> + <p> + In Swiss valleys today the traveller comes sometimes on the figure of a + solitary woman climbing the mountain-side, on her broad shoulders a mighty + burden of fodder or manure she is bearing up for the cattle, or to some + patch of cultivated land. Steady, unshrinking eyes look out at you from + beneath the deeply seamed forehead, and a strand of hair, perhaps almost + as white as the mountain snows on the peaks above, escapes from under the + edge of the binding handkerchief. The face is seamed and seared with the + stern marks of toil and endurance, as the mountain-side is with marks of + storm and avalanche. It is the face of one who has brought men into the + world in labour and sorrow, and toiled mightily to sustain them; and dead + must be the mind to the phases of human existence, who does not see in + that toilworn figure one of the mighty pillars, which have in the long + ages of the past sustained the life of humanity on earth, and made + possible its later development; and much must the tinsel of life have + dazzled him, who fails to mark it with reverence and, metaphorically, to + bow his head before it—the type of the mighty labouring woman who + has built up life. + </p> + <p> + But, it may be said, what if, in the ages to come, it should never again + be possible for any man to stand bowed with the same respect in the + presence of any other of earth’s mighty toilers, who should also be mother + and woman? What, if she, who could combine motherhood with the most + unending muscular toil, will fall flaccid and helpless where the labour + becomes mental? What if, struggle as she will, she can become nothing in + the future but the pet pug-dog of the race, lying on its sofa, or the + Italian greyhound, shivering in its silken coat? What if woman, in spite + of her most earnest aspirations and determined struggles, be destined to + failure in the new world that is rising because of inherent mental + incapacity? + </p> + <p> + There are many replies which may be made to such a suggestion. It is often + said with truth, that the ordinary occupations of woman in the past and + present, and in all classes of society in which she is not parasitic, do + demand, and have always demanded, a very high versatility and mental + activity, as well as physical: that the mediaeval baron’s wife who guided + her large household probably had to expend far more pure intellect in + doing so than the baron in his hunting and fighting; that the wife of the + city accountant probably expends today more reason, imagination, + forethought, and memory on the management of her small household, than he + in his far simpler, monotonous arithmetical toil; that, as there is no + cause for supposing that the tailor or shoemaker needs less intellect in + his calling than the soldier or prize-fighter, so there is nothing to + suggest that, in the past, woman has not expended as much pure intellect + in the mass of her callings as the man in his; while in those highly + specialised intellectual occupations, in which long and uninterrupted + training tending to one point is necessary, such as the liberal + professions and arts, that, although woman has practically been excluded + from the requisite training, and the freedom to place herself in the + positions in which they can be pursued, that yet, by force of innate + genius and gifts in such directions, she has continually broken through + the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and again and again taken her place + beside man in those fields of labour; showing thereby not merely aptitude + but passionate and determined inclination in those directions. With equal + truth, it is often remarked that, when as an independent hereditary + sovereign, woman has been placed in the only position in which she has + ever been able freely and fully to express her own individuality, and + though selected at random by fate from the mass of women, by the mere + accident of birth or marriage, she has shown in a large percentage of + cases that the female has the power to command, organise, and succeed in + one of the most exacting and complex of human employments, the government + of nations; that from the days of Amalasontha to Isabella of Spain, + Elizabeth of England, and Catharine of Russia, women have not failed to + grasp the large impersonal aspects of life, and successfully and + powerfully to control them, when placed in the supreme position in which + it was demanded. It may also be stated, and is sometimes, with so much + iteration as to become almost wearisome, that women’s adequacy in the + modern fields of intellectual or skilled manual labour is no more today an + open matter for debate, than the number of modern women who, as senior + wranglers, doctors, &c., have already successfully entered the new + fields, and the high standard attained by women in all university + examinations to which they are admitted, and their universal success in + the administration of parochial matters, wherever they have been allowed + to share it, proves their intellectual and moral fitness for the new forms + of labour. + </p> + <p> + All these statements are certainly interesting, and may be unanswerable. + And yet—if the truth be told, it is not ultimately on these grounds + that many of us base our hope and our certitude with regard to the future + of woman. Our conviction as to the plenitude of her powers for the + adequate performance of lofty labours in these new fields, springs not at + all from a categorical enumeration of the attainments or performances of + individual women or bodies of women in the past or present; it has another + source. + </p> + <p> + There was a bird’s egg once, picked up by chance upon the ground, and + those who found it bore it home and placed it under a barn-door fowl. And + in time the chick bred out, and those who had found it chained it by the + leg to a log, lest it should stray and be lost. And by and by they + gathered round it, and speculated as to what the bird might be. One said, + “It is surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we took it to + the water it would swim and gabble.” But another said, “It has no webs to + its feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose it will scratch + and cackle with the others on the dung-heap.” But a third speculated, + “Look now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, and can crack + nuts!” But a fourth said, “No, but look at its wings; perhaps it is a bird + of great flight.” But several cried, “Nonsense! No one has ever seen it + fly! Why should it fly? Can you suppose that a thing can do a thing which + no one has ever seen it do?” And the bird—the bird—with its + leg chained close to the log, preened its wing. So they sat about it, + speculating, and discussing it: and one said this, and another that. And + all the while as they talked the bird sat motionless, with its gaze fixed + on the clear, blue sky above it. And one said, “Suppose we let the + creature loose to see what it will do?”—and the bird shivered. But + the others cried, “It is too valuable; it might get lost. If it were to + try to fly it might fall down and break its neck.” And the bird, with its + foot chained to the log, sat looking upward into the clear blue sky; the + sky, in which it had never been—for the bird—the bird, knew + what it would do—because it was an eaglet! + </p> + <p> + There is one woman known to many of us, as each human creature knows but + one on earth; and it is upon our knowledge of that woman that we base our + certitude. + </p> + <p> + For those who do not know her, and have not this ground, it is probably + profitable and necessary that they painfully collect isolated facts and + then speculate upon them, and base whatever views they should form upon + these collections. It might even be profitable that they should form no + definite opinions at all, but wait till the ages of practical experience + have put doubt to rest. For those of us who have a ground of knowledge + which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to + act fearlessly than to argue. + </p> + <p> + Finally, it may be objected to the entrance of woman to the new fields of + labour, and in effect it is often said—“What, and if, all you have + sought be granted you—if it be fully agreed that woman’s ancient + fields of toil are slipping from her, and that, if she do not find new, + she must fall into a state of sexual parasitism, dependent on her + reproductive functions alone; and granted, that, doing this, she must + degenerate, and that from her degeneration must arise the degeneration and + arrest of development of the males as well as of the females of her race; + and granting also, fully, that in the past woman has borne one full half, + and often more than one half, of the weight of the productive labours of + her societies, in addition to child-bearing; and allowing more fully that + she may be as well able to sustain her share in the intellectual labours + of the future as in the more mechanical labours of the past; granting all + this, may there not be one aspect of the question left out of + consideration which may reverse all conclusions as to the desirability, + and the human good to be attained by woman’s enlarged freedom and her + entering into the new fields of toil? What if, the increased culture and + mental activity of woman necessary for her entrance into the new fields, + however desirable in other ways for herself and the race, should result in + a diminution, or in an absolute abolition of the sexual attraction and + affection, which in all ages of the past has bound the two halves of + humanity together? What if, though the stern and unlovely manual labours + of the past have never affected her attractiveness for the male of her own + society, nor his for her; yet the performance by woman of intellectual + labours, or complex and interesting manual labour, and her increased + intelligence and width, should render the male objectionable to her, and + the woman undesirable to the male; so that the very race itself might + become extinct through the dearth of sexual affection? What, and if, the + woman ceases to value the son she bears, and to feel desire for and + tenderness to the man who begets him; and the man to value and desire the + woman and her offspring? Would not such a result exceed, or at least + equal, in its evil to humanity, anything which could result from the + degeneration and parasitism of woman? Would it not be well, if there exist + any possibility of this danger, that woman, however conscious that she can + perform social labour as nobly and successfully under the new conditions + of life as the old, should yet consciously, and deliberately, with her + eyes open, sink into a state of pure intellectual torpor, with all its + attendant evils, rather than face the more irreparable loss which her + development and the exercise of her gifts might entail? Would it not be + well she should deliberately determine, as the lesser of two evils, to + dwarf herself and limit her activities and the expansion of her faculties, + rather than that any risk should be run of the bond of desire and emotion + between the two sexual halves of humanity being severed? If the race is to + decay and become extinct on earth, might it not as well be through the + parasitism and decay of woman, as through the decay of the sexual + instinct?” + </p> + <p> + It is not easy to reply with rationality, or even gravity, to a + supposition, which appears to be based on the conception that a sudden and + entire subversion of the deepest of those elements on which human, and + even animal, life on the globe is based, is possible from so inadequate a + cause: and it might well be passed silently, were it not that, under some + form or other, this argument frequently recurs, now in a more rational and + then in a more irrational form; constituting sometimes an objection in + even moderately intelligent minds, to the entrance of woman into the new + fields of labour. + </p> + <p> + It must be at once frankly admitted that, were there the smallest possible + danger in this direction, the sooner woman laid aside all endeavour in the + direction of increased knowledge and the attainment of new fields of + activity, the better for herself and for the race. + </p> + <p> + When one considers the part which sexual attraction plays in the order of + sentient life on the globe, from the almost unconscious attractions which + draw amoeboid globule to amoeboid globule, on through the endless + progressive forms of life; till in monogamous birds it expresses itself in + song and complex courtship and sometimes in the life-long conjugal + affection of mates; and which in the human race itself, passing through + various forms, from the imperative but almost purely physical attraction + of savage male and female for each other, till in the highly developed + male and female it assumes its aesthetic and intellectual but not less + imperative form, couching itself in the songs of poet, and the sometimes + deathless fidelity of richly developed man and woman to each other, we + find it not only everywhere, but forming the very groundwork on which is + based sentient existence; never eradicable, though infinitely varied in + its external forms of expression. When we consider that in the human + world, from the battles and dances of savages to the intrigues and + entertainments of modern Courts and palaces, the attraction of man and + woman for each other has played an unending part; and, that the most + fierce ascetic religious enthusiasm through the ages, the flagellations + and starvations in endless nunneries and monasteries, have never been able + to extirpate nor seriously to weaken for one moment the master dominance + of this emotion; that the lowest and most brutal ignorance, and the + highest intellectual culture leave mankind, equally, though in different + forms, amenable to its mastery; that, whether in the brutal guffaw of sex + laughter which rings across the drinking bars of our modern cities, and + rises from the comfortable armchairs in fashionable clubs; or in the + poet’s dreams, and the noblest conjugal relations of men and women linked + together for life, it plays still today on earth the vast part it played + when hoary monsters ploughed after each other through Silurian slime, and + that still it forms as ever the warp on which in the loom of human life + the web is woven, and runs as a thread never absent through every design + and pattern which constitutes the individual existence on earth, it + appears not merely as ineradicable; but it is inconceivable to suppose + that that attraction of sex towards sex, which, with hunger and thirst, + lie, as the triune instincts, at the base of animal life on earth, should + ever be exterminable by the comparatively superficial changes resulting + from the performance of this or that form of labour, or the little more or + less of knowledge in one direction or another. + </p> + <p> + That the female who drives steam-driven looms, producing scores of yards + of linen in a day, should therefore desire less the fellowship of her + corresponding male than had she toiled at a spinning-wheel with hand and + foot to produce one yard; that the male should desire less of the + companionship of the woman who spends the morning in doctoring babies in + her consulting-room, according to the formularies of the pharmacopoeia, + than she who of old spent it on the hillside collecting simples for + remedies; that the woman who paints a modern picture or designs a modern + vase should be less lovable by man, than her ancestor who shaped the first + primitive pot and ornamented it with zigzag patterns was to the man of her + day and age; that the woman who contributes to the support of her family + by giving legal opinions will less desire motherhood and wifehood than she + who in the past contributed to the support of her household by bending on + hands and knees over her grindstone, or scrubbing floors, and that the + former should be less valued by man than the latter—these are + suppositions which it is difficult to regard as consonant with any + knowledge of human nature and the laws by which it is dominated. + </p> + <p> + On the other hand, if it be supposed that the possession of wealth or the + means of earning it makes the human female objectionable to the male, all + history and all daily experience negates it. The eager hunt for heiresses + in all ages and social conditions, make it obvious that the human male has + a strong tendency to value the female who can contribute to the family + expenditure; and the case is yet, we believe, unrecorded of a male who, + attracted to a female, becomes averse to her on finding she has material + good. The female doctor or lawyer earning a thousand a year will always, + and today certainly does, find more suitors than had she remained a + governess or cook, labouring as hard, earning thirty pounds. + </p> + <p> + While, if the statement that the female entering on new fields of labour + will cease to be lovable to the male be based on the fact that she will + then be free, all history and all human experience yet more negates its + truth. The study of all races in all ages, proves that the greater the + freedom of woman in any society, the higher the sexual value put upon her + by the males of that society. The three squaws who walk behind the Indian, + and whom he has captured in battle or bought for a few axes or lengths of + tobacco, and over whom he exercises the despotic right of life and death, + are probably all three of infinitesimal value in his eyes, compared with + the value of his single, free wife to one of our ancient, monogamous + German ancestors; while the hundred wives and concubines purchased by a + Turkish pasha have probably not even an approximate value in his eyes, + when compared with the value which thousands of modern European males set + upon the one comparatively free woman, whom they may have won, often only + after a long and tedious courtship. + </p> + <p> + So axiomatic is the statement that the value of the female to the male + varies as her freedom, that, given an account of any human society in + which the individual female is highly valued, it will be perfectly safe to + infer the comparative social freedom of woman; and, given a statement as + to the high degree of freedom of woman in a society, it will be safe to + infer the great sexual value of the individual woman to man. + </p> + <p> + Finally, if the suggestion, that men and women will cease to be attractive + to one another if women enter modern fields of labour, be based on the + fact that her doing so may increase her intelligence and enlarge her + intellectual horizon, it must be replied that the whole trend of human + history absolutely negates the supposition. There is absolutely no ground + for the assumption that increased intelligence and intellectual power + diminishes sexual emotion in the human creature of either sex. The + ignorant savage, whether in ancient or modern societies, who violates and + then clubs a female into submission, may be dominated, and is, by sex + emotions of a certain class; but not less dominated have been the most + cultured, powerful, and highly differentiated male intelligences that the + race has produced. A Mill, a Shelley, a Goethe, a Schiller, a Pericles, + have not been more noted for vast intellectual powers, than for the depth + and intensity of their sexual emotions. And, if possible, with the human + female, the relation between intensity of sexual emotion and high + intellectual gifts has been yet closer. The life of a Sophia Kovalevsky, a + George Eliot, an Elizabeth Browning have not been more marked by a rare + development of the intellect than by deep passionate sexual emotions. Nor + throughout the history of the race has high intelligence and intellectual + power ever tended to make either male or female unattractive to those of + the opposite sex. + </p> + <p> + The merely brilliantly attired and unintelligent woman, probably never + awakened the same intensity of profound sex emotion even among the men of + her own type, which followed a George Sand; who attracted to herself with + deathless force some of the most noted men of her generation, even when, + nearing middle age, stout, and attired in rusty and inartistic black, she + was to be found rolling her cigarettes in a dingy office, scorning all the + external adornments with which less attractive females seek to supply a + hidden deficiency. Probably no more hopeless mistake could be made by an + ascetic seeking to extirpate sex emotion and the attraction of the sexes + for one another, than were he to imagine that in increasing virility, + intelligence, and knowledge this end could be attained. He might thereby + differentiate and greatly concentrate the emotions, but they would be + intensified; as a widely spread, shallow, sluggish stream would not be + annihilated but increased in force and activity by being turned into a + sharply defined, clear-cut course. + </p> + <p> + And if, further, we turn to those secondary manifestations of sexual + emotion, which express themselves in the relations of human progenitors to + their offspring, we shall find, if possible more markedly, that increase + of intelligence and virility does not diminish but increases the strength + of the affections. As the primitive, ignorant male, often willingly + selling his offspring or exposing his female infants to death, often + develops, with the increase of culture and intelligence, into the + extremely devoted and self-sacrificing male progenitor of civilised + societies; so, yet even more markedly, does the female relation with her + offspring, become intensified and permanent, as culture and intelligence + and virility increase. The Bushwoman, like the lowest female barbarians in + our own societies, will often readily dispose of her infant son for a + bottle of spirits or a little coin; and even among somewhat more mentally + developed females, strong as is the affection of the average female for + her new born offspring, the closeness of the relation between mother and + child tends rapidly to shrink as time passes, so that by the time of + adolescence is reached the relation between mother and son becomes little + more than a remembrance of a close inter-union which once existed. It is, + perhaps, seldom, till the very highest point of intellectual growth and + mental virility has been reached by the human female, that her relation + with her male offspring becomes a permanent and active and dominant factor + in the lives of both. The concentrated and all-absorbing affection and + fellowship which existed between the greatest female intellect France has + produced and the son she bore, dominating both lives to the end, the + fellowship of the English historian with his mother, who remained his + chosen companion and the sharer of all his labours through life, the + relation of St. Augustine to his mother, and those of countless others, + are relations almost inconceivable where the woman is not of commanding + and active intelligence, and where the passion of mere physical instinct + is completed by the passion of the intellect and spirit. + </p> + <p> + There appears, then, from the study of human nature in the past, no ground + for supposing that if, as a result of woman’s adopting new forms of + labour, she should become more free, more wealthy, or more actively + intelligent, that this could in any way diminish her need of the physical + and mental comradeship of man, nor his need of her; nor that it would + affect their secondary sexual relations as progenitors, save by deepening, + concentrating, and extending throughout life the parental emotions. The + conception that man’s and woman’s need of each other could be touched, or + the emotions binding the sexes obliterated, by any mere change in the form + of labour performed by the woman of the race, is as grotesque in its + impossibility, as the suggestion that the placing of a shell on the + seashore this way or that might destroy the action of the earth’s great + tidal wave. + </p> + <p> + But, it may be objected, “If there be absolutely no ground for the + formation of such an opinion, how comes it that, in one form or another, + it is so often expressed by persons who object to the entrance of woman + into new or intellectual fields of labour? Where there is smoke must there + not also be fire?” To which it must be replied, “Without fire, no smoke; + but very often the appearance of smoke where neither smoke nor fire + exist!” + </p> + <p> + The fact that a statement is frequently made or a view held forms no + presumptive ground of its truth; but it is undoubtedly a ground for + supposing that there is an appearance or semblance which makes it appear + truth, and which suggests it. The universally entertained conception that + the sun moved round the world was not merely false, but the reverse of the + truth; all that was required for its inception was a fallacious appearance + suggesting it. + </p> + <p> + When we examine narrowly the statement, that the entrance of woman into + the new fields of labour, with its probably resulting greater freedom of + action, economic independence and wider culture, may result in a severance + between the sexes, it becomes clear what that fallacious appearance is, + which suggests this. + </p> + <p> + The entrance of a woman into new fields of labour, though bringing her + increased freedom and economic independence, and necessitating increased + mental training and wider knowledge, could not extinguish the primordial + physical instinct which draws sex to sex throughout all the orders of + sentient life; and still less could it annihilate that subtler mental + need, which, as humanity develops, draws sex to sex for emotional + fellowship and close intercourse; but, it might, and undoubtedly would, + powerfully react and readjust the relations of certain men with certain + women! + </p> + <p> + While the attraction, physical and intellectual, which binds sex to sex + would remain the same in volume and intensity, the forms in which it would + express itself, and, above all, the relative power of individuals to + command the gratification of their instincts and desires, would be + fundamentally altered, and in many cases inverted. + </p> + <p> + In the barbarian state of societies, where physical force dominates, it is + the most muscular and pugilistically and brutally and animally successful + male who captures and possesses the largest number of females; and no + doubt he would be justified in regarding any social change which gave to + woman a larger freedom of choice, and which would so perhaps give to the + less brutal but perhaps more intelligent male, whom the woman might + select, an equal opportunity for the gratification of his sexual wishes + and for the producing of offspring, as a serious loss. And, from the + purely personal standpoint, he would undoubtedly be right in dreading + anything which tended to free woman. But he would manifestly not have been + justified in asserting, that woman’s increased freedom of choice, or the + fact that the other men would share his advantage in the matter of + obtaining female companionship, would in any way lessen the amount of + sexual emotion or the tenderness of relation between the two halves of + humanity. He would not by brute force possess himself of so many females, + nor have so large a circle of choice, under the new conditions; but what + he lost, others would gain; and the intensity of the sex emotions and the + nearness and passion of the relation between the sexes be in no way + touched. + </p> + <p> + In our more civilised societies, as they exist today, woman possesses + (more often perhaps in appearance than reality!) a somewhat greater + freedom of sexual selection; she is no longer captured by muscular force, + but there are still conditions entirely unconnected with sex attractions + and affections, which yet largely dominate the sex relations. + </p> + <p> + It is not the man of the strong arm, but the man of the long purse, who + unduly and artificially dominates in the sexual world today. Practically, + wherever in the modern world woman is wholly or partially dependent for + her means of support on the exercise of her sexual functions, she is + dependent more or less on the male’s power to support her in their + exercise, and her freedom of choice is practically so far absolutely + limited. Probably three-fourths of the sexual unions in our modern + European societies, whether in the illegal or recognised legal forms, are + dominated by or largely influenced by the sex purchasing power of the + male. With regard to the large and savage institution of prostitution, + which still lies as the cancer embedded in the heart of all our modern + civilised societies, this is obviously and nakedly the case; the wealth of + the male as compared to the female being, with hideous obtrusiveness, its + foundation and source of life. But the purchasing power of the male as + compared with the poverty of the female is not less painfully, if a little + less obtrusively, displayed in those layers of society lying nearer the + surface. From the fair, effete young girl of the wealthier classes in her + city boudoir, who weeps copiously as she tells you she cannot marry the + man she loves, because he says he has only two hundred a year and cannot + afford to keep her; to the father who demands frankly of his daughter’s + suitor how much he can settle on her before consenting to his acceptance, + the fact remains, that, under existing conditions, not the amount of sex + affection, passion, and attraction, but the extraneous question of the + material possessions of the male, determines to a large extent the + relation of the sexes. The parasitic, helpless youth who has failed in his + studies, who possesses neither virility, nor charm of person, nor strength + of mind, but who possesses wealth, has a far greater chance of securing + unlimited sexual indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest + maid, than her brother’s tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and + physical grace and mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of + nothing but material good, has, especially among the so-called upper + classes of our societies, a far greater chance of securing the sex + companionship of any woman he desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, + than the most physically attractive and mentally developed male, who may + have nothing to offer to the dependent female but affection and sexual + companionship. + </p> + <p> + To the male, whenever and wherever he exists in our societies, who depends + mainly for his power for procuring the sex relation he desires, not on his + power of winning and retaining personal affection, but, on the purchasing + power of his possessions as compared to the poverty of the females of his + society, the personal loss would be seriously and at once felt, of any + social change which gave to the woman a larger economic independence and + therefore greater freedom of sexual choice. It is not an imaginary danger + which the young dude, of a certain type which sits often in the front row + of the stalls in a theatre, with sloping forehead and feeble jaw, watching + the unhappy women who dance for gold—sees looming before him, as he + lisps out his deep disapproval of increased knowledge and the freedom of + obtaining the means of subsistence in intellectual fields by woman, and + expresses his vast preference for the uncultured ballet-girl over all + types of cultured and productive labouring womenhood in the universe. A + subtle and profound instinct warns him, that with the increased + intelligence and economic freedom of woman, he, and such as he, might + ultimately be left sexually companionless; the undesirable, the residuary, + male old-maids of the human race. + </p> + <p> + On the other hand, there is undoubtedly a certain body of females who + would lose, or imagine they would lose, heavily by the advance of woman as + a whole to a condition of free labour and economic independence. That + female, wilfully or organically belonging to the parasite class, having + neither the vigour of intellect nor the vitality of body to undertake any + form of productive labour, and desiring to be dependent only upon the + passive performance of sex function merely, would, whether as prostitute + or wife, undoubtedly lose heavily by any social change which demanded of + woman increased knowledge and activity. (She would lose in two directions: + by the social disapprobation which, as the new conditions became general, + would rest on her; and yet more by the competition of the more developed + forms. She would practically become non-existent.) + </p> + <p> + It is exactly by these two classes of persons that the objection is raised + that the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour and her increased + freedom and intelligence will dislocate the relations of the sexes; and, + while from the purely personal standpoint, they are undoubtedly right, + viewing human society as a whole they are fundamentally wrong. The loss of + a small and unhealthy section will be the gain of human society as a + whole. + </p> + <p> + In the male voluptuary of feeble intellect and unattractive individuality, + who depends for the gratification of his sexual instincts, not on his + power of winning and retaining the personal affection and admiration of + woman, but on her purchaseable condition, either in the blatantly + barbarous field of sex traffic that lies beyond the pale of legal + marriage, or the not less barbarous though more veiled traffic within that + pale, the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour, with an + increased intellectual culture and economic freedom, means little less + than social extinction. But, to those males who, even at the present day, + constitute the majority in our societies, and who desire the affection and + fellowship of woman rather than a mere material possession; for the male + who has the attributes and gifts of mind or body, which, apart from any + weight of material advantage, would fit him to hold the affection of + woman, however great her freedom of choice, the gain will be + correspondingly great. Given a society in which the majority of women + should be so far self-supporting, that, having their free share open to + them in the modern fields of labour, and reaping the full economic rewards + of their labour, marriage or some form of sexual sale was no more a matter + of necessity to them; so far from this condition causing a diminution in + the number of permanent sex unions, one of the heaviest bars to them would + be removed. It is universally allowed that one of the disease spots in our + modern social condition is the increasing difficulty which bars + conscientious men from entering on marriage and rearing families, if + limited means would in the case of their death or disablement throw the + woman and their common offspring comparatively helpless into the fierce + stream of our modern economic life. If the woman could justifiably be + looked to, in case of the man’s disablement or death, to take his place as + an earner, thousands of valuable marriages which cannot now be contracted + could be entered on; and the serious social evil, which arises from the + fact that while the self-indulgent and selfish freely marry and produce + large families, the restrained and conscientious are often unable to do + so, would be removed. For the first time in the history of the modern + world, prostitution, using that term in its broadest sense to cover all + forced sexual relationships based, not on the spontaneous affection of the + woman for the man, but on the necessitous acceptance by woman of material + good in exchange for the exercise of her sexual functions, would be + extinct; and the relation between men and women become a co-partnership + between freemen. + </p> + <p> + So far from the economic freedom and social independence of the woman + exterminating sexual love between man and woman, it would for the first + time fully enfranchise it. The element of physical force and capture which + dominated the most primitive sex relations, the more degrading element of + seduction and purchase by means of wealth or material good offered to + woman in our modern societies, would then give place to the untrammelled + action of attraction and affection alone between the sexes, and sexual + love, after its long pilgrimage in the deserts, would be enabled to return + at last, a king crowned. + </p> + <p> + But, apart from the two classes of persons whose objection to the entrance + of woman to new fields of labour is based more or less instinctively on + the fear of personal loss, there is undoubtedly a small, if a very small, + number of sincere persons whose fear as to severance between the sexes to + result from woman’s entrance into the new field, is based upon a more + abstract and impersonal ground. + </p> + <p> + It is not easy to do full justice in an exact statement to views held + generally rather nebulously and vaguely, but we believe we should not + mistake this view, by saying that there are a certain class of perfectly + sincere and even moderately intelligent folk who hold a view which, + expressed exactly, would come to something like this—that the + entrance of woman into new fields would necessitate so large a mental + culture and such a development of activity, mental and physical, in the + woman, that she might ultimately develop into a being so superior to the + male and so widely different from the man, that the bond of sympathy + between the sexes might ultimately be broken and the man cease to be an + object of affection and attraction to the woman, and the woman to the man + through mere dissimilarity. The future these persons seem to see, more or + less vaguely, is of a social condition, in which, the males of the race + remaining precisely as they are today, the corresponding females shall + have advanced to undreamed of heights of culture and intelligence; a + condition in which the hand-worker, and the ordinary official, and small + farmer, shall be confronted with the female astronomer or Greek professor + of astonishing learning and gifts as his only possible complementary sex + companion; and the vision naturally awakens in these good folk certain + misgivings as to sympathy between and suitability for each other, of these + two widely dissimilar parts of humanity. + </p> + <p> + It must of course at once be admitted, that, were the two sexual halves of + humanity distinct species, which, having once entered on a course of + evolution and differentiation, might continue to develop along those + distinct lines for countless ages or even for a number of generations, + without reacting through inheritance on each other, the consequences of + such development might ultimately almost completely sever them. + </p> + <p> + The development of distinct branches of humanity has already brought about + such a severance between races and classes which are in totally distinct + stages of evolution. So wide is the hiatus between them often, that the + lowest form of sex attraction can hardly cross it; and the more highly + developed mental and emotional sex passion cannot possibly bridge it. In + the world of sex, kind seeks kind, and too wide a dissimilarity completely + bars the existence of the highest forms of sex emotion, and often even the + lower and more purely animal. + </p> + <p> + Were it possible to place a company of the most highly evolved human + females—George Sands, Sophia Kovalevskys, or even the average + cultured females of a highly evolved race—on an island where the + only males were savages of the Fugean type, who should meet them on the + shores with matted hair and prognathous jaws, and with wild shouts, + brandishing their implements of death, to greet and welcome them, it is an + undoubted fact that, so great would be the horror felt by the females + towards them, that not only would the race become extinct, but if it + depended for its continuance on any approach to sex affection on the part + of the women, that death would certainly be accepted by all, as the lesser + of two evils. Hardly less marked would be the sexual division if, in place + of cultured and developed females, we imagine males of the same highly + evolved class thrown into contact with the lowest form of primitive + females. A Darwin, a Schiller, a Keats, though all men capable of the + strongest sex emotion and of the most durable sex affections, would + probably be untouched by any emotion but horror, cast into the company of + a circle of Bushmen females with greased bodies and twinkling eyes, + devouring the raw entrails of slaughtered beasts. + </p> + <p> + But leaving out even such extreme instances of diversity, the mere + division in culture and mental habits, dividing individuals of the same + race but of different classes, tends largely to exclude the possibility of + at least the nobler and more enduring forms of sex emotion. The highly + cultured denizen of a modern society, though he may enter into passing and + temporary and animal relations with the uncultured peasant or woman of the + street, seldom finds awakened within him in such cases the depth of + emotion and sympathy which is necessary for the enjoyment of the closer + tie of conjugal life; and it may be doubted whether the highest, most + permanent, and intimate forms of sexual affection ever exist except among + humans very largely identical in tastes, habits of thought, and moral and + physical education. (In Greece at a certain period (as we have before + noted) there does appear to have been a temporary advance of the male, so + far in advance of the female as to make the difference between them almost + immeasurable; but he quickly fell back to the level of the woman.) Were it + possible that the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour should + produce any increased divergence between man and woman in ideals, culture, + or tastes, there would undoubtedly be a dangerous responsibility incurred + by any who fostered such a movement. + </p> + <p> + But the most superficial study of human life and the relation of the sexes + negates such a conception. + </p> + <p> + The two sexes are not distinct species but the two halves of one whole, + always acting and interacting on each other through inheritance, and + reproducing and blending with each other in each generation. The human + female is bound organically in two ways to the males of her society: + collaterally they are her companions and the co-progenitors with her of + the race; but she is also the mother of the males of each succeeding + generation, bearing, shaping, and impressing her personality upon them. + The males and females of each human society resemble two oxen tethered to + one yoke: for a moment one may move slightly forward and the other remain + stationary; but they can never move farther from each other than the + length of the yoke that binds them; and they must ultimately remain + stationary or move forward together. That which the women of one + generation are mentally or physically, that by inheritance and education + the males of the next tend to be: there can be no movement or change in + one sex which will not instantly have its co-ordinating effect upon the + other; the males of tomorrow are being cast in the mould of the women of + today. If new ideals, new moral conceptions, new methods of action are + found permeating the minds of the women of one generation, they will + reappear in the ideals, moral conceptions, methods of action of the men of + thirty years hence; and the idea that the males of a society can ever + become permanently farther removed from its females than the individual + man is from the mother who bore and reared him, is at variance with every + law of human inheritance. + </p> + <p> + If, further, we turn from an abstract consideration of this supposition, + and examine practically in the modern world men and women as they exist + today, the irrationality of the supposition is yet more evident. + </p> + <p> + Not merely is the Woman’s Movement of our age not a sporadic and abnormal + growth, like a cancer bearing no organic relation to the development of + the rest of the social organism, but it is essentially but one important + phase of a general modification which the whole of modern life is + undergoing. Further, careful study of the movement will show that, not + only is it not a movement on the part of woman leading to severance and + separation between the woman and the man, but that it is essentially a + movement of the woman towards the man, of the sexes towards closer union. + </p> + <p> + Much is said at the present day on the subject of the “New Woman” (who, as + we have seen, is essentially but the old non-parasitic woman of the remote + past, preparing to draw on her new twentieth-century garb): and it cannot + truly be said that her attitude finds a lack of social attention. On every + hand she is examined, praised, blamed, mistaken for her counterfeit, + ridiculed, or deified—but nowhere can it be said, that the + phenomenon of her existence is overlooked. + </p> + <p> + But there exists at the present day another body of social phenomena, + quite as important, as radical, and if possible more far-reaching in its + effects on the present and future, which yet attracts little conscious + attention or animadversion, though it makes itself everywhere felt; as the + shade of a growing tree may be sat under year after year by persons who + never remark its silent growth. + </p> + <p> + Side by side with the “New Woman,” corresponding to her, as the two sides + of a coin cast in one mould, though differing from each other in + superficial detail, are yet of one metal, one size, and one value; old in + the sense in which she is old, being merely the reincarnation under the + pressure of new conditions of the ancient forms of his race; new in the + sense in which she is new, in that he is an adaptation to material and + social conditions which have no exact counterpart in the past; more + diverse from his immediate progenitors than even the woman is from hers, + side by side with her today in every society and in every class in which + she is found, stands—the New Man! + </p> + <p> + If it be asked, How comes it to pass, if, under the pressure of social + conditions, man shows an analogous change of attitude toward life, that + the change in woman should attract universal attention, while the + corresponding change in the man of her society passes almost unnoticed?—it + would seem that the explanation lies in the fact that, owing to woman’s + less independence of action in the past, any attempt at change or + readaptation on her part has had to overcome greater resistance, and it is + the noise and friction of resistance, more than the amount of actual + change which has taken place, which attracts attention; as when an Alpine + stream, after a long winter frost, breaks the ice, and with a crash and + roar sweeps away the obstructions which have gathered in its bed, all + men’s attention is attracted to it, though when later a much larger body + of water silently forces its way down, no man observes it. (An interesting + practical illustration of this fact is found in the vast attention and + uproar created when the first three women in England, some thirty odd + years ago, sought to enter the medical profession. At the present day + scores of women prepare to enter it yearly without attracting any general + attention; not that the change which is going on is not far more in volume + and social importance, but that, having overcome the first obstruction, it + is now noiseless.) + </p> + <p> + Between the Emilias and Sophy Westerns of a bygone generation and the most + typical of modern women, there exists no greater gap (probably not so + great a one) as that which exists between the Tom Joneses and Squire + Westerns of that day and the most typical of entirely modern men. + </p> + <p> + The sexual and social ideals which dominated the fox-hunting, + hard-drinking, high-playing, recklessly loose-living country squire, + clergyman, lawyer, and politician who headed the social organism of the + past, are at least as distinct from the ideals which dominate thousands of + their male descendants holding corresponding positions in the societies of + today, as are the ideals of her great-great-grand mother’s remote from + those dominating the most modern of New Women. + </p> + <p> + That which most forces itself upon us as the result of a close personal + study of those sections of modern European societies in which change and + adaptation to the new conditions of life are now most rapidly progressing, + is, not merely that equally large bodies of men and women are being + rapidly modified as to their sexual and social ideals and as to their mode + of life, but that this change is strictly complementary. + </p> + <p> + If the ideal of the modern woman becomes increasingly one inconsistent + with the passive existence of woman on the remuneration which her sexual + attributes may win from man, and marriage becomes for her increasingly a + fellowship of comrades, rather than the relationship of the owner and the + bought, the keeper and the kept; the ideal of the typically modern man + departs quite as strongly from that of his forefathers in the direction of + finding in woman active companionship and co-operation rather than passive + submission. If the New Woman’s conception of parenthood differs from the + old in the greater sense of the gravity and obligation resting on those + who are responsible for the production of the individual life, making her + attitude toward the production of her race widely unlike the reckless, + unreasoning, maternal reproduction of the woman of the past, the most + typical male tends to feel in at least the same degree the moral and + social obligation entailed by awakening lifehood: if the ideal which the + New Woman shapes for herself of a male companion excludes the crudely + animal hard-drinking, hard-swearing, licentious, even if materially + wealthy gallant of the past; the most typically modern male’s ideal for + himself excludes at least equally this type. The brothel, the race-course, + the gaming-table, and habits of physical excess among men are still with + us; but the most superficial study of our societies will show that these + have fallen into a new place in the scale of social institutions and + manners. The politician, the clergyman, or the lawyer does not improve his + social or public standing by violent addictions in these directions; to + drink his companions under the table, to be known to have the largest + number of illicit sex relations, to be recognised as an habitual visitant + of the gambling saloon, does not, even in the case of a crowned head, much + enhance his reputation, and with the ordinary man may ultimately prove a + bar to all success. If the New Woman’s conception of love between the + sexes is one more largely psychic and intellectual than crudely and purely + physical, and wholly of an affection between companions; the New Man’s + conception as expressed in the most typical literature and art, produced + by typically modern males, gives voice with a force no woman has surpassed + to the same new ideal. If to the typical modern woman the lifelong + companionship of a Tom Jones or Squire Western would be more intolerable + than death or the most complete celibacy, not less would the most typical + of modern men shrink from the prospect of a lifelong fetterment to the + companionship of an always fainting, weeping, and terrified Emilia or a + Sophia of a bygone epoch. + </p> + <p> + If anywhere on earth exists the perfect ideal of that which the modern + woman desires to be—of a labouring and virile womanhood, free, + strong, fearless and tender—it will probably be found imaged in the + heart of the New Man; engendered there by his own highest needs and + aspirations; and nowhere would the most highly developed modern male find + an image of that which forms his ideal of the most fully developed + manhood, than in the ideal of man which haunts the heart of the New Woman. + </p> + <p> + Those have strangely overlooked some of the most important phenomena of + our modern world, who see in the Woman’s Movement of our day any emotional + movement of the female against the male, of the woman away from the man. + </p> + <p> + We have called the Woman’s Movement of our age an endeavour on the part of + women among modern civilised races to find new fields of labour as the old + slip from them, as an attempt to escape from parasitism and an inactive + dependence upon sex function alone; but, viewed from another side, the + Woman’s Movement might not less justly be called a part of a great + movement of the sexes towards each other, a movement towards common + occupations, common interests, common ideals, and towards an emotional + sympathy between the sexes more deeply founded and more indestructible + than any the world has yet seen. + </p> + <p> + But it may be suggested, and the perception of a certain profound truth + underlies this suggestion; How is it, if there be this close reciprocity + between the lines along which the advanced and typical modern males and + females are developing, that there does exist in our modern societies, and + often among the very classes forming our typically advanced sections, so + much of pain, unrest, and sexual disco-ordination at the present day? + </p> + <p> + The reply to this pertinent suggestion is, that the disco-ordination, + struggle, and consequent suffering which undoubtedly do exist when we + regard the world of sexual relationships and ideals in our modern + societies, do not arise in any way from a disco-ordination between the + sexes as such, but are a part of the general upheaval, of the conflict + between old ideals and new; a struggle which is going on in every branch + the human life in our modern societies, and in which the determining + element is not sex, but the point of evolution which the race or the + individual has reached. + </p> + <p> + It cannot be too often repeated, even at the risk of the most wearisome + reiteration, that our societies are societies in a state of rapid + evolution and change. The continually changing material conditions of + life, with their reaction on the intellectual, emotional, and moral + aspects of human affairs, render our societies the most complex and + probably the most mobile and unsettled which the world has ever seen. As + the result of this rapidity of change and complexity, there must + continually exist a large amount of disco-ordination, and consequently, of + suffering. + </p> + <p> + In a stationary society where generation has succeeded generation for + hundreds, or it may be for thousands, of years, with little or no change + in the material conditions of life, the desires, institutions, and moral + principles of men, their religious, political, domestic, and sexual + institutions, have gradually shaped themselves in accordance with these + conditions; and a certain harmony, and homogeneity, and tranquillity, + pervades the society. + </p> + <p> + In societies in that rapid state of change in which our modern societies + find themselves, where not merely each decade, but each year, and almost + day brings new forces and conditions to bear on life, not only is the + amount of suffering and social rupture, which all rapid, excessive, and + sudden change entails on an organism, inevitable; but, the new conditions, + acting at different angles of intensity on the different individual + members composing the society, according to their positions and varying + intelligence, are producing a society of such marvellous complexity and + dissimilarity in the different individual parts, that the intensest + rupture and disco-ordination between individuals is inevitable; and sexual + ideals and relationships must share in the universal condition. + </p> + <p> + In a primitive society (if a somewhat prolix illustration may be allowed) + where for countless generations the conditions of life had remained + absolutely unchanged; where for ages it had been necessary that all males + should employ themselves in subduing wild beasts and meeting dangerous + foes, polygamy might universally have been a necessity, if the race were + to exist and its numbers be kept up; and society, recognising this, + polygamy would be an institution universally approved and submitted to, + however much suffering it entailed. If food were scarce, the destruction + of superfluous infants and of the aged might also always have been + necessary for the good of the individuals themselves as well as of + society, and the whole society would acquiesce in it without any moral + doubt. If an eclipse of the sun had once occurred in connection with the + appearance of a certain new insect, they mighty universally regard that + insect as a god causing it; and ages might pass without anything arising + to disprove their belief. There would be no social or religious problem; + and the view of one man would be the view of all men; and all would be + more or less in harmony with the established institution and customs. + </p> + <p> + But, supposing the sudden arrival of strangers armed with superior weapons + and knowledge, who should exterminate all wild beasts and render war and + the consequent loss of male life a thing of the past; not only would the + male be driven to encroach on the female’s domain of domestic agriculture + and labour generally, but the males, not being so largely destroyed, they + would soon equal and surpass in numbers the females; and not only would it + then become a moot matter, “a problem,” which labours were or were not to + be performed by man and which by woman, but very soon, not the woman alone + nor the man alone, but both, would be driven to speculate as to the + desirability or necessity of polygamy, which, were men as numerous as + women, would leave many males without sex companions. The more intelligent + and progressive individuals in the community would almost at once arrive + at the conclusion that polygamy was objectionable; the most fearless would + seek to carry their theory into action; the most ignorant and + unprogressive would determinately stick to the old institutions as + inherited from the past, without reason or question; differences of ideal + would cause conflict and dissension in all parts of the body social, and + suffering would ensue, where all before was fixed and determinate. So also + if the strangers introduced new and improved methods of agriculture, and + food became abundant, it would then at once strike the most far-seeing and + readily adaptable members of the community, both male and female, that + there was no necessity for the destruction of their offspring; old men and + women would begin seriously to object to being hastened to death when they + realised that starvation did not necessarily stare them in the face if + they survived to an extreme old age; the most stupid and hide-bound + members of the community would still continue to sacrifice parents and + offspring long after the necessity had ceased, under the influence of + traditional bias; many persons would be in a state of much moral doubt as + to which course of action to pursue, the old or the new; and bitter + conflict might rage in the community on all these points. Were the + strangers to bring with them telescopes, looking through which it might at + once clearly be seen that an eclipse of the sun was caused merely by the + moon’s passing over its face, the more intelligent members of the + community would at once come to the conclusion that the insect was not the + cause of eclipses, would cease to regard it as a god, and might even kill + it; the more stupid and immobile section of the community might refuse to + look through the telescope, or looking might refuse to see that it was the + moon which caused the eclipse, and their deep-seated reverence for the + insect, which was the growth of ages, would lead them to regard as impious + those individuals who denied its godhead, and might even lead to the + physical destruction of the first unbelievers. The society, once so + homogeneous and co-ordinated in all its parts, would become at once a + society rent by moral and social problems; and endless suffering must + arise to individuals in the attempt to co-ordinate the ideals, manners, + and institutions of the society to the new conditions! There might be + immense gain in many directions; lives otherwise sacrificed would be + spared, a higher and more satisfactory stage of existence might be entered + on; but the disco-ordination and struggle would be inevitable until the + society had established an equilibrium between its knowledge, its material + conditions, and its social, sexual, and religious ideals and institutions. + </p> + <p> + An analogous condition, but of a far more complex kind, exists at the + present day in our own societies. Our material environment differs in + every respect from that of our grandparents, and bears little or no + resemblance to that of a few centuries ago. Here and there, even in our + civilised societies in remote agricultural districts, the old social + conditions may remain partly undisturbed; but throughout the bulk of our + societies the substitution of mechanical for hand-labour, the wide + diffusion of knowledge through the always increasing cheap printing-press; + the rapidly increasing gathering of human creatures into vast cities, + where not merely thousands but millions of individuals are collected + together under physical and mental conditions of life which invert every + social condition of the past; the increasingly rapid means of locomotion; + the increasing intercourse between distant races and lands, brought about + by rapid means of intercommunication, widening and changing in every + direction the human horizon—all these produce a society, so complex + and so rapidly altering, that social co-ordination between all its parts + is impossible; and social unrest, and the strife of ideals of faiths, of + institutions, and consequent human suffering is inevitable. + </p> + <p> + If the ancient guns and agricultural implements which our fathers taught + us to use are valueless in the hands of their descendants, if the samplers + our mothers worked and the stockings they knitted are become superfluous + through the action of the modern loom, yet more are their social + institutions, faiths, and manners of life become daily and increasingly + unfitted to our use; and friction and suffering inevitable, especially for + the most advanced and modified individuals in our societies. This + suffering, if we analyse it closely, rises from three causes. + </p> + <p> + Firstly, it is caused by the fact that mere excessive rapidity of change + tends always easily to become painful, by rupturing violently already + hardened habits and modes of thought, as a very rapidly growing tree + ruptures its bark and exudes its internal juices. + </p> + <p> + Secondly, it arises from the fact that individuals of the same human + society, not adapting themselves at the same rate to the new conditions, + or being exposed to them in different degrees, a wide and almost + unparalleled dissimilarity has today arisen between the different + individuals composing our societies; where, side by side with men and + women who have rapidly adapted or are so successfully seeking to adapt + themselves to the new conditions of knowledge and new conditions of life, + that, were they to reappear in future ages in more co-ordinated societies, + they might perhaps hardly appear wholly antiquated, are to be found men + and women whose social, religious, and moral ideals would not constitute + them out of harmony if returned to the primitive camps of the remote + forbears of the human race; while, between these extreme classes lies that + large mass of persons in an intermediate state of development. This + diversity is bound to cause friction and suffering in the interactions of + the members of our societies; more especially, as the individuals + composing each type are not sorted out into classes and families, but are + found scattered through all classes and grades in our societies. (One of + the women holding the most advanced and modern view of the relation of + woman to life whom we have met was the wife of a Northamptonshire + shoemaker; herself engaged in making her living by the sewing of the + uppers of men’s boots.) Persons bound by the closest ties of blood or + social contiguity and compelled to a continual intercourse, are often + those most widely dissevered in their amount of adaptation to the new + conditions of life; and the amount of social friction and consequent human + suffering arising from this fact is so subtle and almost incalculable, + that perhaps it is impossible adequately to portray it in dry didactic + language: it is only truly describable in the medium of art, where actual + concrete individuals are shown acting and reacting on each other—as + in the novel or the drama. We are like a company of chess-men, not sorted + out in kinds, pawns together, kings and queens together, and knights and + rooks together, but simply thrown at haphazard into a box, and jumbled + side by side. In the stationary societies, where all individuals were + permeated by the same political, religious, moral, and social ideas; and + where each class had its own hereditary and fixed traditions of action and + manners, this cause of friction and suffering had of necessity no + existence; individual differences and discord might be occasioned by + personal greeds, ambitions, and selfishnesses, but not by conflicting + conceptions of right and wrong, of the desirable and undesirable, in all + branches of human life. (Only those who have been thrown into contact with + a stationary and homogeneous society such as that of primitive African + tribes before coming in contact with Europeans; or such as the up-country + Boers of South Africa were twenty years ago, can realise adequately how + wholly free from moral and social problems and social friction such a + society can be. It is in studying such societies that the truth is vividly + forced on one, that the key to half, and more than half, of the phenomena + in our own social condition, can be found only in our rapidly changing + conditions necessitating equally rapid change in our conceptions, ideals, + and institutions.) + </p> + <p> + Thirdly, the unrest and suffering peculiar to our age is caused by + conflict going on within the individual himself. So intensely rapid is the + change which is taking place in our environment and knowledge that in the + course of a single life a man may pass through half a dozen phases of + growth. Born and reared in possession of certain ideas and manners of + action, he or she may, before middle life is reached, have had occasion + repeatedly to modify, enlarge, and alter, or completely throw aside those + traditions. Within the individuality itself of such persons, goes on, in + an intensified form, that very struggle, conflict, and disco-ordination + which is going on in society at large between its different members and + sections; and agonising moments must arise, when the individual, seeing + the necessity for adopting new courses of action, or for accepting new + truths, or conforming to new conditions, will yet be tortured by the hold + of traditional convictions; and the man or woman who attempts to adapt + their life to the new material conditions and to harmony with the new + knowledge, is almost bound at some time to rupture the continuity of their + own psychological existence. + </p> + <p> + It is these conditions which give rise to the fact so often noticed, that + the art of our age tends persistently to deal with subtle social problems, + religious, political, and sexual, to which the art of the past holds no + parallel; and it is so inevitably, because the artist who would obey the + artistic instinct to portray faithfully the world about him, must portray + that which lies at the core of its life. The “problem” play, novel, and + poem are as inevitable in this age, as it was inevitable that the artist + of the eleventh century should portray tournaments, physical battles, and + chivalry, because they were the dominant element in the life about him. + </p> + <p> + It is also inevitable that this suffering and conflict must make itself + felt in its acutest form in the person of the most advanced individual of + our societies. It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen stream + who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it broken, and + the last find it gone. It is the man or woman who first treads down the + path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, who must find + themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is deadly. The fact that + any course of human action leading to adjustment, leads also to immediate + suffering, by dividing the individual from the bulk of his fellows; is no + argument against it; that solitude and suffering is the crown of thorns + which marks the kingship of earth’s Messiahs: it is the mark of the + leader. + </p> + <p> + Thus, social disco-ordination, and subjective conflict and suffering, + pervade the life of our age, making themselves felt in every division of + human life, religious, political, and domestic; and, if they are more + noticeable, and make themselves more keenly felt in the region of sex than + in any other, even the religious, it is because when we enter the region + of sex we touch, as it were, the spinal cord of human existence, its great + nerve centre, where sensation is most acute, and pain and pleasure most + keenly felt. It is not sex disco-ordination that is at the root of our + social unrest; it is the universal disco-ordination which affects even the + world of sex phenomena. + </p> + <p> + Also it is necessary to note that the line which divides the progressive + sections of our communities, seeking to co-ordinate themselves to the new + conditions of life, from the retrogressive, is not a line running + coincidentally with the line of sex. A George Sand and a Henrik Ibsen + belong more essentially to the same class in the order of modern + development, than either belongs to any class composed entirely of their + own sex. If we divide humanity into classes according to type, in each + division will be found the male with his complementary female. Side by + side with the old harlot at the street corner anxious to sell herself, + stands the old aboriginal male, whether covered or not with a veneer of + civilisation, eager and desiring to buy. Side by side with the parasitic + woman, seeking only increased pleasure and luxury from her relations with + man, stands the male seeking only pleasure and self-indulgence from his + relations with her. Side by side with the New Woman, anxious for labour + and seeking from man only such love and fellowship as she gives, stands + the New Man, anxious to possess her only on the terms she offers. If the + social movement, through which the most advanced women of our day are + attempting to bring themselves into co-ordination with the new conditions + of life, removes them immeasurably from certain types of the primitive + male; the same movement equally removes the new male from the old female. + The sexual tragedy of modern life lies, not in the fact that woman as such + is tending to differ fundamentally from man as such; but that, in the + unassorted confusion of our modern life, it is continually the modified + type of man or woman who is thrown into the closest personal relations + with the antiquated type of the opposite sex; that between father and + daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, husband and wife, may + sometimes be found to intervene not merely years, but even centuries of + social evolution. + </p> + <p> + It is not man as man who opposes the attempt of woman to readjust herself + to the new conditions of life: that opposition arises, perhaps more often, + from the retrogressive members of her own sex. And it is a fact which will + surprise no one who has studied the conditions of modern life; that among + the works of literature in all European languages, which most powerfully + advocate the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour, and which + most uncompromisingly demand for her the widest training and freedom of + action, and which most passionately seek for the breaking down of all + artificial lines which sever the woman from the man, many of the ablest + and most uncompromising are the works of males. + </p> + <p> + The New Man and Woman do not resemble two people, who, standing on a level + plain, set out on two roads, which diverging at different angles and + continued in straight lines, must continue to take them farther and + farther from each other the longer they proceed in them; rather, they + resemble two persons who start to climb a spur of the same mountain from + opposite sides; where, the higher they climb the nearer they come to each + other, being bound ultimately to meet at the top. + </p> + <p> + Even that opposition often made by males to the entrance of woman into the + new fields of labour, of which they at present hold the monopoly, is not + fundamentally sexual in its nature. The male who opposes the entrance of + woman into the trade or profession in which he holds more or less a + monopoly, would oppose with equal, and perhaps even greater bitterness, + the opening of its doors to numbers of his own sex who had before been + excluded, and who would limit his gains and share his privileges. It is + the primitive brute instinct to retain as much as possible for the ego, + irrespective of justice or humanity, which dominates all the lower moral + types of humanity, both male and female, which acts here. The lawyer or + physician who objects to the entrance of women to his highly fenced + professional enclosure, would probably object yet more strenuously if it + were proposed to throw down the barriers of restraint and monetary + charges, which would result in the flooding of his profession by other + males: while the mechanic, who resists the entrance of woman into his + especial field, is invariably found even more persistently to oppose any + attempt at entrance on the part of other males, when he finds it possible + to do so. + </p> + <p> + This opposition of the smaller type of male, to the entrance of woman into + the callings hitherto apportioned to himself, is sometimes taken as + implying the impossibility of fellowship and affection existing between + the men and women employed in common labour, that the professional + jealousy of the man must necessitate his feeling a hatred and antagonism + towards any one who shares his fields of toil. But the most superficial + study of human life negates such a supposition. Among men, in spite of the + occasional existence of the petty professional jealousies and antagonism, + we find, viewing society as a whole, that common interests, and above all + common labours, are the most potent means of bringing them into close and + friendly relations; and, in fact, they seem generally essential for the + formation of the closest and most permanent human friendships. In every + walk of human life, whether trade, or profession, we find men associating + by choice mainly with, and entertaining often the profoundest and most + permanent friendships for, men engaged in their own callings. The inner + circle of a barrister’s friendships almost always consists of his + fellow-barristers; the city man, who is free to select his society where + he will, will be oftenest found in company with his fellow-man of + business; the medical man’s closest friendship is, in a large number of + cases, for some man who was once his fellow-student and has passed through + the different stages of his professional life with him; the friends and + chosen companions of the actor are commonly actors; of the savant, + savants; of the farmer, farmers; of the sailor, sailors. So generally is + this the case that it would almost attract attention and cause amusement + were the boon companion of the sea captain a leading politician, and the + intimate friend of the clergyman an actor, or the dearest friend of the + farmer an astronomer. Kind seeks kind. The majority of men by choice + frequent clubs where those of their own calling are found, and especially + as life advances and men sink deeper into their professional grooves, they + are found to seek fellowship mainly among their fellow-workers. That this + should be so is inevitable; common amusements may create a certain bond + between the young, but the performance of common labours, necessitating + identical knowledge, identical habits, and modes of thought, forms a far + stronger bond, drawing men far more powerfully towards social intercourse + and personal friendship and affection than the centrifugal force of + professional jealousies can divide them. + </p> + <p> + That the same condition would prevail where women became fellow-workers + with men might be inferred on abstract grounds: but practical experience + confirms this. The actor oftenest marries the actress, the male musician + the female; the reception-room of the literary woman or female painter is + found continually frequented by men of her own calling; the woman-doctor + associates continually with and often marries one of her own confreres; + and as women in increasing numbers share the fields of labour with men, + which have hitherto been apportioned to them alone, the nature and + strength of the sympathy arising from common labours will be increasingly + clear. + </p> + <p> + The sharing by men and women of the same labours, necessitating a common + culture and therefore common habits of thought and interests, would tend + to fill that painful hiatus which arises so continually in modern conjugal + life, dividing the man and woman as soon as the first sheen of physical + sexual attraction which glints only over the unknown begins to fade, and + from which springs so large a part of the tragedy of modern conjugal + relations. The primitive male might discuss with her his success in + hunting and her success in finding roots; as the primitive peasant may + discuss today with his wife the crops and cows in which both are equally + interested and which both understand; there is nothing in their order of + life to produce always increasingly divergent habits of thought and + interest. + </p> + <p> + In modern civilised life, in many sections, the lack of any common labour + and interests and the wide dissimilarity of the life led by the man and + the woman, tend continually to produce increasing divergence; so that, + long before middle life is reached, they are left without any bond of + co-cohesion but that of habit. The comradeship and continual stimulation, + rising from intercourse with those sharing our closest interests and + regarding life from the same standpoint, the man tends to seek in his club + and among his male companions, and the woman accepts solitude, or seeks + dissipations which tend yet farther to disrupt the common conjugal life. A + certain mental camaraderie and community of impersonal interests is + imperative in conjugal life in addition to a purely sexual relation, if + the union is to remain a living and always growing reality. It is more + especially because the sharing by woman of the labours of man will tend to + promote camaraderie and the existence of common, impersonal interests and + like habits of thought and life, that the entrance of women into the very + fields shared by men, and not into others peculiarly reserved for her, is + so desirable. (The reply once given by the wife of a leading barrister, + when reference was made to the fact that she and her husband were seldom + found in each other’s society, throws a painful but true light on certain + aspects of modern life, against which the entire woman’s movement of our + age is a rebellion. “My husband,” she said, “is always increasingly + absorbed in his legal duties, of which I understand nothing, and which so + do not interest me. My children are all growing up and at school. I have + servants enough to attend to my house. When he comes home in the evening, + if I try to amuse him by telling him of the things I have been doing + during the day, of the bazaars I am working for, the shopping I have done, + the visits I have paid, he is bored. He is anxious to get away to his + study, his books, and his men friends, and I am left utterly alone. If it + were not for the society of women and other men with whom I have more in + common, I could not bear my life. When we first met as boy and girl, and + fell in love, we danced and rode together and seemed to have everything in + common; now we have nothing. I respect him and I believe he respects me, + but that is all!” It is, perhaps, only in close confidences between man + and man and woman and woman that this open sore, rising from the + divergence in training, habits of life, and occupation between men and + women is spoken of; but it lies as a tragic element at the core of + millions of modern conjugal relations, beneath the smooth superficial + surface of our modern life; breaking out to the surface only occasionally + in the revelations of our divorce courts.) + </p> + <p> + It is a gracious fact, to which every woman who has achieved success or + accomplished good work in any of the fields generally apportioned to men + will bear witness, whether that work be in the field of literature, of + science, or the organised professions, that the hands which have been most + eagerly stretched our to welcome her have been those of men; that the + voices which have most generously acclaimed her success have been those of + male fellow-workers in the fields into which she has entered. + </p> + <p> + There is no door at which the hand of woman has knocked for admission into + a new field of toil but there have been found on the other side the hands + of strong and generous men eager to turn it for her, almost before she + knocks. + </p> + <p> + To those of us who, at the beginning of a new century, stand with shaded + eyes, gazing into the future, striving to descry the outlines of the + shadowy figures which loom before us in the distance, nothing seems of so + gracious a promise, as the outline we seem to discern of a condition of + human life in which a closer union than the world has yet seen shall exist + between the man and the woman: where the Walhalla of our old Northern + ancestors shall find its realisation in a concrete reality, and the + Walkurie and her hero feast together at one board, in a brave fellowship. + </p> + <p> + Always in our dreams we hear the turn of the key that shall close the door + of the last brothel; the clink of the last coin that pays for the body and + soul of a woman; the falling of the last wall that encloses artificially + the activity of woman and divides her from man; always we picture the love + of the sexes, as, once a dull, slow, creeping worm; then a torpid, earthy + chrysalis; at last the full-winged insect, glorious in the sunshine of the + future. + </p> + <p> + Today, as we row hard against the stream of life, is it only a blindness + in our eyes, which have been too long strained, which makes us see, far up + the river where it fades into the distance, through all the mists that + rise from the river-banks, a clear, a golden light? Is it only a delusion + of the eyes which makes us grasp our oars more lightly and bend our backs + lower; though we know well that long before the boat reaches those + stretches, other hands than ours will man the oars and guide its helm? Is + it all a dream? + </p> + <p> + The ancient Chaldean seer had a vision of a Garden of Eden which lay in a + remote past. It was dreamed that man and woman once lived in joy and + fellowship, till woman ate of the tree of knowledge and gave to man to + eat; and that both were driven forth to wander, to toil in bitterness; + because they had eaten of the fruit. + </p> + <p> + We also have our dream of a Garden: but it lies in a distant future. We + dream that woman shall eat of the tree of knowledge together with man, and + that side by side and hand close to hand, through ages of much toil and + labour, they shall together raise about them an Eden nobler than any the + Chaldean dreamed of; an Eden created by their own labour and made + beautiful by their own fellowship. + </p> + <p> + In his apocalypse there was one who saw a new heaven and a new earth; we + see a new earth; but therein dwells love—the love of comrades and + co-workers. + </p> + <p> + It is because so wide and gracious to us are the possibilities of the + future; so impossible is a return to the past, so deadly is a passive + acquiescence in the present, that today we are found everywhere raising + our strange new cry—“Labour and the training that fits us for + labour!” + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </p> + <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1440 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..250b117 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #1440 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1440) diff --git a/old/1440-0.txt b/old/1440-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d7a91f --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1440-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5604 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman and Labour, by Olive Schreiner + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Woman and Labour + +Author: Olive Schreiner + +Posting Date: September 17, 2008 [EBook #1440] +Release Date: August, 1998 +Last Updated: October 12, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN AND LABOUR *** + + + + +Produced by Sue Asscher + + + + + +WOMAN AND LABOUR + +by Olive Schreiner + + +Author of “Dreams,” “The Story of an African Farm,” “Trooper Peter +Halket,” “Dream Life and Real Life,” etc. etc. + + + Dedicated to Constance Lytton + + “Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, + Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea-- + Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong-- + Nay, but she aim’d not at glory, no lover of glory she: + Give her the glory of going on and still to be.” + + Tennyson. + + Olive Schreiner. + De Aar, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. 1911. + + + + +Contents + + Introduction + + Chapter I. Parasitism + + Chapter II. Parasitism (continued) + + Chapter III. Parasitism (continued) + + Chapter IV. Woman and War + + Chapter V. Sex Differences + + Chapter VI. Certain Objections + + + + + +Introduction. + +It is necessary to say a few words to explain this book. The original +title of the book was “Musings on Woman and Labour.” + +It is, what its name implies, a collection of musings on some of the +points connected with woman’s work. + +In my early youth I began a book on Woman. I continued the work till +ten years ago. It necessarily touched on most matters in which sex has a +part, however incompletely. + +It began by tracing the differences of sex function to their earliest +appearances in life on the globe; not only as when in the animal world, +two amoeboid globules coalesce, and the process of sexual generation +almost unconsciously begins; but to its yet more primitive +manifestations in plant life. In the first three chapters I traced, +as far as I was able, the evolution of sex in different branches of +non-human life. Many large facts surprised me in following this line of +thought by their bearing on the whole modern sex problem. Such facts +as this; that, in the great majority of species on the earth the female +form exceeds the male in size and strength and often in predatory +instinct; and that sex relationships may assume almost any form on earth +as the conditions of life vary; and that, even in their sexual relations +towards offspring, those differences which we, conventionally, are apt +to suppose are inherent in the paternal or the maternal sex form, are +not inherent--as when one studies the lives of certain toads, where the +female deposits her eggs in cavities on the back of the male, where the +eggs are preserved and hatched; or, of certain sea animals, in which the +male carries the young about with him and rears them in a pouch formed +of his own substance; and countless other such. And above all, this +important fact, which had first impressed me when as a child I wandered +alone in the African bush and watched cock-o-veets singing their +inter-knit love-songs, and small singing birds building their nests +together, and caring for and watching over, not only their young, but +each other, and which has powerfully influenced all I have thought and +felt on sex matters since;--the fact that, along the line of bird +life and among certain of its species sex has attained its highest and +aesthetic, and one might almost say intellectual, development on +earth: a point of development to which no human race as a whole has +yet reached, and which represents the realisation of the highest sexual +ideal which haunts humanity. + +When these three chapters we ended I went on to deal, as far as +possible, with woman’s condition in the most primitive, in the savage +and in the semi-savage states. I had always been strangely interested +from childhood in watching the condition of the native African women +in their primitive society about me. When I was eighteen I had a +conversation with a Kafir woman still in her untouched primitive +condition, a conversation which made a more profound impression on my +mind than any but one other incident connected with the position of +woman has ever done. She was a woman whom I cannot think of otherwise +than as a person of genius. In language more eloquent and intense than +I have ever heard from the lips of any other woman, she painted the +condition of the women of her race; the labour of women, the anguish of +woman as she grew older, and the limitations of her life closed in about +her, her sufferings under the condition of polygamy and subjection; all +this she painted with a passion and intensity I have not known equalled; +and yet, and this was the interesting point, when I went on to question +her, combined with a deep and almost fierce bitterness against life +and the unseen powers which had shaped woman and her conditions as they +were, there was not one word of bitterness against the individual man, +nor any will or intention to revolt; rather, there was a stern and +almost majestic attitude of acceptance of the inevitable; life and the +conditions of her race being what they were. It was this conversation +which first forced upon me a truth, which I have since come to regard as +almost axiomatic, that, the women of no race or class will ever rise in +revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment of their +relation to their society, however intense their suffering and however +clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of their +society requires their submission: that, wherever there is a general +attempt on the part of the women of any society to readjust their +position in it, a close analysis will always show that the changed or +changing conditions of that society have made woman’s acquiescence no +longer necessary or desirable. + +Another point which it was attempted to deal with in this division of +the book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that +woman’s physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain other +directions was the price which woman has been compelled to pay for the +passing of the race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state to the +erect; and which was essential if humanity as we know it was to exist +(this of course was dealt with by a physiological study of woman’s +structure); and also, to deal with the highly probable, though unproved +and perhaps unprovable, suggestion, that it was largely the necessity +which woman was under of bearing her helpless young in her arms while +procuring food for them and herself, and of carrying them when escaping +from enemies, that led to the entirely erect position being forced on +developing humanity. + +These and many other points throwing an interesting light on the later +development of women (such as the relation between agriculture and the +subjection of women) were gone into in this division of the book dealing +with primitive and semi-barbarous womanhood. + +When this division was ended, I had them type-written, and with the +first three chapters bound in one volume about the year 1888; and then +went on to work at the last division, which I had already begun. + +This dealt with what is more popularly known as the women’s question: +with the causes which in modern European societies are leading women to +attempt readjustment in their relation to their social organism; with +the direction in which such readjustments are taking place; and with the +results which in the future it appears likely such readjustments will +produce. + +After eleven years, 1899, these chapters were finished and bound in a +large volume with the first two divisions. There then only remained to +revise the book and write a preface. In addition to the prose argument +I had in each chapter one or more allegories; because while it is easy +clearly to express abstract thoughts in argumentative prose, whatever +emotion those thoughts awaken I have not felt myself able adequately +to express except in the other form. (The allegory “Three Dreams in a +Desert” which I published about nineteen years ago was taken from this +book; and I have felt that perhaps being taken from its context it was +not quite clear to every one.) I had also tried throughout to illustrate +the subject with exactly those particular facts in the animal and human +world, with which I had come into personal contact and which had helped +to form the conclusions which were given; as it has always seemed to +me that in dealing with sociological questions a knowledge of the exact +manner in which any writer has arrived at his view is necessary in +measuring its worth. The work had occupied a large part of my life, and +I had hoped, whatever its deficiencies, that it might at least stimulate +other minds, perhaps more happily situated, to an enlarged study of the +question. + +In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was +ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of +two months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I +arrived at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but Martial Law had +already been proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to +allow my return to my home in Johannesburg and sent me to the Colony; +nor was I allowed to send any communication through, to any person, who +might have extended some care over my possessions. Some eight months +after, when the British troops had taken and entered Johannesburg; a +friend, who, being on the British side, had been allowed to go up, wrote +me that he had visited my house and found it looted, that all that was +of value had been taken or destroyed; that my desk had been forced open +and broken up, and its contents set on fire in the centre of the room, +so that the roof was blackened over the pile of burnt papers. He added +that there was little in the remnants of paper of which I could make any +use, but that he had gathered and stored the fragments till such time +as I might be allowed to come and see them. I thus knew my book had been +destroyed. + +Some months later in the war when confined in a little up-country +hamlet, many hundreds of miles from the coast and from Johannesburg; +with the brunt of the war at that time breaking around us, de Wet having +crossed the Orange River and being said to have been within a few miles +of us, and the British columns moving hither and thither, I was living +in a little house on the outskirts of the village, in a single room, +with a stretcher and two packing-cases as furniture, and with my little +dog for company. Thirty-six armed African natives were set to guard +night and day at the doors and windows of the house; and I was only +allowed to go out during certain hours in the middle of the day to fetch +water from the fountain, or to buy what I needed, and I was allowed to +receive no books, newspapers or magazines. A high barbed wire fence, +guarded by armed natives, surrounded the village, through which it would +have been death to try to escape. All day the pompoms from the armoured +trains, that paraded on the railway line nine miles distant, could be +heard at intervals; and at night the talk of the armed natives as they +pressed against the windows, and the tramp of the watch with the endless +“Who goes there?” as they walked round the wire fence through the long, +dark hours, when one was allowed neither to light a candle nor strike +a match. When a conflict was fought near by, the dying and wounded were +brought in; three men belonging to our little village were led out to +execution; death sentences were read in our little market-place; our +prison was filled with our fellow-countrymen; and we did not know +from hour to hour what the next would bring to any of us. Under these +conditions I felt it necessary I should resolutely force my thought at +times from the horror of the world around me, to dwell on some abstract +question, and it was under these circumstances that this little book was +written; being a remembrance mainly drawn from one chapter of the larger +book. The armed native guards standing against the uncurtained windows, +it was impossible to open the shutters, and the room was therefore +always so dark that even the physical act of writing was difficult. + +A year and a half after, when the war was over and peace had been +proclaimed for above four months, I with difficulty obtained a permit to +visit the Transvaal. I found among the burnt fragments the leathern back +of my book intact, the front half of the leaves burnt away; the back +half of the leaves next to the cover still all there, but so browned and +scorched with the flames that they broke as you touched them; and there +was nothing left but to destroy it. I even then felt a hope that at some +future time I might yet rewrite the entire book. But life is short; and +I have found that not only shall I never rewrite the book, but I +shall not have the health even to fill out and harmonise this little +remembrance from it. + +It is therefore with considerable pain that I give out this fragment. I +am only comforted by the thought that perhaps, all sincere and earnest +search after truth, even where it fails to reach it, yet, often comes +so near to it, that other minds more happily situated may be led, by +pointing out its very limitations and errors, to obtain a larger view. + +I have dared to give this long and very uninteresting explanation, not +at all because I have wished by giving the conditions under which this +little book was written, to make excuse for any repetitions or lack of +literary perfection, for these things matter very little; but, because +(and this matters very much) it might lead to misconception on the +subject-matter itself if its genesis were not exactly understood. + +Not only is this book not a general view of the whole vast body +of phenomena connected with woman’s position; but it is not even a +bird’s-eye view of the whole question of woman’s relation to labour. + +In the original book the matter of the parasitism of woman filled only +one chapter out of twelve, and it was mainly from this chapter that this +book was drawn. The question of the parasitism of woman is, I think, +very vital, very important; it explains many phenomena which nothing +else explains; and it will be of increasing importance. But for the +moment there are other aspects of woman’s relation to labour practically +quite as pressing. In the larger book I had devoted one chapter entirely +to an examination of the work woman has done and still does in the +modern world, and the gigantic evils which arise from the fact that +her labour, especially domestic labour, often the most wearisome and +unending known to any section of the human race, is not adequately +recognised or recompensed. Especially on this point I have feared this +book might lead to a misconception, if by its great insistence on the +problem of sex parasitism, and the lighter dealing with other aspects, +it should lead to the impression that woman’s domestic labour at the +present day (something quite distinct from, though indirectly connected +with, the sexual relation between man and woman) should not be highly +and most highly recognised and recompensed. I believe it will be in the +future, and then when woman gives up her independent field of labour for +domestic or marital duty of any kind, she will not receive her share +of the earnings of the man as a more or less eleemosynary benefaction, +placing her in a position of subjection, but an equal share, as the fair +division, in an equal partnership. (It may be objected that where a man +and woman have valued each other sufficiently to select one another from +all other humans for a lifelong physical union, it is an impertinence +to suppose there could be any necessity to adjust economic relations. In +love there is no first nor last! And that the desire of each must be to +excel the other in service. That this should be so is true; that it is +so now, in the case of union between two perfectly morally developed +humans, is also true, and that this condition may in a distant future be +almost universal is certainly true. But dealing with this matter as a +practical question today, we have to consider not what should be, or +what may be, but what, given traditions and institutions of our +societies, is, today.) Especially I have feared that the points dealt +with in this little book, when taken apart from other aspects of the +question, might lead to the conception that it was intended to express +the thought, that it was possible or desirable that woman in addition to +her child-bearing should take from man his share in the support and care +of his offspring or of the woman who fulfilled with regard to himself +domestic duties of any kind. In that chapter in the original book +devoted to the consideration of man’s labour in connection with woman +and with his offspring more than one hundred pages were devoted to +illustrating how essential to the humanising and civilising of man, and +therefore of the whole race, was an increased sense of sexual and +paternal responsibility, and an increased justice towards woman as a +domestic labourer. In the last half of the same chapter I dealt at great +length with what seems to me an even more pressing practical sex +question at this moment--man’s attitude towards those women who are not +engaged in domestic labour; toward that vast and always increasing body +of women, who as modern conditions develop are thrown out into the +stream of modern economic life to sustain themselves and often others by +their own labour; and who yet are there bound hand and foot, not by the +intellectual or physical limitations of their nature, but by artificial +constrictions and conventions, the remnants of a past condition of +society. It is largely this maladjustment, which, deeply studied in all +its ramifications, will be found to lie as the taproot and central +source of the most terrible of the social diseases that afflict us. + +The fact that for equal work equally well performed by a man and by +a woman, it is ordained that the woman on the ground of her sex alone +shall receive a less recompense, is the nearest approach to a wilful +and unqualified “wrong” in the whole relation of woman to society today. +That males of enlightenment and equity can for an hour tolerate the +existence of this inequality has seemed to me always incomprehensible; +and it is only explainable when one regards it as a result of the +blinding effects of custom and habit. Personally, I have felt so +profoundly on this subject, that this, with one other point connected +with woman’s sexual relation to man, are the only matters connected with +woman’s position, in thinking of which I have always felt it necessary +almost fiercely to crush down indignation and to restrain it, if I would +maintain an impartiality of outlook. I should therefore much regret if +the light and passing manner in which this question has been touched on +in this little book made it seem of less vital importance than I hold +it. + +In the last chapter of the original book, the longest, and I believe the +most important, I dealt with the problems connected with marriage and +the personal relations of men and women in the modern world. In it I +tried to give expression to that which I hold to be a great truth, and +one on which I should not fear to challenge the verdict of long future +generations--that, the direction in which the endeavour of woman to +readjust herself to the new conditions of life is leading today, is +not towards a greater sexual laxity, or promiscuity, or to an increased +self-indulgence, but toward a higher appreciation of the sacredness of +all sex relations, and a clearer perception of the sex relation between +man and woman as the basis of human society, on whose integrity, beauty +and healthfulness depend the health and beauty of human life, as a +whole. Above all, that it will lead to a closer, more permanent, more +emotionally and intellectually complete and intimate relation between +the individual man and woman. And if in the present disco-ordinate +transitional stage of our social growth it is found necessary to +allow of readjustment by means of divorce, it will not be because +such readjustments will be regarded lightly, but rather, as when, in a +complex and delicate mechanism moved by a central spring, we allow +in the structure for the readjustment and regulation of that spring, +because on its absolute perfection of action depends the movement of the +whole mechanism. In the last pages of the book, I tried to express what +seems to me a most profound truth often overlooked--that as humanity +and human societies pass on slowly from their present barbarous and +semi-savage condition in matters of sex into a higher, it will be found +increasingly, that over and above its function in producing and sending +onward the physical stream of life (a function which humanity shares +with the most lowly animal and vegetable forms of life, and which even +by some noted thinkers of the present day seems to be regarded as its +only possible function,) that sex and the sexual relation between man +and woman have distinct aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual functions +and ends, apart entirely from physical reproduction. That noble as is +the function of the physical reproduction of humanity by the union of +man and woman, rightly viewed, that union has in it latent, other, and +even higher forms, of creative energy and life-dispensing power, and +that its history on earth has only begun. As the first wild rose when it +hung from its stem with its centre of stamens and pistils and its single +whorl of pale petals, had only begun its course, and was destined, as +the ages passed, to develop stamen upon stamen and petal upon petal, +till it assumed a hundred forms of joy and beauty. + +And, it would indeed almost seem, that, on the path toward the higher +development of sexual life on earth, as man has so often had to lead +in other paths, that here it is perhaps woman, by reason of those very +sexual conditions which in the past have crushed and trammelled her, who +is bound to lead the way, and man to follow. So that it may be at last, +that sexual love--that tired angel who through the ages has presided +over the march of humanity, with distraught eyes, and feather-shafts +broken, and wings drabbled in the mires of lust and greed, and golden +locks caked over with the dust of injustice and oppression--till those +looking at him have sometimes cried in terror, “He is the Evil and +not the Good of life!” and have sought, if it were not possible, to +exterminate him--shall yet, at last, bathed from the mire and dust of +ages in the streams of friendship and freedom, leap upwards, with white +wings spread, resplendent in the sunshine of a distant future--the +essentially Good and Beautiful of human existence. + +I have given this long and very wearisome explanation of the scope and +origin of this little book, because I feel that it might lead to grave +misunderstanding were it not understood how it came to be written. + +I have inscribed it to my friend, Lady Constance Lytton; not because +I think it worthy of her, nor yet because of the splendid part she +has played in the struggle of the women fighting today in England for +certain forms of freedom for all women. It is, if I may be allowed +without violating the sanctity of a close personal friendship so to +say, because she, with one or two other men and women I have known, have +embodied for me the highest ideal of human nature, in which intellectual +power and strength of will are combined with an infinite tenderness and +a wide human sympathy; a combination which, whether in the person of the +man or the woman, is essential to the existence of the fully rounded and +harmonised human creature; and which an English woman of genius summed +in one line when she cried in her invocation of her great French +sister:-- + +“Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man!” + +One word more I should like to add, as I may not again speak or write +on this subject. I should like to say to the men and women of the +generations which will come after us--“You will look back at us with +astonishment! You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished +so little; at the, to you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did +not take; at the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we +sat down passive; at the great truths staring us in the face, which we +failed to see; at the truths we grasped at, but could never quite +get our fingers round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so +little--but, what you will never know is how it was thinking of you and +for you, that we struggled as we did and accomplished the little which +we have done; that it was in the thought of your larger realisation and +fuller life, that we found consolation for the futilities of our own.” + +“What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me.” + +O.S. + + + +Chapter I. Parasitism. + +In that clamour which has arisen in the modern world, where now this, +and then that, is demanded for and by large bodies of modern women, he +who listens carefully may detect as a keynote, beneath all the clamour, +a demand which may be embodied in such a cry as this: Give us labour and +the training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves +alone, but for the race. + +If this demand be logically expanded, it will take such form as this: +Give us labour! For countless ages, for thousands, millions it may be, +we have laboured. When first man wandered, the naked, newly-erected +savage, and hunted and fought, we wandered with him: each step of +his was ours. Within our bodies we bore the race, on our shoulders we +carried it; we sought the roots and plants for its food; and, when man’s +barbed arrow or hook brought the game, our hands dressed it. Side by +side, the savage man and the savage woman, we wandered free together and +laboured free together. And we were contented! + +Then a change came. + +We ceased from our wanderings, and, camping upon one spot of earth, +again the labours of life were divided between us. While man went forth +to hunt, or to battle with the foe who would have dispossessed us of +all, we laboured on the land. We hoed the earth, we reaped the grain, +we shaped the dwellings, we wove the clothing, we modelled the earthen +vessels and drew the lines upon them, which were humanity’s first +attempt at domestic art; we studied the properties and uses of plants, +and our old women were the first physicians of the race, as, often, its +first priests and prophets. + +We fed the race at our breast, we bore it on our shoulders; through us +it was shaped, fed, and clothed. Labour more toilsome and unending than +that of man was ours; yet did we never cry out that it was too heavy for +us. While savage man lay in the sunshine on his skins, resting, that he +might be fitted for war or the chase, or while he shaped his weapons of +death, he ate and drank that which our hands had provided for him; and +while we knelt over our grindstone, or hoed in the fields, with one +child in our womb, perhaps, and one on our back, toiling till the +young body was old before its time--did we ever cry out that the labour +allotted to us was too hard for us? Did we not know that the woman who +threw down her burden was as a man who cast away his shield in battle--a +coward and a traitor to his race? Man fought--that was his work; we fed +and nurtured the race--that was ours. We knew that upon our labours, +even as upon man’s, depended the life and well-being of the people whom +we bore. We endured our toil, as man bore his wounds, silently; and we +were content. + +Then again a change came. + +Ages passed, and time was when it was no longer necessary that all men +should go to the hunt or the field of war; and when only one in five, +or one in ten, or but one in twenty, was needed continually for these +labours. Then our fellow-man, having no longer full occupation in his +old fields of labour, began to take his share in ours. He too began to +cultivate the field, to build the house, to grind the corn (or make +his male slaves do it); and the hoe, and the potter’s tools, and the +thatching-needle, and at last even the grindstones which we first had +picked up and smoothed to grind the food for our children, began to pass +from our hands into his. The old, sweet life of the open fields was ours +no more; we moved within the gates, where the time passes more slowly +and the world is sadder than in the air outside; but we had our own work +still, and were content. + +If, indeed, we might no longer grow the food for our people, we were +still its dressers; if we did not always plant and prepare the flax and +hemp, we still wove the garments for our race; if we did no longer raise +the house walls, the tapestries that covered them were the work of our +hands; we brewed the ale, and the simples which were used as medicines +we distilled and prescribed; and, close about our feet, from birth +to manhood, grew up the children whom we had borne; their voices +were always in our ears. At the doors of our houses we sat with our +spinning-wheels, and we looked out across the fields that were once ours +to labour in--and were contented. Lord’s wife, peasant’s, or burgher’s, +we all still had our work to do! + +A thousand years ago, had one gone to some great dame, questioning her +why she did not go out a-hunting or a-fighting, or enter the great hall +to dispense justice and confer upon the making of laws, she would have +answered: “Am I a fool that you put to me such questions? Have I not a +hundred maidens to keep at work at spinning-wheels and needles? With my +own hands daily do I not dispense bread to over a hundred folk? In the +great hall go and see the tapestries I with my maidens have created by +the labour of years, and which we shall labour over for twenty more, +that my children’s children may see recorded the great deeds of their +forefathers. In my store-room are there not salves and simples, that my +own hands have prepared for the healing of my household and the sick in +the country round? Ill would it go indeed, if when the folk came home +from war and the chase of wild beasts, weary or wounded, they found all +the womenfolk gone out a-hunting and a-fighting, and none there to dress +their wounds, or prepare their meat, or guide and rule the household! +Better far might my lord and his followers come and help us with our +work, than that we should go to help them! You are surely bereft of all +wit. What becomes of the country if the women forsake their toil?” + +And the burgher’s wife, asked why she did not go to labour in her +husband’s workshop, or away into the market-place, or go a-trading to +foreign countries, would certainly have answered: “I am too busy to +speak with such as you! The bread is in the oven (already I smell it +a-burning), the winter is coming on, and my children lack good woollen +hose and my husband needs a warm coat. I have six vats of ale all +a-brewing, and I have daughters whom I must teach to spin and sew, and +the babies are clinging round my knees. And you ask me why I do not go +abroad to seek for new labours! Godsooth! Would you have me to leave my +household to starve in summer and die of cold in winter, and my children +to go untrained, while I gad about to seek for other work? A man must +have his belly full and his back covered before all things in life. Who, +think you, would spin and bake and brew, and rear and train my babes, +if I went abroad? New labour, indeed, when the days are not long enough, +and I have to toil far into the night! I have no time to talk with +fools! Who will rear and shape the nation if I do not?” + +And the young maiden at the cottage door, beside her wheel, asked why +she was content and did not seek new fields of labour, would surely have +answered: “Go away, I have no time to listen to you. Do you not see that +I am spinning here that I too may have a home of my own? I am weaving +the linen garments that shall clothe my household in the long years to +come! I cannot marry till the chest upstairs be full. You cannot hear +it, but as I sit here alone, spinning, far off across the hum of my +spinning-wheel I hear the voices of my little unborn children calling to +me--‘O mother, mother, make haste, that we may be!’--and sometimes, when +I seem to be looking out across my wheel into the sunshine, it is the +blaze of my own fireside that I see, and the light shines on the faces +round it; and I spin on the faster and the steadier when I think of what +shall come. Do you ask me why I do not go out and labour in the fields +with the lad whom I have chosen? Is his work, then, indeed more needed +than mine for the raising of that home that shall be ours? Oh, very hard +I will labour, for him and for my children, in the long years to come. +But I cannot stop to talk to you now. Far off, over the hum of my +spinning-wheel, I hear the voices of my children calling, and I must +hurry on. Do you ask me why I do not seek for labour whose hands are +full to bursting? Who will give folk to the nation if I do not?” + +Such would have been our answer in Europe in the ages of the past, if +asked the question why we were contented with our field of labour and +sought no other. Man had his work; we had ours. We knew that we upbore +our world on our shoulders; and that through the labour of our hands it +was sustained and strengthened--and we were contented. + +But now, again a change has come. + +Something that is entirely new has entered into the field of human +labour, and left nothing as it was. + +In man’s fields of toil, change has accomplished, and is yet more +quickly accomplishing, itself. + +On lands where once fifty men and youths toiled with their cattle, today +one steam-plough, guided by but two pair of hands, passes swiftly; and +an automatic reaper in one day reaps and binds and prepares for the +garner the produce of fields it would have taken a hundred strong male +arms to harvest in the past. The iron tools and weapons, only one +of which it took an ancient father of our race long months of stern +exertion to extract from ore and bring to shape and temper, are now +poured forth by steam-driven machinery as a millpond pours forth its +water; and even in war, the male’s ancient and especial field of labour, +a complete reversal of the ancient order has taken place. Time was when +the size and strength of the muscles in a man’s legs and arms, and the +strength and size of his body, largely determined his fighting powers, +and an Achilles or a Richard Coeur de Lion, armed only with his spear +or battle-axe, made a host fly before him; today the puniest mannikin +behind a modern Maxim gun may mow down in perfect safety a phalanx of +heroes whose legs and arms and physical powers a Greek god might have +envied, but who, having not the modern machinery of war, fall powerless. +The day of the primary import to humanity of the strength in man’s +extensor and flexor muscles, whether in labours of war or of peace, is +gone by for ever; and the day of the all-importance of the culture and +activity of man’s brain and nerve has already come. + +The brain of one consumptive German chemist, who in his laboratory +compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of the modern +peoples than ten thousand soldierly legs and arms; and the man who +invents one new labour-saving machine may, through the cerebration of +a few days, have performed the labour it would otherwise have taken +hundreds of thousands of his lusty fellows decades to accomplish. + +Year by year, month by month, and almost hour by hour, this change is +increasingly showing itself in the field of the modern labour; and crude +muscular force, whether in man or beast, sinks continually in its value +in the world of human toil; while intellectual power, virility, and +activity, and that culture which leads to the mastery of the inanimate +forces of nature, to the invention of machinery, and to that delicate +manipulative skill often required in guiding it, becomes ever of greater +and greater importance to the race. Already today we tremble on the +verge of a discovery, which may come tomorrow or the next day, when, +through the attainment of a simple and cheap method of controlling +some widely diffused, everywhere accessible, natural force (such, for +instance, as the force of the great tidal wave) there will at once and +for ever pass away even that comparatively small value which still, in +our present stage of material civilisation, clings to the expenditure +of mere crude, mechanical, human energy; and the creature, however +physically powerful, who can merely pull, push, and lift, much after the +manner of a machine, will have no further value in the field of human +labour. + +Therefore, even today, we find that wherever that condition which we +call modern civilisation prevails, and in proportion as it tends to +prevail--wherever steam-power, electricity, or the forces of wind +and water, are compelled by man’s intellectual activity to act as the +motor-powers in the accomplishment of human toil, wherever the delicate +adaptions of scientifically constructed machinery are taking the place +of the simple manipulation of the human hand--there has arisen, all the +world over, a large body of males who find that their ancient fields of +labour have slipped or are slipping from them, and who discover that +the modern world has no place or need for them. At the gates of +our dockyards, in our streets, and in our fields, are to be found +everywhere, in proportion as modern civilisation is really dominant, +men whose bulk and mere animal strength would have made them as warriors +invaluable members of any primitive community, and who would have been +valuable even in any simpler civilisation than our own, as machines +of toil; but who, owing to lack of intellectual or delicate manual +training, have now no form of labour to offer society which it stands +really in need of, and who therefore tend to form our Great Male +Unemployed--a body which finds the only powers it possesses so little +needed by its fellows that, in return for its intensest physical labour, +it hardly earns the poorest sustenance. The material conditions of life +have been rapidly modified, and the man has not been modified with them; +machinery has largely filled his place in his old field of labour, and +he has found no new one. + +It is from these men, men who, viewed from the broad humanitarian +standpoint, are often of the most lovable and interesting type, and +who might in a simpler state of society, where physical force was the +dominating factor, have been the heroes, leaders, and chiefs of their +people, that there arises in the modern world the bitter cry of the male +unemployed: “Give us labour or we die!” (The problem of the unemployed +male is, of course, not nearly so modern as that of the unemployed +female. It may be said in England to have taken its rise in almost its +present form as early as the fifteenth century, when economic changes +began to sever the agricultural labourer from the land, and rob him of +his ancient forms of social toil. Still, in its most acute form, it may +be called a modern problem.) + +Yet it is only upon one, and a comparatively small, section of the +males of the modern civilised world that these changes in the material +conditions of life have told in such fashion as to take all useful +occupation from them and render them wholly or partly worthless to +society. If the modern man’s field of labour has contracted at one end +(the physical), at the other (the intellectual) it has immeasurably +expanded! If machinery and the command of inanimate motor-forces +have rendered of comparatively little value the male’s mere physical +motor-power, the demand upon his intellectual faculties, the call +for the expenditure of nervous energy, and the exercise of delicate +manipulative skill in the labour of human life, have immeasurably +increased. + +In a million new directions forms of honoured and remunerative social +labour are opening up before the feet of the modern man, which his +ancestors never dreamed of; and day by day they yet increase in +numbers and importance. The steamship, the hydraulic lift, the patent +road-maker, the railway-train, the electric tram-car, the steam-driven +mill, the Maxim gun and the torpedo boat, once made, may perform their +labours with the guidance and assistance of comparatively few hands; but +a whole army of men of science, engineers, clerks, and highly-trained +workmen is necessary for their invention, construction, and maintenance. +In the domains of art, of science, of literature, and above all in the +field of politics and government, an almost infinite extension has taken +place in the fields of male labour. Where in primitive times woman was +often the only builder, and patterns she daubed on her hut walls or +traced on her earthen vessels the only attempts at domestic art; and +where later but an individual here and there was required to design +a king’s palace or a god’s temple or to ornament it with statues or +paintings, today a mighty army of men, a million strong, is employed in +producing plastic art alone, both high and low, from the traceries on +wall-paper and the illustrations in penny journals, to the production +of the pictures and statues which adorn the national collections, and +a mighty new field of toil has opened before the anciently hunting and +fighting male. Where once one ancient witch-doctress may have been the +only creature in a whole district who studied the nature of herbs and +earths, or a solitary wizard experimenting on poisons was the only +individual in a whole territory interrogating nature; and where later, +a few score of alchemists and astrologers only were engaged in examining +the structure of substances, or the movement of planets, today thousands +of men in every civilised community are labouring to unravel the +mysteries of nature, and the practical chemist, the physician, the +anatomist, the engineer, the astronomer, the mathematician, the +electrician, form a mighty and always increasingly important army of +male labourers. Where once an isolated bard supplied a nation with its +literatures, or where later a few thousand priests and men of letters +wrote and transcribed for the few to read, today literature gives labour +to a multitude almost as countless as a swarm of locusts. From the +penny-a-liner to the artist and thinker, the demand for their labour +continually increases. Where one town-crier with stout legs and lusty +lungs was once all-sufficient to spread the town and country news, a +score of men now sit daily pen in hand, preparing the columns of the +morning’s paper, and far into the night a hundred compositors are +engaged in a labour which requires a higher culture of brain and finger +than most ancient kings and rulers possessed. Even in the labours of +war, the most brutal and primitive of the occupations lingering on into +civilised life from the savage state, the new demand for labour of an +intellectual kind is enormous. The invention, construction, and working +of one Krupp gun, though its mere discharge hardly demands more crude +muscular exertion than a savage expends in throwing his boomerang, yet +represents an infinitude of intellectual care and thought, far greater +than that which went to the shaping of all the weapons of a primitive +army. Above all, in the domain of politics and government, where once a +king or queen, aided by a handful of councillors, was alone practically +concerned in the labours of national guidance or legislation; today, +owing to the rapid means of intercommunication, printing, and the +consequent diffusion of political and social information throughout a +territory, it has become possible, for the first time, for all adults +in a large community to keep themselves closely informed on all national +affairs; and in every highly-civilised state the ordinary male has been +almost compelled to take his share, however small, in the duties and +labours of legislation and government. Thus there has opened before the +mass of men a vast new sphere of labour undreamed of by their ancestors. +In every direction the change which material civilisation has wrought, +while it has militated against that comparatively small section of males +who have nothing to offer society but the expenditure of their untrained +muscular energy (inflicting much and often completely unmerited +suffering upon them), has immeasurably extended the field of male labour +as a whole. Never before in the history of the earth has the man’s field +of remunerative toil been so wide, so interesting, so complex, and in +its results so all-important to society; never before has the male sex, +taken as a whole, been so fully and strenuously employed. + +So much is this the case, that, exactly as in the earlier conditions of +society an excessive and almost crushing amount of the most important +physical labour generally devolved upon the female, so under modern +civilised conditions among the wealthier and fully civilised classes, +an unduly excessive share of labour tends to devolve upon the male. That +almost entirely modern, morbid condition, affecting brain and nervous +system, and shortening the lives of thousands in modern civilised +societies, which is vulgarly known as “overwork” or “nervous breakdown,” + is but one evidence of the even excessive share of mental toil devolving +upon the modern male of the cultured classes, who, in addition to +maintaining himself, has frequently dependent upon him a larger or +smaller number of entirely parasitic females. But, whatever the result +of the changes of modern civilisation may be with regard to the male, +he certainly cannot complain that they have as a whole robbed him of +his fields of labour, diminished his share in the conduct of life, or +reduced him to a condition of morbid inactivity. + +In our woman’s field of labour, matters have tended to shape themselves +wholly otherwise! The changes which have taken place during the last +centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term “modern +civilisation,” have tended to rob woman, not merely in part but almost +wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and +social labour; and, where there has not been a determined and conscious +resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to +her new and compensatory fields. + +It is this fact which constitutes our modern “Woman’s Labour Problem.” + +Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings +steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often +those of men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no +longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our peoples. + +Our hoes and our grindstones passed from us long ago, when the ploughman +and the miller took our place; but for a time we kept fast possession of +the kneading-trough and the brewing-vat. Today, steam often shapes our +bread, and the loaves are set down at our very door--it may be by a +man-driven motor-car! The history of our household drinks we know no +longer; we merely see them set before us at our tables. Day by day +machine-prepared and factory-produced viands take a larger and larger +place in the dietary of rich and poor, till the working man’s wife +places before her household little that is of her own preparation; while +among the wealthier classes, so far has domestic change gone that men +are not unfrequently found labouring in our houses and kitchens, and +even standing behind our chairs ready to do all but actually place the +morsels of food between our feminine lips. The army of rosy milkmaids +has passed away for ever, to give place to the cream-separator and the, +largely, male-and-machinery manipulated butter pat. In every direction +the ancient saw, that it was exclusively the woman’s sphere to prepare +the viands for her household, has become, in proportion as civilisation +has perfected itself, an antiquated lie. + +Even the minor domestic operations are tending to pass out of the circle +of woman’s labour. In modern cities our carpets are beaten, our windows +cleaned, our floors polished, by machinery, or extra domestic, and often +male labour. Change has gone much farther than to the mere taking +from us of the preparation of the materials from which the clothing is +formed. Already the domestic sewing-machine, which has supplanted almost +entirely the ancient needle, begins to become antiquated, and a thousand +machines driven in factories by central engines are supplying not only +the husband and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of +clothing from vest to jacket; while among the wealthy classes, the +male dress-designer with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers +is helping finally to explode the ancient myth, that it is woman’s +exclusive sphere, and a part of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the +garments she or her household wear. + +Year by year, day by day, there is a silently working but determined +tendency for the sphere of woman’s domestic labours to contract itself; +and the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex +condition which we term “modern civilisation” is advanced. + +It manifests itself more in England and America than in Italy and Spain, +more in great cities than in country places, more among the wealthier +classes than the poorer, and is an unfailing indication of advancing +modern civilisation. (There is, indeed, often something pathetic in the +attitude of many a good old mother of the race, who having survived, +here and there, into the heart of our modern civilisation, is sorely +puzzled by the change in woman’s duties and obligations. She may be +found looking into the eyes of some ancient crone, who, like herself, +has survived from a previous state of civilisation, seeking there a +confirmation of a view of life of which a troublous doubt has crept +even into her own soul. “I,” she cries, “always cured my own hams, and +knitted my own socks, and made up all the linen by hand. We always did +it when we were girls--but now my daughters object!” And her old +crone answers her? “Yes, we did it; it’s the right thing; but it’s so +expensive. It’s so much cheaper to buy things ready made!” And they +shake their heads and go their ways, feeling that the world is strangely +out of joint when duty seems no more duty. Such women are, in truth, +like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her ducklings to +the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is left but +baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to it, and +walks about with flapping wings and anxious quack, trying to induce them +to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far off +the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up +to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that +is growing up beside it; and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on +the baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And +they leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to +seek for new pastures--perhaps to lose themselves upon the way?--perhaps +to find them? To the old mother one is inclined to say, “Ah, good old +mother duck, can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the +water back into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter +when it was there, but it has gone for ever; and, would you and yours +swim again, it must be in other waters.” New machinery, new duties.) + +But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women’s material +domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient +field of labour. + +Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult +years were reached. Hers was the training and influence which shaped +them. From the moment when the infant first lay on her breast, till her +daughters left her for marriage and her sons went to take share in man’s +labour, they were continually under the mother’s influence. Today, +so complex have become even the technical and simpler branches of +education, so mighty and inexorable are the demands which modern +civilisation makes for specialised instruction and training for all +individuals who are to survive and retain their usefulness under modern +conditions, that, from the earliest years of its life, the child is of +necessity largely removed from the hands of the mother, and placed +in those of the specialised instructor. Among the wealthier classes, +scarcely is the infant born when it passes into the hands of the trained +nurse, and from hers on into the hands of the qualified teacher; till, +at nine or ten, the son in certain countries often leaves his home for +ever for the public school, to pass on to the college and university; +while the daughter, in the hands of trained instructors and dependents, +owes in the majority of cases hardly more of her education or formation +to maternal toil. While even among our poorer classes, the infant +school, and the public school; and later on the necessity for manual +training, takes the son and often the daughter as completely, and always +increasingly as civilisation advances, from the mother’s control. So +marked has this change in woman’s ancient field of labour become, that a +woman of almost any class may have borne many children and yet in early +middle age be found sitting alone in an empty house, all her offspring +gone from her to receive training and instruction at the hands of +others. The ancient statement that the training and education of her +offspring is exclusively the duty of the mother, however true it +may have been with regard to a remote past, has become an absolute +misstatement; and the woman who should at the present day insist on +entirely educating her own offspring would, in nine cases out of ten, +inflict an irreparable injury on them, because she is incompetent. + +But, if possible, yet more deeply and radically have the changes of +modern civilisation touched our ancient field of labour in another +direction--in that very portion of the field of human labour which is +peculiarly and organically ours, and which can never be wholly taken +from us. Here the shrinkage has been larger than in any other direction, +and touches us as women more vitally. + +Time was, and still is, among almost all primitive and savage folk, when +the first and all-important duty of the female to her society was +to bear, to bear much, and to bear unceasingly! On her adequate and +persistent performance of this passive form of labour, and of her +successful feeding of her young from her own breast, and rearing it, +depended, not merely the welfare, but often the very existence, of +her tribe or nation. Where, as is the case among almost all barbarous +peoples, the rate of infant mortality is high; where the unceasing +casualties resulting from war, the chase, and acts of personal violence +tend continually to reduce the number of adult males; where, surgical +knowledge being still in its infancy, most wounds are fatal; where, +above all, recurrent pestilence and famine, unfailing if of irregular +recurrence, decimated the people, it has been all important that woman +should employ her creative power to its very uttermost limits if the +race were not at once to dwindle and die out. “May thy wife’s womb never +cease from bearing,” is still today the highest expression of goodwill +on the part of a native African chief to his departing guest. For, not +only does the prolific woman in the primitive state contribute to the +wealth and strength of her nation as a whole, but to that of her own +male companion and of her family. Where the social conditions of life +are so simple that, in addition to bearing and suckling the child, it +is reared and nourished through childhood almost entirely through the +labour and care of the mother, requiring no expenditure of tribal +or family wealth on its training or education, its value as an adult +enormously outweighs, both to the state and the male, the trouble and +expense of rearing it, which falls almost entirely on the individual +woman who bears it. The man who has twenty children to become warriors +and labourers is by so much the richer and the more powerful than he who +has but one; while the state whose women are prolific and labour for and +rear their children stands so far insured against destruction. Incessant +and persistent child-bearing is thus truly the highest duty and the most +socially esteemed occupation of the primitive woman, equalling fully in +social importance the labour of the man as hunter and warrior. + +Even under those conditions of civilisation which have existed in the +centuries which divide primitive savagery from high civilisation, the +demand for continuous, unbroken child-bearing on the part of the woman +as her loftiest social duty has generally been hardly less imperious. +Throughout the Middle Ages of Europe, and down almost to our own day, +the rate of infant mortality was almost as large as in a savage state; +medical ignorance destroyed innumerable lives; antiseptic surgery being +unknown, serious wounds were still almost always fatal; in the low +state of sanitary science, plagues such as those which in the reign +of Justinian swept across the civilised world from India to Northern +Europe, well nigh depopulating the globe, or the Black Death of 1349, +which in England alone swept away more than half the population of the +island, were but extreme forms of the destruction of population going on +continually as the result of zymotic disease; while wars were not +merely far more common but, owing to the famines which almost invariably +followed them, were far more destructive to human life than in our own +days, and deaths by violence, whether at the hands of the state or as +the result of personal enmity, were of daily occurrence in all lands. +Under these conditions abstinence on the part of woman from incessant +child-bearing might have led to almost the same serious diminution or +even extinction of her people, as in the savage state; while the very +existence of her civilisation depended on the production of an immense +number of individuals as beasts of burden, without the expenditure +of whose crude muscular force in physical labour of agriculture and +manufacture those intermediate civilisations would, in the absence of +machinery, have been impossible. Twenty men had to be born, fed at the +breast, and reared by women to perform the crude brute labour which is +performed today by one small, well-adjusted steam crane; and the demand +for large masses of human creatures as mere reservoirs of motor force +for accomplishing the simplest processes was imperative. So strong, +indeed, was the consciousness of the importance to society of continuous +child-bearing on the part of woman, that as late as the middle of the +sixteenth century Martin Luther wrote: “If a woman becomes weary or at +last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, +she is there to do it;” and he doubtless gave expression, in a crude +and somewhat brutal form, to a conviction common to the bulk of his +contemporaries, both male and female. + +Today, this condition has almost completely reversed itself. + +The advance of science and the amelioration of the physical conditions +of life tend rapidly toward a diminution of human mortality. The infant +death-rate among the upper classes in modern civilisations has fallen +by more than one-half; while among poorer classes it is already, though +slowly, falling: the increased knowledge of the laws of sanitation has +made among all highly civilised peoples the depopulation by plague a +thing of the past, and the discoveries of the next twenty or thirty +years will probably do away for ever with the danger to man of zymotic +disease. Famines of the old desolating type have become an impossibility +where rapid means of transportation convey the superfluity of one land +to supply the lack of another; and war and deeds of violence, though +still lingering among us, have already become episodal in the lives of +nations as of individuals; while the vast advances in antiseptic surgery +have caused even the effects of wounds and dismemberments to become only +very partially fatal to human life. All these changes have tended to +diminish human mortality and protract human life; and they have today +already made it possible for a race not only to maintain its numbers, +but even to increase them, with a comparatively small expenditure of +woman’s vitality in the passive labour of child-bearing. + +But yet more seriously has the demand for woman’s labour as child-bearer +been diminished by change in another direction. + +Every mechanical invention which lessens the necessity for rough, +untrained, muscular, human labour, diminishes also the social demand +upon woman as the producer in large masses of such labourers. Already +throughout the modern civilised world we have reached a point at which +the social demand is not merely for human creatures in the bulk for use +as beasts of burden, but, rather, and only, for such human creatures as +shall be so trained and cultured as to be fitted for the performance of +the more complex duties of modern life. Not, now, merely for many men, +but, rather, for few men, and those few, well born and well instructed, +is the modern demand. And the woman who today merely produces twelve +children and suckles them, and then turns them loose on her society and +family, is regarded, and rightly so, as a curse and down draught, and +not the productive labourer, of her community. Indeed, so difficult and +expensive has become in the modern world the rearing and training of +even one individual, in a manner suited to fit it for coping with the +complexities and difficulties of civilised life, that, to the family as +well as to the state, unlimited fecundity on the part of the female has +already, in most cases, become irremediable evil; whether it be in the +case of the artisan, who at the cost of immense self-sacrifice must +support and train his children till their twelfth or fourteenth year, +if they are ever to become even skilled manual labourers, and who if his +family be large often sinks beneath the burden, allowing his offspring, +untaught and untrained, to become waste products of human life; or, in +that of the professional man, who by his mental toil is compelled to +support and educate, at immense expense, his sons till they are twenty +or older, and to sustain his daughters, often throughout their whole +lives should they not marry, and to whom a large family proves often no +less disastrous; while the state whose women produce recklessly large +masses of individuals in excess of those for whom they can provide +instruction and nourishment is a state, in so far, tending toward +deterioration. The commandment to the modern woman is now not simply +“Thou shalt bear,” but rather, “Thou shalt not bear in excess of thy +power to rear and train satisfactorily;” and the woman who should +today appear at the door of a workhouse or the tribunal of the +poor-law guardians followed by her twelve infants, demanding honourable +sustenance for them and herself in return for the labour she had +undergone in producing them, would meet with but short shrift. And the +modern man who on his wedding-day should be greeted with the ancient +good wish, that he might become the father of twenty sons and twenty +daughters, would regard it as a malediction rather than a blessing. It +is certain that the time is now rapidly approaching when child-bearing +will be regarded rather as a lofty privilege, permissible only to +those who have shown their power rightly to train and provide for their +offspring, than a labour which in itself, and under whatever conditions +performed, is beneficial to society. (The difference between the +primitive and modern view on this matter is aptly and quaintly +illustrated by two incidents. Seeing a certain Bantu woman who appeared +better cared for, less hard worked, and happier than the mass of +her companions, we made inquiry, and found that she had two impotent +brothers; because of this she herself had not married, but had borne by +different men fourteen children, all of whom when grown she had given +to her brothers. “They are fond of me because I have given them so many +children, therefore I have not to work like the other women; and my +brothers give me plenty of mealies and milk,” she replied, complacently, +when questioned, “and our family will not die out.” And this person, +whose conduct was so emphatically anti-social on all sides when viewed +from the modern standpoint, was evidently regarded as pre-eminently of +value to her family and to society because of her mere fecundity. On the +other hand, a few weeks back appeared an account in the London papers +of an individual who, taken up at the East End for some brutal offence, +blubbered out in court that she was the mother of twenty children. +“You should be ashamed of yourself!” responded the magistrate; “a woman +capable of such conduct would be capable of doing anything!” and the +fine was remorselessly inflicted. Undoubtedly, if somewhat brutally, +the magistrate yet gave true voice to the modern view on the subject of +excessive and reckless child-bearing.) + +Further, owing partly to the diminished demand for child-bearing, rising +from the extreme difficulty and expense of rearing and education, and +to many other complex social causes, to which we shall return later, +millions of women in our modern societies are so placed as to be +absolutely compelled to go through life not merely childless, but +without sex relationship in any form whatever; while another mighty army +of women is reduced by the dislocations of our civilisation to accepting +sexual relationships which practically negate child-bearing, and whose +only product is physical and moral disease. + +Thus, it has come to pass that vast numbers of us are, by modern social +conditions, prohibited from child-bearing at all; and that even those +among us who are child-bearers are required, in proportion as the class +of race to which we belong stands high in the scale of civilisation, to +produce in most cases a limited number of offspring; so that even for +these of us, child-bearing and suckling, instead of filling the entire +circle of female life from the first appearance of puberty to the end of +middle age, becomes an episodal occupation, employing from three or four +to ten or twenty of the threescore-and-ten-years which are allotted to +human life. In such societies the statement (so profoundly true when +made with regard to most savage societies, and even largely true with +regard to those in the intermediate stages of civilisation) that the +main and continuous occupation of all women from puberty to age is the +bearing and suckling of children, and that this occupation must fully +satisfy all her needs for social labour and activity, becomes an +antiquated and unmitigated misstatement. + +Not only are millions of our women precluded from ever bearing a child, +but for those of us who do bear the demand is ever increasingly in +civilised societies coupled with the condition that if we would act +socially we must restrict our powers. (As regards modern civilised +nations, we find that those whose birthrate is the highest per woman are +by no means the happiest, most enlightened, or powerful; nor do we even +find that the population always increases in proportion to the births. +France, which in many respects leads in the van of civilisation, has +one of the lowest birthrates per woman in Europe; and among the free and +enlightened population of Switzerland and Scandinavia the birthrate is +often exceedingly low; while Ireland, one of the most unhappy and weak +of European nations, had long one of the highest birthrates, without +any proportional increase in population or power. With regard to the +different classes in one community, the same effect is observable. The +birthrate per woman is higher among the lowest and most ignorant classes +in the back slums of our great cities, than among the women of the upper +and cultured classes, mainly because the age at which marriages are +contracted always tends to become higher as the culture and intelligence +of individuals rises, but also because of the regulation of the number +of births after marriage. Yet the number of children reared to adult +years among the more intelligent classes probably equals or exceeds +those of the lowest, owing to the high rate of infant mortality where +births are excessive.) + +Looking round, then, with the uttermost impartiality we can command, +on the entire field of woman’s ancient and traditional labours, we find +that fully three-fourths of it have shrunk away for ever, and that the +remaining fourth still tends to shrink. + +It is this great fact, so often and so completely overlooked, which lies +as the propelling force behind that vast and restless “Woman’s Movement” + which marks our day. It is this fact, whether clearly and intellectually +grasped, or, as is more often the case, vaguely and painfully felt, +which awakes in the hearts of the ablest modern European women their +passionate, and at times it would seem almost incoherent, cry for new +forms of labour and new fields for the exercise of their powers. + +Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this: We do not ask that +the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life +flow backward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning-wheels be again +resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old +grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake +himself entirely to his ancient province of war and the chase, leaving +to us all domestic and civil labour. We do not even demand that society +shall immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a +child-bearer (deep and over-mastering as lies the hunger for motherhood +in every virile woman’s heart!); neither do we demand that the children +whom we bear shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. +This, we know, cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone +for ever; no will of man can recall them; but this is our demand: We +demand that, in that strange new world that is arising alike upon +the man and the woman, where nothing is as it was, and all things are +assuming new shapes and relations, that in this new world we also shall +have our share of honoured and socially useful human toil, our full +half of the labour of the Children of Woman. We demand nothing more than +this, and we will take nothing less. This is our “WOMAN’S RIGHT!” + + + +Chapter II. Parasitism (continued). + +Is it to be, that, in the future, machinery and the captive motor-forces +of nature are largely to take the place of human hand and foot in +the labour of clothing and feeding the nations; are these branches +of industry to be no longer domestic labours?--then, we demand in the +factory, the warehouse, and the field, wherever machinery has usurped +our ancient labour-ground, that we also should have our place, as +guiders, controllers, and possessors. Is child-bearing to become the +labour of but a portion of our sex?--then we demand for those among +us who are allowed to take no share in it, compensatory and equally +honourable and important fields of social toil. Is the training of +human creatures to become a yet more and more onerous and laborious +occupation, their education and culture to become increasingly a high +art, complex and scientific?--if so, then, we demand that high and +complex culture and training which shall fit us for instructing the race +which we bring into the world. Is the demand for child-bearing to +become so diminished that, even in the lives of those among us who are +child-bearers, it shall fill no more than half a dozen years out of the +three-score-and-ten of human life?--then we demand that an additional +outlet be ours which shall fill up with dignity and value the tale +of the years not so employed. Is intellectual labour to take ever and +increasingly the place of crude muscular exertion in the labour of +life?--then we demand for ourselves that culture and the freedom +of action which alone can yield us the knowledge of life and the +intellectual vigour and strength which will enable us to undertake the +same share of mental which we have borne in the past in physical labours +of life. Are the rulers of the race to be no more its kings and queens, +but the mass of the peoples?--then we, one-half of the nations, demand +our full queens’ share in the duties and labours of government and +legislation. Slowly but determinately, as the old fields of labour close +up and are submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the new. + +We make this demand, not for our own sakes alone, but for the succour of +the race. + +A horseman, riding along on a dark night in an unknown land, may chance +to feel his horse start beneath him; rearing, it may almost hurl him to +the earth: in the darkness he may curse his beast, and believe its aim +is simply to cast him off, and free itself for ever of its burden. +But when the morning dawns and lights the hills and valleys he has +travelled, looking backward, he may perceive that the spot where his +beast reared, planting its feet into the earth, and where it refused to +move farther on the old road, was indeed the edge of a mighty precipice, +down which one step more would have precipitated both horse and rider. +And he may then see that it was an instinct wiser than his own which +lead his creature, though in the dark, to leap backward, seeking a +new path along which both might travel. (Is it not recorded that even +Balaam’s ass on which he rode saw the angel with flaming sword, but +Balaam saw it not?) + +In the confusion and darkness of the present, it may well seem to +some, that woman, in her desire to seek for new paths of labour and +employment, is guided only by an irresponsible impulse; or that she +seeks selfishly only her own good, at the cost of that of the race, +which she has so long and faithfully borne onward. But, when a clearer +future shall have arisen and the obscuring mists of the present have +been dissipated, may it not then be clearly manifest that not for +herself alone, but for her entire race, has woman sought her new paths? + +For let it be noted exactly what our position is, who today, as +women, are demanding new fields of labour and a reconstruction of our +relationship with life. + +It is often said that the labour problem before the modern woman and +that before the unemployed or partially or almost uselessly employed +male, are absolutely identical; and that therefore, when the male labour +problem of our age solves itself, that of the woman will of necessity +have met its solution also. + +This statement, with a certain specious semblance of truth, is yet, we +believe, radically and fundamentally false. It is true that both the +male and the female problems of our age have taken their rise largely +in the same rapid material changes which during the last centuries, +and more especially the last ninety years, have altered the face of the +human world. Both men and women have been robbed by those changes of +their ancient remunerative fields of social work: here the resemblance +stops. The male, from whom the changes of modern civilisation have taken +his ancient field of labour, has but one choice before him: he must find +new fields of labour, or he must perish. Society will not ultimately +support him in an absolutely quiescent and almost useless condition. +If he does not vigorously exert himself in some direction or other (the +direction may even be predatory) he must ultimately be annihilated. +Individual drones, both among the wealthiest and the poorest classes +(millionaires’ sons, dukes, or tramps), may in isolated cases be +preserved, and allowed to reproduce themselves without any exertion +or activity of mind or body, but a vast body of males who, having lost +their old forms of social employment, should refuse in any way to exert +themselves or seek for new, would at no great length of time become +extinct. There never has been, and as far as can be seen, there never +will be, a time when the majority of the males in any society will be +supported by the rest of the males in a condition of perfect mental and +physical inactivity. “Find labour or die,” is the choice ultimately put +before the human male today, as in the past; and this constitutes his +labour problem. (The nearest approach to complete parasitism on the part +of a vast body of males occurred, perhaps, in ancient Rome at the +time of the decay and downfall of the Empire, when the bulk of the +population, male as well as female, was fed on imported corn, wine, +and oil, and supplied even with entertainment, almost entirely without +exertion or labour of any kind; but this condition was of short +duration, and speedily contributed to the downfall of the diseased +Empire itself. Among the wealthy and so-called upper classes, the males +of various aristocracies have frequently tended to become completely +parasitic after a lapse of time, but such a condition has always been +met by a short and sharp remedy; and the class has fallen, or become +extinct. The condition of the males of the upper classes in France +before the Revolution affords an interesting illustration of this +point.) + +The labour of the man may not always be useful in the highest sense to +his society, or it may even be distinctly harmful and antisocial, as in +the case of the robber-barons of the Middle Ages, who lived by capturing +and despoiling all who passed by their castles; or as in the case of +the share speculators, stock-jobbers, ring-and-corner capitalists, and +monopolists of the present day, who feed upon the productive labours of +society without contributing anything to its welfare. But even males so +occupied are compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a +low intelligence in their callings; and, however injurious to their +societies, they run no personal risk of handing down effete and +enervated constitutions to their race. Whether beneficially or +unbeneficially, the human male must, generally speaking, employ his +intellect, or his muscle, or die. + +The position of the unemployed modern female is one wholly different. +The choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labour slip +from her, is not generally or often at the present day the choice +between finding new fields of labour, or death; but one far more serious +in its ultimate reaction on humanity as a whole--it is the choice +between finding new forms of labour or sinking slowly into a condition +of more or less complete and passive sex-parasitism! (It is not without +profound interest to note the varying phenomena of sex-parasitism as +they present themselves in the animal world, both in the male and in the +female form. Though among the greater number of species in the animal +world the female form is larger and more powerful rather than the male +(e.g., among birds of prey, such as eagles, falcons, vultures, &c., and +among fishes, insects, &c.), yet sex-parasitism appears among both sex +forms. In certain sea-creatures, for example, the female carries about +in the folds of her covering three or four minute and quite inactive +males, who are entirely passive and dependent upon her. Among termites, +on the other hand, the female has so far degenerated that she has +entirely lost the power of locomotion; she can no longer provide herself +or her offspring with nourishment, or defend or even clean herself; she +has become a mere passive, distended bag of eggs, without intelligence +or activity, she and her offspring existing through the exertions of +the workers of the community. Among other insects, such, for example, as +certain ticks, another form of female parasitism prevails, and while the +male remains a complex, highly active, and winded creature, the female, +fastening herself by the head into the flesh of some living animal +and sucking its blood, has lost wings and all activity, and power of +locomotion; having become a mere distended bladder, which when filled +with eggs bursts and ends a parasitic existence which has hardly been +life. It is not impossible, and it appears, indeed, highly probable, +that it has been this degeneration and parasitism on the part of the +female which has set its limitation to the evolution of ants, creatures +which, having reached a point of mental development in some respects +almost as high as that of man, have yet become curiously and immovably +arrested. The whole question of sex-parasitism among the lower animals +is one throwing suggestive and instructive side-lights on human social +problems, but is too extensive to be here entered on.) + +Again and again in the history of the past, when among human creatures +a certain stage of material civilisation has been reached, a curious +tendency has manifested itself for the human female to become more +or less parasitic; social conditions tend to rob her of all forms +of active, conscious, social labour, and to reduce her, like the +field-tick, to the passive exercise of her sex functions alone. And the +result of this parasitism has invariably been the decay in vitality and +intelligence of the female, followed after a longer or shorter period by +that of her male descendants and her entire society. + +Nevertheless, in the history of the past the dangers of the +sex-parasitism have never threatened more than a small section of the +females of the human race, those exclusively of some comparatively +small dominant race or class; the mass of women beneath them being +still compelled to assume many forms of strenuous activity. It is at +the present day, and under the peculiar conditions of our modern +civilisation, that for the first time sex-parasitism has become a +danger, more or less remote, to the mass of civilised women, perhaps +ultimately to all. + +In the very early stages of human growth, the sexual parasitism and +degeneration of the female formed no possible source of social danger. +Where the conditions of life rendered it inevitable that all the labour +of a community should be performed by the members of that community for +themselves, without the assistance of slaves or machinery, the tendency +has always been rather to throw an excessive amount of social labour on +the female. Under no conditions, at no time, in no place, in the history +of the world have the males of any period, of any nation, or of any +class, shown the slightest inclination to allow their own females to +become inactive or parasitic, so long as the actual muscular labour +of feeding and clothing them would in that case have devolved upon +themselves! + +The parasitism of the human female becomes a possibility only when a +point in civilisation is reached (such as that which was attained in the +ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome, Persia, Assyria, India, and such +as today exists in many of the civilisations of the East, such as those +of China and Turkey), when, owing to the extensive employment of the +labour of slaves, or of subject races or classes, the dominant race or +class has become so liberally supplied with the material goods of life, +that mere physical toil on the part of its own female members has become +unnecessary. It is when this point has been reached, and never +before, that the symptoms of female parasitism have in the past almost +invariably tended to manifest themselves, and have become a social +danger. The males of the dominant class have almost always contrived to +absorb to themselves the new intellectual occupations, with the absence +of necessity for the old forms of physical toil made possible in their +societies; and the females of the dominant class or race, for whose +muscular labours there was now also no longer any need, not succeeding +in grasping or attaining to these new forms of labour, have sunk into a +state in which, performing no species of active social duty, they have +existed through the passive performance of sexual functions alone, with +how much or how little of discontent will now never be known, since no +literary record has been made by the woman of the past, of her desires +or sorrows. Then, in place of the active labouring woman, upholding +society by her toil, has come the effete wife, concubine, or prostitute, +clad in fine raiment, the work of others’ fingers; fed on luxurious +viands, the result of others’ toil, waited on and tended by the labour +of others. The need for her physical labour having gone, and mental +industry not having taken its place, she bedecked and scented her +person, or had it bedecked and scented for her, she lay upon her sofa, +or drove or was carried out in her vehicle, and, loaded with jewels, she +sought by dissipations and amusements to fill up the inordinate blank +left by the lack of productive activity. And as the hand whitened and +frame softened, till, at last, the very duties of motherhood, which were +all the constitution of her life left her, became distasteful, and, from +the instant when her infant came damp from her womb, it passed into the +hands of others, to be tended and reared by them; and from youth to age +her offspring often owed nothing to her personal toil. In many cases so +complete was her enervation, that at last the very joy of giving life, +the glory and beatitude of a virile womanhood, became distasteful; +and she sought to evade it, not because of its interference with more +imperious duties to those already born of her, or to her society, +but because her existence of inactivity had robbed her of all joy in +strenuous exertion and endurance in any form. Finely clad, tenderly +housed, life became for her merely the gratification of her own physical +and sexual appetites, and the appetites of the male, through the +stimulation of which she could maintain herself. And, whether as kept +wife, kept mistress, or prostitute, she contributed nothing to the +active and sustaining labours of her society. She had attained to the +full development of that type which, whether in modern Paris or New York +or London, or in ancient Greece, Assyria, or Rome, is essentially one in +its features, its nature, and its results. She was the “fine lady,” + the human female parasite--the most deadly microbe which can make its +appearance on the surface of any social organism. (The relation of +female parasitism generally, to the peculiar phenomenon of prostitution, +is fundamental. Prostitution can never be adequately dealt with, either +from the moral or the scientific standpoint, unless its relation to the +general phenomenon of female parasitism be fully recognised. It is the +failure to do this which leaves so painful a sense of abortion on the +mind, after listening to most modern utterances on the question, +whether made from the emotional platform of the moral reformer, or the +intellectual platform of the would-be scientist. We are left with a +feeling that the matter has been handled but not dealt with: that the +knife has not reached the core.) + +Wherever in the history of the past this type has reached its full +development and has comprised the bulk of the females belonging to any +dominant class or race, it has heralded its decay. In Assyria, Greece, +Rome, Persia, as in Turkey today, the same material conditions have +produced the same social disease among wealthy and dominant races; and +again and again when the nation so affected has come into contact +with nations more healthily constituted, this diseased condition has +contributed to its destruction. + +In ancient Greece, in its superb and virile youth, its womanhood was +richly and even heavily endowed with duties and occupations. Not the +mass of the woman alone, but the king’s wife and the prince’s daughter +do we find going to the well to bear water, cleansing the household +linen in the streams, feeding and doctoring their households, +manufacturing the clothing of their race, and performing even a share +of the highest social functions as priestesses and prophetesses. It was +from the bodies of such women as these that sprang that race of heroes, +thinkers, and artists who laid the foundations of Grecian greatness. +These females underlay their society as the solid and deeply buried +foundations underlay the more visible and ornate portions of a great +temple, making its structure and persistence possible. In Greece, after +a certain lapse of time, these virile labouring women in the upper +classes were to be found no more. The accumulated wealth of the dominant +race, gathered through the labour of slaves and subject people, had so +immensely increased that there was no longer a call for physical labour +on the part of the dominant womanhood; immured within the walls of their +houses as wives or mistresses, waited on by slaves and dependents, they +no longer sustained by their exertion either their own life or the life +of their people. The males absorbed the intellectual labours of life; +slaves and dependents the physical. For a moment, at the end of the +fifth and beginning of the fourth century, when the womanhood of +Greece had already internally decayed, there was indeed a brilliant +intellectual efflorescence among her males, like to the gorgeous colours +in the sunset sky when the sun is already sinking; but the heart +of Greece was already rotting and her vigour failing. Increasingly, +division and dissimilarity arose between male and female, as the male +advanced in culture and entered upon new fields of intellectual toil +while the female sank passively backward and lower in the scale of life, +and thus was made ultimately a chasm which even sexual love could not +bridge. The abnormal institution of avowed inter-male sexual relations +upon the highest plane was one, and the most serious result, of this +severance. The inevitable and invincible desire of all highly developed +human natures, to blend with their sexual relationships their highest +intellectual interests and sympathies, could find no satisfaction or +response in the relationship between the immured, comparatively ignorant +and helpless females of the upper classes, in Greece, and the brilliant, +cultured, and many-sided males who formed its dominant class in the +fifth and fourth centuries. Man turned towards man; and parenthood, the +divine gift of imparting human life, was severed from the loftiest and +profoundest phases of human emotion: Xanthippe fretted out her ignorant +and miserable little life between the walls of her house, and Socrates +lay in the Agora, discussing philosophy and morals with Alcibiades; +and the race decayed at its core. (See Jowett’s translation of Plato’s +“Banquet”; but for full light on this important question the entire +literature of Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. should be +studied.) Here and there an Aspasia, or earlier still a Sappho, burst +through the confining bonds of woman’s environment, and with the force +of irresistible genius broke triumphantly into new fields of action and +powerful mental activity, standing side by side with the male; but their +cases were exceptional. Had they, or such as they, been able to tread +down a pathway, along which the mass of Grecian women might have +followed them; had it been possible for the bulk of the women of the +dominant race in Greece at the end of the fifth century to rise from +their condition of supine inaction and ignorance and to have taken their +share in the intellectual labours and stern activities of their race, +Greece would never have fallen, as she fell at the end of the fourth +century, instantaneously and completely, as a rotten puff-ball falls in +at the touch of a healthy finger; first, before the briberies of Philip, +and then yet more completely before the arms of his yet more warlike +son, who was also the son of the fierce, virile, and indomitable +Olympia. (Like almost all men remarkable for either good or evil, +Alexander inherited from his mother his most notable qualities--his +courage, his intellectual activity, and an ambition indifferent to any +means that made for his own end. Fearless in her life, she fearlessly +met death “with a courage worthy of her rank and domineering character, +when her hour of retribution came”; and Alexander is incomprehensible +till we recognise him as rising from the womb of Olympia.) Nor could +she have been swept clean, a few hundred years later, from Thessaly to +Sparta, from Corinth to Ephesus, her temples destroyed, her effete women +captured by the hordes of the Goths--a people less skilfully armed +and less civilised than the descendants of the race of Pericles and +Leonidas, but who were a branch of that great Teutonic folk whose +monogamous domestic life was sound at the core, and whose fearless, +labouring, and resolute women yet bore for the men they followed to the +ends of the earth, what Spartan women once said they alone bore--men. + +In Rome, in the days of her virtue and vigour, the Roman matron laboured +mightily, and bore on her shoulders her full half of the social burden, +though her sphere of labour and influence was even somewhat smaller +than that of the Teutonic sisterhood whose descendants were finally to +supplant her own. From the vestal virgin to the matron, the Roman woman +in the days of the nation’s health and growth fulfilled lofty functions +and bore the whole weight of domestic toil. From the days of Lucretia, +the great Roman dame whom we find spinning with her handmaidens deep +into the night, and whose personal dignity was so dear to her that, +violated, she sought only death, to those of the mother of the Gracchi, +one of the last of the great line, we find everywhere, erect, labouring, +and resolute, the Roman woman who gave birth to the men who built up +Roman greatness. A few centuries later, and Rome also had reached that +dangerous spot in the order of social change which Greece had reached +centuries before her. Slave labour and the enjoyment of the unlimited +spoils of subject races had done away for ever with the demand for +physical labour on the part of the members of the dominant race. Then +came the period when the male still occupied himself with the duties +of war and government, of legislation and self-culture; but the Roman +matron had already ceased for ever from her toils. Decked in jewels and +fine clothing, brought at the cost of infinite human labour from the +ends of the earth, nourished on delicate victuals, prepared by others’ +hands, she sought now only with amusement to pass away a life that no +longer offered her the excitement and joy of active productive exertion. +She frequented theatres or baths, or reclined on her sofa, or drove in +her chariot; and like more modern counterparts, painted herself, wore +patches, affected an artistic walk, and a handshake with the elbow +raised and the fingers hanging down. Her children were reared by +dependents; and in the intellectual labour and government of her age +she took small part, and was fit to take none. There were not wanting +writers and thinkers who saw clearly the end to which the enervation of +the female was tending, and who were not sparing in their denunciations. +“Time was,” cries one Roman writer of that age, “when the matron turned +the spindle with the hand and kept at the same time the pot in her eye +that the pottage might not be singed, but now,” he adds bitterly, +“when the wife, loaded with jewels, reposes among pillows, or seeks the +dissipation of baths and theatres, all things go downward and the state +decays.” Yet neither he nor that large body of writers and thinkers who +saw the condition towards which the parasitism of woman was tending +to reduce society, preached any adequate remedy. (Indeed, must not +the protest and the remedy in all such cases, if they are to be of any +avail, take their rise within the diseased class itself?) + +Thoughtful men sighed over the present and yearned for the past, nor +seem to have perceived that it was irrevocably gone; that the Roman +lady who, with a hundred servants standing idle about her, should, in +imitation of her ancestress, have gone out with her pitcher on her head +to draw water from the well, while in all her own courtyards pipe-led +streams gushed forth, would have acted the part of the pretender; that +had she insisted on resuscitating her loom and had sat up all night +to spin, she could never have produced those fabrics which alone her +household demanded, and would have been but a puerile actor; that it was +not by attempting to return to the ancient and for ever closed fields of +toil, but by entering upon new, that she could alone serve her race +and retain her own dignity and virility. That not by bearing water and +weaving linen, but by so training and disciplining herself that she +should be fitted to bear her share in the labour necessary to the just +and wise guidance of a great empire, and be capable of training a race +of men adequate to exercise an enlightened, merciful, and beneficent +rule over the vast masses of subject people--that so, and so only, +could she fulfil her duty toward the new society about her, and bear its +burden together with man, as her ancestresses of bygone generations had +borne the burden of theirs. + +That in this direction, and this alone, lay the only possible remedy for +the evils of woman’s condition, was a conception apparently grasped +by none; and the female sank lower and lower, till the image of the +parasitic woman of Rome (with a rag of the old Roman intensity left +even in her degradation!)--seeking madly by pursuit of pleasure and +sensuality to fill the void left by the lack of honourable activity; +accepting lust in the place of love, ease in the place of exertion, and +an unlimited consumption in the place of production; too enervated at +last to care even to produce offspring, and shrinking from every form +of endurance--remains, even to the present day, the most perfect, and +therefore the most appalling, picture of the parasite female that earth +has produced--a picture only less terrible than it is pathetic. + +We recognise that it was inevitable that this womanhood--born it would +seem from its elevation to guide and enlighten a world, and in place +thereof feeding on it--should at last have given birth to a manhood as +effete as itself, and that both should in the end have been swept away +before the march of those Teutonic folk, whose women were virile and +could give birth to men; a folk among whom the woman received on the +morning of her marriage, from the man who was to be her companion +through life, no contemptible trinket to hang about her throat or limbs, +but a shield, a spear, a sword, and a yoke of oxen, while she bestowed +on him in return a suit of armour, in token that they two were +henceforth to be one in toil and in the facing of danger; that she too +should dare with him in war and suffer with him in peace; and of whom +another writer tells us, that their women not only bore the race and +fed it at their breasts without the help of others’ hands, but that they +undertook the whole management of house and lands, leaving the males +free for war and chase; of whom Suetonius tells us, that when Augustus +Caesar demanded hostages from a tribe, he took women, not men, because +he found by experience that the women were more regarded than men, and +of whom Strabo says, that so highly did the Germanic races value the +intellect of their women that they regarded them as inspired, and +entered into no war or great undertaking without their advice and +counsel; while among the Cimbrian women who accompanied their husbands +in the invasion of Italy were certain who marched barefooted in the +midst of the lines, distinguished by their white hair and milk-white +robes, and who were regarded as inspired, and of whom Florus, describing +an early Roman victory, says, “The conflict was not less fierce and +obstinate with the wives of the vanquished; in their carts and wagons +they formed a line of battle, and from their elevated situation, as from +so many turrets, annoyed the Romans with their poles and lances. (The +South African Boer woman after two thousand years appears not wholly to +have forgotten the ancestral tactics.) Their death was as glorious as +their martial spirit. Finding that all was lost, they strangled their +children, and either destroyed themselves in one scene of mutual +slaughter, or with the sashes that bound up their hair suspended +themselves by the neck to the boughs of trees or the tops of their +wagons.” It is of these women that Valerius Maximus says, that, “If the +gods on the day of battle had inspired the men with equal fortitude, +Marius would never have boasted of his Teutonic victory;” and of whom +Tacitus, speaking of those women who accompanied their husbands to war, +remarks, “These are the darling witnesses of his conduct, the applauders +of his valour, at once beloved and valued. The wounded seek their +mothers and their wives; undismayed at the sight, the women count each +honourable scar and suck the gushing blood. They are even hardy enough +to mix with the combatants, administering refreshment and exhorting them +to deeds of valour,” and adds moreover, that “To be contented with one +wife was peculiar to the Germans; while the woman was contented with one +husband, as with one life, one mind, one body.” + +It was inevitable that before the sons of women such as these, the sons +of the parasitic Roman should be swept from existence, as the offspring +of the caged canary would fall in conflict with the offspring of the +free. + +Again and again with wearisome reiteration, the same story repeats +itself. Among the Jews in the days of their health and growth, we find +their women bearing the major weight of agricultural and domestic toil, +full always of labour and care--from Rachel, whom Jacob met and loved +as she watered her father’s flocks, to Ruth, the ancestress of a line of +kings and heroes, whom her Boas noted labouring in the harvest-fields; +from Sarah, kneading and baking cakes for Abraham’s prophetic visitors, +to Miriam, prophetess and singer, and Deborah, who judging Israel +from beneath her palm-tree, “and the land had rest for forty years.” + Everywhere the ancient Jewish woman appears, an active sustaining power +among her people; and perhaps the noblest picture of the labouring +woman to be found in any literature is contained in the Jewish writings, +indited possibly at the very time when the labouring woman was for the +first time tending among a section of the Jews to become a thing of the +past; when already Solomon, with his seven hundred parasitic wives and +three hundred parasitic concubines, loomed large on the horizon of the +national life, to take the place of flock-tending Rachel and gleaning +Ruth, and to produce amid their palaces of cedar and gold, among them +all, no Joseph or David, but in the way of descendant only a Rehoboam, +under whose hand the kingdom was to totter to its fall. (The picture +of the labouring as opposed to the parasitic ideal of womanhood appears +under the heading, “The words of King Lemuel; the oracle which his +mother taught him.”) At risk of presenting the reader with that with +which he is already painfully familiar, we here transcribe the +passage; which, allowing for differences in material and intellectual +surroundings, paints also the ideal of the labouring womanhood of the +present and of the future:-- + + “Her price is far above rubies, + The heart of her husband trusteth in her, + And he shall have no lack of gain, + She doeth him good and not evil + All the days of her life, + She seeketh wool and flax, + And worketh willingly with her hands, + She is like the merchant ships; + She bringeth her food, from afar, + She riseth up while it is yet night + And giveth meat to her household, + And their task to her maidens, + She considereth a field, and buyeth it; + With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. + She girdeth her loins with strength, + And maketh strong her arms. + She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable; + Her lamp goeth not out by night, + She layeth her hands to the distaff, + And her hands hold the spindle. + She spreadeth out her hand to the poor: + Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, + She is not afraid of the snow for her household, + For all her household are clothed with scarlet. + She maketh herself carpets of tapestry; + Her clothing is fine and purple. + Her husband is known in the gates, + When he sitteth among the elders of the land, + She maketh linen garments and selleth them, + And delivereth girdles unto the merchant. + Strength and dignity are her clothing; + And she laugheth at the time to come. + She openeth her mouth with wisdom, + And the law of kindness is on her tongue, + She looketh well to the ways of her household, + And eateth not the bread of idleness. + Her children rise up and call her blessed, + Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, + Many daughters have done virtuously, + But thou excellest them all, + Give her the fruit of her hand, + And let her works praise her in the gate.” + +In the East today the same story has wearisomely written itself: in +China, where the present vitality and power of the most ancient of +existing civilisations may be measured accurately by the length of its +woman’s shoes; in Turkish harems, where one of the noblest dominant +Aryan races the world has yet produced, is being slowly suffocated in +the arms of a parasite womanhood, and might, indeed, along ago have been +obliterated, had not a certain virility and strength been continually +reinfused into it through the persons of purchased wives, who in early +childhood and youth had been themselves active labouring peasants. +Everywhere, in the past as in the present, the parasitism of the female +heralds the decay of a nation or class, and as invariably indicates +disease as the pustules of smallpox upon the skin indicate the existence +of a purulent virus in the system. + +We are, indeed, far from asserting that the civilisations of the past +which have decayed, have decayed alone through the parasitism of their +females. Vast, far-reaching social phenomena have invariably causes and +reactions immeasurably too complex to be summed up under one so simple a +term. Behind the phenomenon of female parasitism has always lain another +and yet larger social phenomenon; it has invariably been preceded, as we +have seen, by the subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, +either as slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the +excessive labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation +of unearned wealth in the hands of the dominant class or race. It has +invariably been by feeding on this wealth, the result of forced or +ill-paid labour, that the female of the dominant race or class has in +the past lost her activity and has come to exist purely through the +passive performance of her sexual functions. Without slaves or subject +classes to perform the crude physical labours of life and produce +superfluous wealth, the parasitism of the female would, in the past, +have been an impossibility. + +There is, therefore, a profound truth in that universal saw which states +that the decay of the great nations and civilisations of the past has +resulted from the enervation caused by excessive wealth and luxury; and +there is a further, and if possible more profound, truth underlying the +statement that their destruction has ultimately been the result of the +enervation of the entire race, male and female. + +But when we come further to inquire how, exactly, this process of decay +took place, we shall find that the part which the parasitism of the +female has played has been fundamental. The mere use of any of the +material products of labour, which we term wealth, can never in itself +produce that decay, physical or mental, which precedes the downfall of +great civilised nations. The eating of salmon at ten shillings a pound +can in itself no more debilitate and corrupt the moral, intellectual, +and physical constitution of the man consuming it, than it could +enervate his naked forefathers who speared it in their rivers for food; +the fact that an individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a +worm, can no more deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than +were it made of sheep’s wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces, +faring delicately, and clad in silks, and surrounded by the noblest +products of literature and plastic art, so those palaces, viands, +garments, and products of art were the result of their own labours, +could never be enervated by them. The debilitating effect of wealth +sets in at that point exactly (and never before) at which the supply of +material necessaries and comforts, and of aesthetic enjoyments, clogs +the individuality, causing it to rest satisfied in the mere passive +possession of the results of the labour of others, without feeling any +necessity or desire for further productive activity of its own. (Of the +other deleterious effects of unearned wealth on the individual or class +possessing it, such as its power of lessening human sympathy, &c., &c., +we do not now speak, as while ultimately and indirectly, undoubtedly, +tending to disintegrate a society, they do not necessarily and +immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point we are here +considering.) + +The exact material condition at which this point will be reached will +vary, not only with the race and the age, but with the individual. A +Marcus Aurelius in a palace of gold and marble was able to retain +his simplicity and virility as completely as though he had lived in a +cow-herd’s hut; while on the other hand, it is quite possible for the +wife of a savage chief who has but four slaves to bring her her corn +and milk and spread her skins in the sun, to become almost as purely +parasitic as the most delicately pampered female of fashion in ancient +Rome, or modern Paris, London, or New York; while the exact amount of +unearned material wealth which will emasculate individuals in the same +society, will vary exactly as their intellectual and moral fibre and +natural activity are strong or weak. (It is not uncommon in modern +societies to find women of a class relatively very moderately wealthy, +the wives and daughters of shopkeepers or professional men, who if their +male relations will supply them with a very limited amount of money +without exertion on their part, will become as completely parasitic and +useless as women with untold wealth at their command.) + +The debilitating effect of unlaboured-for wealth lies, then, not in the +nature of any material adjunct to life in itself, but in the power it +may possess of robbing the individual of all incentive to exertion, thus +destroying the intellectual, the physical, and finally, the moral fibre. + +In all the civilisations of the past examination will show that almost +invariably it has been the female who has tended first to reach this +point, and we think examination will show that it has almost invariably +been from the woman to the man that enervation and decay have spread. + +Why this should be so is obvious. Firstly, it is in the sphere of +domestic labour that slave or hired labour most easily and insidiously +penetrates. The force of blows or hireling gold can far more easily +supply labourers as the preparers of food and clothing, and even as the +rearers of children, than it can supply labourers fitted to be entrusted +with the toils of war and government, which have in the past been the +especial sphere of male toil. The Roman woman had for generations been +supplanted in the sphere of her domestic labours and in the toil of +rearing and educating her offspring, and had long become abjectly +parasitic, before the Roman male had been able to substitute the labour +of the hireling and barbarian for his own, in the army, and in the +drudgeries of governmental toil. + +Secondly, the female having one all-important though passive function +which cannot be taken from her, and which is peculiarly connected +with her own person, in the act of child-bearing, and her mere sexual +attributes being an object of desire and cupidity to the male, she is +liable in a peculiarly insidious and gradual manner to become dependent +on this one sexual function alone for her support. So much is this the +case, that even when she does not in any way perform this function there +is still a curious tendency for the kudos of the function still to hang +about her, and for her mere potentiality in the direction of a duty +which she may never fulfil, to be confused in her own estimation and +that of society with the actual fulfilment of that function. Under the +mighty aegis of the woman who bears and rears offspring and in other +directions labours greatly and actively for her race, creeps in +gradually and unnoticed the woman who does none of these things. From +the mighty labouring woman who bears human creatures to the full extent +of her power, rears her offspring unaided, and performs at the same +time severe social labour in other directions (and who is, undoubtedly, +wherever found, the most productive toiler known to the race); it is but +one step, though a long one, from this woman to the woman who produces +offspring freely but does not herself rear them, and performs no +compensatory social labour. While from this woman, again, to the one who +bears few or no children, but who, whether as a wife or mistress, lives +by the exercise of her sex function alone, the step is short. There +is but one step farther to the prostitute, who affects no form of +productive labour, and who, in place of life, is recognised as producing +disease and death, but who exists parasitically through her sexual +attribute. Enormous as is the distance between the women at the two +extremes of this series, and sharply opposed as their relation to the +world is, there is yet, in actual life, no sharp, clear, sudden-drawn +line dividing the women of the one type from those of the other. They +shade off into each other by delicate and in sensible degrees. And it +is down this inclined plane that the women of civilised races are +peculiarly tempted, unconsciously, to slip; from the noble height of +a condition of the most strenuous social activity, into a condition of +complete, helpless, and inactive parasitism, without being clearly aware +of the fact themselves, and without society’s becoming so--the woman +who has ceased to rear her own offspring, or who has ceased to bear +offspring at all, and who performs no other productive social function, +yet shields the fact from her own eyes by dwelling on the fact that she +is a woman, in whom the capacity is at least latent. (There is, indeed, +an interesting analogous tendency on the part of the parasitic male, +wherever found, to shield his true condition from his own eyes and those +of the world by playing at the ancient ancestral forms of male labour. +He is almost always found talking loudly of the protection he affords to +helpless females and to society, though he is in truth himself protected +through the exertion of soldiers, policemen, magistrates, and society +generally; and he is almost invariably fond of dangling a sword or +other weapon, and wearing some kind of uniform, for the assumption of +militarism without severe toil delights him. But it is in a degenerate +travesty of the ancient labour of hunting where, at terrible risk to +himself, and with endless fatigue, his ancestors supplied the race with +its meat and defended it from destruction by wild beasts) that he finds +his greatest satisfaction; it serves to render the degradation and +uselessness of his existence less obvious to himself and to others than +if he passed his life reclining in an armchair. + +On Yorkshire moors today may be seen walls of sod, behind which hide +certain human males, while hard-labouring men are employed from early +dawn in driving birds towards them. As the birds are driven up to him, +the hunter behind his wall raises his deadly weapon, and the bird, which +it had taken so much human labour to rear and provide, falls dead at his +feet; thereby greatly to the increase of the hunter’s glory, when, the +toils of the chase over, he returns to his city haunts to record his +bag. One might almost fancy one saw arise from the heathery turf the +shade of some ancient Teutonic ancestor, whose dust has long reposed +there, pointing a finger of scorn at his degenerate descendant, as he +leers out from behind the sod wall. During the the later Roman Empire, +Commodus, in the degenerate days of Rome, at great expense had wild +beasts brought from distant lands that he might have the glory of +slaying them in the Roman circus; and medals representing himself as +Hercules slaying the Nemean lion were struck at his orders. We are not +aware that any representation has yet been made in the region of plastic +art of the hero of the sod wall; but history repeats itself--and that +also may come. It is to be noted that these hunters are not youths, +but often ripely adult men, before whom all the lofty enjoyments and +employments possible to the male in modern life, lie open.) + +These peculiarities in her condition have in all civilised societies +laid the female more early and seriously open to the attacks of +parasitism than the male. And while the accumulation of wealth has +always been the antecedent condition, and the degeneracy and effeteness +of the male the final and obvious cause, of the decay of the great +dominant races of the past; yet, between these two has always lain, as a +great middle term, the parasitism of the female, without which the first +would have been inoperative and the last impossible. + +Not slavery, nor the most vast accumulations of wealth, could destroy +a nation by enervation, whose women remained active, virile, and +laborious. + +The conception which again and again appears to have haunted successive +societies, that it was a possibility for the human male to advance +in physical power and intellectual vigour, while his companion female +became stationary and inactive, taking no share in the labours of +society beyond the passive fulfilment of sexual functions, has always +been negated. It has ended as would end the experiment of a man +seeking to raise a breed of winning race-horses out of unexercised, +short-winded, knock-kneed mares. No, more disastrously! For while the +female animal transmits herself to her descendant only or mainly by +means of germinal inheritance, and through the influence she may +exert over it during gestation, the human female, by producing the +intellectual and moral atmosphere in which the early infant years +of life are passed, impresses herself far more indelibly on her +descendants. Only an able and labouring womanhood can permanently +produce an able and labouring manhood; only an effete and inactive male +can ultimately be produced by an effete and inactive womanhood. The +curled darling, scented and languid, with his drawl, his delicate +apparel, his devotion to the rarity and variety of his viands, whose +severest labour is the search after pleasure, and for whom even the +chase, which was for his remote ancestor an invigorating and manly toil +essential for the meat and life of his people, becomes a luxurious and +farcical amusement;--this male, whether found in the later Roman +Empire, the Turkish harem of today, or in our Northern civilisations, is +possible only because generations of parasitic women have preceded him. +More repulsive than the parasite female herself, because a yet further +product of decay, it is yet only the scent of his mother’s boudoir that +we smell in his hair. He is like to the bald patches and rotten wool on +the back of a scabby sheep; which indeed indicate that, deep beneath the +surface, a parasite insect is eating its way into the flesh, but which +are not so much the cause of disease, as its final manifestation. + +As we have said it is the power of the human female to impress +herself on her descendants, male and female, not only through germinal +inheritance, through influence during the period of gestation, but +above all by producing the mental atmosphere in which the impressionable +infant years of life are passed, which makes the condition of the +child-bearing female one of paramount interest of the race. It is this +fact which causes even prostitution (in many other respects the most +repulsive of all the forms of female parasitism which afflicts humanity) +to be, probably, not more adverse to the advance and even to the +conservation of a healthy and powerful society, than the parasitism +of its child-bearing women. For the prostitute, heavily as she weights +society for her support, returning disease and mental and emotional +disintegration for what she consumes, does not yet so immediately affect +the next generation as the kept wife, or kept mistress, who impresses +her effete image indelibly on the generations succeeding. (It cannot be +too often repeated that the woman who merely bears and brings a child +into the world, and then leaves it to be fed and reared by the hands +of another, has performed very much less than half of the labour of +producing adult humans; in such cases it is the nurse and not the mother +who is the most important labourer.) + +No man ever yet entered life farther than the length of one navel-cord +from the body of the woman who bore him. It is the woman who is the +final standard of the race, from which there can be no departure for any +distance for any length of time, in any direction: as her brain weakens, +weakens the man’s she bears; as her muscle softens, softens his; as she +decays, decays the people. + +Other causes may, and do, lead to the enervation and degeneration of a +class or race; the parasitism of its child-bearing women must. + +We, the European women of this age, stand today where again and again, +in the history of the past, women of other races have stood; but our +condition is yet more grave, and of wider import to humanity as a whole +than theirs ever was. Let us again consider more closely why this is so. + + + +Chapter III. Parasitism (continued). + +We have seen that, in the past, no such thing as the parasitism of the +entire body or large majority of the females inhabiting any territory +was possible. Beneath that body of women of the dominant class or race, +who did not labour either mentally or physically, there has always been +of necessity a far more vast body of females who not only performed the +crude physical toil essential to the existence of society before the +introduction of mechanical methods of production, but who were compelled +to labour the more intensely because there was a parasite class above +them to be maintained by their physical toil. The more the female +parasite flourished of old, in one class or race, the more certainly +all women of other classes or races were compelled to labour only too +excessively; and ultimately these females and their descendants were +apt to supplant the more enervated class or race. In the absence of +machinery and of a vast employment of the motor-forces of nature, +parasitism could only threaten a comparatively small section of any +community, and a minute section of the human race as a whole. Female +parasitism in the past resembled gout--a disease dangerous only to the +over-fed, pampered, and few, never to the population of any society as a +whole. + +At the present day, so enormous has been the advance made in the +substitution of mechanical force for crude, physical, human exertion +(mechanical force being employed today even in the shaping of +feeding-bottles and the creation of artificial foods as substitutes +for mother’s milk!), that it is now possible not only for a small and +wealthy section of women in each civilised community to be maintained +without performing any of the ancient, crude, physical labours of their +sex, and without depending on the slavery of, or any vast increase in +the labour of, other classes of females; but this condition has already +been reached, or is tending to be reached, by that large mass of women +in civilised societies, who form the intermediate class between poor +and rich. During the next fifty years, so rapid will undoubtedly be the +spread of the material conditions of civilisation, both in the societies +at present civilised and in the societies at present unpermeated by +our material civilisation, that the ancient forms of female, domestic, +physical labour of even the women of the poorest classes will be little +required, their place being taken, not by other females, but by always +increasingly perfected labour-saving machinery. + +Thus, female parasitism, which in the past threatened only a minute +section of earth’s women, under existing conditions threatens vast +masses, and may, under future conditions, threaten the entire body. + +If woman is content to leave to the male all labour in the new and +all-important fields which are rapidly opening before the human race; +if, as the old forms of domestic labour slip from her for ever +and evitably, she does not grasp the new, it is inevitable, that, +ultimately, not merely a class, but the whole bodies of females in +civilised societies, must sink into a state of more or less absolute +dependence on their sexual functions alone. (How real is this apparently +very remote danger is interestingly illustrated by a proposition gravely +made a few years ago by a man of note in England. He proposed that a +compulsory provision should be made for at least the women of the upper +and middle classes, by which they might be maintained through life +entirely without regard to any productive labour they might perform, +not even the passive labour of sexual reproduction being of necessity +required of them. That this proposal was received by the women striving +to reconstruct the relation of the modern woman to life without +acclamation and with scorn, may have surprised its maker; but with no +more reason than that man would have for feeling surprise who, seeing +a number of persons anxious to escape the infection of some contagious +disease, should propose as a cure to inoculate them all with it in its +most virulent form!) + +As new forms of natural force are mastered and mechanical appliances +perfected, it will be quite possible for the male half of all civilised +races (and therefore ultimately of all) to absorb the entire fields of +intellectual and highly trained manual labour; and it would be entirely +possible for the female half of the race, whether as prostitutes, as +kept mistresses, or as kept wives, to cease from all forms of active +toil, and, as the passive tools of sexual reproduction, or, more +decadently still, as the mere instruments of sexual indulgence, to sink +into a condition of complete and helpless sex-parasitism. + +Sex-parasitism, therefore, presents itself at the end of the nineteenth +century and beginning of the twentieth in a guise which it has never +before worn. We, the European women of the nineteenth and twentieth +centuries, stand therefore in a position the gravity and importance of +which was not equalled by that of any of our forerunners in the ancient +civilisation. As we master and rise above, or fall and are conquered by, +the difficulties of our position, so also will be the future, not merely +of our own class, or even of our own race alone, but also of those +vast masses who are following on in the wake of our civilisation. The +decision we are called on to make is a decision for the race; behind us +comes on the tread of incalculable millions of feet. + +There is thus no truth in the assertion so often made, even by +thoughtful persons, that the male labour question and the woman’s +question of our day are completely one, and that, would the women of +the European race of today but wait peacefully till the males alone had +solved their problem, they would find that their own had been solved at +the same time. + +Were the entire male labour problem of this age satisfactorily settled +tomorrow; were all the unemployed or uselessly employed males at both +ends of societies, whom the changes of modern civilisation have robbed +of their ancient forms of labour, so educated and trained that they were +perfectly fitted for the new conditions of life; and were the material +benefit and intellectual possibilities, which the substitution of +mechanical for human labour now makes possible to humanity, no longer +absorbed by the few but dispersed among the whole mass of males in +return for their trained labour, yet the woman’s problem might be +further from satisfactory solution than it is today; and, if it were +affected at all, might be affected for the worse. It is wholly untrue +that fifty pounds, or two thousand, earned by the male as the result of +his physical or mental toil, if part of it be spent by him in supporting +non-labouring females, whether as prostitutes, wives, or mistresses, is +the same thing to the female or to the race as though that sum had been +earned by her own exertion, either directly as wages or indirectly by +toiling for the man whose wages supported her. For the moment, truly, +the woman so tended lies softer and warmer than had she been compelled +to exert herself; ultimately, intellectually, morally, and even +physically, the difference in the effect upon her as an individual and +on the race is the difference between advance and degradation, between +life and death. The increased wealth of the male no more of necessity +benefits and raises the female upon whom he expends it, than the +increased wealth of his mistress necessarily benefits mentally or +physically a poodle because she can give him a down cushion in place of +one of feathers, and chicken in place of beef. The wealthier the males +of a society become, the greater the temptation, both to themselves and +to the females connected with them, to drift toward female parasitism. + +The readjustment of the position of the male worker, if it led to a +more equitable distribution of wealth among males, might indeed diminish +slightly the accompanying tendency to parasitism in the very wealthiest +female class; but it would, on the other hand, open up exactly those +conditions which make parasitism possible to millions of women today +leading healthy and active lives. (The fact cannot be too often dwelt +upon that parasitism is not connected with any definite amount of +wealth. Any sum supplied to an individual which will so far satisfy +him or her as to enable them to live without exertion may absolutely +parasitise them; while vast wealth unhealthy as its effects generally +tend to be) may, upon certain rare and noble natures, exert hardly any +enervating or deleterious influence. An amusing illustration of the +different points at which enervation is reached by different females +came under our own observation. The wife of an American millionaire +was visited by a woman, the daughter and also the widow of small +professional men. She stated that she was in need of both food and +clothing. The millionaire’s wife gave her a leg of mutton and two +valuable dresses. The woman proceeded to whine, though in vigorous +health, that she had no one to carry them home for her, and could +not think of carrying them herself. The American, the descendant of +generations of able, labouring, New England, Puritan women, tucked the +leg of mutton under one arm and the bundle of clothes under the other +and walked off down the city street towards the woman’s dwelling, +followed by the astonished pauper parasite. + +The most helpless case of female degeneration we ever came into contact +with was that of a daughter of a poor English officer on half-pay and +who had to exist on a few hundreds a year. This woman could neither +cook her own food nor make her own clothes, nor was she engaged in any +social, political, or intellectual or artistic labour. Though able to +dance for a night or play tennis for an afternoon, she was yet hardly +able to do her own hair or attire herself, and appeared absolutely to +have lost all power of compelling herself to do anything which was at +the moment fatiguing or displeasing, as all labour is apt to be, however +great its ultimate reward. In a life of twenty-eight years this +woman had probably not contributed one hour’s earnest toil, mental or +physical, to the increase of the sum total of productive human labour. +Surrounded with acres of cultivable land, she would possibly have +preferred to lie down and die of hunger rather than have cultivated half +an acre for food. This is an extreme case; but the ultimate effect of +parasitism is always a paralysis of the will and an inability to compel +oneself into any course of action for the moment unpleasurable and +exhaustive. + +That the two problems are not identical is shown, if indeed evidence +were needed, by the fact that those males most actively employed in +attempting to readjust the relations of the mass of labouring males to +the new conditions of life, are sometimes precisely those males who +are most bitterly opposed to woman in her attempt to readjust her +own position. Not even by the members of those professions, generally +regarded as the strongholds of obstructionism and prejudice, has a more +short-sighted opposition often been made to the attempts of woman to +enter new fields of labour, than have again and again been made by male +hand-workers, whether as isolated individuals or in their corporate +capacity as trade unions. They have, at least in some certain instances, +endeavoured to exclude women, not merely from new fields of intellectual +and social labour, but even from those ancient fields of textile +manufacture and handicraft, which have through all generations of the +past been woman’s. The patent and undeniable fact, that where the male +labour movement flourishes the woman movement also flourishes, rises +not from the fact that they are identical, but that the same healthy and +virile condition in a race or society gives rise to both. + +As two streams rising from one fountain-head and running a parallel +course through long reaches may yet remain wholly distinct, one finding +its way satisfactorily to the sea, while the other loses itself in sand +or becomes a stagnant marsh, so our modern male and female movements, +taking their rise from the same material conditions in modern +civilisation, and presenting endless and close analogies with one +another in their cause of development, yet remain fundamentally +distinct. By both movements the future of the race must be profoundly +modified for good or evil; both touch the race in a manner absolutely +vital; but both will have to be fought out on their own ground, +and independently: and it can be only by determined, conscious, and +persistent action on the part of woman that the solution of her own +labour problems will proceed co-extensively with that of the other. + +How distinct, though similar, is the underlying motive of the two +movements, is manifested most clearly by this fact, that, while the male +labour movement takes its rise mainly among the poor and hand-labouring +classes, where the material pressure of the modern conditions of life +fall heaviest, and where the danger of physical suffering and even +extinction under that pressure is most felt; the Woman Labour Movement +has taken its rise almost as exclusively among the wealthy, cultured, +and brain-labouring classes, where alone, at the present day, the +danger of enervation through non-employment, and of degeneration through +dependence on the sex function exists. The female labour movement of our +day is, in its ultimate essence, an endeavour on the part of a section +of the race to save itself from inactivity and degeneration, and this, +even at the immediate cost of most heavy loss in material comfort and +ease to the individuals composing it. The male labour movement +is, directly and in the first place, material; and, or at least +superficially, more or less self-seeking, though its ultimate reaction +on society by saving the poorer members from degradation and dependency +and want is undoubtedly wholly social and absolutely essential for +the health and continued development of the human race. In the Woman’s +Labour Movement of our day, which has essentially taken its rise among +women of the more cultured and wealthy classes, and which consists +mainly in a demand to have the doors leading to professional, political, +and highly skilled labour thrown open to them, the ultimate end can only +be attained at the cost of more or less intense, immediate, personal +suffering and renunciation, though eventually, if brought to a +satisfactory conclusion, it will undoubtedly tend to the material and +physical well-being of woman herself, as well as to that of her male +companions and descendants. + +The coming half-century will be a time of peculiar strain, as mankind +seeks rapidly to adjust moral ideals and social relationships and the +general ordering of life to the new and continually unfolding material +conditions. If these two great movements of our age, having this as +their object, can be brought into close harmony and co-operation, the +readjustment will be the sooner and more painlessly accomplished; but, +for the moment, the two movements alike in their origin and alike in +many of their methods of procedure, remain distinct. + +It is this fact, the consciousness on the part of the women taking their +share in the Woman’s Movement of our age, that their efforts are not, +and cannot be, of immediate advantage to themselves, but that they +almost of necessity and immediately lead to loss and renunciation, which +gives to this movement its very peculiar tone; setting it apart from the +large mass of economic movements, placing it rather in a line with those +vast religious developments which at the interval of ages have swept +across humanity, irresistibly modifying and reorganising it. + +It is the perception of this fact, that, not for herself, nor even for +fellow-women alone, but for the benefit of humanity at large, it is +necessary she should seek to readjust herself to life, which lends to +the modern woman’s most superficial and seemingly trivial attempts at +readjustment, a certain dignity and importance. + +It is this profound hidden conviction which removes from the sphere of +the ridiculous the attitude of even the feeblest woman who waves her +poor little “Woman’s rights” flag on the edge of a platform, and which +causes us to forgive even the passionate denunciations, not always +wisely thought out, in which she would represent the suffering and evils +of woman’s condition, as wrongs intentionally inflicted upon her, where +they are merely the inevitable results of ages of social movement. + +It is this over-shadowing consciousness of a large impersonal +obligation, which removes from the sphere of the contemptible and +insignificant even the action of the individual young girl, who leaves +a home of comfort or luxury for a city garret, where in solitude, and +under that stern pressure which is felt by all individuals in arms +against the trend of their environment, she seeks to acquire the +knowledge necessary for entering on a new form of labour. It is this +profound consciousness which makes not less than heroic the figure of +the little half-starved student, battling against gigantic odds to take +her place beside man in the fields of modern intellectual toil, and +which, whether she succeed or fail, makes her a landmark in the course +of our human evolution. It is this consciousness of large impersonal +ends to be attained, and to the attainment of which each individual is +bound to play her part, however small, which removes from the domain of +the unnecessary, and raises to importance, the action of each woman +who resists the tyranny of fashions in dress or bearing or custom which +impedes her in her strife towards the new adjustment. + +It is this consciousness which renders almost of solemn import the +efforts of the individual female after physical or mental self-culture +and expansion; this, which fills with a lofty enthusiasm the heart of +the young girl, who, it may be, in some solitary farm-house, in some +distant wild of Africa or America, deep into the night bends over her +books with the passion and fervour with which an early Christian may +have bent over the pages of his Scriptures; feeling that, it may be, she +fits herself by each increase of knowledge for she knows not what duties +towards the world, in the years to come. It is this consciousness of +great impersonal ends, to be brought, even if slowly and imperceptibly, +a little nearer by her action, which gives to many a woman strength +for renunciation, when she puts from her the lower type of sexual +relationship, even if bound up with all the external honour a legal bond +can confer, if it offers her only enervation and parasitism; and which +enables her often to accept poverty, toil, and sexual isolation (an +isolation even more terrible to the woman than to any male), and the +renunciation of motherhood, that crowning beatitude of the woman’s +existence, which, and which alone, fully compensates her for the organic +sufferings of womanhood--in the conviction that, by so doing, she makes +more possible a fuller and higher attainment of motherhood and wifehood +to the women who will follow her. It is this consciousness which makes +of solemn importance the knock of the humblest woman at the closed +door which shuts off a new field of labour, physical or mental: is she +convinced that, not for herself, but in the service of the whole race, +she knocks. + +It is this abiding consciousness of an end to be attained, reaching +beyond her personal life and individual interests, which constitutes the +religious element of the Woman’s Movement of our day, and binds with the +common bond of an impersonal enthusiasm into one solid body the women +of whatsoever race, class, and nation who are struggling after the +readjustment of woman to life. + +This it is also, which in spite of defects and failures on the part of +individuals, yet makes the body who these women compose, as a whole, one +of the most impressive and irresistible of modern forces. The private +soldier of the great victorious army is not always an imposing object as +he walks down the village street, cap on side of head and sword dangling +between his legs, nor is he always impressive even when he burnishes up +his accoutrements or cleans his pannikins; but it is of individuals +such as these that the great army is made, which tomorrow, when it is +gathered together, may shake the world with its tread. + +Possibly not one woman in ten, or even one woman in twenty thousand +among those taking part in this struggle, could draw up a clear and +succinct account of the causes which have led to the disco-ordination in +woman’s present position, or give a full account of the benefits to flow +from readjustment; as probably not one private soldier in an army of ten +or even of twenty thousand, though he is willing to give his life for +his land, would yet be able to draw up a clear and succinct account of +his land’s history in the past and of the conditions which have made +war inevitable; and almost as little can he often paint an exact and +detailed picture of the benefits to flow from his efts. He knows his +land has need of him; he knows his own small place and work. + +It is possible that not one woman in ten thousand has grasped with +scientific exactitude, and still less could express with verbal +sharpness, the great central conditions which yet compel and animate her +into action. + +Even the great, central fact, that with each generation the entire race +passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing +with the indelible marks of that mould upon it, that as the os cervix of +woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms +a ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human head, a +size which could only increase if in the course of ages the os cervix of +woman should itself slowly expand; and that so exactly the intellectual +capacity, the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms +also an untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive +generation the limits of the expansion of the human race;--even this +fact she may not so clearly have grasped intellectually as to be able to +throw it into the form of a logical statement. The profound truth, that +the continued development of the human race on earth (a development +which, as the old myths and dreams of a narrow personal heaven fade +from our view, becomes increasingly for many of us the spiritual hope by +light of which we continue to live), a development which we hope shall +make the humanity of a distant future as much higher in intellectual +power and wider in social sympathy than the highest human units of +our day, as that is higher than the first primeval ancestor who +with quivering limb strove to walk upright and shape his lips to the +expression of a word, is possible only if the male and female halves of +humanity progress together, expanding side by side in the future as they +have done in the past--even this truth it is possible few women have +exactly and logically grasped as the basis of their action. The truth +that, as the first primitive human males and females, unable to count +farther than their fingers, or grasp an abstract idea, or feel the +controlling power of social emotion, could only develop into the +Sapphos, Aristotles, and Shelleys of a more expanded civilisation, if +side by side, and line by line, male and female forms have expanded +together; if, as the convolutions of his brain increased in complexity, +so increased the convolutions in hers; if, as her forehead grew higher, +so developed his; and that, if the long upward march of the future is +ever to be accomplished by the race, male and female must march side by +side, acting and reacting on each other through inheritance; or progress +is impossible. The truth that, as the existence of even the male Bushman +would be impossible without the existence of the analogous Bushwoman +with the same gifts; and that as races which can produce among their +males a William Kingdon Clifford, a Tolstoy, or a Robert Browning, would +be inconceivable and impossible, unless among its females it could also +produce a Sophia Kovalevsky, a George Eliot, or a Louise Michel; so, +also, in the future, that higher and more socialised human race we dream +of can only come into existence, because in both the sex forms have +evolved together, now this sex and then that, so to speak, catching +up the ball of life and throwing it back to the other, slightly if +imperceptibly enlarging and beautifying it as it passes through their +hands. The fact that without the reaction of interevolution between the +sexes, there can be no real and permanent human advance; without the +enlarged deep-thinking Eve to bear him, no enlarged Adam; without the +enlarged widely sympathising Adam to beget her, no enlarged widely +comprehending Eve; without an enlarged Adam and an enlarged Eve, no +enlarged and beautified generation of mankind on earth; that an arrest +in one form is an arrest in both; and in the upward march of the entire +human family. The truth that, if at the present day, woman, after her +long upward march side by side with man, developing with him through +the countless ages, by means of the endless exercise of the faculties of +mind and body, has now, at last, reached her ultimate limit of growth, +and can progress no farther; that, then, here also, today, the growth +of the human spirit is to be stayed; that here, on the spot of woman’s +arrest, is the standard of the race to be finally planted, to move +forward no more, for ever:--that, if the parasite woman on her couch, +loaded with gewgaws, the plaything and amusement of man, be the +permanent and final manifestation of female human life on the globe, +then that couch is also the death-bed of human evolution. These profound +underlying truths, perhaps, not one woman in twenty thousand of those +actively engaged in the struggle for readjustment has so closely and +keenly grasped that she can readily throw them into the form of exact +language; and yet, probably, not the feeblest woman taking share in our +endeavour toward readjustment and expansion fails to be animated by a +vague but profound consciousness of their existence. Beyond the small +evils, which she seeks by her immediate, personal action to remedy, lie, +she feels; large ills of which they form but an off-shoot; beyond the +small good which she seeks to effect, lies, she believes, a great and +universal beatitude to be attained; beyond the little struggle of today, +lies the larger struggle of the centuries, in which neither she alone +nor her sex alone are concerned, but all mankind. + +That such should be the mental attitude of the average woman taking part +in the readjustive sexual movement of today; that so often on the public +platform and in literature adduces merely secondary arguments, and +is wholly unable logically to give an account of the great propelling +conditions behind it, is sometimes taken as an indication of the +inefficiency, and probably the ultimate failure, of the movement in +which she takes part. But in truth, that is not so. It is rather +an indication which shows how healthy, and deeply implanted in the +substance of human life, are the roots of this movement; and it places +it in a line with all those vast controlling movements which have in the +course of the ages reorganised human life. + +For those great movements which have permanently modified the condition +of humanity have never taken their rise amid the chopped logic of +schools; they have never drawn their vitality from a series of purely +intellectual and abstract inductions. They have arisen always through +the action of widely spread material and spiritual conditions, creating +widespread human needs; which, pressing upon the isolated individuals, +awakens at last continuous, if often vague and uncertain, social +movement in a given direction. Mere intellectual comprehension may +guide, retard, or accelerate the great human movements; it has never +created them. It may even be questioned whether those very leaders, who +have superficially appeared to create and organise great and successful +social movements, have themselves, in most cases, perhaps in any, fully +understood in all their complexity the movements they themselves have +appeared to rule. They have been, rather, themselves permeated by the +great common need; and being possessed of more will, passion, intensity, +or intellect, they have been able to give voice to that which in +others was dumb, and conscious direction to that which in others was +unconscious desire: they have been but the foremost crest of a great +wave of human necessity: they have not themselves created the wave which +bears themselves, and humanity, onwards. The artificial social movements +which have had their origin in the arbitrary will of individuals, guided +with however much determination and reason, have of necessity proved +ephemeral and abortive. An Alexander might will to weld a Greece and +an Asia into one; a Napoleon might resolve to create of a diversified +Europe one consolidated state; and by dint of skill and determination +they might for a moment appear to be accomplishing that which they +desired; but the constraining individual will being withdrawn, the +object of their toil has melted away, as the little heap of damp sand +gathered under the palm of a child’s hand on the sea-shore, melts away, +scattered by the wind and washed out by the waves, the moment the hand +that shaped it is withdrawn; while the small, soft, indefinite, watery +fragment of jelly-fish lying beside it, though tossed hither and +thither by water and wind, yet retains its shape and grows, because its +particles are bound by an internal and organic force. + +Our woman’s movement resembles strongly, in this matter, the gigantic +religious and intellectual movement which for centuries convulsed the +life of Europe; and had, as its ultimate outcome, the final emancipation +of the human intellect and the freedom of the human spirit. Looked +back upon from the vantage-point of the present, this past presents the +appearance of one vast, steady, persistent movement proceeding always +in one ultimate direction, as though guided by some controlling human +intellect. But, to the mass of human individuals taking part in it, it +presented an appearance far otherwise. It was fought out, now here, +now there, by isolated individuals and small groups, and often for +what appeared small and almost personal ends, having sometimes, +superficially, little in common. Now it was a Giordano Bruno, burnt +in Rome in defence of abstract theory with regard to the nature of the +First Cause; then an Albigense hurled from his rocks because he refused +to part with the leaves of his old Bible; now a Dutch peasant woman, +walking serenely to the stake because she refused to bow her head before +two crossed rods; then a Servetus burnt by Protestant Calvin at Geneva; +or a Spinoza cut off from his tribe and people because he could +see nothing but God anywhere; and then it was an exiled Rousseau or +Voltaire, or a persecuted Bradlaugh; till, in our own day the last +sounds of the long fight are dying about us, as fading echoes, in the +guise of a few puerile attempts to enforce trivial disabilities on the +ground of abstract convictions. The vanguard of humanity has won its +battle for freedom of thought. + +But, to the men and women taking part in that mighty movement during +the long centuries of the past, probably nothing was quite clear, in the +majority of cases, but their own immediate move. Not the leaders--most +certainly not good old Martin Luther, even when he gave utterance to +his immortal “I can no otherwise” (the eternal justification of all +reformers and social innovators!), understood the whole breadth of the +battlefield on which they were engaged, or grasped with precision the +issues which were involved. The valiant Englishman, who, as the flames +shot up about him, cried to his companion in death, “Play the man, +Master Ridley; we shall by God’s grace this day light such a candle +in England, as shall never be put out!” undoubtedly believed that +the candle lighted was the mere tallow rushlight of a small sectarian +freedom for England alone; nor perceived that what he lighted was but +one ray of the vast, universal aurora of intellectual and spiritual +liberty, whose light was ultimately to stream, not only across England, +but across the earth. Nevertheless, undoubtedly, behind all these +limited efforts, for what appeared, superficially, limited causes, +lay, in the hearts of the men and women concerned, through the ages, a +profound if vague consciousness of ends larger than they clearly knew, +to be subserved by their action; of a universal social duty and a great +necessity. + +That the Woman’s Movement of our day has not taken its origin from any +mere process of theoretic argument; that it breaks out, now here and +now there, in forms divergent and at times superficially almost +irreconcilable; that the majority of those taking part in it are driven +into action as the result of the immediate pressure of the conditions +of life, and are not always able logically to state the nature of all +causes which propel them, or to paint clearly all results of their +action; so far from removing it from the category of the vast +reorganising movements of humanity, places it in a line with them, +showing how vital, spontaneous, and wholly organic and unartificial is +its nature. + +The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate, and +at times almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and +social duties; while at another it makes itself felt as a determined +endeavour after self-culture; that in one land it embodies itself mainly +in a resolute endeavour to enlarge the sphere of remunerative labour +for women; while in another it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to +recoordinate the personal relation of the sexes; that in one individual +it manifests itself as a passionate and sometimes noisy struggle for +liberty of personal action; while in another it is being fought out +silently in the depth of the individual consciousness--that primal +battle-ground, in which all questions of reform and human advance must +ultimately be fought and decided;--all this diversity, and the fact +that the average woman is entirely concerned in labour in her own little +field, shows, not the weakness, but the strength of the movement; which, +taken as a whole, is a movement steady and persistent in one direction, +the direction of increased activity and culture, and towards the +negation of all possibility of parasitism in the human female. Slowly, +and unconsciously, as the child is shaped in the womb, this movement +shapes itself in the bosom of our time, taking its place beside those +vast human developments, of which men, noting their spontaneity and the +co-ordination of their parts, have said, in the phraseology of old days, +“This thing is not of man, but of God.” + +He who today looks at some great Gothic cathedral in its final form, +seems to be looking at that which might have been the incarnation of the +dream of some single soul of genius. But in truth, its origin was far +otherwise. Ages elapsed from the time the first rough stone was laid as +a foundation till the last spire and pinnacle were shaped, and the hand +which laid the foundation-stone was never the same as that which set +the last stone upon the coping. Generations often succeeded one another, +labouring at gargoyle, rose-window, and shaft, and died, leaving the +work to others; the master-builder who drew up the first rough outline +passed away, and was succeeded by others, and the details of the work as +completed bore sometimes but faint resemblance to the work as he devised +it; no man fully understood all that others had done or were doing, +but each laboured in his place; and the work as completed had unity; +it expressed not the desire and necessity of one mind, but of the human +spirit of that age; and not less essential to the existence of the +building was the labour of the workman who passed a life of devotion +in carving gargoyles or shaping rose-windows, than that of the greatest +master who drew general outlines: perhaps it was yet more heroic; for, +for the master-builder, who, even if it were but vaguely, had an image +of what the work would be when the last stone was laid and the last +spire raised, it was easy to labour with devotion and zeal, though well +he might know that the placing of that last stone and the raising of +that last spire would not be his, and that the building in its full +beauty and strength he should never see; but for the journeyman labourer +who carried on his duties and month by month toiled at carving his own +little gargoyle or shaping the traceries in his own little oriel window, +without any complete vision, it was not so easy; nevertheless, it was +through the conscientious labours of such alone, through their heaps of +chipped and spoiled stones, which may have lain thick about them, that +at the last the pile was reared in its strength and beauty. + +For a Moses who could climb Pisgah, and, though it were through a +mist of bitter tears, could see stretching before him the land of the +inheritance, a land which his feet should never tread and whose fruit +his hand should never touch, it was yet, perhaps, not so hard to turn +round and die; for, as in a dream, he had seen the land: but for the +thousands who could climb no Pisgah, who were to leave their bones +whitening in the desert, having even from afar never seen the true +outline of the land; those who, on that long march, had not even borne +the Ark nor struck the timbrel, but carried only their small household +vessels and possessions, for these it was perhaps not so easy to lie +down and perish in the desert, knowing only that far ahead somewhere, +lay a Land of Promise. Nevertheless, it was by the slow and sometimes +wavering march of such as these, that the land was reached by the people +at last. + +For her, whose insight enables her to see, through the distance, those +large beatitudes towards which the struggles and suffering of the women +of today may tend; who sees beyond the present, though in a future which +she knows she will never enter, an enlarged and strengthened womanhood +bearing forward with it a strengthened and expanded race, it is not so +hard to renounce and labour with unshaken purpose: but for those +who have not that view, and struggle on, animated at most by a vague +consciousness that somewhere ahead lies a large end, towards which their +efforts tend; who labour year after year at some poor little gargoyle of +a Franchise Bill, or the shaping of some rough little foundation-stone +of reform in education, or dress a stone (which perhaps never quite fits +the spot it was intended for, and has to be thrown aside!); or who +carve away all their lives to produce a corbel of some reform in sexual +relations, in the end to find it break under the chisel; who, out of +many failures attain, perhaps, to no success, or but to one, and that +so small and set so much in the shade that no eye will ever see it; +for such as these, it is perhaps not so easy to labour without growing +weary. Nevertheless, it is through the labours of these myriad toilers, +each working in her own minute sphere, with her own small outlook, and +out of endless failures and miscarriages, that at last the enwidened +and beautified relations of woman to life must rise, if they are ever to +come. + +When a starfish lies on the ground at the bottom of a sloping rock it +has to climb, it seems to the onlooker as though there were nothing +which could stir the inert mass and no means for taking it to the top. +Yet watch it. Beneath its lower side, hidden from sight, are a million +fine tentacles; impulses of will from the central nerve radiate +throughout the whole body, and each tiny fibre, fine as a hair, slowly +extends itself, and seizes on the minute particle of rough rock nearest +to it; now a small tentacle slips its hold, and then it holds firmly, +and then slowly and slowly the whole inert mass rises to the top. + +It is often said of those who lead in this attempt at the readaption +of woman’s relation to life, that they are “New Women”; and they are +at times spoken of as though they were a something portentous and +unheard-of in the order of human life. + +But, the truth is, we are not new. We who lead in this movement today +are of that old, old Teutonic womanhood, which twenty centuries ago +ploughed its march through European forests and morasses beside its male +companion; which marched with the Cimbri to Italy, and with the Franks +across the Rhine, with the Varagians into Russia, and the Alamani into +Switzerland; which peopled Scandinavia, and penetrated to Britain; whose +priestesses had their shrines in German forests, and gave out the oracle +for peace or war. We have in us the blood of a womanhood that was never +bought and never sold; that wore no veil, and had no foot bound; whose +realised ideal of marriage was sexual companionship and an equality in +duty and labour; who stood side by side with the males they loved in +peace or war, and whose children, when they had borne them, sucked +manhood from their breasts, and even through their foetal existence +heard a brave heart beat above them. We are women of a breed whose +racial ideal was no Helen of Troy, passed passively from male hand +to male hand, as men pass gold or lead; but that Brynhild whom Segurd +found, clad in helm and byrne, the warrior maid, who gave him counsel +“the deepest that ever yet was given to living man,” and “wrought on him +to the performing of great deeds;” who, when he died, raised high the +funeral pyre and lay down on it beside him, crying, “Nor shall the door +swing to at the heel of him as I go in beside him!” We are of a race +of women that of old knew no fear, and feared no death, and lived great +lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of us have fallen on evil +and degenerate times, there moves in us yet the throb of the old blood. + +If it be today on no physical battlefield that we stand beside our men, +and on no march through no external forest or morass that we have to +lead; it is yet the old spirit which, undimmed by two thousand years, +stirs within us in deeper and subtler ways; it is yet the cry of +the old, free Northern woman which makes the world today. Though the +battlefield be now for us all, in the laboratory or the workshop, in the +forum or the study, in the assembly and in the mart and the political +arena, with the pen and not the sword, of the head and not the arm, we +still stand side by side with the men we love, “to dare with them in +war and to suffer with them in peace,” as the Roman wrote of our old +Northern womanhood. + +Those women, of whom the old writers tell us, who, barefooted and +white robed, led their Northern hosts on that long march to Italy, were +animated by the thought that they led their people to a land of warmer +sunshine and richer fruitage; we, today, believe we have caught sight +of a land bathed in a nobler than any material sunlight, with a fruitage +richer than any which the senses only can grasp: and behind us, we +believe there follows a longer train than any composed of our own race +and people; the sound of the tread we hear behind us is that of all +earth’s women, bearing within them the entire race. The footpath, yet +hardly perceptible, which we tread down today, will, we believe, be +life’s broadest and straightest road, along which the children of men +will pass to a higher co-ordination and harmony. The banner which +we unfurl today is not new: it is the standard of the old, free, +monogamous, labouring woman, which, twenty hundred years ago, floated +over the forests of Europe. We shall bear it on, each generation as it +falls passing it into the hand of that which follows, till we plant it +so high that all nations of the world shall see it; till the women of +the humblest human races shall be gathered beneath its folds, and no +child enter life that was not born within its shade. + +We are not new! If you would understand us, go back two thousand +years, and study our descent; our breed is our explanation. We are the +daughters of our fathers as well as of our mothers. In our dreams we +still hear the clash of the shields of our forefathers as they struck +them together before battle and raised the shout of “Freedom!” In our +dreams it is with us still, and when we wake it breaks from our own +lips! We are the daughters of those men. + +But, it may be said, “Are there not women among you who would use the +shibboleth, of freedom and labour, merely as a means for opening a +door to a greater and more highly flavoured self-indulgence, to a more +lucrative and enjoyable parasitism? Are there not women who, under the +guise of ‘work,’ are seeking only increased means of sensuous pleasure +and self-indulgence; to whom intellectual training and the opening to +new fields of labour side by side with man, mean merely new means of +self-advertisement and parasitic success?” We answer: There may be +such, truly; among us--but not of us! This at least is true, that we, +ourselves, are seldom deceived by them; the sheep generally recognise +the wolf however carefully fitted the sheepskin under which he hides, +though the onlookers may not; and though not always be able to drive him +from the flock! The outer world may be misled; we, who stand shoulder to +shoulder with them, know them; they are not many; neither are they +new. They are one of the oldest survivals, and among the most primitive +relics in the race. They are as old as Loki among the gods, as Lucifer +among the Sons of the Morning, as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as +pain and dislocation in the web of human life. + +Such women are as old as that first primitive woman who, when she went +with her fellows to gather wood for the common household, put grass in +the centre of the bundle that she might appear to carry as much as they, +yet carry nothing; she is as old as the first man who threw away his +shield in battle, and yet, when it was over, gathered with the victors +to share the spoils, as old as cowardice and lust in the human and +animal world; only to cease from being when, perhaps, an enlarged and +expanded humanity shall have cast the last slough of its primitive skin. + +Every army has its camp-followers, not among its accredited soldiers, +but who follow in its train, ready to attack and rifle the fallen on +either side. To lookers on, they may appear soldiers; but the soldier +knows who they are. At the Judean supper there was one Master, and to +the onlooker there may have seemed twelve apostles; in truth only twelve +were of the company, and one was not of it. There has always been this +thirteenth figure at every sacramental gathering, since the world began, +wherever the upholders of a great cause have broken spiritual bread; but +it may be questioned whether in any instance this thirteenth figure +has been able to destroy, or even vitally to retard, any great human +movement. Judas could hang his Master by a kiss; but he could not +silence the voice which for a thousand years rang out of that Judean +grave. Again and again, in social, political, and intellectual +movements, the betrayer betrays;--and the cause marches on over the body +of the man. + +There are women, as there are men, whose political, social, +intellectual, or philanthropic labours are put on, as the harlot puts +on paint, and for the same purpose: but they can no more retard the +progress of the great bulk of vital and sincere womanhood, than the +driftwood on the surface of a mighty river can ultimately prevent its +waters from reaching the sea. + + + +Chapter IV. Woman and War. + +But it may also be said, “Granting fully that you are right, that, as +woman’s old fields of labour slip from her, she must grasp the new, or +must become wholly dependent on her sexual function alone, all the other +elements of human nature in her becoming atrophied and arrested through +lack of exercise: and, granting that her evolution being arrested, +the evolution of the whole race will be also arrested in her person: +granting all this to the full, and allowing that the bulk of human +labour tends to become more and more intellectual and less and less +purely mechanical, as perfected machinery takes the place of crude human +exertion; and that therefore if woman is to be saved from degeneration +and parasitism, and the body of humanity from arrest, she must receive a +training which will cultivate all the intellectual and all the physical +faculties with which she is endowed, and be allowed freely to employ +them; nevertheless, would it not be possible, and perhaps be well, that +a dividing line of some kind should be drawn between the occupations +of men and of women? Would it not, for example, be possible that +woman should retain agriculture, textile manufacture, trade, domestic +management, the education of youth, and medicine, in addition to +child-bearing, as her exclusive fields of toil; while, to the male, +should be left the study of abstract science, law and war, and +statecraft; as of old, man took war and the chase, and woman absorbed +the further labours of life? Why should there not be again a fair and +even division in the field of social labour?” + +Superficially, this suggestion appears rational, having at least this +to recommend it, that it appears to harmonise with the course of human +evolution in the past; but closely examined, it will, we think, be found +to have no practical or scientific basis, and to be out of harmony with +the conditions of modern life. In ancient and primitive societies, the +mere larger size and muscular strength of man, and woman’s incessant +physical activity in child-bearing and suckling and rearing the young, +made almost inevitable a certain sexual division of labour in almost +all countries, save perhaps in ancient Egypt. (The division of labour +between the sexes in Ancient Egypt and other exceptional countries, is +a matter of much interest, which cannot here be entered on.) Woman +naturally took the heavy agricultural and domestic labours, which were +yet more consistent with the continual dependence of infant life on +her own, than those of man in war and the chase. There was nothing +artificial in such a division; it threw the heaviest burden of the most +wearying and unexciting forms of social labour on woman, but under it +both sexes laboured in a manner essential to the existence of society, +and each transmitted to the other, through inheritance, the fruit of its +slowly expanding and always exerted powers; and the race progressed. + +Individual women might sometimes, and even often, become the warrior +chief of a tribe; the King of Ashantee might train his terrible regiment +of females; and men might now and again plant and weave for their +children: but in the main, and in most societies, the division of +labour was just, natural, beneficial; and it was inevitable that such a +division should take place. Were today a band of civilised men, women, +and infants thrown down absolutely naked and defenceless in some desert, +and cut off hopelessly from all external civilised life, undoubtedly +very much the old division of labour would, at least for a time, +reassert itself; men would look about for stones and sticks with which +to make weapons to repel wild beasts and enemies, and would go a-hunting +meat and fighting savage enemies and tend the beasts when tamed: (The +young captured animals would probably be tamed and reared by the women.) +women would suckle their children, cook the meat men brought, build +shelters, look for roots and if possible cultivate them; there certainly +would be no parasite in the society; the woman who refused to labour for +her offspring, and the man who refused to hunt or defend society, would +not be supported by their fellows, would soon be extinguished by want. +As wild beasts were extinguished and others tamed and the materials for +war improved, fewer men would be needed for hunting and war; then they +would remain at home and aid in building and planting; many women would +retire into the house to perfect domestic toil and handicrafts, and on +a small scale the common ancient evolution of society would probably +practically repeat itself. But for the present, we see no such natural +and spontaneous division of labour based on natural sexual distinctions +in the new fields of intellectual or delicately skilled manual labour, +which are taking the place of the old. + +It is possible, though at present there is nothing to give indication of +such a fact, and it seems highly improbable, that, in some subtle +manner now incomprehensible, there might tend to be a subtle correlation +between that condition of the brain and nervous system which accompanies +ability in the direction of certain modern forms of mental, social +labour, and the particular form of reproductive function possessed by +an individual. It may be that, inexplicable as it seems, there may +ultimately be found to be some connection between that condition of the +brain and nervous system which fits the individual for the study of the +higher mathematics, let us say, and the nature of their sex attributes. +The mere fact that, of the handful of women who, up to the present, +have received training and been allowed to devote themselves to abstract +study, several have excelled in the higher mathematics, proves of +necessity no pre-eminent tendency on the part of the female sex in +the direction of mathematics, as compared to labour in the fields of +statesmanship, administration, or law; as into these fields there has +been practically no admittance for women. It is sometimes stated, +that as several women of genius in modern times have sought to find +expression for their creative powers in the art of fiction, there must +be some inherent connection in the human brain between the ovarian sex +function and the art of fiction. The fact is, that modern fiction being +merely a description of human life in any of its phases, and being +the only art that can be exercised without special training or special +appliances, and produced in the moments stolen from the multifarious, +brain-destroying occupations which fill the average woman’s life, they +have been driven to find this outlet for their powers as the only one +presenting itself. How far otherwise might have been the directions in +which their genius would naturally have expressed itself can be known +only partially even to the women themselves; what the world has lost by +that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have been +its most natural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one +can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber +the ground, we see often a pathetic figure, when we recognise that +beneath that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie buried +a sound legislator, an able architect, an original scientific +investigator, or a good judge. Scientifically speaking, it is as +unproven that there is any organic relation between the brain of the +female and the production of art in the form of fiction, as that there +is an organic relation between the hand of woman and a typewriting +machine. Both the creative writer and the typist, in their respective +spheres, are merely finding outlets for their powers in the direction of +least resistance. The tendency of women at the present day to undertake +certain forms of labour, proves only that in the crabbed, walled-in, +and bound conditions surrounding woman at the present day, these are the +lines along which action is most possible to her. + +It may possibly be that in future ages, when the male and female forms +have been placed in like intellectual conditions, with like stimuli, +like training, and like rewards, that some aptitudes may be found +running parallel with the line of sex function when humanity is viewed +as a whole. It may possibly be that, when the historian of the future +looks back over the history of the intellectually freed and active +sexes for countless generations, that a decided preference of the female +intellect for mathematics, engineering, or statecraft may be made clear; +and that a like marked inclination in the male to excel in acting, +music, or astronomy may by careful and large comparison be shown. But, +for the present, we have no adequate scientific data from which to draw +any conclusion, and any attempt to divide the occupations in which male +and female intellects and wills should be employed, must be to attempt +a purely artificial and arbitrary division: a division not more rational +and scientific than an attempt to determine by the colour of his eyes +and the shape and strength of his legs, whether a lad should be an +astronomer or an engraver. Those physical differences among mankind +which divide races and nations--not merely those differences, enormously +greater as they are generally, than any physical differences between +male and female of the same race, which divide the Jew and the Swede, +the Japanese and the Englishman, but even those subtle physical +differences which divide closely allied races such as the English and +German--often appear to be allied with certain subtle differences in +intellectual aptitudes. Yet even with regard to these differences, it +is almost impossible to determine scientifically in how far they are the +result of national traditions, environment, and education, and in how +far the result of real differences in organic conformation. (In thinking +of physical sex differences, the civilised man of modern times has +always to guard himself against being unconsciously misled by the very +exaggerated external sex differences which our unnatural method of sex +clothing and dressing the hair produces. The unclothed and natural human +male and female bodies are not more divided from each other than those +of the lion and lioness. Our remote Saxon ancestors, with their great, +almost naked, white bodies and flowing hair worn long by both sexes, +were but little distinguished from each other; while among their modern +descendants the short hair, darkly clothed, manifestly two-legged male +differs absolutely from the usually long-haired, colour bedizened, +much beskirted female. Were the structural differences between male and +female really one half as marked as the artificial visual differences, +they would be greater than those dividing, not merely any species of man +from another, but as great as those which divide orders in the animal +world. Only a mind exceedingly alert and analytical can fail ultimately +to be misled by habitual visual misrepresentation. There is not, +probably, one man or woman in twenty thousand who is not powerfully +influenced in modern life in their conception of the differences, +physical and intellectual, dividing the human male and female, by the +grotesque exaggerations of modern attire and artificial manners.) + +No study of the mere physical differences between individuals of +different races would have enabled us to arrive at any knowledge of +their mental aptitude; nor does the fact that certain individuals of a +given human variety have certain aptitudes form a rational ground for +compelling all individuals of that variety to undertake a certain form +of labour. + +No analysis, however subtle, of the physical conformation of the Jew +could have suggested a priori, and still less could have proved, apart +from ages of practical experience, that, running parallel with any +physical characteristics which may distinguish him from his fellows, was +an innate and unique intellectual gift in the direction of religion. The +fact that, during three thousand years, from Moses to Isaiah, through +Jesus and Paul on to Spinoza, the Jewish race has produced men who +have given half the world its religious faith and impetus, proves that, +somewhere and somehow, whether connected organically with that physical +organisation that marks the Jew, or as the result of his traditions and +training, there does go this gift in the matter of religion. Yet, on +the other hand, we find millions of Jews who are totally and markedly +deficient in it, and to base any practical legislation for the +individual even on this proven intellectual aptitude of the race as a +whole would be manifestly as ridiculous as abortive. Yet more markedly, +with the German--no consideration of his physical peculiarities, though +it proceeded to the subtlest analysis of nerve, bone, and muscle, could +in the present stage of our knowledge have proved to us what generations +of experience appear to have proved, that, with that organisation which +constitutes the German, goes an unique aptitude for music. There is +always the possibility of mistaking the result of training and external +circumstance for inherent tendency, but when we consider the passion for +music which the German has shown, and when we consider that the greatest +musicians the world has seen, from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to +Wagner, have been of that race, it appears highly probable that such a +correlation between the German organisation and the intellectual gift of +music does exist. Similar intellectual peculiarities seem to be connoted +by the external differences which mark off other races from each other. +Nevertheless, were persons of all of these nationalities gathered in one +colony, any attempt to legislate for their restriction to certain forms +of intellectual labour on the ground of their apparently proved national +aptitudes or disabilities, would be regarded as insane. To insist that +all Jews, and none but Jews, should lead and instruct in religious +matters; that all Englishmen, and none but Englishmen, should engage in +trade; that each German should make his living by music, and none but +a German allowed to practise it, would drive to despair the unfortunate +individual Englishman, whose most marked deficiency might be in the +direction of finance and bartering trade power; the Jew, whose religious +instincts might be entirely rudimentary; or the German, who could not +distinguish one note from another; and the society as a whole would be +an irremediable loser, in one of the heaviest of all forms of social +loss--the loss of the full use of the highest capacities of all its +members. + +It may be that with sexes as with races, the subtlest physical +difference between them may have their fine mental correlatives; but no +abstract consideration of the human body in relation to its functions +of sex can, in the present state of our knowledge, show us what +intellectual capacities tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing +in the present or past condition of male and female give us more +than the very faintest possible indication of the relation of their +intellectual aptitudes and their sexual functions. And even were it +proved by centuries of experiment that with the possession of the +uterine function of sex tends to go exceptional intellectual capacity +in the direction of mathematics rather than natural history, or an +inclination for statecraft rather than for mechanical invention; were it +proved that, generally speaking and as a whole, out of twenty thousand +women devoting themselves to law and twenty thousand to medicine, they +tended to achieve relatively more in the field of law than of +medicine, there would yet be no possible healthy or rational ground +for restricting the activities of the individual female to that line +in which the average female appeared rather more frequently to excel. +(Minds not keenly analytical are always apt to mistake mere correlation +of appearance with causative sequence. We have heard it gravely asserted +that between potatoes, pigs, mud cabins and Irishmen there was an +organic connection: but we who have lived in Colonies, know that within +two generations the pure-bred descendant of the mud cabiner becomes +often the successful politician, wealthy financier, or great judge; and +shows no more predilection for potatoes, pigs, and mud cabins than men +of any other race.) + +That even one individual in a society should be debarred from +undertaking that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes +an unnecessary deficit in the general social assets. That one male +Froebel should be prohibited or hampered in his labour as an educator of +infancy, on the ground that infantile instruction was the field of +the female; that one female with gifts in the direction of state +administration, should be compelled to instruct an infants’ school, +perhaps without the slightest gift for so doing, is a running to waste +of social life-blood. + +Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, +is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be +determined. And our demand today is that natural conditions, inexorably, +but beneficently, may determine the labours of each individual, and not +artificial restrictions. + +As there is no need to legislate that Hindus, being generally supposed +to have a natural incapacity for field sports, shall not betake +themselves to them--for, if they have no capacity, they will fail; and, +as in spite of the Hindus’ supposed general incapacity for sport, it is +possible for an individual Hindu to become the noted batsman of his age; +so, also, there is no need to legislate that women should be restricted +in her choice of fields of labour; for the organic incapacity of the +individual, if it exist, will legislate far more powerfully than any +artificial, legal, or social obstruction can do; and it may be that the +one individual in ten thousand who selects a field not generally sought +by his fellows will enrich humanity by the result of an especial genius. +Allowing all to start from the one point in the world of intellectual +culture and labour, with our ancient Mother Nature sitting as umpire, +distributing the prizes and scratching from the lists the incompetent, +is all we demand, but we demand it determinedly. Throw the puppy into +the water: if it swims, well; if it sinks, well; but do not tie a +rope round its throat and weight it with a brick, and then assert its +incapacity to keep afloat. + +For the present our cry is, “We take all labour for our province!” + +From the judge’s seat to the legislator’s chair; from the statesman’s +closet to the merchant’s office; from the chemist’s laboratory to the +astronomer’s tower, there is no post or form of toil for which it is not +our intention to attempt to fit ourselves; and there is no closed door +we do not intend to force open; and there is no fruit in the garden of +knowledge it is not our determination to eat. Acting in us, and through +us, nature we know will mercilessly expose to us our deficiencies in +the field of human toil, and reveal to us our powers. And, for today, we +take all labour for our province! + +But, it may then be said: “What of war, that struggle of the human +creature to attain its ends by physical force and at the price of the +life of others: will you take part in that also?” We reply: Yes; more +particularly in that field we intend to play our part. We have always +borne part of the weight of war, and the major part. It is not merely +that in primitive times we suffered from the destruction of the fields +we tilled and the houses we built; or that in later times as domestic +labourers and producers, though unwaged, we, in taxes and material loss +and additional labour, paid as much as our males towards the cost of +war; nor is it that in a comparatively insignificant manner, as +nurses of the wounded in modern times, or now and again as warrior +chieftainesses and leaders in primitive and other societies, we have +borne our part; nor is it even because the spirit of resolution in its +women, and their willingness to endure, has in all ages again and again +largely determined the fate of a race that goes to war, that we demand +our controlling right where war is concerned. Our relation to war is +far more intimate, personal, and indissoluble than this. Men have made +boomerangs, bows, swords, or guns with which to destroy one another; we +have made the men who destroyed and were destroyed! We have in all ages +produced, at an enormous cost, the primal munition of war, without which +no other would exist. There is no battlefield on earth, nor ever has +been, howsoever covered with slain, which is has not cost the women of +the race more in actual bloodshed and anguish to supply, then it has +cost the men who lie there. We pay the first cost on all human life. + +In supplying the men for the carnage of a battlefield, women have not +merely lost actually more blood, and gone through a more acute anguish +and weariness, in the long months of bearing and in the final agony of +childbirth, than has been experienced by the men who cover it; but, in +the long months and years of rearing that follow, the women of the race +go through a long, patiently endured strain which no knapsacked soldier +on his longest march has ever more than equalled; while, even in the +matter of death, in all civilised societies, the probability that the +average woman will die in childbirth is immeasurably greater than the +probability that the average male will die in battle. + +There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have borne children, or +be merely potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a +battlefield covered with slain, but the thought would rise in her, “So +many mothers’ sons! So many bodies brought into the world to lie there! +So many months of weariness and pain while bones and muscles were shaped +within; so many hours of anguish and struggle that breath might be; so +many baby mouths drawing life at woman’s breasts;--all this, that men +might lie with glazed eyeballs, and swollen bodies, and fixed, blue, +unclosed mouths, and great limbs tossed--this, that an acre of ground +might be manured with human flesh, that next year’s grass or poppies or +karoo bushes may spring up greener and redder, where they have lain, or +that the sand of a plain may have a glint of white bones!” And we cry, +“Without an inexorable cause, this should not be!” No woman who is a +woman says of a human body, “It is nothing!” + +On that day, when the woman takes her place beside the man in the +governance and arrangement of external affairs of her race will also +be that day that heralds the death of war as a means of arranging human +differences. No tinsel of trumpets and flags will ultimately seduce +women into the insanity of recklessly destroying life, or gild the +wilful taking of life with any other name than that of murder, whether +it be the slaughter of the million or of one by one. And this will be, +not because with the sexual function of maternity necessarily goes in +the human creature a deeper moral insight, or a loftier type of social +instinct than that which accompanies the paternal. Men have in all ages +led as nobly as women in many paths of heroic virtue, and toward the +higher social sympathies; in certain ages, being freer and more widely +cultured, they have led further and better. The fact that woman has +no inherent all-round moral superiority over her male companion, or +naturally on all points any higher social instinct, is perhaps most +clearly exemplified by one curious very small fact: the two terms +signifying intimate human relationships which in almost all human +languages bear the most sinister and antisocial significance are both +terms which have as their root the term “mother,” and denote feminine +relationships--the words “mother-in-law” and “step-mother.” + +In general humanity, in the sense of social solidarity, and in +magnanimity, the male has continually proved himself at least the equal +of the female. + +Nor will women shrink from war because they lack courage. Earth’s women +of every generation have faced suffering and death with an equanimity +that no soldier on a battlefield has ever surpassed and few have +equalled; and where war has been to preserve life, or land, or freedom, +unparasitised and labouring women have in all ages known how to bear an +active part, and die. + +Nor will woman’s influence militate against war because in the future +woman will not be able physically to bear her part in it. The smaller +size of her muscle, which would severely have disadvantaged her when +war was conducted with a battle-axe or sword and hand to hand, would now +little or at all affect her. If intent on training for war, she might +acquire the skill for guiding a Maxim or shooting down a foe with a +Lee-Metford at four thousand yards as ably as any male; and undoubtedly, +it has not been only the peasant girl of France, who has carried latent +and hid within her person the gifts that make the supreme general. If +our European nations should continue in their present semi-civilised +condition, which makes war possible, for a few generations longer, it +is highly probable that as financiers, as managers of the commissariat +department, as inspectors of provisions and clothing for the army, women +will play a very leading part; and that the nation which is the first to +employ its women so may be placed at a vast advantage over its fellows +in time of war. It is not because of woman’s cowardice, incapacity, nor, +above all, because of her general superior virtue, that she will end war +when her voice is fully, finally, and clearly heard in the governance +of states--it is because, on this one point, and on this point almost +alone, the knowledge of woman, simply as woman, is superior to that of +man; she knows the history of human flesh; she knows its cost; he +does not. (It is noteworthy that even Catharine of Russia, a ruler and +statesman of a virile and uncompromising type, and not usually troubled +with moral scruples, yet refused with indignation the offer of Frederick +of Prussia to pay her heavily for a small number of Russian recruits in +an age when the hiring out of soldiers was common among the sovereigns +of Europe.) + +In a besieged city, it might well happen that men in the streets +might seize upon statues and marble carvings from public buildings and +galleries and hurl them in to stop the breaches made in their ramparts +by the enemy, unconsideringly and merely because they came first to +hand, not valuing them more than had they been paving-stones. But one +man could not do this--the sculptor! He, who, though there might be no +work of his own chisel among them, yet knew what each of these works of +art had cost, knew by experience the long years of struggle and study +and the infinitude of toil which had gone to the shaping of even one +limb, to the carving of even one perfected outline, he could never so +use them without thought or care. Instinctively he would seek to throw +in household goods, even gold and silver, all the city held, before he +sacrificed its works of art! + +Men’s bodies are our woman’s works of art. Given to us power of control, +we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human +relationships made by international ambitions and greeds. The thought +would never come to us as woman, “Cast in men’s bodies; settle the thing +so!” Arbitration and compensation would as naturally occur to her +as cheaper and simpler methods of bridging the gaps in national +relationships, as to the sculptor it would occur to throw in anything +rather than statuary, though he might be driven to that at last! + +This is one of those phases of human life, not very numerous, but very +important, towards which the man as man, and the woman as woman, on +the mere ground of their different sexual function with regard to +reproduction, stand, and must stand, at a somewhat differing angle. +The physical creation of human life, which, in as far as the male is +concerned, consists in a few moments of physical pleasure; to the female +must always signify months of pressure and physical endurance, crowned +with danger to life. To the male, the giving of life is a laugh; to the +female, blood, anguish, and sometimes death. Here we touch one of the +few yet important differences between man and woman as such. + +The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean, +to the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be +borne within them for months, given birth to in anguish, fed from +their breasts and reared with toil, if the numbers of the tribe and the +strength of the nation are to be maintained. In nations continually at +war, incessant and unbroken child-bearing is by war imposed on all women +if the state is to survive; and whenever war occurs, if numbers are to +be maintained, there must be an increased child-bearing and rearing. +This throws upon woman as woman a war tax, compared with which all that +the male expends in military preparations is comparatively light. + +The relations of the female towards the production of human life +influences undoubtedly even her relation towards animal and all life. +“It is a fine day, let us go out and kill something!” cries the typical +male of certain races, instinctively. “There is a living thing, it will +die if it is not cared for,” says the average woman, almost equally +instinctively. It is true, that the woman will sacrifice as mercilessly, +as cruelly, the life of a hated rival or an enemy, as any male; but she +always knows what she is doing, and the value of the life she takes! +There is no light-hearted, careless enjoyment in the sacrifice of life +to the normal woman; her instinct, instructed by practical experience, +steps in to prevent it. She always knows what life costs; and that it is +more easy to destroy than create it. + +It is also true, that, from the loftiest standpoint, the condemnation +of war which has arisen in the advancing human spirit, is in no sense +related to any particular form of sex function. The man and the woman +alike, who with Isaiah on the hills of Palestine, or the Indian Buddha +under his bo-tree, have seen the essential unity of all sentient +life; and who therefore see in war but a symptom of that crude +disco-ordination of life on earth, not yet at one with itself, which +affects humanity in these early stages of its growth: and who are +compelled to regard as the ultimate goal of the race, though yet perhaps +far distant across the ridges of innumerable coming ages, that harmony +between all forms of conscious life, metaphorically prefigured by the +ancient Hebrew, when he cried, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb; and +the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion +and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them!”--to that +individual, whether man or woman, who has reached this standpoint, there +is no need for enlightenment from the instincts of the child-bearers of +society as such; their condemnation of war, rising not so much from the +fact that it is a wasteful destruction of human flesh, as that it is an +indication of the non-existence of that co-ordination, the harmony which +is summed up in the cry, “My little children, love one another.” + +But for the vast bulk of humanity, probably for generations to come, the +instinctive antagonism of the human child-bearer to reckless destruction +of that which she has at so much cost produced, will be necessary to +educate the race to any clear conception of the bestiality and insanity +of war. + +War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible +to the female an equal share in the control and governance of modern +national life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its +extinction will not be delayed much longer. + +It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men’s +bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour +and ardour of battle, but singly, and alone, with a three-in-the-morning +courage, shed our blood and face death that the battlefield may have +its food, a food more precious to us than our heart’s blood; it is we +especially, who in the domain of war, have our word to say, a word no +man can say for us. It is our intention to enter into the domain of +war and to labour there till in the course of generations we have +extinguished it. + +If today we claim all labour for our province, yet more especially do we +claim those fields in which the difference in the reproductive function +between man and woman may place male and female at a slightly different +angle with regard to certain phases of human life. + + + +Chapter V. Sex Differences. + +If we examine the physical phenomenon of sex as it manifests itself in +the human creature, we find, in the first stages of the individual’s +existence, no difference discernible, by any means we have at present at +our command, between those germs which are ultimately to become male or +female. Later, in the foetal life, at birth, and through infancy though +the organs of sex serve to distinguish the male from the female, there +is in the general structure and working of the organism little or +nothing to divide the sexes. + +Even when puberty is reached, with its enormous development of sexual +and reproductive activity modifying those parts of the organism +with which it is concerned, and producing certain secondary sexual +characteristics, there yet remains the major extent of the human +body and of physical function little, or not at all, affected by sex +modification. The eye, the ear, the sense of touch, the general organs +of nutrition and respiration and volition are in the main identical, +and often differ far more in persons of the same sex than in those of +opposite sexes; and even on the dissecting-table the tissues of the male +and female are often wholly indistinguishable. + +It is when we consider the reproductive organs themselves and their +forms of activity, and such parts of the organism modified directly +in relation to them, that a real and important difference is found +to exist, radical though absolutely complemental. It is exactly as we +approach the reproductive functions that the male and female bodies +differ; exactly as we recede from them that they become more and more +similar, and even absolutely identical. Taking the eye, perhaps the most +highly developed, complex organ in the body, and, if of an organ the +term may be allowed, the most intellectual organ of sense, we find it +remains the same in male and female in structure, in appearance, and +in function throughout life; while the breast, closely connected with +reproduction, though absolutely identical in both forms in infancy, +assumes a widely different organisation when reproductive activity is +actually concerned. + +When we turn to the psychic phase of human life an exactly analogous +phenomenon presents itself. The intelligence, emotions, and desires of +the human infant at birth differ not at all perceptibly, as its sex may +be male or female; and such psychic differences as appear to exist in +later childhood are undoubtedly very largely the result of artificial +training, forcing on the appearance of psychic sexual divergencies long +before they would tend spontaneously to appear; as where sports and +occupations are interdicted to young children on the ground of their +supposed sexual unfitness; as when an infant female is forcibly +prevented from climbing or shouting, and the infant male from amusing +himself with needle and thread or dolls. Even in the fully adult human, +and in spite of differences of training, the psychic activities over +a large extent of life appear to be absolutely identical. The male and +female brains acquire languages, solve mathematical problems, and master +scientific detail in a manner wholly indistinguishable: as illustrated +by the fact that in modern universities the papers sent in by male and +female candidates are as a rule absolutely identical in type. Placed in +like external conditions, their tastes and emotions, over a vast part of +the surface of life, are identical; and, in an immense number of those +cases where psychic sex differences appear to exist, subject to rigid +analysis they are found to be purely artificial creations, for, when +other races or classes are studied, they are found non-existent as +sexual characteristics; as when the female is supposed by ignorant +persons in modern European societies to have an inherent love for bright +colours and ornaments, not shared by the male; while experience of other +societies and past social conditions prove that it is as often the male +who has been even more desirous of attiring himself in bright raiment +and adorning himself with brilliant jewels; or as when, among certain +tribes of savages, the use of tobacco is supposed to be a peculiarly +female prerogative, while, in some modern societies, it is supposed +to have some relation to masculinity. (The savage male of today +when attired in his paint, feathers, cats’ tails and necklaces is an +immeasurably more ornamented and imposing figure than his female, even +when fully attired for a dance in beads and bangles: the Oriental +male has sometimes scarcely been able to walk under the weight of his +ornaments; and the males of Europe a couple of centuries ago, with their +powdered wigs, lace ruffles and cuffs, paste buckles, feathered cocked +hats, and patches were quite as ridiculous in their excess of adornment +as the complementary females of their own day, or the most parasitic +females of this. Both in the class and the individual, whether male or +female, an intense love of dress and meretricious external adornment is +almost invariably the concomitant and outcome of parasitism. Were the +parasite female class in our own societies today to pass away, French +fashions with their easeless and grotesque variations (shaped not for +use or beauty, but the attracting of attention) would die out. And the +extent to which any woman today, not herself belonging to the parasite +class and still labouring, attempts to follow afar off the fashions of +the parasite, may be taken generally as an almost certain indication +of the ease with which she would accept parasitism were its conditions +offered her. The tendency of the cultured and intellectually labouring +woman of today to adopt a more rational type of attire, less shaped to +attract attention to the individual than to confer comfort and abstain +from impeding activity, is often spoken of as an attempt on the part +of woman slavishly to imitate man. What is really taking place is, that +like causes are producing like effects on human creatures with common +characteristics.) + +But there remain certain psychic differences in attitude, on the part of +male and female as such, which are inherent and not artificial: and, +in the psychic human world, it is exactly as we approach the sphere +of sexual and reproductive activity, with those emotions and instincts +connected directly with sex and the reproduction of the race, that a +difference does appear. + +In the animal world all forms of psychic variations are found allying +themselves now with the male sex form, and then with the female. In the +insect and fish worlds, where the female forms are generally larger +and stronger than the male, the female is generally more pugnacious and +predatory than the male. Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form +is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem +very small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly +monogamous, the affection of the female for the male is so great that +she is said never to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over +and care for the young with extreme solicitude. The ostrich male form, +though perhaps larger than the female, shares with her the labour of +hatching the eggs, relieving the hen of her duty at a fixed hour daily: +and his care for the young when hatched is as tender as hers. Among +song-birds, in which the male and female forms are so alike as sometimes +to be indistinguishable, and which are also monogamous, the male and +female forms not only exhibit the same passionate affection for each +other (in the case of the South African cock-o-veet, they have one +answering love-song between them; the male sounding two or three notes +and the female completing it with two or three more), but they build the +nest together and rear the young with an equal devotion. In the case of +the little kapok bird of the Cape, a beautiful, white, fluffy round +nest is made by both out of the white down of a certain plant, and +immediately below the entrance to the cavity in which the little female +sits on the eggs is a small shelf or basket, in which the tiny male sits +to watch over and guard them. It is among certain orders of birds that +sex manifestations appear to assume their most harmonious and poetical +forms on earth. Among gallinaceous birds, on the other hand, where the +cock is much larger and more pugnacious than the female, and which are +polygamous, the cock does not court the female by song, but seizes her +by force, and shows little or no interest in his offspring, neither +sharing in the brooding nor feeding the young; and even at times seizing +any tempting morsel which the young or the hen may have discovered. + +Among mammals the male form tends to be slightly larger than the female, +though not always (the female whale, for instance, being larger than the +male); the male also tends to be more pugnacious and less careful of the +young; though to this rule also there are exceptions. In the case of +the South African mierkat, for instance, the female is generally more +combative and more difficult to tame than the male; and it is the +males who from the moment of birth watch over the young with the most +passionate and tender solicitude, keeping them warm under their persons, +carrying them to places of safety in their mouths, and feeding them till +full grown; and this they do not only for their own young, but to any +young who may be brought in contact with them. We have known a male +mierkat so assiduous in feeding young that were quite unrelated to +himself, taking to them every morsel of food given him, that we have +been compelled to shut him up in a room alone when feeding him, to +prevent his starving himself to death: the male mierkat thus exhibiting +exactly those psychic qualities which are generally regarded as +peculiarly feminine; the females, on the other hand, being far more +pugnacious towards each other than are the males. + +Among mammals generally, except the tendency to greater pugnacity shown +by the male towards other males, and the greater solicitude for the +young shown generally by the female form, but not always; the psychic +differences between the two sex forms are not great. Between the male +and female pointer as puppies, there is as little difference in mental +activity as in physical; and even when adult, on the hunting ground, +that great non-sexual field in which their highest mental and physical +activities are displayed, there is little or nothing which distinguishes +materially between the male and female; in method, manner, and quickness +they are alike; in devotion to man, they are psychically identical. (It +is often said the female dog is more intelligent than the male; but I +am almost inclined to doubt this, after long and close study of both +forms.) It is at the moment when the reproductive element comes fully +into play that similarity and identity cease. In the intensity of +initial sex instinct they are alike; the female will leap from windows, +climb walls, and almost endanger her life to reach the male who waits +for her, as readily as he will to gain her. It is when the bitch lies +with her six young drawing life from her breast, and gazing with wistful +and anguished solicitude at every hand stretched out to touch them, a +world of emotion concentrated on the sightless creatures, and a whole +body of new mental aptitudes brought into play in caring for them, it is +then that between her and the male who begot them, but cares nothing for +them, there does rise a psychic difference that is real and wide. Alike +in the sports of puppydom and the non-sexual activities of adult age; +alike in the possession of the initial sexual instinct which draws the +sex to the sex, the moment active sexual reproduction is concerned, +there is opened to the female a certain world of sensations and +experiences, from which her male companion is for ever excluded. + +So also is our human world: alike in the sports, and joys, and sorrows +of infancy; alike in the non-sexual labours of life; alike even in the +possession of that initial instinct which draws sex to sex, and which, +differing slightly in its forms of manifestation is of corresponding +intensity in both; the moment actual reproduction begins to take place, +the man and the woman enter spheres of sensation, perception, emotion, +desire, and knowledge which are not, and cannot be, absolutely +identical. Between the man who, in an instant of light-hearted +enjoyment, begets the infant (who may even beget it in a state of +half-drunken unconsciousness, and may easily know nothing of its +existence for months or years after it is born, or never at all; and who +under no circumstances can have any direct sensational knowledge of its +relation to himself) and the woman who bears it continuously for months +within her body, and who gives birth to it in pain, and who, if it is to +live, is compelled, or was in primitive times, to nourish it for +months from the blood of her own being--between these, there exists of +necessity, towards a limited but all-important body of human interests +and phenomena, a certain distinct psychic attitude. At this one point, +the two great halves of humanity stand confronting certain great +elements in human existence, from angles that are not identical. From +the moment the universal initial attraction of sex to sex becomes +incarnate in the first concrete sexual act till the developed offspring +attains maturity, no step in the reproductive journey, or in their +relation to their offspring, has been quite identical for the man and +the woman. And this divergence of experiences in human relations must +react on their attitude towards that particular body of human concerns +which directly is connected with the sexual reproduction of the race; +and, it is exactly in these fields of human activity, where sex as sex +is concerned, that woman as woman has a part to play which she cannot +resign into the hands of others. + +It may be truly said that in the laboratory, the designing-room, the +factory, the mart, the mathematician’s study, and in all fields of +purely abstract or impersonal labour, while the entrance of woman would +add to the net result of human labour in those fields, and though a +grave injustice is done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps +the only field she is fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman +has probably little or nothing to contribute in those fields that is +radically distinct from that which man might supply; there would be a +difference in quantity but probably none in kind, in the work done for +the race. + +But in those spheres of social activity, dealing especially with +certain relations between human creatures because of their diverse if +complementary relation to the production of human life, the sexes as +sexes have often each a part to play which the other cannot play for +them; have each a knowledge gained from phases of human experience, +which the other cannot supply; here woman as woman has something +radically distinct to contribute to the sum-total of human knowledge, +and her activity is of importance, not merely individually, but +collectively, and as a class. + +That demand, which today in all democratic self-governing countries is +being made by women, to be accorded their share in the electoral, and +ultimately in the legislative and executive duties of government, is +based on two grounds: the wider, and more important, that they find +nothing in the nature of their sex-function which exonerates them, +as human beings, from their obligation to take part in the labours of +guidance and government in their state: the narrower, but yet important +ground, that, in as far as in one direction, i.e., in the special form +of their sex function takes, they do differ from the male, they, in so +far, form a class and are bound to represent the interests of, and to +give the state the benefit of, the insight of their class, in certain +directions. + +Those persons who imagine that the balance of great political parties +in almost any society would be seriously changed by the admission of its +women in public functions are undoubtedly wholly wrong. The fundamental +division of humans into those inclined to hold by the past and defend +whatever is, and those hopeful of the future and inclined to introduce +change, would probably be found to exist in much the same proportion +were the males or the females of any given society compared: and the +males and females of each class will in the main share the faults, the +virtues, and the prejudices of their class. The individuals may lose by +being excluded on the ground of sex from a share of public labour, and +by being robbed of a portion of their lawful individual weight in their +own society; and the society as a whole may lose by having a smaller +number to select its chosen labourers from; yet, undoubtedly, on the +mass of social, political, and international questions, the conclusions +arrived at by one sex would be exactly those arrived at by the other. + +Were a body of humans elected to adjudicate upon Greek accents, or to +pass a decision on the relative fineness of woollens and linens, the +form of sex of the persons composing it would probably have no bearing +on the result; there is no rational ground for supposing that, on a +question of Greek accents or the thickness of cloths, equally instructed +males and females would differ. Here sex plays no part. The experience +and instructedness of the individuals would tell: their sexual +attributes would be indifferent. + +But there are points, comparatively small, even very small, in number, +yet of vital importance to human life, in which sex does play a part. + +It is not a matter of indifference whether the body called to adjudicate +upon the questions, whether the temporary sale of the female body for +sexual purposes shall or shall not be a form of traffic encouraged +and recognised by the state; or whether one law shall exist for the +licentious human female and another for the licentious human male; +whether the claim of the female to the offspring she bears shall or +shall not equal that of the male who begets it; whether an act of +infidelity on the part of the male shall or shall not terminate the +contract which binds his female companion to him, as completely as an +act of infidelity on her part would terminate her claim on him; it is +not a matter of indifference whether a body elected to adjudicate on +such points as these consists of males solely, or females solely, or of +both combined. As it consists of one, or the other, or of both, so not +only will the answers vary, but, in some cases, will they be completely +diverse. Here we come into that very narrow, but important, region, +where sex as sex manifestly plays its part; where the male as male +and the female as female have each their body of perceptions and +experiences, which they do not hold in common; here one sex cannot +adequately represent the other. It is here that each sexual part has +something radically distinct to contribute to the wisdom of the race. + +We, today, take all labour for our province! We seek to enter the +non-sexual fields of intellectual or physical toil, because we are +unable to see today, with regard to them, any dividing wall raised by +sex which excludes us from them. We are yet equally determined to enter +those in which sex difference does play its part, because it is here +that woman, the bearer of the race, must stand side by side with man, +the begetter; if a completed human wisdom, an insight that misses no +aspect of human life, and an activity that is in harmony with the entire +knowledge and the entire instinct of the entire human race, is to exist. +It is here that the man cannot act for the woman nor the woman for the +man; but both must interact. It is here that each sexual half of the +race, so closely and indistinguishably blended elsewhere, has its own +distinct contribution to make to the sum total of human knowledge and +human wisdom. Neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without +the woman, the completed human intelligence. + +Therefore;--We claim, today, all labour for our province! Those large +fields in which it would appear sex plays no part, and equally those +smaller in which it plays a part. + + + +Chapter VI. Certain Objections. + +It has been stated sometimes, though more often implicitly than in any +direct or logical form, (this statement being one it is not easy to make +definitely without its reducing itself to nullity!) that woman should +seek no fields of labour in the new world of social conditions that +is arising about us, as she has still her function as child-bearer: a +labour which, by her own showing, is arduous and dangerous, though she +may love it as a soldier loves his battlefield; and that woman should +perform her sex functions only, allowing man or the state to support +her, even when she is only potentially a child-bearer and bears no +children. (Such a scheme, as has before been stated, was actually put +forward by a literary man in England some years ago: but he had the +sense to state that it should apply only to women of the upper classes, +the mass of labouring women, who form the vast bulk of the English women +of the present day, being left to their ill-paid drudgery and their +child-bearing as well!) + +There is some difficulty in replying to a theorist so wholly delusive. +Not only is he to be met by all the arguments against parasitism of +class or race; but, at the present day, when probably much more than +half the world’s most laborious and ill-paid labour is still performed +by women, from tea pickers and cocoa tenders in India and the islands, +to the washerwomen, cooks, and drudging labouring men’s wives, who +in addition to the sternest and most unending toil, throw in their +child-bearing as a little addition; and when, in some civilised +countries women exceed the males in numbers by one million, so +that there would still be one million females for whom there was no +legitimate sexual outlet, though each male in the nation supported a +female, it is somewhat difficult to reply with gravity to the assertion, +“Let Woman be content to be the ‘Divine Child-bearer,’ and ask no more.” + +Were it worth replying gravely to so idle a theorist, we might +answer:--Through all the ages of the past, when, with heavy womb and +hard labour-worn hands, we physically toiled beside man, bearing up by +the labour of our bodies the world about us, it was never suggested to +us, “You, the child-bearers of the race, have in that one function a +labour that equals all others combined; therefore, toil no more in other +directions, we pray of you; neither plant, nor build, nor bend over +the grindstone; nor far into the night, while we sleep, sit weaving the +clothing we and our children are to wear! Leave it to us, to plant, to +reap, to weave, to work, to toil for you, O sacred child-bearer! Work no +more; every man of the race will work for you!” This cry in all the grim +ages of our past toil we never heard. + +And today, when the lofty theorist, who tonight stands before the +drawing-room fire in spotless shirtfront and perfectly fitting clothes, +and declaims upon the amplitude of woman’s work in life as child-bearer, +and the mighty value of that labour which exceeds all other, making +it unnecessary for her to share man’s grosser and lower toils: is it +certain he always in practical life remembers his theory? When waking +tomorrow morning, he finds that the elderly house drudge, who rises +at dawn while he yet sleeps to make his tea and clean his boots, has +brought his tea late, and polished his boots ill; may he not even +sharply condemn her, and assure her she will have to leave unless +she works harder and rises earlier? Does he exclaim to her, “Divine +child-bearer! Potential mother of the race! Why should you clean my +boots or bring up my tea, while I lie warm in bed? Is it not enough you +should have the holy and mysterious power of bringing the race to life? +Let that content you. Henceforth I shall get up at dawn and make my own +tea and clean my own boots, and pay you just the same!” Or, should his +landlady, now about to give birth to her ninth child, send him up a +poorly-cooked dinner or forget to bring up his scuttle of coals, does he +send for her and thus apostrophise the astonished matron: “Child-bearer +of the race! Producer of men! Cannot you be contented with so noble and +lofty a function in life without toiling and moiling? Why carry up heavy +coal-scuttles from the cellar and bend over hot fires, wearing out nerve +and brain and muscle that should be reserved for higher duties? We, we, +the men of the race, will perform its mean, its sordid, its grinding +toil! For woman is beauty, peace, repose! Your function is to give life, +not to support it by labour. The Mother, the Mother! How wonderful it +sounds! Toil no more! Rest is for you; labour and drudgery for +us!” Would he not rather assure her that, unless she laboured more +assiduously and sternly, she would lose his custom and so be unable to +pay her month’s rent; and perhaps so, with children and an invalid or +drunken husband whom she supports, be turned out into the streets? For, +it is remarkable, that, with theorists of this class, it is not toil, or +the amount of toil, crushing alike to brain and body, which the female +undertakes that is objected to; it is the form and the amount of the +reward. It is not the hand-labouring woman, even in his own society, +worn out and prematurely aged at forty with grinding domestic toil, that +has no beginning and knows no end-- + + “Man’s work is from sun to sun, + But the woman’s work is never done”-- + +it is not the haggard, work-crushed woman and mother who irons his +shirts, or the potential mother who destroys health and youth in +the sweater’s den where she sews the garments in which he appears so +radiantly in the drawing-room which disturbs him. It is the thought +of the woman-doctor with an income of some hundreds a year, who drives +round in her carriage to see her patients, or receives them in her +consulting-rooms, and who spends the evening smoking and reading before +her study fire or receiving her guests; it is the thought of the woman +who, as legislator, may loll for perhaps six hours of the day on the +padded seat of legislative bench, relieving the tedium now and then by +a turn in the billiard- or refreshment-room, when she is not needed to +vote or speak; it is the thought of the woman as Greek professor, with +three or four hundred a year, who gives half a dozen lectures a week, +and has leisure to enjoy the society of her husband and children, and +to devote to her own study and life of thought; it is she who wrings his +heart. It is not the woman, who, on hands and knees, at tenpence a day, +scrubs the floors of the public buildings, or private dwellings, that +fills him with anguish for womanhood: that somewhat quadrupedal posture +is for him truly feminine, and does not interfere with his ideal of the +mother and child-bearer; and that, in some other man’s house, or perhaps +his own, while he and the wife he keeps for his pleasures are visiting +concert or entertainment, some weary woman paces till far into the night +bearing with aching back and tired head the fretful, teething child +he brought into the world, for a pittance of twenty or thirty pounds +a year, does not distress him. But that the same woman by work in an +office should earn one hundred and fifty pounds, be able to have a +comfortable home of her own, and her evening free for study or pleasure, +distresses him deeply. It is not the labour, or the amount of labour, +so much as the amount of reward that interferes with his ideal of the +eternal womanly; he is as a rule quite contented that the women of the +race should labour for him, whether as tea-pickers or washerwomen, or +toilers for the children he brings into the world, provided the reward +they receive is not large, nor in such fields as he might himself at any +time desire to enter. + +When master and ass, drawing a heavy burden between them, have climbed +a steep mountain range together; clambering over sharp rocks and across +sliding gravel where no water is, and herbage is scant; if, when they +were come out on the top of the mountain, and before them stretch broad, +green lands, and through wide half-open gates they catch the glimpse of +trees waving, and there comes the sound of running waters, if then, the +master should say to his ass, “Good beast of mine, lie down! I can push +the whole burden myself now: lie down here; lie down, my creature; you +have toiled enough; I will go on alone!” then it might be even the beast +would whisper (with that glimpse through the swinging gates of the green +fields beyond)--“Good master, we two have climbed this mighty mountain +together, and the stones have cut my hoofs as they cut your feet. +Perhaps, if when we were at the foot you had found out that the burden +was two heavy for me, and had then said to me, ‘Lie down, my beastie; +I will carry on the burden alone; lie down and rest!’ I might then have +listened. But now, just here, where I see the gates swinging open, a +smooth road, and green fields before us, I think I shall go on a little +farther. We two have climbed together; maybe we shall go on yet, side by +side.” + +For the heart of labouring womanhood cries out today to the man who +would suggest she need not seek new fields of labour, that child-bearing +is enough for her share in life’s labour, “Do you dare say to us +now, that we are fit to do nothing but child-bear, that when that is +performed our powers are exhausted? To us, who yet through all the ages +of the past, when child-bearing was persistent and incessant, regarded +it hardly as a toil, but rather as the reward of labour; has our right +hand lost its cunning and our heart its strength, that today, when human +labour is easier and humanity’s work grows fairer, you say to us, ‘You +can do nothing now but child-bear’? Do you dare to say this, to us, when +the upward path of the race has been watered by the sweat of our brow, +and the sides of the road by which humanity has climbed are whitened on +either hand by the bones of the womanhood that has fallen there, toiling +beside man? Do you dare say this, to us, when even today the food you +eat, the clothes you wear, the comfort you enjoy, is largely given you +by the unending muscular toil of woman?” + +As the women of old planted and reaped and ground the grain that the +children they bore might eat; as the maidens of old spun that they might +make linen for their households and obtain the right to bear men; so, +though we bend no more over grindstones, or labour in the fields, +or weave by hand, it is our intention to enter all the new fields of +labour, that we also may have the power and right to bring men into the +world. It is our faith that the day comes in which not only shall no man +dare to say, “It is enough portion for a woman in life that she bear +a child,” but when it will rather be said, “What noble labour has that +woman performed, that she should have the privilege of bringing a man or +woman child into the world?” + +But, it has also been objected, “What, and if the female half of +humanity, though able, in addition to the exercise of its reproductive +functions, to bear its share in the new fields of social labour as it +did in the old, be yet in certain directions a less productive labourer +than the male? What if, in the main, the result of the labour of the two +halves of humanity should not be found to be exactly equal?” + +To this it may be answered, that it is within the range of possibility +that, mysteriously co-ordinated with the male reproductive function in +the human, there may also be in some directions a tendency to possess +gifts for labour useful and beneficial to the race in the stage of +growth it has now reached, in excess of those possessed by the female. +We see no reason why this should be so, and, in the present state of our +knowledge, this is a point on which no sane person would dogmatise; but +it is possible! It may, on the other hand be, that, taken in the bulk, +when all the branches of productive labour be considered, as the ages +pass, the value of the labour of the two halves of humanity will be +found so identical and so closely to balance, that no superiority can +possibly be asserted of either, as the result of the closest analysis. +This also is possible. + +But, it may also be, that, when the bulk and sum-total of human +activities is surveyed in future ages, it will be found that the value +of the labour of the female in the world that is rising about us, has +exceeded in quality or in quantity that of the male. We see no reason +either, why this should be; there is nothing in the nature of the +reproductive function in the female human which of necessity implies +such superiority. + +Yet it may be, that, with the smaller general bulk and the muscular +fineness, and the preponderance of brain and nervous system in net bulk +over the fleshy and osseous parts of the organism, which generally, +though by no means always, characterises the female as distinguished +from the male of the human species, there do go mental qualities which +will peculiarly fit her for the labours of the future. It may be, that +her lesser possession of the mere muscular and osseous strength, which +were the elements of primary importance and which gave dominance in one +stage of human growth, and which placed woman at a social disadvantage +as compared with her companion, will, under new conditions of life, in +which the value of crude mechanical strength as distinguished from high +vitality and strong nervous activity is passing away, prove as largely +to her advantage, as his muscular bulk and strength in the past proved +to the male. It is quite possible, in the new world which is arising +about us, that the type of human most useful to society and best fitted +for its future conditions, and who will excel in the most numerous forms +of activity, will be, not merely the muscularly powerful and bulky, but +the highly versatile, active, vital, adaptive, sensitive, physically +fine-drawn type; and, as that type, though, like the muscularly heavy +and powerful, by no means peculiar to and confined to one sex, is yet +rather more commonly found in conjunction with a female organism, it is +quite possible that, taken in the bulk and on the whole, the female half +of humanity may, by virtue of its structural adaptions, be found most +fitted for the bulk of human labours in the future! + +As with individuals and races, so also with sexes, changed social +conditions may render exactly those subtile qualities, which in one +social state were a disadvantage, of the highest social advantage in +another. + +The skilled diplomatist or politician, so powerful in his own element, +on board ship during a storm becomes at once of less general value or +consideration than the meanest sailor who can reef a sail or guide a +wheel; and, were we to be reduced again suddenly to a state of nature, +a company of highly civilised men and women would at once, as we have +before remarked, find their social value completely inverted; landed on +a desert shore, unarmed and naked, to encounter wild beasts and savages, +and to combat nature for food, the primitive scale of human values would +at once reassert itself. It would not then be the mighty financier, the +learned judge, or great poet and scholar who would be sought after, but +the thickest-headed navvy who could throw a stone so exactly that he +brought down a bird, and who could in a day raise a wall which would +shelter the group; and the man so powerful that he could surely strike +an enemy or wild beast dead with his club, would at once be objects of +social regard and attain individual eminence, and perhaps dominance. It +would not be the skilled dancer, who in one night in a civilised state +earns her hundreds, nor yet the fragile clinging beauty, but the girl +of the broad back and the strong limb, who could collect wood and carry +water, who would be the much considered and much sought after female in +such a community. Even in the animal world, there is the same inversion +in values, according as the external conditions vary. The lion, while +ruling over every other creature in his primitive wilds, by right of his +untamable ferocity, size, and rapacity, is yet bound to become a prey +to destruction and extermination when he comes into contact with the +new condition brought by man; while the wild dog, so immeasurably +his inferior in size and ferocity, is tamed, survives and multiplies, +exactly because he has been driven by his smaller structure and lesser +physical force to develop those social instincts and those forms of +intelligence which make him amenable to the new condition of life and +valuable in them. The same inversion in the value of qualities may be +traced in the history of human species. The Jews, whose history has been +one long story of oppression at the hands of more muscular, physically +powerful and pugilistic peoples; whom we find first making bricks under +the lash of the Egyptian, and later hanging his harp as an exile among +the willow-trees of Babylon; who, for eighteen hundred years, has been +trampled, tortured, and despised beneath the feet of the more physically +powerful and pugilistic, but not more vital, keen, intelligent, or +persistent races of Europe; has, today, by the slow turning of the +wheel of life, come uppermost. The Egyptian task-master and warrior +have passed; what the Babylonian was we know no more, save for a few mud +tablets and rock inscriptions recording the martial victories; but the +once captive Jew we see today in every city and every street; until at +last, the descendants of those men who spat when they spoke his +name, and forcibly drew his teeth to extract his money from him, wait +patiently behind each other for admission to his offices and palaces; +while nobles solicit his daughters in marriage and kings are proud to be +summoned to his table in hope of golden crumbs, and great questions +of peace and war are often held balanced in the hand of one little +asthmatic Jew. After long ages of disgrace and pariahism, the time has +come, whether for good or for evil, when just those qualities which the +Jew possesses and which subtilely distinguish him from others, are in +demand; while those he has not are sinking into disuse; exactly that +domination of the reflective faculties over the combative, which once +made him slave, also saved him from becoming extinct in wars; and the +intellectual quickness, the far-sighted keenness, the persistent mental +activity and self-control, which could not in those ages save him from +degradation or compensate for his lack of bone and muscle and combative +instinct, are the very qualities the modern world demands and crowns. +The day of Goliath with his club and his oaths is fast passing, and the +day of David with his harp and skilfully constructed sling is coming +near and yet nearer. + +The qualities which give an animal, a race, or an individual, a higher +utility or social dominance must always be influenced by any change in +the environment. As the wheel of life slowly revolves, that which was +lowest comes continually uppermost, and that which was dominant becomes +subservient. + +It is possible, that women, after countless ages, during which that +smaller relative development in weight and muscularity which is incident +to almost all females which suckle their young, and that lesser desire +for pugilism inherent in almost all females who bear their young alive, +rendered her lacking in the two qualities which made for individual +dominance in her societies, may yet, in the future, discover that those +changes in human conditions, which have done away with the primary +necessity for muscular force and pugilistic arts, have also inverted her +place in the scale of social values. + +It is possible, that the human female, like the Jew, the male of that +type farthest removed from the dominant male type of the past, may in +the future find, that, so far from those qualities which, in an earlier +condition, lessened her social value and power of labour, continuing to +do so, they will increase it. That the delicacy of hand, lightness of +structure which were fatal when the dominant labour of life was to +wield a battle-axe or move a weight, may be no restraint but even an +assistance in the intellectual and more delicate mechanical fields of +labour; that the preponderance of nervous and cerebral over muscular +material, and the tendency towards preservative and creative activity +over pugilistic and destructive, so far from shutting her off from the +most important fields of human toil, may increase her fitness for them! +We have no certain proof that it is so at present; but, if woman’s +long years of servitude and physical subjection, and her experience as +child-bearer and protector of infancy, should, in any way, be found +in the future to have endowed her, as a kind of secondary sexual +characteristic, with any additional strength of social instinct, +with any exceptional width of human sympathy and any instinctive +comprehension; then, it is not merely possible, but certain, that, in +the ages that are coming, in which the labour of the human race will be +not mainly destructive but conservative, in which the building up and +developing of humanity, and not continually the inter-destruction of +part by part, will be the dominant activity of the race, that woman as +woman, and by right of that wherein she differs from the male, will have +an all-important part to play in the activity of the race. + +The matter is one of curious and subtle interest, but what practically +concerns the human race is, not which of the two sexual halves which +must always coexist is best fitted to excel in certain human labours in +this or that direction, at this or that time, nor even which has most +to contribute to the sum-total of human activities; but it is this, that +every individual unit humanity contains, irrespective of race, sex, or +type, should find exactly that field of labour which may most contribute +to its development, happiness, and health, and in which its peculiar +faculties and gifts shall be most effectively and beneficially exerted +for its fellows. + +It matters nothing, and less than nothing, to us as women, whether, of +those children we bring into the world, our sons should excel in virtue, +intelligence, and activity, our daughters, or our daughters our sons; +so that, in each child we bring to life, not one potentiality shall be +lost, nor squandered on a lesser when it might have been expended on a +higher and more beneficent task. So that not one desirable faculty +of the marvellous creatures we suffer to bring into existence be left +uncultivated, to us, as women, it matters nothing and less than nothing, +which sex type excels in action, in knowledge, or in virtue, so both +attain their best. There is one thing only on earth, as precious to +woman as the daughter who springs from her body--it is the son. There +is one thing only dearer to the woman than herself--it is the man. As no +sane human concerns himself as to whether the right or left ventricle +of his heart works most satisfactorily, or is most essential to his +well-being, so both be perfect in health and activity; as no sane woman +distresses herself lest her right breast should not excel the left in +beauty and use; so no sane man or woman questions anxiously over the +relative perfections of male and female. In love there is no first nor +last. What we request of life is that the tools should be given to his +hand or hers who can best handle them; that the least efficient +should not be forced into the place of the more efficient, and that +an artificially drawn line should never repress the activities of the +individual creature, which we as women bring into the world. + +But it may also be said to us, “What, and if, all your dreams and hopes +for woman and the future of the race be based on air? What, and if, +desirable as it is that woman should not become practically dependent on +her sexual function alone, and should play at least as great a part in +the productive labour of the race in the future as she played in that of +the past--what, if woman cannot take the same vast share in the complex +and largely mental labour fields of the future, as in the largely +physical fields of the past? What, and if, in spite of all her effort +and sacrifice to attain this end, exactly now and when the labour of +civilised societies becomes mental rather than mechanical, woman be +found wanting?” + +In Swiss valleys today the traveller comes sometimes on the figure of +a solitary woman climbing the mountain-side, on her broad shoulders a +mighty burden of fodder or manure she is bearing up for the cattle, or +to some patch of cultivated land. Steady, unshrinking eyes look out +at you from beneath the deeply seamed forehead, and a strand of hair, +perhaps almost as white as the mountain snows on the peaks above, +escapes from under the edge of the binding handkerchief. The face is +seamed and seared with the stern marks of toil and endurance, as the +mountain-side is with marks of storm and avalanche. It is the face of +one who has brought men into the world in labour and sorrow, and toiled +mightily to sustain them; and dead must be the mind to the phases of +human existence, who does not see in that toilworn figure one of the +mighty pillars, which have in the long ages of the past sustained the +life of humanity on earth, and made possible its later development; and +much must the tinsel of life have dazzled him, who fails to mark it with +reverence and, metaphorically, to bow his head before it--the type of +the mighty labouring woman who has built up life. + +But, it may be said, what if, in the ages to come, it should never again +be possible for any man to stand bowed with the same respect in the +presence of any other of earth’s mighty toilers, who should also be +mother and woman? What, if she, who could combine motherhood with the +most unending muscular toil, will fall flaccid and helpless where the +labour becomes mental? What if, struggle as she will, she can become +nothing in the future but the pet pug-dog of the race, lying on its +sofa, or the Italian greyhound, shivering in its silken coat? What +if woman, in spite of her most earnest aspirations and determined +struggles, be destined to failure in the new world that is rising +because of inherent mental incapacity? + +There are many replies which may be made to such a suggestion. It is +often said with truth, that the ordinary occupations of woman in the +past and present, and in all classes of society in which she is not +parasitic, do demand, and have always demanded, a very high versatility +and mental activity, as well as physical: that the mediaeval baron’s +wife who guided her large household probably had to expend far more pure +intellect in doing so than the baron in his hunting and fighting; that +the wife of the city accountant probably expends today more reason, +imagination, forethought, and memory on the management of her small +household, than he in his far simpler, monotonous arithmetical toil; +that, as there is no cause for supposing that the tailor or shoemaker +needs less intellect in his calling than the soldier or prize-fighter, +so there is nothing to suggest that, in the past, woman has not expended +as much pure intellect in the mass of her callings as the man in his; +while in those highly specialised intellectual occupations, in which +long and uninterrupted training tending to one point is necessary, +such as the liberal professions and arts, that, although woman has +practically been excluded from the requisite training, and the freedom +to place herself in the positions in which they can be pursued, that +yet, by force of innate genius and gifts in such directions, she has +continually broken through the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and +again and again taken her place beside man in those fields of labour; +showing thereby not merely aptitude but passionate and determined +inclination in those directions. With equal truth, it is often remarked +that, when as an independent hereditary sovereign, woman has been placed +in the only position in which she has ever been able freely and fully +to express her own individuality, and though selected at random by fate +from the mass of women, by the mere accident of birth or marriage, she +has shown in a large percentage of cases that the female has the power +to command, organise, and succeed in one of the most exacting and +complex of human employments, the government of nations; that from the +days of Amalasontha to Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth of England, and +Catharine of Russia, women have not failed to grasp the large impersonal +aspects of life, and successfully and powerfully to control them, when +placed in the supreme position in which it was demanded. It may also +be stated, and is sometimes, with so much iteration as to become almost +wearisome, that women’s adequacy in the modern fields of intellectual or +skilled manual labour is no more today an open matter for debate, than +the number of modern women who, as senior wranglers, doctors, &c., +have already successfully entered the new fields, and the high standard +attained by women in all university examinations to which they are +admitted, and their universal success in the administration of parochial +matters, wherever they have been allowed to share it, proves their +intellectual and moral fitness for the new forms of labour. + +All these statements are certainly interesting, and may be unanswerable. +And yet--if the truth be told, it is not ultimately on these grounds +that many of us base our hope and our certitude with regard to the +future of woman. Our conviction as to the plenitude of her powers for +the adequate performance of lofty labours in these new fields, springs +not at all from a categorical enumeration of the attainments or +performances of individual women or bodies of women in the past or +present; it has another source. + +There was a bird’s egg once, picked up by chance upon the ground, and +those who found it bore it home and placed it under a barn-door fowl. +And in time the chick bred out, and those who had found it chained it by +the leg to a log, lest it should stray and be lost. And by and by they +gathered round it, and speculated as to what the bird might be. One +said, “It is surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we +took it to the water it would swim and gabble.” But another said, “It +has no webs to its feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose +it will scratch and cackle with the others on the dung-heap.” But a +third speculated, “Look now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, +and can crack nuts!” But a fourth said, “No, but look at its wings; +perhaps it is a bird of great flight.” But several cried, “Nonsense! +No one has ever seen it fly! Why should it fly? Can you suppose that +a thing can do a thing which no one has ever seen it do?” And the +bird--the bird--with its leg chained close to the log, preened its wing. +So they sat about it, speculating, and discussing it: and one said +this, and another that. And all the while as they talked the bird sat +motionless, with its gaze fixed on the clear, blue sky above it. And one +said, “Suppose we let the creature loose to see what it will do?”--and +the bird shivered. But the others cried, “It is too valuable; it might +get lost. If it were to try to fly it might fall down and break its +neck.” And the bird, with its foot chained to the log, sat looking +upward into the clear blue sky; the sky, in which it had never been--for +the bird--the bird, knew what it would do--because it was an eaglet! + +There is one woman known to many of us, as each human creature knows but +one on earth; and it is upon our knowledge of that woman that we base +our certitude. + +For those who do not know her, and have not this ground, it is probably +profitable and necessary that they painfully collect isolated facts and +then speculate upon them, and base whatever views they should form upon +these collections. It might even be profitable that they should form no +definite opinions at all, but wait till the ages of practical experience +have put doubt to rest. For those of us who have a ground of knowledge +which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to +act fearlessly than to argue. + +Finally, it may be objected to the entrance of woman to the new fields +of labour, and in effect it is often said--“What, and if, all you have +sought be granted you--if it be fully agreed that woman’s ancient fields +of toil are slipping from her, and that, if she do not find new, +she must fall into a state of sexual parasitism, dependent on her +reproductive functions alone; and granted, that, doing this, she must +degenerate, and that from her degeneration must arise the degeneration +and arrest of development of the males as well as of the females of her +race; and granting also, fully, that in the past woman has borne one +full half, and often more than one half, of the weight of the productive +labours of her societies, in addition to child-bearing; and allowing +more fully that she may be as well able to sustain her share in the +intellectual labours of the future as in the more mechanical labours of +the past; granting all this, may there not be one aspect of the question +left out of consideration which may reverse all conclusions as to the +desirability, and the human good to be attained by woman’s enlarged +freedom and her entering into the new fields of toil? What if, the +increased culture and mental activity of woman necessary for her +entrance into the new fields, however desirable in other ways for +herself and the race, should result in a diminution, or in an absolute +abolition of the sexual attraction and affection, which in all ages of +the past has bound the two halves of humanity together? What if, though +the stern and unlovely manual labours of the past have never affected +her attractiveness for the male of her own society, nor his for her; +yet the performance by woman of intellectual labours, or complex and +interesting manual labour, and her increased intelligence and width, +should render the male objectionable to her, and the woman undesirable +to the male; so that the very race itself might become extinct through +the dearth of sexual affection? What, and if, the woman ceases to value +the son she bears, and to feel desire for and tenderness to the man who +begets him; and the man to value and desire the woman and her offspring? +Would not such a result exceed, or at least equal, in its evil to +humanity, anything which could result from the degeneration and +parasitism of woman? Would it not be well, if there exist any +possibility of this danger, that woman, however conscious that she can +perform social labour as nobly and successfully under the new conditions +of life as the old, should yet consciously, and deliberately, with her +eyes open, sink into a state of pure intellectual torpor, with all its +attendant evils, rather than face the more irreparable loss which her +development and the exercise of her gifts might entail? Would it not be +well she should deliberately determine, as the lesser of two evils, +to dwarf herself and limit her activities and the expansion of her +faculties, rather than that any risk should be run of the bond of desire +and emotion between the two sexual halves of humanity being severed? If +the race is to decay and become extinct on earth, might it not as well +be through the parasitism and decay of woman, as through the decay of +the sexual instinct?” + +It is not easy to reply with rationality, or even gravity, to a +supposition, which appears to be based on the conception that a sudden +and entire subversion of the deepest of those elements on which human, +and even animal, life on the globe is based, is possible from so +inadequate a cause: and it might well be passed silently, were it not +that, under some form or other, this argument frequently recurs, now +in a more rational and then in a more irrational form; constituting +sometimes an objection in even moderately intelligent minds, to the +entrance of woman into the new fields of labour. + +It must be at once frankly admitted that, were there the smallest +possible danger in this direction, the sooner woman laid aside all +endeavour in the direction of increased knowledge and the attainment of +new fields of activity, the better for herself and for the race. + +When one considers the part which sexual attraction plays in the order +of sentient life on the globe, from the almost unconscious attractions +which draw amoeboid globule to amoeboid globule, on through the endless +progressive forms of life; till in monogamous birds it expresses itself +in song and complex courtship and sometimes in the life-long conjugal +affection of mates; and which in the human race itself, passing through +various forms, from the imperative but almost purely physical attraction +of savage male and female for each other, till in the highly developed +male and female it assumes its aesthetic and intellectual but not less +imperative form, couching itself in the songs of poet, and the sometimes +deathless fidelity of richly developed man and woman to each other, we +find it not only everywhere, but forming the very groundwork on which is +based sentient existence; never eradicable, though infinitely varied +in its external forms of expression. When we consider that in the human +world, from the battles and dances of savages to the intrigues and +entertainments of modern Courts and palaces, the attraction of man and +woman for each other has played an unending part; and, that the most +fierce ascetic religious enthusiasm through the ages, the flagellations +and starvations in endless nunneries and monasteries, have never been +able to extirpate nor seriously to weaken for one moment the master +dominance of this emotion; that the lowest and most brutal ignorance, +and the highest intellectual culture leave mankind, equally, though in +different forms, amenable to its mastery; that, whether in the brutal +guffaw of sex laughter which rings across the drinking bars of our +modern cities, and rises from the comfortable armchairs in fashionable +clubs; or in the poet’s dreams, and the noblest conjugal relations of +men and women linked together for life, it plays still today on earth +the vast part it played when hoary monsters ploughed after each other +through Silurian slime, and that still it forms as ever the warp on +which in the loom of human life the web is woven, and runs as a thread +never absent through every design and pattern which constitutes the +individual existence on earth, it appears not merely as ineradicable; +but it is inconceivable to suppose that that attraction of sex towards +sex, which, with hunger and thirst, lie, as the triune instincts, at +the base of animal life on earth, should ever be exterminable by the +comparatively superficial changes resulting from the performance of this +or that form of labour, or the little more or less of knowledge in one +direction or another. + +That the female who drives steam-driven looms, producing scores of yards +of linen in a day, should therefore desire less the fellowship of her +corresponding male than had she toiled at a spinning-wheel with hand +and foot to produce one yard; that the male should desire less of the +companionship of the woman who spends the morning in doctoring babies in +her consulting-room, according to the formularies of the pharmacopoeia, +than she who of old spent it on the hillside collecting simples for +remedies; that the woman who paints a modern picture or designs a modern +vase should be less lovable by man, than her ancestor who shaped the +first primitive pot and ornamented it with zigzag patterns was to the +man of her day and age; that the woman who contributes to the support +of her family by giving legal opinions will less desire motherhood and +wifehood than she who in the past contributed to the support of +her household by bending on hands and knees over her grindstone, or +scrubbing floors, and that the former should be less valued by man than +the latter--these are suppositions which it is difficult to regard as +consonant with any knowledge of human nature and the laws by which it is +dominated. + +On the other hand, if it be supposed that the possession of wealth or +the means of earning it makes the human female objectionable to the +male, all history and all daily experience negates it. The eager hunt +for heiresses in all ages and social conditions, make it obvious +that the human male has a strong tendency to value the female who can +contribute to the family expenditure; and the case is yet, we believe, +unrecorded of a male who, attracted to a female, becomes averse to her +on finding she has material good. The female doctor or lawyer earning a +thousand a year will always, and today certainly does, find more suitors +than had she remained a governess or cook, labouring as hard, earning +thirty pounds. + +While, if the statement that the female entering on new fields of labour +will cease to be lovable to the male be based on the fact that she will +then be free, all history and all human experience yet more negates its +truth. The study of all races in all ages, proves that the greater the +freedom of woman in any society, the higher the sexual value put upon +her by the males of that society. The three squaws who walk behind the +Indian, and whom he has captured in battle or bought for a few axes or +lengths of tobacco, and over whom he exercises the despotic right of +life and death, are probably all three of infinitesimal value in his +eyes, compared with the value of his single, free wife to one of our +ancient, monogamous German ancestors; while the hundred wives and +concubines purchased by a Turkish pasha have probably not even an +approximate value in his eyes, when compared with the value which +thousands of modern European males set upon the one comparatively free +woman, whom they may have won, often only after a long and tedious +courtship. + +So axiomatic is the statement that the value of the female to the male +varies as her freedom, that, given an account of any human society in +which the individual female is highly valued, it will be perfectly safe +to infer the comparative social freedom of woman; and, given a statement +as to the high degree of freedom of woman in a society, it will be safe +to infer the great sexual value of the individual woman to man. + +Finally, if the suggestion, that men and women will cease to be +attractive to one another if women enter modern fields of labour, be +based on the fact that her doing so may increase her intelligence and +enlarge her intellectual horizon, it must be replied that the whole +trend of human history absolutely negates the supposition. There is +absolutely no ground for the assumption that increased intelligence and +intellectual power diminishes sexual emotion in the human creature of +either sex. The ignorant savage, whether in ancient or modern societies, +who violates and then clubs a female into submission, may be dominated, +and is, by sex emotions of a certain class; but not less dominated +have been the most cultured, powerful, and highly differentiated male +intelligences that the race has produced. A Mill, a Shelley, a Goethe, +a Schiller, a Pericles, have not been more noted for vast intellectual +powers, than for the depth and intensity of their sexual emotions. And, +if possible, with the human female, the relation between intensity of +sexual emotion and high intellectual gifts has been yet closer. The life +of a Sophia Kovalevsky, a George Eliot, an Elizabeth Browning have not +been more marked by a rare development of the intellect than by deep +passionate sexual emotions. Nor throughout the history of the race has +high intelligence and intellectual power ever tended to make either male +or female unattractive to those of the opposite sex. + +The merely brilliantly attired and unintelligent woman, probably never +awakened the same intensity of profound sex emotion even among the men +of her own type, which followed a George Sand; who attracted to herself +with deathless force some of the most noted men of her generation, even +when, nearing middle age, stout, and attired in rusty and inartistic +black, she was to be found rolling her cigarettes in a dingy office, +scorning all the external adornments with which less attractive females +seek to supply a hidden deficiency. Probably no more hopeless mistake +could be made by an ascetic seeking to extirpate sex emotion and the +attraction of the sexes for one another, than were he to imagine that +in increasing virility, intelligence, and knowledge this end could be +attained. He might thereby differentiate and greatly concentrate the +emotions, but they would be intensified; as a widely spread, shallow, +sluggish stream would not be annihilated but increased in force and +activity by being turned into a sharply defined, clear-cut course. + +And if, further, we turn to those secondary manifestations of sexual +emotion, which express themselves in the relations of human progenitors +to their offspring, we shall find, if possible more markedly, that +increase of intelligence and virility does not diminish but increases +the strength of the affections. As the primitive, ignorant male, often +willingly selling his offspring or exposing his female infants to death, +often develops, with the increase of culture and intelligence, into +the extremely devoted and self-sacrificing male progenitor of civilised +societies; so, yet even more markedly, does the female relation with her +offspring, become intensified and permanent, as culture and intelligence +and virility increase. The Bushwoman, like the lowest female barbarians +in our own societies, will often readily dispose of her infant son for +a bottle of spirits or a little coin; and even among somewhat more +mentally developed females, strong as is the affection of the average +female for her new born offspring, the closeness of the relation between +mother and child tends rapidly to shrink as time passes, so that by +the time of adolescence is reached the relation between mother and son +becomes little more than a remembrance of a close inter-union which +once existed. It is, perhaps, seldom, till the very highest point of +intellectual growth and mental virility has been reached by the human +female, that her relation with her male offspring becomes a permanent +and active and dominant factor in the lives of both. The concentrated +and all-absorbing affection and fellowship which existed between the +greatest female intellect France has produced and the son she bore, +dominating both lives to the end, the fellowship of the English +historian with his mother, who remained his chosen companion and the +sharer of all his labours through life, the relation of St. Augustine +to his mother, and those of countless others, are relations almost +inconceivable where the woman is not of commanding and active +intelligence, and where the passion of mere physical instinct is +completed by the passion of the intellect and spirit. + +There appears, then, from the study of human nature in the past, no +ground for supposing that if, as a result of woman’s adopting new forms +of labour, she should become more free, more wealthy, or more actively +intelligent, that this could in any way diminish her need of the +physical and mental comradeship of man, nor his need of her; nor that +it would affect their secondary sexual relations as progenitors, save +by deepening, concentrating, and extending throughout life the parental +emotions. The conception that man’s and woman’s need of each other could +be touched, or the emotions binding the sexes obliterated, by any mere +change in the form of labour performed by the woman of the race, is as +grotesque in its impossibility, as the suggestion that the placing of a +shell on the seashore this way or that might destroy the action of the +earth’s great tidal wave. + +But, it may be objected, “If there be absolutely no ground for the +formation of such an opinion, how comes it that, in one form or another, +it is so often expressed by persons who object to the entrance of woman +into new or intellectual fields of labour? Where there is smoke must +there not also be fire?” To which it must be replied, “Without fire, no +smoke; but very often the appearance of smoke where neither smoke nor +fire exist!” + +The fact that a statement is frequently made or a view held forms no +presumptive ground of its truth; but it is undoubtedly a ground for +supposing that there is an appearance or semblance which makes it appear +truth, and which suggests it. The universally entertained conception +that the sun moved round the world was not merely false, but the reverse +of the truth; all that was required for its inception was a fallacious +appearance suggesting it. + +When we examine narrowly the statement, that the entrance of woman into +the new fields of labour, with its probably resulting greater freedom +of action, economic independence and wider culture, may result in a +severance between the sexes, it becomes clear what that fallacious +appearance is, which suggests this. + +The entrance of a woman into new fields of labour, though bringing her +increased freedom and economic independence, and necessitating increased +mental training and wider knowledge, could not extinguish the primordial +physical instinct which draws sex to sex throughout all the orders of +sentient life; and still less could it annihilate that subtler mental +need, which, as humanity develops, draws sex to sex for emotional +fellowship and close intercourse; but, it might, and undoubtedly would, +powerfully react and readjust the relations of certain men with certain +women! + +While the attraction, physical and intellectual, which binds sex to sex +would remain the same in volume and intensity, the forms in which it +would express itself, and, above all, the relative power of individuals +to command the gratification of their instincts and desires, would be +fundamentally altered, and in many cases inverted. + +In the barbarian state of societies, where physical force dominates, +it is the most muscular and pugilistically and brutally and animally +successful male who captures and possesses the largest number of +females; and no doubt he would be justified in regarding any social +change which gave to woman a larger freedom of choice, and which would +so perhaps give to the less brutal but perhaps more intelligent male, +whom the woman might select, an equal opportunity for the gratification +of his sexual wishes and for the producing of offspring, as a serious +loss. And, from the purely personal standpoint, he would undoubtedly +be right in dreading anything which tended to free woman. But he would +manifestly not have been justified in asserting, that woman’s increased +freedom of choice, or the fact that the other men would share his +advantage in the matter of obtaining female companionship, would in any +way lessen the amount of sexual emotion or the tenderness of relation +between the two halves of humanity. He would not by brute force possess +himself of so many females, nor have so large a circle of choice, +under the new conditions; but what he lost, others would gain; and +the intensity of the sex emotions and the nearness and passion of the +relation between the sexes be in no way touched. + +In our more civilised societies, as they exist today, woman possesses +(more often perhaps in appearance than reality!) a somewhat greater +freedom of sexual selection; she is no longer captured by muscular +force, but there are still conditions entirely unconnected with +sex attractions and affections, which yet largely dominate the sex +relations. + +It is not the man of the strong arm, but the man of the long purse, +who unduly and artificially dominates in the sexual world today. +Practically, wherever in the modern world woman is wholly or partially +dependent for her means of support on the exercise of her sexual +functions, she is dependent more or less on the male’s power to support +her in their exercise, and her freedom of choice is practically so far +absolutely limited. Probably three-fourths of the sexual unions in our +modern European societies, whether in the illegal or recognised legal +forms, are dominated by or largely influenced by the sex purchasing +power of the male. With regard to the large and savage institution of +prostitution, which still lies as the cancer embedded in the heart of +all our modern civilised societies, this is obviously and nakedly the +case; the wealth of the male as compared to the female being, with +hideous obtrusiveness, its foundation and source of life. But the +purchasing power of the male as compared with the poverty of the female +is not less painfully, if a little less obtrusively, displayed in those +layers of society lying nearer the surface. From the fair, effete young +girl of the wealthier classes in her city boudoir, who weeps copiously +as she tells you she cannot marry the man she loves, because he says he +has only two hundred a year and cannot afford to keep her; to the father +who demands frankly of his daughter’s suitor how much he can settle on +her before consenting to his acceptance, the fact remains, that, under +existing conditions, not the amount of sex affection, passion, and +attraction, but the extraneous question of the material possessions of +the male, determines to a large extent the relation of the sexes. The +parasitic, helpless youth who has failed in his studies, who possesses +neither virility, nor charm of person, nor strength of mind, but who +possesses wealth, has a far greater chance of securing unlimited sexual +indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest maid, than her +brother’s tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and physical grace +and mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of nothing but +material good, has, especially among the so-called upper classes of our +societies, a far greater chance of securing the sex companionship of +any woman he desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, than the most +physically attractive and mentally developed male, who may have nothing +to offer to the dependent female but affection and sexual companionship. + +To the male, whenever and wherever he exists in our societies, who +depends mainly for his power for procuring the sex relation he desires, +not on his power of winning and retaining personal affection, but, on +the purchasing power of his possessions as compared to the poverty of +the females of his society, the personal loss would be seriously and +at once felt, of any social change which gave to the woman a larger +economic independence and therefore greater freedom of sexual choice. It +is not an imaginary danger which the young dude, of a certain type which +sits often in the front row of the stalls in a theatre, with sloping +forehead and feeble jaw, watching the unhappy women who dance for +gold--sees looming before him, as he lisps out his deep disapproval +of increased knowledge and the freedom of obtaining the means of +subsistence in intellectual fields by woman, and expresses his vast +preference for the uncultured ballet-girl over all types of cultured and +productive labouring womenhood in the universe. A subtle and profound +instinct warns him, that with the increased intelligence and economic +freedom of woman, he, and such as he, might ultimately be left sexually +companionless; the undesirable, the residuary, male old-maids of the +human race. + +On the other hand, there is undoubtedly a certain body of females who +would lose, or imagine they would lose, heavily by the advance of woman +as a whole to a condition of free labour and economic independence. That +female, wilfully or organically belonging to the parasite class, having +neither the vigour of intellect nor the vitality of body to undertake +any form of productive labour, and desiring to be dependent only upon +the passive performance of sex function merely, would, whether as +prostitute or wife, undoubtedly lose heavily by any social change which +demanded of woman increased knowledge and activity. (She would lose +in two directions: by the social disapprobation which, as the new +conditions became general, would rest on her; and yet more by the +competition of the more developed forms. She would practically become +non-existent.) + +It is exactly by these two classes of persons that the objection is +raised that the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour and her +increased freedom and intelligence will dislocate the relations of +the sexes; and, while from the purely personal standpoint, they +are undoubtedly right, viewing human society as a whole they are +fundamentally wrong. The loss of a small and unhealthy section will be +the gain of human society as a whole. + +In the male voluptuary of feeble intellect and unattractive +individuality, who depends for the gratification of his sexual +instincts, not on his power of winning and retaining the personal +affection and admiration of woman, but on her purchaseable condition, +either in the blatantly barbarous field of sex traffic that lies beyond +the pale of legal marriage, or the not less barbarous though more veiled +traffic within that pale, the entrance of woman into the new fields of +labour, with an increased intellectual culture and economic freedom, +means little less than social extinction. But, to those males who, even +at the present day, constitute the majority in our societies, and who +desire the affection and fellowship of woman rather than a mere material +possession; for the male who has the attributes and gifts of mind or +body, which, apart from any weight of material advantage, would fit him +to hold the affection of woman, however great her freedom of choice, +the gain will be correspondingly great. Given a society in which the +majority of women should be so far self-supporting, that, having their +free share open to them in the modern fields of labour, and reaping the +full economic rewards of their labour, marriage or some form of sexual +sale was no more a matter of necessity to them; so far from this +condition causing a diminution in the number of permanent sex unions, +one of the heaviest bars to them would be removed. It is universally +allowed that one of the disease spots in our modern social condition is +the increasing difficulty which bars conscientious men from entering +on marriage and rearing families, if limited means would in the case of +their death or disablement throw the woman and their common offspring +comparatively helpless into the fierce stream of our modern economic +life. If the woman could justifiably be looked to, in case of the man’s +disablement or death, to take his place as an earner, thousands of +valuable marriages which cannot now be contracted could be entered on; +and the serious social evil, which arises from the fact that while the +self-indulgent and selfish freely marry and produce large families, +the restrained and conscientious are often unable to do so, would +be removed. For the first time in the history of the modern world, +prostitution, using that term in its broadest sense to cover all forced +sexual relationships based, not on the spontaneous affection of the +woman for the man, but on the necessitous acceptance by woman of +material good in exchange for the exercise of her sexual functions, +would be extinct; and the relation between men and women become a +co-partnership between freemen. + +So far from the economic freedom and social independence of the woman +exterminating sexual love between man and woman, it would for the first +time fully enfranchise it. The element of physical force and capture +which dominated the most primitive sex relations, the more degrading +element of seduction and purchase by means of wealth or material good +offered to woman in our modern societies, would then give place to the +untrammelled action of attraction and affection alone between the sexes, +and sexual love, after its long pilgrimage in the deserts, would be +enabled to return at last, a king crowned. + +But, apart from the two classes of persons whose objection to the +entrance of woman to new fields of labour is based more or less +instinctively on the fear of personal loss, there is undoubtedly a +small, if a very small, number of sincere persons whose fear as to +severance between the sexes to result from woman’s entrance into the new +field, is based upon a more abstract and impersonal ground. + +It is not easy to do full justice in an exact statement to views held +generally rather nebulously and vaguely, but we believe we should not +mistake this view, by saying that there are a certain class of perfectly +sincere and even moderately intelligent folk who hold a view which, +expressed exactly, would come to something like this--that the entrance +of woman into new fields would necessitate so large a mental culture and +such a development of activity, mental and physical, in the woman, that +she might ultimately develop into a being so superior to the male and +so widely different from the man, that the bond of sympathy between the +sexes might ultimately be broken and the man cease to be an object of +affection and attraction to the woman, and the woman to the man through +mere dissimilarity. The future these persons seem to see, more or less +vaguely, is of a social condition, in which, the males of the race +remaining precisely as they are today, the corresponding females shall +have advanced to undreamed of heights of culture and intelligence; a +condition in which the hand-worker, and the ordinary official, and +small farmer, shall be confronted with the female astronomer or Greek +professor of astonishing learning and gifts as his only possible +complementary sex companion; and the vision naturally awakens in these +good folk certain misgivings as to sympathy between and suitability for +each other, of these two widely dissimilar parts of humanity. + +It must of course at once be admitted, that, were the two sexual halves +of humanity distinct species, which, having once entered on a course +of evolution and differentiation, might continue to develop along those +distinct lines for countless ages or even for a number of generations, +without reacting through inheritance on each other, the consequences of +such development might ultimately almost completely sever them. + +The development of distinct branches of humanity has already brought +about such a severance between races and classes which are in totally +distinct stages of evolution. So wide is the hiatus between them often, +that the lowest form of sex attraction can hardly cross it; and the more +highly developed mental and emotional sex passion cannot possibly bridge +it. In the world of sex, kind seeks kind, and too wide a dissimilarity +completely bars the existence of the highest forms of sex emotion, and +often even the lower and more purely animal. + +Were it possible to place a company of the most highly evolved human +females--George Sands, Sophia Kovalevskys, or even the average cultured +females of a highly evolved race--on an island where the only males +were savages of the Fugean type, who should meet them on the shores +with matted hair and prognathous jaws, and with wild shouts, brandishing +their implements of death, to greet and welcome them, it is an undoubted +fact that, so great would be the horror felt by the females towards +them, that not only would the race become extinct, but if it depended +for its continuance on any approach to sex affection on the part of the +women, that death would certainly be accepted by all, as the lesser of +two evils. Hardly less marked would be the sexual division if, in place +of cultured and developed females, we imagine males of the same highly +evolved class thrown into contact with the lowest form of primitive +females. A Darwin, a Schiller, a Keats, though all men capable of the +strongest sex emotion and of the most durable sex affections, would +probably be untouched by any emotion but horror, cast into the company +of a circle of Bushmen females with greased bodies and twinkling eyes, +devouring the raw entrails of slaughtered beasts. + +But leaving out even such extreme instances of diversity, the mere +division in culture and mental habits, dividing individuals of the same +race but of different classes, tends largely to exclude the possibility +of at least the nobler and more enduring forms of sex emotion. The +highly cultured denizen of a modern society, though he may enter into +passing and temporary and animal relations with the uncultured peasant +or woman of the street, seldom finds awakened within him in such cases +the depth of emotion and sympathy which is necessary for the enjoyment +of the closer tie of conjugal life; and it may be doubted whether the +highest, most permanent, and intimate forms of sexual affection ever +exist except among humans very largely identical in tastes, habits +of thought, and moral and physical education. (In Greece at a certain +period (as we have before noted) there does appear to have been a +temporary advance of the male, so far in advance of the female as to +make the difference between them almost immeasurable; but he quickly +fell back to the level of the woman.) Were it possible that the entrance +of woman into the new fields of labour should produce any increased +divergence between man and woman in ideals, culture, or tastes, there +would undoubtedly be a dangerous responsibility incurred by any who +fostered such a movement. + +But the most superficial study of human life and the relation of the +sexes negates such a conception. + +The two sexes are not distinct species but the two halves of one whole, +always acting and interacting on each other through inheritance, and +reproducing and blending with each other in each generation. The human +female is bound organically in two ways to the males of her society: +collaterally they are her companions and the co-progenitors with her +of the race; but she is also the mother of the males of each succeeding +generation, bearing, shaping, and impressing her personality upon them. +The males and females of each human society resemble two oxen tethered +to one yoke: for a moment one may move slightly forward and the other +remain stationary; but they can never move farther from each other than +the length of the yoke that binds them; and they must ultimately +remain stationary or move forward together. That which the women of one +generation are mentally or physically, that by inheritance and education +the males of the next tend to be: there can be no movement or change in +one sex which will not instantly have its co-ordinating effect upon the +other; the males of tomorrow are being cast in the mould of the women of +today. If new ideals, new moral conceptions, new methods of action are +found permeating the minds of the women of one generation, they will +reappear in the ideals, moral conceptions, methods of action of the men +of thirty years hence; and the idea that the males of a society can ever +become permanently farther removed from its females than the individual +man is from the mother who bore and reared him, is at variance with +every law of human inheritance. + +If, further, we turn from an abstract consideration of this supposition, +and examine practically in the modern world men and women as they exist +today, the irrationality of the supposition is yet more evident. + +Not merely is the Woman’s Movement of our age not a sporadic and +abnormal growth, like a cancer bearing no organic relation to the +development of the rest of the social organism, but it is essentially +but one important phase of a general modification which the whole of +modern life is undergoing. Further, careful study of the movement will +show that, not only is it not a movement on the part of woman leading to +severance and separation between the woman and the man, but that it +is essentially a movement of the woman towards the man, of the sexes +towards closer union. + +Much is said at the present day on the subject of the “New Woman” (who, +as we have seen, is essentially but the old non-parasitic woman of the +remote past, preparing to draw on her new twentieth-century garb): +and it cannot truly be said that her attitude finds a lack of social +attention. On every hand she is examined, praised, blamed, mistaken for +her counterfeit, ridiculed, or deified--but nowhere can it be said, that +the phenomenon of her existence is overlooked. + +But there exists at the present day another body of social phenomena, +quite as important, as radical, and if possible more far-reaching in its +effects on the present and future, which yet attracts little conscious +attention or animadversion, though it makes itself everywhere felt; as +the shade of a growing tree may be sat under year after year by persons +who never remark its silent growth. + +Side by side with the “New Woman,” corresponding to her, as the two +sides of a coin cast in one mould, though differing from each other in +superficial detail, are yet of one metal, one size, and one value; old +in the sense in which she is old, being merely the reincarnation under +the pressure of new conditions of the ancient forms of his race; new in +the sense in which she is new, in that he is an adaptation to material +and social conditions which have no exact counterpart in the past; more +diverse from his immediate progenitors than even the woman is from hers, +side by side with her today in every society and in every class in which +she is found, stands--the New Man! + +If it be asked, How comes it to pass, if, under the pressure of social +conditions, man shows an analogous change of attitude toward life, +that the change in woman should attract universal attention, while +the corresponding change in the man of her society passes almost +unnoticed?--it would seem that the explanation lies in the fact that, +owing to woman’s less independence of action in the past, any attempt +at change or readaptation on her part has had to overcome greater +resistance, and it is the noise and friction of resistance, more than +the amount of actual change which has taken place, which attracts +attention; as when an Alpine stream, after a long winter frost, breaks +the ice, and with a crash and roar sweeps away the obstructions which +have gathered in its bed, all men’s attention is attracted to it, though +when later a much larger body of water silently forces its way down, no +man observes it. (An interesting practical illustration of this fact +is found in the vast attention and uproar created when the first three +women in England, some thirty odd years ago, sought to enter the medical +profession. At the present day scores of women prepare to enter it +yearly without attracting any general attention; not that the change +which is going on is not far more in volume and social importance, but +that, having overcome the first obstruction, it is now noiseless.) + +Between the Emilias and Sophy Westerns of a bygone generation and the +most typical of modern women, there exists no greater gap (probably not +so great a one) as that which exists between the Tom Joneses and Squire +Westerns of that day and the most typical of entirely modern men. + +The sexual and social ideals which dominated the fox-hunting, +hard-drinking, high-playing, recklessly loose-living country squire, +clergyman, lawyer, and politician who headed the social organism of the +past, are at least as distinct from the ideals which dominate thousands +of their male descendants holding corresponding positions in the +societies of today, as are the ideals of her great-great-grand mother’s +remote from those dominating the most modern of New Women. + +That which most forces itself upon us as the result of a close personal +study of those sections of modern European societies in which change +and adaptation to the new conditions of life are now most rapidly +progressing, is, not merely that equally large bodies of men and women +are being rapidly modified as to their sexual and social ideals and as +to their mode of life, but that this change is strictly complementary. + +If the ideal of the modern woman becomes increasingly one inconsistent +with the passive existence of woman on the remuneration which her sexual +attributes may win from man, and marriage becomes for her increasingly +a fellowship of comrades, rather than the relationship of the owner and +the bought, the keeper and the kept; the ideal of the typically modern +man departs quite as strongly from that of his forefathers in the +direction of finding in woman active companionship and co-operation +rather than passive submission. If the New Woman’s conception of +parenthood differs from the old in the greater sense of the gravity and +obligation resting on those who are responsible for the production of +the individual life, making her attitude toward the production of her +race widely unlike the reckless, unreasoning, maternal reproduction of +the woman of the past, the most typical male tends to feel in at least +the same degree the moral and social obligation entailed by awakening +lifehood: if the ideal which the New Woman shapes for herself of a male +companion excludes the crudely animal hard-drinking, hard-swearing, +licentious, even if materially wealthy gallant of the past; the most +typically modern male’s ideal for himself excludes at least equally +this type. The brothel, the race-course, the gaming-table, and habits +of physical excess among men are still with us; but the most superficial +study of our societies will show that these have fallen into a new place +in the scale of social institutions and manners. The politician, the +clergyman, or the lawyer does not improve his social or public standing +by violent addictions in these directions; to drink his companions +under the table, to be known to have the largest number of illicit sex +relations, to be recognised as an habitual visitant of the gambling +saloon, does not, even in the case of a crowned head, much enhance his +reputation, and with the ordinary man may ultimately prove a bar to all +success. If the New Woman’s conception of love between the sexes is one +more largely psychic and intellectual than crudely and purely physical, +and wholly of an affection between companions; the New Man’s conception +as expressed in the most typical literature and art, produced by +typically modern males, gives voice with a force no woman has surpassed +to the same new ideal. If to the typical modern woman the lifelong +companionship of a Tom Jones or Squire Western would be more intolerable +than death or the most complete celibacy, not less would the most +typical of modern men shrink from the prospect of a lifelong fetterment +to the companionship of an always fainting, weeping, and terrified +Emilia or a Sophia of a bygone epoch. + +If anywhere on earth exists the perfect ideal of that which the modern +woman desires to be--of a labouring and virile womanhood, free, strong, +fearless and tender--it will probably be found imaged in the heart of +the New Man; engendered there by his own highest needs and aspirations; +and nowhere would the most highly developed modern male find an image of +that which forms his ideal of the most fully developed manhood, than in +the ideal of man which haunts the heart of the New Woman. + +Those have strangely overlooked some of the most important phenomena +of our modern world, who see in the Woman’s Movement of our day any +emotional movement of the female against the male, of the woman away +from the man. + +We have called the Woman’s Movement of our age an endeavour on the part +of women among modern civilised races to find new fields of labour as +the old slip from them, as an attempt to escape from parasitism and an +inactive dependence upon sex function alone; but, viewed from another +side, the Woman’s Movement might not less justly be called a part of +a great movement of the sexes towards each other, a movement towards +common occupations, common interests, common ideals, and towards an +emotional sympathy between the sexes more deeply founded and more +indestructible than any the world has yet seen. + +But it may be suggested, and the perception of a certain profound truth +underlies this suggestion; How is it, if there be this close reciprocity +between the lines along which the advanced and typical modern males and +females are developing, that there does exist in our modern societies, +and often among the very classes forming our typically advanced +sections, so much of pain, unrest, and sexual disco-ordination at the +present day? + +The reply to this pertinent suggestion is, that the disco-ordination, +struggle, and consequent suffering which undoubtedly do exist when +we regard the world of sexual relationships and ideals in our modern +societies, do not arise in any way from a disco-ordination between the +sexes as such, but are a part of the general upheaval, of the conflict +between old ideals and new; a struggle which is going on in every branch +the human life in our modern societies, and in which the determining +element is not sex, but the point of evolution which the race or the +individual has reached. + +It cannot be too often repeated, even at the risk of the most wearisome +reiteration, that our societies are societies in a state of rapid +evolution and change. The continually changing material conditions of +life, with their reaction on the intellectual, emotional, and moral +aspects of human affairs, render our societies the most complex and +probably the most mobile and unsettled which the world has ever seen. +As the result of this rapidity of change and complexity, there must +continually exist a large amount of disco-ordination, and consequently, +of suffering. + +In a stationary society where generation has succeeded generation for +hundreds, or it may be for thousands, of years, with little or no change +in the material conditions of life, the desires, institutions, and moral +principles of men, their religious, political, domestic, and sexual +institutions, have gradually shaped themselves in accordance with these +conditions; and a certain harmony, and homogeneity, and tranquillity, +pervades the society. + +In societies in that rapid state of change in which our modern societies +find themselves, where not merely each decade, but each year, and almost +day brings new forces and conditions to bear on life, not only is the +amount of suffering and social rupture, which all rapid, excessive, +and sudden change entails on an organism, inevitable; but, the new +conditions, acting at different angles of intensity on the different +individual members composing the society, according to their positions +and varying intelligence, are producing a society of such marvellous +complexity and dissimilarity in the different individual parts, that +the intensest rupture and disco-ordination between individuals is +inevitable; and sexual ideals and relationships must share in the +universal condition. + +In a primitive society (if a somewhat prolix illustration may be +allowed) where for countless generations the conditions of life had +remained absolutely unchanged; where for ages it had been necessary that +all males should employ themselves in subduing wild beasts and meeting +dangerous foes, polygamy might universally have been a necessity, if the +race were to exist and its numbers be kept up; and society, recognising +this, polygamy would be an institution universally approved and +submitted to, however much suffering it entailed. If food were scarce, +the destruction of superfluous infants and of the aged might also always +have been necessary for the good of the individuals themselves as well +as of society, and the whole society would acquiesce in it without any +moral doubt. If an eclipse of the sun had once occurred in connection +with the appearance of a certain new insect, they mighty universally +regard that insect as a god causing it; and ages might pass without +anything arising to disprove their belief. There would be no social or +religious problem; and the view of one man would be the view of all +men; and all would be more or less in harmony with the established +institution and customs. + +But, supposing the sudden arrival of strangers armed with superior +weapons and knowledge, who should exterminate all wild beasts and render +war and the consequent loss of male life a thing of the past; not only +would the male be driven to encroach on the female’s domain of domestic +agriculture and labour generally, but the males, not being so largely +destroyed, they would soon equal and surpass in numbers the females; and +not only would it then become a moot matter, “a problem,” which labours +were or were not to be performed by man and which by woman, but very +soon, not the woman alone nor the man alone, but both, would be driven +to speculate as to the desirability or necessity of polygamy, which, +were men as numerous as women, would leave many males without sex +companions. The more intelligent and progressive individuals in the +community would almost at once arrive at the conclusion that polygamy +was objectionable; the most fearless would seek to carry their theory +into action; the most ignorant and unprogressive would determinately +stick to the old institutions as inherited from the past, without reason +or question; differences of ideal would cause conflict and dissension +in all parts of the body social, and suffering would ensue, where all +before was fixed and determinate. So also if the strangers introduced +new and improved methods of agriculture, and food became abundant, it +would then at once strike the most far-seeing and readily adaptable +members of the community, both male and female, that there was no +necessity for the destruction of their offspring; old men and women +would begin seriously to object to being hastened to death when they +realised that starvation did not necessarily stare them in the face +if they survived to an extreme old age; the most stupid and hide-bound +members of the community would still continue to sacrifice parents and +offspring long after the necessity had ceased, under the influence of +traditional bias; many persons would be in a state of much moral doubt +as to which course of action to pursue, the old or the new; and bitter +conflict might rage in the community on all these points. Were the +strangers to bring with them telescopes, looking through which it might +at once clearly be seen that an eclipse of the sun was caused merely by +the moon’s passing over its face, the more intelligent members of the +community would at once come to the conclusion that the insect was not +the cause of eclipses, would cease to regard it as a god, and might even +kill it; the more stupid and immobile section of the community might +refuse to look through the telescope, or looking might refuse to see +that it was the moon which caused the eclipse, and their deep-seated +reverence for the insect, which was the growth of ages, would lead them +to regard as impious those individuals who denied its godhead, and might +even lead to the physical destruction of the first unbelievers. The +society, once so homogeneous and co-ordinated in all its parts, would +become at once a society rent by moral and social problems; and endless +suffering must arise to individuals in the attempt to co-ordinate the +ideals, manners, and institutions of the society to the new conditions! +There might be immense gain in many directions; lives otherwise +sacrificed would be spared, a higher and more satisfactory stage of +existence might be entered on; but the disco-ordination and struggle +would be inevitable until the society had established an equilibrium +between its knowledge, its material conditions, and its social, sexual, +and religious ideals and institutions. + +An analogous condition, but of a far more complex kind, exists at the +present day in our own societies. Our material environment differs in +every respect from that of our grandparents, and bears little or no +resemblance to that of a few centuries ago. Here and there, even in our +civilised societies in remote agricultural districts, the old social +conditions may remain partly undisturbed; but throughout the bulk of +our societies the substitution of mechanical for hand-labour, the +wide diffusion of knowledge through the always increasing cheap +printing-press; the rapidly increasing gathering of human creatures into +vast cities, where not merely thousands but millions of individuals are +collected together under physical and mental conditions of life which +invert every social condition of the past; the increasingly rapid means +of locomotion; the increasing intercourse between distant races and +lands, brought about by rapid means of intercommunication, widening +and changing in every direction the human horizon--all these produce a +society, so complex and so rapidly altering, that social co-ordination +between all its parts is impossible; and social unrest, and the strife +of ideals of faiths, of institutions, and consequent human suffering is +inevitable. + +If the ancient guns and agricultural implements which our fathers +taught us to use are valueless in the hands of their descendants, if the +samplers our mothers worked and the stockings they knitted are become +superfluous through the action of the modern loom, yet more are their +social institutions, faiths, and manners of life become daily and +increasingly unfitted to our use; and friction and suffering inevitable, +especially for the most advanced and modified individuals in our +societies. This suffering, if we analyse it closely, rises from three +causes. + +Firstly, it is caused by the fact that mere excessive rapidity of change +tends always easily to become painful, by rupturing violently already +hardened habits and modes of thought, as a very rapidly growing tree +ruptures its bark and exudes its internal juices. + +Secondly, it arises from the fact that individuals of the same human +society, not adapting themselves at the same rate to the new conditions, +or being exposed to them in different degrees, a wide and almost +unparalleled dissimilarity has today arisen between the different +individuals composing our societies; where, side by side with men and +women who have rapidly adapted or are so successfully seeking to adapt +themselves to the new conditions of knowledge and new conditions of +life, that, were they to reappear in future ages in more co-ordinated +societies, they might perhaps hardly appear wholly antiquated, are to be +found men and women whose social, religious, and moral ideals would not +constitute them out of harmony if returned to the primitive camps of the +remote forbears of the human race; while, between these extreme classes +lies that large mass of persons in an intermediate state of development. +This diversity is bound to cause friction and suffering in the +interactions of the members of our societies; more especially, as the +individuals composing each type are not sorted out into classes and +families, but are found scattered through all classes and grades in our +societies. (One of the women holding the most advanced and modern view +of the relation of woman to life whom we have met was the wife of a +Northamptonshire shoemaker; herself engaged in making her living by the +sewing of the uppers of men’s boots.) Persons bound by the closest ties +of blood or social contiguity and compelled to a continual intercourse, +are often those most widely dissevered in their amount of adaptation +to the new conditions of life; and the amount of social friction and +consequent human suffering arising from this fact is so subtle and +almost incalculable, that perhaps it is impossible adequately to portray +it in dry didactic language: it is only truly describable in the medium +of art, where actual concrete individuals are shown acting and reacting +on each other--as in the novel or the drama. We are like a company of +chess-men, not sorted out in kinds, pawns together, kings and queens +together, and knights and rooks together, but simply thrown at haphazard +into a box, and jumbled side by side. In the stationary societies, where +all individuals were permeated by the same political, religious, moral, +and social ideas; and where each class had its own hereditary and fixed +traditions of action and manners, this cause of friction and suffering +had of necessity no existence; individual differences and discord might +be occasioned by personal greeds, ambitions, and selfishnesses, but +not by conflicting conceptions of right and wrong, of the desirable and +undesirable, in all branches of human life. (Only those who have been +thrown into contact with a stationary and homogeneous society such +as that of primitive African tribes before coming in contact with +Europeans; or such as the up-country Boers of South Africa were twenty +years ago, can realise adequately how wholly free from moral and social +problems and social friction such a society can be. It is in studying +such societies that the truth is vividly forced on one, that the key to +half, and more than half, of the phenomena in our own social condition, +can be found only in our rapidly changing conditions necessitating +equally rapid change in our conceptions, ideals, and institutions.) + +Thirdly, the unrest and suffering peculiar to our age is caused by +conflict going on within the individual himself. So intensely rapid is +the change which is taking place in our environment and knowledge that +in the course of a single life a man may pass through half a dozen +phases of growth. Born and reared in possession of certain ideas and +manners of action, he or she may, before middle life is reached, have +had occasion repeatedly to modify, enlarge, and alter, or completely +throw aside those traditions. Within the individuality itself of such +persons, goes on, in an intensified form, that very struggle, conflict, +and disco-ordination which is going on in society at large between its +different members and sections; and agonising moments must arise, when +the individual, seeing the necessity for adopting new courses of action, +or for accepting new truths, or conforming to new conditions, will yet +be tortured by the hold of traditional convictions; and the man or woman +who attempts to adapt their life to the new material conditions and to +harmony with the new knowledge, is almost bound at some time to rupture +the continuity of their own psychological existence. + +It is these conditions which give rise to the fact so often noticed, +that the art of our age tends persistently to deal with subtle social +problems, religious, political, and sexual, to which the art of the past +holds no parallel; and it is so inevitably, because the artist who would +obey the artistic instinct to portray faithfully the world about him, +must portray that which lies at the core of its life. The “problem” + play, novel, and poem are as inevitable in this age, as it was +inevitable that the artist of the eleventh century should portray +tournaments, physical battles, and chivalry, because they were the +dominant element in the life about him. + +It is also inevitable that this suffering and conflict must make itself +felt in its acutest form in the person of the most advanced individual +of our societies. It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen +stream who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it +broken, and the last find it gone. It is the man or woman who first +treads down the path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, +who must find themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is +deadly. The fact that any course of human action leading to adjustment, +leads also to immediate suffering, by dividing the individual from +the bulk of his fellows; is no argument against it; that solitude and +suffering is the crown of thorns which marks the kingship of earth’s +Messiahs: it is the mark of the leader. + +Thus, social disco-ordination, and subjective conflict and suffering, +pervade the life of our age, making themselves felt in every division +of human life, religious, political, and domestic; and, if they are more +noticeable, and make themselves more keenly felt in the region of sex +than in any other, even the religious, it is because when we enter the +region of sex we touch, as it were, the spinal cord of human existence, +its great nerve centre, where sensation is most acute, and pain and +pleasure most keenly felt. It is not sex disco-ordination that is at the +root of our social unrest; it is the universal disco-ordination which +affects even the world of sex phenomena. + +Also it is necessary to note that the line which divides the progressive +sections of our communities, seeking to co-ordinate themselves to the +new conditions of life, from the retrogressive, is not a line running +coincidentally with the line of sex. A George Sand and a Henrik Ibsen +belong more essentially to the same class in the order of modern +development, than either belongs to any class composed entirely of their +own sex. If we divide humanity into classes according to type, in each +division will be found the male with his complementary female. Side by +side with the old harlot at the street corner anxious to sell herself, +stands the old aboriginal male, whether covered or not with a veneer of +civilisation, eager and desiring to buy. Side by side with the parasitic +woman, seeking only increased pleasure and luxury from her relations +with man, stands the male seeking only pleasure and self-indulgence from +his relations with her. Side by side with the New Woman, anxious for +labour and seeking from man only such love and fellowship as she gives, +stands the New Man, anxious to possess her only on the terms she offers. +If the social movement, through which the most advanced women of our +day are attempting to bring themselves into co-ordination with the new +conditions of life, removes them immeasurably from certain types of the +primitive male; the same movement equally removes the new male from the +old female. The sexual tragedy of modern life lies, not in the fact that +woman as such is tending to differ fundamentally from man as such; but +that, in the unassorted confusion of our modern life, it is continually +the modified type of man or woman who is thrown into the closest +personal relations with the antiquated type of the opposite sex; that +between father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, husband +and wife, may sometimes be found to intervene not merely years, but even +centuries of social evolution. + +It is not man as man who opposes the attempt of woman to readjust +herself to the new conditions of life: that opposition arises, perhaps +more often, from the retrogressive members of her own sex. And it is a +fact which will surprise no one who has studied the conditions of modern +life; that among the works of literature in all European languages, +which most powerfully advocate the entrance of woman into the new fields +of labour, and which most uncompromisingly demand for her the widest +training and freedom of action, and which most passionately seek for +the breaking down of all artificial lines which sever the woman from the +man, many of the ablest and most uncompromising are the works of males. + +The New Man and Woman do not resemble two people, who, standing on a +level plain, set out on two roads, which diverging at different angles +and continued in straight lines, must continue to take them farther and +farther from each other the longer they proceed in them; rather, they +resemble two persons who start to climb a spur of the same mountain from +opposite sides; where, the higher they climb the nearer they come to +each other, being bound ultimately to meet at the top. + +Even that opposition often made by males to the entrance of woman into +the new fields of labour, of which they at present hold the monopoly, +is not fundamentally sexual in its nature. The male who opposes the +entrance of woman into the trade or profession in which he holds more +or less a monopoly, would oppose with equal, and perhaps even greater +bitterness, the opening of its doors to numbers of his own sex who +had before been excluded, and who would limit his gains and share his +privileges. It is the primitive brute instinct to retain as much +as possible for the ego, irrespective of justice or humanity, which +dominates all the lower moral types of humanity, both male and female, +which acts here. The lawyer or physician who objects to the entrance of +women to his highly fenced professional enclosure, would probably object +yet more strenuously if it were proposed to throw down the barriers of +restraint and monetary charges, which would result in the flooding +of his profession by other males: while the mechanic, who resists the +entrance of woman into his especial field, is invariably found even +more persistently to oppose any attempt at entrance on the part of other +males, when he finds it possible to do so. + +This opposition of the smaller type of male, to the entrance of woman +into the callings hitherto apportioned to himself, is sometimes taken as +implying the impossibility of fellowship and affection existing between +the men and women employed in common labour, that the professional +jealousy of the man must necessitate his feeling a hatred and antagonism +towards any one who shares his fields of toil. But the most superficial +study of human life negates such a supposition. Among men, in spite +of the occasional existence of the petty professional jealousies and +antagonism, we find, viewing society as a whole, that common interests, +and above all common labours, are the most potent means of bringing them +into close and friendly relations; and, in fact, they seem generally +essential for the formation of the closest and most permanent human +friendships. In every walk of human life, whether trade, or profession, +we find men associating by choice mainly with, and entertaining often +the profoundest and most permanent friendships for, men engaged in +their own callings. The inner circle of a barrister’s friendships almost +always consists of his fellow-barristers; the city man, who is free to +select his society where he will, will be oftenest found in company with +his fellow-man of business; the medical man’s closest friendship is, in +a large number of cases, for some man who was once his fellow-student +and has passed through the different stages of his professional life +with him; the friends and chosen companions of the actor are commonly +actors; of the savant, savants; of the farmer, farmers; of the sailor, +sailors. So generally is this the case that it would almost attract +attention and cause amusement were the boon companion of the sea captain +a leading politician, and the intimate friend of the clergyman an actor, +or the dearest friend of the farmer an astronomer. Kind seeks kind. +The majority of men by choice frequent clubs where those of their own +calling are found, and especially as life advances and men sink deeper +into their professional grooves, they are found to seek fellowship +mainly among their fellow-workers. That this should be so is inevitable; +common amusements may create a certain bond between the young, but +the performance of common labours, necessitating identical knowledge, +identical habits, and modes of thought, forms a far stronger bond, +drawing men far more powerfully towards social intercourse and personal +friendship and affection than the centrifugal force of professional +jealousies can divide them. + +That the same condition would prevail where women became fellow-workers +with men might be inferred on abstract grounds: but practical experience +confirms this. The actor oftenest marries the actress, the male musician +the female; the reception-room of the literary woman or female +painter is found continually frequented by men of her own calling; the +woman-doctor associates continually with and often marries one of her +own confreres; and as women in increasing numbers share the fields of +labour with men, which have hitherto been apportioned to them alone, the +nature and strength of the sympathy arising from common labours will be +increasingly clear. + +The sharing by men and women of the same labours, necessitating a common +culture and therefore common habits of thought and interests, would +tend to fill that painful hiatus which arises so continually in modern +conjugal life, dividing the man and woman as soon as the first sheen of +physical sexual attraction which glints only over the unknown begins to +fade, and from which springs so large a part of the tragedy of modern +conjugal relations. The primitive male might discuss with her his +success in hunting and her success in finding roots; as the primitive +peasant may discuss today with his wife the crops and cows in which both +are equally interested and which both understand; there is nothing in +their order of life to produce always increasingly divergent habits of +thought and interest. + +In modern civilised life, in many sections, the lack of any common +labour and interests and the wide dissimilarity of the life led by the +man and the woman, tend continually to produce increasing divergence; so +that, long before middle life is reached, they are left without any +bond of co-cohesion but that of habit. The comradeship and continual +stimulation, rising from intercourse with those sharing our closest +interests and regarding life from the same standpoint, the man tends to +seek in his club and among his male companions, and the woman accepts +solitude, or seeks dissipations which tend yet farther to disrupt the +common conjugal life. A certain mental camaraderie and community of +impersonal interests is imperative in conjugal life in addition to a +purely sexual relation, if the union is to remain a living and always +growing reality. It is more especially because the sharing by woman of +the labours of man will tend to promote camaraderie and the existence of +common, impersonal interests and like habits of thought and life, that +the entrance of women into the very fields shared by men, and not into +others peculiarly reserved for her, is so desirable. (The reply once +given by the wife of a leading barrister, when reference was made to the +fact that she and her husband were seldom found in each other’s society, +throws a painful but true light on certain aspects of modern life, +against which the entire woman’s movement of our age is a rebellion. +“My husband,” she said, “is always increasingly absorbed in his legal +duties, of which I understand nothing, and which so do not interest me. +My children are all growing up and at school. I have servants enough to +attend to my house. When he comes home in the evening, if I try to amuse +him by telling him of the things I have been doing during the day, of +the bazaars I am working for, the shopping I have done, the visits I +have paid, he is bored. He is anxious to get away to his study, his +books, and his men friends, and I am left utterly alone. If it were not +for the society of women and other men with whom I have more in common, +I could not bear my life. When we first met as boy and girl, and fell +in love, we danced and rode together and seemed to have everything in +common; now we have nothing. I respect him and I believe he respects me, +but that is all!” It is, perhaps, only in close confidences between +man and man and woman and woman that this open sore, rising from the +divergence in training, habits of life, and occupation between men +and women is spoken of; but it lies as a tragic element at the core of +millions of modern conjugal relations, beneath the smooth superficial +surface of our modern life; breaking out to the surface only +occasionally in the revelations of our divorce courts.) + +It is a gracious fact, to which every woman who has achieved success or +accomplished good work in any of the fields generally apportioned to men +will bear witness, whether that work be in the field of literature, of +science, or the organised professions, that the hands which have been +most eagerly stretched our to welcome her have been those of men; that +the voices which have most generously acclaimed her success have been +those of male fellow-workers in the fields into which she has entered. + +There is no door at which the hand of woman has knocked for admission +into a new field of toil but there have been found on the other side the +hands of strong and generous men eager to turn it for her, almost before +she knocks. + +To those of us who, at the beginning of a new century, stand with shaded +eyes, gazing into the future, striving to descry the outlines of the +shadowy figures which loom before us in the distance, nothing seems of +so gracious a promise, as the outline we seem to discern of a condition +of human life in which a closer union than the world has yet seen shall +exist between the man and the woman: where the Walhalla of our old +Northern ancestors shall find its realisation in a concrete reality, +and the Walkurie and her hero feast together at one board, in a brave +fellowship. + +Always in our dreams we hear the turn of the key that shall close the +door of the last brothel; the clink of the last coin that pays for the +body and soul of a woman; the falling of the last wall that encloses +artificially the activity of woman and divides her from man; always we +picture the love of the sexes, as, once a dull, slow, creeping worm; +then a torpid, earthy chrysalis; at last the full-winged insect, +glorious in the sunshine of the future. + +Today, as we row hard against the stream of life, is it only a blindness +in our eyes, which have been too long strained, which makes us see, far +up the river where it fades into the distance, through all the mists +that rise from the river-banks, a clear, a golden light? Is it only a +delusion of the eyes which makes us grasp our oars more lightly and bend +our backs lower; though we know well that long before the boat reaches +those stretches, other hands than ours will man the oars and guide its +helm? Is it all a dream? + +The ancient Chaldean seer had a vision of a Garden of Eden which lay in +a remote past. It was dreamed that man and woman once lived in joy and +fellowship, till woman ate of the tree of knowledge and gave to man to +eat; and that both were driven forth to wander, to toil in bitterness; +because they had eaten of the fruit. + +We also have our dream of a Garden: but it lies in a distant future. We +dream that woman shall eat of the tree of knowledge together with man, +and that side by side and hand close to hand, through ages of much toil +and labour, they shall together raise about them an Eden nobler than any +the Chaldean dreamed of; an Eden created by their own labour and made +beautiful by their own fellowship. + +In his apocalypse there was one who saw a new heaven and a new earth; +we see a new earth; but therein dwells love--the love of comrades and +co-workers. + +It is because so wide and gracious to us are the possibilities of the +future; so impossible is a return to the past, so deadly is a passive +acquiescence in the present, that today we are found everywhere raising +our strange new cry--“Labour and the training that fits us for labour!” + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman and Labour, by Olive Schreiner + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN AND LABOUR *** + +***** This file should be named 1440-0.txt or 1440-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/4/1440/ + +Produced by Sue Asscher + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Woman and Labour + +Author: Olive Schreiner + +Release Date: September 17, 2008 [EBook #1440] +Last Updated: October 12, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN AND LABOUR *** + + + + +Produced by Sue Asscher, and David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h1> + WOMAN AND LABOUR + </h1> + <h2> + by Olive Schreiner + </h2> + <h4> + Author of “Dreams,” “The Story of an African Farm,"<br /> “Trooper Peter + Halket,” “Dream Life and Real Life,” etc. etc. + </h4> + <p> + <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Dedicated to Constance Lytton + + “Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, + Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea— + Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong— + Nay, but she aim’d not at glory, no lover of glory she: + Give her the glory of going on and still to be.” + + Tennyson. + + Olive Schreiner. + De Aar, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. 1911. +</pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h3> + Contents + </h3> + <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + <tr> + <td> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_INTR"> Introduction. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0001"> Chapter I. Parasitism. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0002"> Chapter II. Parasitism (continued). </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0003"> Chapter III. Parasitism (continued). </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0004"> Chapter IV. Woman and War. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0005"> Chapter V. Sex Differences. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0006"> Chapter VI. Certain Objections. </a> + </p> + </td> + </tr> + </table> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + Introduction. + </h2> + <p> + It is necessary to say a few words to explain this book. The original + title of the book was “Musings on Woman and Labour.” + </p> + <p> + It is, what its name implies, a collection of musings on some of the + points connected with woman’s work. + </p> + <p> + In my early youth I began a book on Woman. I continued the work till ten + years ago. It necessarily touched on most matters in which sex has a part, + however incompletely. + </p> + <p> + It began by tracing the differences of sex function to their earliest + appearances in life on the globe; not only as when in the animal world, + two amoeboid globules coalesce, and the process of sexual generation + almost unconsciously begins; but to its yet more primitive manifestations + in plant life. In the first three chapters I traced, as far as I was able, + the evolution of sex in different branches of non-human life. Many large + facts surprised me in following this line of thought by their bearing on + the whole modern sex problem. Such facts as this; that, in the great + majority of species on the earth the female form exceeds the male in size + and strength and often in predatory instinct; and that sex relationships + may assume almost any form on earth as the conditions of life vary; and + that, even in their sexual relations towards offspring, those differences + which we, conventionally, are apt to suppose are inherent in the paternal + or the maternal sex form, are not inherent—as when one studies the + lives of certain toads, where the female deposits her eggs in cavities on + the back of the male, where the eggs are preserved and hatched; or, of + certain sea animals, in which the male carries the young about with him + and rears them in a pouch formed of his own substance; and countless other + such. And above all, this important fact, which had first impressed me + when as a child I wandered alone in the African bush and watched + cock-o-veets singing their inter-knit love-songs, and small singing birds + building their nests together, and caring for and watching over, not only + their young, but each other, and which has powerfully influenced all I + have thought and felt on sex matters since;—the fact that, along the + line of bird life and among certain of its species sex has attained its + highest and aesthetic, and one might almost say intellectual, development + on earth: a point of development to which no human race as a whole has yet + reached, and which represents the realisation of the highest sexual ideal + which haunts humanity. + </p> + <p> + When these three chapters we ended I went on to deal, as far as possible, + with woman’s condition in the most primitive, in the savage and in the + semi-savage states. I had always been strangely interested from childhood + in watching the condition of the native African women in their primitive + society about me. When I was eighteen I had a conversation with a Kafir + woman still in her untouched primitive condition, a conversation which + made a more profound impression on my mind than any but one other incident + connected with the position of woman has ever done. She was a woman whom I + cannot think of otherwise than as a person of genius. In language more + eloquent and intense than I have ever heard from the lips of any other + woman, she painted the condition of the women of her race; the labour of + women, the anguish of woman as she grew older, and the limitations of her + life closed in about her, her sufferings under the condition of polygamy + and subjection; all this she painted with a passion and intensity I have + not known equalled; and yet, and this was the interesting point, when I + went on to question her, combined with a deep and almost fierce bitterness + against life and the unseen powers which had shaped woman and her + conditions as they were, there was not one word of bitterness against the + individual man, nor any will or intention to revolt; rather, there was a + stern and almost majestic attitude of acceptance of the inevitable; life + and the conditions of her race being what they were. It was this + conversation which first forced upon me a truth, which I have since come + to regard as almost axiomatic, that, the women of no race or class will + ever rise in revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment + of their relation to their society, however intense their suffering and + however clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of + their society requires their submission: that, wherever there is a general + attempt on the part of the women of any society to readjust their position + in it, a close analysis will always show that the changed or changing + conditions of that society have made woman’s acquiescence no longer + necessary or desirable. + </p> + <p> + Another point which it was attempted to deal with in this division of the + book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that woman’s + physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain other directions + was the price which woman has been compelled to pay for the passing of the + race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state to the erect; and which + was essential if humanity as we know it was to exist (this of course was + dealt with by a physiological study of woman’s structure); and also, to + deal with the highly probable, though unproved and perhaps unprovable, + suggestion, that it was largely the necessity which woman was under of + bearing her helpless young in her arms while procuring food for them and + herself, and of carrying them when escaping from enemies, that led to the + entirely erect position being forced on developing humanity. + </p> + <p> + These and many other points throwing an interesting light on the later + development of women (such as the relation between agriculture and the + subjection of women) were gone into in this division of the book dealing + with primitive and semi-barbarous womanhood. + </p> + <p> + When this division was ended, I had them type-written, and with the first + three chapters bound in one volume about the year 1888; and then went on + to work at the last division, which I had already begun. + </p> + <p> + This dealt with what is more popularly known as the women’s question: with + the causes which in modern European societies are leading women to attempt + readjustment in their relation to their social organism; with the + direction in which such readjustments are taking place; and with the + results which in the future it appears likely such readjustments will + produce. + </p> + <p> + After eleven years, 1899, these chapters were finished and bound in a + large volume with the first two divisions. There then only remained to + revise the book and write a preface. In addition to the prose argument I + had in each chapter one or more allegories; because while it is easy + clearly to express abstract thoughts in argumentative prose, whatever + emotion those thoughts awaken I have not felt myself able adequately to + express except in the other form. (The allegory “Three Dreams in a Desert” + which I published about nineteen years ago was taken from this book; and I + have felt that perhaps being taken from its context it was not quite clear + to every one.) I had also tried throughout to illustrate the subject with + exactly those particular facts in the animal and human world, with which I + had come into personal contact and which had helped to form the + conclusions which were given; as it has always seemed to me that in + dealing with sociological questions a knowledge of the exact manner in + which any writer has arrived at his view is necessary in measuring its + worth. The work had occupied a large part of my life, and I had hoped, + whatever its deficiencies, that it might at least stimulate other minds, + perhaps more happily situated, to an enlarged study of the question. + </p> + <p> + In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was + ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of two + months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I arrived + at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but Martial Law had already + been proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to allow my + return to my home in Johannesburg and sent me to the Colony; nor was I + allowed to send any communication through, to any person, who might have + extended some care over my possessions. Some eight months after, when the + British troops had taken and entered Johannesburg; a friend, who, being on + the British side, had been allowed to go up, wrote me that he had visited + my house and found it looted, that all that was of value had been taken or + destroyed; that my desk had been forced open and broken up, and its + contents set on fire in the centre of the room, so that the roof was + blackened over the pile of burnt papers. He added that there was little in + the remnants of paper of which I could make any use, but that he had + gathered and stored the fragments till such time as I might be allowed to + come and see them. I thus knew my book had been destroyed. + </p> + <p> + Some months later in the war when confined in a little up-country hamlet, + many hundreds of miles from the coast and from Johannesburg; with the + brunt of the war at that time breaking around us, de Wet having crossed + the Orange River and being said to have been within a few miles of us, and + the British columns moving hither and thither, I was living in a little + house on the outskirts of the village, in a single room, with a stretcher + and two packing-cases as furniture, and with my little dog for company. + Thirty-six armed African natives were set to guard night and day at the + doors and windows of the house; and I was only allowed to go out during + certain hours in the middle of the day to fetch water from the fountain, + or to buy what I needed, and I was allowed to receive no books, newspapers + or magazines. A high barbed wire fence, guarded by armed natives, + surrounded the village, through which it would have been death to try to + escape. All day the pompoms from the armoured trains, that paraded on the + railway line nine miles distant, could be heard at intervals; and at night + the talk of the armed natives as they pressed against the windows, and the + tramp of the watch with the endless “Who goes there?” as they walked round + the wire fence through the long, dark hours, when one was allowed neither + to light a candle nor strike a match. When a conflict was fought near by, + the dying and wounded were brought in; three men belonging to our little + village were led out to execution; death sentences were read in our little + market-place; our prison was filled with our fellow-countrymen; and we did + not know from hour to hour what the next would bring to any of us. Under + these conditions I felt it necessary I should resolutely force my thought + at times from the horror of the world around me, to dwell on some abstract + question, and it was under these circumstances that this little book was + written; being a remembrance mainly drawn from one chapter of the larger + book. The armed native guards standing against the uncurtained windows, it + was impossible to open the shutters, and the room was therefore always so + dark that even the physical act of writing was difficult. + </p> + <p> + A year and a half after, when the war was over and peace had been + proclaimed for above four months, I with difficulty obtained a permit to + visit the Transvaal. I found among the burnt fragments the leathern back + of my book intact, the front half of the leaves burnt away; the back half + of the leaves next to the cover still all there, but so browned and + scorched with the flames that they broke as you touched them; and there + was nothing left but to destroy it. I even then felt a hope that at some + future time I might yet rewrite the entire book. But life is short; and I + have found that not only shall I never rewrite the book, but I shall not + have the health even to fill out and harmonise this little remembrance + from it. + </p> + <p> + It is therefore with considerable pain that I give out this fragment. I am + only comforted by the thought that perhaps, all sincere and earnest search + after truth, even where it fails to reach it, yet, often comes so near to + it, that other minds more happily situated may be led, by pointing out its + very limitations and errors, to obtain a larger view. + </p> + <p> + I have dared to give this long and very uninteresting explanation, not at + all because I have wished by giving the conditions under which this little + book was written, to make excuse for any repetitions or lack of literary + perfection, for these things matter very little; but, because (and this + matters very much) it might lead to misconception on the subject-matter + itself if its genesis were not exactly understood. + </p> + <p> + Not only is this book not a general view of the whole vast body of + phenomena connected with woman’s position; but it is not even a bird’s-eye + view of the whole question of woman’s relation to labour. + </p> + <p> + In the original book the matter of the parasitism of woman filled only one + chapter out of twelve, and it was mainly from this chapter that this book + was drawn. The question of the parasitism of woman is, I think, very + vital, very important; it explains many phenomena which nothing else + explains; and it will be of increasing importance. But for the moment + there are other aspects of woman’s relation to labour practically quite as + pressing. In the larger book I had devoted one chapter entirely to an + examination of the work woman has done and still does in the modern world, + and the gigantic evils which arise from the fact that her labour, + especially domestic labour, often the most wearisome and unending known to + any section of the human race, is not adequately recognised or + recompensed. Especially on this point I have feared this book might lead + to a misconception, if by its great insistence on the problem of sex + parasitism, and the lighter dealing with other aspects, it should lead to + the impression that woman’s domestic labour at the present day (something + quite distinct from, though indirectly connected with, the sexual relation + between man and woman) should not be highly and most highly recognised and + recompensed. I believe it will be in the future, and then when woman gives + up her independent field of labour for domestic or marital duty of any + kind, she will not receive her share of the earnings of the man as a more + or less eleemosynary benefaction, placing her in a position of subjection, + but an equal share, as the fair division, in an equal partnership. (It may + be objected that where a man and woman have valued each other sufficiently + to select one another from all other humans for a lifelong physical union, + it is an impertinence to suppose there could be any necessity to adjust + economic relations. In love there is no first nor last! And that the + desire of each must be to excel the other in service. That this should be + so is true; that it is so now, in the case of union between two perfectly + morally developed humans, is also true, and that this condition may in a + distant future be almost universal is certainly true. But dealing with + this matter as a practical question today, we have to consider not what + should be, or what may be, but what, given traditions and institutions of + our societies, is, today.) Especially I have feared that the points dealt + with in this little book, when taken apart from other aspects of the + question, might lead to the conception that it was intended to express the + thought, that it was possible or desirable that woman in addition to her + child-bearing should take from man his share in the support and care of + his offspring or of the woman who fulfilled with regard to himself + domestic duties of any kind. In that chapter in the original book devoted + to the consideration of man’s labour in connection with woman and with his + offspring more than one hundred pages were devoted to illustrating how + essential to the humanising and civilising of man, and therefore of the + whole race, was an increased sense of sexual and paternal responsibility, + and an increased justice towards woman as a domestic labourer. In the last + half of the same chapter I dealt at great length with what seems to me an + even more pressing practical sex question at this moment—man’s + attitude towards those women who are not engaged in domestic labour; + toward that vast and always increasing body of women, who as modern + conditions develop are thrown out into the stream of modern economic life + to sustain themselves and often others by their own labour; and who yet + are there bound hand and foot, not by the intellectual or physical + limitations of their nature, but by artificial constrictions and + conventions, the remnants of a past condition of society. It is largely + this maladjustment, which, deeply studied in all its ramifications, will + be found to lie as the taproot and central source of the most terrible of + the social diseases that afflict us. + </p> + <p> + The fact that for equal work equally well performed by a man and by a + woman, it is ordained that the woman on the ground of her sex alone shall + receive a less recompense, is the nearest approach to a wilful and + unqualified “wrong” in the whole relation of woman to society today. That + males of enlightenment and equity can for an hour tolerate the existence + of this inequality has seemed to me always incomprehensible; and it is + only explainable when one regards it as a result of the blinding effects + of custom and habit. Personally, I have felt so profoundly on this + subject, that this, with one other point connected with woman’s sexual + relation to man, are the only matters connected with woman’s position, in + thinking of which I have always felt it necessary almost fiercely to crush + down indignation and to restrain it, if I would maintain an impartiality + of outlook. I should therefore much regret if the light and passing manner + in which this question has been touched on in this little book made it + seem of less vital importance than I hold it. + </p> + <p> + In the last chapter of the original book, the longest, and I believe the + most important, I dealt with the problems connected with marriage and the + personal relations of men and women in the modern world. In it I tried to + give expression to that which I hold to be a great truth, and one on which + I should not fear to challenge the verdict of long future generations—that, + the direction in which the endeavour of woman to readjust herself to the + new conditions of life is leading today, is not towards a greater sexual + laxity, or promiscuity, or to an increased self-indulgence, but toward a + higher appreciation of the sacredness of all sex relations, and a clearer + perception of the sex relation between man and woman as the basis of human + society, on whose integrity, beauty and healthfulness depend the health + and beauty of human life, as a whole. Above all, that it will lead to a + closer, more permanent, more emotionally and intellectually complete and + intimate relation between the individual man and woman. And if in the + present disco-ordinate transitional stage of our social growth it is found + necessary to allow of readjustment by means of divorce, it will not be + because such readjustments will be regarded lightly, but rather, as when, + in a complex and delicate mechanism moved by a central spring, we allow in + the structure for the readjustment and regulation of that spring, because + on its absolute perfection of action depends the movement of the whole + mechanism. In the last pages of the book, I tried to express what seems to + me a most profound truth often overlooked—that as humanity and human + societies pass on slowly from their present barbarous and semi-savage + condition in matters of sex into a higher, it will be found increasingly, + that over and above its function in producing and sending onward the + physical stream of life (a function which humanity shares with the most + lowly animal and vegetable forms of life, and which even by some noted + thinkers of the present day seems to be regarded as its only possible + function,) that sex and the sexual relation between man and woman have + distinct aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual functions and ends, apart + entirely from physical reproduction. That noble as is the function of the + physical reproduction of humanity by the union of man and woman, rightly + viewed, that union has in it latent, other, and even higher forms, of + creative energy and life-dispensing power, and that its history on earth + has only begun. As the first wild rose when it hung from its stem with its + centre of stamens and pistils and its single whorl of pale petals, had + only begun its course, and was destined, as the ages passed, to develop + stamen upon stamen and petal upon petal, till it assumed a hundred forms + of joy and beauty. + </p> + <p> + And, it would indeed almost seem, that, on the path toward the higher + development of sexual life on earth, as man has so often had to lead in + other paths, that here it is perhaps woman, by reason of those very sexual + conditions which in the past have crushed and trammelled her, who is bound + to lead the way, and man to follow. So that it may be at last, that sexual + love—that tired angel who through the ages has presided over the + march of humanity, with distraught eyes, and feather-shafts broken, and + wings drabbled in the mires of lust and greed, and golden locks caked over + with the dust of injustice and oppression—till those looking at him + have sometimes cried in terror, “He is the Evil and not the Good of life!” + and have sought, if it were not possible, to exterminate him—shall + yet, at last, bathed from the mire and dust of ages in the streams of + friendship and freedom, leap upwards, with white wings spread, resplendent + in the sunshine of a distant future—the essentially Good and + Beautiful of human existence. + </p> + <p> + I have given this long and very wearisome explanation of the scope and + origin of this little book, because I feel that it might lead to grave + misunderstanding were it not understood how it came to be written. + </p> + <p> + I have inscribed it to my friend, Lady Constance Lytton; not because I + think it worthy of her, nor yet because of the splendid part she has + played in the struggle of the women fighting today in England for certain + forms of freedom for all women. It is, if I may be allowed without + violating the sanctity of a close personal friendship so to say, because + she, with one or two other men and women I have known, have embodied for + me the highest ideal of human nature, in which intellectual power and + strength of will are combined with an infinite tenderness and a wide human + sympathy; a combination which, whether in the person of the man or the + woman, is essential to the existence of the fully rounded and harmonised + human creature; and which an English woman of genius summed in one line + when she cried in her invocation of her great French sister:— + </p> + <p> + “Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man!” + </p> + <p> + One word more I should like to add, as I may not again speak or write on + this subject. I should like to say to the men and women of the generations + which will come after us—“You will look back at us with + astonishment! You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished so + little; at the, to you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did not + take; at the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we sat + down passive; at the great truths staring us in the face, which we failed + to see; at the truths we grasped at, but could never quite get our fingers + round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so little—but, + what you will never know is how it was thinking of you and for you, that + we struggled as we did and accomplished the little which we have done; + that it was in the thought of your larger realisation and fuller life, + that we found consolation for the futilities of our own.” + </p> + <p> + “What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me.” + </p> + <p> + O.S. <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter I. Parasitism. + </h2> + <p> + In that clamour which has arisen in the modern world, where now this, and + then that, is demanded for and by large bodies of modern women, he who + listens carefully may detect as a keynote, beneath all the clamour, a + demand which may be embodied in such a cry as this: Give us labour and the + training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves alone, + but for the race. + </p> + <p> + If this demand be logically expanded, it will take such form as this: Give + us labour! For countless ages, for thousands, millions it may be, we have + laboured. When first man wandered, the naked, newly-erected savage, and + hunted and fought, we wandered with him: each step of his was ours. Within + our bodies we bore the race, on our shoulders we carried it; we sought the + roots and plants for its food; and, when man’s barbed arrow or hook + brought the game, our hands dressed it. Side by side, the savage man and + the savage woman, we wandered free together and laboured free together. + And we were contented! + </p> + <p> + Then a change came. + </p> + <p> + We ceased from our wanderings, and, camping upon one spot of earth, again + the labours of life were divided between us. While man went forth to hunt, + or to battle with the foe who would have dispossessed us of all, we + laboured on the land. We hoed the earth, we reaped the grain, we shaped + the dwellings, we wove the clothing, we modelled the earthen vessels and + drew the lines upon them, which were humanity’s first attempt at domestic + art; we studied the properties and uses of plants, and our old women were + the first physicians of the race, as, often, its first priests and + prophets. + </p> + <p> + We fed the race at our breast, we bore it on our shoulders; through us it + was shaped, fed, and clothed. Labour more toilsome and unending than that + of man was ours; yet did we never cry out that it was too heavy for us. + While savage man lay in the sunshine on his skins, resting, that he might + be fitted for war or the chase, or while he shaped his weapons of death, + he ate and drank that which our hands had provided for him; and while we + knelt over our grindstone, or hoed in the fields, with one child in our + womb, perhaps, and one on our back, toiling till the young body was old + before its time—did we ever cry out that the labour allotted to us + was too hard for us? Did we not know that the woman who threw down her + burden was as a man who cast away his shield in battle—a coward and + a traitor to his race? Man fought—that was his work; we fed and + nurtured the race—that was ours. We knew that upon our labours, even + as upon man’s, depended the life and well-being of the people whom we + bore. We endured our toil, as man bore his wounds, silently; and we were + content. + </p> + <p> + Then again a change came. + </p> + <p> + Ages passed, and time was when it was no longer necessary that all men + should go to the hunt or the field of war; and when only one in five, or + one in ten, or but one in twenty, was needed continually for these + labours. Then our fellow-man, having no longer full occupation in his old + fields of labour, began to take his share in ours. He too began to + cultivate the field, to build the house, to grind the corn (or make his + male slaves do it); and the hoe, and the potter’s tools, and the + thatching-needle, and at last even the grindstones which we first had + picked up and smoothed to grind the food for our children, began to pass + from our hands into his. The old, sweet life of the open fields was ours + no more; we moved within the gates, where the time passes more slowly and + the world is sadder than in the air outside; but we had our own work + still, and were content. + </p> + <p> + If, indeed, we might no longer grow the food for our people, we were still + its dressers; if we did not always plant and prepare the flax and hemp, we + still wove the garments for our race; if we did no longer raise the house + walls, the tapestries that covered them were the work of our hands; we + brewed the ale, and the simples which were used as medicines we distilled + and prescribed; and, close about our feet, from birth to manhood, grew up + the children whom we had borne; their voices were always in our ears. At + the doors of our houses we sat with our spinning-wheels, and we looked out + across the fields that were once ours to labour in—and were + contented. Lord’s wife, peasant’s, or burgher’s, we all still had our work + to do! + </p> + <p> + A thousand years ago, had one gone to some great dame, questioning her why + she did not go out a-hunting or a-fighting, or enter the great hall to + dispense justice and confer upon the making of laws, she would have + answered: “Am I a fool that you put to me such questions? Have I not a + hundred maidens to keep at work at spinning-wheels and needles? With my + own hands daily do I not dispense bread to over a hundred folk? In the + great hall go and see the tapestries I with my maidens have created by the + labour of years, and which we shall labour over for twenty more, that my + children’s children may see recorded the great deeds of their forefathers. + In my store-room are there not salves and simples, that my own hands have + prepared for the healing of my household and the sick in the country + round? Ill would it go indeed, if when the folk came home from war and the + chase of wild beasts, weary or wounded, they found all the womenfolk gone + out a-hunting and a-fighting, and none there to dress their wounds, or + prepare their meat, or guide and rule the household! Better far might my + lord and his followers come and help us with our work, than that we should + go to help them! You are surely bereft of all wit. What becomes of the + country if the women forsake their toil?” + </p> + <p> + And the burgher’s wife, asked why she did not go to labour in her + husband’s workshop, or away into the market-place, or go a-trading to + foreign countries, would certainly have answered: “I am too busy to speak + with such as you! The bread is in the oven (already I smell it a-burning), + the winter is coming on, and my children lack good woollen hose and my + husband needs a warm coat. I have six vats of ale all a-brewing, and I + have daughters whom I must teach to spin and sew, and the babies are + clinging round my knees. And you ask me why I do not go abroad to seek for + new labours! Godsooth! Would you have me to leave my household to starve + in summer and die of cold in winter, and my children to go untrained, + while I gad about to seek for other work? A man must have his belly full + and his back covered before all things in life. Who, think you, would spin + and bake and brew, and rear and train my babes, if I went abroad? New + labour, indeed, when the days are not long enough, and I have to toil far + into the night! I have no time to talk with fools! Who will rear and shape + the nation if I do not?” + </p> + <p> + And the young maiden at the cottage door, beside her wheel, asked why she + was content and did not seek new fields of labour, would surely have + answered: “Go away, I have no time to listen to you. Do you not see that I + am spinning here that I too may have a home of my own? I am weaving the + linen garments that shall clothe my household in the long years to come! I + cannot marry till the chest upstairs be full. You cannot hear it, but as I + sit here alone, spinning, far off across the hum of my spinning-wheel I + hear the voices of my little unborn children calling to me—‘O + mother, mother, make haste, that we may be!’—and sometimes, when I + seem to be looking out across my wheel into the sunshine, it is the blaze + of my own fireside that I see, and the light shines on the faces round it; + and I spin on the faster and the steadier when I think of what shall come. + Do you ask me why I do not go out and labour in the fields with the lad + whom I have chosen? Is his work, then, indeed more needed than mine for + the raising of that home that shall be ours? Oh, very hard I will labour, + for him and for my children, in the long years to come. But I cannot stop + to talk to you now. Far off, over the hum of my spinning-wheel, I hear the + voices of my children calling, and I must hurry on. Do you ask me why I do + not seek for labour whose hands are full to bursting? Who will give folk + to the nation if I do not?” + </p> + <p> + Such would have been our answer in Europe in the ages of the past, if + asked the question why we were contented with our field of labour and + sought no other. Man had his work; we had ours. We knew that we upbore our + world on our shoulders; and that through the labour of our hands it was + sustained and strengthened—and we were contented. + </p> + <p> + But now, again a change has come. + </p> + <p> + Something that is entirely new has entered into the field of human labour, + and left nothing as it was. + </p> + <p> + In man’s fields of toil, change has accomplished, and is yet more quickly + accomplishing, itself. + </p> + <p> + On lands where once fifty men and youths toiled with their cattle, today + one steam-plough, guided by but two pair of hands, passes swiftly; and an + automatic reaper in one day reaps and binds and prepares for the garner + the produce of fields it would have taken a hundred strong male arms to + harvest in the past. The iron tools and weapons, only one of which it took + an ancient father of our race long months of stern exertion to extract + from ore and bring to shape and temper, are now poured forth by + steam-driven machinery as a millpond pours forth its water; and even in + war, the male’s ancient and especial field of labour, a complete reversal + of the ancient order has taken place. Time was when the size and strength + of the muscles in a man’s legs and arms, and the strength and size of his + body, largely determined his fighting powers, and an Achilles or a Richard + Coeur de Lion, armed only with his spear or battle-axe, made a host fly + before him; today the puniest mannikin behind a modern Maxim gun may mow + down in perfect safety a phalanx of heroes whose legs and arms and + physical powers a Greek god might have envied, but who, having not the + modern machinery of war, fall powerless. The day of the primary import to + humanity of the strength in man’s extensor and flexor muscles, whether in + labours of war or of peace, is gone by for ever; and the day of the + all-importance of the culture and activity of man’s brain and nerve has + already come. + </p> + <p> + The brain of one consumptive German chemist, who in his laboratory + compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of the modern + peoples than ten thousand soldierly legs and arms; and the man who invents + one new labour-saving machine may, through the cerebration of a few days, + have performed the labour it would otherwise have taken hundreds of + thousands of his lusty fellows decades to accomplish. + </p> + <p> + Year by year, month by month, and almost hour by hour, this change is + increasingly showing itself in the field of the modern labour; and crude + muscular force, whether in man or beast, sinks continually in its value in + the world of human toil; while intellectual power, virility, and activity, + and that culture which leads to the mastery of the inanimate forces of + nature, to the invention of machinery, and to that delicate manipulative + skill often required in guiding it, becomes ever of greater and greater + importance to the race. Already today we tremble on the verge of a + discovery, which may come tomorrow or the next day, when, through the + attainment of a simple and cheap method of controlling some widely + diffused, everywhere accessible, natural force (such, for instance, as the + force of the great tidal wave) there will at once and for ever pass away + even that comparatively small value which still, in our present stage of + material civilisation, clings to the expenditure of mere crude, + mechanical, human energy; and the creature, however physically powerful, + who can merely pull, push, and lift, much after the manner of a machine, + will have no further value in the field of human labour. + </p> + <p> + Therefore, even today, we find that wherever that condition which we call + modern civilisation prevails, and in proportion as it tends to prevail—wherever + steam-power, electricity, or the forces of wind and water, are compelled + by man’s intellectual activity to act as the motor-powers in the + accomplishment of human toil, wherever the delicate adaptions of + scientifically constructed machinery are taking the place of the simple + manipulation of the human hand—there has arisen, all the world over, + a large body of males who find that their ancient fields of labour have + slipped or are slipping from them, and who discover that the modern world + has no place or need for them. At the gates of our dockyards, in our + streets, and in our fields, are to be found everywhere, in proportion as + modern civilisation is really dominant, men whose bulk and mere animal + strength would have made them as warriors invaluable members of any + primitive community, and who would have been valuable even in any simpler + civilisation than our own, as machines of toil; but who, owing to lack of + intellectual or delicate manual training, have now no form of labour to + offer society which it stands really in need of, and who therefore tend to + form our Great Male Unemployed—a body which finds the only powers it + possesses so little needed by its fellows that, in return for its + intensest physical labour, it hardly earns the poorest sustenance. The + material conditions of life have been rapidly modified, and the man has + not been modified with them; machinery has largely filled his place in his + old field of labour, and he has found no new one. + </p> + <p> + It is from these men, men who, viewed from the broad humanitarian + standpoint, are often of the most lovable and interesting type, and who + might in a simpler state of society, where physical force was the + dominating factor, have been the heroes, leaders, and chiefs of their + people, that there arises in the modern world the bitter cry of the male + unemployed: “Give us labour or we die!” (The problem of the unemployed + male is, of course, not nearly so modern as that of the unemployed female. + It may be said in England to have taken its rise in almost its present + form as early as the fifteenth century, when economic changes began to + sever the agricultural labourer from the land, and rob him of his ancient + forms of social toil. Still, in its most acute form, it may be called a + modern problem.) + </p> + <p> + Yet it is only upon one, and a comparatively small, section of the males + of the modern civilised world that these changes in the material + conditions of life have told in such fashion as to take all useful + occupation from them and render them wholly or partly worthless to + society. If the modern man’s field of labour has contracted at one end + (the physical), at the other (the intellectual) it has immeasurably + expanded! If machinery and the command of inanimate motor-forces have + rendered of comparatively little value the male’s mere physical + motor-power, the demand upon his intellectual faculties, the call for the + expenditure of nervous energy, and the exercise of delicate manipulative + skill in the labour of human life, have immeasurably increased. + </p> + <p> + In a million new directions forms of honoured and remunerative social + labour are opening up before the feet of the modern man, which his + ancestors never dreamed of; and day by day they yet increase in numbers + and importance. The steamship, the hydraulic lift, the patent road-maker, + the railway-train, the electric tram-car, the steam-driven mill, the Maxim + gun and the torpedo boat, once made, may perform their labours with the + guidance and assistance of comparatively few hands; but a whole army of + men of science, engineers, clerks, and highly-trained workmen is necessary + for their invention, construction, and maintenance. In the domains of art, + of science, of literature, and above all in the field of politics and + government, an almost infinite extension has taken place in the fields of + male labour. Where in primitive times woman was often the only builder, + and patterns she daubed on her hut walls or traced on her earthen vessels + the only attempts at domestic art; and where later but an individual here + and there was required to design a king’s palace or a god’s temple or to + ornament it with statues or paintings, today a mighty army of men, a + million strong, is employed in producing plastic art alone, both high and + low, from the traceries on wall-paper and the illustrations in penny + journals, to the production of the pictures and statues which adorn the + national collections, and a mighty new field of toil has opened before the + anciently hunting and fighting male. Where once one ancient witch-doctress + may have been the only creature in a whole district who studied the nature + of herbs and earths, or a solitary wizard experimenting on poisons was the + only individual in a whole territory interrogating nature; and where + later, a few score of alchemists and astrologers only were engaged in + examining the structure of substances, or the movement of planets, today + thousands of men in every civilised community are labouring to unravel the + mysteries of nature, and the practical chemist, the physician, the + anatomist, the engineer, the astronomer, the mathematician, the + electrician, form a mighty and always increasingly important army of male + labourers. Where once an isolated bard supplied a nation with its + literatures, or where later a few thousand priests and men of letters + wrote and transcribed for the few to read, today literature gives labour + to a multitude almost as countless as a swarm of locusts. From the + penny-a-liner to the artist and thinker, the demand for their labour + continually increases. Where one town-crier with stout legs and lusty + lungs was once all-sufficient to spread the town and country news, a score + of men now sit daily pen in hand, preparing the columns of the morning’s + paper, and far into the night a hundred compositors are engaged in a + labour which requires a higher culture of brain and finger than most + ancient kings and rulers possessed. Even in the labours of war, the most + brutal and primitive of the occupations lingering on into civilised life + from the savage state, the new demand for labour of an intellectual kind + is enormous. The invention, construction, and working of one Krupp gun, + though its mere discharge hardly demands more crude muscular exertion than + a savage expends in throwing his boomerang, yet represents an infinitude + of intellectual care and thought, far greater than that which went to the + shaping of all the weapons of a primitive army. Above all, in the domain + of politics and government, where once a king or queen, aided by a handful + of councillors, was alone practically concerned in the labours of national + guidance or legislation; today, owing to the rapid means of + intercommunication, printing, and the consequent diffusion of political + and social information throughout a territory, it has become possible, for + the first time, for all adults in a large community to keep themselves + closely informed on all national affairs; and in every highly-civilised + state the ordinary male has been almost compelled to take his share, + however small, in the duties and labours of legislation and government. + Thus there has opened before the mass of men a vast new sphere of labour + undreamed of by their ancestors. In every direction the change which + material civilisation has wrought, while it has militated against that + comparatively small section of males who have nothing to offer society but + the expenditure of their untrained muscular energy (inflicting much and + often completely unmerited suffering upon them), has immeasurably extended + the field of male labour as a whole. Never before in the history of the + earth has the man’s field of remunerative toil been so wide, so + interesting, so complex, and in its results so all-important to society; + never before has the male sex, taken as a whole, been so fully and + strenuously employed. + </p> + <p> + So much is this the case, that, exactly as in the earlier conditions of + society an excessive and almost crushing amount of the most important + physical labour generally devolved upon the female, so under modern + civilised conditions among the wealthier and fully civilised classes, an + unduly excessive share of labour tends to devolve upon the male. That + almost entirely modern, morbid condition, affecting brain and nervous + system, and shortening the lives of thousands in modern civilised + societies, which is vulgarly known as “overwork” or “nervous breakdown,” + is but one evidence of the even excessive share of mental toil devolving + upon the modern male of the cultured classes, who, in addition to + maintaining himself, has frequently dependent upon him a larger or smaller + number of entirely parasitic females. But, whatever the result of the + changes of modern civilisation may be with regard to the male, he + certainly cannot complain that they have as a whole robbed him of his + fields of labour, diminished his share in the conduct of life, or reduced + him to a condition of morbid inactivity. + </p> + <p> + In our woman’s field of labour, matters have tended to shape themselves + wholly otherwise! The changes which have taken place during the last + centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term “modern + civilisation,” have tended to rob woman, not merely in part but almost + wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and + social labour; and, where there has not been a determined and conscious + resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to + her new and compensatory fields. + </p> + <p> + It is this fact which constitutes our modern “Woman’s Labour Problem.” + </p> + <p> + Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings + steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often + those of men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no + longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our peoples. + </p> + <p> + Our hoes and our grindstones passed from us long ago, when the ploughman + and the miller took our place; but for a time we kept fast possession of + the kneading-trough and the brewing-vat. Today, steam often shapes our + bread, and the loaves are set down at our very door—it may be by a + man-driven motor-car! The history of our household drinks we know no + longer; we merely see them set before us at our tables. Day by day + machine-prepared and factory-produced viands take a larger and larger + place in the dietary of rich and poor, till the working man’s wife places + before her household little that is of her own preparation; while among + the wealthier classes, so far has domestic change gone that men are not + unfrequently found labouring in our houses and kitchens, and even standing + behind our chairs ready to do all but actually place the morsels of food + between our feminine lips. The army of rosy milkmaids has passed away for + ever, to give place to the cream-separator and the, largely, + male-and-machinery manipulated butter pat. In every direction the ancient + saw, that it was exclusively the woman’s sphere to prepare the viands for + her household, has become, in proportion as civilisation has perfected + itself, an antiquated lie. + </p> + <p> + Even the minor domestic operations are tending to pass out of the circle + of woman’s labour. In modern cities our carpets are beaten, our windows + cleaned, our floors polished, by machinery, or extra domestic, and often + male labour. Change has gone much farther than to the mere taking from us + of the preparation of the materials from which the clothing is formed. + Already the domestic sewing-machine, which has supplanted almost entirely + the ancient needle, begins to become antiquated, and a thousand machines + driven in factories by central engines are supplying not only the husband + and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of clothing from + vest to jacket; while among the wealthy classes, the male dress-designer + with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers is helping finally to + explode the ancient myth, that it is woman’s exclusive sphere, and a part + of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the garments she or her household + wear. + </p> + <p> + Year by year, day by day, there is a silently working but determined + tendency for the sphere of woman’s domestic labours to contract itself; + and the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex + condition which we term “modern civilisation” is advanced. + </p> + <p> + It manifests itself more in England and America than in Italy and Spain, + more in great cities than in country places, more among the wealthier + classes than the poorer, and is an unfailing indication of advancing + modern civilisation. (There is, indeed, often something pathetic in the + attitude of many a good old mother of the race, who having survived, here + and there, into the heart of our modern civilisation, is sorely puzzled by + the change in woman’s duties and obligations. She may be found looking + into the eyes of some ancient crone, who, like herself, has survived from + a previous state of civilisation, seeking there a confirmation of a view + of life of which a troublous doubt has crept even into her own soul. “I,” + she cries, “always cured my own hams, and knitted my own socks, and made + up all the linen by hand. We always did it when we were girls—but + now my daughters object!” And her old crone answers her? “Yes, we did it; + it’s the right thing; but it’s so expensive. It’s so much cheaper to buy + things ready made!” And they shake their heads and go their ways, feeling + that the world is strangely out of joint when duty seems no more duty. + Such women are, in truth, like a good old mother duck, who, having for + years led her ducklings to the same pond, when that pond has been drained + and nothing is left but baked mud, will still persist in bringing her + younglings down to it, and walks about with flapping wings and anxious + quack, trying to induce them to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh + young instincts, hear far off the delicious drippings from the new dam + which has been built higher up to catch the water, and they smell the + chickweed and the long grass that is growing up beside it; and absolutely + refuse to disport themselves on the baked mud or to pretend to seek for + worms where no worms are. And they leave the ancient mother quacking + beside her pond and set out to seek for new pastures—perhaps to lose + themselves upon the way?—perhaps to find them? To the old mother one + is inclined to say, “Ah, good old mother duck, can you not see the world + has changed? You cannot bring the water back into the dried-up pond! + Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was there, but it has gone for + ever; and, would you and yours swim again, it must be in other waters.” + New machinery, new duties.) + </p> + <p> + But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women’s material + domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient field + of labour. + </p> + <p> + Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult + years were reached. Hers was the training and influence which shaped them. + From the moment when the infant first lay on her breast, till her + daughters left her for marriage and her sons went to take share in man’s + labour, they were continually under the mother’s influence. Today, so + complex have become even the technical and simpler branches of education, + so mighty and inexorable are the demands which modern civilisation makes + for specialised instruction and training for all individuals who are to + survive and retain their usefulness under modern conditions, that, from + the earliest years of its life, the child is of necessity largely removed + from the hands of the mother, and placed in those of the specialised + instructor. Among the wealthier classes, scarcely is the infant born when + it passes into the hands of the trained nurse, and from hers on into the + hands of the qualified teacher; till, at nine or ten, the son in certain + countries often leaves his home for ever for the public school, to pass on + to the college and university; while the daughter, in the hands of trained + instructors and dependents, owes in the majority of cases hardly more of + her education or formation to maternal toil. While even among our poorer + classes, the infant school, and the public school; and later on the + necessity for manual training, takes the son and often the daughter as + completely, and always increasingly as civilisation advances, from the + mother’s control. So marked has this change in woman’s ancient field of + labour become, that a woman of almost any class may have borne many + children and yet in early middle age be found sitting alone in an empty + house, all her offspring gone from her to receive training and instruction + at the hands of others. The ancient statement that the training and + education of her offspring is exclusively the duty of the mother, however + true it may have been with regard to a remote past, has become an absolute + misstatement; and the woman who should at the present day insist on + entirely educating her own offspring would, in nine cases out of ten, + inflict an irreparable injury on them, because she is incompetent. + </p> + <p> + But, if possible, yet more deeply and radically have the changes of modern + civilisation touched our ancient field of labour in another direction—in + that very portion of the field of human labour which is peculiarly and + organically ours, and which can never be wholly taken from us. Here the + shrinkage has been larger than in any other direction, and touches us as + women more vitally. + </p> + <p> + Time was, and still is, among almost all primitive and savage folk, when + the first and all-important duty of the female to her society was to bear, + to bear much, and to bear unceasingly! On her adequate and persistent + performance of this passive form of labour, and of her successful feeding + of her young from her own breast, and rearing it, depended, not merely the + welfare, but often the very existence, of her tribe or nation. Where, as + is the case among almost all barbarous peoples, the rate of infant + mortality is high; where the unceasing casualties resulting from war, the + chase, and acts of personal violence tend continually to reduce the number + of adult males; where, surgical knowledge being still in its infancy, most + wounds are fatal; where, above all, recurrent pestilence and famine, + unfailing if of irregular recurrence, decimated the people, it has been + all important that woman should employ her creative power to its very + uttermost limits if the race were not at once to dwindle and die out. “May + thy wife’s womb never cease from bearing,” is still today the highest + expression of goodwill on the part of a native African chief to his + departing guest. For, not only does the prolific woman in the primitive + state contribute to the wealth and strength of her nation as a whole, but + to that of her own male companion and of her family. Where the social + conditions of life are so simple that, in addition to bearing and suckling + the child, it is reared and nourished through childhood almost entirely + through the labour and care of the mother, requiring no expenditure of + tribal or family wealth on its training or education, its value as an + adult enormously outweighs, both to the state and the male, the trouble + and expense of rearing it, which falls almost entirely on the individual + woman who bears it. The man who has twenty children to become warriors and + labourers is by so much the richer and the more powerful than he who has + but one; while the state whose women are prolific and labour for and rear + their children stands so far insured against destruction. Incessant and + persistent child-bearing is thus truly the highest duty and the most + socially esteemed occupation of the primitive woman, equalling fully in + social importance the labour of the man as hunter and warrior. + </p> + <p> + Even under those conditions of civilisation which have existed in the + centuries which divide primitive savagery from high civilisation, the + demand for continuous, unbroken child-bearing on the part of the woman as + her loftiest social duty has generally been hardly less imperious. + Throughout the Middle Ages of Europe, and down almost to our own day, the + rate of infant mortality was almost as large as in a savage state; medical + ignorance destroyed innumerable lives; antiseptic surgery being unknown, + serious wounds were still almost always fatal; in the low state of + sanitary science, plagues such as those which in the reign of Justinian + swept across the civilised world from India to Northern Europe, well nigh + depopulating the globe, or the Black Death of 1349, which in England alone + swept away more than half the population of the island, were but extreme + forms of the destruction of population going on continually as the result + of zymotic disease; while wars were not merely far more common but, owing + to the famines which almost invariably followed them, were far more + destructive to human life than in our own days, and deaths by violence, + whether at the hands of the state or as the result of personal enmity, + were of daily occurrence in all lands. Under these conditions abstinence + on the part of woman from incessant child-bearing might have led to almost + the same serious diminution or even extinction of her people, as in the + savage state; while the very existence of her civilisation depended on the + production of an immense number of individuals as beasts of burden, + without the expenditure of whose crude muscular force in physical labour + of agriculture and manufacture those intermediate civilisations would, in + the absence of machinery, have been impossible. Twenty men had to be born, + fed at the breast, and reared by women to perform the crude brute labour + which is performed today by one small, well-adjusted steam crane; and the + demand for large masses of human creatures as mere reservoirs of motor + force for accomplishing the simplest processes was imperative. So strong, + indeed, was the consciousness of the importance to society of continuous + child-bearing on the part of woman, that as late as the middle of the + sixteenth century Martin Luther wrote: “If a woman becomes weary or at + last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, + she is there to do it;” and he doubtless gave expression, in a crude and + somewhat brutal form, to a conviction common to the bulk of his + contemporaries, both male and female. + </p> + <p> + Today, this condition has almost completely reversed itself. + </p> + <p> + The advance of science and the amelioration of the physical conditions of + life tend rapidly toward a diminution of human mortality. The infant + death-rate among the upper classes in modern civilisations has fallen by + more than one-half; while among poorer classes it is already, though + slowly, falling: the increased knowledge of the laws of sanitation has + made among all highly civilised peoples the depopulation by plague a thing + of the past, and the discoveries of the next twenty or thirty years will + probably do away for ever with the danger to man of zymotic disease. + Famines of the old desolating type have become an impossibility where + rapid means of transportation convey the superfluity of one land to supply + the lack of another; and war and deeds of violence, though still lingering + among us, have already become episodal in the lives of nations as of + individuals; while the vast advances in antiseptic surgery have caused + even the effects of wounds and dismemberments to become only very + partially fatal to human life. All these changes have tended to diminish + human mortality and protract human life; and they have today already made + it possible for a race not only to maintain its numbers, but even to + increase them, with a comparatively small expenditure of woman’s vitality + in the passive labour of child-bearing. + </p> + <p> + But yet more seriously has the demand for woman’s labour as child-bearer + been diminished by change in another direction. + </p> + <p> + Every mechanical invention which lessens the necessity for rough, + untrained, muscular, human labour, diminishes also the social demand upon + woman as the producer in large masses of such labourers. Already + throughout the modern civilised world we have reached a point at which the + social demand is not merely for human creatures in the bulk for use as + beasts of burden, but, rather, and only, for such human creatures as shall + be so trained and cultured as to be fitted for the performance of the more + complex duties of modern life. Not, now, merely for many men, but, rather, + for few men, and those few, well born and well instructed, is the modern + demand. And the woman who today merely produces twelve children and + suckles them, and then turns them loose on her society and family, is + regarded, and rightly so, as a curse and down draught, and not the + productive labourer, of her community. Indeed, so difficult and expensive + has become in the modern world the rearing and training of even one + individual, in a manner suited to fit it for coping with the complexities + and difficulties of civilised life, that, to the family as well as to the + state, unlimited fecundity on the part of the female has already, in most + cases, become irremediable evil; whether it be in the case of the artisan, + who at the cost of immense self-sacrifice must support and train his + children till their twelfth or fourteenth year, if they are ever to become + even skilled manual labourers, and who if his family be large often sinks + beneath the burden, allowing his offspring, untaught and untrained, to + become waste products of human life; or, in that of the professional man, + who by his mental toil is compelled to support and educate, at immense + expense, his sons till they are twenty or older, and to sustain his + daughters, often throughout their whole lives should they not marry, and + to whom a large family proves often no less disastrous; while the state + whose women produce recklessly large masses of individuals in excess of + those for whom they can provide instruction and nourishment is a state, in + so far, tending toward deterioration. The commandment to the modern woman + is now not simply “Thou shalt bear,” but rather, “Thou shalt not bear in + excess of thy power to rear and train satisfactorily;” and the woman who + should today appear at the door of a workhouse or the tribunal of the + poor-law guardians followed by her twelve infants, demanding honourable + sustenance for them and herself in return for the labour she had undergone + in producing them, would meet with but short shrift. And the modern man + who on his wedding-day should be greeted with the ancient good wish, that + he might become the father of twenty sons and twenty daughters, would + regard it as a malediction rather than a blessing. It is certain that the + time is now rapidly approaching when child-bearing will be regarded rather + as a lofty privilege, permissible only to those who have shown their power + rightly to train and provide for their offspring, than a labour which in + itself, and under whatever conditions performed, is beneficial to society. + (The difference between the primitive and modern view on this matter is + aptly and quaintly illustrated by two incidents. Seeing a certain Bantu + woman who appeared better cared for, less hard worked, and happier than + the mass of her companions, we made inquiry, and found that she had two + impotent brothers; because of this she herself had not married, but had + borne by different men fourteen children, all of whom when grown she had + given to her brothers. “They are fond of me because I have given them so + many children, therefore I have not to work like the other women; and my + brothers give me plenty of mealies and milk,” she replied, complacently, + when questioned, “and our family will not die out.” And this person, whose + conduct was so emphatically anti-social on all sides when viewed from the + modern standpoint, was evidently regarded as pre-eminently of value to her + family and to society because of her mere fecundity. On the other hand, a + few weeks back appeared an account in the London papers of an individual + who, taken up at the East End for some brutal offence, blubbered out in + court that she was the mother of twenty children. “You should be ashamed + of yourself!” responded the magistrate; “a woman capable of such conduct + would be capable of doing anything!” and the fine was remorselessly + inflicted. Undoubtedly, if somewhat brutally, the magistrate yet gave true + voice to the modern view on the subject of excessive and reckless + child-bearing.) + </p> + <p> + Further, owing partly to the diminished demand for child-bearing, rising + from the extreme difficulty and expense of rearing and education, and to + many other complex social causes, to which we shall return later, millions + of women in our modern societies are so placed as to be absolutely + compelled to go through life not merely childless, but without sex + relationship in any form whatever; while another mighty army of women is + reduced by the dislocations of our civilisation to accepting sexual + relationships which practically negate child-bearing, and whose only + product is physical and moral disease. + </p> + <p> + Thus, it has come to pass that vast numbers of us are, by modern social + conditions, prohibited from child-bearing at all; and that even those + among us who are child-bearers are required, in proportion as the class of + race to which we belong stands high in the scale of civilisation, to + produce in most cases a limited number of offspring; so that even for + these of us, child-bearing and suckling, instead of filling the entire + circle of female life from the first appearance of puberty to the end of + middle age, becomes an episodal occupation, employing from three or four + to ten or twenty of the threescore-and-ten-years which are allotted to + human life. In such societies the statement (so profoundly true when made + with regard to most savage societies, and even largely true with regard to + those in the intermediate stages of civilisation) that the main and + continuous occupation of all women from puberty to age is the bearing and + suckling of children, and that this occupation must fully satisfy all her + needs for social labour and activity, becomes an antiquated and + unmitigated misstatement. + </p> + <p> + Not only are millions of our women precluded from ever bearing a child, + but for those of us who do bear the demand is ever increasingly in + civilised societies coupled with the condition that if we would act + socially we must restrict our powers. (As regards modern civilised + nations, we find that those whose birthrate is the highest per woman are + by no means the happiest, most enlightened, or powerful; nor do we even + find that the population always increases in proportion to the births. + France, which in many respects leads in the van of civilisation, has one + of the lowest birthrates per woman in Europe; and among the free and + enlightened population of Switzerland and Scandinavia the birthrate is + often exceedingly low; while Ireland, one of the most unhappy and weak of + European nations, had long one of the highest birthrates, without any + proportional increase in population or power. With regard to the different + classes in one community, the same effect is observable. The birthrate per + woman is higher among the lowest and most ignorant classes in the back + slums of our great cities, than among the women of the upper and cultured + classes, mainly because the age at which marriages are contracted always + tends to become higher as the culture and intelligence of individuals + rises, but also because of the regulation of the number of births after + marriage. Yet the number of children reared to adult years among the more + intelligent classes probably equals or exceeds those of the lowest, owing + to the high rate of infant mortality where births are excessive.) + </p> + <p> + Looking round, then, with the uttermost impartiality we can command, on + the entire field of woman’s ancient and traditional labours, we find that + fully three-fourths of it have shrunk away for ever, and that the + remaining fourth still tends to shrink. + </p> + <p> + It is this great fact, so often and so completely overlooked, which lies + as the propelling force behind that vast and restless “Woman’s Movement” + which marks our day. It is this fact, whether clearly and intellectually + grasped, or, as is more often the case, vaguely and painfully felt, which + awakes in the hearts of the ablest modern European women their passionate, + and at times it would seem almost incoherent, cry for new forms of labour + and new fields for the exercise of their powers. + </p> + <p> + Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this: We do not ask that + the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life flow + backward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning-wheels be again + resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old + grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake + himself entirely to his ancient province of war and the chase, leaving to + us all domestic and civil labour. We do not even demand that society shall + immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a + child-bearer (deep and over-mastering as lies the hunger for motherhood in + every virile woman’s heart!); neither do we demand that the children whom + we bear shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. This, we + know, cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone for ever; + no will of man can recall them; but this is our demand: We demand that, in + that strange new world that is arising alike upon the man and the woman, + where nothing is as it was, and all things are assuming new shapes and + relations, that in this new world we also shall have our share of honoured + and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labour of the + Children of Woman. We demand nothing more than this, and we will take + nothing less. This is our “WOMAN’S RIGHT!” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter II. Parasitism (continued). + </h2> + <p> + Is it to be, that, in the future, machinery and the captive motor-forces + of nature are largely to take the place of human hand and foot in the + labour of clothing and feeding the nations; are these branches of industry + to be no longer domestic labours?—then, we demand in the factory, + the warehouse, and the field, wherever machinery has usurped our ancient + labour-ground, that we also should have our place, as guiders, + controllers, and possessors. Is child-bearing to become the labour of but + a portion of our sex?—then we demand for those among us who are + allowed to take no share in it, compensatory and equally honourable and + important fields of social toil. Is the training of human creatures to + become a yet more and more onerous and laborious occupation, their + education and culture to become increasingly a high art, complex and + scientific?—if so, then, we demand that high and complex culture and + training which shall fit us for instructing the race which we bring into + the world. Is the demand for child-bearing to become so diminished that, + even in the lives of those among us who are child-bearers, it shall fill + no more than half a dozen years out of the three-score-and-ten of human + life?—then we demand that an additional outlet be ours which shall + fill up with dignity and value the tale of the years not so employed. Is + intellectual labour to take ever and increasingly the place of crude + muscular exertion in the labour of life?—then we demand for + ourselves that culture and the freedom of action which alone can yield us + the knowledge of life and the intellectual vigour and strength which will + enable us to undertake the same share of mental which we have borne in the + past in physical labours of life. Are the rulers of the race to be no more + its kings and queens, but the mass of the peoples?—then we, one-half + of the nations, demand our full queens’ share in the duties and labours of + government and legislation. Slowly but determinately, as the old fields of + labour close up and are submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the + new. + </p> + <p> + We make this demand, not for our own sakes alone, but for the succour of + the race. + </p> + <p> + A horseman, riding along on a dark night in an unknown land, may chance to + feel his horse start beneath him; rearing, it may almost hurl him to the + earth: in the darkness he may curse his beast, and believe its aim is + simply to cast him off, and free itself for ever of its burden. But when + the morning dawns and lights the hills and valleys he has travelled, + looking backward, he may perceive that the spot where his beast reared, + planting its feet into the earth, and where it refused to move farther on + the old road, was indeed the edge of a mighty precipice, down which one + step more would have precipitated both horse and rider. And he may then + see that it was an instinct wiser than his own which lead his creature, + though in the dark, to leap backward, seeking a new path along which both + might travel. (Is it not recorded that even Balaam’s ass on which he rode + saw the angel with flaming sword, but Balaam saw it not?) + </p> + <p> + In the confusion and darkness of the present, it may well seem to some, + that woman, in her desire to seek for new paths of labour and employment, + is guided only by an irresponsible impulse; or that she seeks selfishly + only her own good, at the cost of that of the race, which she has so long + and faithfully borne onward. But, when a clearer future shall have arisen + and the obscuring mists of the present have been dissipated, may it not + then be clearly manifest that not for herself alone, but for her entire + race, has woman sought her new paths? + </p> + <p> + For let it be noted exactly what our position is, who today, as women, are + demanding new fields of labour and a reconstruction of our relationship + with life. + </p> + <p> + It is often said that the labour problem before the modern woman and that + before the unemployed or partially or almost uselessly employed male, are + absolutely identical; and that therefore, when the male labour problem of + our age solves itself, that of the woman will of necessity have met its + solution also. + </p> + <p> + This statement, with a certain specious semblance of truth, is yet, we + believe, radically and fundamentally false. It is true that both the male + and the female problems of our age have taken their rise largely in the + same rapid material changes which during the last centuries, and more + especially the last ninety years, have altered the face of the human + world. Both men and women have been robbed by those changes of their + ancient remunerative fields of social work: here the resemblance stops. + The male, from whom the changes of modern civilisation have taken his + ancient field of labour, has but one choice before him: he must find new + fields of labour, or he must perish. Society will not ultimately support + him in an absolutely quiescent and almost useless condition. If he does + not vigorously exert himself in some direction or other (the direction may + even be predatory) he must ultimately be annihilated. Individual drones, + both among the wealthiest and the poorest classes (millionaires’ sons, + dukes, or tramps), may in isolated cases be preserved, and allowed to + reproduce themselves without any exertion or activity of mind or body, but + a vast body of males who, having lost their old forms of social + employment, should refuse in any way to exert themselves or seek for new, + would at no great length of time become extinct. There never has been, and + as far as can be seen, there never will be, a time when the majority of + the males in any society will be supported by the rest of the males in a + condition of perfect mental and physical inactivity. “Find labour or die,” + is the choice ultimately put before the human male today, as in the past; + and this constitutes his labour problem. (The nearest approach to complete + parasitism on the part of a vast body of males occurred, perhaps, in + ancient Rome at the time of the decay and downfall of the Empire, when the + bulk of the population, male as well as female, was fed on imported corn, + wine, and oil, and supplied even with entertainment, almost entirely + without exertion or labour of any kind; but this condition was of short + duration, and speedily contributed to the downfall of the diseased Empire + itself. Among the wealthy and so-called upper classes, the males of + various aristocracies have frequently tended to become completely + parasitic after a lapse of time, but such a condition has always been met + by a short and sharp remedy; and the class has fallen, or become extinct. + The condition of the males of the upper classes in France before the + Revolution affords an interesting illustration of this point.) + </p> + <p> + The labour of the man may not always be useful in the highest sense to his + society, or it may even be distinctly harmful and antisocial, as in the + case of the robber-barons of the Middle Ages, who lived by capturing and + despoiling all who passed by their castles; or as in the case of the share + speculators, stock-jobbers, ring-and-corner capitalists, and monopolists + of the present day, who feed upon the productive labours of society + without contributing anything to its welfare. But even males so occupied + are compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a low + intelligence in their callings; and, however injurious to their societies, + they run no personal risk of handing down effete and enervated + constitutions to their race. Whether beneficially or unbeneficially, the + human male must, generally speaking, employ his intellect, or his muscle, + or die. + </p> + <p> + The position of the unemployed modern female is one wholly different. The + choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labour slip from her, + is not generally or often at the present day the choice between finding + new fields of labour, or death; but one far more serious in its ultimate + reaction on humanity as a whole—it is the choice between finding new + forms of labour or sinking slowly into a condition of more or less + complete and passive sex-parasitism! (It is not without profound interest + to note the varying phenomena of sex-parasitism as they present themselves + in the animal world, both in the male and in the female form. Though among + the greater number of species in the animal world the female form is + larger and more powerful rather than the male (e.g., among birds of prey, + such as eagles, falcons, vultures, &c., and among fishes, insects, + &c.), yet sex-parasitism appears among both sex forms. In certain + sea-creatures, for example, the female carries about in the folds of her + covering three or four minute and quite inactive males, who are entirely + passive and dependent upon her. Among termites, on the other hand, the + female has so far degenerated that she has entirely lost the power of + locomotion; she can no longer provide herself or her offspring with + nourishment, or defend or even clean herself; she has become a mere + passive, distended bag of eggs, without intelligence or activity, she and + her offspring existing through the exertions of the workers of the + community. Among other insects, such, for example, as certain ticks, + another form of female parasitism prevails, and while the male remains a + complex, highly active, and winded creature, the female, fastening herself + by the head into the flesh of some living animal and sucking its blood, + has lost wings and all activity, and power of locomotion; having become a + mere distended bladder, which when filled with eggs bursts and ends a + parasitic existence which has hardly been life. It is not impossible, and + it appears, indeed, highly probable, that it has been this degeneration + and parasitism on the part of the female which has set its limitation to + the evolution of ants, creatures which, having reached a point of mental + development in some respects almost as high as that of man, have yet + become curiously and immovably arrested. The whole question of + sex-parasitism among the lower animals is one throwing suggestive and + instructive side-lights on human social problems, but is too extensive to + be here entered on.) + </p> + <p> + Again and again in the history of the past, when among human creatures a + certain stage of material civilisation has been reached, a curious + tendency has manifested itself for the human female to become more or less + parasitic; social conditions tend to rob her of all forms of active, + conscious, social labour, and to reduce her, like the field-tick, to the + passive exercise of her sex functions alone. And the result of this + parasitism has invariably been the decay in vitality and intelligence of + the female, followed after a longer or shorter period by that of her male + descendants and her entire society. + </p> + <p> + Nevertheless, in the history of the past the dangers of the sex-parasitism + have never threatened more than a small section of the females of the + human race, those exclusively of some comparatively small dominant race or + class; the mass of women beneath them being still compelled to assume many + forms of strenuous activity. It is at the present day, and under the + peculiar conditions of our modern civilisation, that for the first time + sex-parasitism has become a danger, more or less remote, to the mass of + civilised women, perhaps ultimately to all. + </p> + <p> + In the very early stages of human growth, the sexual parasitism and + degeneration of the female formed no possible source of social danger. + Where the conditions of life rendered it inevitable that all the labour of + a community should be performed by the members of that community for + themselves, without the assistance of slaves or machinery, the tendency + has always been rather to throw an excessive amount of social labour on + the female. Under no conditions, at no time, in no place, in the history + of the world have the males of any period, of any nation, or of any class, + shown the slightest inclination to allow their own females to become + inactive or parasitic, so long as the actual muscular labour of feeding + and clothing them would in that case have devolved upon themselves! + </p> + <p> + The parasitism of the human female becomes a possibility only when a point + in civilisation is reached (such as that which was attained in the ancient + civilisations of Greece, Rome, Persia, Assyria, India, and such as today + exists in many of the civilisations of the East, such as those of China + and Turkey), when, owing to the extensive employment of the labour of + slaves, or of subject races or classes, the dominant race or class has + become so liberally supplied with the material goods of life, that mere + physical toil on the part of its own female members has become + unnecessary. It is when this point has been reached, and never before, + that the symptoms of female parasitism have in the past almost invariably + tended to manifest themselves, and have become a social danger. The males + of the dominant class have almost always contrived to absorb to themselves + the new intellectual occupations, with the absence of necessity for the + old forms of physical toil made possible in their societies; and the + females of the dominant class or race, for whose muscular labours there + was now also no longer any need, not succeeding in grasping or attaining + to these new forms of labour, have sunk into a state in which, performing + no species of active social duty, they have existed through the passive + performance of sexual functions alone, with how much or how little of + discontent will now never be known, since no literary record has been made + by the woman of the past, of her desires or sorrows. Then, in place of the + active labouring woman, upholding society by her toil, has come the effete + wife, concubine, or prostitute, clad in fine raiment, the work of others’ + fingers; fed on luxurious viands, the result of others’ toil, waited on + and tended by the labour of others. The need for her physical labour + having gone, and mental industry not having taken its place, she bedecked + and scented her person, or had it bedecked and scented for her, she lay + upon her sofa, or drove or was carried out in her vehicle, and, loaded + with jewels, she sought by dissipations and amusements to fill up the + inordinate blank left by the lack of productive activity. And as the hand + whitened and frame softened, till, at last, the very duties of motherhood, + which were all the constitution of her life left her, became distasteful, + and, from the instant when her infant came damp from her womb, it passed + into the hands of others, to be tended and reared by them; and from youth + to age her offspring often owed nothing to her personal toil. In many + cases so complete was her enervation, that at last the very joy of giving + life, the glory and beatitude of a virile womanhood, became distasteful; + and she sought to evade it, not because of its interference with more + imperious duties to those already born of her, or to her society, but + because her existence of inactivity had robbed her of all joy in strenuous + exertion and endurance in any form. Finely clad, tenderly housed, life + became for her merely the gratification of her own physical and sexual + appetites, and the appetites of the male, through the stimulation of which + she could maintain herself. And, whether as kept wife, kept mistress, or + prostitute, she contributed nothing to the active and sustaining labours + of her society. She had attained to the full development of that type + which, whether in modern Paris or New York or London, or in ancient + Greece, Assyria, or Rome, is essentially one in its features, its nature, + and its results. She was the “fine lady,” the human female parasite—the + most deadly microbe which can make its appearance on the surface of any + social organism. (The relation of female parasitism generally, to the + peculiar phenomenon of prostitution, is fundamental. Prostitution can + never be adequately dealt with, either from the moral or the scientific + standpoint, unless its relation to the general phenomenon of female + parasitism be fully recognised. It is the failure to do this which leaves + so painful a sense of abortion on the mind, after listening to most modern + utterances on the question, whether made from the emotional platform of + the moral reformer, or the intellectual platform of the would-be + scientist. We are left with a feeling that the matter has been handled but + not dealt with: that the knife has not reached the core.) + </p> + <p> + Wherever in the history of the past this type has reached its full + development and has comprised the bulk of the females belonging to any + dominant class or race, it has heralded its decay. In Assyria, Greece, + Rome, Persia, as in Turkey today, the same material conditions have + produced the same social disease among wealthy and dominant races; and + again and again when the nation so affected has come into contact with + nations more healthily constituted, this diseased condition has + contributed to its destruction. + </p> + <p> + In ancient Greece, in its superb and virile youth, its womanhood was + richly and even heavily endowed with duties and occupations. Not the mass + of the woman alone, but the king’s wife and the prince’s daughter do we + find going to the well to bear water, cleansing the household linen in the + streams, feeding and doctoring their households, manufacturing the + clothing of their race, and performing even a share of the highest social + functions as priestesses and prophetesses. It was from the bodies of such + women as these that sprang that race of heroes, thinkers, and artists who + laid the foundations of Grecian greatness. These females underlay their + society as the solid and deeply buried foundations underlay the more + visible and ornate portions of a great temple, making its structure and + persistence possible. In Greece, after a certain lapse of time, these + virile labouring women in the upper classes were to be found no more. The + accumulated wealth of the dominant race, gathered through the labour of + slaves and subject people, had so immensely increased that there was no + longer a call for physical labour on the part of the dominant womanhood; + immured within the walls of their houses as wives or mistresses, waited on + by slaves and dependents, they no longer sustained by their exertion + either their own life or the life of their people. The males absorbed the + intellectual labours of life; slaves and dependents the physical. For a + moment, at the end of the fifth and beginning of the fourth century, when + the womanhood of Greece had already internally decayed, there was indeed a + brilliant intellectual efflorescence among her males, like to the gorgeous + colours in the sunset sky when the sun is already sinking; but the heart + of Greece was already rotting and her vigour failing. Increasingly, + division and dissimilarity arose between male and female, as the male + advanced in culture and entered upon new fields of intellectual toil while + the female sank passively backward and lower in the scale of life, and + thus was made ultimately a chasm which even sexual love could not bridge. + The abnormal institution of avowed inter-male sexual relations upon the + highest plane was one, and the most serious result, of this severance. The + inevitable and invincible desire of all highly developed human natures, to + blend with their sexual relationships their highest intellectual interests + and sympathies, could find no satisfaction or response in the relationship + between the immured, comparatively ignorant and helpless females of the + upper classes, in Greece, and the brilliant, cultured, and many-sided + males who formed its dominant class in the fifth and fourth centuries. Man + turned towards man; and parenthood, the divine gift of imparting human + life, was severed from the loftiest and profoundest phases of human + emotion: Xanthippe fretted out her ignorant and miserable little life + between the walls of her house, and Socrates lay in the Agora, discussing + philosophy and morals with Alcibiades; and the race decayed at its core. + (See Jowett’s translation of Plato’s “Banquet”; but for full light on this + important question the entire literature of Greece in the fifth and fourth + centuries B.C. should be studied.) Here and there an Aspasia, or earlier + still a Sappho, burst through the confining bonds of woman’s environment, + and with the force of irresistible genius broke triumphantly into new + fields of action and powerful mental activity, standing side by side with + the male; but their cases were exceptional. Had they, or such as they, + been able to tread down a pathway, along which the mass of Grecian women + might have followed them; had it been possible for the bulk of the women + of the dominant race in Greece at the end of the fifth century to rise + from their condition of supine inaction and ignorance and to have taken + their share in the intellectual labours and stern activities of their + race, Greece would never have fallen, as she fell at the end of the fourth + century, instantaneously and completely, as a rotten puff-ball falls in at + the touch of a healthy finger; first, before the briberies of Philip, and + then yet more completely before the arms of his yet more warlike son, who + was also the son of the fierce, virile, and indomitable Olympia. (Like + almost all men remarkable for either good or evil, Alexander inherited + from his mother his most notable qualities—his courage, his + intellectual activity, and an ambition indifferent to any means that made + for his own end. Fearless in her life, she fearlessly met death “with a + courage worthy of her rank and domineering character, when her hour of + retribution came”; and Alexander is incomprehensible till we recognise him + as rising from the womb of Olympia.) Nor could she have been swept clean, + a few hundred years later, from Thessaly to Sparta, from Corinth to + Ephesus, her temples destroyed, her effete women captured by the hordes of + the Goths—a people less skilfully armed and less civilised than the + descendants of the race of Pericles and Leonidas, but who were a branch of + that great Teutonic folk whose monogamous domestic life was sound at the + core, and whose fearless, labouring, and resolute women yet bore for the + men they followed to the ends of the earth, what Spartan women once said + they alone bore—men. + </p> + <p> + In Rome, in the days of her virtue and vigour, the Roman matron laboured + mightily, and bore on her shoulders her full half of the social burden, + though her sphere of labour and influence was even somewhat smaller than + that of the Teutonic sisterhood whose descendants were finally to supplant + her own. From the vestal virgin to the matron, the Roman woman in the days + of the nation’s health and growth fulfilled lofty functions and bore the + whole weight of domestic toil. From the days of Lucretia, the great Roman + dame whom we find spinning with her handmaidens deep into the night, and + whose personal dignity was so dear to her that, violated, she sought only + death, to those of the mother of the Gracchi, one of the last of the great + line, we find everywhere, erect, labouring, and resolute, the Roman woman + who gave birth to the men who built up Roman greatness. A few centuries + later, and Rome also had reached that dangerous spot in the order of + social change which Greece had reached centuries before her. Slave labour + and the enjoyment of the unlimited spoils of subject races had done away + for ever with the demand for physical labour on the part of the members of + the dominant race. Then came the period when the male still occupied + himself with the duties of war and government, of legislation and + self-culture; but the Roman matron had already ceased for ever from her + toils. Decked in jewels and fine clothing, brought at the cost of infinite + human labour from the ends of the earth, nourished on delicate victuals, + prepared by others’ hands, she sought now only with amusement to pass away + a life that no longer offered her the excitement and joy of active + productive exertion. She frequented theatres or baths, or reclined on her + sofa, or drove in her chariot; and like more modern counterparts, painted + herself, wore patches, affected an artistic walk, and a handshake with the + elbow raised and the fingers hanging down. Her children were reared by + dependents; and in the intellectual labour and government of her age she + took small part, and was fit to take none. There were not wanting writers + and thinkers who saw clearly the end to which the enervation of the female + was tending, and who were not sparing in their denunciations. “Time was,” + cries one Roman writer of that age, “when the matron turned the spindle + with the hand and kept at the same time the pot in her eye that the + pottage might not be singed, but now,” he adds bitterly, “when the wife, + loaded with jewels, reposes among pillows, or seeks the dissipation of + baths and theatres, all things go downward and the state decays.” Yet + neither he nor that large body of writers and thinkers who saw the + condition towards which the parasitism of woman was tending to reduce + society, preached any adequate remedy. (Indeed, must not the protest and + the remedy in all such cases, if they are to be of any avail, take their + rise within the diseased class itself?) + </p> + <p> + Thoughtful men sighed over the present and yearned for the past, nor seem + to have perceived that it was irrevocably gone; that the Roman lady who, + with a hundred servants standing idle about her, should, in imitation of + her ancestress, have gone out with her pitcher on her head to draw water + from the well, while in all her own courtyards pipe-led streams gushed + forth, would have acted the part of the pretender; that had she insisted + on resuscitating her loom and had sat up all night to spin, she could + never have produced those fabrics which alone her household demanded, and + would have been but a puerile actor; that it was not by attempting to + return to the ancient and for ever closed fields of toil, but by entering + upon new, that she could alone serve her race and retain her own dignity + and virility. That not by bearing water and weaving linen, but by so + training and disciplining herself that she should be fitted to bear her + share in the labour necessary to the just and wise guidance of a great + empire, and be capable of training a race of men adequate to exercise an + enlightened, merciful, and beneficent rule over the vast masses of subject + people—that so, and so only, could she fulfil her duty toward the + new society about her, and bear its burden together with man, as her + ancestresses of bygone generations had borne the burden of theirs. + </p> + <p> + That in this direction, and this alone, lay the only possible remedy for + the evils of woman’s condition, was a conception apparently grasped by + none; and the female sank lower and lower, till the image of the parasitic + woman of Rome (with a rag of the old Roman intensity left even in her + degradation!)—seeking madly by pursuit of pleasure and sensuality to + fill the void left by the lack of honourable activity; accepting lust in + the place of love, ease in the place of exertion, and an unlimited + consumption in the place of production; too enervated at last to care even + to produce offspring, and shrinking from every form of endurance—remains, + even to the present day, the most perfect, and therefore the most + appalling, picture of the parasite female that earth has produced—a + picture only less terrible than it is pathetic. + </p> + <p> + We recognise that it was inevitable that this womanhood—born it + would seem from its elevation to guide and enlighten a world, and in place + thereof feeding on it—should at last have given birth to a manhood + as effete as itself, and that both should in the end have been swept away + before the march of those Teutonic folk, whose women were virile and could + give birth to men; a folk among whom the woman received on the morning of + her marriage, from the man who was to be her companion through life, no + contemptible trinket to hang about her throat or limbs, but a shield, a + spear, a sword, and a yoke of oxen, while she bestowed on him in return a + suit of armour, in token that they two were henceforth to be one in toil + and in the facing of danger; that she too should dare with him in war and + suffer with him in peace; and of whom another writer tells us, that their + women not only bore the race and fed it at their breasts without the help + of others’ hands, but that they undertook the whole management of house + and lands, leaving the males free for war and chase; of whom Suetonius + tells us, that when Augustus Caesar demanded hostages from a tribe, he + took women, not men, because he found by experience that the women were + more regarded than men, and of whom Strabo says, that so highly did the + Germanic races value the intellect of their women that they regarded them + as inspired, and entered into no war or great undertaking without their + advice and counsel; while among the Cimbrian women who accompanied their + husbands in the invasion of Italy were certain who marched barefooted in + the midst of the lines, distinguished by their white hair and milk-white + robes, and who were regarded as inspired, and of whom Florus, describing + an early Roman victory, says, “The conflict was not less fierce and + obstinate with the wives of the vanquished; in their carts and wagons they + formed a line of battle, and from their elevated situation, as from so + many turrets, annoyed the Romans with their poles and lances. (The South + African Boer woman after two thousand years appears not wholly to have + forgotten the ancestral tactics.) Their death was as glorious as their + martial spirit. Finding that all was lost, they strangled their children, + and either destroyed themselves in one scene of mutual slaughter, or with + the sashes that bound up their hair suspended themselves by the neck to + the boughs of trees or the tops of their wagons.” It is of these women + that Valerius Maximus says, that, “If the gods on the day of battle had + inspired the men with equal fortitude, Marius would never have boasted of + his Teutonic victory;” and of whom Tacitus, speaking of those women who + accompanied their husbands to war, remarks, “These are the darling + witnesses of his conduct, the applauders of his valour, at once beloved + and valued. The wounded seek their mothers and their wives; undismayed at + the sight, the women count each honourable scar and suck the gushing + blood. They are even hardy enough to mix with the combatants, + administering refreshment and exhorting them to deeds of valour,” and adds + moreover, that “To be contented with one wife was peculiar to the Germans; + while the woman was contented with one husband, as with one life, one + mind, one body.” + </p> + <p> + It was inevitable that before the sons of women such as these, the sons of + the parasitic Roman should be swept from existence, as the offspring of + the caged canary would fall in conflict with the offspring of the free. + </p> + <p> + Again and again with wearisome reiteration, the same story repeats itself. + Among the Jews in the days of their health and growth, we find their women + bearing the major weight of agricultural and domestic toil, full always of + labour and care—from Rachel, whom Jacob met and loved as she watered + her father’s flocks, to Ruth, the ancestress of a line of kings and + heroes, whom her Boas noted labouring in the harvest-fields; from Sarah, + kneading and baking cakes for Abraham’s prophetic visitors, to Miriam, + prophetess and singer, and Deborah, who judging Israel from beneath her + palm-tree, “and the land had rest for forty years.” Everywhere the ancient + Jewish woman appears, an active sustaining power among her people; and + perhaps the noblest picture of the labouring woman to be found in any + literature is contained in the Jewish writings, indited possibly at the + very time when the labouring woman was for the first time tending among a + section of the Jews to become a thing of the past; when already Solomon, + with his seven hundred parasitic wives and three hundred parasitic + concubines, loomed large on the horizon of the national life, to take the + place of flock-tending Rachel and gleaning Ruth, and to produce amid their + palaces of cedar and gold, among them all, no Joseph or David, but in the + way of descendant only a Rehoboam, under whose hand the kingdom was to + totter to its fall. (The picture of the labouring as opposed to the + parasitic ideal of womanhood appears under the heading, “The words of King + Lemuel; the oracle which his mother taught him.”) At risk of presenting + the reader with that with which he is already painfully familiar, we here + transcribe the passage; which, allowing for differences in material and + intellectual surroundings, paints also the ideal of the labouring + womanhood of the present and of the future:— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Her price is far above rubies, + The heart of her husband trusteth in her, + And he shall have no lack of gain, + She doeth him good and not evil + All the days of her life, + She seeketh wool and flax, + And worketh willingly with her hands, + She is like the merchant ships; + She bringeth her food, from afar, + She riseth up while it is yet night + And giveth meat to her household, + And their task to her maidens, + She considereth a field, and buyeth it; + With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. + She girdeth her loins with strength, + And maketh strong her arms. + She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable; + Her lamp goeth not out by night, + She layeth her hands to the distaff, + And her hands hold the spindle. + She spreadeth out her hand to the poor: + Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, + She is not afraid of the snow for her household, + For all her household are clothed with scarlet. + She maketh herself carpets of tapestry; + Her clothing is fine and purple. + Her husband is known in the gates, + When he sitteth among the elders of the land, + She maketh linen garments and selleth them, + And delivereth girdles unto the merchant. + Strength and dignity are her clothing; + And she laugheth at the time to come. + She openeth her mouth with wisdom, + And the law of kindness is on her tongue, + She looketh well to the ways of her household, + And eateth not the bread of idleness. + Her children rise up and call her blessed, + Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, + Many daughters have done virtuously, + But thou excellest them all, + Give her the fruit of her hand, + And let her works praise her in the gate.” + </pre> + <p> + In the East today the same story has wearisomely written itself: in China, + where the present vitality and power of the most ancient of existing + civilisations may be measured accurately by the length of its woman’s + shoes; in Turkish harems, where one of the noblest dominant Aryan races + the world has yet produced, is being slowly suffocated in the arms of a + parasite womanhood, and might, indeed, along ago have been obliterated, + had not a certain virility and strength been continually reinfused into it + through the persons of purchased wives, who in early childhood and youth + had been themselves active labouring peasants. Everywhere, in the past as + in the present, the parasitism of the female heralds the decay of a nation + or class, and as invariably indicates disease as the pustules of smallpox + upon the skin indicate the existence of a purulent virus in the system. + </p> + <p> + We are, indeed, far from asserting that the civilisations of the past + which have decayed, have decayed alone through the parasitism of their + females. Vast, far-reaching social phenomena have invariably causes and + reactions immeasurably too complex to be summed up under one so simple a + term. Behind the phenomenon of female parasitism has always lain another + and yet larger social phenomenon; it has invariably been preceded, as we + have seen, by the subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, + either as slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the + excessive labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation + of unearned wealth in the hands of the dominant class or race. It has + invariably been by feeding on this wealth, the result of forced or + ill-paid labour, that the female of the dominant race or class has in the + past lost her activity and has come to exist purely through the passive + performance of her sexual functions. Without slaves or subject classes to + perform the crude physical labours of life and produce superfluous wealth, + the parasitism of the female would, in the past, have been an + impossibility. + </p> + <p> + There is, therefore, a profound truth in that universal saw which states + that the decay of the great nations and civilisations of the past has + resulted from the enervation caused by excessive wealth and luxury; and + there is a further, and if possible more profound, truth underlying the + statement that their destruction has ultimately been the result of the + enervation of the entire race, male and female. + </p> + <p> + But when we come further to inquire how, exactly, this process of decay + took place, we shall find that the part which the parasitism of the female + has played has been fundamental. The mere use of any of the material + products of labour, which we term wealth, can never in itself produce that + decay, physical or mental, which precedes the downfall of great civilised + nations. The eating of salmon at ten shillings a pound can in itself no + more debilitate and corrupt the moral, intellectual, and physical + constitution of the man consuming it, than it could enervate his naked + forefathers who speared it in their rivers for food; the fact that an + individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a worm, can no more + deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than were it made of sheep’s + wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces, faring delicately, and + clad in silks, and surrounded by the noblest products of literature and + plastic art, so those palaces, viands, garments, and products of art were + the result of their own labours, could never be enervated by them. The + debilitating effect of wealth sets in at that point exactly (and never + before) at which the supply of material necessaries and comforts, and of + aesthetic enjoyments, clogs the individuality, causing it to rest + satisfied in the mere passive possession of the results of the labour of + others, without feeling any necessity or desire for further productive + activity of its own. (Of the other deleterious effects of unearned wealth + on the individual or class possessing it, such as its power of lessening + human sympathy, &c., &c., we do not now speak, as while ultimately + and indirectly, undoubtedly, tending to disintegrate a society, they do + not necessarily and immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point + we are here considering.) + </p> + <p> + The exact material condition at which this point will be reached will + vary, not only with the race and the age, but with the individual. A + Marcus Aurelius in a palace of gold and marble was able to retain his + simplicity and virility as completely as though he had lived in a + cow-herd’s hut; while on the other hand, it is quite possible for the wife + of a savage chief who has but four slaves to bring her her corn and milk + and spread her skins in the sun, to become almost as purely parasitic as + the most delicately pampered female of fashion in ancient Rome, or modern + Paris, London, or New York; while the exact amount of unearned material + wealth which will emasculate individuals in the same society, will vary + exactly as their intellectual and moral fibre and natural activity are + strong or weak. (It is not uncommon in modern societies to find women of a + class relatively very moderately wealthy, the wives and daughters of + shopkeepers or professional men, who if their male relations will supply + them with a very limited amount of money without exertion on their part, + will become as completely parasitic and useless as women with untold + wealth at their command.) + </p> + <p> + The debilitating effect of unlaboured-for wealth lies, then, not in the + nature of any material adjunct to life in itself, but in the power it may + possess of robbing the individual of all incentive to exertion, thus + destroying the intellectual, the physical, and finally, the moral fibre. + </p> + <p> + In all the civilisations of the past examination will show that almost + invariably it has been the female who has tended first to reach this + point, and we think examination will show that it has almost invariably + been from the woman to the man that enervation and decay have spread. + </p> + <p> + Why this should be so is obvious. Firstly, it is in the sphere of domestic + labour that slave or hired labour most easily and insidiously penetrates. + The force of blows or hireling gold can far more easily supply labourers + as the preparers of food and clothing, and even as the rearers of + children, than it can supply labourers fitted to be entrusted with the + toils of war and government, which have in the past been the especial + sphere of male toil. The Roman woman had for generations been supplanted + in the sphere of her domestic labours and in the toil of rearing and + educating her offspring, and had long become abjectly parasitic, before + the Roman male had been able to substitute the labour of the hireling and + barbarian for his own, in the army, and in the drudgeries of governmental + toil. + </p> + <p> + Secondly, the female having one all-important though passive function + which cannot be taken from her, and which is peculiarly connected with her + own person, in the act of child-bearing, and her mere sexual attributes + being an object of desire and cupidity to the male, she is liable in a + peculiarly insidious and gradual manner to become dependent on this one + sexual function alone for her support. So much is this the case, that even + when she does not in any way perform this function there is still a + curious tendency for the kudos of the function still to hang about her, + and for her mere potentiality in the direction of a duty which she may + never fulfil, to be confused in her own estimation and that of society + with the actual fulfilment of that function. Under the mighty aegis of the + woman who bears and rears offspring and in other directions labours + greatly and actively for her race, creeps in gradually and unnoticed the + woman who does none of these things. From the mighty labouring woman who + bears human creatures to the full extent of her power, rears her offspring + unaided, and performs at the same time severe social labour in other + directions (and who is, undoubtedly, wherever found, the most productive + toiler known to the race); it is but one step, though a long one, from + this woman to the woman who produces offspring freely but does not herself + rear them, and performs no compensatory social labour. While from this + woman, again, to the one who bears few or no children, but who, whether as + a wife or mistress, lives by the exercise of her sex function alone, the + step is short. There is but one step farther to the prostitute, who + affects no form of productive labour, and who, in place of life, is + recognised as producing disease and death, but who exists parasitically + through her sexual attribute. Enormous as is the distance between the + women at the two extremes of this series, and sharply opposed as their + relation to the world is, there is yet, in actual life, no sharp, clear, + sudden-drawn line dividing the women of the one type from those of the + other. They shade off into each other by delicate and in sensible degrees. + And it is down this inclined plane that the women of civilised races are + peculiarly tempted, unconsciously, to slip; from the noble height of a + condition of the most strenuous social activity, into a condition of + complete, helpless, and inactive parasitism, without being clearly aware + of the fact themselves, and without society’s becoming so—the woman + who has ceased to rear her own offspring, or who has ceased to bear + offspring at all, and who performs no other productive social function, + yet shields the fact from her own eyes by dwelling on the fact that she is + a woman, in whom the capacity is at least latent. (There is, indeed, an + interesting analogous tendency on the part of the parasitic male, wherever + found, to shield his true condition from his own eyes and those of the + world by playing at the ancient ancestral forms of male labour. He is + almost always found talking loudly of the protection he affords to + helpless females and to society, though he is in truth himself protected + through the exertion of soldiers, policemen, magistrates, and society + generally; and he is almost invariably fond of dangling a sword or other + weapon, and wearing some kind of uniform, for the assumption of militarism + without severe toil delights him. But it is in a degenerate travesty of + the ancient labour of hunting where, at terrible risk to himself, and with + endless fatigue, his ancestors supplied the race with its meat and + defended it from destruction by wild beasts) that he finds his greatest + satisfaction; it serves to render the degradation and uselessness of his + existence less obvious to himself and to others than if he passed his life + reclining in an armchair. + </p> + <p> + On Yorkshire moors today may be seen walls of sod, behind which hide + certain human males, while hard-labouring men are employed from early dawn + in driving birds towards them. As the birds are driven up to him, the + hunter behind his wall raises his deadly weapon, and the bird, which it + had taken so much human labour to rear and provide, falls dead at his + feet; thereby greatly to the increase of the hunter’s glory, when, the + toils of the chase over, he returns to his city haunts to record his bag. + One might almost fancy one saw arise from the heathery turf the shade of + some ancient Teutonic ancestor, whose dust has long reposed there, + pointing a finger of scorn at his degenerate descendant, as he leers out + from behind the sod wall. During the the later Roman Empire, Commodus, in + the degenerate days of Rome, at great expense had wild beasts brought from + distant lands that he might have the glory of slaying them in the Roman + circus; and medals representing himself as Hercules slaying the Nemean + lion were struck at his orders. We are not aware that any representation + has yet been made in the region of plastic art of the hero of the sod + wall; but history repeats itself—and that also may come. It is to be + noted that these hunters are not youths, but often ripely adult men, + before whom all the lofty enjoyments and employments possible to the male + in modern life, lie open.) + </p> + <p> + These peculiarities in her condition have in all civilised societies laid + the female more early and seriously open to the attacks of parasitism than + the male. And while the accumulation of wealth has always been the + antecedent condition, and the degeneracy and effeteness of the male the + final and obvious cause, of the decay of the great dominant races of the + past; yet, between these two has always lain, as a great middle term, the + parasitism of the female, without which the first would have been + inoperative and the last impossible. + </p> + <p> + Not slavery, nor the most vast accumulations of wealth, could destroy a + nation by enervation, whose women remained active, virile, and laborious. + </p> + <p> + The conception which again and again appears to have haunted successive + societies, that it was a possibility for the human male to advance in + physical power and intellectual vigour, while his companion female became + stationary and inactive, taking no share in the labours of society beyond + the passive fulfilment of sexual functions, has always been negated. It + has ended as would end the experiment of a man seeking to raise a breed of + winning race-horses out of unexercised, short-winded, knock-kneed mares. + No, more disastrously! For while the female animal transmits herself to + her descendant only or mainly by means of germinal inheritance, and + through the influence she may exert over it during gestation, the human + female, by producing the intellectual and moral atmosphere in which the + early infant years of life are passed, impresses herself far more + indelibly on her descendants. Only an able and labouring womanhood can + permanently produce an able and labouring manhood; only an effete and + inactive male can ultimately be produced by an effete and inactive + womanhood. The curled darling, scented and languid, with his drawl, his + delicate apparel, his devotion to the rarity and variety of his viands, + whose severest labour is the search after pleasure, and for whom even the + chase, which was for his remote ancestor an invigorating and manly toil + essential for the meat and life of his people, becomes a luxurious and + farcical amusement;—this male, whether found in the later Roman + Empire, the Turkish harem of today, or in our Northern civilisations, is + possible only because generations of parasitic women have preceded him. + More repulsive than the parasite female herself, because a yet further + product of decay, it is yet only the scent of his mother’s boudoir that we + smell in his hair. He is like to the bald patches and rotten wool on the + back of a scabby sheep; which indeed indicate that, deep beneath the + surface, a parasite insect is eating its way into the flesh, but which are + not so much the cause of disease, as its final manifestation. + </p> + <p> + As we have said it is the power of the human female to impress herself on + her descendants, male and female, not only through germinal inheritance, + through influence during the period of gestation, but above all by + producing the mental atmosphere in which the impressionable infant years + of life are passed, which makes the condition of the child-bearing female + one of paramount interest of the race. It is this fact which causes even + prostitution (in many other respects the most repulsive of all the forms + of female parasitism which afflicts humanity) to be, probably, not more + adverse to the advance and even to the conservation of a healthy and + powerful society, than the parasitism of its child-bearing women. For the + prostitute, heavily as she weights society for her support, returning + disease and mental and emotional disintegration for what she consumes, + does not yet so immediately affect the next generation as the kept wife, + or kept mistress, who impresses her effete image indelibly on the + generations succeeding. (It cannot be too often repeated that the woman + who merely bears and brings a child into the world, and then leaves it to + be fed and reared by the hands of another, has performed very much less + than half of the labour of producing adult humans; in such cases it is the + nurse and not the mother who is the most important labourer.) + </p> + <p> + No man ever yet entered life farther than the length of one navel-cord + from the body of the woman who bore him. It is the woman who is the final + standard of the race, from which there can be no departure for any + distance for any length of time, in any direction: as her brain weakens, + weakens the man’s she bears; as her muscle softens, softens his; as she + decays, decays the people. + </p> + <p> + Other causes may, and do, lead to the enervation and degeneration of a + class or race; the parasitism of its child-bearing women must. + </p> + <p> + We, the European women of this age, stand today where again and again, in + the history of the past, women of other races have stood; but our + condition is yet more grave, and of wider import to humanity as a whole + than theirs ever was. Let us again consider more closely why this is so. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter III. Parasitism (continued). + </h2> + <p> + We have seen that, in the past, no such thing as the parasitism of the + entire body or large majority of the females inhabiting any territory was + possible. Beneath that body of women of the dominant class or race, who + did not labour either mentally or physically, there has always been of + necessity a far more vast body of females who not only performed the crude + physical toil essential to the existence of society before the + introduction of mechanical methods of production, but who were compelled + to labour the more intensely because there was a parasite class above them + to be maintained by their physical toil. The more the female parasite + flourished of old, in one class or race, the more certainly all women of + other classes or races were compelled to labour only too excessively; and + ultimately these females and their descendants were apt to supplant the + more enervated class or race. In the absence of machinery and of a vast + employment of the motor-forces of nature, parasitism could only threaten a + comparatively small section of any community, and a minute section of the + human race as a whole. Female parasitism in the past resembled gout—a + disease dangerous only to the over-fed, pampered, and few, never to the + population of any society as a whole. + </p> + <p> + At the present day, so enormous has been the advance made in the + substitution of mechanical force for crude, physical, human exertion + (mechanical force being employed today even in the shaping of + feeding-bottles and the creation of artificial foods as substitutes for + mother’s milk!), that it is now possible not only for a small and wealthy + section of women in each civilised community to be maintained without + performing any of the ancient, crude, physical labours of their sex, and + without depending on the slavery of, or any vast increase in the labour + of, other classes of females; but this condition has already been reached, + or is tending to be reached, by that large mass of women in civilised + societies, who form the intermediate class between poor and rich. During + the next fifty years, so rapid will undoubtedly be the spread of the + material conditions of civilisation, both in the societies at present + civilised and in the societies at present unpermeated by our material + civilisation, that the ancient forms of female, domestic, physical labour + of even the women of the poorest classes will be little required, their + place being taken, not by other females, but by always increasingly + perfected labour-saving machinery. + </p> + <p> + Thus, female parasitism, which in the past threatened only a minute + section of earth’s women, under existing conditions threatens vast masses, + and may, under future conditions, threaten the entire body. + </p> + <p> + If woman is content to leave to the male all labour in the new and + all-important fields which are rapidly opening before the human race; if, + as the old forms of domestic labour slip from her for ever and evitably, + she does not grasp the new, it is inevitable, that, ultimately, not merely + a class, but the whole bodies of females in civilised societies, must sink + into a state of more or less absolute dependence on their sexual functions + alone. (How real is this apparently very remote danger is interestingly + illustrated by a proposition gravely made a few years ago by a man of note + in England. He proposed that a compulsory provision should be made for at + least the women of the upper and middle classes, by which they might be + maintained through life entirely without regard to any productive labour + they might perform, not even the passive labour of sexual reproduction + being of necessity required of them. That this proposal was received by + the women striving to reconstruct the relation of the modern woman to life + without acclamation and with scorn, may have surprised its maker; but with + no more reason than that man would have for feeling surprise who, seeing a + number of persons anxious to escape the infection of some contagious + disease, should propose as a cure to inoculate them all with it in its + most virulent form!) + </p> + <p> + As new forms of natural force are mastered and mechanical appliances + perfected, it will be quite possible for the male half of all civilised + races (and therefore ultimately of all) to absorb the entire fields of + intellectual and highly trained manual labour; and it would be entirely + possible for the female half of the race, whether as prostitutes, as kept + mistresses, or as kept wives, to cease from all forms of active toil, and, + as the passive tools of sexual reproduction, or, more decadently still, as + the mere instruments of sexual indulgence, to sink into a condition of + complete and helpless sex-parasitism. + </p> + <p> + Sex-parasitism, therefore, presents itself at the end of the nineteenth + century and beginning of the twentieth in a guise which it has never + before worn. We, the European women of the nineteenth and twentieth + centuries, stand therefore in a position the gravity and importance of + which was not equalled by that of any of our forerunners in the ancient + civilisation. As we master and rise above, or fall and are conquered by, + the difficulties of our position, so also will be the future, not merely + of our own class, or even of our own race alone, but also of those vast + masses who are following on in the wake of our civilisation. The decision + we are called on to make is a decision for the race; behind us comes on + the tread of incalculable millions of feet. + </p> + <p> + There is thus no truth in the assertion so often made, even by thoughtful + persons, that the male labour question and the woman’s question of our day + are completely one, and that, would the women of the European race of + today but wait peacefully till the males alone had solved their problem, + they would find that their own had been solved at the same time. + </p> + <p> + Were the entire male labour problem of this age satisfactorily settled + tomorrow; were all the unemployed or uselessly employed males at both ends + of societies, whom the changes of modern civilisation have robbed of their + ancient forms of labour, so educated and trained that they were perfectly + fitted for the new conditions of life; and were the material benefit and + intellectual possibilities, which the substitution of mechanical for human + labour now makes possible to humanity, no longer absorbed by the few but + dispersed among the whole mass of males in return for their trained + labour, yet the woman’s problem might be further from satisfactory + solution than it is today; and, if it were affected at all, might be + affected for the worse. It is wholly untrue that fifty pounds, or two + thousand, earned by the male as the result of his physical or mental toil, + if part of it be spent by him in supporting non-labouring females, whether + as prostitutes, wives, or mistresses, is the same thing to the female or + to the race as though that sum had been earned by her own exertion, either + directly as wages or indirectly by toiling for the man whose wages + supported her. For the moment, truly, the woman so tended lies softer and + warmer than had she been compelled to exert herself; ultimately, + intellectually, morally, and even physically, the difference in the effect + upon her as an individual and on the race is the difference between + advance and degradation, between life and death. The increased wealth of + the male no more of necessity benefits and raises the female upon whom he + expends it, than the increased wealth of his mistress necessarily benefits + mentally or physically a poodle because she can give him a down cushion in + place of one of feathers, and chicken in place of beef. The wealthier the + males of a society become, the greater the temptation, both to themselves + and to the females connected with them, to drift toward female parasitism. + </p> + <p> + The readjustment of the position of the male worker, if it led to a more + equitable distribution of wealth among males, might indeed diminish + slightly the accompanying tendency to parasitism in the very wealthiest + female class; but it would, on the other hand, open up exactly those + conditions which make parasitism possible to millions of women today + leading healthy and active lives. (The fact cannot be too often dwelt upon + that parasitism is not connected with any definite amount of wealth. Any + sum supplied to an individual which will so far satisfy him or her as to + enable them to live without exertion may absolutely parasitise them; while + vast wealth unhealthy as its effects generally tend to be) may, upon + certain rare and noble natures, exert hardly any enervating or deleterious + influence. An amusing illustration of the different points at which + enervation is reached by different females came under our own observation. + The wife of an American millionaire was visited by a woman, the daughter + and also the widow of small professional men. She stated that she was in + need of both food and clothing. The millionaire’s wife gave her a leg of + mutton and two valuable dresses. The woman proceeded to whine, though in + vigorous health, that she had no one to carry them home for her, and could + not think of carrying them herself. The American, the descendant of + generations of able, labouring, New England, Puritan women, tucked the leg + of mutton under one arm and the bundle of clothes under the other and + walked off down the city street towards the woman’s dwelling, followed by + the astonished pauper parasite. + </p> + <p> + The most helpless case of female degeneration we ever came into contact + with was that of a daughter of a poor English officer on half-pay and who + had to exist on a few hundreds a year. This woman could neither cook her + own food nor make her own clothes, nor was she engaged in any social, + political, or intellectual or artistic labour. Though able to dance for a + night or play tennis for an afternoon, she was yet hardly able to do her + own hair or attire herself, and appeared absolutely to have lost all power + of compelling herself to do anything which was at the moment fatiguing or + displeasing, as all labour is apt to be, however great its ultimate + reward. In a life of twenty-eight years this woman had probably not + contributed one hour’s earnest toil, mental or physical, to the increase + of the sum total of productive human labour. Surrounded with acres of + cultivable land, she would possibly have preferred to lie down and die of + hunger rather than have cultivated half an acre for food. This is an + extreme case; but the ultimate effect of parasitism is always a paralysis + of the will and an inability to compel oneself into any course of action + for the moment unpleasurable and exhaustive. + </p> + <p> + That the two problems are not identical is shown, if indeed evidence were + needed, by the fact that those males most actively employed in attempting + to readjust the relations of the mass of labouring males to the new + conditions of life, are sometimes precisely those males who are most + bitterly opposed to woman in her attempt to readjust her own position. Not + even by the members of those professions, generally regarded as the + strongholds of obstructionism and prejudice, has a more short-sighted + opposition often been made to the attempts of woman to enter new fields of + labour, than have again and again been made by male hand-workers, whether + as isolated individuals or in their corporate capacity as trade unions. + They have, at least in some certain instances, endeavoured to exclude + women, not merely from new fields of intellectual and social labour, but + even from those ancient fields of textile manufacture and handicraft, + which have through all generations of the past been woman’s. The patent + and undeniable fact, that where the male labour movement flourishes the + woman movement also flourishes, rises not from the fact that they are + identical, but that the same healthy and virile condition in a race or + society gives rise to both. + </p> + <p> + As two streams rising from one fountain-head and running a parallel course + through long reaches may yet remain wholly distinct, one finding its way + satisfactorily to the sea, while the other loses itself in sand or becomes + a stagnant marsh, so our modern male and female movements, taking their + rise from the same material conditions in modern civilisation, and + presenting endless and close analogies with one another in their cause of + development, yet remain fundamentally distinct. By both movements the + future of the race must be profoundly modified for good or evil; both + touch the race in a manner absolutely vital; but both will have to be + fought out on their own ground, and independently: and it can be only by + determined, conscious, and persistent action on the part of woman that the + solution of her own labour problems will proceed co-extensively with that + of the other. + </p> + <p> + How distinct, though similar, is the underlying motive of the two + movements, is manifested most clearly by this fact, that, while the male + labour movement takes its rise mainly among the poor and hand-labouring + classes, where the material pressure of the modern conditions of life fall + heaviest, and where the danger of physical suffering and even extinction + under that pressure is most felt; the Woman Labour Movement has taken its + rise almost as exclusively among the wealthy, cultured, and + brain-labouring classes, where alone, at the present day, the danger of + enervation through non-employment, and of degeneration through dependence + on the sex function exists. The female labour movement of our day is, in + its ultimate essence, an endeavour on the part of a section of the race to + save itself from inactivity and degeneration, and this, even at the + immediate cost of most heavy loss in material comfort and ease to the + individuals composing it. The male labour movement is, directly and in the + first place, material; and, or at least superficially, more or less + self-seeking, though its ultimate reaction on society by saving the poorer + members from degradation and dependency and want is undoubtedly wholly + social and absolutely essential for the health and continued development + of the human race. In the Woman’s Labour Movement of our day, which has + essentially taken its rise among women of the more cultured and wealthy + classes, and which consists mainly in a demand to have the doors leading + to professional, political, and highly skilled labour thrown open to them, + the ultimate end can only be attained at the cost of more or less intense, + immediate, personal suffering and renunciation, though eventually, if + brought to a satisfactory conclusion, it will undoubtedly tend to the + material and physical well-being of woman herself, as well as to that of + her male companions and descendants. + </p> + <p> + The coming half-century will be a time of peculiar strain, as mankind + seeks rapidly to adjust moral ideals and social relationships and the + general ordering of life to the new and continually unfolding material + conditions. If these two great movements of our age, having this as their + object, can be brought into close harmony and co-operation, the + readjustment will be the sooner and more painlessly accomplished; but, for + the moment, the two movements alike in their origin and alike in many of + their methods of procedure, remain distinct. + </p> + <p> + It is this fact, the consciousness on the part of the women taking their + share in the Woman’s Movement of our age, that their efforts are not, and + cannot be, of immediate advantage to themselves, but that they almost of + necessity and immediately lead to loss and renunciation, which gives to + this movement its very peculiar tone; setting it apart from the large mass + of economic movements, placing it rather in a line with those vast + religious developments which at the interval of ages have swept across + humanity, irresistibly modifying and reorganising it. + </p> + <p> + It is the perception of this fact, that, not for herself, nor even for + fellow-women alone, but for the benefit of humanity at large, it is + necessary she should seek to readjust herself to life, which lends to the + modern woman’s most superficial and seemingly trivial attempts at + readjustment, a certain dignity and importance. + </p> + <p> + It is this profound hidden conviction which removes from the sphere of the + ridiculous the attitude of even the feeblest woman who waves her poor + little “Woman’s rights” flag on the edge of a platform, and which causes + us to forgive even the passionate denunciations, not always wisely thought + out, in which she would represent the suffering and evils of woman’s + condition, as wrongs intentionally inflicted upon her, where they are + merely the inevitable results of ages of social movement. + </p> + <p> + It is this over-shadowing consciousness of a large impersonal obligation, + which removes from the sphere of the contemptible and insignificant even + the action of the individual young girl, who leaves a home of comfort or + luxury for a city garret, where in solitude, and under that stern pressure + which is felt by all individuals in arms against the trend of their + environment, she seeks to acquire the knowledge necessary for entering on + a new form of labour. It is this profound consciousness which makes not + less than heroic the figure of the little half-starved student, battling + against gigantic odds to take her place beside man in the fields of modern + intellectual toil, and which, whether she succeed or fail, makes her a + landmark in the course of our human evolution. It is this consciousness of + large impersonal ends to be attained, and to the attainment of which each + individual is bound to play her part, however small, which removes from + the domain of the unnecessary, and raises to importance, the action of + each woman who resists the tyranny of fashions in dress or bearing or + custom which impedes her in her strife towards the new adjustment. + </p> + <p> + It is this consciousness which renders almost of solemn import the efforts + of the individual female after physical or mental self-culture and + expansion; this, which fills with a lofty enthusiasm the heart of the + young girl, who, it may be, in some solitary farm-house, in some distant + wild of Africa or America, deep into the night bends over her books with + the passion and fervour with which an early Christian may have bent over + the pages of his Scriptures; feeling that, it may be, she fits herself by + each increase of knowledge for she knows not what duties towards the + world, in the years to come. It is this consciousness of great impersonal + ends, to be brought, even if slowly and imperceptibly, a little nearer by + her action, which gives to many a woman strength for renunciation, when + she puts from her the lower type of sexual relationship, even if bound up + with all the external honour a legal bond can confer, if it offers her + only enervation and parasitism; and which enables her often to accept + poverty, toil, and sexual isolation (an isolation even more terrible to + the woman than to any male), and the renunciation of motherhood, that + crowning beatitude of the woman’s existence, which, and which alone, fully + compensates her for the organic sufferings of womanhood—in the + conviction that, by so doing, she makes more possible a fuller and higher + attainment of motherhood and wifehood to the women who will follow her. It + is this consciousness which makes of solemn importance the knock of the + humblest woman at the closed door which shuts off a new field of labour, + physical or mental: is she convinced that, not for herself, but in the + service of the whole race, she knocks. + </p> + <p> + It is this abiding consciousness of an end to be attained, reaching beyond + her personal life and individual interests, which constitutes the + religious element of the Woman’s Movement of our day, and binds with the + common bond of an impersonal enthusiasm into one solid body the women of + whatsoever race, class, and nation who are struggling after the + readjustment of woman to life. + </p> + <p> + This it is also, which in spite of defects and failures on the part of + individuals, yet makes the body who these women compose, as a whole, one + of the most impressive and irresistible of modern forces. The private + soldier of the great victorious army is not always an imposing object as + he walks down the village street, cap on side of head and sword dangling + between his legs, nor is he always impressive even when he burnishes up + his accoutrements or cleans his pannikins; but it is of individuals such + as these that the great army is made, which tomorrow, when it is gathered + together, may shake the world with its tread. + </p> + <p> + Possibly not one woman in ten, or even one woman in twenty thousand among + those taking part in this struggle, could draw up a clear and succinct + account of the causes which have led to the disco-ordination in woman’s + present position, or give a full account of the benefits to flow from + readjustment; as probably not one private soldier in an army of ten or + even of twenty thousand, though he is willing to give his life for his + land, would yet be able to draw up a clear and succinct account of his + land’s history in the past and of the conditions which have made war + inevitable; and almost as little can he often paint an exact and detailed + picture of the benefits to flow from his efts. He knows his land has need + of him; he knows his own small place and work. + </p> + <p> + It is possible that not one woman in ten thousand has grasped with + scientific exactitude, and still less could express with verbal sharpness, + the great central conditions which yet compel and animate her into action. + </p> + <p> + Even the great, central fact, that with each generation the entire race + passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing + with the indelible marks of that mould upon it, that as the os cervix of + woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms a + ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human head, a size + which could only increase if in the course of ages the os cervix of woman + should itself slowly expand; and that so exactly the intellectual + capacity, the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms also an + untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive generation the + limits of the expansion of the human race;—even this fact she may + not so clearly have grasped intellectually as to be able to throw it into + the form of a logical statement. The profound truth, that the continued + development of the human race on earth (a development which, as the old + myths and dreams of a narrow personal heaven fade from our view, becomes + increasingly for many of us the spiritual hope by light of which we + continue to live), a development which we hope shall make the humanity of + a distant future as much higher in intellectual power and wider in social + sympathy than the highest human units of our day, as that is higher than + the first primeval ancestor who with quivering limb strove to walk upright + and shape his lips to the expression of a word, is possible only if the + male and female halves of humanity progress together, expanding side by + side in the future as they have done in the past—even this truth it + is possible few women have exactly and logically grasped as the basis of + their action. The truth that, as the first primitive human males and + females, unable to count farther than their fingers, or grasp an abstract + idea, or feel the controlling power of social emotion, could only develop + into the Sapphos, Aristotles, and Shelleys of a more expanded + civilisation, if side by side, and line by line, male and female forms + have expanded together; if, as the convolutions of his brain increased in + complexity, so increased the convolutions in hers; if, as her forehead + grew higher, so developed his; and that, if the long upward march of the + future is ever to be accomplished by the race, male and female must march + side by side, acting and reacting on each other through inheritance; or + progress is impossible. The truth that, as the existence of even the male + Bushman would be impossible without the existence of the analogous + Bushwoman with the same gifts; and that as races which can produce among + their males a William Kingdon Clifford, a Tolstoy, or a Robert Browning, + would be inconceivable and impossible, unless among its females it could + also produce a Sophia Kovalevsky, a George Eliot, or a Louise Michel; so, + also, in the future, that higher and more socialised human race we dream + of can only come into existence, because in both the sex forms have + evolved together, now this sex and then that, so to speak, catching up the + ball of life and throwing it back to the other, slightly if imperceptibly + enlarging and beautifying it as it passes through their hands. The fact + that without the reaction of interevolution between the sexes, there can + be no real and permanent human advance; without the enlarged deep-thinking + Eve to bear him, no enlarged Adam; without the enlarged widely + sympathising Adam to beget her, no enlarged widely comprehending Eve; + without an enlarged Adam and an enlarged Eve, no enlarged and beautified + generation of mankind on earth; that an arrest in one form is an arrest in + both; and in the upward march of the entire human family. The truth that, + if at the present day, woman, after her long upward march side by side + with man, developing with him through the countless ages, by means of the + endless exercise of the faculties of mind and body, has now, at last, + reached her ultimate limit of growth, and can progress no farther; that, + then, here also, today, the growth of the human spirit is to be stayed; + that here, on the spot of woman’s arrest, is the standard of the race to + be finally planted, to move forward no more, for ever:—that, if the + parasite woman on her couch, loaded with gewgaws, the plaything and + amusement of man, be the permanent and final manifestation of female human + life on the globe, then that couch is also the death-bed of human + evolution. These profound underlying truths, perhaps, not one woman in + twenty thousand of those actively engaged in the struggle for readjustment + has so closely and keenly grasped that she can readily throw them into the + form of exact language; and yet, probably, not the feeblest woman taking + share in our endeavour toward readjustment and expansion fails to be + animated by a vague but profound consciousness of their existence. Beyond + the small evils, which she seeks by her immediate, personal action to + remedy, lie, she feels; large ills of which they form but an off-shoot; + beyond the small good which she seeks to effect, lies, she believes, a + great and universal beatitude to be attained; beyond the little struggle + of today, lies the larger struggle of the centuries, in which neither she + alone nor her sex alone are concerned, but all mankind. + </p> + <p> + That such should be the mental attitude of the average woman taking part + in the readjustive sexual movement of today; that so often on the public + platform and in literature adduces merely secondary arguments, and is + wholly unable logically to give an account of the great propelling + conditions behind it, is sometimes taken as an indication of the + inefficiency, and probably the ultimate failure, of the movement in which + she takes part. But in truth, that is not so. It is rather an indication + which shows how healthy, and deeply implanted in the substance of human + life, are the roots of this movement; and it places it in a line with all + those vast controlling movements which have in the course of the ages + reorganised human life. + </p> + <p> + For those great movements which have permanently modified the condition of + humanity have never taken their rise amid the chopped logic of schools; + they have never drawn their vitality from a series of purely intellectual + and abstract inductions. They have arisen always through the action of + widely spread material and spiritual conditions, creating widespread human + needs; which, pressing upon the isolated individuals, awakens at last + continuous, if often vague and uncertain, social movement in a given + direction. Mere intellectual comprehension may guide, retard, or + accelerate the great human movements; it has never created them. It may + even be questioned whether those very leaders, who have superficially + appeared to create and organise great and successful social movements, + have themselves, in most cases, perhaps in any, fully understood in all + their complexity the movements they themselves have appeared to rule. They + have been, rather, themselves permeated by the great common need; and + being possessed of more will, passion, intensity, or intellect, they have + been able to give voice to that which in others was dumb, and conscious + direction to that which in others was unconscious desire: they have been + but the foremost crest of a great wave of human necessity: they have not + themselves created the wave which bears themselves, and humanity, onwards. + The artificial social movements which have had their origin in the + arbitrary will of individuals, guided with however much determination and + reason, have of necessity proved ephemeral and abortive. An Alexander + might will to weld a Greece and an Asia into one; a Napoleon might resolve + to create of a diversified Europe one consolidated state; and by dint of + skill and determination they might for a moment appear to be accomplishing + that which they desired; but the constraining individual will being + withdrawn, the object of their toil has melted away, as the little heap of + damp sand gathered under the palm of a child’s hand on the sea-shore, + melts away, scattered by the wind and washed out by the waves, the moment + the hand that shaped it is withdrawn; while the small, soft, indefinite, + watery fragment of jelly-fish lying beside it, though tossed hither and + thither by water and wind, yet retains its shape and grows, because its + particles are bound by an internal and organic force. + </p> + <p> + Our woman’s movement resembles strongly, in this matter, the gigantic + religious and intellectual movement which for centuries convulsed the life + of Europe; and had, as its ultimate outcome, the final emancipation of the + human intellect and the freedom of the human spirit. Looked back upon from + the vantage-point of the present, this past presents the appearance of one + vast, steady, persistent movement proceeding always in one ultimate + direction, as though guided by some controlling human intellect. But, to + the mass of human individuals taking part in it, it presented an + appearance far otherwise. It was fought out, now here, now there, by + isolated individuals and small groups, and often for what appeared small + and almost personal ends, having sometimes, superficially, little in + common. Now it was a Giordano Bruno, burnt in Rome in defence of abstract + theory with regard to the nature of the First Cause; then an Albigense + hurled from his rocks because he refused to part with the leaves of his + old Bible; now a Dutch peasant woman, walking serenely to the stake + because she refused to bow her head before two crossed rods; then a + Servetus burnt by Protestant Calvin at Geneva; or a Spinoza cut off from + his tribe and people because he could see nothing but God anywhere; and + then it was an exiled Rousseau or Voltaire, or a persecuted Bradlaugh; + till, in our own day the last sounds of the long fight are dying about us, + as fading echoes, in the guise of a few puerile attempts to enforce + trivial disabilities on the ground of abstract convictions. The vanguard + of humanity has won its battle for freedom of thought. + </p> + <p> + But, to the men and women taking part in that mighty movement during the + long centuries of the past, probably nothing was quite clear, in the + majority of cases, but their own immediate move. Not the leaders—most + certainly not good old Martin Luther, even when he gave utterance to his + immortal “I can no otherwise” (the eternal justification of all reformers + and social innovators!), understood the whole breadth of the battlefield + on which they were engaged, or grasped with precision the issues which + were involved. The valiant Englishman, who, as the flames shot up about + him, cried to his companion in death, “Play the man, Master Ridley; we + shall by God’s grace this day light such a candle in England, as shall + never be put out!” undoubtedly believed that the candle lighted was the + mere tallow rushlight of a small sectarian freedom for England alone; nor + perceived that what he lighted was but one ray of the vast, universal + aurora of intellectual and spiritual liberty, whose light was ultimately + to stream, not only across England, but across the earth. Nevertheless, + undoubtedly, behind all these limited efforts, for what appeared, + superficially, limited causes, lay, in the hearts of the men and women + concerned, through the ages, a profound if vague consciousness of ends + larger than they clearly knew, to be subserved by their action; of a + universal social duty and a great necessity. + </p> + <p> + That the Woman’s Movement of our day has not taken its origin from any + mere process of theoretic argument; that it breaks out, now here and now + there, in forms divergent and at times superficially almost + irreconcilable; that the majority of those taking part in it are driven + into action as the result of the immediate pressure of the conditions of + life, and are not always able logically to state the nature of all causes + which propel them, or to paint clearly all results of their action; so far + from removing it from the category of the vast reorganising movements of + humanity, places it in a line with them, showing how vital, spontaneous, + and wholly organic and unartificial is its nature. + </p> + <p> + The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate, and at + times almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and social + duties; while at another it makes itself felt as a determined endeavour + after self-culture; that in one land it embodies itself mainly in a + resolute endeavour to enlarge the sphere of remunerative labour for women; + while in another it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to recoordinate + the personal relation of the sexes; that in one individual it manifests + itself as a passionate and sometimes noisy struggle for liberty of + personal action; while in another it is being fought out silently in the + depth of the individual consciousness—that primal battle-ground, in + which all questions of reform and human advance must ultimately be fought + and decided;—all this diversity, and the fact that the average woman + is entirely concerned in labour in her own little field, shows, not the + weakness, but the strength of the movement; which, taken as a whole, is a + movement steady and persistent in one direction, the direction of + increased activity and culture, and towards the negation of all + possibility of parasitism in the human female. Slowly, and unconsciously, + as the child is shaped in the womb, this movement shapes itself in the + bosom of our time, taking its place beside those vast human developments, + of which men, noting their spontaneity and the co-ordination of their + parts, have said, in the phraseology of old days, “This thing is not of + man, but of God.” + </p> + <p> + He who today looks at some great Gothic cathedral in its final form, seems + to be looking at that which might have been the incarnation of the dream + of some single soul of genius. But in truth, its origin was far otherwise. + Ages elapsed from the time the first rough stone was laid as a foundation + till the last spire and pinnacle were shaped, and the hand which laid the + foundation-stone was never the same as that which set the last stone upon + the coping. Generations often succeeded one another, labouring at + gargoyle, rose-window, and shaft, and died, leaving the work to others; + the master-builder who drew up the first rough outline passed away, and + was succeeded by others, and the details of the work as completed bore + sometimes but faint resemblance to the work as he devised it; no man fully + understood all that others had done or were doing, but each laboured in + his place; and the work as completed had unity; it expressed not the + desire and necessity of one mind, but of the human spirit of that age; and + not less essential to the existence of the building was the labour of the + workman who passed a life of devotion in carving gargoyles or shaping + rose-windows, than that of the greatest master who drew general outlines: + perhaps it was yet more heroic; for, for the master-builder, who, even if + it were but vaguely, had an image of what the work would be when the last + stone was laid and the last spire raised, it was easy to labour with + devotion and zeal, though well he might know that the placing of that last + stone and the raising of that last spire would not be his, and that the + building in its full beauty and strength he should never see; but for the + journeyman labourer who carried on his duties and month by month toiled at + carving his own little gargoyle or shaping the traceries in his own little + oriel window, without any complete vision, it was not so easy; + nevertheless, it was through the conscientious labours of such alone, + through their heaps of chipped and spoiled stones, which may have lain + thick about them, that at the last the pile was reared in its strength and + beauty. + </p> + <p> + For a Moses who could climb Pisgah, and, though it were through a mist of + bitter tears, could see stretching before him the land of the inheritance, + a land which his feet should never tread and whose fruit his hand should + never touch, it was yet, perhaps, not so hard to turn round and die; for, + as in a dream, he had seen the land: but for the thousands who could climb + no Pisgah, who were to leave their bones whitening in the desert, having + even from afar never seen the true outline of the land; those who, on that + long march, had not even borne the Ark nor struck the timbrel, but carried + only their small household vessels and possessions, for these it was + perhaps not so easy to lie down and perish in the desert, knowing only + that far ahead somewhere, lay a Land of Promise. Nevertheless, it was by + the slow and sometimes wavering march of such as these, that the land was + reached by the people at last. + </p> + <p> + For her, whose insight enables her to see, through the distance, those + large beatitudes towards which the struggles and suffering of the women of + today may tend; who sees beyond the present, though in a future which she + knows she will never enter, an enlarged and strengthened womanhood bearing + forward with it a strengthened and expanded race, it is not so hard to + renounce and labour with unshaken purpose: but for those who have not that + view, and struggle on, animated at most by a vague consciousness that + somewhere ahead lies a large end, towards which their efforts tend; who + labour year after year at some poor little gargoyle of a Franchise Bill, + or the shaping of some rough little foundation-stone of reform in + education, or dress a stone (which perhaps never quite fits the spot it + was intended for, and has to be thrown aside!); or who carve away all + their lives to produce a corbel of some reform in sexual relations, in the + end to find it break under the chisel; who, out of many failures attain, + perhaps, to no success, or but to one, and that so small and set so much + in the shade that no eye will ever see it; for such as these, it is + perhaps not so easy to labour without growing weary. Nevertheless, it is + through the labours of these myriad toilers, each working in her own + minute sphere, with her own small outlook, and out of endless failures and + miscarriages, that at last the enwidened and beautified relations of woman + to life must rise, if they are ever to come. + </p> + <p> + When a starfish lies on the ground at the bottom of a sloping rock it has + to climb, it seems to the onlooker as though there were nothing which + could stir the inert mass and no means for taking it to the top. Yet watch + it. Beneath its lower side, hidden from sight, are a million fine + tentacles; impulses of will from the central nerve radiate throughout the + whole body, and each tiny fibre, fine as a hair, slowly extends itself, + and seizes on the minute particle of rough rock nearest to it; now a small + tentacle slips its hold, and then it holds firmly, and then slowly and + slowly the whole inert mass rises to the top. + </p> + <p> + It is often said of those who lead in this attempt at the readaption of + woman’s relation to life, that they are “New Women”; and they are at times + spoken of as though they were a something portentous and unheard-of in the + order of human life. + </p> + <p> + But, the truth is, we are not new. We who lead in this movement today are + of that old, old Teutonic womanhood, which twenty centuries ago ploughed + its march through European forests and morasses beside its male companion; + which marched with the Cimbri to Italy, and with the Franks across the + Rhine, with the Varagians into Russia, and the Alamani into Switzerland; + which peopled Scandinavia, and penetrated to Britain; whose priestesses + had their shrines in German forests, and gave out the oracle for peace or + war. We have in us the blood of a womanhood that was never bought and + never sold; that wore no veil, and had no foot bound; whose realised ideal + of marriage was sexual companionship and an equality in duty and labour; + who stood side by side with the males they loved in peace or war, and + whose children, when they had borne them, sucked manhood from their + breasts, and even through their foetal existence heard a brave heart beat + above them. We are women of a breed whose racial ideal was no Helen of + Troy, passed passively from male hand to male hand, as men pass gold or + lead; but that Brynhild whom Segurd found, clad in helm and byrne, the + warrior maid, who gave him counsel “the deepest that ever yet was given to + living man,” and “wrought on him to the performing of great deeds;” who, + when he died, raised high the funeral pyre and lay down on it beside him, + crying, “Nor shall the door swing to at the heel of him as I go in beside + him!” We are of a race of women that of old knew no fear, and feared no + death, and lived great lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of + us have fallen on evil and degenerate times, there moves in us yet the + throb of the old blood. + </p> + <p> + If it be today on no physical battlefield that we stand beside our men, + and on no march through no external forest or morass that we have to lead; + it is yet the old spirit which, undimmed by two thousand years, stirs + within us in deeper and subtler ways; it is yet the cry of the old, free + Northern woman which makes the world today. Though the battlefield be now + for us all, in the laboratory or the workshop, in the forum or the study, + in the assembly and in the mart and the political arena, with the pen and + not the sword, of the head and not the arm, we still stand side by side + with the men we love, “to dare with them in war and to suffer with them in + peace,” as the Roman wrote of our old Northern womanhood. + </p> + <p> + Those women, of whom the old writers tell us, who, barefooted and white + robed, led their Northern hosts on that long march to Italy, were animated + by the thought that they led their people to a land of warmer sunshine and + richer fruitage; we, today, believe we have caught sight of a land bathed + in a nobler than any material sunlight, with a fruitage richer than any + which the senses only can grasp: and behind us, we believe there follows a + longer train than any composed of our own race and people; the sound of + the tread we hear behind us is that of all earth’s women, bearing within + them the entire race. The footpath, yet hardly perceptible, which we tread + down today, will, we believe, be life’s broadest and straightest road, + along which the children of men will pass to a higher co-ordination and + harmony. The banner which we unfurl today is not new: it is the standard + of the old, free, monogamous, labouring woman, which, twenty hundred years + ago, floated over the forests of Europe. We shall bear it on, each + generation as it falls passing it into the hand of that which follows, + till we plant it so high that all nations of the world shall see it; till + the women of the humblest human races shall be gathered beneath its folds, + and no child enter life that was not born within its shade. + </p> + <p> + We are not new! If you would understand us, go back two thousand years, + and study our descent; our breed is our explanation. We are the daughters + of our fathers as well as of our mothers. In our dreams we still hear the + clash of the shields of our forefathers as they struck them together + before battle and raised the shout of “Freedom!” In our dreams it is with + us still, and when we wake it breaks from our own lips! We are the + daughters of those men. + </p> + <p> + But, it may be said, “Are there not women among you who would use the + shibboleth, of freedom and labour, merely as a means for opening a door to + a greater and more highly flavoured self-indulgence, to a more lucrative + and enjoyable parasitism? Are there not women who, under the guise of + ‘work,’ are seeking only increased means of sensuous pleasure and + self-indulgence; to whom intellectual training and the opening to new + fields of labour side by side with man, mean merely new means of + self-advertisement and parasitic success?” We answer: There may be such, + truly; among us—but not of us! This at least is true, that we, + ourselves, are seldom deceived by them; the sheep generally recognise the + wolf however carefully fitted the sheepskin under which he hides, though + the onlookers may not; and though not always be able to drive him from the + flock! The outer world may be misled; we, who stand shoulder to shoulder + with them, know them; they are not many; neither are they new. They are + one of the oldest survivals, and among the most primitive relics in the + race. They are as old as Loki among the gods, as Lucifer among the Sons of + the Morning, as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as pain and dislocation + in the web of human life. + </p> + <p> + Such women are as old as that first primitive woman who, when she went + with her fellows to gather wood for the common household, put grass in the + centre of the bundle that she might appear to carry as much as they, yet + carry nothing; she is as old as the first man who threw away his shield in + battle, and yet, when it was over, gathered with the victors to share the + spoils, as old as cowardice and lust in the human and animal world; only + to cease from being when, perhaps, an enlarged and expanded humanity shall + have cast the last slough of its primitive skin. + </p> + <p> + Every army has its camp-followers, not among its accredited soldiers, but + who follow in its train, ready to attack and rifle the fallen on either + side. To lookers on, they may appear soldiers; but the soldier knows who + they are. At the Judean supper there was one Master, and to the onlooker + there may have seemed twelve apostles; in truth only twelve were of the + company, and one was not of it. There has always been this thirteenth + figure at every sacramental gathering, since the world began, wherever the + upholders of a great cause have broken spiritual bread; but it may be + questioned whether in any instance this thirteenth figure has been able to + destroy, or even vitally to retard, any great human movement. Judas could + hang his Master by a kiss; but he could not silence the voice which for a + thousand years rang out of that Judean grave. Again and again, in social, + political, and intellectual movements, the betrayer betrays;—and the + cause marches on over the body of the man. + </p> + <p> + There are women, as there are men, whose political, social, intellectual, + or philanthropic labours are put on, as the harlot puts on paint, and for + the same purpose: but they can no more retard the progress of the great + bulk of vital and sincere womanhood, than the driftwood on the surface of + a mighty river can ultimately prevent its waters from reaching the sea. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter IV. Woman and War. + </h2> + <p> + But it may also be said, “Granting fully that you are right, that, as + woman’s old fields of labour slip from her, she must grasp the new, or + must become wholly dependent on her sexual function alone, all the other + elements of human nature in her becoming atrophied and arrested through + lack of exercise: and, granting that her evolution being arrested, the + evolution of the whole race will be also arrested in her person: granting + all this to the full, and allowing that the bulk of human labour tends to + become more and more intellectual and less and less purely mechanical, as + perfected machinery takes the place of crude human exertion; and that + therefore if woman is to be saved from degeneration and parasitism, and + the body of humanity from arrest, she must receive a training which will + cultivate all the intellectual and all the physical faculties with which + she is endowed, and be allowed freely to employ them; nevertheless, would + it not be possible, and perhaps be well, that a dividing line of some kind + should be drawn between the occupations of men and of women? Would it not, + for example, be possible that woman should retain agriculture, textile + manufacture, trade, domestic management, the education of youth, and + medicine, in addition to child-bearing, as her exclusive fields of toil; + while, to the male, should be left the study of abstract science, law and + war, and statecraft; as of old, man took war and the chase, and woman + absorbed the further labours of life? Why should there not be again a fair + and even division in the field of social labour?” + </p> + <p> + Superficially, this suggestion appears rational, having at least this to + recommend it, that it appears to harmonise with the course of human + evolution in the past; but closely examined, it will, we think, be found + to have no practical or scientific basis, and to be out of harmony with + the conditions of modern life. In ancient and primitive societies, the + mere larger size and muscular strength of man, and woman’s incessant + physical activity in child-bearing and suckling and rearing the young, + made almost inevitable a certain sexual division of labour in almost all + countries, save perhaps in ancient Egypt. (The division of labour between + the sexes in Ancient Egypt and other exceptional countries, is a matter of + much interest, which cannot here be entered on.) Woman naturally took the + heavy agricultural and domestic labours, which were yet more consistent + with the continual dependence of infant life on her own, than those of man + in war and the chase. There was nothing artificial in such a division; it + threw the heaviest burden of the most wearying and unexciting forms of + social labour on woman, but under it both sexes laboured in a manner + essential to the existence of society, and each transmitted to the other, + through inheritance, the fruit of its slowly expanding and always exerted + powers; and the race progressed. + </p> + <p> + Individual women might sometimes, and even often, become the warrior chief + of a tribe; the King of Ashantee might train his terrible regiment of + females; and men might now and again plant and weave for their children: + but in the main, and in most societies, the division of labour was just, + natural, beneficial; and it was inevitable that such a division should + take place. Were today a band of civilised men, women, and infants thrown + down absolutely naked and defenceless in some desert, and cut off + hopelessly from all external civilised life, undoubtedly very much the old + division of labour would, at least for a time, reassert itself; men would + look about for stones and sticks with which to make weapons to repel wild + beasts and enemies, and would go a-hunting meat and fighting savage + enemies and tend the beasts when tamed: (The young captured animals would + probably be tamed and reared by the women.) women would suckle their + children, cook the meat men brought, build shelters, look for roots and if + possible cultivate them; there certainly would be no parasite in the + society; the woman who refused to labour for her offspring, and the man + who refused to hunt or defend society, would not be supported by their + fellows, would soon be extinguished by want. As wild beasts were + extinguished and others tamed and the materials for war improved, fewer + men would be needed for hunting and war; then they would remain at home + and aid in building and planting; many women would retire into the house + to perfect domestic toil and handicrafts, and on a small scale the common + ancient evolution of society would probably practically repeat itself. But + for the present, we see no such natural and spontaneous division of labour + based on natural sexual distinctions in the new fields of intellectual or + delicately skilled manual labour, which are taking the place of the old. + </p> + <p> + It is possible, though at present there is nothing to give indication of + such a fact, and it seems highly improbable, that, in some subtle manner + now incomprehensible, there might tend to be a subtle correlation between + that condition of the brain and nervous system which accompanies ability + in the direction of certain modern forms of mental, social labour, and the + particular form of reproductive function possessed by an individual. It + may be that, inexplicable as it seems, there may ultimately be found to be + some connection between that condition of the brain and nervous system + which fits the individual for the study of the higher mathematics, let us + say, and the nature of their sex attributes. The mere fact that, of the + handful of women who, up to the present, have received training and been + allowed to devote themselves to abstract study, several have excelled in + the higher mathematics, proves of necessity no pre-eminent tendency on the + part of the female sex in the direction of mathematics, as compared to + labour in the fields of statesmanship, administration, or law; as into + these fields there has been practically no admittance for women. It is + sometimes stated, that as several women of genius in modern times have + sought to find expression for their creative powers in the art of fiction, + there must be some inherent connection in the human brain between the + ovarian sex function and the art of fiction. The fact is, that modern + fiction being merely a description of human life in any of its phases, and + being the only art that can be exercised without special training or + special appliances, and produced in the moments stolen from the + multifarious, brain-destroying occupations which fill the average woman’s + life, they have been driven to find this outlet for their powers as the + only one presenting itself. How far otherwise might have been the + directions in which their genius would naturally have expressed itself can + be known only partially even to the women themselves; what the world has + lost by that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have + been its most natural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one + can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber + the ground, we see often a pathetic figure, when we recognise that beneath + that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie buried a sound + legislator, an able architect, an original scientific investigator, or a + good judge. Scientifically speaking, it is as unproven that there is any + organic relation between the brain of the female and the production of art + in the form of fiction, as that there is an organic relation between the + hand of woman and a typewriting machine. Both the creative writer and the + typist, in their respective spheres, are merely finding outlets for their + powers in the direction of least resistance. The tendency of women at the + present day to undertake certain forms of labour, proves only that in the + crabbed, walled-in, and bound conditions surrounding woman at the present + day, these are the lines along which action is most possible to her. + </p> + <p> + It may possibly be that in future ages, when the male and female forms + have been placed in like intellectual conditions, with like stimuli, like + training, and like rewards, that some aptitudes may be found running + parallel with the line of sex function when humanity is viewed as a whole. + It may possibly be that, when the historian of the future looks back over + the history of the intellectually freed and active sexes for countless + generations, that a decided preference of the female intellect for + mathematics, engineering, or statecraft may be made clear; and that a like + marked inclination in the male to excel in acting, music, or astronomy may + by careful and large comparison be shown. But, for the present, we have no + adequate scientific data from which to draw any conclusion, and any + attempt to divide the occupations in which male and female intellects and + wills should be employed, must be to attempt a purely artificial and + arbitrary division: a division not more rational and scientific than an + attempt to determine by the colour of his eyes and the shape and strength + of his legs, whether a lad should be an astronomer or an engraver. Those + physical differences among mankind which divide races and nations—not + merely those differences, enormously greater as they are generally, than + any physical differences between male and female of the same race, which + divide the Jew and the Swede, the Japanese and the Englishman, but even + those subtle physical differences which divide closely allied races such + as the English and German—often appear to be allied with certain + subtle differences in intellectual aptitudes. Yet even with regard to + these differences, it is almost impossible to determine scientifically in + how far they are the result of national traditions, environment, and + education, and in how far the result of real differences in organic + conformation. (In thinking of physical sex differences, the civilised man + of modern times has always to guard himself against being unconsciously + misled by the very exaggerated external sex differences which our + unnatural method of sex clothing and dressing the hair produces. The + unclothed and natural human male and female bodies are not more divided + from each other than those of the lion and lioness. Our remote Saxon + ancestors, with their great, almost naked, white bodies and flowing hair + worn long by both sexes, were but little distinguished from each other; + while among their modern descendants the short hair, darkly clothed, + manifestly two-legged male differs absolutely from the usually + long-haired, colour bedizened, much beskirted female. Were the structural + differences between male and female really one half as marked as the + artificial visual differences, they would be greater than those dividing, + not merely any species of man from another, but as great as those which + divide orders in the animal world. Only a mind exceedingly alert and + analytical can fail ultimately to be misled by habitual visual + misrepresentation. There is not, probably, one man or woman in twenty + thousand who is not powerfully influenced in modern life in their + conception of the differences, physical and intellectual, dividing the + human male and female, by the grotesque exaggerations of modern attire and + artificial manners.) + </p> + <p> + No study of the mere physical differences between individuals of different + races would have enabled us to arrive at any knowledge of their mental + aptitude; nor does the fact that certain individuals of a given human + variety have certain aptitudes form a rational ground for compelling all + individuals of that variety to undertake a certain form of labour. + </p> + <p> + No analysis, however subtle, of the physical conformation of the Jew could + have suggested a priori, and still less could have proved, apart from ages + of practical experience, that, running parallel with any physical + characteristics which may distinguish him from his fellows, was an innate + and unique intellectual gift in the direction of religion. The fact that, + during three thousand years, from Moses to Isaiah, through Jesus and Paul + on to Spinoza, the Jewish race has produced men who have given half the + world its religious faith and impetus, proves that, somewhere and somehow, + whether connected organically with that physical organisation that marks + the Jew, or as the result of his traditions and training, there does go + this gift in the matter of religion. Yet, on the other hand, we find + millions of Jews who are totally and markedly deficient in it, and to base + any practical legislation for the individual even on this proven + intellectual aptitude of the race as a whole would be manifestly as + ridiculous as abortive. Yet more markedly, with the German—no + consideration of his physical peculiarities, though it proceeded to the + subtlest analysis of nerve, bone, and muscle, could in the present stage + of our knowledge have proved to us what generations of experience appear + to have proved, that, with that organisation which constitutes the German, + goes an unique aptitude for music. There is always the possibility of + mistaking the result of training and external circumstance for inherent + tendency, but when we consider the passion for music which the German has + shown, and when we consider that the greatest musicians the world has + seen, from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to Wagner, have been of that race, + it appears highly probable that such a correlation between the German + organisation and the intellectual gift of music does exist. Similar + intellectual peculiarities seem to be connoted by the external differences + which mark off other races from each other. Nevertheless, were persons of + all of these nationalities gathered in one colony, any attempt to + legislate for their restriction to certain forms of intellectual labour on + the ground of their apparently proved national aptitudes or disabilities, + would be regarded as insane. To insist that all Jews, and none but Jews, + should lead and instruct in religious matters; that all Englishmen, and + none but Englishmen, should engage in trade; that each German should make + his living by music, and none but a German allowed to practise it, would + drive to despair the unfortunate individual Englishman, whose most marked + deficiency might be in the direction of finance and bartering trade power; + the Jew, whose religious instincts might be entirely rudimentary; or the + German, who could not distinguish one note from another; and the society + as a whole would be an irremediable loser, in one of the heaviest of all + forms of social loss—the loss of the full use of the highest + capacities of all its members. + </p> + <p> + It may be that with sexes as with races, the subtlest physical difference + between them may have their fine mental correlatives; but no abstract + consideration of the human body in relation to its functions of sex can, + in the present state of our knowledge, show us what intellectual + capacities tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing in the present + or past condition of male and female give us more than the very faintest + possible indication of the relation of their intellectual aptitudes and + their sexual functions. And even were it proved by centuries of experiment + that with the possession of the uterine function of sex tends to go + exceptional intellectual capacity in the direction of mathematics rather + than natural history, or an inclination for statecraft rather than for + mechanical invention; were it proved that, generally speaking and as a + whole, out of twenty thousand women devoting themselves to law and twenty + thousand to medicine, they tended to achieve relatively more in the field + of law than of medicine, there would yet be no possible healthy or + rational ground for restricting the activities of the individual female to + that line in which the average female appeared rather more frequently to + excel. (Minds not keenly analytical are always apt to mistake mere + correlation of appearance with causative sequence. We have heard it + gravely asserted that between potatoes, pigs, mud cabins and Irishmen + there was an organic connection: but we who have lived in Colonies, know + that within two generations the pure-bred descendant of the mud cabiner + becomes often the successful politician, wealthy financier, or great + judge; and shows no more predilection for potatoes, pigs, and mud cabins + than men of any other race.) + </p> + <p> + That even one individual in a society should be debarred from undertaking + that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes an unnecessary + deficit in the general social assets. That one male Froebel should be + prohibited or hampered in his labour as an educator of infancy, on the + ground that infantile instruction was the field of the female; that one + female with gifts in the direction of state administration, should be + compelled to instruct an infants’ school, perhaps without the slightest + gift for so doing, is a running to waste of social life-blood. + </p> + <p> + Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, + is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be + determined. And our demand today is that natural conditions, inexorably, + but beneficently, may determine the labours of each individual, and not + artificial restrictions. + </p> + <p> + As there is no need to legislate that Hindus, being generally supposed to + have a natural incapacity for field sports, shall not betake themselves to + them—for, if they have no capacity, they will fail; and, as in spite + of the Hindus’ supposed general incapacity for sport, it is possible for + an individual Hindu to become the noted batsman of his age; so, also, + there is no need to legislate that women should be restricted in her + choice of fields of labour; for the organic incapacity of the individual, + if it exist, will legislate far more powerfully than any artificial, + legal, or social obstruction can do; and it may be that the one individual + in ten thousand who selects a field not generally sought by his fellows + will enrich humanity by the result of an especial genius. Allowing all to + start from the one point in the world of intellectual culture and labour, + with our ancient Mother Nature sitting as umpire, distributing the prizes + and scratching from the lists the incompetent, is all we demand, but we + demand it determinedly. Throw the puppy into the water: if it swims, well; + if it sinks, well; but do not tie a rope round its throat and weight it + with a brick, and then assert its incapacity to keep afloat. + </p> + <p> + For the present our cry is, “We take all labour for our province!” + </p> + <p> + From the judge’s seat to the legislator’s chair; from the statesman’s + closet to the merchant’s office; from the chemist’s laboratory to the + astronomer’s tower, there is no post or form of toil for which it is not + our intention to attempt to fit ourselves; and there is no closed door we + do not intend to force open; and there is no fruit in the garden of + knowledge it is not our determination to eat. Acting in us, and through + us, nature we know will mercilessly expose to us our deficiencies in the + field of human toil, and reveal to us our powers. And, for today, we take + all labour for our province! + </p> + <p> + But, it may then be said: “What of war, that struggle of the human + creature to attain its ends by physical force and at the price of the life + of others: will you take part in that also?” We reply: Yes; more + particularly in that field we intend to play our part. We have always + borne part of the weight of war, and the major part. It is not merely that + in primitive times we suffered from the destruction of the fields we + tilled and the houses we built; or that in later times as domestic + labourers and producers, though unwaged, we, in taxes and material loss + and additional labour, paid as much as our males towards the cost of war; + nor is it that in a comparatively insignificant manner, as nurses of the + wounded in modern times, or now and again as warrior chieftainesses and + leaders in primitive and other societies, we have borne our part; nor is + it even because the spirit of resolution in its women, and their + willingness to endure, has in all ages again and again largely determined + the fate of a race that goes to war, that we demand our controlling right + where war is concerned. Our relation to war is far more intimate, + personal, and indissoluble than this. Men have made boomerangs, bows, + swords, or guns with which to destroy one another; we have made the men + who destroyed and were destroyed! We have in all ages produced, at an + enormous cost, the primal munition of war, without which no other would + exist. There is no battlefield on earth, nor ever has been, howsoever + covered with slain, which is has not cost the women of the race more in + actual bloodshed and anguish to supply, then it has cost the men who lie + there. We pay the first cost on all human life. + </p> + <p> + In supplying the men for the carnage of a battlefield, women have not + merely lost actually more blood, and gone through a more acute anguish and + weariness, in the long months of bearing and in the final agony of + childbirth, than has been experienced by the men who cover it; but, in the + long months and years of rearing that follow, the women of the race go + through a long, patiently endured strain which no knapsacked soldier on + his longest march has ever more than equalled; while, even in the matter + of death, in all civilised societies, the probability that the average + woman will die in childbirth is immeasurably greater than the probability + that the average male will die in battle. + </p> + <p> + There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have borne children, or be merely + potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a battlefield covered + with slain, but the thought would rise in her, “So many mothers’ sons! So + many bodies brought into the world to lie there! So many months of + weariness and pain while bones and muscles were shaped within; so many + hours of anguish and struggle that breath might be; so many baby mouths + drawing life at woman’s breasts;—all this, that men might lie with + glazed eyeballs, and swollen bodies, and fixed, blue, unclosed mouths, and + great limbs tossed—this, that an acre of ground might be manured + with human flesh, that next year’s grass or poppies or karoo bushes may + spring up greener and redder, where they have lain, or that the sand of a + plain may have a glint of white bones!” And we cry, “Without an inexorable + cause, this should not be!” No woman who is a woman says of a human body, + “It is nothing!” + </p> + <p> + On that day, when the woman takes her place beside the man in the + governance and arrangement of external affairs of her race will also be + that day that heralds the death of war as a means of arranging human + differences. No tinsel of trumpets and flags will ultimately seduce women + into the insanity of recklessly destroying life, or gild the wilful taking + of life with any other name than that of murder, whether it be the + slaughter of the million or of one by one. And this will be, not because + with the sexual function of maternity necessarily goes in the human + creature a deeper moral insight, or a loftier type of social instinct than + that which accompanies the paternal. Men have in all ages led as nobly as + women in many paths of heroic virtue, and toward the higher social + sympathies; in certain ages, being freer and more widely cultured, they + have led further and better. The fact that woman has no inherent all-round + moral superiority over her male companion, or naturally on all points any + higher social instinct, is perhaps most clearly exemplified by one curious + very small fact: the two terms signifying intimate human relationships + which in almost all human languages bear the most sinister and antisocial + significance are both terms which have as their root the term “mother,” + and denote feminine relationships—the words “mother-in-law” and + “step-mother.” + </p> + <p> + In general humanity, in the sense of social solidarity, and in + magnanimity, the male has continually proved himself at least the equal of + the female. + </p> + <p> + Nor will women shrink from war because they lack courage. Earth’s women of + every generation have faced suffering and death with an equanimity that no + soldier on a battlefield has ever surpassed and few have equalled; and + where war has been to preserve life, or land, or freedom, unparasitised + and labouring women have in all ages known how to bear an active part, and + die. + </p> + <p> + Nor will woman’s influence militate against war because in the future + woman will not be able physically to bear her part in it. The smaller size + of her muscle, which would severely have disadvantaged her when war was + conducted with a battle-axe or sword and hand to hand, would now little or + at all affect her. If intent on training for war, she might acquire the + skill for guiding a Maxim or shooting down a foe with a Lee-Metford at + four thousand yards as ably as any male; and undoubtedly, it has not been + only the peasant girl of France, who has carried latent and hid within her + person the gifts that make the supreme general. If our European nations + should continue in their present semi-civilised condition, which makes war + possible, for a few generations longer, it is highly probable that as + financiers, as managers of the commissariat department, as inspectors of + provisions and clothing for the army, women will play a very leading part; + and that the nation which is the first to employ its women so may be + placed at a vast advantage over its fellows in time of war. It is not + because of woman’s cowardice, incapacity, nor, above all, because of her + general superior virtue, that she will end war when her voice is fully, + finally, and clearly heard in the governance of states—it is + because, on this one point, and on this point almost alone, the knowledge + of woman, simply as woman, is superior to that of man; she knows the + history of human flesh; she knows its cost; he does not. (It is noteworthy + that even Catharine of Russia, a ruler and statesman of a virile and + uncompromising type, and not usually troubled with moral scruples, yet + refused with indignation the offer of Frederick of Prussia to pay her + heavily for a small number of Russian recruits in an age when the hiring + out of soldiers was common among the sovereigns of Europe.) + </p> + <p> + In a besieged city, it might well happen that men in the streets might + seize upon statues and marble carvings from public buildings and galleries + and hurl them in to stop the breaches made in their ramparts by the enemy, + unconsideringly and merely because they came first to hand, not valuing + them more than had they been paving-stones. But one man could not do this—the + sculptor! He, who, though there might be no work of his own chisel among + them, yet knew what each of these works of art had cost, knew by + experience the long years of struggle and study and the infinitude of toil + which had gone to the shaping of even one limb, to the carving of even one + perfected outline, he could never so use them without thought or care. + Instinctively he would seek to throw in household goods, even gold and + silver, all the city held, before he sacrificed its works of art! + </p> + <p> + Men’s bodies are our woman’s works of art. Given to us power of control, + we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human + relationships made by international ambitions and greeds. The thought + would never come to us as woman, “Cast in men’s bodies; settle the thing + so!” Arbitration and compensation would as naturally occur to her as + cheaper and simpler methods of bridging the gaps in national + relationships, as to the sculptor it would occur to throw in anything + rather than statuary, though he might be driven to that at last! + </p> + <p> + This is one of those phases of human life, not very numerous, but very + important, towards which the man as man, and the woman as woman, on the + mere ground of their different sexual function with regard to + reproduction, stand, and must stand, at a somewhat differing angle. The + physical creation of human life, which, in as far as the male is + concerned, consists in a few moments of physical pleasure; to the female + must always signify months of pressure and physical endurance, crowned + with danger to life. To the male, the giving of life is a laugh; to the + female, blood, anguish, and sometimes death. Here we touch one of the few + yet important differences between man and woman as such. + </p> + <p> + The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean, to + the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be borne + within them for months, given birth to in anguish, fed from their breasts + and reared with toil, if the numbers of the tribe and the strength of the + nation are to be maintained. In nations continually at war, incessant and + unbroken child-bearing is by war imposed on all women if the state is to + survive; and whenever war occurs, if numbers are to be maintained, there + must be an increased child-bearing and rearing. This throws upon woman as + woman a war tax, compared with which all that the male expends in military + preparations is comparatively light. + </p> + <p> + The relations of the female towards the production of human life + influences undoubtedly even her relation towards animal and all life. “It + is a fine day, let us go out and kill something!” cries the typical male + of certain races, instinctively. “There is a living thing, it will die if + it is not cared for,” says the average woman, almost equally + instinctively. It is true, that the woman will sacrifice as mercilessly, + as cruelly, the life of a hated rival or an enemy, as any male; but she + always knows what she is doing, and the value of the life she takes! There + is no light-hearted, careless enjoyment in the sacrifice of life to the + normal woman; her instinct, instructed by practical experience, steps in + to prevent it. She always knows what life costs; and that it is more easy + to destroy than create it. + </p> + <p> + It is also true, that, from the loftiest standpoint, the condemnation of + war which has arisen in the advancing human spirit, is in no sense related + to any particular form of sex function. The man and the woman alike, who + with Isaiah on the hills of Palestine, or the Indian Buddha under his + bo-tree, have seen the essential unity of all sentient life; and who + therefore see in war but a symptom of that crude disco-ordination of life + on earth, not yet at one with itself, which affects humanity in these + early stages of its growth: and who are compelled to regard as the + ultimate goal of the race, though yet perhaps far distant across the + ridges of innumerable coming ages, that harmony between all forms of + conscious life, metaphorically prefigured by the ancient Hebrew, when he + cried, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb; and the leopard shall lie down + with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, + and a little child shall lead them!”—to that individual, whether man + or woman, who has reached this standpoint, there is no need for + enlightenment from the instincts of the child-bearers of society as such; + their condemnation of war, rising not so much from the fact that it is a + wasteful destruction of human flesh, as that it is an indication of the + non-existence of that co-ordination, the harmony which is summed up in the + cry, “My little children, love one another.” + </p> + <p> + But for the vast bulk of humanity, probably for generations to come, the + instinctive antagonism of the human child-bearer to reckless destruction + of that which she has at so much cost produced, will be necessary to + educate the race to any clear conception of the bestiality and insanity of + war. + </p> + <p> + War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to + the female an equal share in the control and governance of modern national + life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its extinction will not + be delayed much longer. + </p> + <p> + It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men’s + bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour + and ardour of battle, but singly, and alone, with a three-in-the-morning + courage, shed our blood and face death that the battlefield may have its + food, a food more precious to us than our heart’s blood; it is we + especially, who in the domain of war, have our word to say, a word no man + can say for us. It is our intention to enter into the domain of war and to + labour there till in the course of generations we have extinguished it. + </p> + <p> + If today we claim all labour for our province, yet more especially do we + claim those fields in which the difference in the reproductive function + between man and woman may place male and female at a slightly different + angle with regard to certain phases of human life. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter V. Sex Differences. + </h2> + <p> + If we examine the physical phenomenon of sex as it manifests itself in the + human creature, we find, in the first stages of the individual’s + existence, no difference discernible, by any means we have at present at + our command, between those germs which are ultimately to become male or + female. Later, in the foetal life, at birth, and through infancy though + the organs of sex serve to distinguish the male from the female, there is + in the general structure and working of the organism little or nothing to + divide the sexes. + </p> + <p> + Even when puberty is reached, with its enormous development of sexual and + reproductive activity modifying those parts of the organism with which it + is concerned, and producing certain secondary sexual characteristics, + there yet remains the major extent of the human body and of physical + function little, or not at all, affected by sex modification. The eye, the + ear, the sense of touch, the general organs of nutrition and respiration + and volition are in the main identical, and often differ far more in + persons of the same sex than in those of opposite sexes; and even on the + dissecting-table the tissues of the male and female are often wholly + indistinguishable. + </p> + <p> + It is when we consider the reproductive organs themselves and their forms + of activity, and such parts of the organism modified directly in relation + to them, that a real and important difference is found to exist, radical + though absolutely complemental. It is exactly as we approach the + reproductive functions that the male and female bodies differ; exactly as + we recede from them that they become more and more similar, and even + absolutely identical. Taking the eye, perhaps the most highly developed, + complex organ in the body, and, if of an organ the term may be allowed, + the most intellectual organ of sense, we find it remains the same in male + and female in structure, in appearance, and in function throughout life; + while the breast, closely connected with reproduction, though absolutely + identical in both forms in infancy, assumes a widely different + organisation when reproductive activity is actually concerned. + </p> + <p> + When we turn to the psychic phase of human life an exactly analogous + phenomenon presents itself. The intelligence, emotions, and desires of the + human infant at birth differ not at all perceptibly, as its sex may be + male or female; and such psychic differences as appear to exist in later + childhood are undoubtedly very largely the result of artificial training, + forcing on the appearance of psychic sexual divergencies long before they + would tend spontaneously to appear; as where sports and occupations are + interdicted to young children on the ground of their supposed sexual + unfitness; as when an infant female is forcibly prevented from climbing or + shouting, and the infant male from amusing himself with needle and thread + or dolls. Even in the fully adult human, and in spite of differences of + training, the psychic activities over a large extent of life appear to be + absolutely identical. The male and female brains acquire languages, solve + mathematical problems, and master scientific detail in a manner wholly + indistinguishable: as illustrated by the fact that in modern universities + the papers sent in by male and female candidates are as a rule absolutely + identical in type. Placed in like external conditions, their tastes and + emotions, over a vast part of the surface of life, are identical; and, in + an immense number of those cases where psychic sex differences appear to + exist, subject to rigid analysis they are found to be purely artificial + creations, for, when other races or classes are studied, they are found + non-existent as sexual characteristics; as when the female is supposed by + ignorant persons in modern European societies to have an inherent love for + bright colours and ornaments, not shared by the male; while experience of + other societies and past social conditions prove that it is as often the + male who has been even more desirous of attiring himself in bright raiment + and adorning himself with brilliant jewels; or as when, among certain + tribes of savages, the use of tobacco is supposed to be a peculiarly + female prerogative, while, in some modern societies, it is supposed to + have some relation to masculinity. (The savage male of today when attired + in his paint, feathers, cats’ tails and necklaces is an immeasurably more + ornamented and imposing figure than his female, even when fully attired + for a dance in beads and bangles: the Oriental male has sometimes scarcely + been able to walk under the weight of his ornaments; and the males of + Europe a couple of centuries ago, with their powdered wigs, lace ruffles + and cuffs, paste buckles, feathered cocked hats, and patches were quite as + ridiculous in their excess of adornment as the complementary females of + their own day, or the most parasitic females of this. Both in the class + and the individual, whether male or female, an intense love of dress and + meretricious external adornment is almost invariably the concomitant and + outcome of parasitism. Were the parasite female class in our own societies + today to pass away, French fashions with their easeless and grotesque + variations (shaped not for use or beauty, but the attracting of attention) + would die out. And the extent to which any woman today, not herself + belonging to the parasite class and still labouring, attempts to follow + afar off the fashions of the parasite, may be taken generally as an almost + certain indication of the ease with which she would accept parasitism were + its conditions offered her. The tendency of the cultured and + intellectually labouring woman of today to adopt a more rational type of + attire, less shaped to attract attention to the individual than to confer + comfort and abstain from impeding activity, is often spoken of as an + attempt on the part of woman slavishly to imitate man. What is really + taking place is, that like causes are producing like effects on human + creatures with common characteristics.) + </p> + <p> + But there remain certain psychic differences in attitude, on the part of + male and female as such, which are inherent and not artificial: and, in + the psychic human world, it is exactly as we approach the sphere of sexual + and reproductive activity, with those emotions and instincts connected + directly with sex and the reproduction of the race, that a difference does + appear. + </p> + <p> + In the animal world all forms of psychic variations are found allying + themselves now with the male sex form, and then with the female. In the + insect and fish worlds, where the female forms are generally larger and + stronger than the male, the female is generally more pugnacious and + predatory than the male. Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form + is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem very + small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly monogamous, + the affection of the female for the male is so great that she is said + never to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over and care for the + young with extreme solicitude. The ostrich male form, though perhaps + larger than the female, shares with her the labour of hatching the eggs, + relieving the hen of her duty at a fixed hour daily: and his care for the + young when hatched is as tender as hers. Among song-birds, in which the + male and female forms are so alike as sometimes to be indistinguishable, + and which are also monogamous, the male and female forms not only exhibit + the same passionate affection for each other (in the case of the South + African cock-o-veet, they have one answering love-song between them; the + male sounding two or three notes and the female completing it with two or + three more), but they build the nest together and rear the young with an + equal devotion. In the case of the little kapok bird of the Cape, a + beautiful, white, fluffy round nest is made by both out of the white down + of a certain plant, and immediately below the entrance to the cavity in + which the little female sits on the eggs is a small shelf or basket, in + which the tiny male sits to watch over and guard them. It is among certain + orders of birds that sex manifestations appear to assume their most + harmonious and poetical forms on earth. Among gallinaceous birds, on the + other hand, where the cock is much larger and more pugnacious than the + female, and which are polygamous, the cock does not court the female by + song, but seizes her by force, and shows little or no interest in his + offspring, neither sharing in the brooding nor feeding the young; and even + at times seizing any tempting morsel which the young or the hen may have + discovered. + </p> + <p> + Among mammals the male form tends to be slightly larger than the female, + though not always (the female whale, for instance, being larger than the + male); the male also tends to be more pugnacious and less careful of the + young; though to this rule also there are exceptions. In the case of the + South African mierkat, for instance, the female is generally more + combative and more difficult to tame than the male; and it is the males + who from the moment of birth watch over the young with the most passionate + and tender solicitude, keeping them warm under their persons, carrying + them to places of safety in their mouths, and feeding them till full + grown; and this they do not only for their own young, but to any young who + may be brought in contact with them. We have known a male mierkat so + assiduous in feeding young that were quite unrelated to himself, taking to + them every morsel of food given him, that we have been compelled to shut + him up in a room alone when feeding him, to prevent his starving himself + to death: the male mierkat thus exhibiting exactly those psychic qualities + which are generally regarded as peculiarly feminine; the females, on the + other hand, being far more pugnacious towards each other than are the + males. + </p> + <p> + Among mammals generally, except the tendency to greater pugnacity shown by + the male towards other males, and the greater solicitude for the young + shown generally by the female form, but not always; the psychic + differences between the two sex forms are not great. Between the male and + female pointer as puppies, there is as little difference in mental + activity as in physical; and even when adult, on the hunting ground, that + great non-sexual field in which their highest mental and physical + activities are displayed, there is little or nothing which distinguishes + materially between the male and female; in method, manner, and quickness + they are alike; in devotion to man, they are psychically identical. (It is + often said the female dog is more intelligent than the male; but I am + almost inclined to doubt this, after long and close study of both forms.) + It is at the moment when the reproductive element comes fully into play + that similarity and identity cease. In the intensity of initial sex + instinct they are alike; the female will leap from windows, climb walls, + and almost endanger her life to reach the male who waits for her, as + readily as he will to gain her. It is when the bitch lies with her six + young drawing life from her breast, and gazing with wistful and anguished + solicitude at every hand stretched out to touch them, a world of emotion + concentrated on the sightless creatures, and a whole body of new mental + aptitudes brought into play in caring for them, it is then that between + her and the male who begot them, but cares nothing for them, there does + rise a psychic difference that is real and wide. Alike in the sports of + puppydom and the non-sexual activities of adult age; alike in the + possession of the initial sexual instinct which draws the sex to the sex, + the moment active sexual reproduction is concerned, there is opened to the + female a certain world of sensations and experiences, from which her male + companion is for ever excluded. + </p> + <p> + So also is our human world: alike in the sports, and joys, and sorrows of + infancy; alike in the non-sexual labours of life; alike even in the + possession of that initial instinct which draws sex to sex, and which, + differing slightly in its forms of manifestation is of corresponding + intensity in both; the moment actual reproduction begins to take place, + the man and the woman enter spheres of sensation, perception, emotion, + desire, and knowledge which are not, and cannot be, absolutely identical. + Between the man who, in an instant of light-hearted enjoyment, begets the + infant (who may even beget it in a state of half-drunken unconsciousness, + and may easily know nothing of its existence for months or years after it + is born, or never at all; and who under no circumstances can have any + direct sensational knowledge of its relation to himself) and the woman who + bears it continuously for months within her body, and who gives birth to + it in pain, and who, if it is to live, is compelled, or was in primitive + times, to nourish it for months from the blood of her own being—between + these, there exists of necessity, towards a limited but all-important body + of human interests and phenomena, a certain distinct psychic attitude. At + this one point, the two great halves of humanity stand confronting certain + great elements in human existence, from angles that are not identical. + From the moment the universal initial attraction of sex to sex becomes + incarnate in the first concrete sexual act till the developed offspring + attains maturity, no step in the reproductive journey, or in their + relation to their offspring, has been quite identical for the man and the + woman. And this divergence of experiences in human relations must react on + their attitude towards that particular body of human concerns which + directly is connected with the sexual reproduction of the race; and, it is + exactly in these fields of human activity, where sex as sex is concerned, + that woman as woman has a part to play which she cannot resign into the + hands of others. + </p> + <p> + It may be truly said that in the laboratory, the designing-room, the + factory, the mart, the mathematician’s study, and in all fields of purely + abstract or impersonal labour, while the entrance of woman would add to + the net result of human labour in those fields, and though a grave + injustice is done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps the only + field she is fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman has probably + little or nothing to contribute in those fields that is radically distinct + from that which man might supply; there would be a difference in quantity + but probably none in kind, in the work done for the race. + </p> + <p> + But in those spheres of social activity, dealing especially with certain + relations between human creatures because of their diverse if + complementary relation to the production of human life, the sexes as sexes + have often each a part to play which the other cannot play for them; have + each a knowledge gained from phases of human experience, which the other + cannot supply; here woman as woman has something radically distinct to + contribute to the sum-total of human knowledge, and her activity is of + importance, not merely individually, but collectively, and as a class. + </p> + <p> + That demand, which today in all democratic self-governing countries is + being made by women, to be accorded their share in the electoral, and + ultimately in the legislative and executive duties of government, is based + on two grounds: the wider, and more important, that they find nothing in + the nature of their sex-function which exonerates them, as human beings, + from their obligation to take part in the labours of guidance and + government in their state: the narrower, but yet important ground, that, + in as far as in one direction, i.e., in the special form of their sex + function takes, they do differ from the male, they, in so far, form a + class and are bound to represent the interests of, and to give the state + the benefit of, the insight of their class, in certain directions. + </p> + <p> + Those persons who imagine that the balance of great political parties in + almost any society would be seriously changed by the admission of its + women in public functions are undoubtedly wholly wrong. The fundamental + division of humans into those inclined to hold by the past and defend + whatever is, and those hopeful of the future and inclined to introduce + change, would probably be found to exist in much the same proportion were + the males or the females of any given society compared: and the males and + females of each class will in the main share the faults, the virtues, and + the prejudices of their class. The individuals may lose by being excluded + on the ground of sex from a share of public labour, and by being robbed of + a portion of their lawful individual weight in their own society; and the + society as a whole may lose by having a smaller number to select its + chosen labourers from; yet, undoubtedly, on the mass of social, political, + and international questions, the conclusions arrived at by one sex would + be exactly those arrived at by the other. + </p> + <p> + Were a body of humans elected to adjudicate upon Greek accents, or to pass + a decision on the relative fineness of woollens and linens, the form of + sex of the persons composing it would probably have no bearing on the + result; there is no rational ground for supposing that, on a question of + Greek accents or the thickness of cloths, equally instructed males and + females would differ. Here sex plays no part. The experience and + instructedness of the individuals would tell: their sexual attributes + would be indifferent. + </p> + <p> + But there are points, comparatively small, even very small, in number, yet + of vital importance to human life, in which sex does play a part. + </p> + <p> + It is not a matter of indifference whether the body called to adjudicate + upon the questions, whether the temporary sale of the female body for + sexual purposes shall or shall not be a form of traffic encouraged and + recognised by the state; or whether one law shall exist for the licentious + human female and another for the licentious human male; whether the claim + of the female to the offspring she bears shall or shall not equal that of + the male who begets it; whether an act of infidelity on the part of the + male shall or shall not terminate the contract which binds his female + companion to him, as completely as an act of infidelity on her part would + terminate her claim on him; it is not a matter of indifference whether a + body elected to adjudicate on such points as these consists of males + solely, or females solely, or of both combined. As it consists of one, or + the other, or of both, so not only will the answers vary, but, in some + cases, will they be completely diverse. Here we come into that very + narrow, but important, region, where sex as sex manifestly plays its part; + where the male as male and the female as female have each their body of + perceptions and experiences, which they do not hold in common; here one + sex cannot adequately represent the other. It is here that each sexual + part has something radically distinct to contribute to the wisdom of the + race. + </p> + <p> + We, today, take all labour for our province! We seek to enter the + non-sexual fields of intellectual or physical toil, because we are unable + to see today, with regard to them, any dividing wall raised by sex which + excludes us from them. We are yet equally determined to enter those in + which sex difference does play its part, because it is here that woman, + the bearer of the race, must stand side by side with man, the begetter; if + a completed human wisdom, an insight that misses no aspect of human life, + and an activity that is in harmony with the entire knowledge and the + entire instinct of the entire human race, is to exist. It is here that the + man cannot act for the woman nor the woman for the man; but both must + interact. It is here that each sexual half of the race, so closely and + indistinguishably blended elsewhere, has its own distinct contribution to + make to the sum total of human knowledge and human wisdom. Neither is the + woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, the completed human + intelligence. + </p> + <p> + Therefore;—We claim, today, all labour for our province! Those large + fields in which it would appear sex plays no part, and equally those + smaller in which it plays a part. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Chapter VI. Certain Objections. + </h2> + <p> + It has been stated sometimes, though more often implicitly than in any + direct or logical form, (this statement being one it is not easy to make + definitely without its reducing itself to nullity!) that woman should seek + no fields of labour in the new world of social conditions that is arising + about us, as she has still her function as child-bearer: a labour which, + by her own showing, is arduous and dangerous, though she may love it as a + soldier loves his battlefield; and that woman should perform her sex + functions only, allowing man or the state to support her, even when she is + only potentially a child-bearer and bears no children. (Such a scheme, as + has before been stated, was actually put forward by a literary man in + England some years ago: but he had the sense to state that it should apply + only to women of the upper classes, the mass of labouring women, who form + the vast bulk of the English women of the present day, being left to their + ill-paid drudgery and their child-bearing as well!) + </p> + <p> + There is some difficulty in replying to a theorist so wholly delusive. Not + only is he to be met by all the arguments against parasitism of class or + race; but, at the present day, when probably much more than half the + world’s most laborious and ill-paid labour is still performed by women, + from tea pickers and cocoa tenders in India and the islands, to the + washerwomen, cooks, and drudging labouring men’s wives, who in addition to + the sternest and most unending toil, throw in their child-bearing as a + little addition; and when, in some civilised countries women exceed the + males in numbers by one million, so that there would still be one million + females for whom there was no legitimate sexual outlet, though each male + in the nation supported a female, it is somewhat difficult to reply with + gravity to the assertion, “Let Woman be content to be the ‘Divine + Child-bearer,’ and ask no more.” + </p> + <p> + Were it worth replying gravely to so idle a theorist, we might answer:—Through + all the ages of the past, when, with heavy womb and hard labour-worn + hands, we physically toiled beside man, bearing up by the labour of our + bodies the world about us, it was never suggested to us, “You, the + child-bearers of the race, have in that one function a labour that equals + all others combined; therefore, toil no more in other directions, we pray + of you; neither plant, nor build, nor bend over the grindstone; nor far + into the night, while we sleep, sit weaving the clothing we and our + children are to wear! Leave it to us, to plant, to reap, to weave, to + work, to toil for you, O sacred child-bearer! Work no more; every man of + the race will work for you!” This cry in all the grim ages of our past + toil we never heard. + </p> + <p> + And today, when the lofty theorist, who tonight stands before the + drawing-room fire in spotless shirtfront and perfectly fitting clothes, + and declaims upon the amplitude of woman’s work in life as child-bearer, + and the mighty value of that labour which exceeds all other, making it + unnecessary for her to share man’s grosser and lower toils: is it certain + he always in practical life remembers his theory? When waking tomorrow + morning, he finds that the elderly house drudge, who rises at dawn while + he yet sleeps to make his tea and clean his boots, has brought his tea + late, and polished his boots ill; may he not even sharply condemn her, and + assure her she will have to leave unless she works harder and rises + earlier? Does he exclaim to her, “Divine child-bearer! Potential mother of + the race! Why should you clean my boots or bring up my tea, while I lie + warm in bed? Is it not enough you should have the holy and mysterious + power of bringing the race to life? Let that content you. Henceforth I + shall get up at dawn and make my own tea and clean my own boots, and pay + you just the same!” Or, should his landlady, now about to give birth to + her ninth child, send him up a poorly-cooked dinner or forget to bring up + his scuttle of coals, does he send for her and thus apostrophise the + astonished matron: “Child-bearer of the race! Producer of men! Cannot you + be contented with so noble and lofty a function in life without toiling + and moiling? Why carry up heavy coal-scuttles from the cellar and bend + over hot fires, wearing out nerve and brain and muscle that should be + reserved for higher duties? We, we, the men of the race, will perform its + mean, its sordid, its grinding toil! For woman is beauty, peace, repose! + Your function is to give life, not to support it by labour. The Mother, + the Mother! How wonderful it sounds! Toil no more! Rest is for you; labour + and drudgery for us!” Would he not rather assure her that, unless she + laboured more assiduously and sternly, she would lose his custom and so be + unable to pay her month’s rent; and perhaps so, with children and an + invalid or drunken husband whom she supports, be turned out into the + streets? For, it is remarkable, that, with theorists of this class, it is + not toil, or the amount of toil, crushing alike to brain and body, which + the female undertakes that is objected to; it is the form and the amount + of the reward. It is not the hand-labouring woman, even in his own + society, worn out and prematurely aged at forty with grinding domestic + toil, that has no beginning and knows no end— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Man’s work is from sun to sun, + But the woman’s work is never done”— +</pre> + <p> + it is not the haggard, work-crushed woman and mother who irons his shirts, + or the potential mother who destroys health and youth in the sweater’s den + where she sews the garments in which he appears so radiantly in the + drawing-room which disturbs him. It is the thought of the woman-doctor + with an income of some hundreds a year, who drives round in her carriage + to see her patients, or receives them in her consulting-rooms, and who + spends the evening smoking and reading before her study fire or receiving + her guests; it is the thought of the woman who, as legislator, may loll + for perhaps six hours of the day on the padded seat of legislative bench, + relieving the tedium now and then by a turn in the billiard- or + refreshment-room, when she is not needed to vote or speak; it is the + thought of the woman as Greek professor, with three or four hundred a + year, who gives half a dozen lectures a week, and has leisure to enjoy the + society of her husband and children, and to devote to her own study and + life of thought; it is she who wrings his heart. It is not the woman, who, + on hands and knees, at tenpence a day, scrubs the floors of the public + buildings, or private dwellings, that fills him with anguish for + womanhood: that somewhat quadrupedal posture is for him truly feminine, + and does not interfere with his ideal of the mother and child-bearer; and + that, in some other man’s house, or perhaps his own, while he and the wife + he keeps for his pleasures are visiting concert or entertainment, some + weary woman paces till far into the night bearing with aching back and + tired head the fretful, teething child he brought into the world, for a + pittance of twenty or thirty pounds a year, does not distress him. But + that the same woman by work in an office should earn one hundred and fifty + pounds, be able to have a comfortable home of her own, and her evening + free for study or pleasure, distresses him deeply. It is not the labour, + or the amount of labour, so much as the amount of reward that interferes + with his ideal of the eternal womanly; he is as a rule quite contented + that the women of the race should labour for him, whether as tea-pickers + or washerwomen, or toilers for the children he brings into the world, + provided the reward they receive is not large, nor in such fields as he + might himself at any time desire to enter. + </p> + <p> + When master and ass, drawing a heavy burden between them, have climbed a + steep mountain range together; clambering over sharp rocks and across + sliding gravel where no water is, and herbage is scant; if, when they were + come out on the top of the mountain, and before them stretch broad, green + lands, and through wide half-open gates they catch the glimpse of trees + waving, and there comes the sound of running waters, if then, the master + should say to his ass, “Good beast of mine, lie down! I can push the whole + burden myself now: lie down here; lie down, my creature; you have toiled + enough; I will go on alone!” then it might be even the beast would whisper + (with that glimpse through the swinging gates of the green fields beyond)—“Good + master, we two have climbed this mighty mountain together, and the stones + have cut my hoofs as they cut your feet. Perhaps, if when we were at the + foot you had found out that the burden was two heavy for me, and had then + said to me, ‘Lie down, my beastie; I will carry on the burden alone; lie + down and rest!’ I might then have listened. But now, just here, where I + see the gates swinging open, a smooth road, and green fields before us, I + think I shall go on a little farther. We two have climbed together; maybe + we shall go on yet, side by side.” + </p> + <p> + For the heart of labouring womanhood cries out today to the man who would + suggest she need not seek new fields of labour, that child-bearing is + enough for her share in life’s labour, “Do you dare say to us now, that we + are fit to do nothing but child-bear, that when that is performed our + powers are exhausted? To us, who yet through all the ages of the past, + when child-bearing was persistent and incessant, regarded it hardly as a + toil, but rather as the reward of labour; has our right hand lost its + cunning and our heart its strength, that today, when human labour is + easier and humanity’s work grows fairer, you say to us, ‘You can do + nothing now but child-bear’? Do you dare to say this, to us, when the + upward path of the race has been watered by the sweat of our brow, and the + sides of the road by which humanity has climbed are whitened on either + hand by the bones of the womanhood that has fallen there, toiling beside + man? Do you dare say this, to us, when even today the food you eat, the + clothes you wear, the comfort you enjoy, is largely given you by the + unending muscular toil of woman?” + </p> + <p> + As the women of old planted and reaped and ground the grain that the + children they bore might eat; as the maidens of old spun that they might + make linen for their households and obtain the right to bear men; so, + though we bend no more over grindstones, or labour in the fields, or weave + by hand, it is our intention to enter all the new fields of labour, that + we also may have the power and right to bring men into the world. It is + our faith that the day comes in which not only shall no man dare to say, + “It is enough portion for a woman in life that she bear a child,” but when + it will rather be said, “What noble labour has that woman performed, that + she should have the privilege of bringing a man or woman child into the + world?” + </p> + <p> + But, it has also been objected, “What, and if the female half of humanity, + though able, in addition to the exercise of its reproductive functions, to + bear its share in the new fields of social labour as it did in the old, be + yet in certain directions a less productive labourer than the male? What + if, in the main, the result of the labour of the two halves of humanity + should not be found to be exactly equal?” + </p> + <p> + To this it may be answered, that it is within the range of possibility + that, mysteriously co-ordinated with the male reproductive function in the + human, there may also be in some directions a tendency to possess gifts + for labour useful and beneficial to the race in the stage of growth it has + now reached, in excess of those possessed by the female. We see no reason + why this should be so, and, in the present state of our knowledge, this is + a point on which no sane person would dogmatise; but it is possible! It + may, on the other hand be, that, taken in the bulk, when all the branches + of productive labour be considered, as the ages pass, the value of the + labour of the two halves of humanity will be found so identical and so + closely to balance, that no superiority can possibly be asserted of + either, as the result of the closest analysis. This also is possible. + </p> + <p> + But, it may also be, that, when the bulk and sum-total of human activities + is surveyed in future ages, it will be found that the value of the labour + of the female in the world that is rising about us, has exceeded in + quality or in quantity that of the male. We see no reason either, why this + should be; there is nothing in the nature of the reproductive function in + the female human which of necessity implies such superiority. + </p> + <p> + Yet it may be, that, with the smaller general bulk and the muscular + fineness, and the preponderance of brain and nervous system in net bulk + over the fleshy and osseous parts of the organism, which generally, though + by no means always, characterises the female as distinguished from the + male of the human species, there do go mental qualities which will + peculiarly fit her for the labours of the future. It may be, that her + lesser possession of the mere muscular and osseous strength, which were + the elements of primary importance and which gave dominance in one stage + of human growth, and which placed woman at a social disadvantage as + compared with her companion, will, under new conditions of life, in which + the value of crude mechanical strength as distinguished from high vitality + and strong nervous activity is passing away, prove as largely to her + advantage, as his muscular bulk and strength in the past proved to the + male. It is quite possible, in the new world which is arising about us, + that the type of human most useful to society and best fitted for its + future conditions, and who will excel in the most numerous forms of + activity, will be, not merely the muscularly powerful and bulky, but the + highly versatile, active, vital, adaptive, sensitive, physically + fine-drawn type; and, as that type, though, like the muscularly heavy and + powerful, by no means peculiar to and confined to one sex, is yet rather + more commonly found in conjunction with a female organism, it is quite + possible that, taken in the bulk and on the whole, the female half of + humanity may, by virtue of its structural adaptions, be found most fitted + for the bulk of human labours in the future! + </p> + <p> + As with individuals and races, so also with sexes, changed social + conditions may render exactly those subtile qualities, which in one social + state were a disadvantage, of the highest social advantage in another. + </p> + <p> + The skilled diplomatist or politician, so powerful in his own element, on + board ship during a storm becomes at once of less general value or + consideration than the meanest sailor who can reef a sail or guide a + wheel; and, were we to be reduced again suddenly to a state of nature, a + company of highly civilised men and women would at once, as we have before + remarked, find their social value completely inverted; landed on a desert + shore, unarmed and naked, to encounter wild beasts and savages, and to + combat nature for food, the primitive scale of human values would at once + reassert itself. It would not then be the mighty financier, the learned + judge, or great poet and scholar who would be sought after, but the + thickest-headed navvy who could throw a stone so exactly that he brought + down a bird, and who could in a day raise a wall which would shelter the + group; and the man so powerful that he could surely strike an enemy or + wild beast dead with his club, would at once be objects of social regard + and attain individual eminence, and perhaps dominance. It would not be the + skilled dancer, who in one night in a civilised state earns her hundreds, + nor yet the fragile clinging beauty, but the girl of the broad back and + the strong limb, who could collect wood and carry water, who would be the + much considered and much sought after female in such a community. Even in + the animal world, there is the same inversion in values, according as the + external conditions vary. The lion, while ruling over every other creature + in his primitive wilds, by right of his untamable ferocity, size, and + rapacity, is yet bound to become a prey to destruction and extermination + when he comes into contact with the new condition brought by man; while + the wild dog, so immeasurably his inferior in size and ferocity, is tamed, + survives and multiplies, exactly because he has been driven by his smaller + structure and lesser physical force to develop those social instincts and + those forms of intelligence which make him amenable to the new condition + of life and valuable in them. The same inversion in the value of qualities + may be traced in the history of human species. The Jews, whose history has + been one long story of oppression at the hands of more muscular, + physically powerful and pugilistic peoples; whom we find first making + bricks under the lash of the Egyptian, and later hanging his harp as an + exile among the willow-trees of Babylon; who, for eighteen hundred years, + has been trampled, tortured, and despised beneath the feet of the more + physically powerful and pugilistic, but not more vital, keen, intelligent, + or persistent races of Europe; has, today, by the slow turning of the + wheel of life, come uppermost. The Egyptian task-master and warrior have + passed; what the Babylonian was we know no more, save for a few mud + tablets and rock inscriptions recording the martial victories; but the + once captive Jew we see today in every city and every street; until at + last, the descendants of those men who spat when they spoke his name, and + forcibly drew his teeth to extract his money from him, wait patiently + behind each other for admission to his offices and palaces; while nobles + solicit his daughters in marriage and kings are proud to be summoned to + his table in hope of golden crumbs, and great questions of peace and war + are often held balanced in the hand of one little asthmatic Jew. After + long ages of disgrace and pariahism, the time has come, whether for good + or for evil, when just those qualities which the Jew possesses and which + subtilely distinguish him from others, are in demand; while those he has + not are sinking into disuse; exactly that domination of the reflective + faculties over the combative, which once made him slave, also saved him + from becoming extinct in wars; and the intellectual quickness, the + far-sighted keenness, the persistent mental activity and self-control, + which could not in those ages save him from degradation or compensate for + his lack of bone and muscle and combative instinct, are the very qualities + the modern world demands and crowns. The day of Goliath with his club and + his oaths is fast passing, and the day of David with his harp and + skilfully constructed sling is coming near and yet nearer. + </p> + <p> + The qualities which give an animal, a race, or an individual, a higher + utility or social dominance must always be influenced by any change in the + environment. As the wheel of life slowly revolves, that which was lowest + comes continually uppermost, and that which was dominant becomes + subservient. + </p> + <p> + It is possible, that women, after countless ages, during which that + smaller relative development in weight and muscularity which is incident + to almost all females which suckle their young, and that lesser desire for + pugilism inherent in almost all females who bear their young alive, + rendered her lacking in the two qualities which made for individual + dominance in her societies, may yet, in the future, discover that those + changes in human conditions, which have done away with the primary + necessity for muscular force and pugilistic arts, have also inverted her + place in the scale of social values. + </p> + <p> + It is possible, that the human female, like the Jew, the male of that type + farthest removed from the dominant male type of the past, may in the + future find, that, so far from those qualities which, in an earlier + condition, lessened her social value and power of labour, continuing to do + so, they will increase it. That the delicacy of hand, lightness of + structure which were fatal when the dominant labour of life was to wield a + battle-axe or move a weight, may be no restraint but even an assistance in + the intellectual and more delicate mechanical fields of labour; that the + preponderance of nervous and cerebral over muscular material, and the + tendency towards preservative and creative activity over pugilistic and + destructive, so far from shutting her off from the most important fields + of human toil, may increase her fitness for them! We have no certain proof + that it is so at present; but, if woman’s long years of servitude and + physical subjection, and her experience as child-bearer and protector of + infancy, should, in any way, be found in the future to have endowed her, + as a kind of secondary sexual characteristic, with any additional strength + of social instinct, with any exceptional width of human sympathy and any + instinctive comprehension; then, it is not merely possible, but certain, + that, in the ages that are coming, in which the labour of the human race + will be not mainly destructive but conservative, in which the building up + and developing of humanity, and not continually the inter-destruction of + part by part, will be the dominant activity of the race, that woman as + woman, and by right of that wherein she differs from the male, will have + an all-important part to play in the activity of the race. + </p> + <p> + The matter is one of curious and subtle interest, but what practically + concerns the human race is, not which of the two sexual halves which must + always coexist is best fitted to excel in certain human labours in this or + that direction, at this or that time, nor even which has most to + contribute to the sum-total of human activities; but it is this, that + every individual unit humanity contains, irrespective of race, sex, or + type, should find exactly that field of labour which may most contribute + to its development, happiness, and health, and in which its peculiar + faculties and gifts shall be most effectively and beneficially exerted for + its fellows. + </p> + <p> + It matters nothing, and less than nothing, to us as women, whether, of + those children we bring into the world, our sons should excel in virtue, + intelligence, and activity, our daughters, or our daughters our sons; so + that, in each child we bring to life, not one potentiality shall be lost, + nor squandered on a lesser when it might have been expended on a higher + and more beneficent task. So that not one desirable faculty of the + marvellous creatures we suffer to bring into existence be left + uncultivated, to us, as women, it matters nothing and less than nothing, + which sex type excels in action, in knowledge, or in virtue, so both + attain their best. There is one thing only on earth, as precious to woman + as the daughter who springs from her body—it is the son. There is + one thing only dearer to the woman than herself—it is the man. As no + sane human concerns himself as to whether the right or left ventricle of + his heart works most satisfactorily, or is most essential to his + well-being, so both be perfect in health and activity; as no sane woman + distresses herself lest her right breast should not excel the left in + beauty and use; so no sane man or woman questions anxiously over the + relative perfections of male and female. In love there is no first nor + last. What we request of life is that the tools should be given to his + hand or hers who can best handle them; that the least efficient should not + be forced into the place of the more efficient, and that an artificially + drawn line should never repress the activities of the individual creature, + which we as women bring into the world. + </p> + <p> + But it may also be said to us, “What, and if, all your dreams and hopes + for woman and the future of the race be based on air? What, and if, + desirable as it is that woman should not become practically dependent on + her sexual function alone, and should play at least as great a part in the + productive labour of the race in the future as she played in that of the + past—what, if woman cannot take the same vast share in the complex + and largely mental labour fields of the future, as in the largely physical + fields of the past? What, and if, in spite of all her effort and sacrifice + to attain this end, exactly now and when the labour of civilised societies + becomes mental rather than mechanical, woman be found wanting?” + </p> + <p> + In Swiss valleys today the traveller comes sometimes on the figure of a + solitary woman climbing the mountain-side, on her broad shoulders a mighty + burden of fodder or manure she is bearing up for the cattle, or to some + patch of cultivated land. Steady, unshrinking eyes look out at you from + beneath the deeply seamed forehead, and a strand of hair, perhaps almost + as white as the mountain snows on the peaks above, escapes from under the + edge of the binding handkerchief. The face is seamed and seared with the + stern marks of toil and endurance, as the mountain-side is with marks of + storm and avalanche. It is the face of one who has brought men into the + world in labour and sorrow, and toiled mightily to sustain them; and dead + must be the mind to the phases of human existence, who does not see in + that toilworn figure one of the mighty pillars, which have in the long + ages of the past sustained the life of humanity on earth, and made + possible its later development; and much must the tinsel of life have + dazzled him, who fails to mark it with reverence and, metaphorically, to + bow his head before it—the type of the mighty labouring woman who + has built up life. + </p> + <p> + But, it may be said, what if, in the ages to come, it should never again + be possible for any man to stand bowed with the same respect in the + presence of any other of earth’s mighty toilers, who should also be mother + and woman? What, if she, who could combine motherhood with the most + unending muscular toil, will fall flaccid and helpless where the labour + becomes mental? What if, struggle as she will, she can become nothing in + the future but the pet pug-dog of the race, lying on its sofa, or the + Italian greyhound, shivering in its silken coat? What if woman, in spite + of her most earnest aspirations and determined struggles, be destined to + failure in the new world that is rising because of inherent mental + incapacity? + </p> + <p> + There are many replies which may be made to such a suggestion. It is often + said with truth, that the ordinary occupations of woman in the past and + present, and in all classes of society in which she is not parasitic, do + demand, and have always demanded, a very high versatility and mental + activity, as well as physical: that the mediaeval baron’s wife who guided + her large household probably had to expend far more pure intellect in + doing so than the baron in his hunting and fighting; that the wife of the + city accountant probably expends today more reason, imagination, + forethought, and memory on the management of her small household, than he + in his far simpler, monotonous arithmetical toil; that, as there is no + cause for supposing that the tailor or shoemaker needs less intellect in + his calling than the soldier or prize-fighter, so there is nothing to + suggest that, in the past, woman has not expended as much pure intellect + in the mass of her callings as the man in his; while in those highly + specialised intellectual occupations, in which long and uninterrupted + training tending to one point is necessary, such as the liberal + professions and arts, that, although woman has practically been excluded + from the requisite training, and the freedom to place herself in the + positions in which they can be pursued, that yet, by force of innate + genius and gifts in such directions, she has continually broken through + the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and again and again taken her place + beside man in those fields of labour; showing thereby not merely aptitude + but passionate and determined inclination in those directions. With equal + truth, it is often remarked that, when as an independent hereditary + sovereign, woman has been placed in the only position in which she has + ever been able freely and fully to express her own individuality, and + though selected at random by fate from the mass of women, by the mere + accident of birth or marriage, she has shown in a large percentage of + cases that the female has the power to command, organise, and succeed in + one of the most exacting and complex of human employments, the government + of nations; that from the days of Amalasontha to Isabella of Spain, + Elizabeth of England, and Catharine of Russia, women have not failed to + grasp the large impersonal aspects of life, and successfully and + powerfully to control them, when placed in the supreme position in which + it was demanded. It may also be stated, and is sometimes, with so much + iteration as to become almost wearisome, that women’s adequacy in the + modern fields of intellectual or skilled manual labour is no more today an + open matter for debate, than the number of modern women who, as senior + wranglers, doctors, &c., have already successfully entered the new + fields, and the high standard attained by women in all university + examinations to which they are admitted, and their universal success in + the administration of parochial matters, wherever they have been allowed + to share it, proves their intellectual and moral fitness for the new forms + of labour. + </p> + <p> + All these statements are certainly interesting, and may be unanswerable. + And yet—if the truth be told, it is not ultimately on these grounds + that many of us base our hope and our certitude with regard to the future + of woman. Our conviction as to the plenitude of her powers for the + adequate performance of lofty labours in these new fields, springs not at + all from a categorical enumeration of the attainments or performances of + individual women or bodies of women in the past or present; it has another + source. + </p> + <p> + There was a bird’s egg once, picked up by chance upon the ground, and + those who found it bore it home and placed it under a barn-door fowl. And + in time the chick bred out, and those who had found it chained it by the + leg to a log, lest it should stray and be lost. And by and by they + gathered round it, and speculated as to what the bird might be. One said, + “It is surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we took it to + the water it would swim and gabble.” But another said, “It has no webs to + its feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose it will scratch + and cackle with the others on the dung-heap.” But a third speculated, + “Look now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, and can crack + nuts!” But a fourth said, “No, but look at its wings; perhaps it is a bird + of great flight.” But several cried, “Nonsense! No one has ever seen it + fly! Why should it fly? Can you suppose that a thing can do a thing which + no one has ever seen it do?” And the bird—the bird—with its + leg chained close to the log, preened its wing. So they sat about it, + speculating, and discussing it: and one said this, and another that. And + all the while as they talked the bird sat motionless, with its gaze fixed + on the clear, blue sky above it. And one said, “Suppose we let the + creature loose to see what it will do?”—and the bird shivered. But + the others cried, “It is too valuable; it might get lost. If it were to + try to fly it might fall down and break its neck.” And the bird, with its + foot chained to the log, sat looking upward into the clear blue sky; the + sky, in which it had never been—for the bird—the bird, knew + what it would do—because it was an eaglet! + </p> + <p> + There is one woman known to many of us, as each human creature knows but + one on earth; and it is upon our knowledge of that woman that we base our + certitude. + </p> + <p> + For those who do not know her, and have not this ground, it is probably + profitable and necessary that they painfully collect isolated facts and + then speculate upon them, and base whatever views they should form upon + these collections. It might even be profitable that they should form no + definite opinions at all, but wait till the ages of practical experience + have put doubt to rest. For those of us who have a ground of knowledge + which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to + act fearlessly than to argue. + </p> + <p> + Finally, it may be objected to the entrance of woman to the new fields of + labour, and in effect it is often said—“What, and if, all you have + sought be granted you—if it be fully agreed that woman’s ancient + fields of toil are slipping from her, and that, if she do not find new, + she must fall into a state of sexual parasitism, dependent on her + reproductive functions alone; and granted, that, doing this, she must + degenerate, and that from her degeneration must arise the degeneration and + arrest of development of the males as well as of the females of her race; + and granting also, fully, that in the past woman has borne one full half, + and often more than one half, of the weight of the productive labours of + her societies, in addition to child-bearing; and allowing more fully that + she may be as well able to sustain her share in the intellectual labours + of the future as in the more mechanical labours of the past; granting all + this, may there not be one aspect of the question left out of + consideration which may reverse all conclusions as to the desirability, + and the human good to be attained by woman’s enlarged freedom and her + entering into the new fields of toil? What if, the increased culture and + mental activity of woman necessary for her entrance into the new fields, + however desirable in other ways for herself and the race, should result in + a diminution, or in an absolute abolition of the sexual attraction and + affection, which in all ages of the past has bound the two halves of + humanity together? What if, though the stern and unlovely manual labours + of the past have never affected her attractiveness for the male of her own + society, nor his for her; yet the performance by woman of intellectual + labours, or complex and interesting manual labour, and her increased + intelligence and width, should render the male objectionable to her, and + the woman undesirable to the male; so that the very race itself might + become extinct through the dearth of sexual affection? What, and if, the + woman ceases to value the son she bears, and to feel desire for and + tenderness to the man who begets him; and the man to value and desire the + woman and her offspring? Would not such a result exceed, or at least + equal, in its evil to humanity, anything which could result from the + degeneration and parasitism of woman? Would it not be well, if there exist + any possibility of this danger, that woman, however conscious that she can + perform social labour as nobly and successfully under the new conditions + of life as the old, should yet consciously, and deliberately, with her + eyes open, sink into a state of pure intellectual torpor, with all its + attendant evils, rather than face the more irreparable loss which her + development and the exercise of her gifts might entail? Would it not be + well she should deliberately determine, as the lesser of two evils, to + dwarf herself and limit her activities and the expansion of her faculties, + rather than that any risk should be run of the bond of desire and emotion + between the two sexual halves of humanity being severed? If the race is to + decay and become extinct on earth, might it not as well be through the + parasitism and decay of woman, as through the decay of the sexual + instinct?” + </p> + <p> + It is not easy to reply with rationality, or even gravity, to a + supposition, which appears to be based on the conception that a sudden and + entire subversion of the deepest of those elements on which human, and + even animal, life on the globe is based, is possible from so inadequate a + cause: and it might well be passed silently, were it not that, under some + form or other, this argument frequently recurs, now in a more rational and + then in a more irrational form; constituting sometimes an objection in + even moderately intelligent minds, to the entrance of woman into the new + fields of labour. + </p> + <p> + It must be at once frankly admitted that, were there the smallest possible + danger in this direction, the sooner woman laid aside all endeavour in the + direction of increased knowledge and the attainment of new fields of + activity, the better for herself and for the race. + </p> + <p> + When one considers the part which sexual attraction plays in the order of + sentient life on the globe, from the almost unconscious attractions which + draw amoeboid globule to amoeboid globule, on through the endless + progressive forms of life; till in monogamous birds it expresses itself in + song and complex courtship and sometimes in the life-long conjugal + affection of mates; and which in the human race itself, passing through + various forms, from the imperative but almost purely physical attraction + of savage male and female for each other, till in the highly developed + male and female it assumes its aesthetic and intellectual but not less + imperative form, couching itself in the songs of poet, and the sometimes + deathless fidelity of richly developed man and woman to each other, we + find it not only everywhere, but forming the very groundwork on which is + based sentient existence; never eradicable, though infinitely varied in + its external forms of expression. When we consider that in the human + world, from the battles and dances of savages to the intrigues and + entertainments of modern Courts and palaces, the attraction of man and + woman for each other has played an unending part; and, that the most + fierce ascetic religious enthusiasm through the ages, the flagellations + and starvations in endless nunneries and monasteries, have never been able + to extirpate nor seriously to weaken for one moment the master dominance + of this emotion; that the lowest and most brutal ignorance, and the + highest intellectual culture leave mankind, equally, though in different + forms, amenable to its mastery; that, whether in the brutal guffaw of sex + laughter which rings across the drinking bars of our modern cities, and + rises from the comfortable armchairs in fashionable clubs; or in the + poet’s dreams, and the noblest conjugal relations of men and women linked + together for life, it plays still today on earth the vast part it played + when hoary monsters ploughed after each other through Silurian slime, and + that still it forms as ever the warp on which in the loom of human life + the web is woven, and runs as a thread never absent through every design + and pattern which constitutes the individual existence on earth, it + appears not merely as ineradicable; but it is inconceivable to suppose + that that attraction of sex towards sex, which, with hunger and thirst, + lie, as the triune instincts, at the base of animal life on earth, should + ever be exterminable by the comparatively superficial changes resulting + from the performance of this or that form of labour, or the little more or + less of knowledge in one direction or another. + </p> + <p> + That the female who drives steam-driven looms, producing scores of yards + of linen in a day, should therefore desire less the fellowship of her + corresponding male than had she toiled at a spinning-wheel with hand and + foot to produce one yard; that the male should desire less of the + companionship of the woman who spends the morning in doctoring babies in + her consulting-room, according to the formularies of the pharmacopoeia, + than she who of old spent it on the hillside collecting simples for + remedies; that the woman who paints a modern picture or designs a modern + vase should be less lovable by man, than her ancestor who shaped the first + primitive pot and ornamented it with zigzag patterns was to the man of her + day and age; that the woman who contributes to the support of her family + by giving legal opinions will less desire motherhood and wifehood than she + who in the past contributed to the support of her household by bending on + hands and knees over her grindstone, or scrubbing floors, and that the + former should be less valued by man than the latter—these are + suppositions which it is difficult to regard as consonant with any + knowledge of human nature and the laws by which it is dominated. + </p> + <p> + On the other hand, if it be supposed that the possession of wealth or the + means of earning it makes the human female objectionable to the male, all + history and all daily experience negates it. The eager hunt for heiresses + in all ages and social conditions, make it obvious that the human male has + a strong tendency to value the female who can contribute to the family + expenditure; and the case is yet, we believe, unrecorded of a male who, + attracted to a female, becomes averse to her on finding she has material + good. The female doctor or lawyer earning a thousand a year will always, + and today certainly does, find more suitors than had she remained a + governess or cook, labouring as hard, earning thirty pounds. + </p> + <p> + While, if the statement that the female entering on new fields of labour + will cease to be lovable to the male be based on the fact that she will + then be free, all history and all human experience yet more negates its + truth. The study of all races in all ages, proves that the greater the + freedom of woman in any society, the higher the sexual value put upon her + by the males of that society. The three squaws who walk behind the Indian, + and whom he has captured in battle or bought for a few axes or lengths of + tobacco, and over whom he exercises the despotic right of life and death, + are probably all three of infinitesimal value in his eyes, compared with + the value of his single, free wife to one of our ancient, monogamous + German ancestors; while the hundred wives and concubines purchased by a + Turkish pasha have probably not even an approximate value in his eyes, + when compared with the value which thousands of modern European males set + upon the one comparatively free woman, whom they may have won, often only + after a long and tedious courtship. + </p> + <p> + So axiomatic is the statement that the value of the female to the male + varies as her freedom, that, given an account of any human society in + which the individual female is highly valued, it will be perfectly safe to + infer the comparative social freedom of woman; and, given a statement as + to the high degree of freedom of woman in a society, it will be safe to + infer the great sexual value of the individual woman to man. + </p> + <p> + Finally, if the suggestion, that men and women will cease to be attractive + to one another if women enter modern fields of labour, be based on the + fact that her doing so may increase her intelligence and enlarge her + intellectual horizon, it must be replied that the whole trend of human + history absolutely negates the supposition. There is absolutely no ground + for the assumption that increased intelligence and intellectual power + diminishes sexual emotion in the human creature of either sex. The + ignorant savage, whether in ancient or modern societies, who violates and + then clubs a female into submission, may be dominated, and is, by sex + emotions of a certain class; but not less dominated have been the most + cultured, powerful, and highly differentiated male intelligences that the + race has produced. A Mill, a Shelley, a Goethe, a Schiller, a Pericles, + have not been more noted for vast intellectual powers, than for the depth + and intensity of their sexual emotions. And, if possible, with the human + female, the relation between intensity of sexual emotion and high + intellectual gifts has been yet closer. The life of a Sophia Kovalevsky, a + George Eliot, an Elizabeth Browning have not been more marked by a rare + development of the intellect than by deep passionate sexual emotions. Nor + throughout the history of the race has high intelligence and intellectual + power ever tended to make either male or female unattractive to those of + the opposite sex. + </p> + <p> + The merely brilliantly attired and unintelligent woman, probably never + awakened the same intensity of profound sex emotion even among the men of + her own type, which followed a George Sand; who attracted to herself with + deathless force some of the most noted men of her generation, even when, + nearing middle age, stout, and attired in rusty and inartistic black, she + was to be found rolling her cigarettes in a dingy office, scorning all the + external adornments with which less attractive females seek to supply a + hidden deficiency. Probably no more hopeless mistake could be made by an + ascetic seeking to extirpate sex emotion and the attraction of the sexes + for one another, than were he to imagine that in increasing virility, + intelligence, and knowledge this end could be attained. He might thereby + differentiate and greatly concentrate the emotions, but they would be + intensified; as a widely spread, shallow, sluggish stream would not be + annihilated but increased in force and activity by being turned into a + sharply defined, clear-cut course. + </p> + <p> + And if, further, we turn to those secondary manifestations of sexual + emotion, which express themselves in the relations of human progenitors to + their offspring, we shall find, if possible more markedly, that increase + of intelligence and virility does not diminish but increases the strength + of the affections. As the primitive, ignorant male, often willingly + selling his offspring or exposing his female infants to death, often + develops, with the increase of culture and intelligence, into the + extremely devoted and self-sacrificing male progenitor of civilised + societies; so, yet even more markedly, does the female relation with her + offspring, become intensified and permanent, as culture and intelligence + and virility increase. The Bushwoman, like the lowest female barbarians in + our own societies, will often readily dispose of her infant son for a + bottle of spirits or a little coin; and even among somewhat more mentally + developed females, strong as is the affection of the average female for + her new born offspring, the closeness of the relation between mother and + child tends rapidly to shrink as time passes, so that by the time of + adolescence is reached the relation between mother and son becomes little + more than a remembrance of a close inter-union which once existed. It is, + perhaps, seldom, till the very highest point of intellectual growth and + mental virility has been reached by the human female, that her relation + with her male offspring becomes a permanent and active and dominant factor + in the lives of both. The concentrated and all-absorbing affection and + fellowship which existed between the greatest female intellect France has + produced and the son she bore, dominating both lives to the end, the + fellowship of the English historian with his mother, who remained his + chosen companion and the sharer of all his labours through life, the + relation of St. Augustine to his mother, and those of countless others, + are relations almost inconceivable where the woman is not of commanding + and active intelligence, and where the passion of mere physical instinct + is completed by the passion of the intellect and spirit. + </p> + <p> + There appears, then, from the study of human nature in the past, no ground + for supposing that if, as a result of woman’s adopting new forms of + labour, she should become more free, more wealthy, or more actively + intelligent, that this could in any way diminish her need of the physical + and mental comradeship of man, nor his need of her; nor that it would + affect their secondary sexual relations as progenitors, save by deepening, + concentrating, and extending throughout life the parental emotions. The + conception that man’s and woman’s need of each other could be touched, or + the emotions binding the sexes obliterated, by any mere change in the form + of labour performed by the woman of the race, is as grotesque in its + impossibility, as the suggestion that the placing of a shell on the + seashore this way or that might destroy the action of the earth’s great + tidal wave. + </p> + <p> + But, it may be objected, “If there be absolutely no ground for the + formation of such an opinion, how comes it that, in one form or another, + it is so often expressed by persons who object to the entrance of woman + into new or intellectual fields of labour? Where there is smoke must there + not also be fire?” To which it must be replied, “Without fire, no smoke; + but very often the appearance of smoke where neither smoke nor fire + exist!” + </p> + <p> + The fact that a statement is frequently made or a view held forms no + presumptive ground of its truth; but it is undoubtedly a ground for + supposing that there is an appearance or semblance which makes it appear + truth, and which suggests it. The universally entertained conception that + the sun moved round the world was not merely false, but the reverse of the + truth; all that was required for its inception was a fallacious appearance + suggesting it. + </p> + <p> + When we examine narrowly the statement, that the entrance of woman into + the new fields of labour, with its probably resulting greater freedom of + action, economic independence and wider culture, may result in a severance + between the sexes, it becomes clear what that fallacious appearance is, + which suggests this. + </p> + <p> + The entrance of a woman into new fields of labour, though bringing her + increased freedom and economic independence, and necessitating increased + mental training and wider knowledge, could not extinguish the primordial + physical instinct which draws sex to sex throughout all the orders of + sentient life; and still less could it annihilate that subtler mental + need, which, as humanity develops, draws sex to sex for emotional + fellowship and close intercourse; but, it might, and undoubtedly would, + powerfully react and readjust the relations of certain men with certain + women! + </p> + <p> + While the attraction, physical and intellectual, which binds sex to sex + would remain the same in volume and intensity, the forms in which it would + express itself, and, above all, the relative power of individuals to + command the gratification of their instincts and desires, would be + fundamentally altered, and in many cases inverted. + </p> + <p> + In the barbarian state of societies, where physical force dominates, it is + the most muscular and pugilistically and brutally and animally successful + male who captures and possesses the largest number of females; and no + doubt he would be justified in regarding any social change which gave to + woman a larger freedom of choice, and which would so perhaps give to the + less brutal but perhaps more intelligent male, whom the woman might + select, an equal opportunity for the gratification of his sexual wishes + and for the producing of offspring, as a serious loss. And, from the + purely personal standpoint, he would undoubtedly be right in dreading + anything which tended to free woman. But he would manifestly not have been + justified in asserting, that woman’s increased freedom of choice, or the + fact that the other men would share his advantage in the matter of + obtaining female companionship, would in any way lessen the amount of + sexual emotion or the tenderness of relation between the two halves of + humanity. He would not by brute force possess himself of so many females, + nor have so large a circle of choice, under the new conditions; but what + he lost, others would gain; and the intensity of the sex emotions and the + nearness and passion of the relation between the sexes be in no way + touched. + </p> + <p> + In our more civilised societies, as they exist today, woman possesses + (more often perhaps in appearance than reality!) a somewhat greater + freedom of sexual selection; she is no longer captured by muscular force, + but there are still conditions entirely unconnected with sex attractions + and affections, which yet largely dominate the sex relations. + </p> + <p> + It is not the man of the strong arm, but the man of the long purse, who + unduly and artificially dominates in the sexual world today. Practically, + wherever in the modern world woman is wholly or partially dependent for + her means of support on the exercise of her sexual functions, she is + dependent more or less on the male’s power to support her in their + exercise, and her freedom of choice is practically so far absolutely + limited. Probably three-fourths of the sexual unions in our modern + European societies, whether in the illegal or recognised legal forms, are + dominated by or largely influenced by the sex purchasing power of the + male. With regard to the large and savage institution of prostitution, + which still lies as the cancer embedded in the heart of all our modern + civilised societies, this is obviously and nakedly the case; the wealth of + the male as compared to the female being, with hideous obtrusiveness, its + foundation and source of life. But the purchasing power of the male as + compared with the poverty of the female is not less painfully, if a little + less obtrusively, displayed in those layers of society lying nearer the + surface. From the fair, effete young girl of the wealthier classes in her + city boudoir, who weeps copiously as she tells you she cannot marry the + man she loves, because he says he has only two hundred a year and cannot + afford to keep her; to the father who demands frankly of his daughter’s + suitor how much he can settle on her before consenting to his acceptance, + the fact remains, that, under existing conditions, not the amount of sex + affection, passion, and attraction, but the extraneous question of the + material possessions of the male, determines to a large extent the + relation of the sexes. The parasitic, helpless youth who has failed in his + studies, who possesses neither virility, nor charm of person, nor strength + of mind, but who possesses wealth, has a far greater chance of securing + unlimited sexual indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest + maid, than her brother’s tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and + physical grace and mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of + nothing but material good, has, especially among the so-called upper + classes of our societies, a far greater chance of securing the sex + companionship of any woman he desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, + than the most physically attractive and mentally developed male, who may + have nothing to offer to the dependent female but affection and sexual + companionship. + </p> + <p> + To the male, whenever and wherever he exists in our societies, who depends + mainly for his power for procuring the sex relation he desires, not on his + power of winning and retaining personal affection, but, on the purchasing + power of his possessions as compared to the poverty of the females of his + society, the personal loss would be seriously and at once felt, of any + social change which gave to the woman a larger economic independence and + therefore greater freedom of sexual choice. It is not an imaginary danger + which the young dude, of a certain type which sits often in the front row + of the stalls in a theatre, with sloping forehead and feeble jaw, watching + the unhappy women who dance for gold—sees looming before him, as he + lisps out his deep disapproval of increased knowledge and the freedom of + obtaining the means of subsistence in intellectual fields by woman, and + expresses his vast preference for the uncultured ballet-girl over all + types of cultured and productive labouring womenhood in the universe. A + subtle and profound instinct warns him, that with the increased + intelligence and economic freedom of woman, he, and such as he, might + ultimately be left sexually companionless; the undesirable, the residuary, + male old-maids of the human race. + </p> + <p> + On the other hand, there is undoubtedly a certain body of females who + would lose, or imagine they would lose, heavily by the advance of woman as + a whole to a condition of free labour and economic independence. That + female, wilfully or organically belonging to the parasite class, having + neither the vigour of intellect nor the vitality of body to undertake any + form of productive labour, and desiring to be dependent only upon the + passive performance of sex function merely, would, whether as prostitute + or wife, undoubtedly lose heavily by any social change which demanded of + woman increased knowledge and activity. (She would lose in two directions: + by the social disapprobation which, as the new conditions became general, + would rest on her; and yet more by the competition of the more developed + forms. She would practically become non-existent.) + </p> + <p> + It is exactly by these two classes of persons that the objection is raised + that the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour and her increased + freedom and intelligence will dislocate the relations of the sexes; and, + while from the purely personal standpoint, they are undoubtedly right, + viewing human society as a whole they are fundamentally wrong. The loss of + a small and unhealthy section will be the gain of human society as a + whole. + </p> + <p> + In the male voluptuary of feeble intellect and unattractive individuality, + who depends for the gratification of his sexual instincts, not on his + power of winning and retaining the personal affection and admiration of + woman, but on her purchaseable condition, either in the blatantly + barbarous field of sex traffic that lies beyond the pale of legal + marriage, or the not less barbarous though more veiled traffic within that + pale, the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour, with an + increased intellectual culture and economic freedom, means little less + than social extinction. But, to those males who, even at the present day, + constitute the majority in our societies, and who desire the affection and + fellowship of woman rather than a mere material possession; for the male + who has the attributes and gifts of mind or body, which, apart from any + weight of material advantage, would fit him to hold the affection of + woman, however great her freedom of choice, the gain will be + correspondingly great. Given a society in which the majority of women + should be so far self-supporting, that, having their free share open to + them in the modern fields of labour, and reaping the full economic rewards + of their labour, marriage or some form of sexual sale was no more a matter + of necessity to them; so far from this condition causing a diminution in + the number of permanent sex unions, one of the heaviest bars to them would + be removed. It is universally allowed that one of the disease spots in our + modern social condition is the increasing difficulty which bars + conscientious men from entering on marriage and rearing families, if + limited means would in the case of their death or disablement throw the + woman and their common offspring comparatively helpless into the fierce + stream of our modern economic life. If the woman could justifiably be + looked to, in case of the man’s disablement or death, to take his place as + an earner, thousands of valuable marriages which cannot now be contracted + could be entered on; and the serious social evil, which arises from the + fact that while the self-indulgent and selfish freely marry and produce + large families, the restrained and conscientious are often unable to do + so, would be removed. For the first time in the history of the modern + world, prostitution, using that term in its broadest sense to cover all + forced sexual relationships based, not on the spontaneous affection of the + woman for the man, but on the necessitous acceptance by woman of material + good in exchange for the exercise of her sexual functions, would be + extinct; and the relation between men and women become a co-partnership + between freemen. + </p> + <p> + So far from the economic freedom and social independence of the woman + exterminating sexual love between man and woman, it would for the first + time fully enfranchise it. The element of physical force and capture which + dominated the most primitive sex relations, the more degrading element of + seduction and purchase by means of wealth or material good offered to + woman in our modern societies, would then give place to the untrammelled + action of attraction and affection alone between the sexes, and sexual + love, after its long pilgrimage in the deserts, would be enabled to return + at last, a king crowned. + </p> + <p> + But, apart from the two classes of persons whose objection to the entrance + of woman to new fields of labour is based more or less instinctively on + the fear of personal loss, there is undoubtedly a small, if a very small, + number of sincere persons whose fear as to severance between the sexes to + result from woman’s entrance into the new field, is based upon a more + abstract and impersonal ground. + </p> + <p> + It is not easy to do full justice in an exact statement to views held + generally rather nebulously and vaguely, but we believe we should not + mistake this view, by saying that there are a certain class of perfectly + sincere and even moderately intelligent folk who hold a view which, + expressed exactly, would come to something like this—that the + entrance of woman into new fields would necessitate so large a mental + culture and such a development of activity, mental and physical, in the + woman, that she might ultimately develop into a being so superior to the + male and so widely different from the man, that the bond of sympathy + between the sexes might ultimately be broken and the man cease to be an + object of affection and attraction to the woman, and the woman to the man + through mere dissimilarity. The future these persons seem to see, more or + less vaguely, is of a social condition, in which, the males of the race + remaining precisely as they are today, the corresponding females shall + have advanced to undreamed of heights of culture and intelligence; a + condition in which the hand-worker, and the ordinary official, and small + farmer, shall be confronted with the female astronomer or Greek professor + of astonishing learning and gifts as his only possible complementary sex + companion; and the vision naturally awakens in these good folk certain + misgivings as to sympathy between and suitability for each other, of these + two widely dissimilar parts of humanity. + </p> + <p> + It must of course at once be admitted, that, were the two sexual halves of + humanity distinct species, which, having once entered on a course of + evolution and differentiation, might continue to develop along those + distinct lines for countless ages or even for a number of generations, + without reacting through inheritance on each other, the consequences of + such development might ultimately almost completely sever them. + </p> + <p> + The development of distinct branches of humanity has already brought about + such a severance between races and classes which are in totally distinct + stages of evolution. So wide is the hiatus between them often, that the + lowest form of sex attraction can hardly cross it; and the more highly + developed mental and emotional sex passion cannot possibly bridge it. In + the world of sex, kind seeks kind, and too wide a dissimilarity completely + bars the existence of the highest forms of sex emotion, and often even the + lower and more purely animal. + </p> + <p> + Were it possible to place a company of the most highly evolved human + females—George Sands, Sophia Kovalevskys, or even the average + cultured females of a highly evolved race—on an island where the + only males were savages of the Fugean type, who should meet them on the + shores with matted hair and prognathous jaws, and with wild shouts, + brandishing their implements of death, to greet and welcome them, it is an + undoubted fact that, so great would be the horror felt by the females + towards them, that not only would the race become extinct, but if it + depended for its continuance on any approach to sex affection on the part + of the women, that death would certainly be accepted by all, as the lesser + of two evils. Hardly less marked would be the sexual division if, in place + of cultured and developed females, we imagine males of the same highly + evolved class thrown into contact with the lowest form of primitive + females. A Darwin, a Schiller, a Keats, though all men capable of the + strongest sex emotion and of the most durable sex affections, would + probably be untouched by any emotion but horror, cast into the company of + a circle of Bushmen females with greased bodies and twinkling eyes, + devouring the raw entrails of slaughtered beasts. + </p> + <p> + But leaving out even such extreme instances of diversity, the mere + division in culture and mental habits, dividing individuals of the same + race but of different classes, tends largely to exclude the possibility of + at least the nobler and more enduring forms of sex emotion. The highly + cultured denizen of a modern society, though he may enter into passing and + temporary and animal relations with the uncultured peasant or woman of the + street, seldom finds awakened within him in such cases the depth of + emotion and sympathy which is necessary for the enjoyment of the closer + tie of conjugal life; and it may be doubted whether the highest, most + permanent, and intimate forms of sexual affection ever exist except among + humans very largely identical in tastes, habits of thought, and moral and + physical education. (In Greece at a certain period (as we have before + noted) there does appear to have been a temporary advance of the male, so + far in advance of the female as to make the difference between them almost + immeasurable; but he quickly fell back to the level of the woman.) Were it + possible that the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour should + produce any increased divergence between man and woman in ideals, culture, + or tastes, there would undoubtedly be a dangerous responsibility incurred + by any who fostered such a movement. + </p> + <p> + But the most superficial study of human life and the relation of the sexes + negates such a conception. + </p> + <p> + The two sexes are not distinct species but the two halves of one whole, + always acting and interacting on each other through inheritance, and + reproducing and blending with each other in each generation. The human + female is bound organically in two ways to the males of her society: + collaterally they are her companions and the co-progenitors with her of + the race; but she is also the mother of the males of each succeeding + generation, bearing, shaping, and impressing her personality upon them. + The males and females of each human society resemble two oxen tethered to + one yoke: for a moment one may move slightly forward and the other remain + stationary; but they can never move farther from each other than the + length of the yoke that binds them; and they must ultimately remain + stationary or move forward together. That which the women of one + generation are mentally or physically, that by inheritance and education + the males of the next tend to be: there can be no movement or change in + one sex which will not instantly have its co-ordinating effect upon the + other; the males of tomorrow are being cast in the mould of the women of + today. If new ideals, new moral conceptions, new methods of action are + found permeating the minds of the women of one generation, they will + reappear in the ideals, moral conceptions, methods of action of the men of + thirty years hence; and the idea that the males of a society can ever + become permanently farther removed from its females than the individual + man is from the mother who bore and reared him, is at variance with every + law of human inheritance. + </p> + <p> + If, further, we turn from an abstract consideration of this supposition, + and examine practically in the modern world men and women as they exist + today, the irrationality of the supposition is yet more evident. + </p> + <p> + Not merely is the Woman’s Movement of our age not a sporadic and abnormal + growth, like a cancer bearing no organic relation to the development of + the rest of the social organism, but it is essentially but one important + phase of a general modification which the whole of modern life is + undergoing. Further, careful study of the movement will show that, not + only is it not a movement on the part of woman leading to severance and + separation between the woman and the man, but that it is essentially a + movement of the woman towards the man, of the sexes towards closer union. + </p> + <p> + Much is said at the present day on the subject of the “New Woman” (who, as + we have seen, is essentially but the old non-parasitic woman of the remote + past, preparing to draw on her new twentieth-century garb): and it cannot + truly be said that her attitude finds a lack of social attention. On every + hand she is examined, praised, blamed, mistaken for her counterfeit, + ridiculed, or deified—but nowhere can it be said, that the + phenomenon of her existence is overlooked. + </p> + <p> + But there exists at the present day another body of social phenomena, + quite as important, as radical, and if possible more far-reaching in its + effects on the present and future, which yet attracts little conscious + attention or animadversion, though it makes itself everywhere felt; as the + shade of a growing tree may be sat under year after year by persons who + never remark its silent growth. + </p> + <p> + Side by side with the “New Woman,” corresponding to her, as the two sides + of a coin cast in one mould, though differing from each other in + superficial detail, are yet of one metal, one size, and one value; old in + the sense in which she is old, being merely the reincarnation under the + pressure of new conditions of the ancient forms of his race; new in the + sense in which she is new, in that he is an adaptation to material and + social conditions which have no exact counterpart in the past; more + diverse from his immediate progenitors than even the woman is from hers, + side by side with her today in every society and in every class in which + she is found, stands—the New Man! + </p> + <p> + If it be asked, How comes it to pass, if, under the pressure of social + conditions, man shows an analogous change of attitude toward life, that + the change in woman should attract universal attention, while the + corresponding change in the man of her society passes almost unnoticed?—it + would seem that the explanation lies in the fact that, owing to woman’s + less independence of action in the past, any attempt at change or + readaptation on her part has had to overcome greater resistance, and it is + the noise and friction of resistance, more than the amount of actual + change which has taken place, which attracts attention; as when an Alpine + stream, after a long winter frost, breaks the ice, and with a crash and + roar sweeps away the obstructions which have gathered in its bed, all + men’s attention is attracted to it, though when later a much larger body + of water silently forces its way down, no man observes it. (An interesting + practical illustration of this fact is found in the vast attention and + uproar created when the first three women in England, some thirty odd + years ago, sought to enter the medical profession. At the present day + scores of women prepare to enter it yearly without attracting any general + attention; not that the change which is going on is not far more in volume + and social importance, but that, having overcome the first obstruction, it + is now noiseless.) + </p> + <p> + Between the Emilias and Sophy Westerns of a bygone generation and the most + typical of modern women, there exists no greater gap (probably not so + great a one) as that which exists between the Tom Joneses and Squire + Westerns of that day and the most typical of entirely modern men. + </p> + <p> + The sexual and social ideals which dominated the fox-hunting, + hard-drinking, high-playing, recklessly loose-living country squire, + clergyman, lawyer, and politician who headed the social organism of the + past, are at least as distinct from the ideals which dominate thousands of + their male descendants holding corresponding positions in the societies of + today, as are the ideals of her great-great-grand mother’s remote from + those dominating the most modern of New Women. + </p> + <p> + That which most forces itself upon us as the result of a close personal + study of those sections of modern European societies in which change and + adaptation to the new conditions of life are now most rapidly progressing, + is, not merely that equally large bodies of men and women are being + rapidly modified as to their sexual and social ideals and as to their mode + of life, but that this change is strictly complementary. + </p> + <p> + If the ideal of the modern woman becomes increasingly one inconsistent + with the passive existence of woman on the remuneration which her sexual + attributes may win from man, and marriage becomes for her increasingly a + fellowship of comrades, rather than the relationship of the owner and the + bought, the keeper and the kept; the ideal of the typically modern man + departs quite as strongly from that of his forefathers in the direction of + finding in woman active companionship and co-operation rather than passive + submission. If the New Woman’s conception of parenthood differs from the + old in the greater sense of the gravity and obligation resting on those + who are responsible for the production of the individual life, making her + attitude toward the production of her race widely unlike the reckless, + unreasoning, maternal reproduction of the woman of the past, the most + typical male tends to feel in at least the same degree the moral and + social obligation entailed by awakening lifehood: if the ideal which the + New Woman shapes for herself of a male companion excludes the crudely + animal hard-drinking, hard-swearing, licentious, even if materially + wealthy gallant of the past; the most typically modern male’s ideal for + himself excludes at least equally this type. The brothel, the race-course, + the gaming-table, and habits of physical excess among men are still with + us; but the most superficial study of our societies will show that these + have fallen into a new place in the scale of social institutions and + manners. The politician, the clergyman, or the lawyer does not improve his + social or public standing by violent addictions in these directions; to + drink his companions under the table, to be known to have the largest + number of illicit sex relations, to be recognised as an habitual visitant + of the gambling saloon, does not, even in the case of a crowned head, much + enhance his reputation, and with the ordinary man may ultimately prove a + bar to all success. If the New Woman’s conception of love between the + sexes is one more largely psychic and intellectual than crudely and purely + physical, and wholly of an affection between companions; the New Man’s + conception as expressed in the most typical literature and art, produced + by typically modern males, gives voice with a force no woman has surpassed + to the same new ideal. If to the typical modern woman the lifelong + companionship of a Tom Jones or Squire Western would be more intolerable + than death or the most complete celibacy, not less would the most typical + of modern men shrink from the prospect of a lifelong fetterment to the + companionship of an always fainting, weeping, and terrified Emilia or a + Sophia of a bygone epoch. + </p> + <p> + If anywhere on earth exists the perfect ideal of that which the modern + woman desires to be—of a labouring and virile womanhood, free, + strong, fearless and tender—it will probably be found imaged in the + heart of the New Man; engendered there by his own highest needs and + aspirations; and nowhere would the most highly developed modern male find + an image of that which forms his ideal of the most fully developed + manhood, than in the ideal of man which haunts the heart of the New Woman. + </p> + <p> + Those have strangely overlooked some of the most important phenomena of + our modern world, who see in the Woman’s Movement of our day any emotional + movement of the female against the male, of the woman away from the man. + </p> + <p> + We have called the Woman’s Movement of our age an endeavour on the part of + women among modern civilised races to find new fields of labour as the old + slip from them, as an attempt to escape from parasitism and an inactive + dependence upon sex function alone; but, viewed from another side, the + Woman’s Movement might not less justly be called a part of a great + movement of the sexes towards each other, a movement towards common + occupations, common interests, common ideals, and towards an emotional + sympathy between the sexes more deeply founded and more indestructible + than any the world has yet seen. + </p> + <p> + But it may be suggested, and the perception of a certain profound truth + underlies this suggestion; How is it, if there be this close reciprocity + between the lines along which the advanced and typical modern males and + females are developing, that there does exist in our modern societies, and + often among the very classes forming our typically advanced sections, so + much of pain, unrest, and sexual disco-ordination at the present day? + </p> + <p> + The reply to this pertinent suggestion is, that the disco-ordination, + struggle, and consequent suffering which undoubtedly do exist when we + regard the world of sexual relationships and ideals in our modern + societies, do not arise in any way from a disco-ordination between the + sexes as such, but are a part of the general upheaval, of the conflict + between old ideals and new; a struggle which is going on in every branch + the human life in our modern societies, and in which the determining + element is not sex, but the point of evolution which the race or the + individual has reached. + </p> + <p> + It cannot be too often repeated, even at the risk of the most wearisome + reiteration, that our societies are societies in a state of rapid + evolution and change. The continually changing material conditions of + life, with their reaction on the intellectual, emotional, and moral + aspects of human affairs, render our societies the most complex and + probably the most mobile and unsettled which the world has ever seen. As + the result of this rapidity of change and complexity, there must + continually exist a large amount of disco-ordination, and consequently, of + suffering. + </p> + <p> + In a stationary society where generation has succeeded generation for + hundreds, or it may be for thousands, of years, with little or no change + in the material conditions of life, the desires, institutions, and moral + principles of men, their religious, political, domestic, and sexual + institutions, have gradually shaped themselves in accordance with these + conditions; and a certain harmony, and homogeneity, and tranquillity, + pervades the society. + </p> + <p> + In societies in that rapid state of change in which our modern societies + find themselves, where not merely each decade, but each year, and almost + day brings new forces and conditions to bear on life, not only is the + amount of suffering and social rupture, which all rapid, excessive, and + sudden change entails on an organism, inevitable; but, the new conditions, + acting at different angles of intensity on the different individual + members composing the society, according to their positions and varying + intelligence, are producing a society of such marvellous complexity and + dissimilarity in the different individual parts, that the intensest + rupture and disco-ordination between individuals is inevitable; and sexual + ideals and relationships must share in the universal condition. + </p> + <p> + In a primitive society (if a somewhat prolix illustration may be allowed) + where for countless generations the conditions of life had remained + absolutely unchanged; where for ages it had been necessary that all males + should employ themselves in subduing wild beasts and meeting dangerous + foes, polygamy might universally have been a necessity, if the race were + to exist and its numbers be kept up; and society, recognising this, + polygamy would be an institution universally approved and submitted to, + however much suffering it entailed. If food were scarce, the destruction + of superfluous infants and of the aged might also always have been + necessary for the good of the individuals themselves as well as of + society, and the whole society would acquiesce in it without any moral + doubt. If an eclipse of the sun had once occurred in connection with the + appearance of a certain new insect, they mighty universally regard that + insect as a god causing it; and ages might pass without anything arising + to disprove their belief. There would be no social or religious problem; + and the view of one man would be the view of all men; and all would be + more or less in harmony with the established institution and customs. + </p> + <p> + But, supposing the sudden arrival of strangers armed with superior weapons + and knowledge, who should exterminate all wild beasts and render war and + the consequent loss of male life a thing of the past; not only would the + male be driven to encroach on the female’s domain of domestic agriculture + and labour generally, but the males, not being so largely destroyed, they + would soon equal and surpass in numbers the females; and not only would it + then become a moot matter, “a problem,” which labours were or were not to + be performed by man and which by woman, but very soon, not the woman alone + nor the man alone, but both, would be driven to speculate as to the + desirability or necessity of polygamy, which, were men as numerous as + women, would leave many males without sex companions. The more intelligent + and progressive individuals in the community would almost at once arrive + at the conclusion that polygamy was objectionable; the most fearless would + seek to carry their theory into action; the most ignorant and + unprogressive would determinately stick to the old institutions as + inherited from the past, without reason or question; differences of ideal + would cause conflict and dissension in all parts of the body social, and + suffering would ensue, where all before was fixed and determinate. So also + if the strangers introduced new and improved methods of agriculture, and + food became abundant, it would then at once strike the most far-seeing and + readily adaptable members of the community, both male and female, that + there was no necessity for the destruction of their offspring; old men and + women would begin seriously to object to being hastened to death when they + realised that starvation did not necessarily stare them in the face if + they survived to an extreme old age; the most stupid and hide-bound + members of the community would still continue to sacrifice parents and + offspring long after the necessity had ceased, under the influence of + traditional bias; many persons would be in a state of much moral doubt as + to which course of action to pursue, the old or the new; and bitter + conflict might rage in the community on all these points. Were the + strangers to bring with them telescopes, looking through which it might at + once clearly be seen that an eclipse of the sun was caused merely by the + moon’s passing over its face, the more intelligent members of the + community would at once come to the conclusion that the insect was not the + cause of eclipses, would cease to regard it as a god, and might even kill + it; the more stupid and immobile section of the community might refuse to + look through the telescope, or looking might refuse to see that it was the + moon which caused the eclipse, and their deep-seated reverence for the + insect, which was the growth of ages, would lead them to regard as impious + those individuals who denied its godhead, and might even lead to the + physical destruction of the first unbelievers. The society, once so + homogeneous and co-ordinated in all its parts, would become at once a + society rent by moral and social problems; and endless suffering must + arise to individuals in the attempt to co-ordinate the ideals, manners, + and institutions of the society to the new conditions! There might be + immense gain in many directions; lives otherwise sacrificed would be + spared, a higher and more satisfactory stage of existence might be entered + on; but the disco-ordination and struggle would be inevitable until the + society had established an equilibrium between its knowledge, its material + conditions, and its social, sexual, and religious ideals and institutions. + </p> + <p> + An analogous condition, but of a far more complex kind, exists at the + present day in our own societies. Our material environment differs in + every respect from that of our grandparents, and bears little or no + resemblance to that of a few centuries ago. Here and there, even in our + civilised societies in remote agricultural districts, the old social + conditions may remain partly undisturbed; but throughout the bulk of our + societies the substitution of mechanical for hand-labour, the wide + diffusion of knowledge through the always increasing cheap printing-press; + the rapidly increasing gathering of human creatures into vast cities, + where not merely thousands but millions of individuals are collected + together under physical and mental conditions of life which invert every + social condition of the past; the increasingly rapid means of locomotion; + the increasing intercourse between distant races and lands, brought about + by rapid means of intercommunication, widening and changing in every + direction the human horizon—all these produce a society, so complex + and so rapidly altering, that social co-ordination between all its parts + is impossible; and social unrest, and the strife of ideals of faiths, of + institutions, and consequent human suffering is inevitable. + </p> + <p> + If the ancient guns and agricultural implements which our fathers taught + us to use are valueless in the hands of their descendants, if the samplers + our mothers worked and the stockings they knitted are become superfluous + through the action of the modern loom, yet more are their social + institutions, faiths, and manners of life become daily and increasingly + unfitted to our use; and friction and suffering inevitable, especially for + the most advanced and modified individuals in our societies. This + suffering, if we analyse it closely, rises from three causes. + </p> + <p> + Firstly, it is caused by the fact that mere excessive rapidity of change + tends always easily to become painful, by rupturing violently already + hardened habits and modes of thought, as a very rapidly growing tree + ruptures its bark and exudes its internal juices. + </p> + <p> + Secondly, it arises from the fact that individuals of the same human + society, not adapting themselves at the same rate to the new conditions, + or being exposed to them in different degrees, a wide and almost + unparalleled dissimilarity has today arisen between the different + individuals composing our societies; where, side by side with men and + women who have rapidly adapted or are so successfully seeking to adapt + themselves to the new conditions of knowledge and new conditions of life, + that, were they to reappear in future ages in more co-ordinated societies, + they might perhaps hardly appear wholly antiquated, are to be found men + and women whose social, religious, and moral ideals would not constitute + them out of harmony if returned to the primitive camps of the remote + forbears of the human race; while, between these extreme classes lies that + large mass of persons in an intermediate state of development. This + diversity is bound to cause friction and suffering in the interactions of + the members of our societies; more especially, as the individuals + composing each type are not sorted out into classes and families, but are + found scattered through all classes and grades in our societies. (One of + the women holding the most advanced and modern view of the relation of + woman to life whom we have met was the wife of a Northamptonshire + shoemaker; herself engaged in making her living by the sewing of the + uppers of men’s boots.) Persons bound by the closest ties of blood or + social contiguity and compelled to a continual intercourse, are often + those most widely dissevered in their amount of adaptation to the new + conditions of life; and the amount of social friction and consequent human + suffering arising from this fact is so subtle and almost incalculable, + that perhaps it is impossible adequately to portray it in dry didactic + language: it is only truly describable in the medium of art, where actual + concrete individuals are shown acting and reacting on each other—as + in the novel or the drama. We are like a company of chess-men, not sorted + out in kinds, pawns together, kings and queens together, and knights and + rooks together, but simply thrown at haphazard into a box, and jumbled + side by side. In the stationary societies, where all individuals were + permeated by the same political, religious, moral, and social ideas; and + where each class had its own hereditary and fixed traditions of action and + manners, this cause of friction and suffering had of necessity no + existence; individual differences and discord might be occasioned by + personal greeds, ambitions, and selfishnesses, but not by conflicting + conceptions of right and wrong, of the desirable and undesirable, in all + branches of human life. (Only those who have been thrown into contact with + a stationary and homogeneous society such as that of primitive African + tribes before coming in contact with Europeans; or such as the up-country + Boers of South Africa were twenty years ago, can realise adequately how + wholly free from moral and social problems and social friction such a + society can be. It is in studying such societies that the truth is vividly + forced on one, that the key to half, and more than half, of the phenomena + in our own social condition, can be found only in our rapidly changing + conditions necessitating equally rapid change in our conceptions, ideals, + and institutions.) + </p> + <p> + Thirdly, the unrest and suffering peculiar to our age is caused by + conflict going on within the individual himself. So intensely rapid is the + change which is taking place in our environment and knowledge that in the + course of a single life a man may pass through half a dozen phases of + growth. Born and reared in possession of certain ideas and manners of + action, he or she may, before middle life is reached, have had occasion + repeatedly to modify, enlarge, and alter, or completely throw aside those + traditions. Within the individuality itself of such persons, goes on, in + an intensified form, that very struggle, conflict, and disco-ordination + which is going on in society at large between its different members and + sections; and agonising moments must arise, when the individual, seeing + the necessity for adopting new courses of action, or for accepting new + truths, or conforming to new conditions, will yet be tortured by the hold + of traditional convictions; and the man or woman who attempts to adapt + their life to the new material conditions and to harmony with the new + knowledge, is almost bound at some time to rupture the continuity of their + own psychological existence. + </p> + <p> + It is these conditions which give rise to the fact so often noticed, that + the art of our age tends persistently to deal with subtle social problems, + religious, political, and sexual, to which the art of the past holds no + parallel; and it is so inevitably, because the artist who would obey the + artistic instinct to portray faithfully the world about him, must portray + that which lies at the core of its life. The “problem” play, novel, and + poem are as inevitable in this age, as it was inevitable that the artist + of the eleventh century should portray tournaments, physical battles, and + chivalry, because they were the dominant element in the life about him. + </p> + <p> + It is also inevitable that this suffering and conflict must make itself + felt in its acutest form in the person of the most advanced individual of + our societies. It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen stream + who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it broken, and + the last find it gone. It is the man or woman who first treads down the + path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, who must find + themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is deadly. The fact that + any course of human action leading to adjustment, leads also to immediate + suffering, by dividing the individual from the bulk of his fellows; is no + argument against it; that solitude and suffering is the crown of thorns + which marks the kingship of earth’s Messiahs: it is the mark of the + leader. + </p> + <p> + Thus, social disco-ordination, and subjective conflict and suffering, + pervade the life of our age, making themselves felt in every division of + human life, religious, political, and domestic; and, if they are more + noticeable, and make themselves more keenly felt in the region of sex than + in any other, even the religious, it is because when we enter the region + of sex we touch, as it were, the spinal cord of human existence, its great + nerve centre, where sensation is most acute, and pain and pleasure most + keenly felt. It is not sex disco-ordination that is at the root of our + social unrest; it is the universal disco-ordination which affects even the + world of sex phenomena. + </p> + <p> + Also it is necessary to note that the line which divides the progressive + sections of our communities, seeking to co-ordinate themselves to the new + conditions of life, from the retrogressive, is not a line running + coincidentally with the line of sex. A George Sand and a Henrik Ibsen + belong more essentially to the same class in the order of modern + development, than either belongs to any class composed entirely of their + own sex. If we divide humanity into classes according to type, in each + division will be found the male with his complementary female. Side by + side with the old harlot at the street corner anxious to sell herself, + stands the old aboriginal male, whether covered or not with a veneer of + civilisation, eager and desiring to buy. Side by side with the parasitic + woman, seeking only increased pleasure and luxury from her relations with + man, stands the male seeking only pleasure and self-indulgence from his + relations with her. Side by side with the New Woman, anxious for labour + and seeking from man only such love and fellowship as she gives, stands + the New Man, anxious to possess her only on the terms she offers. If the + social movement, through which the most advanced women of our day are + attempting to bring themselves into co-ordination with the new conditions + of life, removes them immeasurably from certain types of the primitive + male; the same movement equally removes the new male from the old female. + The sexual tragedy of modern life lies, not in the fact that woman as such + is tending to differ fundamentally from man as such; but that, in the + unassorted confusion of our modern life, it is continually the modified + type of man or woman who is thrown into the closest personal relations + with the antiquated type of the opposite sex; that between father and + daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, husband and wife, may + sometimes be found to intervene not merely years, but even centuries of + social evolution. + </p> + <p> + It is not man as man who opposes the attempt of woman to readjust herself + to the new conditions of life: that opposition arises, perhaps more often, + from the retrogressive members of her own sex. And it is a fact which will + surprise no one who has studied the conditions of modern life; that among + the works of literature in all European languages, which most powerfully + advocate the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour, and which + most uncompromisingly demand for her the widest training and freedom of + action, and which most passionately seek for the breaking down of all + artificial lines which sever the woman from the man, many of the ablest + and most uncompromising are the works of males. + </p> + <p> + The New Man and Woman do not resemble two people, who, standing on a level + plain, set out on two roads, which diverging at different angles and + continued in straight lines, must continue to take them farther and + farther from each other the longer they proceed in them; rather, they + resemble two persons who start to climb a spur of the same mountain from + opposite sides; where, the higher they climb the nearer they come to each + other, being bound ultimately to meet at the top. + </p> + <p> + Even that opposition often made by males to the entrance of woman into the + new fields of labour, of which they at present hold the monopoly, is not + fundamentally sexual in its nature. The male who opposes the entrance of + woman into the trade or profession in which he holds more or less a + monopoly, would oppose with equal, and perhaps even greater bitterness, + the opening of its doors to numbers of his own sex who had before been + excluded, and who would limit his gains and share his privileges. It is + the primitive brute instinct to retain as much as possible for the ego, + irrespective of justice or humanity, which dominates all the lower moral + types of humanity, both male and female, which acts here. The lawyer or + physician who objects to the entrance of women to his highly fenced + professional enclosure, would probably object yet more strenuously if it + were proposed to throw down the barriers of restraint and monetary + charges, which would result in the flooding of his profession by other + males: while the mechanic, who resists the entrance of woman into his + especial field, is invariably found even more persistently to oppose any + attempt at entrance on the part of other males, when he finds it possible + to do so. + </p> + <p> + This opposition of the smaller type of male, to the entrance of woman into + the callings hitherto apportioned to himself, is sometimes taken as + implying the impossibility of fellowship and affection existing between + the men and women employed in common labour, that the professional + jealousy of the man must necessitate his feeling a hatred and antagonism + towards any one who shares his fields of toil. But the most superficial + study of human life negates such a supposition. Among men, in spite of the + occasional existence of the petty professional jealousies and antagonism, + we find, viewing society as a whole, that common interests, and above all + common labours, are the most potent means of bringing them into close and + friendly relations; and, in fact, they seem generally essential for the + formation of the closest and most permanent human friendships. In every + walk of human life, whether trade, or profession, we find men associating + by choice mainly with, and entertaining often the profoundest and most + permanent friendships for, men engaged in their own callings. The inner + circle of a barrister’s friendships almost always consists of his + fellow-barristers; the city man, who is free to select his society where + he will, will be oftenest found in company with his fellow-man of + business; the medical man’s closest friendship is, in a large number of + cases, for some man who was once his fellow-student and has passed through + the different stages of his professional life with him; the friends and + chosen companions of the actor are commonly actors; of the savant, + savants; of the farmer, farmers; of the sailor, sailors. So generally is + this the case that it would almost attract attention and cause amusement + were the boon companion of the sea captain a leading politician, and the + intimate friend of the clergyman an actor, or the dearest friend of the + farmer an astronomer. Kind seeks kind. The majority of men by choice + frequent clubs where those of their own calling are found, and especially + as life advances and men sink deeper into their professional grooves, they + are found to seek fellowship mainly among their fellow-workers. That this + should be so is inevitable; common amusements may create a certain bond + between the young, but the performance of common labours, necessitating + identical knowledge, identical habits, and modes of thought, forms a far + stronger bond, drawing men far more powerfully towards social intercourse + and personal friendship and affection than the centrifugal force of + professional jealousies can divide them. + </p> + <p> + That the same condition would prevail where women became fellow-workers + with men might be inferred on abstract grounds: but practical experience + confirms this. The actor oftenest marries the actress, the male musician + the female; the reception-room of the literary woman or female painter is + found continually frequented by men of her own calling; the woman-doctor + associates continually with and often marries one of her own confreres; + and as women in increasing numbers share the fields of labour with men, + which have hitherto been apportioned to them alone, the nature and + strength of the sympathy arising from common labours will be increasingly + clear. + </p> + <p> + The sharing by men and women of the same labours, necessitating a common + culture and therefore common habits of thought and interests, would tend + to fill that painful hiatus which arises so continually in modern conjugal + life, dividing the man and woman as soon as the first sheen of physical + sexual attraction which glints only over the unknown begins to fade, and + from which springs so large a part of the tragedy of modern conjugal + relations. The primitive male might discuss with her his success in + hunting and her success in finding roots; as the primitive peasant may + discuss today with his wife the crops and cows in which both are equally + interested and which both understand; there is nothing in their order of + life to produce always increasingly divergent habits of thought and + interest. + </p> + <p> + In modern civilised life, in many sections, the lack of any common labour + and interests and the wide dissimilarity of the life led by the man and + the woman, tend continually to produce increasing divergence; so that, + long before middle life is reached, they are left without any bond of + co-cohesion but that of habit. The comradeship and continual stimulation, + rising from intercourse with those sharing our closest interests and + regarding life from the same standpoint, the man tends to seek in his club + and among his male companions, and the woman accepts solitude, or seeks + dissipations which tend yet farther to disrupt the common conjugal life. A + certain mental camaraderie and community of impersonal interests is + imperative in conjugal life in addition to a purely sexual relation, if + the union is to remain a living and always growing reality. It is more + especially because the sharing by woman of the labours of man will tend to + promote camaraderie and the existence of common, impersonal interests and + like habits of thought and life, that the entrance of women into the very + fields shared by men, and not into others peculiarly reserved for her, is + so desirable. (The reply once given by the wife of a leading barrister, + when reference was made to the fact that she and her husband were seldom + found in each other’s society, throws a painful but true light on certain + aspects of modern life, against which the entire woman’s movement of our + age is a rebellion. “My husband,” she said, “is always increasingly + absorbed in his legal duties, of which I understand nothing, and which so + do not interest me. My children are all growing up and at school. I have + servants enough to attend to my house. When he comes home in the evening, + if I try to amuse him by telling him of the things I have been doing + during the day, of the bazaars I am working for, the shopping I have done, + the visits I have paid, he is bored. He is anxious to get away to his + study, his books, and his men friends, and I am left utterly alone. If it + were not for the society of women and other men with whom I have more in + common, I could not bear my life. When we first met as boy and girl, and + fell in love, we danced and rode together and seemed to have everything in + common; now we have nothing. I respect him and I believe he respects me, + but that is all!” It is, perhaps, only in close confidences between man + and man and woman and woman that this open sore, rising from the + divergence in training, habits of life, and occupation between men and + women is spoken of; but it lies as a tragic element at the core of + millions of modern conjugal relations, beneath the smooth superficial + surface of our modern life; breaking out to the surface only occasionally + in the revelations of our divorce courts.) + </p> + <p> + It is a gracious fact, to which every woman who has achieved success or + accomplished good work in any of the fields generally apportioned to men + will bear witness, whether that work be in the field of literature, of + science, or the organised professions, that the hands which have been most + eagerly stretched our to welcome her have been those of men; that the + voices which have most generously acclaimed her success have been those of + male fellow-workers in the fields into which she has entered. + </p> + <p> + There is no door at which the hand of woman has knocked for admission into + a new field of toil but there have been found on the other side the hands + of strong and generous men eager to turn it for her, almost before she + knocks. + </p> + <p> + To those of us who, at the beginning of a new century, stand with shaded + eyes, gazing into the future, striving to descry the outlines of the + shadowy figures which loom before us in the distance, nothing seems of so + gracious a promise, as the outline we seem to discern of a condition of + human life in which a closer union than the world has yet seen shall exist + between the man and the woman: where the Walhalla of our old Northern + ancestors shall find its realisation in a concrete reality, and the + Walkurie and her hero feast together at one board, in a brave fellowship. + </p> + <p> + Always in our dreams we hear the turn of the key that shall close the door + of the last brothel; the clink of the last coin that pays for the body and + soul of a woman; the falling of the last wall that encloses artificially + the activity of woman and divides her from man; always we picture the love + of the sexes, as, once a dull, slow, creeping worm; then a torpid, earthy + chrysalis; at last the full-winged insect, glorious in the sunshine of the + future. + </p> + <p> + Today, as we row hard against the stream of life, is it only a blindness + in our eyes, which have been too long strained, which makes us see, far up + the river where it fades into the distance, through all the mists that + rise from the river-banks, a clear, a golden light? Is it only a delusion + of the eyes which makes us grasp our oars more lightly and bend our backs + lower; though we know well that long before the boat reaches those + stretches, other hands than ours will man the oars and guide its helm? Is + it all a dream? + </p> + <p> + The ancient Chaldean seer had a vision of a Garden of Eden which lay in a + remote past. It was dreamed that man and woman once lived in joy and + fellowship, till woman ate of the tree of knowledge and gave to man to + eat; and that both were driven forth to wander, to toil in bitterness; + because they had eaten of the fruit. + </p> + <p> + We also have our dream of a Garden: but it lies in a distant future. We + dream that woman shall eat of the tree of knowledge together with man, and + that side by side and hand close to hand, through ages of much toil and + labour, they shall together raise about them an Eden nobler than any the + Chaldean dreamed of; an Eden created by their own labour and made + beautiful by their own fellowship. + </p> + <p> + In his apocalypse there was one who saw a new heaven and a new earth; we + see a new earth; but therein dwells love—the love of comrades and + co-workers. + </p> + <p> + It is because so wide and gracious to us are the possibilities of the + future; so impossible is a return to the past, so deadly is a passive + acquiescence in the present, that today we are found everywhere raising + our strange new cry—“Labour and the training that fits us for + labour!” + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman and Labour, by Olive Schreiner + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN AND LABOUR *** + +***** This file should be named 1440-h.htm or 1440-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/4/1440/ + +Produced by Sue Asscher, and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Woman and Labour + +Author: Olive Schreiner + +Posting Date: September 17, 2008 [EBook #1440] +Release Date: August, 1998 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN AND LABOUR *** + + + + +Produced by Sue Asscher + + + + + +WOMAN AND LABOUR + +by Olive Schreiner + + +Author of "Dreams," "The Story of an African Farm," "Trooper Peter +Halket," "Dream Life and Real Life," etc. etc. + + + Dedicated to Constance Lytton + + "Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, + Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea-- + Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong-- + Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she: + Give her the glory of going on and still to be." + + Tennyson. + + Olive Schreiner. + De Aar, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. 1911. + + + + +Contents + + Introduction + + Chapter I. Parasitism + + Chapter II. Parasitism (continued) + + Chapter III. Parasitism (continued) + + Chapter IV. Woman and War + + Chapter V. Sex Differences + + Chapter VI. Certain Objections + + + + + +Introduction. + +It is necessary to say a few words to explain this book. The original +title of the book was "Musings on Woman and Labour." + +It is, what its name implies, a collection of musings on some of the +points connected with woman's work. + +In my early youth I began a book on Woman. I continued the work till +ten years ago. It necessarily touched on most matters in which sex has a +part, however incompletely. + +It began by tracing the differences of sex function to their earliest +appearances in life on the globe; not only as when in the animal world, +two amoeboid globules coalesce, and the process of sexual generation +almost unconsciously begins; but to its yet more primitive +manifestations in plant life. In the first three chapters I traced, +as far as I was able, the evolution of sex in different branches of +non-human life. Many large facts surprised me in following this line of +thought by their bearing on the whole modern sex problem. Such facts +as this; that, in the great majority of species on the earth the female +form exceeds the male in size and strength and often in predatory +instinct; and that sex relationships may assume almost any form on earth +as the conditions of life vary; and that, even in their sexual relations +towards offspring, those differences which we, conventionally, are apt +to suppose are inherent in the paternal or the maternal sex form, are +not inherent--as when one studies the lives of certain toads, where the +female deposits her eggs in cavities on the back of the male, where the +eggs are preserved and hatched; or, of certain sea animals, in which the +male carries the young about with him and rears them in a pouch formed +of his own substance; and countless other such. And above all, this +important fact, which had first impressed me when as a child I wandered +alone in the African bush and watched cock-o-veets singing their +inter-knit love-songs, and small singing birds building their nests +together, and caring for and watching over, not only their young, but +each other, and which has powerfully influenced all I have thought and +felt on sex matters since;--the fact that, along the line of bird +life and among certain of its species sex has attained its highest and +aesthetic, and one might almost say intellectual, development on +earth: a point of development to which no human race as a whole has +yet reached, and which represents the realisation of the highest sexual +ideal which haunts humanity. + +When these three chapters we ended I went on to deal, as far as +possible, with woman's condition in the most primitive, in the savage +and in the semi-savage states. I had always been strangely interested +from childhood in watching the condition of the native African women +in their primitive society about me. When I was eighteen I had a +conversation with a Kafir woman still in her untouched primitive +condition, a conversation which made a more profound impression on my +mind than any but one other incident connected with the position of +woman has ever done. She was a woman whom I cannot think of otherwise +than as a person of genius. In language more eloquent and intense than +I have ever heard from the lips of any other woman, she painted the +condition of the women of her race; the labour of women, the anguish of +woman as she grew older, and the limitations of her life closed in about +her, her sufferings under the condition of polygamy and subjection; all +this she painted with a passion and intensity I have not known equalled; +and yet, and this was the interesting point, when I went on to question +her, combined with a deep and almost fierce bitterness against life +and the unseen powers which had shaped woman and her conditions as they +were, there was not one word of bitterness against the individual man, +nor any will or intention to revolt; rather, there was a stern and +almost majestic attitude of acceptance of the inevitable; life and the +conditions of her race being what they were. It was this conversation +which first forced upon me a truth, which I have since come to regard as +almost axiomatic, that, the women of no race or class will ever rise in +revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment of their +relation to their society, however intense their suffering and however +clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of their +society requires their submission: that, wherever there is a general +attempt on the part of the women of any society to readjust their +position in it, a close analysis will always show that the changed or +changing conditions of that society have made woman's acquiescence no +longer necessary or desirable. + +Another point which it was attempted to deal with in this division of +the book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that +woman's physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain other +directions was the price which woman has been compelled to pay for the +passing of the race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state to the +erect; and which was essential if humanity as we know it was to exist +(this of course was dealt with by a physiological study of woman's +structure); and also, to deal with the highly probable, though unproved +and perhaps unprovable, suggestion, that it was largely the necessity +which woman was under of bearing her helpless young in her arms while +procuring food for them and herself, and of carrying them when escaping +from enemies, that led to the entirely erect position being forced on +developing humanity. + +These and many other points throwing an interesting light on the later +development of women (such as the relation between agriculture and the +subjection of women) were gone into in this division of the book dealing +with primitive and semi-barbarous womanhood. + +When this division was ended, I had them type-written, and with the +first three chapters bound in one volume about the year 1888; and then +went on to work at the last division, which I had already begun. + +This dealt with what is more popularly known as the women's question: +with the causes which in modern European societies are leading women to +attempt readjustment in their relation to their social organism; with +the direction in which such readjustments are taking place; and with the +results which in the future it appears likely such readjustments will +produce. + +After eleven years, 1899, these chapters were finished and bound in a +large volume with the first two divisions. There then only remained to +revise the book and write a preface. In addition to the prose argument +I had in each chapter one or more allegories; because while it is easy +clearly to express abstract thoughts in argumentative prose, whatever +emotion those thoughts awaken I have not felt myself able adequately +to express except in the other form. (The allegory "Three Dreams in a +Desert" which I published about nineteen years ago was taken from this +book; and I have felt that perhaps being taken from its context it was +not quite clear to every one.) I had also tried throughout to illustrate +the subject with exactly those particular facts in the animal and human +world, with which I had come into personal contact and which had helped +to form the conclusions which were given; as it has always seemed to +me that in dealing with sociological questions a knowledge of the exact +manner in which any writer has arrived at his view is necessary in +measuring its worth. The work had occupied a large part of my life, and +I had hoped, whatever its deficiencies, that it might at least stimulate +other minds, perhaps more happily situated, to an enlarged study of the +question. + +In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was +ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of +two months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I +arrived at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but Martial Law had +already been proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to +allow my return to my home in Johannesburg and sent me to the Colony; +nor was I allowed to send any communication through, to any person, who +might have extended some care over my possessions. Some eight months +after, when the British troops had taken and entered Johannesburg; a +friend, who, being on the British side, had been allowed to go up, wrote +me that he had visited my house and found it looted, that all that was +of value had been taken or destroyed; that my desk had been forced open +and broken up, and its contents set on fire in the centre of the room, +so that the roof was blackened over the pile of burnt papers. He added +that there was little in the remnants of paper of which I could make any +use, but that he had gathered and stored the fragments till such time +as I might be allowed to come and see them. I thus knew my book had been +destroyed. + +Some months later in the war when confined in a little up-country +hamlet, many hundreds of miles from the coast and from Johannesburg; +with the brunt of the war at that time breaking around us, de Wet having +crossed the Orange River and being said to have been within a few miles +of us, and the British columns moving hither and thither, I was living +in a little house on the outskirts of the village, in a single room, +with a stretcher and two packing-cases as furniture, and with my little +dog for company. Thirty-six armed African natives were set to guard +night and day at the doors and windows of the house; and I was only +allowed to go out during certain hours in the middle of the day to fetch +water from the fountain, or to buy what I needed, and I was allowed to +receive no books, newspapers or magazines. A high barbed wire fence, +guarded by armed natives, surrounded the village, through which it would +have been death to try to escape. All day the pompoms from the armoured +trains, that paraded on the railway line nine miles distant, could be +heard at intervals; and at night the talk of the armed natives as they +pressed against the windows, and the tramp of the watch with the endless +"Who goes there?" as they walked round the wire fence through the long, +dark hours, when one was allowed neither to light a candle nor strike +a match. When a conflict was fought near by, the dying and wounded were +brought in; three men belonging to our little village were led out to +execution; death sentences were read in our little market-place; our +prison was filled with our fellow-countrymen; and we did not know +from hour to hour what the next would bring to any of us. Under these +conditions I felt it necessary I should resolutely force my thought at +times from the horror of the world around me, to dwell on some abstract +question, and it was under these circumstances that this little book was +written; being a remembrance mainly drawn from one chapter of the larger +book. The armed native guards standing against the uncurtained windows, +it was impossible to open the shutters, and the room was therefore +always so dark that even the physical act of writing was difficult. + +A year and a half after, when the war was over and peace had been +proclaimed for above four months, I with difficulty obtained a permit to +visit the Transvaal. I found among the burnt fragments the leathern back +of my book intact, the front half of the leaves burnt away; the back +half of the leaves next to the cover still all there, but so browned and +scorched with the flames that they broke as you touched them; and there +was nothing left but to destroy it. I even then felt a hope that at some +future time I might yet rewrite the entire book. But life is short; and +I have found that not only shall I never rewrite the book, but I +shall not have the health even to fill out and harmonise this little +remembrance from it. + +It is therefore with considerable pain that I give out this fragment. I +am only comforted by the thought that perhaps, all sincere and earnest +search after truth, even where it fails to reach it, yet, often comes +so near to it, that other minds more happily situated may be led, by +pointing out its very limitations and errors, to obtain a larger view. + +I have dared to give this long and very uninteresting explanation, not +at all because I have wished by giving the conditions under which this +little book was written, to make excuse for any repetitions or lack of +literary perfection, for these things matter very little; but, because +(and this matters very much) it might lead to misconception on the +subject-matter itself if its genesis were not exactly understood. + +Not only is this book not a general view of the whole vast body +of phenomena connected with woman's position; but it is not even a +bird's-eye view of the whole question of woman's relation to labour. + +In the original book the matter of the parasitism of woman filled only +one chapter out of twelve, and it was mainly from this chapter that this +book was drawn. The question of the parasitism of woman is, I think, +very vital, very important; it explains many phenomena which nothing +else explains; and it will be of increasing importance. But for the +moment there are other aspects of woman's relation to labour practically +quite as pressing. In the larger book I had devoted one chapter entirely +to an examination of the work woman has done and still does in the +modern world, and the gigantic evils which arise from the fact that +her labour, especially domestic labour, often the most wearisome and +unending known to any section of the human race, is not adequately +recognised or recompensed. Especially on this point I have feared this +book might lead to a misconception, if by its great insistence on the +problem of sex parasitism, and the lighter dealing with other aspects, +it should lead to the impression that woman's domestic labour at the +present day (something quite distinct from, though indirectly connected +with, the sexual relation between man and woman) should not be highly +and most highly recognised and recompensed. I believe it will be in the +future, and then when woman gives up her independent field of labour for +domestic or marital duty of any kind, she will not receive her share +of the earnings of the man as a more or less eleemosynary benefaction, +placing her in a position of subjection, but an equal share, as the fair +division, in an equal partnership. (It may be objected that where a man +and woman have valued each other sufficiently to select one another from +all other humans for a lifelong physical union, it is an impertinence +to suppose there could be any necessity to adjust economic relations. In +love there is no first nor last! And that the desire of each must be to +excel the other in service. That this should be so is true; that it is +so now, in the case of union between two perfectly morally developed +humans, is also true, and that this condition may in a distant future be +almost universal is certainly true. But dealing with this matter as a +practical question today, we have to consider not what should be, or +what may be, but what, given traditions and institutions of our +societies, is, today.) Especially I have feared that the points dealt +with in this little book, when taken apart from other aspects of the +question, might lead to the conception that it was intended to express +the thought, that it was possible or desirable that woman in addition to +her child-bearing should take from man his share in the support and care +of his offspring or of the woman who fulfilled with regard to himself +domestic duties of any kind. In that chapter in the original book +devoted to the consideration of man's labour in connection with woman +and with his offspring more than one hundred pages were devoted to +illustrating how essential to the humanising and civilising of man, and +therefore of the whole race, was an increased sense of sexual and +paternal responsibility, and an increased justice towards woman as a +domestic labourer. In the last half of the same chapter I dealt at great +length with what seems to me an even more pressing practical sex +question at this moment--man's attitude towards those women who are not +engaged in domestic labour; toward that vast and always increasing body +of women, who as modern conditions develop are thrown out into the +stream of modern economic life to sustain themselves and often others by +their own labour; and who yet are there bound hand and foot, not by the +intellectual or physical limitations of their nature, but by artificial +constrictions and conventions, the remnants of a past condition of +society. It is largely this maladjustment, which, deeply studied in all +its ramifications, will be found to lie as the taproot and central +source of the most terrible of the social diseases that afflict us. + +The fact that for equal work equally well performed by a man and by +a woman, it is ordained that the woman on the ground of her sex alone +shall receive a less recompense, is the nearest approach to a wilful +and unqualified "wrong" in the whole relation of woman to society today. +That males of enlightenment and equity can for an hour tolerate the +existence of this inequality has seemed to me always incomprehensible; +and it is only explainable when one regards it as a result of the +blinding effects of custom and habit. Personally, I have felt so +profoundly on this subject, that this, with one other point connected +with woman's sexual relation to man, are the only matters connected with +woman's position, in thinking of which I have always felt it necessary +almost fiercely to crush down indignation and to restrain it, if I would +maintain an impartiality of outlook. I should therefore much regret if +the light and passing manner in which this question has been touched on +in this little book made it seem of less vital importance than I hold +it. + +In the last chapter of the original book, the longest, and I believe the +most important, I dealt with the problems connected with marriage and +the personal relations of men and women in the modern world. In it I +tried to give expression to that which I hold to be a great truth, and +one on which I should not fear to challenge the verdict of long future +generations--that, the direction in which the endeavour of woman to +readjust herself to the new conditions of life is leading today, is +not towards a greater sexual laxity, or promiscuity, or to an increased +self-indulgence, but toward a higher appreciation of the sacredness of +all sex relations, and a clearer perception of the sex relation between +man and woman as the basis of human society, on whose integrity, beauty +and healthfulness depend the health and beauty of human life, as a +whole. Above all, that it will lead to a closer, more permanent, more +emotionally and intellectually complete and intimate relation between +the individual man and woman. And if in the present disco-ordinate +transitional stage of our social growth it is found necessary to +allow of readjustment by means of divorce, it will not be because +such readjustments will be regarded lightly, but rather, as when, in a +complex and delicate mechanism moved by a central spring, we allow +in the structure for the readjustment and regulation of that spring, +because on its absolute perfection of action depends the movement of the +whole mechanism. In the last pages of the book, I tried to express what +seems to me a most profound truth often overlooked--that as humanity +and human societies pass on slowly from their present barbarous and +semi-savage condition in matters of sex into a higher, it will be found +increasingly, that over and above its function in producing and sending +onward the physical stream of life (a function which humanity shares +with the most lowly animal and vegetable forms of life, and which even +by some noted thinkers of the present day seems to be regarded as its +only possible function,) that sex and the sexual relation between man +and woman have distinct aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual functions +and ends, apart entirely from physical reproduction. That noble as is +the function of the physical reproduction of humanity by the union of +man and woman, rightly viewed, that union has in it latent, other, and +even higher forms, of creative energy and life-dispensing power, and +that its history on earth has only begun. As the first wild rose when it +hung from its stem with its centre of stamens and pistils and its single +whorl of pale petals, had only begun its course, and was destined, as +the ages passed, to develop stamen upon stamen and petal upon petal, +till it assumed a hundred forms of joy and beauty. + +And, it would indeed almost seem, that, on the path toward the higher +development of sexual life on earth, as man has so often had to lead +in other paths, that here it is perhaps woman, by reason of those very +sexual conditions which in the past have crushed and trammelled her, who +is bound to lead the way, and man to follow. So that it may be at last, +that sexual love--that tired angel who through the ages has presided +over the march of humanity, with distraught eyes, and feather-shafts +broken, and wings drabbled in the mires of lust and greed, and golden +locks caked over with the dust of injustice and oppression--till those +looking at him have sometimes cried in terror, "He is the Evil and +not the Good of life!" and have sought, if it were not possible, to +exterminate him--shall yet, at last, bathed from the mire and dust of +ages in the streams of friendship and freedom, leap upwards, with white +wings spread, resplendent in the sunshine of a distant future--the +essentially Good and Beautiful of human existence. + +I have given this long and very wearisome explanation of the scope and +origin of this little book, because I feel that it might lead to grave +misunderstanding were it not understood how it came to be written. + +I have inscribed it to my friend, Lady Constance Lytton; not because +I think it worthy of her, nor yet because of the splendid part she +has played in the struggle of the women fighting today in England for +certain forms of freedom for all women. It is, if I may be allowed +without violating the sanctity of a close personal friendship so to +say, because she, with one or two other men and women I have known, have +embodied for me the highest ideal of human nature, in which intellectual +power and strength of will are combined with an infinite tenderness and +a wide human sympathy; a combination which, whether in the person of the +man or the woman, is essential to the existence of the fully rounded and +harmonised human creature; and which an English woman of genius summed +in one line when she cried in her invocation of her great French +sister:-- + +"Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man!" + +One word more I should like to add, as I may not again speak or write +on this subject. I should like to say to the men and women of the +generations which will come after us--"You will look back at us with +astonishment! You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished +so little; at the, to you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did +not take; at the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we +sat down passive; at the great truths staring us in the face, which we +failed to see; at the truths we grasped at, but could never quite +get our fingers round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so +little--but, what you will never know is how it was thinking of you and +for you, that we struggled as we did and accomplished the little which +we have done; that it was in the thought of your larger realisation and +fuller life, that we found consolation for the futilities of our own." + +"What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me." + +O.S. + + + +Chapter I. Parasitism. + +In that clamour which has arisen in the modern world, where now this, +and then that, is demanded for and by large bodies of modern women, he +who listens carefully may detect as a keynote, beneath all the clamour, +a demand which may be embodied in such a cry as this: Give us labour and +the training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves +alone, but for the race. + +If this demand be logically expanded, it will take such form as this: +Give us labour! For countless ages, for thousands, millions it may be, +we have laboured. When first man wandered, the naked, newly-erected +savage, and hunted and fought, we wandered with him: each step of +his was ours. Within our bodies we bore the race, on our shoulders we +carried it; we sought the roots and plants for its food; and, when man's +barbed arrow or hook brought the game, our hands dressed it. Side by +side, the savage man and the savage woman, we wandered free together and +laboured free together. And we were contented! + +Then a change came. + +We ceased from our wanderings, and, camping upon one spot of earth, +again the labours of life were divided between us. While man went forth +to hunt, or to battle with the foe who would have dispossessed us of +all, we laboured on the land. We hoed the earth, we reaped the grain, +we shaped the dwellings, we wove the clothing, we modelled the earthen +vessels and drew the lines upon them, which were humanity's first +attempt at domestic art; we studied the properties and uses of plants, +and our old women were the first physicians of the race, as, often, its +first priests and prophets. + +We fed the race at our breast, we bore it on our shoulders; through us +it was shaped, fed, and clothed. Labour more toilsome and unending than +that of man was ours; yet did we never cry out that it was too heavy for +us. While savage man lay in the sunshine on his skins, resting, that he +might be fitted for war or the chase, or while he shaped his weapons of +death, he ate and drank that which our hands had provided for him; and +while we knelt over our grindstone, or hoed in the fields, with one +child in our womb, perhaps, and one on our back, toiling till the +young body was old before its time--did we ever cry out that the labour +allotted to us was too hard for us? Did we not know that the woman who +threw down her burden was as a man who cast away his shield in battle--a +coward and a traitor to his race? Man fought--that was his work; we fed +and nurtured the race--that was ours. We knew that upon our labours, +even as upon man's, depended the life and well-being of the people whom +we bore. We endured our toil, as man bore his wounds, silently; and we +were content. + +Then again a change came. + +Ages passed, and time was when it was no longer necessary that all men +should go to the hunt or the field of war; and when only one in five, +or one in ten, or but one in twenty, was needed continually for these +labours. Then our fellow-man, having no longer full occupation in his +old fields of labour, began to take his share in ours. He too began to +cultivate the field, to build the house, to grind the corn (or make +his male slaves do it); and the hoe, and the potter's tools, and the +thatching-needle, and at last even the grindstones which we first had +picked up and smoothed to grind the food for our children, began to pass +from our hands into his. The old, sweet life of the open fields was ours +no more; we moved within the gates, where the time passes more slowly +and the world is sadder than in the air outside; but we had our own work +still, and were content. + +If, indeed, we might no longer grow the food for our people, we were +still its dressers; if we did not always plant and prepare the flax and +hemp, we still wove the garments for our race; if we did no longer raise +the house walls, the tapestries that covered them were the work of our +hands; we brewed the ale, and the simples which were used as medicines +we distilled and prescribed; and, close about our feet, from birth +to manhood, grew up the children whom we had borne; their voices +were always in our ears. At the doors of our houses we sat with our +spinning-wheels, and we looked out across the fields that were once ours +to labour in--and were contented. Lord's wife, peasant's, or burgher's, +we all still had our work to do! + +A thousand years ago, had one gone to some great dame, questioning her +why she did not go out a-hunting or a-fighting, or enter the great hall +to dispense justice and confer upon the making of laws, she would have +answered: "Am I a fool that you put to me such questions? Have I not a +hundred maidens to keep at work at spinning-wheels and needles? With my +own hands daily do I not dispense bread to over a hundred folk? In the +great hall go and see the tapestries I with my maidens have created by +the labour of years, and which we shall labour over for twenty more, +that my children's children may see recorded the great deeds of their +forefathers. In my store-room are there not salves and simples, that my +own hands have prepared for the healing of my household and the sick in +the country round? Ill would it go indeed, if when the folk came home +from war and the chase of wild beasts, weary or wounded, they found all +the womenfolk gone out a-hunting and a-fighting, and none there to dress +their wounds, or prepare their meat, or guide and rule the household! +Better far might my lord and his followers come and help us with our +work, than that we should go to help them! You are surely bereft of all +wit. What becomes of the country if the women forsake their toil?" + +And the burgher's wife, asked why she did not go to labour in her +husband's workshop, or away into the market-place, or go a-trading to +foreign countries, would certainly have answered: "I am too busy to +speak with such as you! The bread is in the oven (already I smell it +a-burning), the winter is coming on, and my children lack good woollen +hose and my husband needs a warm coat. I have six vats of ale all +a-brewing, and I have daughters whom I must teach to spin and sew, and +the babies are clinging round my knees. And you ask me why I do not go +abroad to seek for new labours! Godsooth! Would you have me to leave my +household to starve in summer and die of cold in winter, and my children +to go untrained, while I gad about to seek for other work? A man must +have his belly full and his back covered before all things in life. Who, +think you, would spin and bake and brew, and rear and train my babes, +if I went abroad? New labour, indeed, when the days are not long enough, +and I have to toil far into the night! I have no time to talk with +fools! Who will rear and shape the nation if I do not?" + +And the young maiden at the cottage door, beside her wheel, asked why +she was content and did not seek new fields of labour, would surely have +answered: "Go away, I have no time to listen to you. Do you not see that +I am spinning here that I too may have a home of my own? I am weaving +the linen garments that shall clothe my household in the long years to +come! I cannot marry till the chest upstairs be full. You cannot hear +it, but as I sit here alone, spinning, far off across the hum of my +spinning-wheel I hear the voices of my little unborn children calling to +me--'O mother, mother, make haste, that we may be!'--and sometimes, when +I seem to be looking out across my wheel into the sunshine, it is the +blaze of my own fireside that I see, and the light shines on the faces +round it; and I spin on the faster and the steadier when I think of what +shall come. Do you ask me why I do not go out and labour in the fields +with the lad whom I have chosen? Is his work, then, indeed more needed +than mine for the raising of that home that shall be ours? Oh, very hard +I will labour, for him and for my children, in the long years to come. +But I cannot stop to talk to you now. Far off, over the hum of my +spinning-wheel, I hear the voices of my children calling, and I must +hurry on. Do you ask me why I do not seek for labour whose hands are +full to bursting? Who will give folk to the nation if I do not?" + +Such would have been our answer in Europe in the ages of the past, if +asked the question why we were contented with our field of labour and +sought no other. Man had his work; we had ours. We knew that we upbore +our world on our shoulders; and that through the labour of our hands it +was sustained and strengthened--and we were contented. + +But now, again a change has come. + +Something that is entirely new has entered into the field of human +labour, and left nothing as it was. + +In man's fields of toil, change has accomplished, and is yet more +quickly accomplishing, itself. + +On lands where once fifty men and youths toiled with their cattle, today +one steam-plough, guided by but two pair of hands, passes swiftly; and +an automatic reaper in one day reaps and binds and prepares for the +garner the produce of fields it would have taken a hundred strong male +arms to harvest in the past. The iron tools and weapons, only one +of which it took an ancient father of our race long months of stern +exertion to extract from ore and bring to shape and temper, are now +poured forth by steam-driven machinery as a millpond pours forth its +water; and even in war, the male's ancient and especial field of labour, +a complete reversal of the ancient order has taken place. Time was when +the size and strength of the muscles in a man's legs and arms, and the +strength and size of his body, largely determined his fighting powers, +and an Achilles or a Richard Coeur de Lion, armed only with his spear +or battle-axe, made a host fly before him; today the puniest mannikin +behind a modern Maxim gun may mow down in perfect safety a phalanx of +heroes whose legs and arms and physical powers a Greek god might have +envied, but who, having not the modern machinery of war, fall powerless. +The day of the primary import to humanity of the strength in man's +extensor and flexor muscles, whether in labours of war or of peace, is +gone by for ever; and the day of the all-importance of the culture and +activity of man's brain and nerve has already come. + +The brain of one consumptive German chemist, who in his laboratory +compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of the modern +peoples than ten thousand soldierly legs and arms; and the man who +invents one new labour-saving machine may, through the cerebration of +a few days, have performed the labour it would otherwise have taken +hundreds of thousands of his lusty fellows decades to accomplish. + +Year by year, month by month, and almost hour by hour, this change is +increasingly showing itself in the field of the modern labour; and crude +muscular force, whether in man or beast, sinks continually in its value +in the world of human toil; while intellectual power, virility, and +activity, and that culture which leads to the mastery of the inanimate +forces of nature, to the invention of machinery, and to that delicate +manipulative skill often required in guiding it, becomes ever of greater +and greater importance to the race. Already today we tremble on the +verge of a discovery, which may come tomorrow or the next day, when, +through the attainment of a simple and cheap method of controlling +some widely diffused, everywhere accessible, natural force (such, for +instance, as the force of the great tidal wave) there will at once and +for ever pass away even that comparatively small value which still, in +our present stage of material civilisation, clings to the expenditure +of mere crude, mechanical, human energy; and the creature, however +physically powerful, who can merely pull, push, and lift, much after the +manner of a machine, will have no further value in the field of human +labour. + +Therefore, even today, we find that wherever that condition which we +call modern civilisation prevails, and in proportion as it tends to +prevail--wherever steam-power, electricity, or the forces of wind +and water, are compelled by man's intellectual activity to act as the +motor-powers in the accomplishment of human toil, wherever the delicate +adaptions of scientifically constructed machinery are taking the place +of the simple manipulation of the human hand--there has arisen, all the +world over, a large body of males who find that their ancient fields of +labour have slipped or are slipping from them, and who discover that +the modern world has no place or need for them. At the gates of +our dockyards, in our streets, and in our fields, are to be found +everywhere, in proportion as modern civilisation is really dominant, +men whose bulk and mere animal strength would have made them as warriors +invaluable members of any primitive community, and who would have been +valuable even in any simpler civilisation than our own, as machines +of toil; but who, owing to lack of intellectual or delicate manual +training, have now no form of labour to offer society which it stands +really in need of, and who therefore tend to form our Great Male +Unemployed--a body which finds the only powers it possesses so little +needed by its fellows that, in return for its intensest physical labour, +it hardly earns the poorest sustenance. The material conditions of life +have been rapidly modified, and the man has not been modified with them; +machinery has largely filled his place in his old field of labour, and +he has found no new one. + +It is from these men, men who, viewed from the broad humanitarian +standpoint, are often of the most lovable and interesting type, and +who might in a simpler state of society, where physical force was the +dominating factor, have been the heroes, leaders, and chiefs of their +people, that there arises in the modern world the bitter cry of the male +unemployed: "Give us labour or we die!" (The problem of the unemployed +male is, of course, not nearly so modern as that of the unemployed +female. It may be said in England to have taken its rise in almost its +present form as early as the fifteenth century, when economic changes +began to sever the agricultural labourer from the land, and rob him of +his ancient forms of social toil. Still, in its most acute form, it may +be called a modern problem.) + +Yet it is only upon one, and a comparatively small, section of the +males of the modern civilised world that these changes in the material +conditions of life have told in such fashion as to take all useful +occupation from them and render them wholly or partly worthless to +society. If the modern man's field of labour has contracted at one end +(the physical), at the other (the intellectual) it has immeasurably +expanded! If machinery and the command of inanimate motor-forces +have rendered of comparatively little value the male's mere physical +motor-power, the demand upon his intellectual faculties, the call +for the expenditure of nervous energy, and the exercise of delicate +manipulative skill in the labour of human life, have immeasurably +increased. + +In a million new directions forms of honoured and remunerative social +labour are opening up before the feet of the modern man, which his +ancestors never dreamed of; and day by day they yet increase in +numbers and importance. The steamship, the hydraulic lift, the patent +road-maker, the railway-train, the electric tram-car, the steam-driven +mill, the Maxim gun and the torpedo boat, once made, may perform their +labours with the guidance and assistance of comparatively few hands; but +a whole army of men of science, engineers, clerks, and highly-trained +workmen is necessary for their invention, construction, and maintenance. +In the domains of art, of science, of literature, and above all in the +field of politics and government, an almost infinite extension has taken +place in the fields of male labour. Where in primitive times woman was +often the only builder, and patterns she daubed on her hut walls or +traced on her earthen vessels the only attempts at domestic art; and +where later but an individual here and there was required to design +a king's palace or a god's temple or to ornament it with statues or +paintings, today a mighty army of men, a million strong, is employed in +producing plastic art alone, both high and low, from the traceries on +wall-paper and the illustrations in penny journals, to the production +of the pictures and statues which adorn the national collections, and +a mighty new field of toil has opened before the anciently hunting and +fighting male. Where once one ancient witch-doctress may have been the +only creature in a whole district who studied the nature of herbs and +earths, or a solitary wizard experimenting on poisons was the only +individual in a whole territory interrogating nature; and where later, +a few score of alchemists and astrologers only were engaged in examining +the structure of substances, or the movement of planets, today thousands +of men in every civilised community are labouring to unravel the +mysteries of nature, and the practical chemist, the physician, the +anatomist, the engineer, the astronomer, the mathematician, the +electrician, form a mighty and always increasingly important army of +male labourers. Where once an isolated bard supplied a nation with its +literatures, or where later a few thousand priests and men of letters +wrote and transcribed for the few to read, today literature gives labour +to a multitude almost as countless as a swarm of locusts. From the +penny-a-liner to the artist and thinker, the demand for their labour +continually increases. Where one town-crier with stout legs and lusty +lungs was once all-sufficient to spread the town and country news, a +score of men now sit daily pen in hand, preparing the columns of the +morning's paper, and far into the night a hundred compositors are +engaged in a labour which requires a higher culture of brain and finger +than most ancient kings and rulers possessed. Even in the labours of +war, the most brutal and primitive of the occupations lingering on into +civilised life from the savage state, the new demand for labour of an +intellectual kind is enormous. The invention, construction, and working +of one Krupp gun, though its mere discharge hardly demands more crude +muscular exertion than a savage expends in throwing his boomerang, yet +represents an infinitude of intellectual care and thought, far greater +than that which went to the shaping of all the weapons of a primitive +army. Above all, in the domain of politics and government, where once a +king or queen, aided by a handful of councillors, was alone practically +concerned in the labours of national guidance or legislation; today, +owing to the rapid means of intercommunication, printing, and the +consequent diffusion of political and social information throughout a +territory, it has become possible, for the first time, for all adults +in a large community to keep themselves closely informed on all national +affairs; and in every highly-civilised state the ordinary male has been +almost compelled to take his share, however small, in the duties and +labours of legislation and government. Thus there has opened before the +mass of men a vast new sphere of labour undreamed of by their ancestors. +In every direction the change which material civilisation has wrought, +while it has militated against that comparatively small section of males +who have nothing to offer society but the expenditure of their untrained +muscular energy (inflicting much and often completely unmerited +suffering upon them), has immeasurably extended the field of male labour +as a whole. Never before in the history of the earth has the man's field +of remunerative toil been so wide, so interesting, so complex, and in +its results so all-important to society; never before has the male sex, +taken as a whole, been so fully and strenuously employed. + +So much is this the case, that, exactly as in the earlier conditions of +society an excessive and almost crushing amount of the most important +physical labour generally devolved upon the female, so under modern +civilised conditions among the wealthier and fully civilised classes, +an unduly excessive share of labour tends to devolve upon the male. That +almost entirely modern, morbid condition, affecting brain and nervous +system, and shortening the lives of thousands in modern civilised +societies, which is vulgarly known as "overwork" or "nervous breakdown," +is but one evidence of the even excessive share of mental toil devolving +upon the modern male of the cultured classes, who, in addition to +maintaining himself, has frequently dependent upon him a larger or +smaller number of entirely parasitic females. But, whatever the result +of the changes of modern civilisation may be with regard to the male, +he certainly cannot complain that they have as a whole robbed him of +his fields of labour, diminished his share in the conduct of life, or +reduced him to a condition of morbid inactivity. + +In our woman's field of labour, matters have tended to shape themselves +wholly otherwise! The changes which have taken place during the last +centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term "modern +civilisation," have tended to rob woman, not merely in part but almost +wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and +social labour; and, where there has not been a determined and conscious +resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to +her new and compensatory fields. + +It is this fact which constitutes our modern "Woman's Labour Problem." + +Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings +steam-driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often +those of men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no +longer say, proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our peoples. + +Our hoes and our grindstones passed from us long ago, when the ploughman +and the miller took our place; but for a time we kept fast possession of +the kneading-trough and the brewing-vat. Today, steam often shapes our +bread, and the loaves are set down at our very door--it may be by a +man-driven motor-car! The history of our household drinks we know no +longer; we merely see them set before us at our tables. Day by day +machine-prepared and factory-produced viands take a larger and larger +place in the dietary of rich and poor, till the working man's wife +places before her household little that is of her own preparation; while +among the wealthier classes, so far has domestic change gone that men +are not unfrequently found labouring in our houses and kitchens, and +even standing behind our chairs ready to do all but actually place the +morsels of food between our feminine lips. The army of rosy milkmaids +has passed away for ever, to give place to the cream-separator and the, +largely, male-and-machinery manipulated butter pat. In every direction +the ancient saw, that it was exclusively the woman's sphere to prepare +the viands for her household, has become, in proportion as civilisation +has perfected itself, an antiquated lie. + +Even the minor domestic operations are tending to pass out of the circle +of woman's labour. In modern cities our carpets are beaten, our windows +cleaned, our floors polished, by machinery, or extra domestic, and often +male labour. Change has gone much farther than to the mere taking +from us of the preparation of the materials from which the clothing is +formed. Already the domestic sewing-machine, which has supplanted almost +entirely the ancient needle, begins to become antiquated, and a thousand +machines driven in factories by central engines are supplying not only +the husband and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of +clothing from vest to jacket; while among the wealthy classes, the +male dress-designer with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers +is helping finally to explode the ancient myth, that it is woman's +exclusive sphere, and a part of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the +garments she or her household wear. + +Year by year, day by day, there is a silently working but determined +tendency for the sphere of woman's domestic labours to contract itself; +and the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex +condition which we term "modern civilisation" is advanced. + +It manifests itself more in England and America than in Italy and Spain, +more in great cities than in country places, more among the wealthier +classes than the poorer, and is an unfailing indication of advancing +modern civilisation. (There is, indeed, often something pathetic in the +attitude of many a good old mother of the race, who having survived, +here and there, into the heart of our modern civilisation, is sorely +puzzled by the change in woman's duties and obligations. She may be +found looking into the eyes of some ancient crone, who, like herself, +has survived from a previous state of civilisation, seeking there a +confirmation of a view of life of which a troublous doubt has crept +even into her own soul. "I," she cries, "always cured my own hams, and +knitted my own socks, and made up all the linen by hand. We always did +it when we were girls--but now my daughters object!" And her old +crone answers her? "Yes, we did it; it's the right thing; but it's so +expensive. It's so much cheaper to buy things ready made!" And they +shake their heads and go their ways, feeling that the world is strangely +out of joint when duty seems no more duty. Such women are, in truth, +like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her ducklings to +the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is left but +baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to it, and +walks about with flapping wings and anxious quack, trying to induce them +to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far off +the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up +to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that +is growing up beside it; and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on +the baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And +they leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to +seek for new pastures--perhaps to lose themselves upon the way?--perhaps +to find them? To the old mother one is inclined to say, "Ah, good old +mother duck, can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the +water back into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter +when it was there, but it has gone for ever; and, would you and yours +swim again, it must be in other waters." New machinery, new duties.) + +But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women's material +domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient +field of labour. + +Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult +years were reached. Hers was the training and influence which shaped +them. From the moment when the infant first lay on her breast, till her +daughters left her for marriage and her sons went to take share in man's +labour, they were continually under the mother's influence. Today, +so complex have become even the technical and simpler branches of +education, so mighty and inexorable are the demands which modern +civilisation makes for specialised instruction and training for all +individuals who are to survive and retain their usefulness under modern +conditions, that, from the earliest years of its life, the child is of +necessity largely removed from the hands of the mother, and placed +in those of the specialised instructor. Among the wealthier classes, +scarcely is the infant born when it passes into the hands of the trained +nurse, and from hers on into the hands of the qualified teacher; till, +at nine or ten, the son in certain countries often leaves his home for +ever for the public school, to pass on to the college and university; +while the daughter, in the hands of trained instructors and dependents, +owes in the majority of cases hardly more of her education or formation +to maternal toil. While even among our poorer classes, the infant +school, and the public school; and later on the necessity for manual +training, takes the son and often the daughter as completely, and always +increasingly as civilisation advances, from the mother's control. So +marked has this change in woman's ancient field of labour become, that a +woman of almost any class may have borne many children and yet in early +middle age be found sitting alone in an empty house, all her offspring +gone from her to receive training and instruction at the hands of +others. The ancient statement that the training and education of her +offspring is exclusively the duty of the mother, however true it +may have been with regard to a remote past, has become an absolute +misstatement; and the woman who should at the present day insist on +entirely educating her own offspring would, in nine cases out of ten, +inflict an irreparable injury on them, because she is incompetent. + +But, if possible, yet more deeply and radically have the changes of +modern civilisation touched our ancient field of labour in another +direction--in that very portion of the field of human labour which is +peculiarly and organically ours, and which can never be wholly taken +from us. Here the shrinkage has been larger than in any other direction, +and touches us as women more vitally. + +Time was, and still is, among almost all primitive and savage folk, when +the first and all-important duty of the female to her society was +to bear, to bear much, and to bear unceasingly! On her adequate and +persistent performance of this passive form of labour, and of her +successful feeding of her young from her own breast, and rearing it, +depended, not merely the welfare, but often the very existence, of +her tribe or nation. Where, as is the case among almost all barbarous +peoples, the rate of infant mortality is high; where the unceasing +casualties resulting from war, the chase, and acts of personal violence +tend continually to reduce the number of adult males; where, surgical +knowledge being still in its infancy, most wounds are fatal; where, +above all, recurrent pestilence and famine, unfailing if of irregular +recurrence, decimated the people, it has been all important that woman +should employ her creative power to its very uttermost limits if the +race were not at once to dwindle and die out. "May thy wife's womb never +cease from bearing," is still today the highest expression of goodwill +on the part of a native African chief to his departing guest. For, not +only does the prolific woman in the primitive state contribute to the +wealth and strength of her nation as a whole, but to that of her own +male companion and of her family. Where the social conditions of life +are so simple that, in addition to bearing and suckling the child, it +is reared and nourished through childhood almost entirely through the +labour and care of the mother, requiring no expenditure of tribal +or family wealth on its training or education, its value as an adult +enormously outweighs, both to the state and the male, the trouble and +expense of rearing it, which falls almost entirely on the individual +woman who bears it. The man who has twenty children to become warriors +and labourers is by so much the richer and the more powerful than he who +has but one; while the state whose women are prolific and labour for and +rear their children stands so far insured against destruction. Incessant +and persistent child-bearing is thus truly the highest duty and the most +socially esteemed occupation of the primitive woman, equalling fully in +social importance the labour of the man as hunter and warrior. + +Even under those conditions of civilisation which have existed in the +centuries which divide primitive savagery from high civilisation, the +demand for continuous, unbroken child-bearing on the part of the woman +as her loftiest social duty has generally been hardly less imperious. +Throughout the Middle Ages of Europe, and down almost to our own day, +the rate of infant mortality was almost as large as in a savage state; +medical ignorance destroyed innumerable lives; antiseptic surgery being +unknown, serious wounds were still almost always fatal; in the low +state of sanitary science, plagues such as those which in the reign +of Justinian swept across the civilised world from India to Northern +Europe, well nigh depopulating the globe, or the Black Death of 1349, +which in England alone swept away more than half the population of the +island, were but extreme forms of the destruction of population going on +continually as the result of zymotic disease; while wars were not +merely far more common but, owing to the famines which almost invariably +followed them, were far more destructive to human life than in our own +days, and deaths by violence, whether at the hands of the state or as +the result of personal enmity, were of daily occurrence in all lands. +Under these conditions abstinence on the part of woman from incessant +child-bearing might have led to almost the same serious diminution or +even extinction of her people, as in the savage state; while the very +existence of her civilisation depended on the production of an immense +number of individuals as beasts of burden, without the expenditure +of whose crude muscular force in physical labour of agriculture and +manufacture those intermediate civilisations would, in the absence of +machinery, have been impossible. Twenty men had to be born, fed at the +breast, and reared by women to perform the crude brute labour which is +performed today by one small, well-adjusted steam crane; and the demand +for large masses of human creatures as mere reservoirs of motor force +for accomplishing the simplest processes was imperative. So strong, +indeed, was the consciousness of the importance to society of continuous +child-bearing on the part of woman, that as late as the middle of the +sixteenth century Martin Luther wrote: "If a woman becomes weary or at +last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, +she is there to do it;" and he doubtless gave expression, in a crude +and somewhat brutal form, to a conviction common to the bulk of his +contemporaries, both male and female. + +Today, this condition has almost completely reversed itself. + +The advance of science and the amelioration of the physical conditions +of life tend rapidly toward a diminution of human mortality. The infant +death-rate among the upper classes in modern civilisations has fallen +by more than one-half; while among poorer classes it is already, though +slowly, falling: the increased knowledge of the laws of sanitation has +made among all highly civilised peoples the depopulation by plague a +thing of the past, and the discoveries of the next twenty or thirty +years will probably do away for ever with the danger to man of zymotic +disease. Famines of the old desolating type have become an impossibility +where rapid means of transportation convey the superfluity of one land +to supply the lack of another; and war and deeds of violence, though +still lingering among us, have already become episodal in the lives of +nations as of individuals; while the vast advances in antiseptic surgery +have caused even the effects of wounds and dismemberments to become only +very partially fatal to human life. All these changes have tended to +diminish human mortality and protract human life; and they have today +already made it possible for a race not only to maintain its numbers, +but even to increase them, with a comparatively small expenditure of +woman's vitality in the passive labour of child-bearing. + +But yet more seriously has the demand for woman's labour as child-bearer +been diminished by change in another direction. + +Every mechanical invention which lessens the necessity for rough, +untrained, muscular, human labour, diminishes also the social demand +upon woman as the producer in large masses of such labourers. Already +throughout the modern civilised world we have reached a point at which +the social demand is not merely for human creatures in the bulk for use +as beasts of burden, but, rather, and only, for such human creatures as +shall be so trained and cultured as to be fitted for the performance of +the more complex duties of modern life. Not, now, merely for many men, +but, rather, for few men, and those few, well born and well instructed, +is the modern demand. And the woman who today merely produces twelve +children and suckles them, and then turns them loose on her society and +family, is regarded, and rightly so, as a curse and down draught, and +not the productive labourer, of her community. Indeed, so difficult and +expensive has become in the modern world the rearing and training of +even one individual, in a manner suited to fit it for coping with the +complexities and difficulties of civilised life, that, to the family as +well as to the state, unlimited fecundity on the part of the female has +already, in most cases, become irremediable evil; whether it be in the +case of the artisan, who at the cost of immense self-sacrifice must +support and train his children till their twelfth or fourteenth year, +if they are ever to become even skilled manual labourers, and who if his +family be large often sinks beneath the burden, allowing his offspring, +untaught and untrained, to become waste products of human life; or, in +that of the professional man, who by his mental toil is compelled to +support and educate, at immense expense, his sons till they are twenty +or older, and to sustain his daughters, often throughout their whole +lives should they not marry, and to whom a large family proves often no +less disastrous; while the state whose women produce recklessly large +masses of individuals in excess of those for whom they can provide +instruction and nourishment is a state, in so far, tending toward +deterioration. The commandment to the modern woman is now not simply +"Thou shalt bear," but rather, "Thou shalt not bear in excess of thy +power to rear and train satisfactorily;" and the woman who should +today appear at the door of a workhouse or the tribunal of the +poor-law guardians followed by her twelve infants, demanding honourable +sustenance for them and herself in return for the labour she had +undergone in producing them, would meet with but short shrift. And the +modern man who on his wedding-day should be greeted with the ancient +good wish, that he might become the father of twenty sons and twenty +daughters, would regard it as a malediction rather than a blessing. It +is certain that the time is now rapidly approaching when child-bearing +will be regarded rather as a lofty privilege, permissible only to +those who have shown their power rightly to train and provide for their +offspring, than a labour which in itself, and under whatever conditions +performed, is beneficial to society. (The difference between the +primitive and modern view on this matter is aptly and quaintly +illustrated by two incidents. Seeing a certain Bantu woman who appeared +better cared for, less hard worked, and happier than the mass of +her companions, we made inquiry, and found that she had two impotent +brothers; because of this she herself had not married, but had borne by +different men fourteen children, all of whom when grown she had given +to her brothers. "They are fond of me because I have given them so many +children, therefore I have not to work like the other women; and my +brothers give me plenty of mealies and milk," she replied, complacently, +when questioned, "and our family will not die out." And this person, +whose conduct was so emphatically anti-social on all sides when viewed +from the modern standpoint, was evidently regarded as pre-eminently of +value to her family and to society because of her mere fecundity. On the +other hand, a few weeks back appeared an account in the London papers +of an individual who, taken up at the East End for some brutal offence, +blubbered out in court that she was the mother of twenty children. +"You should be ashamed of yourself!" responded the magistrate; "a woman +capable of such conduct would be capable of doing anything!" and the +fine was remorselessly inflicted. Undoubtedly, if somewhat brutally, +the magistrate yet gave true voice to the modern view on the subject of +excessive and reckless child-bearing.) + +Further, owing partly to the diminished demand for child-bearing, rising +from the extreme difficulty and expense of rearing and education, and +to many other complex social causes, to which we shall return later, +millions of women in our modern societies are so placed as to be +absolutely compelled to go through life not merely childless, but +without sex relationship in any form whatever; while another mighty army +of women is reduced by the dislocations of our civilisation to accepting +sexual relationships which practically negate child-bearing, and whose +only product is physical and moral disease. + +Thus, it has come to pass that vast numbers of us are, by modern social +conditions, prohibited from child-bearing at all; and that even those +among us who are child-bearers are required, in proportion as the class +of race to which we belong stands high in the scale of civilisation, to +produce in most cases a limited number of offspring; so that even for +these of us, child-bearing and suckling, instead of filling the entire +circle of female life from the first appearance of puberty to the end of +middle age, becomes an episodal occupation, employing from three or four +to ten or twenty of the threescore-and-ten-years which are allotted to +human life. In such societies the statement (so profoundly true when +made with regard to most savage societies, and even largely true with +regard to those in the intermediate stages of civilisation) that the +main and continuous occupation of all women from puberty to age is the +bearing and suckling of children, and that this occupation must fully +satisfy all her needs for social labour and activity, becomes an +antiquated and unmitigated misstatement. + +Not only are millions of our women precluded from ever bearing a child, +but for those of us who do bear the demand is ever increasingly in +civilised societies coupled with the condition that if we would act +socially we must restrict our powers. (As regards modern civilised +nations, we find that those whose birthrate is the highest per woman are +by no means the happiest, most enlightened, or powerful; nor do we even +find that the population always increases in proportion to the births. +France, which in many respects leads in the van of civilisation, has +one of the lowest birthrates per woman in Europe; and among the free and +enlightened population of Switzerland and Scandinavia the birthrate is +often exceedingly low; while Ireland, one of the most unhappy and weak +of European nations, had long one of the highest birthrates, without +any proportional increase in population or power. With regard to the +different classes in one community, the same effect is observable. The +birthrate per woman is higher among the lowest and most ignorant classes +in the back slums of our great cities, than among the women of the upper +and cultured classes, mainly because the age at which marriages are +contracted always tends to become higher as the culture and intelligence +of individuals rises, but also because of the regulation of the number +of births after marriage. Yet the number of children reared to adult +years among the more intelligent classes probably equals or exceeds +those of the lowest, owing to the high rate of infant mortality where +births are excessive.) + +Looking round, then, with the uttermost impartiality we can command, +on the entire field of woman's ancient and traditional labours, we find +that fully three-fourths of it have shrunk away for ever, and that the +remaining fourth still tends to shrink. + +It is this great fact, so often and so completely overlooked, which lies +as the propelling force behind that vast and restless "Woman's Movement" +which marks our day. It is this fact, whether clearly and intellectually +grasped, or, as is more often the case, vaguely and painfully felt, +which awakes in the hearts of the ablest modern European women their +passionate, and at times it would seem almost incoherent, cry for new +forms of labour and new fields for the exercise of their powers. + +Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this: We do not ask that +the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life +flow backward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning-wheels be again +resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old +grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake +himself entirely to his ancient province of war and the chase, leaving +to us all domestic and civil labour. We do not even demand that society +shall immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a +child-bearer (deep and over-mastering as lies the hunger for motherhood +in every virile woman's heart!); neither do we demand that the children +whom we bear shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. +This, we know, cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone +for ever; no will of man can recall them; but this is our demand: We +demand that, in that strange new world that is arising alike upon +the man and the woman, where nothing is as it was, and all things are +assuming new shapes and relations, that in this new world we also shall +have our share of honoured and socially useful human toil, our full +half of the labour of the Children of Woman. We demand nothing more than +this, and we will take nothing less. This is our "WOMAN'S RIGHT!" + + + +Chapter II. Parasitism (continued). + +Is it to be, that, in the future, machinery and the captive motor-forces +of nature are largely to take the place of human hand and foot in +the labour of clothing and feeding the nations; are these branches +of industry to be no longer domestic labours?--then, we demand in the +factory, the warehouse, and the field, wherever machinery has usurped +our ancient labour-ground, that we also should have our place, as +guiders, controllers, and possessors. Is child-bearing to become the +labour of but a portion of our sex?--then we demand for those among +us who are allowed to take no share in it, compensatory and equally +honourable and important fields of social toil. Is the training of +human creatures to become a yet more and more onerous and laborious +occupation, their education and culture to become increasingly a high +art, complex and scientific?--if so, then, we demand that high and +complex culture and training which shall fit us for instructing the race +which we bring into the world. Is the demand for child-bearing to +become so diminished that, even in the lives of those among us who are +child-bearers, it shall fill no more than half a dozen years out of the +three-score-and-ten of human life?--then we demand that an additional +outlet be ours which shall fill up with dignity and value the tale +of the years not so employed. Is intellectual labour to take ever and +increasingly the place of crude muscular exertion in the labour of +life?--then we demand for ourselves that culture and the freedom +of action which alone can yield us the knowledge of life and the +intellectual vigour and strength which will enable us to undertake the +same share of mental which we have borne in the past in physical labours +of life. Are the rulers of the race to be no more its kings and queens, +but the mass of the peoples?--then we, one-half of the nations, demand +our full queens' share in the duties and labours of government and +legislation. Slowly but determinately, as the old fields of labour close +up and are submerged behind us, we demand entrance into the new. + +We make this demand, not for our own sakes alone, but for the succour of +the race. + +A horseman, riding along on a dark night in an unknown land, may chance +to feel his horse start beneath him; rearing, it may almost hurl him to +the earth: in the darkness he may curse his beast, and believe its aim +is simply to cast him off, and free itself for ever of its burden. +But when the morning dawns and lights the hills and valleys he has +travelled, looking backward, he may perceive that the spot where his +beast reared, planting its feet into the earth, and where it refused to +move farther on the old road, was indeed the edge of a mighty precipice, +down which one step more would have precipitated both horse and rider. +And he may then see that it was an instinct wiser than his own which +lead his creature, though in the dark, to leap backward, seeking a +new path along which both might travel. (Is it not recorded that even +Balaam's ass on which he rode saw the angel with flaming sword, but +Balaam saw it not?) + +In the confusion and darkness of the present, it may well seem to +some, that woman, in her desire to seek for new paths of labour and +employment, is guided only by an irresponsible impulse; or that she +seeks selfishly only her own good, at the cost of that of the race, +which she has so long and faithfully borne onward. But, when a clearer +future shall have arisen and the obscuring mists of the present have +been dissipated, may it not then be clearly manifest that not for +herself alone, but for her entire race, has woman sought her new paths? + +For let it be noted exactly what our position is, who today, as +women, are demanding new fields of labour and a reconstruction of our +relationship with life. + +It is often said that the labour problem before the modern woman and +that before the unemployed or partially or almost uselessly employed +male, are absolutely identical; and that therefore, when the male labour +problem of our age solves itself, that of the woman will of necessity +have met its solution also. + +This statement, with a certain specious semblance of truth, is yet, we +believe, radically and fundamentally false. It is true that both the +male and the female problems of our age have taken their rise largely +in the same rapid material changes which during the last centuries, +and more especially the last ninety years, have altered the face of the +human world. Both men and women have been robbed by those changes of +their ancient remunerative fields of social work: here the resemblance +stops. The male, from whom the changes of modern civilisation have taken +his ancient field of labour, has but one choice before him: he must find +new fields of labour, or he must perish. Society will not ultimately +support him in an absolutely quiescent and almost useless condition. +If he does not vigorously exert himself in some direction or other (the +direction may even be predatory) he must ultimately be annihilated. +Individual drones, both among the wealthiest and the poorest classes +(millionaires' sons, dukes, or tramps), may in isolated cases be +preserved, and allowed to reproduce themselves without any exertion +or activity of mind or body, but a vast body of males who, having lost +their old forms of social employment, should refuse in any way to exert +themselves or seek for new, would at no great length of time become +extinct. There never has been, and as far as can be seen, there never +will be, a time when the majority of the males in any society will be +supported by the rest of the males in a condition of perfect mental and +physical inactivity. "Find labour or die," is the choice ultimately put +before the human male today, as in the past; and this constitutes his +labour problem. (The nearest approach to complete parasitism on the part +of a vast body of males occurred, perhaps, in ancient Rome at the +time of the decay and downfall of the Empire, when the bulk of the +population, male as well as female, was fed on imported corn, wine, +and oil, and supplied even with entertainment, almost entirely without +exertion or labour of any kind; but this condition was of short +duration, and speedily contributed to the downfall of the diseased +Empire itself. Among the wealthy and so-called upper classes, the males +of various aristocracies have frequently tended to become completely +parasitic after a lapse of time, but such a condition has always been +met by a short and sharp remedy; and the class has fallen, or become +extinct. The condition of the males of the upper classes in France +before the Revolution affords an interesting illustration of this +point.) + +The labour of the man may not always be useful in the highest sense to +his society, or it may even be distinctly harmful and antisocial, as in +the case of the robber-barons of the Middle Ages, who lived by capturing +and despoiling all who passed by their castles; or as in the case of +the share speculators, stock-jobbers, ring-and-corner capitalists, and +monopolists of the present day, who feed upon the productive labours of +society without contributing anything to its welfare. But even males so +occupied are compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a +low intelligence in their callings; and, however injurious to their +societies, they run no personal risk of handing down effete and +enervated constitutions to their race. Whether beneficially or +unbeneficially, the human male must, generally speaking, employ his +intellect, or his muscle, or die. + +The position of the unemployed modern female is one wholly different. +The choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labour slip +from her, is not generally or often at the present day the choice +between finding new fields of labour, or death; but one far more serious +in its ultimate reaction on humanity as a whole--it is the choice +between finding new forms of labour or sinking slowly into a condition +of more or less complete and passive sex-parasitism! (It is not without +profound interest to note the varying phenomena of sex-parasitism as +they present themselves in the animal world, both in the male and in the +female form. Though among the greater number of species in the animal +world the female form is larger and more powerful rather than the male +(e.g., among birds of prey, such as eagles, falcons, vultures, &c., and +among fishes, insects, &c.), yet sex-parasitism appears among both sex +forms. In certain sea-creatures, for example, the female carries about +in the folds of her covering three or four minute and quite inactive +males, who are entirely passive and dependent upon her. Among termites, +on the other hand, the female has so far degenerated that she has +entirely lost the power of locomotion; she can no longer provide herself +or her offspring with nourishment, or defend or even clean herself; she +has become a mere passive, distended bag of eggs, without intelligence +or activity, she and her offspring existing through the exertions of +the workers of the community. Among other insects, such, for example, as +certain ticks, another form of female parasitism prevails, and while the +male remains a complex, highly active, and winded creature, the female, +fastening herself by the head into the flesh of some living animal +and sucking its blood, has lost wings and all activity, and power of +locomotion; having become a mere distended bladder, which when filled +with eggs bursts and ends a parasitic existence which has hardly been +life. It is not impossible, and it appears, indeed, highly probable, +that it has been this degeneration and parasitism on the part of the +female which has set its limitation to the evolution of ants, creatures +which, having reached a point of mental development in some respects +almost as high as that of man, have yet become curiously and immovably +arrested. The whole question of sex-parasitism among the lower animals +is one throwing suggestive and instructive side-lights on human social +problems, but is too extensive to be here entered on.) + +Again and again in the history of the past, when among human creatures +a certain stage of material civilisation has been reached, a curious +tendency has manifested itself for the human female to become more +or less parasitic; social conditions tend to rob her of all forms +of active, conscious, social labour, and to reduce her, like the +field-tick, to the passive exercise of her sex functions alone. And the +result of this parasitism has invariably been the decay in vitality and +intelligence of the female, followed after a longer or shorter period by +that of her male descendants and her entire society. + +Nevertheless, in the history of the past the dangers of the +sex-parasitism have never threatened more than a small section of the +females of the human race, those exclusively of some comparatively +small dominant race or class; the mass of women beneath them being +still compelled to assume many forms of strenuous activity. It is at +the present day, and under the peculiar conditions of our modern +civilisation, that for the first time sex-parasitism has become a +danger, more or less remote, to the mass of civilised women, perhaps +ultimately to all. + +In the very early stages of human growth, the sexual parasitism and +degeneration of the female formed no possible source of social danger. +Where the conditions of life rendered it inevitable that all the labour +of a community should be performed by the members of that community for +themselves, without the assistance of slaves or machinery, the tendency +has always been rather to throw an excessive amount of social labour on +the female. Under no conditions, at no time, in no place, in the history +of the world have the males of any period, of any nation, or of any +class, shown the slightest inclination to allow their own females to +become inactive or parasitic, so long as the actual muscular labour +of feeding and clothing them would in that case have devolved upon +themselves! + +The parasitism of the human female becomes a possibility only when a +point in civilisation is reached (such as that which was attained in the +ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome, Persia, Assyria, India, and such +as today exists in many of the civilisations of the East, such as those +of China and Turkey), when, owing to the extensive employment of the +labour of slaves, or of subject races or classes, the dominant race or +class has become so liberally supplied with the material goods of life, +that mere physical toil on the part of its own female members has become +unnecessary. It is when this point has been reached, and never +before, that the symptoms of female parasitism have in the past almost +invariably tended to manifest themselves, and have become a social +danger. The males of the dominant class have almost always contrived to +absorb to themselves the new intellectual occupations, with the absence +of necessity for the old forms of physical toil made possible in their +societies; and the females of the dominant class or race, for whose +muscular labours there was now also no longer any need, not succeeding +in grasping or attaining to these new forms of labour, have sunk into a +state in which, performing no species of active social duty, they have +existed through the passive performance of sexual functions alone, with +how much or how little of discontent will now never be known, since no +literary record has been made by the woman of the past, of her desires +or sorrows. Then, in place of the active labouring woman, upholding +society by her toil, has come the effete wife, concubine, or prostitute, +clad in fine raiment, the work of others' fingers; fed on luxurious +viands, the result of others' toil, waited on and tended by the labour +of others. The need for her physical labour having gone, and mental +industry not having taken its place, she bedecked and scented her +person, or had it bedecked and scented for her, she lay upon her sofa, +or drove or was carried out in her vehicle, and, loaded with jewels, she +sought by dissipations and amusements to fill up the inordinate blank +left by the lack of productive activity. And as the hand whitened and +frame softened, till, at last, the very duties of motherhood, which were +all the constitution of her life left her, became distasteful, and, from +the instant when her infant came damp from her womb, it passed into the +hands of others, to be tended and reared by them; and from youth to age +her offspring often owed nothing to her personal toil. In many cases so +complete was her enervation, that at last the very joy of giving life, +the glory and beatitude of a virile womanhood, became distasteful; +and she sought to evade it, not because of its interference with more +imperious duties to those already born of her, or to her society, +but because her existence of inactivity had robbed her of all joy in +strenuous exertion and endurance in any form. Finely clad, tenderly +housed, life became for her merely the gratification of her own physical +and sexual appetites, and the appetites of the male, through the +stimulation of which she could maintain herself. And, whether as kept +wife, kept mistress, or prostitute, she contributed nothing to the +active and sustaining labours of her society. She had attained to the +full development of that type which, whether in modern Paris or New York +or London, or in ancient Greece, Assyria, or Rome, is essentially one in +its features, its nature, and its results. She was the "fine lady," +the human female parasite--the most deadly microbe which can make its +appearance on the surface of any social organism. (The relation of +female parasitism generally, to the peculiar phenomenon of prostitution, +is fundamental. Prostitution can never be adequately dealt with, either +from the moral or the scientific standpoint, unless its relation to the +general phenomenon of female parasitism be fully recognised. It is the +failure to do this which leaves so painful a sense of abortion on the +mind, after listening to most modern utterances on the question, +whether made from the emotional platform of the moral reformer, or the +intellectual platform of the would-be scientist. We are left with a +feeling that the matter has been handled but not dealt with: that the +knife has not reached the core.) + +Wherever in the history of the past this type has reached its full +development and has comprised the bulk of the females belonging to any +dominant class or race, it has heralded its decay. In Assyria, Greece, +Rome, Persia, as in Turkey today, the same material conditions have +produced the same social disease among wealthy and dominant races; and +again and again when the nation so affected has come into contact +with nations more healthily constituted, this diseased condition has +contributed to its destruction. + +In ancient Greece, in its superb and virile youth, its womanhood was +richly and even heavily endowed with duties and occupations. Not the +mass of the woman alone, but the king's wife and the prince's daughter +do we find going to the well to bear water, cleansing the household +linen in the streams, feeding and doctoring their households, +manufacturing the clothing of their race, and performing even a share +of the highest social functions as priestesses and prophetesses. It was +from the bodies of such women as these that sprang that race of heroes, +thinkers, and artists who laid the foundations of Grecian greatness. +These females underlay their society as the solid and deeply buried +foundations underlay the more visible and ornate portions of a great +temple, making its structure and persistence possible. In Greece, after +a certain lapse of time, these virile labouring women in the upper +classes were to be found no more. The accumulated wealth of the dominant +race, gathered through the labour of slaves and subject people, had so +immensely increased that there was no longer a call for physical labour +on the part of the dominant womanhood; immured within the walls of their +houses as wives or mistresses, waited on by slaves and dependents, they +no longer sustained by their exertion either their own life or the life +of their people. The males absorbed the intellectual labours of life; +slaves and dependents the physical. For a moment, at the end of the +fifth and beginning of the fourth century, when the womanhood of +Greece had already internally decayed, there was indeed a brilliant +intellectual efflorescence among her males, like to the gorgeous colours +in the sunset sky when the sun is already sinking; but the heart +of Greece was already rotting and her vigour failing. Increasingly, +division and dissimilarity arose between male and female, as the male +advanced in culture and entered upon new fields of intellectual toil +while the female sank passively backward and lower in the scale of life, +and thus was made ultimately a chasm which even sexual love could not +bridge. The abnormal institution of avowed inter-male sexual relations +upon the highest plane was one, and the most serious result, of this +severance. The inevitable and invincible desire of all highly developed +human natures, to blend with their sexual relationships their highest +intellectual interests and sympathies, could find no satisfaction or +response in the relationship between the immured, comparatively ignorant +and helpless females of the upper classes, in Greece, and the brilliant, +cultured, and many-sided males who formed its dominant class in the +fifth and fourth centuries. Man turned towards man; and parenthood, the +divine gift of imparting human life, was severed from the loftiest and +profoundest phases of human emotion: Xanthippe fretted out her ignorant +and miserable little life between the walls of her house, and Socrates +lay in the Agora, discussing philosophy and morals with Alcibiades; +and the race decayed at its core. (See Jowett's translation of Plato's +"Banquet"; but for full light on this important question the entire +literature of Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. should be +studied.) Here and there an Aspasia, or earlier still a Sappho, burst +through the confining bonds of woman's environment, and with the force +of irresistible genius broke triumphantly into new fields of action and +powerful mental activity, standing side by side with the male; but their +cases were exceptional. Had they, or such as they, been able to tread +down a pathway, along which the mass of Grecian women might have +followed them; had it been possible for the bulk of the women of the +dominant race in Greece at the end of the fifth century to rise from +their condition of supine inaction and ignorance and to have taken their +share in the intellectual labours and stern activities of their race, +Greece would never have fallen, as she fell at the end of the fourth +century, instantaneously and completely, as a rotten puff-ball falls in +at the touch of a healthy finger; first, before the briberies of Philip, +and then yet more completely before the arms of his yet more warlike +son, who was also the son of the fierce, virile, and indomitable +Olympia. (Like almost all men remarkable for either good or evil, +Alexander inherited from his mother his most notable qualities--his +courage, his intellectual activity, and an ambition indifferent to any +means that made for his own end. Fearless in her life, she fearlessly +met death "with a courage worthy of her rank and domineering character, +when her hour of retribution came"; and Alexander is incomprehensible +till we recognise him as rising from the womb of Olympia.) Nor could +she have been swept clean, a few hundred years later, from Thessaly to +Sparta, from Corinth to Ephesus, her temples destroyed, her effete women +captured by the hordes of the Goths--a people less skilfully armed +and less civilised than the descendants of the race of Pericles and +Leonidas, but who were a branch of that great Teutonic folk whose +monogamous domestic life was sound at the core, and whose fearless, +labouring, and resolute women yet bore for the men they followed to the +ends of the earth, what Spartan women once said they alone bore--men. + +In Rome, in the days of her virtue and vigour, the Roman matron laboured +mightily, and bore on her shoulders her full half of the social burden, +though her sphere of labour and influence was even somewhat smaller +than that of the Teutonic sisterhood whose descendants were finally to +supplant her own. From the vestal virgin to the matron, the Roman woman +in the days of the nation's health and growth fulfilled lofty functions +and bore the whole weight of domestic toil. From the days of Lucretia, +the great Roman dame whom we find spinning with her handmaidens deep +into the night, and whose personal dignity was so dear to her that, +violated, she sought only death, to those of the mother of the Gracchi, +one of the last of the great line, we find everywhere, erect, labouring, +and resolute, the Roman woman who gave birth to the men who built up +Roman greatness. A few centuries later, and Rome also had reached that +dangerous spot in the order of social change which Greece had reached +centuries before her. Slave labour and the enjoyment of the unlimited +spoils of subject races had done away for ever with the demand for +physical labour on the part of the members of the dominant race. Then +came the period when the male still occupied himself with the duties +of war and government, of legislation and self-culture; but the Roman +matron had already ceased for ever from her toils. Decked in jewels and +fine clothing, brought at the cost of infinite human labour from the +ends of the earth, nourished on delicate victuals, prepared by others' +hands, she sought now only with amusement to pass away a life that no +longer offered her the excitement and joy of active productive exertion. +She frequented theatres or baths, or reclined on her sofa, or drove in +her chariot; and like more modern counterparts, painted herself, wore +patches, affected an artistic walk, and a handshake with the elbow +raised and the fingers hanging down. Her children were reared by +dependents; and in the intellectual labour and government of her age +she took small part, and was fit to take none. There were not wanting +writers and thinkers who saw clearly the end to which the enervation of +the female was tending, and who were not sparing in their denunciations. +"Time was," cries one Roman writer of that age, "when the matron turned +the spindle with the hand and kept at the same time the pot in her eye +that the pottage might not be singed, but now," he adds bitterly, +"when the wife, loaded with jewels, reposes among pillows, or seeks the +dissipation of baths and theatres, all things go downward and the state +decays." Yet neither he nor that large body of writers and thinkers who +saw the condition towards which the parasitism of woman was tending +to reduce society, preached any adequate remedy. (Indeed, must not +the protest and the remedy in all such cases, if they are to be of any +avail, take their rise within the diseased class itself?) + +Thoughtful men sighed over the present and yearned for the past, nor +seem to have perceived that it was irrevocably gone; that the Roman +lady who, with a hundred servants standing idle about her, should, in +imitation of her ancestress, have gone out with her pitcher on her head +to draw water from the well, while in all her own courtyards pipe-led +streams gushed forth, would have acted the part of the pretender; that +had she insisted on resuscitating her loom and had sat up all night +to spin, she could never have produced those fabrics which alone her +household demanded, and would have been but a puerile actor; that it was +not by attempting to return to the ancient and for ever closed fields of +toil, but by entering upon new, that she could alone serve her race +and retain her own dignity and virility. That not by bearing water and +weaving linen, but by so training and disciplining herself that she +should be fitted to bear her share in the labour necessary to the just +and wise guidance of a great empire, and be capable of training a race +of men adequate to exercise an enlightened, merciful, and beneficent +rule over the vast masses of subject people--that so, and so only, +could she fulfil her duty toward the new society about her, and bear its +burden together with man, as her ancestresses of bygone generations had +borne the burden of theirs. + +That in this direction, and this alone, lay the only possible remedy for +the evils of woman's condition, was a conception apparently grasped +by none; and the female sank lower and lower, till the image of the +parasitic woman of Rome (with a rag of the old Roman intensity left +even in her degradation!)--seeking madly by pursuit of pleasure and +sensuality to fill the void left by the lack of honourable activity; +accepting lust in the place of love, ease in the place of exertion, and +an unlimited consumption in the place of production; too enervated at +last to care even to produce offspring, and shrinking from every form +of endurance--remains, even to the present day, the most perfect, and +therefore the most appalling, picture of the parasite female that earth +has produced--a picture only less terrible than it is pathetic. + +We recognise that it was inevitable that this womanhood--born it would +seem from its elevation to guide and enlighten a world, and in place +thereof feeding on it--should at last have given birth to a manhood as +effete as itself, and that both should in the end have been swept away +before the march of those Teutonic folk, whose women were virile and +could give birth to men; a folk among whom the woman received on the +morning of her marriage, from the man who was to be her companion +through life, no contemptible trinket to hang about her throat or limbs, +but a shield, a spear, a sword, and a yoke of oxen, while she bestowed +on him in return a suit of armour, in token that they two were +henceforth to be one in toil and in the facing of danger; that she too +should dare with him in war and suffer with him in peace; and of whom +another writer tells us, that their women not only bore the race and +fed it at their breasts without the help of others' hands, but that they +undertook the whole management of house and lands, leaving the males +free for war and chase; of whom Suetonius tells us, that when Augustus +Caesar demanded hostages from a tribe, he took women, not men, because +he found by experience that the women were more regarded than men, and +of whom Strabo says, that so highly did the Germanic races value the +intellect of their women that they regarded them as inspired, and +entered into no war or great undertaking without their advice and +counsel; while among the Cimbrian women who accompanied their husbands +in the invasion of Italy were certain who marched barefooted in the +midst of the lines, distinguished by their white hair and milk-white +robes, and who were regarded as inspired, and of whom Florus, describing +an early Roman victory, says, "The conflict was not less fierce and +obstinate with the wives of the vanquished; in their carts and wagons +they formed a line of battle, and from their elevated situation, as from +so many turrets, annoyed the Romans with their poles and lances. (The +South African Boer woman after two thousand years appears not wholly to +have forgotten the ancestral tactics.) Their death was as glorious as +their martial spirit. Finding that all was lost, they strangled their +children, and either destroyed themselves in one scene of mutual +slaughter, or with the sashes that bound up their hair suspended +themselves by the neck to the boughs of trees or the tops of their +wagons." It is of these women that Valerius Maximus says, that, "If the +gods on the day of battle had inspired the men with equal fortitude, +Marius would never have boasted of his Teutonic victory;" and of whom +Tacitus, speaking of those women who accompanied their husbands to war, +remarks, "These are the darling witnesses of his conduct, the applauders +of his valour, at once beloved and valued. The wounded seek their +mothers and their wives; undismayed at the sight, the women count each +honourable scar and suck the gushing blood. They are even hardy enough +to mix with the combatants, administering refreshment and exhorting them +to deeds of valour," and adds moreover, that "To be contented with one +wife was peculiar to the Germans; while the woman was contented with one +husband, as with one life, one mind, one body." + +It was inevitable that before the sons of women such as these, the sons +of the parasitic Roman should be swept from existence, as the offspring +of the caged canary would fall in conflict with the offspring of the +free. + +Again and again with wearisome reiteration, the same story repeats +itself. Among the Jews in the days of their health and growth, we find +their women bearing the major weight of agricultural and domestic toil, +full always of labour and care--from Rachel, whom Jacob met and loved +as she watered her father's flocks, to Ruth, the ancestress of a line of +kings and heroes, whom her Boas noted labouring in the harvest-fields; +from Sarah, kneading and baking cakes for Abraham's prophetic visitors, +to Miriam, prophetess and singer, and Deborah, who judging Israel +from beneath her palm-tree, "and the land had rest for forty years." +Everywhere the ancient Jewish woman appears, an active sustaining power +among her people; and perhaps the noblest picture of the labouring +woman to be found in any literature is contained in the Jewish writings, +indited possibly at the very time when the labouring woman was for the +first time tending among a section of the Jews to become a thing of the +past; when already Solomon, with his seven hundred parasitic wives and +three hundred parasitic concubines, loomed large on the horizon of the +national life, to take the place of flock-tending Rachel and gleaning +Ruth, and to produce amid their palaces of cedar and gold, among them +all, no Joseph or David, but in the way of descendant only a Rehoboam, +under whose hand the kingdom was to totter to its fall. (The picture +of the labouring as opposed to the parasitic ideal of womanhood appears +under the heading, "The words of King Lemuel; the oracle which his +mother taught him.") At risk of presenting the reader with that with +which he is already painfully familiar, we here transcribe the +passage; which, allowing for differences in material and intellectual +surroundings, paints also the ideal of the labouring womanhood of the +present and of the future:-- + + "Her price is far above rubies, + The heart of her husband trusteth in her, + And he shall have no lack of gain, + She doeth him good and not evil + All the days of her life, + She seeketh wool and flax, + And worketh willingly with her hands, + She is like the merchant ships; + She bringeth her food, from afar, + She riseth up while it is yet night + And giveth meat to her household, + And their task to her maidens, + She considereth a field, and buyeth it; + With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. + She girdeth her loins with strength, + And maketh strong her arms. + She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable; + Her lamp goeth not out by night, + She layeth her hands to the distaff, + And her hands hold the spindle. + She spreadeth out her hand to the poor: + Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, + She is not afraid of the snow for her household, + For all her household are clothed with scarlet. + She maketh herself carpets of tapestry; + Her clothing is fine and purple. + Her husband is known in the gates, + When he sitteth among the elders of the land, + She maketh linen garments and selleth them, + And delivereth girdles unto the merchant. + Strength and dignity are her clothing; + And she laugheth at the time to come. + She openeth her mouth with wisdom, + And the law of kindness is on her tongue, + She looketh well to the ways of her household, + And eateth not the bread of idleness. + Her children rise up and call her blessed, + Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, + Many daughters have done virtuously, + But thou excellest them all, + Give her the fruit of her hand, + And let her works praise her in the gate." + +In the East today the same story has wearisomely written itself: in +China, where the present vitality and power of the most ancient of +existing civilisations may be measured accurately by the length of its +woman's shoes; in Turkish harems, where one of the noblest dominant +Aryan races the world has yet produced, is being slowly suffocated in +the arms of a parasite womanhood, and might, indeed, along ago have been +obliterated, had not a certain virility and strength been continually +reinfused into it through the persons of purchased wives, who in early +childhood and youth had been themselves active labouring peasants. +Everywhere, in the past as in the present, the parasitism of the female +heralds the decay of a nation or class, and as invariably indicates +disease as the pustules of smallpox upon the skin indicate the existence +of a purulent virus in the system. + +We are, indeed, far from asserting that the civilisations of the past +which have decayed, have decayed alone through the parasitism of their +females. Vast, far-reaching social phenomena have invariably causes and +reactions immeasurably too complex to be summed up under one so simple a +term. Behind the phenomenon of female parasitism has always lain another +and yet larger social phenomenon; it has invariably been preceded, as we +have seen, by the subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, +either as slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the +excessive labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation +of unearned wealth in the hands of the dominant class or race. It has +invariably been by feeding on this wealth, the result of forced or +ill-paid labour, that the female of the dominant race or class has in +the past lost her activity and has come to exist purely through the +passive performance of her sexual functions. Without slaves or subject +classes to perform the crude physical labours of life and produce +superfluous wealth, the parasitism of the female would, in the past, +have been an impossibility. + +There is, therefore, a profound truth in that universal saw which states +that the decay of the great nations and civilisations of the past has +resulted from the enervation caused by excessive wealth and luxury; and +there is a further, and if possible more profound, truth underlying the +statement that their destruction has ultimately been the result of the +enervation of the entire race, male and female. + +But when we come further to inquire how, exactly, this process of decay +took place, we shall find that the part which the parasitism of the +female has played has been fundamental. The mere use of any of the +material products of labour, which we term wealth, can never in itself +produce that decay, physical or mental, which precedes the downfall of +great civilised nations. The eating of salmon at ten shillings a pound +can in itself no more debilitate and corrupt the moral, intellectual, +and physical constitution of the man consuming it, than it could +enervate his naked forefathers who speared it in their rivers for food; +the fact that an individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a +worm, can no more deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than +were it made of sheep's wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces, +faring delicately, and clad in silks, and surrounded by the noblest +products of literature and plastic art, so those palaces, viands, +garments, and products of art were the result of their own labours, +could never be enervated by them. The debilitating effect of wealth +sets in at that point exactly (and never before) at which the supply of +material necessaries and comforts, and of aesthetic enjoyments, clogs +the individuality, causing it to rest satisfied in the mere passive +possession of the results of the labour of others, without feeling any +necessity or desire for further productive activity of its own. (Of the +other deleterious effects of unearned wealth on the individual or class +possessing it, such as its power of lessening human sympathy, &c., &c., +we do not now speak, as while ultimately and indirectly, undoubtedly, +tending to disintegrate a society, they do not necessarily and +immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point we are here +considering.) + +The exact material condition at which this point will be reached will +vary, not only with the race and the age, but with the individual. A +Marcus Aurelius in a palace of gold and marble was able to retain +his simplicity and virility as completely as though he had lived in a +cow-herd's hut; while on the other hand, it is quite possible for the +wife of a savage chief who has but four slaves to bring her her corn +and milk and spread her skins in the sun, to become almost as purely +parasitic as the most delicately pampered female of fashion in ancient +Rome, or modern Paris, London, or New York; while the exact amount of +unearned material wealth which will emasculate individuals in the same +society, will vary exactly as their intellectual and moral fibre and +natural activity are strong or weak. (It is not uncommon in modern +societies to find women of a class relatively very moderately wealthy, +the wives and daughters of shopkeepers or professional men, who if their +male relations will supply them with a very limited amount of money +without exertion on their part, will become as completely parasitic and +useless as women with untold wealth at their command.) + +The debilitating effect of unlaboured-for wealth lies, then, not in the +nature of any material adjunct to life in itself, but in the power it +may possess of robbing the individual of all incentive to exertion, thus +destroying the intellectual, the physical, and finally, the moral fibre. + +In all the civilisations of the past examination will show that almost +invariably it has been the female who has tended first to reach this +point, and we think examination will show that it has almost invariably +been from the woman to the man that enervation and decay have spread. + +Why this should be so is obvious. Firstly, it is in the sphere of +domestic labour that slave or hired labour most easily and insidiously +penetrates. The force of blows or hireling gold can far more easily +supply labourers as the preparers of food and clothing, and even as the +rearers of children, than it can supply labourers fitted to be entrusted +with the toils of war and government, which have in the past been the +especial sphere of male toil. The Roman woman had for generations been +supplanted in the sphere of her domestic labours and in the toil of +rearing and educating her offspring, and had long become abjectly +parasitic, before the Roman male had been able to substitute the labour +of the hireling and barbarian for his own, in the army, and in the +drudgeries of governmental toil. + +Secondly, the female having one all-important though passive function +which cannot be taken from her, and which is peculiarly connected +with her own person, in the act of child-bearing, and her mere sexual +attributes being an object of desire and cupidity to the male, she is +liable in a peculiarly insidious and gradual manner to become dependent +on this one sexual function alone for her support. So much is this the +case, that even when she does not in any way perform this function there +is still a curious tendency for the kudos of the function still to hang +about her, and for her mere potentiality in the direction of a duty +which she may never fulfil, to be confused in her own estimation and +that of society with the actual fulfilment of that function. Under the +mighty aegis of the woman who bears and rears offspring and in other +directions labours greatly and actively for her race, creeps in +gradually and unnoticed the woman who does none of these things. From +the mighty labouring woman who bears human creatures to the full extent +of her power, rears her offspring unaided, and performs at the same +time severe social labour in other directions (and who is, undoubtedly, +wherever found, the most productive toiler known to the race); it is but +one step, though a long one, from this woman to the woman who produces +offspring freely but does not herself rear them, and performs no +compensatory social labour. While from this woman, again, to the one who +bears few or no children, but who, whether as a wife or mistress, lives +by the exercise of her sex function alone, the step is short. There +is but one step farther to the prostitute, who affects no form of +productive labour, and who, in place of life, is recognised as producing +disease and death, but who exists parasitically through her sexual +attribute. Enormous as is the distance between the women at the two +extremes of this series, and sharply opposed as their relation to the +world is, there is yet, in actual life, no sharp, clear, sudden-drawn +line dividing the women of the one type from those of the other. They +shade off into each other by delicate and in sensible degrees. And it +is down this inclined plane that the women of civilised races are +peculiarly tempted, unconsciously, to slip; from the noble height of +a condition of the most strenuous social activity, into a condition of +complete, helpless, and inactive parasitism, without being clearly aware +of the fact themselves, and without society's becoming so--the woman +who has ceased to rear her own offspring, or who has ceased to bear +offspring at all, and who performs no other productive social function, +yet shields the fact from her own eyes by dwelling on the fact that she +is a woman, in whom the capacity is at least latent. (There is, indeed, +an interesting analogous tendency on the part of the parasitic male, +wherever found, to shield his true condition from his own eyes and those +of the world by playing at the ancient ancestral forms of male labour. +He is almost always found talking loudly of the protection he affords to +helpless females and to society, though he is in truth himself protected +through the exertion of soldiers, policemen, magistrates, and society +generally; and he is almost invariably fond of dangling a sword or +other weapon, and wearing some kind of uniform, for the assumption of +militarism without severe toil delights him. But it is in a degenerate +travesty of the ancient labour of hunting where, at terrible risk to +himself, and with endless fatigue, his ancestors supplied the race with +its meat and defended it from destruction by wild beasts) that he finds +his greatest satisfaction; it serves to render the degradation and +uselessness of his existence less obvious to himself and to others than +if he passed his life reclining in an armchair. + +On Yorkshire moors today may be seen walls of sod, behind which hide +certain human males, while hard-labouring men are employed from early +dawn in driving birds towards them. As the birds are driven up to him, +the hunter behind his wall raises his deadly weapon, and the bird, which +it had taken so much human labour to rear and provide, falls dead at his +feet; thereby greatly to the increase of the hunter's glory, when, the +toils of the chase over, he returns to his city haunts to record his +bag. One might almost fancy one saw arise from the heathery turf the +shade of some ancient Teutonic ancestor, whose dust has long reposed +there, pointing a finger of scorn at his degenerate descendant, as he +leers out from behind the sod wall. During the the later Roman Empire, +Commodus, in the degenerate days of Rome, at great expense had wild +beasts brought from distant lands that he might have the glory of +slaying them in the Roman circus; and medals representing himself as +Hercules slaying the Nemean lion were struck at his orders. We are not +aware that any representation has yet been made in the region of plastic +art of the hero of the sod wall; but history repeats itself--and that +also may come. It is to be noted that these hunters are not youths, +but often ripely adult men, before whom all the lofty enjoyments and +employments possible to the male in modern life, lie open.) + +These peculiarities in her condition have in all civilised societies +laid the female more early and seriously open to the attacks of +parasitism than the male. And while the accumulation of wealth has +always been the antecedent condition, and the degeneracy and effeteness +of the male the final and obvious cause, of the decay of the great +dominant races of the past; yet, between these two has always lain, as a +great middle term, the parasitism of the female, without which the first +would have been inoperative and the last impossible. + +Not slavery, nor the most vast accumulations of wealth, could destroy +a nation by enervation, whose women remained active, virile, and +laborious. + +The conception which again and again appears to have haunted successive +societies, that it was a possibility for the human male to advance +in physical power and intellectual vigour, while his companion female +became stationary and inactive, taking no share in the labours of +society beyond the passive fulfilment of sexual functions, has always +been negated. It has ended as would end the experiment of a man +seeking to raise a breed of winning race-horses out of unexercised, +short-winded, knock-kneed mares. No, more disastrously! For while the +female animal transmits herself to her descendant only or mainly by +means of germinal inheritance, and through the influence she may +exert over it during gestation, the human female, by producing the +intellectual and moral atmosphere in which the early infant years +of life are passed, impresses herself far more indelibly on her +descendants. Only an able and labouring womanhood can permanently +produce an able and labouring manhood; only an effete and inactive male +can ultimately be produced by an effete and inactive womanhood. The +curled darling, scented and languid, with his drawl, his delicate +apparel, his devotion to the rarity and variety of his viands, whose +severest labour is the search after pleasure, and for whom even the +chase, which was for his remote ancestor an invigorating and manly toil +essential for the meat and life of his people, becomes a luxurious and +farcical amusement;--this male, whether found in the later Roman +Empire, the Turkish harem of today, or in our Northern civilisations, is +possible only because generations of parasitic women have preceded him. +More repulsive than the parasite female herself, because a yet further +product of decay, it is yet only the scent of his mother's boudoir that +we smell in his hair. He is like to the bald patches and rotten wool on +the back of a scabby sheep; which indeed indicate that, deep beneath the +surface, a parasite insect is eating its way into the flesh, but which +are not so much the cause of disease, as its final manifestation. + +As we have said it is the power of the human female to impress +herself on her descendants, male and female, not only through germinal +inheritance, through influence during the period of gestation, but +above all by producing the mental atmosphere in which the impressionable +infant years of life are passed, which makes the condition of the +child-bearing female one of paramount interest of the race. It is this +fact which causes even prostitution (in many other respects the most +repulsive of all the forms of female parasitism which afflicts humanity) +to be, probably, not more adverse to the advance and even to the +conservation of a healthy and powerful society, than the parasitism +of its child-bearing women. For the prostitute, heavily as she weights +society for her support, returning disease and mental and emotional +disintegration for what she consumes, does not yet so immediately affect +the next generation as the kept wife, or kept mistress, who impresses +her effete image indelibly on the generations succeeding. (It cannot be +too often repeated that the woman who merely bears and brings a child +into the world, and then leaves it to be fed and reared by the hands +of another, has performed very much less than half of the labour of +producing adult humans; in such cases it is the nurse and not the mother +who is the most important labourer.) + +No man ever yet entered life farther than the length of one navel-cord +from the body of the woman who bore him. It is the woman who is the +final standard of the race, from which there can be no departure for any +distance for any length of time, in any direction: as her brain weakens, +weakens the man's she bears; as her muscle softens, softens his; as she +decays, decays the people. + +Other causes may, and do, lead to the enervation and degeneration of a +class or race; the parasitism of its child-bearing women must. + +We, the European women of this age, stand today where again and again, +in the history of the past, women of other races have stood; but our +condition is yet more grave, and of wider import to humanity as a whole +than theirs ever was. Let us again consider more closely why this is so. + + + +Chapter III. Parasitism (continued). + +We have seen that, in the past, no such thing as the parasitism of the +entire body or large majority of the females inhabiting any territory +was possible. Beneath that body of women of the dominant class or race, +who did not labour either mentally or physically, there has always been +of necessity a far more vast body of females who not only performed the +crude physical toil essential to the existence of society before the +introduction of mechanical methods of production, but who were compelled +to labour the more intensely because there was a parasite class above +them to be maintained by their physical toil. The more the female +parasite flourished of old, in one class or race, the more certainly +all women of other classes or races were compelled to labour only too +excessively; and ultimately these females and their descendants were +apt to supplant the more enervated class or race. In the absence of +machinery and of a vast employment of the motor-forces of nature, +parasitism could only threaten a comparatively small section of any +community, and a minute section of the human race as a whole. Female +parasitism in the past resembled gout--a disease dangerous only to the +over-fed, pampered, and few, never to the population of any society as a +whole. + +At the present day, so enormous has been the advance made in the +substitution of mechanical force for crude, physical, human exertion +(mechanical force being employed today even in the shaping of +feeding-bottles and the creation of artificial foods as substitutes +for mother's milk!), that it is now possible not only for a small and +wealthy section of women in each civilised community to be maintained +without performing any of the ancient, crude, physical labours of their +sex, and without depending on the slavery of, or any vast increase in +the labour of, other classes of females; but this condition has already +been reached, or is tending to be reached, by that large mass of women +in civilised societies, who form the intermediate class between poor +and rich. During the next fifty years, so rapid will undoubtedly be the +spread of the material conditions of civilisation, both in the societies +at present civilised and in the societies at present unpermeated by +our material civilisation, that the ancient forms of female, domestic, +physical labour of even the women of the poorest classes will be little +required, their place being taken, not by other females, but by always +increasingly perfected labour-saving machinery. + +Thus, female parasitism, which in the past threatened only a minute +section of earth's women, under existing conditions threatens vast +masses, and may, under future conditions, threaten the entire body. + +If woman is content to leave to the male all labour in the new and +all-important fields which are rapidly opening before the human race; +if, as the old forms of domestic labour slip from her for ever +and evitably, she does not grasp the new, it is inevitable, that, +ultimately, not merely a class, but the whole bodies of females in +civilised societies, must sink into a state of more or less absolute +dependence on their sexual functions alone. (How real is this apparently +very remote danger is interestingly illustrated by a proposition gravely +made a few years ago by a man of note in England. He proposed that a +compulsory provision should be made for at least the women of the upper +and middle classes, by which they might be maintained through life +entirely without regard to any productive labour they might perform, +not even the passive labour of sexual reproduction being of necessity +required of them. That this proposal was received by the women striving +to reconstruct the relation of the modern woman to life without +acclamation and with scorn, may have surprised its maker; but with no +more reason than that man would have for feeling surprise who, seeing +a number of persons anxious to escape the infection of some contagious +disease, should propose as a cure to inoculate them all with it in its +most virulent form!) + +As new forms of natural force are mastered and mechanical appliances +perfected, it will be quite possible for the male half of all civilised +races (and therefore ultimately of all) to absorb the entire fields of +intellectual and highly trained manual labour; and it would be entirely +possible for the female half of the race, whether as prostitutes, as +kept mistresses, or as kept wives, to cease from all forms of active +toil, and, as the passive tools of sexual reproduction, or, more +decadently still, as the mere instruments of sexual indulgence, to sink +into a condition of complete and helpless sex-parasitism. + +Sex-parasitism, therefore, presents itself at the end of the nineteenth +century and beginning of the twentieth in a guise which it has never +before worn. We, the European women of the nineteenth and twentieth +centuries, stand therefore in a position the gravity and importance of +which was not equalled by that of any of our forerunners in the ancient +civilisation. As we master and rise above, or fall and are conquered by, +the difficulties of our position, so also will be the future, not merely +of our own class, or even of our own race alone, but also of those +vast masses who are following on in the wake of our civilisation. The +decision we are called on to make is a decision for the race; behind us +comes on the tread of incalculable millions of feet. + +There is thus no truth in the assertion so often made, even by +thoughtful persons, that the male labour question and the woman's +question of our day are completely one, and that, would the women of +the European race of today but wait peacefully till the males alone had +solved their problem, they would find that their own had been solved at +the same time. + +Were the entire male labour problem of this age satisfactorily settled +tomorrow; were all the unemployed or uselessly employed males at both +ends of societies, whom the changes of modern civilisation have robbed +of their ancient forms of labour, so educated and trained that they were +perfectly fitted for the new conditions of life; and were the material +benefit and intellectual possibilities, which the substitution of +mechanical for human labour now makes possible to humanity, no longer +absorbed by the few but dispersed among the whole mass of males in +return for their trained labour, yet the woman's problem might be +further from satisfactory solution than it is today; and, if it were +affected at all, might be affected for the worse. It is wholly untrue +that fifty pounds, or two thousand, earned by the male as the result of +his physical or mental toil, if part of it be spent by him in supporting +non-labouring females, whether as prostitutes, wives, or mistresses, is +the same thing to the female or to the race as though that sum had been +earned by her own exertion, either directly as wages or indirectly by +toiling for the man whose wages supported her. For the moment, truly, +the woman so tended lies softer and warmer than had she been compelled +to exert herself; ultimately, intellectually, morally, and even +physically, the difference in the effect upon her as an individual and +on the race is the difference between advance and degradation, between +life and death. The increased wealth of the male no more of necessity +benefits and raises the female upon whom he expends it, than the +increased wealth of his mistress necessarily benefits mentally or +physically a poodle because she can give him a down cushion in place of +one of feathers, and chicken in place of beef. The wealthier the males +of a society become, the greater the temptation, both to themselves and +to the females connected with them, to drift toward female parasitism. + +The readjustment of the position of the male worker, if it led to a +more equitable distribution of wealth among males, might indeed diminish +slightly the accompanying tendency to parasitism in the very wealthiest +female class; but it would, on the other hand, open up exactly those +conditions which make parasitism possible to millions of women today +leading healthy and active lives. (The fact cannot be too often dwelt +upon that parasitism is not connected with any definite amount of +wealth. Any sum supplied to an individual which will so far satisfy +him or her as to enable them to live without exertion may absolutely +parasitise them; while vast wealth unhealthy as its effects generally +tend to be) may, upon certain rare and noble natures, exert hardly any +enervating or deleterious influence. An amusing illustration of the +different points at which enervation is reached by different females +came under our own observation. The wife of an American millionaire +was visited by a woman, the daughter and also the widow of small +professional men. She stated that she was in need of both food and +clothing. The millionaire's wife gave her a leg of mutton and two +valuable dresses. The woman proceeded to whine, though in vigorous +health, that she had no one to carry them home for her, and could +not think of carrying them herself. The American, the descendant of +generations of able, labouring, New England, Puritan women, tucked the +leg of mutton under one arm and the bundle of clothes under the other +and walked off down the city street towards the woman's dwelling, +followed by the astonished pauper parasite. + +The most helpless case of female degeneration we ever came into contact +with was that of a daughter of a poor English officer on half-pay and +who had to exist on a few hundreds a year. This woman could neither +cook her own food nor make her own clothes, nor was she engaged in any +social, political, or intellectual or artistic labour. Though able to +dance for a night or play tennis for an afternoon, she was yet hardly +able to do her own hair or attire herself, and appeared absolutely to +have lost all power of compelling herself to do anything which was at +the moment fatiguing or displeasing, as all labour is apt to be, however +great its ultimate reward. In a life of twenty-eight years this +woman had probably not contributed one hour's earnest toil, mental or +physical, to the increase of the sum total of productive human labour. +Surrounded with acres of cultivable land, she would possibly have +preferred to lie down and die of hunger rather than have cultivated half +an acre for food. This is an extreme case; but the ultimate effect of +parasitism is always a paralysis of the will and an inability to compel +oneself into any course of action for the moment unpleasurable and +exhaustive. + +That the two problems are not identical is shown, if indeed evidence +were needed, by the fact that those males most actively employed in +attempting to readjust the relations of the mass of labouring males to +the new conditions of life, are sometimes precisely those males who +are most bitterly opposed to woman in her attempt to readjust her +own position. Not even by the members of those professions, generally +regarded as the strongholds of obstructionism and prejudice, has a more +short-sighted opposition often been made to the attempts of woman to +enter new fields of labour, than have again and again been made by male +hand-workers, whether as isolated individuals or in their corporate +capacity as trade unions. They have, at least in some certain instances, +endeavoured to exclude women, not merely from new fields of intellectual +and social labour, but even from those ancient fields of textile +manufacture and handicraft, which have through all generations of the +past been woman's. The patent and undeniable fact, that where the male +labour movement flourishes the woman movement also flourishes, rises +not from the fact that they are identical, but that the same healthy and +virile condition in a race or society gives rise to both. + +As two streams rising from one fountain-head and running a parallel +course through long reaches may yet remain wholly distinct, one finding +its way satisfactorily to the sea, while the other loses itself in sand +or becomes a stagnant marsh, so our modern male and female movements, +taking their rise from the same material conditions in modern +civilisation, and presenting endless and close analogies with one +another in their cause of development, yet remain fundamentally +distinct. By both movements the future of the race must be profoundly +modified for good or evil; both touch the race in a manner absolutely +vital; but both will have to be fought out on their own ground, +and independently: and it can be only by determined, conscious, and +persistent action on the part of woman that the solution of her own +labour problems will proceed co-extensively with that of the other. + +How distinct, though similar, is the underlying motive of the two +movements, is manifested most clearly by this fact, that, while the male +labour movement takes its rise mainly among the poor and hand-labouring +classes, where the material pressure of the modern conditions of life +fall heaviest, and where the danger of physical suffering and even +extinction under that pressure is most felt; the Woman Labour Movement +has taken its rise almost as exclusively among the wealthy, cultured, +and brain-labouring classes, where alone, at the present day, the +danger of enervation through non-employment, and of degeneration through +dependence on the sex function exists. The female labour movement of our +day is, in its ultimate essence, an endeavour on the part of a section +of the race to save itself from inactivity and degeneration, and this, +even at the immediate cost of most heavy loss in material comfort and +ease to the individuals composing it. The male labour movement +is, directly and in the first place, material; and, or at least +superficially, more or less self-seeking, though its ultimate reaction +on society by saving the poorer members from degradation and dependency +and want is undoubtedly wholly social and absolutely essential for +the health and continued development of the human race. In the Woman's +Labour Movement of our day, which has essentially taken its rise among +women of the more cultured and wealthy classes, and which consists +mainly in a demand to have the doors leading to professional, political, +and highly skilled labour thrown open to them, the ultimate end can only +be attained at the cost of more or less intense, immediate, personal +suffering and renunciation, though eventually, if brought to a +satisfactory conclusion, it will undoubtedly tend to the material and +physical well-being of woman herself, as well as to that of her male +companions and descendants. + +The coming half-century will be a time of peculiar strain, as mankind +seeks rapidly to adjust moral ideals and social relationships and the +general ordering of life to the new and continually unfolding material +conditions. If these two great movements of our age, having this as +their object, can be brought into close harmony and co-operation, the +readjustment will be the sooner and more painlessly accomplished; but, +for the moment, the two movements alike in their origin and alike in +many of their methods of procedure, remain distinct. + +It is this fact, the consciousness on the part of the women taking their +share in the Woman's Movement of our age, that their efforts are not, +and cannot be, of immediate advantage to themselves, but that they +almost of necessity and immediately lead to loss and renunciation, which +gives to this movement its very peculiar tone; setting it apart from the +large mass of economic movements, placing it rather in a line with those +vast religious developments which at the interval of ages have swept +across humanity, irresistibly modifying and reorganising it. + +It is the perception of this fact, that, not for herself, nor even for +fellow-women alone, but for the benefit of humanity at large, it is +necessary she should seek to readjust herself to life, which lends to +the modern woman's most superficial and seemingly trivial attempts at +readjustment, a certain dignity and importance. + +It is this profound hidden conviction which removes from the sphere of +the ridiculous the attitude of even the feeblest woman who waves her +poor little "Woman's rights" flag on the edge of a platform, and which +causes us to forgive even the passionate denunciations, not always +wisely thought out, in which she would represent the suffering and evils +of woman's condition, as wrongs intentionally inflicted upon her, where +they are merely the inevitable results of ages of social movement. + +It is this over-shadowing consciousness of a large impersonal +obligation, which removes from the sphere of the contemptible and +insignificant even the action of the individual young girl, who leaves +a home of comfort or luxury for a city garret, where in solitude, and +under that stern pressure which is felt by all individuals in arms +against the trend of their environment, she seeks to acquire the +knowledge necessary for entering on a new form of labour. It is this +profound consciousness which makes not less than heroic the figure of +the little half-starved student, battling against gigantic odds to take +her place beside man in the fields of modern intellectual toil, and +which, whether she succeed or fail, makes her a landmark in the course +of our human evolution. It is this consciousness of large impersonal +ends to be attained, and to the attainment of which each individual is +bound to play her part, however small, which removes from the domain of +the unnecessary, and raises to importance, the action of each woman +who resists the tyranny of fashions in dress or bearing or custom which +impedes her in her strife towards the new adjustment. + +It is this consciousness which renders almost of solemn import the +efforts of the individual female after physical or mental self-culture +and expansion; this, which fills with a lofty enthusiasm the heart of +the young girl, who, it may be, in some solitary farm-house, in some +distant wild of Africa or America, deep into the night bends over her +books with the passion and fervour with which an early Christian may +have bent over the pages of his Scriptures; feeling that, it may be, she +fits herself by each increase of knowledge for she knows not what duties +towards the world, in the years to come. It is this consciousness of +great impersonal ends, to be brought, even if slowly and imperceptibly, +a little nearer by her action, which gives to many a woman strength +for renunciation, when she puts from her the lower type of sexual +relationship, even if bound up with all the external honour a legal bond +can confer, if it offers her only enervation and parasitism; and which +enables her often to accept poverty, toil, and sexual isolation (an +isolation even more terrible to the woman than to any male), and the +renunciation of motherhood, that crowning beatitude of the woman's +existence, which, and which alone, fully compensates her for the organic +sufferings of womanhood--in the conviction that, by so doing, she makes +more possible a fuller and higher attainment of motherhood and wifehood +to the women who will follow her. It is this consciousness which makes +of solemn importance the knock of the humblest woman at the closed +door which shuts off a new field of labour, physical or mental: is she +convinced that, not for herself, but in the service of the whole race, +she knocks. + +It is this abiding consciousness of an end to be attained, reaching +beyond her personal life and individual interests, which constitutes the +religious element of the Woman's Movement of our day, and binds with the +common bond of an impersonal enthusiasm into one solid body the women +of whatsoever race, class, and nation who are struggling after the +readjustment of woman to life. + +This it is also, which in spite of defects and failures on the part of +individuals, yet makes the body who these women compose, as a whole, one +of the most impressive and irresistible of modern forces. The private +soldier of the great victorious army is not always an imposing object as +he walks down the village street, cap on side of head and sword dangling +between his legs, nor is he always impressive even when he burnishes up +his accoutrements or cleans his pannikins; but it is of individuals +such as these that the great army is made, which tomorrow, when it is +gathered together, may shake the world with its tread. + +Possibly not one woman in ten, or even one woman in twenty thousand +among those taking part in this struggle, could draw up a clear and +succinct account of the causes which have led to the disco-ordination in +woman's present position, or give a full account of the benefits to flow +from readjustment; as probably not one private soldier in an army of ten +or even of twenty thousand, though he is willing to give his life for +his land, would yet be able to draw up a clear and succinct account of +his land's history in the past and of the conditions which have made +war inevitable; and almost as little can he often paint an exact and +detailed picture of the benefits to flow from his efts. He knows his +land has need of him; he knows his own small place and work. + +It is possible that not one woman in ten thousand has grasped with +scientific exactitude, and still less could express with verbal +sharpness, the great central conditions which yet compel and animate her +into action. + +Even the great, central fact, that with each generation the entire race +passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing +with the indelible marks of that mould upon it, that as the os cervix of +woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms +a ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human head, a +size which could only increase if in the course of ages the os cervix of +woman should itself slowly expand; and that so exactly the intellectual +capacity, the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms +also an untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive +generation the limits of the expansion of the human race;--even this +fact she may not so clearly have grasped intellectually as to be able to +throw it into the form of a logical statement. The profound truth, that +the continued development of the human race on earth (a development +which, as the old myths and dreams of a narrow personal heaven fade +from our view, becomes increasingly for many of us the spiritual hope by +light of which we continue to live), a development which we hope shall +make the humanity of a distant future as much higher in intellectual +power and wider in social sympathy than the highest human units of +our day, as that is higher than the first primeval ancestor who +with quivering limb strove to walk upright and shape his lips to the +expression of a word, is possible only if the male and female halves of +humanity progress together, expanding side by side in the future as they +have done in the past--even this truth it is possible few women have +exactly and logically grasped as the basis of their action. The truth +that, as the first primitive human males and females, unable to count +farther than their fingers, or grasp an abstract idea, or feel the +controlling power of social emotion, could only develop into the +Sapphos, Aristotles, and Shelleys of a more expanded civilisation, if +side by side, and line by line, male and female forms have expanded +together; if, as the convolutions of his brain increased in complexity, +so increased the convolutions in hers; if, as her forehead grew higher, +so developed his; and that, if the long upward march of the future is +ever to be accomplished by the race, male and female must march side by +side, acting and reacting on each other through inheritance; or progress +is impossible. The truth that, as the existence of even the male Bushman +would be impossible without the existence of the analogous Bushwoman +with the same gifts; and that as races which can produce among their +males a William Kingdon Clifford, a Tolstoy, or a Robert Browning, would +be inconceivable and impossible, unless among its females it could also +produce a Sophia Kovalevsky, a George Eliot, or a Louise Michel; so, +also, in the future, that higher and more socialised human race we dream +of can only come into existence, because in both the sex forms have +evolved together, now this sex and then that, so to speak, catching +up the ball of life and throwing it back to the other, slightly if +imperceptibly enlarging and beautifying it as it passes through their +hands. The fact that without the reaction of interevolution between the +sexes, there can be no real and permanent human advance; without the +enlarged deep-thinking Eve to bear him, no enlarged Adam; without the +enlarged widely sympathising Adam to beget her, no enlarged widely +comprehending Eve; without an enlarged Adam and an enlarged Eve, no +enlarged and beautified generation of mankind on earth; that an arrest +in one form is an arrest in both; and in the upward march of the entire +human family. The truth that, if at the present day, woman, after her +long upward march side by side with man, developing with him through +the countless ages, by means of the endless exercise of the faculties of +mind and body, has now, at last, reached her ultimate limit of growth, +and can progress no farther; that, then, here also, today, the growth +of the human spirit is to be stayed; that here, on the spot of woman's +arrest, is the standard of the race to be finally planted, to move +forward no more, for ever:--that, if the parasite woman on her couch, +loaded with gewgaws, the plaything and amusement of man, be the +permanent and final manifestation of female human life on the globe, +then that couch is also the death-bed of human evolution. These profound +underlying truths, perhaps, not one woman in twenty thousand of those +actively engaged in the struggle for readjustment has so closely and +keenly grasped that she can readily throw them into the form of exact +language; and yet, probably, not the feeblest woman taking share in our +endeavour toward readjustment and expansion fails to be animated by a +vague but profound consciousness of their existence. Beyond the small +evils, which she seeks by her immediate, personal action to remedy, lie, +she feels; large ills of which they form but an off-shoot; beyond the +small good which she seeks to effect, lies, she believes, a great and +universal beatitude to be attained; beyond the little struggle of today, +lies the larger struggle of the centuries, in which neither she alone +nor her sex alone are concerned, but all mankind. + +That such should be the mental attitude of the average woman taking part +in the readjustive sexual movement of today; that so often on the public +platform and in literature adduces merely secondary arguments, and +is wholly unable logically to give an account of the great propelling +conditions behind it, is sometimes taken as an indication of the +inefficiency, and probably the ultimate failure, of the movement in +which she takes part. But in truth, that is not so. It is rather +an indication which shows how healthy, and deeply implanted in the +substance of human life, are the roots of this movement; and it places +it in a line with all those vast controlling movements which have in the +course of the ages reorganised human life. + +For those great movements which have permanently modified the condition +of humanity have never taken their rise amid the chopped logic of +schools; they have never drawn their vitality from a series of purely +intellectual and abstract inductions. They have arisen always through +the action of widely spread material and spiritual conditions, creating +widespread human needs; which, pressing upon the isolated individuals, +awakens at last continuous, if often vague and uncertain, social +movement in a given direction. Mere intellectual comprehension may +guide, retard, or accelerate the great human movements; it has never +created them. It may even be questioned whether those very leaders, who +have superficially appeared to create and organise great and successful +social movements, have themselves, in most cases, perhaps in any, fully +understood in all their complexity the movements they themselves have +appeared to rule. They have been, rather, themselves permeated by the +great common need; and being possessed of more will, passion, intensity, +or intellect, they have been able to give voice to that which in +others was dumb, and conscious direction to that which in others was +unconscious desire: they have been but the foremost crest of a great +wave of human necessity: they have not themselves created the wave which +bears themselves, and humanity, onwards. The artificial social movements +which have had their origin in the arbitrary will of individuals, guided +with however much determination and reason, have of necessity proved +ephemeral and abortive. An Alexander might will to weld a Greece and +an Asia into one; a Napoleon might resolve to create of a diversified +Europe one consolidated state; and by dint of skill and determination +they might for a moment appear to be accomplishing that which they +desired; but the constraining individual will being withdrawn, the +object of their toil has melted away, as the little heap of damp sand +gathered under the palm of a child's hand on the sea-shore, melts away, +scattered by the wind and washed out by the waves, the moment the hand +that shaped it is withdrawn; while the small, soft, indefinite, watery +fragment of jelly-fish lying beside it, though tossed hither and +thither by water and wind, yet retains its shape and grows, because its +particles are bound by an internal and organic force. + +Our woman's movement resembles strongly, in this matter, the gigantic +religious and intellectual movement which for centuries convulsed the +life of Europe; and had, as its ultimate outcome, the final emancipation +of the human intellect and the freedom of the human spirit. Looked +back upon from the vantage-point of the present, this past presents the +appearance of one vast, steady, persistent movement proceeding always +in one ultimate direction, as though guided by some controlling human +intellect. But, to the mass of human individuals taking part in it, it +presented an appearance far otherwise. It was fought out, now here, +now there, by isolated individuals and small groups, and often for +what appeared small and almost personal ends, having sometimes, +superficially, little in common. Now it was a Giordano Bruno, burnt +in Rome in defence of abstract theory with regard to the nature of the +First Cause; then an Albigense hurled from his rocks because he refused +to part with the leaves of his old Bible; now a Dutch peasant woman, +walking serenely to the stake because she refused to bow her head before +two crossed rods; then a Servetus burnt by Protestant Calvin at Geneva; +or a Spinoza cut off from his tribe and people because he could +see nothing but God anywhere; and then it was an exiled Rousseau or +Voltaire, or a persecuted Bradlaugh; till, in our own day the last +sounds of the long fight are dying about us, as fading echoes, in the +guise of a few puerile attempts to enforce trivial disabilities on the +ground of abstract convictions. The vanguard of humanity has won its +battle for freedom of thought. + +But, to the men and women taking part in that mighty movement during +the long centuries of the past, probably nothing was quite clear, in the +majority of cases, but their own immediate move. Not the leaders--most +certainly not good old Martin Luther, even when he gave utterance to +his immortal "I can no otherwise" (the eternal justification of all +reformers and social innovators!), understood the whole breadth of the +battlefield on which they were engaged, or grasped with precision the +issues which were involved. The valiant Englishman, who, as the flames +shot up about him, cried to his companion in death, "Play the man, +Master Ridley; we shall by God's grace this day light such a candle +in England, as shall never be put out!" undoubtedly believed that +the candle lighted was the mere tallow rushlight of a small sectarian +freedom for England alone; nor perceived that what he lighted was but +one ray of the vast, universal aurora of intellectual and spiritual +liberty, whose light was ultimately to stream, not only across England, +but across the earth. Nevertheless, undoubtedly, behind all these +limited efforts, for what appeared, superficially, limited causes, +lay, in the hearts of the men and women concerned, through the ages, a +profound if vague consciousness of ends larger than they clearly knew, +to be subserved by their action; of a universal social duty and a great +necessity. + +That the Woman's Movement of our day has not taken its origin from any +mere process of theoretic argument; that it breaks out, now here and +now there, in forms divergent and at times superficially almost +irreconcilable; that the majority of those taking part in it are driven +into action as the result of the immediate pressure of the conditions +of life, and are not always able logically to state the nature of all +causes which propel them, or to paint clearly all results of their +action; so far from removing it from the category of the vast +reorganising movements of humanity, places it in a line with them, +showing how vital, spontaneous, and wholly organic and unartificial is +its nature. + +The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate, and +at times almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and +social duties; while at another it makes itself felt as a determined +endeavour after self-culture; that in one land it embodies itself mainly +in a resolute endeavour to enlarge the sphere of remunerative labour +for women; while in another it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to +recoordinate the personal relation of the sexes; that in one individual +it manifests itself as a passionate and sometimes noisy struggle for +liberty of personal action; while in another it is being fought out +silently in the depth of the individual consciousness--that primal +battle-ground, in which all questions of reform and human advance must +ultimately be fought and decided;--all this diversity, and the fact +that the average woman is entirely concerned in labour in her own little +field, shows, not the weakness, but the strength of the movement; which, +taken as a whole, is a movement steady and persistent in one direction, +the direction of increased activity and culture, and towards the +negation of all possibility of parasitism in the human female. Slowly, +and unconsciously, as the child is shaped in the womb, this movement +shapes itself in the bosom of our time, taking its place beside those +vast human developments, of which men, noting their spontaneity and the +co-ordination of their parts, have said, in the phraseology of old days, +"This thing is not of man, but of God." + +He who today looks at some great Gothic cathedral in its final form, +seems to be looking at that which might have been the incarnation of the +dream of some single soul of genius. But in truth, its origin was far +otherwise. Ages elapsed from the time the first rough stone was laid as +a foundation till the last spire and pinnacle were shaped, and the hand +which laid the foundation-stone was never the same as that which set +the last stone upon the coping. Generations often succeeded one another, +labouring at gargoyle, rose-window, and shaft, and died, leaving the +work to others; the master-builder who drew up the first rough outline +passed away, and was succeeded by others, and the details of the work as +completed bore sometimes but faint resemblance to the work as he devised +it; no man fully understood all that others had done or were doing, +but each laboured in his place; and the work as completed had unity; +it expressed not the desire and necessity of one mind, but of the human +spirit of that age; and not less essential to the existence of the +building was the labour of the workman who passed a life of devotion +in carving gargoyles or shaping rose-windows, than that of the greatest +master who drew general outlines: perhaps it was yet more heroic; for, +for the master-builder, who, even if it were but vaguely, had an image +of what the work would be when the last stone was laid and the last +spire raised, it was easy to labour with devotion and zeal, though well +he might know that the placing of that last stone and the raising of +that last spire would not be his, and that the building in its full +beauty and strength he should never see; but for the journeyman labourer +who carried on his duties and month by month toiled at carving his own +little gargoyle or shaping the traceries in his own little oriel window, +without any complete vision, it was not so easy; nevertheless, it was +through the conscientious labours of such alone, through their heaps of +chipped and spoiled stones, which may have lain thick about them, that +at the last the pile was reared in its strength and beauty. + +For a Moses who could climb Pisgah, and, though it were through a +mist of bitter tears, could see stretching before him the land of the +inheritance, a land which his feet should never tread and whose fruit +his hand should never touch, it was yet, perhaps, not so hard to turn +round and die; for, as in a dream, he had seen the land: but for the +thousands who could climb no Pisgah, who were to leave their bones +whitening in the desert, having even from afar never seen the true +outline of the land; those who, on that long march, had not even borne +the Ark nor struck the timbrel, but carried only their small household +vessels and possessions, for these it was perhaps not so easy to lie +down and perish in the desert, knowing only that far ahead somewhere, +lay a Land of Promise. Nevertheless, it was by the slow and sometimes +wavering march of such as these, that the land was reached by the people +at last. + +For her, whose insight enables her to see, through the distance, those +large beatitudes towards which the struggles and suffering of the women +of today may tend; who sees beyond the present, though in a future which +she knows she will never enter, an enlarged and strengthened womanhood +bearing forward with it a strengthened and expanded race, it is not so +hard to renounce and labour with unshaken purpose: but for those +who have not that view, and struggle on, animated at most by a vague +consciousness that somewhere ahead lies a large end, towards which their +efforts tend; who labour year after year at some poor little gargoyle of +a Franchise Bill, or the shaping of some rough little foundation-stone +of reform in education, or dress a stone (which perhaps never quite fits +the spot it was intended for, and has to be thrown aside!); or who +carve away all their lives to produce a corbel of some reform in sexual +relations, in the end to find it break under the chisel; who, out of +many failures attain, perhaps, to no success, or but to one, and that +so small and set so much in the shade that no eye will ever see it; +for such as these, it is perhaps not so easy to labour without growing +weary. Nevertheless, it is through the labours of these myriad toilers, +each working in her own minute sphere, with her own small outlook, and +out of endless failures and miscarriages, that at last the enwidened +and beautified relations of woman to life must rise, if they are ever to +come. + +When a starfish lies on the ground at the bottom of a sloping rock it +has to climb, it seems to the onlooker as though there were nothing +which could stir the inert mass and no means for taking it to the top. +Yet watch it. Beneath its lower side, hidden from sight, are a million +fine tentacles; impulses of will from the central nerve radiate +throughout the whole body, and each tiny fibre, fine as a hair, slowly +extends itself, and seizes on the minute particle of rough rock nearest +to it; now a small tentacle slips its hold, and then it holds firmly, +and then slowly and slowly the whole inert mass rises to the top. + +It is often said of those who lead in this attempt at the readaption +of woman's relation to life, that they are "New Women"; and they are +at times spoken of as though they were a something portentous and +unheard-of in the order of human life. + +But, the truth is, we are not new. We who lead in this movement today +are of that old, old Teutonic womanhood, which twenty centuries ago +ploughed its march through European forests and morasses beside its male +companion; which marched with the Cimbri to Italy, and with the Franks +across the Rhine, with the Varagians into Russia, and the Alamani into +Switzerland; which peopled Scandinavia, and penetrated to Britain; whose +priestesses had their shrines in German forests, and gave out the oracle +for peace or war. We have in us the blood of a womanhood that was never +bought and never sold; that wore no veil, and had no foot bound; whose +realised ideal of marriage was sexual companionship and an equality in +duty and labour; who stood side by side with the males they loved in +peace or war, and whose children, when they had borne them, sucked +manhood from their breasts, and even through their foetal existence +heard a brave heart beat above them. We are women of a breed whose +racial ideal was no Helen of Troy, passed passively from male hand +to male hand, as men pass gold or lead; but that Brynhild whom Segurd +found, clad in helm and byrne, the warrior maid, who gave him counsel +"the deepest that ever yet was given to living man," and "wrought on him +to the performing of great deeds;" who, when he died, raised high the +funeral pyre and lay down on it beside him, crying, "Nor shall the door +swing to at the heel of him as I go in beside him!" We are of a race +of women that of old knew no fear, and feared no death, and lived great +lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of us have fallen on evil +and degenerate times, there moves in us yet the throb of the old blood. + +If it be today on no physical battlefield that we stand beside our men, +and on no march through no external forest or morass that we have to +lead; it is yet the old spirit which, undimmed by two thousand years, +stirs within us in deeper and subtler ways; it is yet the cry of +the old, free Northern woman which makes the world today. Though the +battlefield be now for us all, in the laboratory or the workshop, in the +forum or the study, in the assembly and in the mart and the political +arena, with the pen and not the sword, of the head and not the arm, we +still stand side by side with the men we love, "to dare with them in +war and to suffer with them in peace," as the Roman wrote of our old +Northern womanhood. + +Those women, of whom the old writers tell us, who, barefooted and +white robed, led their Northern hosts on that long march to Italy, were +animated by the thought that they led their people to a land of warmer +sunshine and richer fruitage; we, today, believe we have caught sight +of a land bathed in a nobler than any material sunlight, with a fruitage +richer than any which the senses only can grasp: and behind us, we +believe there follows a longer train than any composed of our own race +and people; the sound of the tread we hear behind us is that of all +earth's women, bearing within them the entire race. The footpath, yet +hardly perceptible, which we tread down today, will, we believe, be +life's broadest and straightest road, along which the children of men +will pass to a higher co-ordination and harmony. The banner which +we unfurl today is not new: it is the standard of the old, free, +monogamous, labouring woman, which, twenty hundred years ago, floated +over the forests of Europe. We shall bear it on, each generation as it +falls passing it into the hand of that which follows, till we plant it +so high that all nations of the world shall see it; till the women of +the humblest human races shall be gathered beneath its folds, and no +child enter life that was not born within its shade. + +We are not new! If you would understand us, go back two thousand +years, and study our descent; our breed is our explanation. We are the +daughters of our fathers as well as of our mothers. In our dreams we +still hear the clash of the shields of our forefathers as they struck +them together before battle and raised the shout of "Freedom!" In our +dreams it is with us still, and when we wake it breaks from our own +lips! We are the daughters of those men. + +But, it may be said, "Are there not women among you who would use the +shibboleth, of freedom and labour, merely as a means for opening a +door to a greater and more highly flavoured self-indulgence, to a more +lucrative and enjoyable parasitism? Are there not women who, under the +guise of 'work,' are seeking only increased means of sensuous pleasure +and self-indulgence; to whom intellectual training and the opening to +new fields of labour side by side with man, mean merely new means of +self-advertisement and parasitic success?" We answer: There may be +such, truly; among us--but not of us! This at least is true, that we, +ourselves, are seldom deceived by them; the sheep generally recognise +the wolf however carefully fitted the sheepskin under which he hides, +though the onlookers may not; and though not always be able to drive him +from the flock! The outer world may be misled; we, who stand shoulder to +shoulder with them, know them; they are not many; neither are they +new. They are one of the oldest survivals, and among the most primitive +relics in the race. They are as old as Loki among the gods, as Lucifer +among the Sons of the Morning, as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as +pain and dislocation in the web of human life. + +Such women are as old as that first primitive woman who, when she went +with her fellows to gather wood for the common household, put grass in +the centre of the bundle that she might appear to carry as much as they, +yet carry nothing; she is as old as the first man who threw away his +shield in battle, and yet, when it was over, gathered with the victors +to share the spoils, as old as cowardice and lust in the human and +animal world; only to cease from being when, perhaps, an enlarged and +expanded humanity shall have cast the last slough of its primitive skin. + +Every army has its camp-followers, not among its accredited soldiers, +but who follow in its train, ready to attack and rifle the fallen on +either side. To lookers on, they may appear soldiers; but the soldier +knows who they are. At the Judean supper there was one Master, and to +the onlooker there may have seemed twelve apostles; in truth only twelve +were of the company, and one was not of it. There has always been this +thirteenth figure at every sacramental gathering, since the world began, +wherever the upholders of a great cause have broken spiritual bread; but +it may be questioned whether in any instance this thirteenth figure +has been able to destroy, or even vitally to retard, any great human +movement. Judas could hang his Master by a kiss; but he could not +silence the voice which for a thousand years rang out of that Judean +grave. Again and again, in social, political, and intellectual +movements, the betrayer betrays;--and the cause marches on over the body +of the man. + +There are women, as there are men, whose political, social, +intellectual, or philanthropic labours are put on, as the harlot puts +on paint, and for the same purpose: but they can no more retard the +progress of the great bulk of vital and sincere womanhood, than the +driftwood on the surface of a mighty river can ultimately prevent its +waters from reaching the sea. + + + +Chapter IV. Woman and War. + +But it may also be said, "Granting fully that you are right, that, as +woman's old fields of labour slip from her, she must grasp the new, or +must become wholly dependent on her sexual function alone, all the other +elements of human nature in her becoming atrophied and arrested through +lack of exercise: and, granting that her evolution being arrested, +the evolution of the whole race will be also arrested in her person: +granting all this to the full, and allowing that the bulk of human +labour tends to become more and more intellectual and less and less +purely mechanical, as perfected machinery takes the place of crude human +exertion; and that therefore if woman is to be saved from degeneration +and parasitism, and the body of humanity from arrest, she must receive a +training which will cultivate all the intellectual and all the physical +faculties with which she is endowed, and be allowed freely to employ +them; nevertheless, would it not be possible, and perhaps be well, that +a dividing line of some kind should be drawn between the occupations +of men and of women? Would it not, for example, be possible that +woman should retain agriculture, textile manufacture, trade, domestic +management, the education of youth, and medicine, in addition to +child-bearing, as her exclusive fields of toil; while, to the male, +should be left the study of abstract science, law and war, and +statecraft; as of old, man took war and the chase, and woman absorbed +the further labours of life? Why should there not be again a fair and +even division in the field of social labour?" + +Superficially, this suggestion appears rational, having at least this +to recommend it, that it appears to harmonise with the course of human +evolution in the past; but closely examined, it will, we think, be found +to have no practical or scientific basis, and to be out of harmony with +the conditions of modern life. In ancient and primitive societies, the +mere larger size and muscular strength of man, and woman's incessant +physical activity in child-bearing and suckling and rearing the young, +made almost inevitable a certain sexual division of labour in almost +all countries, save perhaps in ancient Egypt. (The division of labour +between the sexes in Ancient Egypt and other exceptional countries, is +a matter of much interest, which cannot here be entered on.) Woman +naturally took the heavy agricultural and domestic labours, which were +yet more consistent with the continual dependence of infant life on +her own, than those of man in war and the chase. There was nothing +artificial in such a division; it threw the heaviest burden of the most +wearying and unexciting forms of social labour on woman, but under it +both sexes laboured in a manner essential to the existence of society, +and each transmitted to the other, through inheritance, the fruit of its +slowly expanding and always exerted powers; and the race progressed. + +Individual women might sometimes, and even often, become the warrior +chief of a tribe; the King of Ashantee might train his terrible regiment +of females; and men might now and again plant and weave for their +children: but in the main, and in most societies, the division of +labour was just, natural, beneficial; and it was inevitable that such a +division should take place. Were today a band of civilised men, women, +and infants thrown down absolutely naked and defenceless in some desert, +and cut off hopelessly from all external civilised life, undoubtedly +very much the old division of labour would, at least for a time, +reassert itself; men would look about for stones and sticks with which +to make weapons to repel wild beasts and enemies, and would go a-hunting +meat and fighting savage enemies and tend the beasts when tamed: (The +young captured animals would probably be tamed and reared by the women.) +women would suckle their children, cook the meat men brought, build +shelters, look for roots and if possible cultivate them; there certainly +would be no parasite in the society; the woman who refused to labour for +her offspring, and the man who refused to hunt or defend society, would +not be supported by their fellows, would soon be extinguished by want. +As wild beasts were extinguished and others tamed and the materials for +war improved, fewer men would be needed for hunting and war; then they +would remain at home and aid in building and planting; many women would +retire into the house to perfect domestic toil and handicrafts, and on +a small scale the common ancient evolution of society would probably +practically repeat itself. But for the present, we see no such natural +and spontaneous division of labour based on natural sexual distinctions +in the new fields of intellectual or delicately skilled manual labour, +which are taking the place of the old. + +It is possible, though at present there is nothing to give indication of +such a fact, and it seems highly improbable, that, in some subtle +manner now incomprehensible, there might tend to be a subtle correlation +between that condition of the brain and nervous system which accompanies +ability in the direction of certain modern forms of mental, social +labour, and the particular form of reproductive function possessed by +an individual. It may be that, inexplicable as it seems, there may +ultimately be found to be some connection between that condition of the +brain and nervous system which fits the individual for the study of the +higher mathematics, let us say, and the nature of their sex attributes. +The mere fact that, of the handful of women who, up to the present, +have received training and been allowed to devote themselves to abstract +study, several have excelled in the higher mathematics, proves of +necessity no pre-eminent tendency on the part of the female sex in +the direction of mathematics, as compared to labour in the fields of +statesmanship, administration, or law; as into these fields there has +been practically no admittance for women. It is sometimes stated, +that as several women of genius in modern times have sought to find +expression for their creative powers in the art of fiction, there must +be some inherent connection in the human brain between the ovarian sex +function and the art of fiction. The fact is, that modern fiction being +merely a description of human life in any of its phases, and being +the only art that can be exercised without special training or special +appliances, and produced in the moments stolen from the multifarious, +brain-destroying occupations which fill the average woman's life, they +have been driven to find this outlet for their powers as the only one +presenting itself. How far otherwise might have been the directions in +which their genius would naturally have expressed itself can be known +only partially even to the women themselves; what the world has lost by +that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have been +its most natural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one +can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber +the ground, we see often a pathetic figure, when we recognise that +beneath that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie buried +a sound legislator, an able architect, an original scientific +investigator, or a good judge. Scientifically speaking, it is as +unproven that there is any organic relation between the brain of the +female and the production of art in the form of fiction, as that there +is an organic relation between the hand of woman and a typewriting +machine. Both the creative writer and the typist, in their respective +spheres, are merely finding outlets for their powers in the direction of +least resistance. The tendency of women at the present day to undertake +certain forms of labour, proves only that in the crabbed, walled-in, +and bound conditions surrounding woman at the present day, these are the +lines along which action is most possible to her. + +It may possibly be that in future ages, when the male and female forms +have been placed in like intellectual conditions, with like stimuli, +like training, and like rewards, that some aptitudes may be found +running parallel with the line of sex function when humanity is viewed +as a whole. It may possibly be that, when the historian of the future +looks back over the history of the intellectually freed and active +sexes for countless generations, that a decided preference of the female +intellect for mathematics, engineering, or statecraft may be made clear; +and that a like marked inclination in the male to excel in acting, +music, or astronomy may by careful and large comparison be shown. But, +for the present, we have no adequate scientific data from which to draw +any conclusion, and any attempt to divide the occupations in which male +and female intellects and wills should be employed, must be to attempt +a purely artificial and arbitrary division: a division not more rational +and scientific than an attempt to determine by the colour of his eyes +and the shape and strength of his legs, whether a lad should be an +astronomer or an engraver. Those physical differences among mankind +which divide races and nations--not merely those differences, enormously +greater as they are generally, than any physical differences between +male and female of the same race, which divide the Jew and the Swede, +the Japanese and the Englishman, but even those subtle physical +differences which divide closely allied races such as the English and +German--often appear to be allied with certain subtle differences in +intellectual aptitudes. Yet even with regard to these differences, it +is almost impossible to determine scientifically in how far they are the +result of national traditions, environment, and education, and in how +far the result of real differences in organic conformation. (In thinking +of physical sex differences, the civilised man of modern times has +always to guard himself against being unconsciously misled by the very +exaggerated external sex differences which our unnatural method of sex +clothing and dressing the hair produces. The unclothed and natural human +male and female bodies are not more divided from each other than those +of the lion and lioness. Our remote Saxon ancestors, with their great, +almost naked, white bodies and flowing hair worn long by both sexes, +were but little distinguished from each other; while among their modern +descendants the short hair, darkly clothed, manifestly two-legged male +differs absolutely from the usually long-haired, colour bedizened, +much beskirted female. Were the structural differences between male and +female really one half as marked as the artificial visual differences, +they would be greater than those dividing, not merely any species of man +from another, but as great as those which divide orders in the animal +world. Only a mind exceedingly alert and analytical can fail ultimately +to be misled by habitual visual misrepresentation. There is not, +probably, one man or woman in twenty thousand who is not powerfully +influenced in modern life in their conception of the differences, +physical and intellectual, dividing the human male and female, by the +grotesque exaggerations of modern attire and artificial manners.) + +No study of the mere physical differences between individuals of +different races would have enabled us to arrive at any knowledge of +their mental aptitude; nor does the fact that certain individuals of a +given human variety have certain aptitudes form a rational ground for +compelling all individuals of that variety to undertake a certain form +of labour. + +No analysis, however subtle, of the physical conformation of the Jew +could have suggested a priori, and still less could have proved, apart +from ages of practical experience, that, running parallel with any +physical characteristics which may distinguish him from his fellows, was +an innate and unique intellectual gift in the direction of religion. The +fact that, during three thousand years, from Moses to Isaiah, through +Jesus and Paul on to Spinoza, the Jewish race has produced men who +have given half the world its religious faith and impetus, proves that, +somewhere and somehow, whether connected organically with that physical +organisation that marks the Jew, or as the result of his traditions and +training, there does go this gift in the matter of religion. Yet, on +the other hand, we find millions of Jews who are totally and markedly +deficient in it, and to base any practical legislation for the +individual even on this proven intellectual aptitude of the race as a +whole would be manifestly as ridiculous as abortive. Yet more markedly, +with the German--no consideration of his physical peculiarities, though +it proceeded to the subtlest analysis of nerve, bone, and muscle, could +in the present stage of our knowledge have proved to us what generations +of experience appear to have proved, that, with that organisation which +constitutes the German, goes an unique aptitude for music. There is +always the possibility of mistaking the result of training and external +circumstance for inherent tendency, but when we consider the passion for +music which the German has shown, and when we consider that the greatest +musicians the world has seen, from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to +Wagner, have been of that race, it appears highly probable that such a +correlation between the German organisation and the intellectual gift of +music does exist. Similar intellectual peculiarities seem to be connoted +by the external differences which mark off other races from each other. +Nevertheless, were persons of all of these nationalities gathered in one +colony, any attempt to legislate for their restriction to certain forms +of intellectual labour on the ground of their apparently proved national +aptitudes or disabilities, would be regarded as insane. To insist that +all Jews, and none but Jews, should lead and instruct in religious +matters; that all Englishmen, and none but Englishmen, should engage in +trade; that each German should make his living by music, and none but +a German allowed to practise it, would drive to despair the unfortunate +individual Englishman, whose most marked deficiency might be in the +direction of finance and bartering trade power; the Jew, whose religious +instincts might be entirely rudimentary; or the German, who could not +distinguish one note from another; and the society as a whole would be +an irremediable loser, in one of the heaviest of all forms of social +loss--the loss of the full use of the highest capacities of all its +members. + +It may be that with sexes as with races, the subtlest physical +difference between them may have their fine mental correlatives; but no +abstract consideration of the human body in relation to its functions +of sex can, in the present state of our knowledge, show us what +intellectual capacities tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing +in the present or past condition of male and female give us more +than the very faintest possible indication of the relation of their +intellectual aptitudes and their sexual functions. And even were it +proved by centuries of experiment that with the possession of the +uterine function of sex tends to go exceptional intellectual capacity +in the direction of mathematics rather than natural history, or an +inclination for statecraft rather than for mechanical invention; were it +proved that, generally speaking and as a whole, out of twenty thousand +women devoting themselves to law and twenty thousand to medicine, they +tended to achieve relatively more in the field of law than of +medicine, there would yet be no possible healthy or rational ground +for restricting the activities of the individual female to that line +in which the average female appeared rather more frequently to excel. +(Minds not keenly analytical are always apt to mistake mere correlation +of appearance with causative sequence. We have heard it gravely asserted +that between potatoes, pigs, mud cabins and Irishmen there was an +organic connection: but we who have lived in Colonies, know that within +two generations the pure-bred descendant of the mud cabiner becomes +often the successful politician, wealthy financier, or great judge; and +shows no more predilection for potatoes, pigs, and mud cabins than men +of any other race.) + +That even one individual in a society should be debarred from +undertaking that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes +an unnecessary deficit in the general social assets. That one male +Froebel should be prohibited or hampered in his labour as an educator of +infancy, on the ground that infantile instruction was the field of +the female; that one female with gifts in the direction of state +administration, should be compelled to instruct an infants' school, +perhaps without the slightest gift for so doing, is a running to waste +of social life-blood. + +Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, +is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be +determined. And our demand today is that natural conditions, inexorably, +but beneficently, may determine the labours of each individual, and not +artificial restrictions. + +As there is no need to legislate that Hindus, being generally supposed +to have a natural incapacity for field sports, shall not betake +themselves to them--for, if they have no capacity, they will fail; and, +as in spite of the Hindus' supposed general incapacity for sport, it is +possible for an individual Hindu to become the noted batsman of his age; +so, also, there is no need to legislate that women should be restricted +in her choice of fields of labour; for the organic incapacity of the +individual, if it exist, will legislate far more powerfully than any +artificial, legal, or social obstruction can do; and it may be that the +one individual in ten thousand who selects a field not generally sought +by his fellows will enrich humanity by the result of an especial genius. +Allowing all to start from the one point in the world of intellectual +culture and labour, with our ancient Mother Nature sitting as umpire, +distributing the prizes and scratching from the lists the incompetent, +is all we demand, but we demand it determinedly. Throw the puppy into +the water: if it swims, well; if it sinks, well; but do not tie a +rope round its throat and weight it with a brick, and then assert its +incapacity to keep afloat. + +For the present our cry is, "We take all labour for our province!" + +From the judge's seat to the legislator's chair; from the statesman's +closet to the merchant's office; from the chemist's laboratory to the +astronomer's tower, there is no post or form of toil for which it is not +our intention to attempt to fit ourselves; and there is no closed door +we do not intend to force open; and there is no fruit in the garden of +knowledge it is not our determination to eat. Acting in us, and through +us, nature we know will mercilessly expose to us our deficiencies in +the field of human toil, and reveal to us our powers. And, for today, we +take all labour for our province! + +But, it may then be said: "What of war, that struggle of the human +creature to attain its ends by physical force and at the price of the +life of others: will you take part in that also?" We reply: Yes; more +particularly in that field we intend to play our part. We have always +borne part of the weight of war, and the major part. It is not merely +that in primitive times we suffered from the destruction of the fields +we tilled and the houses we built; or that in later times as domestic +labourers and producers, though unwaged, we, in taxes and material loss +and additional labour, paid as much as our males towards the cost of +war; nor is it that in a comparatively insignificant manner, as +nurses of the wounded in modern times, or now and again as warrior +chieftainesses and leaders in primitive and other societies, we have +borne our part; nor is it even because the spirit of resolution in its +women, and their willingness to endure, has in all ages again and again +largely determined the fate of a race that goes to war, that we demand +our controlling right where war is concerned. Our relation to war is +far more intimate, personal, and indissoluble than this. Men have made +boomerangs, bows, swords, or guns with which to destroy one another; we +have made the men who destroyed and were destroyed! We have in all ages +produced, at an enormous cost, the primal munition of war, without which +no other would exist. There is no battlefield on earth, nor ever has +been, howsoever covered with slain, which is has not cost the women of +the race more in actual bloodshed and anguish to supply, then it has +cost the men who lie there. We pay the first cost on all human life. + +In supplying the men for the carnage of a battlefield, women have not +merely lost actually more blood, and gone through a more acute anguish +and weariness, in the long months of bearing and in the final agony of +childbirth, than has been experienced by the men who cover it; but, in +the long months and years of rearing that follow, the women of the race +go through a long, patiently endured strain which no knapsacked soldier +on his longest march has ever more than equalled; while, even in the +matter of death, in all civilised societies, the probability that the +average woman will die in childbirth is immeasurably greater than the +probability that the average male will die in battle. + +There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have borne children, or +be merely potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a +battlefield covered with slain, but the thought would rise in her, "So +many mothers' sons! So many bodies brought into the world to lie there! +So many months of weariness and pain while bones and muscles were shaped +within; so many hours of anguish and struggle that breath might be; so +many baby mouths drawing life at woman's breasts;--all this, that men +might lie with glazed eyeballs, and swollen bodies, and fixed, blue, +unclosed mouths, and great limbs tossed--this, that an acre of ground +might be manured with human flesh, that next year's grass or poppies or +karoo bushes may spring up greener and redder, where they have lain, or +that the sand of a plain may have a glint of white bones!" And we cry, +"Without an inexorable cause, this should not be!" No woman who is a +woman says of a human body, "It is nothing!" + +On that day, when the woman takes her place beside the man in the +governance and arrangement of external affairs of her race will also +be that day that heralds the death of war as a means of arranging human +differences. No tinsel of trumpets and flags will ultimately seduce +women into the insanity of recklessly destroying life, or gild the +wilful taking of life with any other name than that of murder, whether +it be the slaughter of the million or of one by one. And this will be, +not because with the sexual function of maternity necessarily goes in +the human creature a deeper moral insight, or a loftier type of social +instinct than that which accompanies the paternal. Men have in all ages +led as nobly as women in many paths of heroic virtue, and toward the +higher social sympathies; in certain ages, being freer and more widely +cultured, they have led further and better. The fact that woman has +no inherent all-round moral superiority over her male companion, or +naturally on all points any higher social instinct, is perhaps most +clearly exemplified by one curious very small fact: the two terms +signifying intimate human relationships which in almost all human +languages bear the most sinister and antisocial significance are both +terms which have as their root the term "mother," and denote feminine +relationships--the words "mother-in-law" and "step-mother." + +In general humanity, in the sense of social solidarity, and in +magnanimity, the male has continually proved himself at least the equal +of the female. + +Nor will women shrink from war because they lack courage. Earth's women +of every generation have faced suffering and death with an equanimity +that no soldier on a battlefield has ever surpassed and few have +equalled; and where war has been to preserve life, or land, or freedom, +unparasitised and labouring women have in all ages known how to bear an +active part, and die. + +Nor will woman's influence militate against war because in the future +woman will not be able physically to bear her part in it. The smaller +size of her muscle, which would severely have disadvantaged her when +war was conducted with a battle-axe or sword and hand to hand, would now +little or at all affect her. If intent on training for war, she might +acquire the skill for guiding a Maxim or shooting down a foe with a +Lee-Metford at four thousand yards as ably as any male; and undoubtedly, +it has not been only the peasant girl of France, who has carried latent +and hid within her person the gifts that make the supreme general. If +our European nations should continue in their present semi-civilised +condition, which makes war possible, for a few generations longer, it +is highly probable that as financiers, as managers of the commissariat +department, as inspectors of provisions and clothing for the army, women +will play a very leading part; and that the nation which is the first to +employ its women so may be placed at a vast advantage over its fellows +in time of war. It is not because of woman's cowardice, incapacity, nor, +above all, because of her general superior virtue, that she will end war +when her voice is fully, finally, and clearly heard in the governance +of states--it is because, on this one point, and on this point almost +alone, the knowledge of woman, simply as woman, is superior to that of +man; she knows the history of human flesh; she knows its cost; he +does not. (It is noteworthy that even Catharine of Russia, a ruler and +statesman of a virile and uncompromising type, and not usually troubled +with moral scruples, yet refused with indignation the offer of Frederick +of Prussia to pay her heavily for a small number of Russian recruits in +an age when the hiring out of soldiers was common among the sovereigns +of Europe.) + +In a besieged city, it might well happen that men in the streets +might seize upon statues and marble carvings from public buildings and +galleries and hurl them in to stop the breaches made in their ramparts +by the enemy, unconsideringly and merely because they came first to +hand, not valuing them more than had they been paving-stones. But one +man could not do this--the sculptor! He, who, though there might be no +work of his own chisel among them, yet knew what each of these works of +art had cost, knew by experience the long years of struggle and study +and the infinitude of toil which had gone to the shaping of even one +limb, to the carving of even one perfected outline, he could never so +use them without thought or care. Instinctively he would seek to throw +in household goods, even gold and silver, all the city held, before he +sacrificed its works of art! + +Men's bodies are our woman's works of art. Given to us power of control, +we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human +relationships made by international ambitions and greeds. The thought +would never come to us as woman, "Cast in men's bodies; settle the thing +so!" Arbitration and compensation would as naturally occur to her +as cheaper and simpler methods of bridging the gaps in national +relationships, as to the sculptor it would occur to throw in anything +rather than statuary, though he might be driven to that at last! + +This is one of those phases of human life, not very numerous, but very +important, towards which the man as man, and the woman as woman, on +the mere ground of their different sexual function with regard to +reproduction, stand, and must stand, at a somewhat differing angle. +The physical creation of human life, which, in as far as the male is +concerned, consists in a few moments of physical pleasure; to the female +must always signify months of pressure and physical endurance, crowned +with danger to life. To the male, the giving of life is a laugh; to the +female, blood, anguish, and sometimes death. Here we touch one of the +few yet important differences between man and woman as such. + +The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean, +to the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be +borne within them for months, given birth to in anguish, fed from +their breasts and reared with toil, if the numbers of the tribe and the +strength of the nation are to be maintained. In nations continually at +war, incessant and unbroken child-bearing is by war imposed on all women +if the state is to survive; and whenever war occurs, if numbers are to +be maintained, there must be an increased child-bearing and rearing. +This throws upon woman as woman a war tax, compared with which all that +the male expends in military preparations is comparatively light. + +The relations of the female towards the production of human life +influences undoubtedly even her relation towards animal and all life. +"It is a fine day, let us go out and kill something!" cries the typical +male of certain races, instinctively. "There is a living thing, it will +die if it is not cared for," says the average woman, almost equally +instinctively. It is true, that the woman will sacrifice as mercilessly, +as cruelly, the life of a hated rival or an enemy, as any male; but she +always knows what she is doing, and the value of the life she takes! +There is no light-hearted, careless enjoyment in the sacrifice of life +to the normal woman; her instinct, instructed by practical experience, +steps in to prevent it. She always knows what life costs; and that it is +more easy to destroy than create it. + +It is also true, that, from the loftiest standpoint, the condemnation +of war which has arisen in the advancing human spirit, is in no sense +related to any particular form of sex function. The man and the woman +alike, who with Isaiah on the hills of Palestine, or the Indian Buddha +under his bo-tree, have seen the essential unity of all sentient +life; and who therefore see in war but a symptom of that crude +disco-ordination of life on earth, not yet at one with itself, which +affects humanity in these early stages of its growth: and who are +compelled to regard as the ultimate goal of the race, though yet perhaps +far distant across the ridges of innumerable coming ages, that harmony +between all forms of conscious life, metaphorically prefigured by the +ancient Hebrew, when he cried, "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb; and +the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion +and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them!"--to that +individual, whether man or woman, who has reached this standpoint, there +is no need for enlightenment from the instincts of the child-bearers of +society as such; their condemnation of war, rising not so much from the +fact that it is a wasteful destruction of human flesh, as that it is an +indication of the non-existence of that co-ordination, the harmony which +is summed up in the cry, "My little children, love one another." + +But for the vast bulk of humanity, probably for generations to come, the +instinctive antagonism of the human child-bearer to reckless destruction +of that which she has at so much cost produced, will be necessary to +educate the race to any clear conception of the bestiality and insanity +of war. + +War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible +to the female an equal share in the control and governance of modern +national life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its +extinction will not be delayed much longer. + +It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men's +bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour +and ardour of battle, but singly, and alone, with a three-in-the-morning +courage, shed our blood and face death that the battlefield may have +its food, a food more precious to us than our heart's blood; it is we +especially, who in the domain of war, have our word to say, a word no +man can say for us. It is our intention to enter into the domain of +war and to labour there till in the course of generations we have +extinguished it. + +If today we claim all labour for our province, yet more especially do we +claim those fields in which the difference in the reproductive function +between man and woman may place male and female at a slightly different +angle with regard to certain phases of human life. + + + +Chapter V. Sex Differences. + +If we examine the physical phenomenon of sex as it manifests itself in +the human creature, we find, in the first stages of the individual's +existence, no difference discernible, by any means we have at present at +our command, between those germs which are ultimately to become male or +female. Later, in the foetal life, at birth, and through infancy though +the organs of sex serve to distinguish the male from the female, there +is in the general structure and working of the organism little or +nothing to divide the sexes. + +Even when puberty is reached, with its enormous development of sexual +and reproductive activity modifying those parts of the organism +with which it is concerned, and producing certain secondary sexual +characteristics, there yet remains the major extent of the human +body and of physical function little, or not at all, affected by sex +modification. The eye, the ear, the sense of touch, the general organs +of nutrition and respiration and volition are in the main identical, +and often differ far more in persons of the same sex than in those of +opposite sexes; and even on the dissecting-table the tissues of the male +and female are often wholly indistinguishable. + +It is when we consider the reproductive organs themselves and their +forms of activity, and such parts of the organism modified directly +in relation to them, that a real and important difference is found +to exist, radical though absolutely complemental. It is exactly as we +approach the reproductive functions that the male and female bodies +differ; exactly as we recede from them that they become more and more +similar, and even absolutely identical. Taking the eye, perhaps the most +highly developed, complex organ in the body, and, if of an organ the +term may be allowed, the most intellectual organ of sense, we find it +remains the same in male and female in structure, in appearance, and +in function throughout life; while the breast, closely connected with +reproduction, though absolutely identical in both forms in infancy, +assumes a widely different organisation when reproductive activity is +actually concerned. + +When we turn to the psychic phase of human life an exactly analogous +phenomenon presents itself. The intelligence, emotions, and desires of +the human infant at birth differ not at all perceptibly, as its sex may +be male or female; and such psychic differences as appear to exist in +later childhood are undoubtedly very largely the result of artificial +training, forcing on the appearance of psychic sexual divergencies long +before they would tend spontaneously to appear; as where sports and +occupations are interdicted to young children on the ground of their +supposed sexual unfitness; as when an infant female is forcibly +prevented from climbing or shouting, and the infant male from amusing +himself with needle and thread or dolls. Even in the fully adult human, +and in spite of differences of training, the psychic activities over +a large extent of life appear to be absolutely identical. The male and +female brains acquire languages, solve mathematical problems, and master +scientific detail in a manner wholly indistinguishable: as illustrated +by the fact that in modern universities the papers sent in by male and +female candidates are as a rule absolutely identical in type. Placed in +like external conditions, their tastes and emotions, over a vast part of +the surface of life, are identical; and, in an immense number of those +cases where psychic sex differences appear to exist, subject to rigid +analysis they are found to be purely artificial creations, for, when +other races or classes are studied, they are found non-existent as +sexual characteristics; as when the female is supposed by ignorant +persons in modern European societies to have an inherent love for bright +colours and ornaments, not shared by the male; while experience of other +societies and past social conditions prove that it is as often the male +who has been even more desirous of attiring himself in bright raiment +and adorning himself with brilliant jewels; or as when, among certain +tribes of savages, the use of tobacco is supposed to be a peculiarly +female prerogative, while, in some modern societies, it is supposed +to have some relation to masculinity. (The savage male of today +when attired in his paint, feathers, cats' tails and necklaces is an +immeasurably more ornamented and imposing figure than his female, even +when fully attired for a dance in beads and bangles: the Oriental +male has sometimes scarcely been able to walk under the weight of his +ornaments; and the males of Europe a couple of centuries ago, with their +powdered wigs, lace ruffles and cuffs, paste buckles, feathered cocked +hats, and patches were quite as ridiculous in their excess of adornment +as the complementary females of their own day, or the most parasitic +females of this. Both in the class and the individual, whether male or +female, an intense love of dress and meretricious external adornment is +almost invariably the concomitant and outcome of parasitism. Were the +parasite female class in our own societies today to pass away, French +fashions with their easeless and grotesque variations (shaped not for +use or beauty, but the attracting of attention) would die out. And the +extent to which any woman today, not herself belonging to the parasite +class and still labouring, attempts to follow afar off the fashions of +the parasite, may be taken generally as an almost certain indication +of the ease with which she would accept parasitism were its conditions +offered her. The tendency of the cultured and intellectually labouring +woman of today to adopt a more rational type of attire, less shaped to +attract attention to the individual than to confer comfort and abstain +from impeding activity, is often spoken of as an attempt on the part +of woman slavishly to imitate man. What is really taking place is, that +like causes are producing like effects on human creatures with common +characteristics.) + +But there remain certain psychic differences in attitude, on the part of +male and female as such, which are inherent and not artificial: and, +in the psychic human world, it is exactly as we approach the sphere +of sexual and reproductive activity, with those emotions and instincts +connected directly with sex and the reproduction of the race, that a +difference does appear. + +In the animal world all forms of psychic variations are found allying +themselves now with the male sex form, and then with the female. In the +insect and fish worlds, where the female forms are generally larger +and stronger than the male, the female is generally more pugnacious and +predatory than the male. Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form +is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem +very small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly +monogamous, the affection of the female for the male is so great that +she is said never to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over +and care for the young with extreme solicitude. The ostrich male form, +though perhaps larger than the female, shares with her the labour of +hatching the eggs, relieving the hen of her duty at a fixed hour daily: +and his care for the young when hatched is as tender as hers. Among +song-birds, in which the male and female forms are so alike as sometimes +to be indistinguishable, and which are also monogamous, the male and +female forms not only exhibit the same passionate affection for each +other (in the case of the South African cock-o-veet, they have one +answering love-song between them; the male sounding two or three notes +and the female completing it with two or three more), but they build the +nest together and rear the young with an equal devotion. In the case of +the little kapok bird of the Cape, a beautiful, white, fluffy round +nest is made by both out of the white down of a certain plant, and +immediately below the entrance to the cavity in which the little female +sits on the eggs is a small shelf or basket, in which the tiny male sits +to watch over and guard them. It is among certain orders of birds that +sex manifestations appear to assume their most harmonious and poetical +forms on earth. Among gallinaceous birds, on the other hand, where the +cock is much larger and more pugnacious than the female, and which are +polygamous, the cock does not court the female by song, but seizes her +by force, and shows little or no interest in his offspring, neither +sharing in the brooding nor feeding the young; and even at times seizing +any tempting morsel which the young or the hen may have discovered. + +Among mammals the male form tends to be slightly larger than the female, +though not always (the female whale, for instance, being larger than the +male); the male also tends to be more pugnacious and less careful of the +young; though to this rule also there are exceptions. In the case of +the South African mierkat, for instance, the female is generally more +combative and more difficult to tame than the male; and it is the +males who from the moment of birth watch over the young with the most +passionate and tender solicitude, keeping them warm under their persons, +carrying them to places of safety in their mouths, and feeding them till +full grown; and this they do not only for their own young, but to any +young who may be brought in contact with them. We have known a male +mierkat so assiduous in feeding young that were quite unrelated to +himself, taking to them every morsel of food given him, that we have +been compelled to shut him up in a room alone when feeding him, to +prevent his starving himself to death: the male mierkat thus exhibiting +exactly those psychic qualities which are generally regarded as +peculiarly feminine; the females, on the other hand, being far more +pugnacious towards each other than are the males. + +Among mammals generally, except the tendency to greater pugnacity shown +by the male towards other males, and the greater solicitude for the +young shown generally by the female form, but not always; the psychic +differences between the two sex forms are not great. Between the male +and female pointer as puppies, there is as little difference in mental +activity as in physical; and even when adult, on the hunting ground, +that great non-sexual field in which their highest mental and physical +activities are displayed, there is little or nothing which distinguishes +materially between the male and female; in method, manner, and quickness +they are alike; in devotion to man, they are psychically identical. (It +is often said the female dog is more intelligent than the male; but I +am almost inclined to doubt this, after long and close study of both +forms.) It is at the moment when the reproductive element comes fully +into play that similarity and identity cease. In the intensity of +initial sex instinct they are alike; the female will leap from windows, +climb walls, and almost endanger her life to reach the male who waits +for her, as readily as he will to gain her. It is when the bitch lies +with her six young drawing life from her breast, and gazing with wistful +and anguished solicitude at every hand stretched out to touch them, a +world of emotion concentrated on the sightless creatures, and a whole +body of new mental aptitudes brought into play in caring for them, it is +then that between her and the male who begot them, but cares nothing for +them, there does rise a psychic difference that is real and wide. Alike +in the sports of puppydom and the non-sexual activities of adult age; +alike in the possession of the initial sexual instinct which draws the +sex to the sex, the moment active sexual reproduction is concerned, +there is opened to the female a certain world of sensations and +experiences, from which her male companion is for ever excluded. + +So also is our human world: alike in the sports, and joys, and sorrows +of infancy; alike in the non-sexual labours of life; alike even in the +possession of that initial instinct which draws sex to sex, and which, +differing slightly in its forms of manifestation is of corresponding +intensity in both; the moment actual reproduction begins to take place, +the man and the woman enter spheres of sensation, perception, emotion, +desire, and knowledge which are not, and cannot be, absolutely +identical. Between the man who, in an instant of light-hearted +enjoyment, begets the infant (who may even beget it in a state of +half-drunken unconsciousness, and may easily know nothing of its +existence for months or years after it is born, or never at all; and who +under no circumstances can have any direct sensational knowledge of its +relation to himself) and the woman who bears it continuously for months +within her body, and who gives birth to it in pain, and who, if it is to +live, is compelled, or was in primitive times, to nourish it for +months from the blood of her own being--between these, there exists of +necessity, towards a limited but all-important body of human interests +and phenomena, a certain distinct psychic attitude. At this one point, +the two great halves of humanity stand confronting certain great +elements in human existence, from angles that are not identical. From +the moment the universal initial attraction of sex to sex becomes +incarnate in the first concrete sexual act till the developed offspring +attains maturity, no step in the reproductive journey, or in their +relation to their offspring, has been quite identical for the man and +the woman. And this divergence of experiences in human relations must +react on their attitude towards that particular body of human concerns +which directly is connected with the sexual reproduction of the race; +and, it is exactly in these fields of human activity, where sex as sex +is concerned, that woman as woman has a part to play which she cannot +resign into the hands of others. + +It may be truly said that in the laboratory, the designing-room, the +factory, the mart, the mathematician's study, and in all fields of +purely abstract or impersonal labour, while the entrance of woman would +add to the net result of human labour in those fields, and though a +grave injustice is done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps +the only field she is fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman +has probably little or nothing to contribute in those fields that is +radically distinct from that which man might supply; there would be a +difference in quantity but probably none in kind, in the work done for +the race. + +But in those spheres of social activity, dealing especially with +certain relations between human creatures because of their diverse if +complementary relation to the production of human life, the sexes as +sexes have often each a part to play which the other cannot play for +them; have each a knowledge gained from phases of human experience, +which the other cannot supply; here woman as woman has something +radically distinct to contribute to the sum-total of human knowledge, +and her activity is of importance, not merely individually, but +collectively, and as a class. + +That demand, which today in all democratic self-governing countries is +being made by women, to be accorded their share in the electoral, and +ultimately in the legislative and executive duties of government, is +based on two grounds: the wider, and more important, that they find +nothing in the nature of their sex-function which exonerates them, +as human beings, from their obligation to take part in the labours of +guidance and government in their state: the narrower, but yet important +ground, that, in as far as in one direction, i.e., in the special form +of their sex function takes, they do differ from the male, they, in so +far, form a class and are bound to represent the interests of, and to +give the state the benefit of, the insight of their class, in certain +directions. + +Those persons who imagine that the balance of great political parties +in almost any society would be seriously changed by the admission of its +women in public functions are undoubtedly wholly wrong. The fundamental +division of humans into those inclined to hold by the past and defend +whatever is, and those hopeful of the future and inclined to introduce +change, would probably be found to exist in much the same proportion +were the males or the females of any given society compared: and the +males and females of each class will in the main share the faults, the +virtues, and the prejudices of their class. The individuals may lose by +being excluded on the ground of sex from a share of public labour, and +by being robbed of a portion of their lawful individual weight in their +own society; and the society as a whole may lose by having a smaller +number to select its chosen labourers from; yet, undoubtedly, on the +mass of social, political, and international questions, the conclusions +arrived at by one sex would be exactly those arrived at by the other. + +Were a body of humans elected to adjudicate upon Greek accents, or to +pass a decision on the relative fineness of woollens and linens, the +form of sex of the persons composing it would probably have no bearing +on the result; there is no rational ground for supposing that, on a +question of Greek accents or the thickness of cloths, equally instructed +males and females would differ. Here sex plays no part. The experience +and instructedness of the individuals would tell: their sexual +attributes would be indifferent. + +But there are points, comparatively small, even very small, in number, +yet of vital importance to human life, in which sex does play a part. + +It is not a matter of indifference whether the body called to adjudicate +upon the questions, whether the temporary sale of the female body for +sexual purposes shall or shall not be a form of traffic encouraged +and recognised by the state; or whether one law shall exist for the +licentious human female and another for the licentious human male; +whether the claim of the female to the offspring she bears shall or +shall not equal that of the male who begets it; whether an act of +infidelity on the part of the male shall or shall not terminate the +contract which binds his female companion to him, as completely as an +act of infidelity on her part would terminate her claim on him; it is +not a matter of indifference whether a body elected to adjudicate on +such points as these consists of males solely, or females solely, or of +both combined. As it consists of one, or the other, or of both, so not +only will the answers vary, but, in some cases, will they be completely +diverse. Here we come into that very narrow, but important, region, +where sex as sex manifestly plays its part; where the male as male +and the female as female have each their body of perceptions and +experiences, which they do not hold in common; here one sex cannot +adequately represent the other. It is here that each sexual part has +something radically distinct to contribute to the wisdom of the race. + +We, today, take all labour for our province! We seek to enter the +non-sexual fields of intellectual or physical toil, because we are +unable to see today, with regard to them, any dividing wall raised by +sex which excludes us from them. We are yet equally determined to enter +those in which sex difference does play its part, because it is here +that woman, the bearer of the race, must stand side by side with man, +the begetter; if a completed human wisdom, an insight that misses no +aspect of human life, and an activity that is in harmony with the entire +knowledge and the entire instinct of the entire human race, is to exist. +It is here that the man cannot act for the woman nor the woman for the +man; but both must interact. It is here that each sexual half of the +race, so closely and indistinguishably blended elsewhere, has its own +distinct contribution to make to the sum total of human knowledge and +human wisdom. Neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without +the woman, the completed human intelligence. + +Therefore;--We claim, today, all labour for our province! Those large +fields in which it would appear sex plays no part, and equally those +smaller in which it plays a part. + + + +Chapter VI. Certain Objections. + +It has been stated sometimes, though more often implicitly than in any +direct or logical form, (this statement being one it is not easy to make +definitely without its reducing itself to nullity!) that woman should +seek no fields of labour in the new world of social conditions that +is arising about us, as she has still her function as child-bearer: a +labour which, by her own showing, is arduous and dangerous, though she +may love it as a soldier loves his battlefield; and that woman should +perform her sex functions only, allowing man or the state to support +her, even when she is only potentially a child-bearer and bears no +children. (Such a scheme, as has before been stated, was actually put +forward by a literary man in England some years ago: but he had the +sense to state that it should apply only to women of the upper classes, +the mass of labouring women, who form the vast bulk of the English women +of the present day, being left to their ill-paid drudgery and their +child-bearing as well!) + +There is some difficulty in replying to a theorist so wholly delusive. +Not only is he to be met by all the arguments against parasitism of +class or race; but, at the present day, when probably much more than +half the world's most laborious and ill-paid labour is still performed +by women, from tea pickers and cocoa tenders in India and the islands, +to the washerwomen, cooks, and drudging labouring men's wives, who +in addition to the sternest and most unending toil, throw in their +child-bearing as a little addition; and when, in some civilised +countries women exceed the males in numbers by one million, so +that there would still be one million females for whom there was no +legitimate sexual outlet, though each male in the nation supported a +female, it is somewhat difficult to reply with gravity to the assertion, +"Let Woman be content to be the 'Divine Child-bearer,' and ask no more." + +Were it worth replying gravely to so idle a theorist, we might +answer:--Through all the ages of the past, when, with heavy womb and +hard labour-worn hands, we physically toiled beside man, bearing up by +the labour of our bodies the world about us, it was never suggested to +us, "You, the child-bearers of the race, have in that one function a +labour that equals all others combined; therefore, toil no more in other +directions, we pray of you; neither plant, nor build, nor bend over +the grindstone; nor far into the night, while we sleep, sit weaving the +clothing we and our children are to wear! Leave it to us, to plant, to +reap, to weave, to work, to toil for you, O sacred child-bearer! Work no +more; every man of the race will work for you!" This cry in all the grim +ages of our past toil we never heard. + +And today, when the lofty theorist, who tonight stands before the +drawing-room fire in spotless shirtfront and perfectly fitting clothes, +and declaims upon the amplitude of woman's work in life as child-bearer, +and the mighty value of that labour which exceeds all other, making +it unnecessary for her to share man's grosser and lower toils: is it +certain he always in practical life remembers his theory? When waking +tomorrow morning, he finds that the elderly house drudge, who rises +at dawn while he yet sleeps to make his tea and clean his boots, has +brought his tea late, and polished his boots ill; may he not even +sharply condemn her, and assure her she will have to leave unless +she works harder and rises earlier? Does he exclaim to her, "Divine +child-bearer! Potential mother of the race! Why should you clean my +boots or bring up my tea, while I lie warm in bed? Is it not enough you +should have the holy and mysterious power of bringing the race to life? +Let that content you. Henceforth I shall get up at dawn and make my own +tea and clean my own boots, and pay you just the same!" Or, should his +landlady, now about to give birth to her ninth child, send him up a +poorly-cooked dinner or forget to bring up his scuttle of coals, does he +send for her and thus apostrophise the astonished matron: "Child-bearer +of the race! Producer of men! Cannot you be contented with so noble and +lofty a function in life without toiling and moiling? Why carry up heavy +coal-scuttles from the cellar and bend over hot fires, wearing out nerve +and brain and muscle that should be reserved for higher duties? We, we, +the men of the race, will perform its mean, its sordid, its grinding +toil! For woman is beauty, peace, repose! Your function is to give life, +not to support it by labour. The Mother, the Mother! How wonderful it +sounds! Toil no more! Rest is for you; labour and drudgery for +us!" Would he not rather assure her that, unless she laboured more +assiduously and sternly, she would lose his custom and so be unable to +pay her month's rent; and perhaps so, with children and an invalid or +drunken husband whom she supports, be turned out into the streets? For, +it is remarkable, that, with theorists of this class, it is not toil, or +the amount of toil, crushing alike to brain and body, which the female +undertakes that is objected to; it is the form and the amount of the +reward. It is not the hand-labouring woman, even in his own society, +worn out and prematurely aged at forty with grinding domestic toil, that +has no beginning and knows no end-- + + "Man's work is from sun to sun, + But the woman's work is never done"-- + +it is not the haggard, work-crushed woman and mother who irons his +shirts, or the potential mother who destroys health and youth in +the sweater's den where she sews the garments in which he appears so +radiantly in the drawing-room which disturbs him. It is the thought +of the woman-doctor with an income of some hundreds a year, who drives +round in her carriage to see her patients, or receives them in her +consulting-rooms, and who spends the evening smoking and reading before +her study fire or receiving her guests; it is the thought of the woman +who, as legislator, may loll for perhaps six hours of the day on the +padded seat of legislative bench, relieving the tedium now and then by +a turn in the billiard- or refreshment-room, when she is not needed to +vote or speak; it is the thought of the woman as Greek professor, with +three or four hundred a year, who gives half a dozen lectures a week, +and has leisure to enjoy the society of her husband and children, and +to devote to her own study and life of thought; it is she who wrings his +heart. It is not the woman, who, on hands and knees, at tenpence a day, +scrubs the floors of the public buildings, or private dwellings, that +fills him with anguish for womanhood: that somewhat quadrupedal posture +is for him truly feminine, and does not interfere with his ideal of the +mother and child-bearer; and that, in some other man's house, or perhaps +his own, while he and the wife he keeps for his pleasures are visiting +concert or entertainment, some weary woman paces till far into the night +bearing with aching back and tired head the fretful, teething child +he brought into the world, for a pittance of twenty or thirty pounds +a year, does not distress him. But that the same woman by work in an +office should earn one hundred and fifty pounds, be able to have a +comfortable home of her own, and her evening free for study or pleasure, +distresses him deeply. It is not the labour, or the amount of labour, +so much as the amount of reward that interferes with his ideal of the +eternal womanly; he is as a rule quite contented that the women of the +race should labour for him, whether as tea-pickers or washerwomen, or +toilers for the children he brings into the world, provided the reward +they receive is not large, nor in such fields as he might himself at any +time desire to enter. + +When master and ass, drawing a heavy burden between them, have climbed +a steep mountain range together; clambering over sharp rocks and across +sliding gravel where no water is, and herbage is scant; if, when they +were come out on the top of the mountain, and before them stretch broad, +green lands, and through wide half-open gates they catch the glimpse of +trees waving, and there comes the sound of running waters, if then, the +master should say to his ass, "Good beast of mine, lie down! I can push +the whole burden myself now: lie down here; lie down, my creature; you +have toiled enough; I will go on alone!" then it might be even the beast +would whisper (with that glimpse through the swinging gates of the green +fields beyond)--"Good master, we two have climbed this mighty mountain +together, and the stones have cut my hoofs as they cut your feet. +Perhaps, if when we were at the foot you had found out that the burden +was two heavy for me, and had then said to me, 'Lie down, my beastie; +I will carry on the burden alone; lie down and rest!' I might then have +listened. But now, just here, where I see the gates swinging open, a +smooth road, and green fields before us, I think I shall go on a little +farther. We two have climbed together; maybe we shall go on yet, side by +side." + +For the heart of labouring womanhood cries out today to the man who +would suggest she need not seek new fields of labour, that child-bearing +is enough for her share in life's labour, "Do you dare say to us +now, that we are fit to do nothing but child-bear, that when that is +performed our powers are exhausted? To us, who yet through all the ages +of the past, when child-bearing was persistent and incessant, regarded +it hardly as a toil, but rather as the reward of labour; has our right +hand lost its cunning and our heart its strength, that today, when human +labour is easier and humanity's work grows fairer, you say to us, 'You +can do nothing now but child-bear'? Do you dare to say this, to us, when +the upward path of the race has been watered by the sweat of our brow, +and the sides of the road by which humanity has climbed are whitened on +either hand by the bones of the womanhood that has fallen there, toiling +beside man? Do you dare say this, to us, when even today the food you +eat, the clothes you wear, the comfort you enjoy, is largely given you +by the unending muscular toil of woman?" + +As the women of old planted and reaped and ground the grain that the +children they bore might eat; as the maidens of old spun that they might +make linen for their households and obtain the right to bear men; so, +though we bend no more over grindstones, or labour in the fields, +or weave by hand, it is our intention to enter all the new fields of +labour, that we also may have the power and right to bring men into the +world. It is our faith that the day comes in which not only shall no man +dare to say, "It is enough portion for a woman in life that she bear +a child," but when it will rather be said, "What noble labour has that +woman performed, that she should have the privilege of bringing a man or +woman child into the world?" + +But, it has also been objected, "What, and if the female half of +humanity, though able, in addition to the exercise of its reproductive +functions, to bear its share in the new fields of social labour as it +did in the old, be yet in certain directions a less productive labourer +than the male? What if, in the main, the result of the labour of the two +halves of humanity should not be found to be exactly equal?" + +To this it may be answered, that it is within the range of possibility +that, mysteriously co-ordinated with the male reproductive function in +the human, there may also be in some directions a tendency to possess +gifts for labour useful and beneficial to the race in the stage of +growth it has now reached, in excess of those possessed by the female. +We see no reason why this should be so, and, in the present state of our +knowledge, this is a point on which no sane person would dogmatise; but +it is possible! It may, on the other hand be, that, taken in the bulk, +when all the branches of productive labour be considered, as the ages +pass, the value of the labour of the two halves of humanity will be +found so identical and so closely to balance, that no superiority can +possibly be asserted of either, as the result of the closest analysis. +This also is possible. + +But, it may also be, that, when the bulk and sum-total of human +activities is surveyed in future ages, it will be found that the value +of the labour of the female in the world that is rising about us, has +exceeded in quality or in quantity that of the male. We see no reason +either, why this should be; there is nothing in the nature of the +reproductive function in the female human which of necessity implies +such superiority. + +Yet it may be, that, with the smaller general bulk and the muscular +fineness, and the preponderance of brain and nervous system in net bulk +over the fleshy and osseous parts of the organism, which generally, +though by no means always, characterises the female as distinguished +from the male of the human species, there do go mental qualities which +will peculiarly fit her for the labours of the future. It may be, that +her lesser possession of the mere muscular and osseous strength, which +were the elements of primary importance and which gave dominance in one +stage of human growth, and which placed woman at a social disadvantage +as compared with her companion, will, under new conditions of life, in +which the value of crude mechanical strength as distinguished from high +vitality and strong nervous activity is passing away, prove as largely +to her advantage, as his muscular bulk and strength in the past proved +to the male. It is quite possible, in the new world which is arising +about us, that the type of human most useful to society and best fitted +for its future conditions, and who will excel in the most numerous forms +of activity, will be, not merely the muscularly powerful and bulky, but +the highly versatile, active, vital, adaptive, sensitive, physically +fine-drawn type; and, as that type, though, like the muscularly heavy +and powerful, by no means peculiar to and confined to one sex, is yet +rather more commonly found in conjunction with a female organism, it is +quite possible that, taken in the bulk and on the whole, the female half +of humanity may, by virtue of its structural adaptions, be found most +fitted for the bulk of human labours in the future! + +As with individuals and races, so also with sexes, changed social +conditions may render exactly those subtile qualities, which in one +social state were a disadvantage, of the highest social advantage in +another. + +The skilled diplomatist or politician, so powerful in his own element, +on board ship during a storm becomes at once of less general value or +consideration than the meanest sailor who can reef a sail or guide a +wheel; and, were we to be reduced again suddenly to a state of nature, +a company of highly civilised men and women would at once, as we have +before remarked, find their social value completely inverted; landed on +a desert shore, unarmed and naked, to encounter wild beasts and savages, +and to combat nature for food, the primitive scale of human values would +at once reassert itself. It would not then be the mighty financier, the +learned judge, or great poet and scholar who would be sought after, but +the thickest-headed navvy who could throw a stone so exactly that he +brought down a bird, and who could in a day raise a wall which would +shelter the group; and the man so powerful that he could surely strike +an enemy or wild beast dead with his club, would at once be objects of +social regard and attain individual eminence, and perhaps dominance. It +would not be the skilled dancer, who in one night in a civilised state +earns her hundreds, nor yet the fragile clinging beauty, but the girl +of the broad back and the strong limb, who could collect wood and carry +water, who would be the much considered and much sought after female in +such a community. Even in the animal world, there is the same inversion +in values, according as the external conditions vary. The lion, while +ruling over every other creature in his primitive wilds, by right of his +untamable ferocity, size, and rapacity, is yet bound to become a prey +to destruction and extermination when he comes into contact with the +new condition brought by man; while the wild dog, so immeasurably +his inferior in size and ferocity, is tamed, survives and multiplies, +exactly because he has been driven by his smaller structure and lesser +physical force to develop those social instincts and those forms of +intelligence which make him amenable to the new condition of life and +valuable in them. The same inversion in the value of qualities may be +traced in the history of human species. The Jews, whose history has been +one long story of oppression at the hands of more muscular, physically +powerful and pugilistic peoples; whom we find first making bricks under +the lash of the Egyptian, and later hanging his harp as an exile among +the willow-trees of Babylon; who, for eighteen hundred years, has been +trampled, tortured, and despised beneath the feet of the more physically +powerful and pugilistic, but not more vital, keen, intelligent, or +persistent races of Europe; has, today, by the slow turning of the +wheel of life, come uppermost. The Egyptian task-master and warrior +have passed; what the Babylonian was we know no more, save for a few mud +tablets and rock inscriptions recording the martial victories; but the +once captive Jew we see today in every city and every street; until at +last, the descendants of those men who spat when they spoke his +name, and forcibly drew his teeth to extract his money from him, wait +patiently behind each other for admission to his offices and palaces; +while nobles solicit his daughters in marriage and kings are proud to be +summoned to his table in hope of golden crumbs, and great questions +of peace and war are often held balanced in the hand of one little +asthmatic Jew. After long ages of disgrace and pariahism, the time has +come, whether for good or for evil, when just those qualities which the +Jew possesses and which subtilely distinguish him from others, are in +demand; while those he has not are sinking into disuse; exactly that +domination of the reflective faculties over the combative, which once +made him slave, also saved him from becoming extinct in wars; and the +intellectual quickness, the far-sighted keenness, the persistent mental +activity and self-control, which could not in those ages save him from +degradation or compensate for his lack of bone and muscle and combative +instinct, are the very qualities the modern world demands and crowns. +The day of Goliath with his club and his oaths is fast passing, and the +day of David with his harp and skilfully constructed sling is coming +near and yet nearer. + +The qualities which give an animal, a race, or an individual, a higher +utility or social dominance must always be influenced by any change in +the environment. As the wheel of life slowly revolves, that which was +lowest comes continually uppermost, and that which was dominant becomes +subservient. + +It is possible, that women, after countless ages, during which that +smaller relative development in weight and muscularity which is incident +to almost all females which suckle their young, and that lesser desire +for pugilism inherent in almost all females who bear their young alive, +rendered her lacking in the two qualities which made for individual +dominance in her societies, may yet, in the future, discover that those +changes in human conditions, which have done away with the primary +necessity for muscular force and pugilistic arts, have also inverted her +place in the scale of social values. + +It is possible, that the human female, like the Jew, the male of that +type farthest removed from the dominant male type of the past, may in +the future find, that, so far from those qualities which, in an earlier +condition, lessened her social value and power of labour, continuing to +do so, they will increase it. That the delicacy of hand, lightness of +structure which were fatal when the dominant labour of life was to +wield a battle-axe or move a weight, may be no restraint but even an +assistance in the intellectual and more delicate mechanical fields of +labour; that the preponderance of nervous and cerebral over muscular +material, and the tendency towards preservative and creative activity +over pugilistic and destructive, so far from shutting her off from the +most important fields of human toil, may increase her fitness for them! +We have no certain proof that it is so at present; but, if woman's +long years of servitude and physical subjection, and her experience as +child-bearer and protector of infancy, should, in any way, be found +in the future to have endowed her, as a kind of secondary sexual +characteristic, with any additional strength of social instinct, +with any exceptional width of human sympathy and any instinctive +comprehension; then, it is not merely possible, but certain, that, in +the ages that are coming, in which the labour of the human race will be +not mainly destructive but conservative, in which the building up and +developing of humanity, and not continually the inter-destruction of +part by part, will be the dominant activity of the race, that woman as +woman, and by right of that wherein she differs from the male, will have +an all-important part to play in the activity of the race. + +The matter is one of curious and subtle interest, but what practically +concerns the human race is, not which of the two sexual halves which +must always coexist is best fitted to excel in certain human labours in +this or that direction, at this or that time, nor even which has most +to contribute to the sum-total of human activities; but it is this, that +every individual unit humanity contains, irrespective of race, sex, or +type, should find exactly that field of labour which may most contribute +to its development, happiness, and health, and in which its peculiar +faculties and gifts shall be most effectively and beneficially exerted +for its fellows. + +It matters nothing, and less than nothing, to us as women, whether, of +those children we bring into the world, our sons should excel in virtue, +intelligence, and activity, our daughters, or our daughters our sons; +so that, in each child we bring to life, not one potentiality shall be +lost, nor squandered on a lesser when it might have been expended on a +higher and more beneficent task. So that not one desirable faculty +of the marvellous creatures we suffer to bring into existence be left +uncultivated, to us, as women, it matters nothing and less than nothing, +which sex type excels in action, in knowledge, or in virtue, so both +attain their best. There is one thing only on earth, as precious to +woman as the daughter who springs from her body--it is the son. There +is one thing only dearer to the woman than herself--it is the man. As no +sane human concerns himself as to whether the right or left ventricle +of his heart works most satisfactorily, or is most essential to his +well-being, so both be perfect in health and activity; as no sane woman +distresses herself lest her right breast should not excel the left in +beauty and use; so no sane man or woman questions anxiously over the +relative perfections of male and female. In love there is no first nor +last. What we request of life is that the tools should be given to his +hand or hers who can best handle them; that the least efficient +should not be forced into the place of the more efficient, and that +an artificially drawn line should never repress the activities of the +individual creature, which we as women bring into the world. + +But it may also be said to us, "What, and if, all your dreams and hopes +for woman and the future of the race be based on air? What, and if, +desirable as it is that woman should not become practically dependent on +her sexual function alone, and should play at least as great a part in +the productive labour of the race in the future as she played in that of +the past--what, if woman cannot take the same vast share in the complex +and largely mental labour fields of the future, as in the largely +physical fields of the past? What, and if, in spite of all her effort +and sacrifice to attain this end, exactly now and when the labour of +civilised societies becomes mental rather than mechanical, woman be +found wanting?" + +In Swiss valleys today the traveller comes sometimes on the figure of +a solitary woman climbing the mountain-side, on her broad shoulders a +mighty burden of fodder or manure she is bearing up for the cattle, or +to some patch of cultivated land. Steady, unshrinking eyes look out +at you from beneath the deeply seamed forehead, and a strand of hair, +perhaps almost as white as the mountain snows on the peaks above, +escapes from under the edge of the binding handkerchief. The face is +seamed and seared with the stern marks of toil and endurance, as the +mountain-side is with marks of storm and avalanche. It is the face of +one who has brought men into the world in labour and sorrow, and toiled +mightily to sustain them; and dead must be the mind to the phases of +human existence, who does not see in that toilworn figure one of the +mighty pillars, which have in the long ages of the past sustained the +life of humanity on earth, and made possible its later development; and +much must the tinsel of life have dazzled him, who fails to mark it with +reverence and, metaphorically, to bow his head before it--the type of +the mighty labouring woman who has built up life. + +But, it may be said, what if, in the ages to come, it should never again +be possible for any man to stand bowed with the same respect in the +presence of any other of earth's mighty toilers, who should also be +mother and woman? What, if she, who could combine motherhood with the +most unending muscular toil, will fall flaccid and helpless where the +labour becomes mental? What if, struggle as she will, she can become +nothing in the future but the pet pug-dog of the race, lying on its +sofa, or the Italian greyhound, shivering in its silken coat? What +if woman, in spite of her most earnest aspirations and determined +struggles, be destined to failure in the new world that is rising +because of inherent mental incapacity? + +There are many replies which may be made to such a suggestion. It is +often said with truth, that the ordinary occupations of woman in the +past and present, and in all classes of society in which she is not +parasitic, do demand, and have always demanded, a very high versatility +and mental activity, as well as physical: that the mediaeval baron's +wife who guided her large household probably had to expend far more pure +intellect in doing so than the baron in his hunting and fighting; that +the wife of the city accountant probably expends today more reason, +imagination, forethought, and memory on the management of her small +household, than he in his far simpler, monotonous arithmetical toil; +that, as there is no cause for supposing that the tailor or shoemaker +needs less intellect in his calling than the soldier or prize-fighter, +so there is nothing to suggest that, in the past, woman has not expended +as much pure intellect in the mass of her callings as the man in his; +while in those highly specialised intellectual occupations, in which +long and uninterrupted training tending to one point is necessary, +such as the liberal professions and arts, that, although woman has +practically been excluded from the requisite training, and the freedom +to place herself in the positions in which they can be pursued, that +yet, by force of innate genius and gifts in such directions, she has +continually broken through the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and +again and again taken her place beside man in those fields of labour; +showing thereby not merely aptitude but passionate and determined +inclination in those directions. With equal truth, it is often remarked +that, when as an independent hereditary sovereign, woman has been placed +in the only position in which she has ever been able freely and fully +to express her own individuality, and though selected at random by fate +from the mass of women, by the mere accident of birth or marriage, she +has shown in a large percentage of cases that the female has the power +to command, organise, and succeed in one of the most exacting and +complex of human employments, the government of nations; that from the +days of Amalasontha to Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth of England, and +Catharine of Russia, women have not failed to grasp the large impersonal +aspects of life, and successfully and powerfully to control them, when +placed in the supreme position in which it was demanded. It may also +be stated, and is sometimes, with so much iteration as to become almost +wearisome, that women's adequacy in the modern fields of intellectual or +skilled manual labour is no more today an open matter for debate, than +the number of modern women who, as senior wranglers, doctors, &c., +have already successfully entered the new fields, and the high standard +attained by women in all university examinations to which they are +admitted, and their universal success in the administration of parochial +matters, wherever they have been allowed to share it, proves their +intellectual and moral fitness for the new forms of labour. + +All these statements are certainly interesting, and may be unanswerable. +And yet--if the truth be told, it is not ultimately on these grounds +that many of us base our hope and our certitude with regard to the +future of woman. Our conviction as to the plenitude of her powers for +the adequate performance of lofty labours in these new fields, springs +not at all from a categorical enumeration of the attainments or +performances of individual women or bodies of women in the past or +present; it has another source. + +There was a bird's egg once, picked up by chance upon the ground, and +those who found it bore it home and placed it under a barn-door fowl. +And in time the chick bred out, and those who had found it chained it by +the leg to a log, lest it should stray and be lost. And by and by they +gathered round it, and speculated as to what the bird might be. One +said, "It is surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we +took it to the water it would swim and gabble." But another said, "It +has no webs to its feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose +it will scratch and cackle with the others on the dung-heap." But a +third speculated, "Look now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, +and can crack nuts!" But a fourth said, "No, but look at its wings; +perhaps it is a bird of great flight." But several cried, "Nonsense! +No one has ever seen it fly! Why should it fly? Can you suppose that +a thing can do a thing which no one has ever seen it do?" And the +bird--the bird--with its leg chained close to the log, preened its wing. +So they sat about it, speculating, and discussing it: and one said +this, and another that. And all the while as they talked the bird sat +motionless, with its gaze fixed on the clear, blue sky above it. And one +said, "Suppose we let the creature loose to see what it will do?"--and +the bird shivered. But the others cried, "It is too valuable; it might +get lost. If it were to try to fly it might fall down and break its +neck." And the bird, with its foot chained to the log, sat looking +upward into the clear blue sky; the sky, in which it had never been--for +the bird--the bird, knew what it would do--because it was an eaglet! + +There is one woman known to many of us, as each human creature knows but +one on earth; and it is upon our knowledge of that woman that we base +our certitude. + +For those who do not know her, and have not this ground, it is probably +profitable and necessary that they painfully collect isolated facts and +then speculate upon them, and base whatever views they should form upon +these collections. It might even be profitable that they should form no +definite opinions at all, but wait till the ages of practical experience +have put doubt to rest. For those of us who have a ground of knowledge +which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to +act fearlessly than to argue. + +Finally, it may be objected to the entrance of woman to the new fields +of labour, and in effect it is often said--"What, and if, all you have +sought be granted you--if it be fully agreed that woman's ancient fields +of toil are slipping from her, and that, if she do not find new, +she must fall into a state of sexual parasitism, dependent on her +reproductive functions alone; and granted, that, doing this, she must +degenerate, and that from her degeneration must arise the degeneration +and arrest of development of the males as well as of the females of her +race; and granting also, fully, that in the past woman has borne one +full half, and often more than one half, of the weight of the productive +labours of her societies, in addition to child-bearing; and allowing +more fully that she may be as well able to sustain her share in the +intellectual labours of the future as in the more mechanical labours of +the past; granting all this, may there not be one aspect of the question +left out of consideration which may reverse all conclusions as to the +desirability, and the human good to be attained by woman's enlarged +freedom and her entering into the new fields of toil? What if, the +increased culture and mental activity of woman necessary for her +entrance into the new fields, however desirable in other ways for +herself and the race, should result in a diminution, or in an absolute +abolition of the sexual attraction and affection, which in all ages of +the past has bound the two halves of humanity together? What if, though +the stern and unlovely manual labours of the past have never affected +her attractiveness for the male of her own society, nor his for her; +yet the performance by woman of intellectual labours, or complex and +interesting manual labour, and her increased intelligence and width, +should render the male objectionable to her, and the woman undesirable +to the male; so that the very race itself might become extinct through +the dearth of sexual affection? What, and if, the woman ceases to value +the son she bears, and to feel desire for and tenderness to the man who +begets him; and the man to value and desire the woman and her offspring? +Would not such a result exceed, or at least equal, in its evil to +humanity, anything which could result from the degeneration and +parasitism of woman? Would it not be well, if there exist any +possibility of this danger, that woman, however conscious that she can +perform social labour as nobly and successfully under the new conditions +of life as the old, should yet consciously, and deliberately, with her +eyes open, sink into a state of pure intellectual torpor, with all its +attendant evils, rather than face the more irreparable loss which her +development and the exercise of her gifts might entail? Would it not be +well she should deliberately determine, as the lesser of two evils, +to dwarf herself and limit her activities and the expansion of her +faculties, rather than that any risk should be run of the bond of desire +and emotion between the two sexual halves of humanity being severed? If +the race is to decay and become extinct on earth, might it not as well +be through the parasitism and decay of woman, as through the decay of +the sexual instinct?" + +It is not easy to reply with rationality, or even gravity, to a +supposition, which appears to be based on the conception that a sudden +and entire subversion of the deepest of those elements on which human, +and even animal, life on the globe is based, is possible from so +inadequate a cause: and it might well be passed silently, were it not +that, under some form or other, this argument frequently recurs, now +in a more rational and then in a more irrational form; constituting +sometimes an objection in even moderately intelligent minds, to the +entrance of woman into the new fields of labour. + +It must be at once frankly admitted that, were there the smallest +possible danger in this direction, the sooner woman laid aside all +endeavour in the direction of increased knowledge and the attainment of +new fields of activity, the better for herself and for the race. + +When one considers the part which sexual attraction plays in the order +of sentient life on the globe, from the almost unconscious attractions +which draw amoeboid globule to amoeboid globule, on through the endless +progressive forms of life; till in monogamous birds it expresses itself +in song and complex courtship and sometimes in the life-long conjugal +affection of mates; and which in the human race itself, passing through +various forms, from the imperative but almost purely physical attraction +of savage male and female for each other, till in the highly developed +male and female it assumes its aesthetic and intellectual but not less +imperative form, couching itself in the songs of poet, and the sometimes +deathless fidelity of richly developed man and woman to each other, we +find it not only everywhere, but forming the very groundwork on which is +based sentient existence; never eradicable, though infinitely varied +in its external forms of expression. When we consider that in the human +world, from the battles and dances of savages to the intrigues and +entertainments of modern Courts and palaces, the attraction of man and +woman for each other has played an unending part; and, that the most +fierce ascetic religious enthusiasm through the ages, the flagellations +and starvations in endless nunneries and monasteries, have never been +able to extirpate nor seriously to weaken for one moment the master +dominance of this emotion; that the lowest and most brutal ignorance, +and the highest intellectual culture leave mankind, equally, though in +different forms, amenable to its mastery; that, whether in the brutal +guffaw of sex laughter which rings across the drinking bars of our +modern cities, and rises from the comfortable armchairs in fashionable +clubs; or in the poet's dreams, and the noblest conjugal relations of +men and women linked together for life, it plays still today on earth +the vast part it played when hoary monsters ploughed after each other +through Silurian slime, and that still it forms as ever the warp on +which in the loom of human life the web is woven, and runs as a thread +never absent through every design and pattern which constitutes the +individual existence on earth, it appears not merely as ineradicable; +but it is inconceivable to suppose that that attraction of sex towards +sex, which, with hunger and thirst, lie, as the triune instincts, at +the base of animal life on earth, should ever be exterminable by the +comparatively superficial changes resulting from the performance of this +or that form of labour, or the little more or less of knowledge in one +direction or another. + +That the female who drives steam-driven looms, producing scores of yards +of linen in a day, should therefore desire less the fellowship of her +corresponding male than had she toiled at a spinning-wheel with hand +and foot to produce one yard; that the male should desire less of the +companionship of the woman who spends the morning in doctoring babies in +her consulting-room, according to the formularies of the pharmacopoeia, +than she who of old spent it on the hillside collecting simples for +remedies; that the woman who paints a modern picture or designs a modern +vase should be less lovable by man, than her ancestor who shaped the +first primitive pot and ornamented it with zigzag patterns was to the +man of her day and age; that the woman who contributes to the support +of her family by giving legal opinions will less desire motherhood and +wifehood than she who in the past contributed to the support of +her household by bending on hands and knees over her grindstone, or +scrubbing floors, and that the former should be less valued by man than +the latter--these are suppositions which it is difficult to regard as +consonant with any knowledge of human nature and the laws by which it is +dominated. + +On the other hand, if it be supposed that the possession of wealth or +the means of earning it makes the human female objectionable to the +male, all history and all daily experience negates it. The eager hunt +for heiresses in all ages and social conditions, make it obvious +that the human male has a strong tendency to value the female who can +contribute to the family expenditure; and the case is yet, we believe, +unrecorded of a male who, attracted to a female, becomes averse to her +on finding she has material good. The female doctor or lawyer earning a +thousand a year will always, and today certainly does, find more suitors +than had she remained a governess or cook, labouring as hard, earning +thirty pounds. + +While, if the statement that the female entering on new fields of labour +will cease to be lovable to the male be based on the fact that she will +then be free, all history and all human experience yet more negates its +truth. The study of all races in all ages, proves that the greater the +freedom of woman in any society, the higher the sexual value put upon +her by the males of that society. The three squaws who walk behind the +Indian, and whom he has captured in battle or bought for a few axes or +lengths of tobacco, and over whom he exercises the despotic right of +life and death, are probably all three of infinitesimal value in his +eyes, compared with the value of his single, free wife to one of our +ancient, monogamous German ancestors; while the hundred wives and +concubines purchased by a Turkish pasha have probably not even an +approximate value in his eyes, when compared with the value which +thousands of modern European males set upon the one comparatively free +woman, whom they may have won, often only after a long and tedious +courtship. + +So axiomatic is the statement that the value of the female to the male +varies as her freedom, that, given an account of any human society in +which the individual female is highly valued, it will be perfectly safe +to infer the comparative social freedom of woman; and, given a statement +as to the high degree of freedom of woman in a society, it will be safe +to infer the great sexual value of the individual woman to man. + +Finally, if the suggestion, that men and women will cease to be +attractive to one another if women enter modern fields of labour, be +based on the fact that her doing so may increase her intelligence and +enlarge her intellectual horizon, it must be replied that the whole +trend of human history absolutely negates the supposition. There is +absolutely no ground for the assumption that increased intelligence and +intellectual power diminishes sexual emotion in the human creature of +either sex. The ignorant savage, whether in ancient or modern societies, +who violates and then clubs a female into submission, may be dominated, +and is, by sex emotions of a certain class; but not less dominated +have been the most cultured, powerful, and highly differentiated male +intelligences that the race has produced. A Mill, a Shelley, a Goethe, +a Schiller, a Pericles, have not been more noted for vast intellectual +powers, than for the depth and intensity of their sexual emotions. And, +if possible, with the human female, the relation between intensity of +sexual emotion and high intellectual gifts has been yet closer. The life +of a Sophia Kovalevsky, a George Eliot, an Elizabeth Browning have not +been more marked by a rare development of the intellect than by deep +passionate sexual emotions. Nor throughout the history of the race has +high intelligence and intellectual power ever tended to make either male +or female unattractive to those of the opposite sex. + +The merely brilliantly attired and unintelligent woman, probably never +awakened the same intensity of profound sex emotion even among the men +of her own type, which followed a George Sand; who attracted to herself +with deathless force some of the most noted men of her generation, even +when, nearing middle age, stout, and attired in rusty and inartistic +black, she was to be found rolling her cigarettes in a dingy office, +scorning all the external adornments with which less attractive females +seek to supply a hidden deficiency. Probably no more hopeless mistake +could be made by an ascetic seeking to extirpate sex emotion and the +attraction of the sexes for one another, than were he to imagine that +in increasing virility, intelligence, and knowledge this end could be +attained. He might thereby differentiate and greatly concentrate the +emotions, but they would be intensified; as a widely spread, shallow, +sluggish stream would not be annihilated but increased in force and +activity by being turned into a sharply defined, clear-cut course. + +And if, further, we turn to those secondary manifestations of sexual +emotion, which express themselves in the relations of human progenitors +to their offspring, we shall find, if possible more markedly, that +increase of intelligence and virility does not diminish but increases +the strength of the affections. As the primitive, ignorant male, often +willingly selling his offspring or exposing his female infants to death, +often develops, with the increase of culture and intelligence, into +the extremely devoted and self-sacrificing male progenitor of civilised +societies; so, yet even more markedly, does the female relation with her +offspring, become intensified and permanent, as culture and intelligence +and virility increase. The Bushwoman, like the lowest female barbarians +in our own societies, will often readily dispose of her infant son for +a bottle of spirits or a little coin; and even among somewhat more +mentally developed females, strong as is the affection of the average +female for her new born offspring, the closeness of the relation between +mother and child tends rapidly to shrink as time passes, so that by +the time of adolescence is reached the relation between mother and son +becomes little more than a remembrance of a close inter-union which +once existed. It is, perhaps, seldom, till the very highest point of +intellectual growth and mental virility has been reached by the human +female, that her relation with her male offspring becomes a permanent +and active and dominant factor in the lives of both. The concentrated +and all-absorbing affection and fellowship which existed between the +greatest female intellect France has produced and the son she bore, +dominating both lives to the end, the fellowship of the English +historian with his mother, who remained his chosen companion and the +sharer of all his labours through life, the relation of St. Augustine +to his mother, and those of countless others, are relations almost +inconceivable where the woman is not of commanding and active +intelligence, and where the passion of mere physical instinct is +completed by the passion of the intellect and spirit. + +There appears, then, from the study of human nature in the past, no +ground for supposing that if, as a result of woman's adopting new forms +of labour, she should become more free, more wealthy, or more actively +intelligent, that this could in any way diminish her need of the +physical and mental comradeship of man, nor his need of her; nor that +it would affect their secondary sexual relations as progenitors, save +by deepening, concentrating, and extending throughout life the parental +emotions. The conception that man's and woman's need of each other could +be touched, or the emotions binding the sexes obliterated, by any mere +change in the form of labour performed by the woman of the race, is as +grotesque in its impossibility, as the suggestion that the placing of a +shell on the seashore this way or that might destroy the action of the +earth's great tidal wave. + +But, it may be objected, "If there be absolutely no ground for the +formation of such an opinion, how comes it that, in one form or another, +it is so often expressed by persons who object to the entrance of woman +into new or intellectual fields of labour? Where there is smoke must +there not also be fire?" To which it must be replied, "Without fire, no +smoke; but very often the appearance of smoke where neither smoke nor +fire exist!" + +The fact that a statement is frequently made or a view held forms no +presumptive ground of its truth; but it is undoubtedly a ground for +supposing that there is an appearance or semblance which makes it appear +truth, and which suggests it. The universally entertained conception +that the sun moved round the world was not merely false, but the reverse +of the truth; all that was required for its inception was a fallacious +appearance suggesting it. + +When we examine narrowly the statement, that the entrance of woman into +the new fields of labour, with its probably resulting greater freedom +of action, economic independence and wider culture, may result in a +severance between the sexes, it becomes clear what that fallacious +appearance is, which suggests this. + +The entrance of a woman into new fields of labour, though bringing her +increased freedom and economic independence, and necessitating increased +mental training and wider knowledge, could not extinguish the primordial +physical instinct which draws sex to sex throughout all the orders of +sentient life; and still less could it annihilate that subtler mental +need, which, as humanity develops, draws sex to sex for emotional +fellowship and close intercourse; but, it might, and undoubtedly would, +powerfully react and readjust the relations of certain men with certain +women! + +While the attraction, physical and intellectual, which binds sex to sex +would remain the same in volume and intensity, the forms in which it +would express itself, and, above all, the relative power of individuals +to command the gratification of their instincts and desires, would be +fundamentally altered, and in many cases inverted. + +In the barbarian state of societies, where physical force dominates, +it is the most muscular and pugilistically and brutally and animally +successful male who captures and possesses the largest number of +females; and no doubt he would be justified in regarding any social +change which gave to woman a larger freedom of choice, and which would +so perhaps give to the less brutal but perhaps more intelligent male, +whom the woman might select, an equal opportunity for the gratification +of his sexual wishes and for the producing of offspring, as a serious +loss. And, from the purely personal standpoint, he would undoubtedly +be right in dreading anything which tended to free woman. But he would +manifestly not have been justified in asserting, that woman's increased +freedom of choice, or the fact that the other men would share his +advantage in the matter of obtaining female companionship, would in any +way lessen the amount of sexual emotion or the tenderness of relation +between the two halves of humanity. He would not by brute force possess +himself of so many females, nor have so large a circle of choice, +under the new conditions; but what he lost, others would gain; and +the intensity of the sex emotions and the nearness and passion of the +relation between the sexes be in no way touched. + +In our more civilised societies, as they exist today, woman possesses +(more often perhaps in appearance than reality!) a somewhat greater +freedom of sexual selection; she is no longer captured by muscular +force, but there are still conditions entirely unconnected with +sex attractions and affections, which yet largely dominate the sex +relations. + +It is not the man of the strong arm, but the man of the long purse, +who unduly and artificially dominates in the sexual world today. +Practically, wherever in the modern world woman is wholly or partially +dependent for her means of support on the exercise of her sexual +functions, she is dependent more or less on the male's power to support +her in their exercise, and her freedom of choice is practically so far +absolutely limited. Probably three-fourths of the sexual unions in our +modern European societies, whether in the illegal or recognised legal +forms, are dominated by or largely influenced by the sex purchasing +power of the male. With regard to the large and savage institution of +prostitution, which still lies as the cancer embedded in the heart of +all our modern civilised societies, this is obviously and nakedly the +case; the wealth of the male as compared to the female being, with +hideous obtrusiveness, its foundation and source of life. But the +purchasing power of the male as compared with the poverty of the female +is not less painfully, if a little less obtrusively, displayed in those +layers of society lying nearer the surface. From the fair, effete young +girl of the wealthier classes in her city boudoir, who weeps copiously +as she tells you she cannot marry the man she loves, because he says he +has only two hundred a year and cannot afford to keep her; to the father +who demands frankly of his daughter's suitor how much he can settle on +her before consenting to his acceptance, the fact remains, that, under +existing conditions, not the amount of sex affection, passion, and +attraction, but the extraneous question of the material possessions of +the male, determines to a large extent the relation of the sexes. The +parasitic, helpless youth who has failed in his studies, who possesses +neither virility, nor charm of person, nor strength of mind, but who +possesses wealth, has a far greater chance of securing unlimited sexual +indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest maid, than her +brother's tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and physical grace +and mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of nothing but +material good, has, especially among the so-called upper classes of our +societies, a far greater chance of securing the sex companionship of +any woman he desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, than the most +physically attractive and mentally developed male, who may have nothing +to offer to the dependent female but affection and sexual companionship. + +To the male, whenever and wherever he exists in our societies, who +depends mainly for his power for procuring the sex relation he desires, +not on his power of winning and retaining personal affection, but, on +the purchasing power of his possessions as compared to the poverty of +the females of his society, the personal loss would be seriously and +at once felt, of any social change which gave to the woman a larger +economic independence and therefore greater freedom of sexual choice. It +is not an imaginary danger which the young dude, of a certain type which +sits often in the front row of the stalls in a theatre, with sloping +forehead and feeble jaw, watching the unhappy women who dance for +gold--sees looming before him, as he lisps out his deep disapproval +of increased knowledge and the freedom of obtaining the means of +subsistence in intellectual fields by woman, and expresses his vast +preference for the uncultured ballet-girl over all types of cultured and +productive labouring womenhood in the universe. A subtle and profound +instinct warns him, that with the increased intelligence and economic +freedom of woman, he, and such as he, might ultimately be left sexually +companionless; the undesirable, the residuary, male old-maids of the +human race. + +On the other hand, there is undoubtedly a certain body of females who +would lose, or imagine they would lose, heavily by the advance of woman +as a whole to a condition of free labour and economic independence. That +female, wilfully or organically belonging to the parasite class, having +neither the vigour of intellect nor the vitality of body to undertake +any form of productive labour, and desiring to be dependent only upon +the passive performance of sex function merely, would, whether as +prostitute or wife, undoubtedly lose heavily by any social change which +demanded of woman increased knowledge and activity. (She would lose +in two directions: by the social disapprobation which, as the new +conditions became general, would rest on her; and yet more by the +competition of the more developed forms. She would practically become +non-existent.) + +It is exactly by these two classes of persons that the objection is +raised that the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour and her +increased freedom and intelligence will dislocate the relations of +the sexes; and, while from the purely personal standpoint, they +are undoubtedly right, viewing human society as a whole they are +fundamentally wrong. The loss of a small and unhealthy section will be +the gain of human society as a whole. + +In the male voluptuary of feeble intellect and unattractive +individuality, who depends for the gratification of his sexual +instincts, not on his power of winning and retaining the personal +affection and admiration of woman, but on her purchaseable condition, +either in the blatantly barbarous field of sex traffic that lies beyond +the pale of legal marriage, or the not less barbarous though more veiled +traffic within that pale, the entrance of woman into the new fields of +labour, with an increased intellectual culture and economic freedom, +means little less than social extinction. But, to those males who, even +at the present day, constitute the majority in our societies, and who +desire the affection and fellowship of woman rather than a mere material +possession; for the male who has the attributes and gifts of mind or +body, which, apart from any weight of material advantage, would fit him +to hold the affection of woman, however great her freedom of choice, +the gain will be correspondingly great. Given a society in which the +majority of women should be so far self-supporting, that, having their +free share open to them in the modern fields of labour, and reaping the +full economic rewards of their labour, marriage or some form of sexual +sale was no more a matter of necessity to them; so far from this +condition causing a diminution in the number of permanent sex unions, +one of the heaviest bars to them would be removed. It is universally +allowed that one of the disease spots in our modern social condition is +the increasing difficulty which bars conscientious men from entering +on marriage and rearing families, if limited means would in the case of +their death or disablement throw the woman and their common offspring +comparatively helpless into the fierce stream of our modern economic +life. If the woman could justifiably be looked to, in case of the man's +disablement or death, to take his place as an earner, thousands of +valuable marriages which cannot now be contracted could be entered on; +and the serious social evil, which arises from the fact that while the +self-indulgent and selfish freely marry and produce large families, +the restrained and conscientious are often unable to do so, would +be removed. For the first time in the history of the modern world, +prostitution, using that term in its broadest sense to cover all forced +sexual relationships based, not on the spontaneous affection of the +woman for the man, but on the necessitous acceptance by woman of +material good in exchange for the exercise of her sexual functions, +would be extinct; and the relation between men and women become a +co-partnership between freemen. + +So far from the economic freedom and social independence of the woman +exterminating sexual love between man and woman, it would for the first +time fully enfranchise it. The element of physical force and capture +which dominated the most primitive sex relations, the more degrading +element of seduction and purchase by means of wealth or material good +offered to woman in our modern societies, would then give place to the +untrammelled action of attraction and affection alone between the sexes, +and sexual love, after its long pilgrimage in the deserts, would be +enabled to return at last, a king crowned. + +But, apart from the two classes of persons whose objection to the +entrance of woman to new fields of labour is based more or less +instinctively on the fear of personal loss, there is undoubtedly a +small, if a very small, number of sincere persons whose fear as to +severance between the sexes to result from woman's entrance into the new +field, is based upon a more abstract and impersonal ground. + +It is not easy to do full justice in an exact statement to views held +generally rather nebulously and vaguely, but we believe we should not +mistake this view, by saying that there are a certain class of perfectly +sincere and even moderately intelligent folk who hold a view which, +expressed exactly, would come to something like this--that the entrance +of woman into new fields would necessitate so large a mental culture and +such a development of activity, mental and physical, in the woman, that +she might ultimately develop into a being so superior to the male and +so widely different from the man, that the bond of sympathy between the +sexes might ultimately be broken and the man cease to be an object of +affection and attraction to the woman, and the woman to the man through +mere dissimilarity. The future these persons seem to see, more or less +vaguely, is of a social condition, in which, the males of the race +remaining precisely as they are today, the corresponding females shall +have advanced to undreamed of heights of culture and intelligence; a +condition in which the hand-worker, and the ordinary official, and +small farmer, shall be confronted with the female astronomer or Greek +professor of astonishing learning and gifts as his only possible +complementary sex companion; and the vision naturally awakens in these +good folk certain misgivings as to sympathy between and suitability for +each other, of these two widely dissimilar parts of humanity. + +It must of course at once be admitted, that, were the two sexual halves +of humanity distinct species, which, having once entered on a course +of evolution and differentiation, might continue to develop along those +distinct lines for countless ages or even for a number of generations, +without reacting through inheritance on each other, the consequences of +such development might ultimately almost completely sever them. + +The development of distinct branches of humanity has already brought +about such a severance between races and classes which are in totally +distinct stages of evolution. So wide is the hiatus between them often, +that the lowest form of sex attraction can hardly cross it; and the more +highly developed mental and emotional sex passion cannot possibly bridge +it. In the world of sex, kind seeks kind, and too wide a dissimilarity +completely bars the existence of the highest forms of sex emotion, and +often even the lower and more purely animal. + +Were it possible to place a company of the most highly evolved human +females--George Sands, Sophia Kovalevskys, or even the average cultured +females of a highly evolved race--on an island where the only males +were savages of the Fugean type, who should meet them on the shores +with matted hair and prognathous jaws, and with wild shouts, brandishing +their implements of death, to greet and welcome them, it is an undoubted +fact that, so great would be the horror felt by the females towards +them, that not only would the race become extinct, but if it depended +for its continuance on any approach to sex affection on the part of the +women, that death would certainly be accepted by all, as the lesser of +two evils. Hardly less marked would be the sexual division if, in place +of cultured and developed females, we imagine males of the same highly +evolved class thrown into contact with the lowest form of primitive +females. A Darwin, a Schiller, a Keats, though all men capable of the +strongest sex emotion and of the most durable sex affections, would +probably be untouched by any emotion but horror, cast into the company +of a circle of Bushmen females with greased bodies and twinkling eyes, +devouring the raw entrails of slaughtered beasts. + +But leaving out even such extreme instances of diversity, the mere +division in culture and mental habits, dividing individuals of the same +race but of different classes, tends largely to exclude the possibility +of at least the nobler and more enduring forms of sex emotion. The +highly cultured denizen of a modern society, though he may enter into +passing and temporary and animal relations with the uncultured peasant +or woman of the street, seldom finds awakened within him in such cases +the depth of emotion and sympathy which is necessary for the enjoyment +of the closer tie of conjugal life; and it may be doubted whether the +highest, most permanent, and intimate forms of sexual affection ever +exist except among humans very largely identical in tastes, habits +of thought, and moral and physical education. (In Greece at a certain +period (as we have before noted) there does appear to have been a +temporary advance of the male, so far in advance of the female as to +make the difference between them almost immeasurable; but he quickly +fell back to the level of the woman.) Were it possible that the entrance +of woman into the new fields of labour should produce any increased +divergence between man and woman in ideals, culture, or tastes, there +would undoubtedly be a dangerous responsibility incurred by any who +fostered such a movement. + +But the most superficial study of human life and the relation of the +sexes negates such a conception. + +The two sexes are not distinct species but the two halves of one whole, +always acting and interacting on each other through inheritance, and +reproducing and blending with each other in each generation. The human +female is bound organically in two ways to the males of her society: +collaterally they are her companions and the co-progenitors with her +of the race; but she is also the mother of the males of each succeeding +generation, bearing, shaping, and impressing her personality upon them. +The males and females of each human society resemble two oxen tethered +to one yoke: for a moment one may move slightly forward and the other +remain stationary; but they can never move farther from each other than +the length of the yoke that binds them; and they must ultimately +remain stationary or move forward together. That which the women of one +generation are mentally or physically, that by inheritance and education +the males of the next tend to be: there can be no movement or change in +one sex which will not instantly have its co-ordinating effect upon the +other; the males of tomorrow are being cast in the mould of the women of +today. If new ideals, new moral conceptions, new methods of action are +found permeating the minds of the women of one generation, they will +reappear in the ideals, moral conceptions, methods of action of the men +of thirty years hence; and the idea that the males of a society can ever +become permanently farther removed from its females than the individual +man is from the mother who bore and reared him, is at variance with +every law of human inheritance. + +If, further, we turn from an abstract consideration of this supposition, +and examine practically in the modern world men and women as they exist +today, the irrationality of the supposition is yet more evident. + +Not merely is the Woman's Movement of our age not a sporadic and +abnormal growth, like a cancer bearing no organic relation to the +development of the rest of the social organism, but it is essentially +but one important phase of a general modification which the whole of +modern life is undergoing. Further, careful study of the movement will +show that, not only is it not a movement on the part of woman leading to +severance and separation between the woman and the man, but that it +is essentially a movement of the woman towards the man, of the sexes +towards closer union. + +Much is said at the present day on the subject of the "New Woman" (who, +as we have seen, is essentially but the old non-parasitic woman of the +remote past, preparing to draw on her new twentieth-century garb): +and it cannot truly be said that her attitude finds a lack of social +attention. On every hand she is examined, praised, blamed, mistaken for +her counterfeit, ridiculed, or deified--but nowhere can it be said, that +the phenomenon of her existence is overlooked. + +But there exists at the present day another body of social phenomena, +quite as important, as radical, and if possible more far-reaching in its +effects on the present and future, which yet attracts little conscious +attention or animadversion, though it makes itself everywhere felt; as +the shade of a growing tree may be sat under year after year by persons +who never remark its silent growth. + +Side by side with the "New Woman," corresponding to her, as the two +sides of a coin cast in one mould, though differing from each other in +superficial detail, are yet of one metal, one size, and one value; old +in the sense in which she is old, being merely the reincarnation under +the pressure of new conditions of the ancient forms of his race; new in +the sense in which she is new, in that he is an adaptation to material +and social conditions which have no exact counterpart in the past; more +diverse from his immediate progenitors than even the woman is from hers, +side by side with her today in every society and in every class in which +she is found, stands--the New Man! + +If it be asked, How comes it to pass, if, under the pressure of social +conditions, man shows an analogous change of attitude toward life, +that the change in woman should attract universal attention, while +the corresponding change in the man of her society passes almost +unnoticed?--it would seem that the explanation lies in the fact that, +owing to woman's less independence of action in the past, any attempt +at change or readaptation on her part has had to overcome greater +resistance, and it is the noise and friction of resistance, more than +the amount of actual change which has taken place, which attracts +attention; as when an Alpine stream, after a long winter frost, breaks +the ice, and with a crash and roar sweeps away the obstructions which +have gathered in its bed, all men's attention is attracted to it, though +when later a much larger body of water silently forces its way down, no +man observes it. (An interesting practical illustration of this fact +is found in the vast attention and uproar created when the first three +women in England, some thirty odd years ago, sought to enter the medical +profession. At the present day scores of women prepare to enter it +yearly without attracting any general attention; not that the change +which is going on is not far more in volume and social importance, but +that, having overcome the first obstruction, it is now noiseless.) + +Between the Emilias and Sophy Westerns of a bygone generation and the +most typical of modern women, there exists no greater gap (probably not +so great a one) as that which exists between the Tom Joneses and Squire +Westerns of that day and the most typical of entirely modern men. + +The sexual and social ideals which dominated the fox-hunting, +hard-drinking, high-playing, recklessly loose-living country squire, +clergyman, lawyer, and politician who headed the social organism of the +past, are at least as distinct from the ideals which dominate thousands +of their male descendants holding corresponding positions in the +societies of today, as are the ideals of her great-great-grand mother's +remote from those dominating the most modern of New Women. + +That which most forces itself upon us as the result of a close personal +study of those sections of modern European societies in which change +and adaptation to the new conditions of life are now most rapidly +progressing, is, not merely that equally large bodies of men and women +are being rapidly modified as to their sexual and social ideals and as +to their mode of life, but that this change is strictly complementary. + +If the ideal of the modern woman becomes increasingly one inconsistent +with the passive existence of woman on the remuneration which her sexual +attributes may win from man, and marriage becomes for her increasingly +a fellowship of comrades, rather than the relationship of the owner and +the bought, the keeper and the kept; the ideal of the typically modern +man departs quite as strongly from that of his forefathers in the +direction of finding in woman active companionship and co-operation +rather than passive submission. If the New Woman's conception of +parenthood differs from the old in the greater sense of the gravity and +obligation resting on those who are responsible for the production of +the individual life, making her attitude toward the production of her +race widely unlike the reckless, unreasoning, maternal reproduction of +the woman of the past, the most typical male tends to feel in at least +the same degree the moral and social obligation entailed by awakening +lifehood: if the ideal which the New Woman shapes for herself of a male +companion excludes the crudely animal hard-drinking, hard-swearing, +licentious, even if materially wealthy gallant of the past; the most +typically modern male's ideal for himself excludes at least equally +this type. The brothel, the race-course, the gaming-table, and habits +of physical excess among men are still with us; but the most superficial +study of our societies will show that these have fallen into a new place +in the scale of social institutions and manners. The politician, the +clergyman, or the lawyer does not improve his social or public standing +by violent addictions in these directions; to drink his companions +under the table, to be known to have the largest number of illicit sex +relations, to be recognised as an habitual visitant of the gambling +saloon, does not, even in the case of a crowned head, much enhance his +reputation, and with the ordinary man may ultimately prove a bar to all +success. If the New Woman's conception of love between the sexes is one +more largely psychic and intellectual than crudely and purely physical, +and wholly of an affection between companions; the New Man's conception +as expressed in the most typical literature and art, produced by +typically modern males, gives voice with a force no woman has surpassed +to the same new ideal. If to the typical modern woman the lifelong +companionship of a Tom Jones or Squire Western would be more intolerable +than death or the most complete celibacy, not less would the most +typical of modern men shrink from the prospect of a lifelong fetterment +to the companionship of an always fainting, weeping, and terrified +Emilia or a Sophia of a bygone epoch. + +If anywhere on earth exists the perfect ideal of that which the modern +woman desires to be--of a labouring and virile womanhood, free, strong, +fearless and tender--it will probably be found imaged in the heart of +the New Man; engendered there by his own highest needs and aspirations; +and nowhere would the most highly developed modern male find an image of +that which forms his ideal of the most fully developed manhood, than in +the ideal of man which haunts the heart of the New Woman. + +Those have strangely overlooked some of the most important phenomena +of our modern world, who see in the Woman's Movement of our day any +emotional movement of the female against the male, of the woman away +from the man. + +We have called the Woman's Movement of our age an endeavour on the part +of women among modern civilised races to find new fields of labour as +the old slip from them, as an attempt to escape from parasitism and an +inactive dependence upon sex function alone; but, viewed from another +side, the Woman's Movement might not less justly be called a part of +a great movement of the sexes towards each other, a movement towards +common occupations, common interests, common ideals, and towards an +emotional sympathy between the sexes more deeply founded and more +indestructible than any the world has yet seen. + +But it may be suggested, and the perception of a certain profound truth +underlies this suggestion; How is it, if there be this close reciprocity +between the lines along which the advanced and typical modern males and +females are developing, that there does exist in our modern societies, +and often among the very classes forming our typically advanced +sections, so much of pain, unrest, and sexual disco-ordination at the +present day? + +The reply to this pertinent suggestion is, that the disco-ordination, +struggle, and consequent suffering which undoubtedly do exist when +we regard the world of sexual relationships and ideals in our modern +societies, do not arise in any way from a disco-ordination between the +sexes as such, but are a part of the general upheaval, of the conflict +between old ideals and new; a struggle which is going on in every branch +the human life in our modern societies, and in which the determining +element is not sex, but the point of evolution which the race or the +individual has reached. + +It cannot be too often repeated, even at the risk of the most wearisome +reiteration, that our societies are societies in a state of rapid +evolution and change. The continually changing material conditions of +life, with their reaction on the intellectual, emotional, and moral +aspects of human affairs, render our societies the most complex and +probably the most mobile and unsettled which the world has ever seen. +As the result of this rapidity of change and complexity, there must +continually exist a large amount of disco-ordination, and consequently, +of suffering. + +In a stationary society where generation has succeeded generation for +hundreds, or it may be for thousands, of years, with little or no change +in the material conditions of life, the desires, institutions, and moral +principles of men, their religious, political, domestic, and sexual +institutions, have gradually shaped themselves in accordance with these +conditions; and a certain harmony, and homogeneity, and tranquillity, +pervades the society. + +In societies in that rapid state of change in which our modern societies +find themselves, where not merely each decade, but each year, and almost +day brings new forces and conditions to bear on life, not only is the +amount of suffering and social rupture, which all rapid, excessive, +and sudden change entails on an organism, inevitable; but, the new +conditions, acting at different angles of intensity on the different +individual members composing the society, according to their positions +and varying intelligence, are producing a society of such marvellous +complexity and dissimilarity in the different individual parts, that +the intensest rupture and disco-ordination between individuals is +inevitable; and sexual ideals and relationships must share in the +universal condition. + +In a primitive society (if a somewhat prolix illustration may be +allowed) where for countless generations the conditions of life had +remained absolutely unchanged; where for ages it had been necessary that +all males should employ themselves in subduing wild beasts and meeting +dangerous foes, polygamy might universally have been a necessity, if the +race were to exist and its numbers be kept up; and society, recognising +this, polygamy would be an institution universally approved and +submitted to, however much suffering it entailed. If food were scarce, +the destruction of superfluous infants and of the aged might also always +have been necessary for the good of the individuals themselves as well +as of society, and the whole society would acquiesce in it without any +moral doubt. If an eclipse of the sun had once occurred in connection +with the appearance of a certain new insect, they mighty universally +regard that insect as a god causing it; and ages might pass without +anything arising to disprove their belief. There would be no social or +religious problem; and the view of one man would be the view of all +men; and all would be more or less in harmony with the established +institution and customs. + +But, supposing the sudden arrival of strangers armed with superior +weapons and knowledge, who should exterminate all wild beasts and render +war and the consequent loss of male life a thing of the past; not only +would the male be driven to encroach on the female's domain of domestic +agriculture and labour generally, but the males, not being so largely +destroyed, they would soon equal and surpass in numbers the females; and +not only would it then become a moot matter, "a problem," which labours +were or were not to be performed by man and which by woman, but very +soon, not the woman alone nor the man alone, but both, would be driven +to speculate as to the desirability or necessity of polygamy, which, +were men as numerous as women, would leave many males without sex +companions. The more intelligent and progressive individuals in the +community would almost at once arrive at the conclusion that polygamy +was objectionable; the most fearless would seek to carry their theory +into action; the most ignorant and unprogressive would determinately +stick to the old institutions as inherited from the past, without reason +or question; differences of ideal would cause conflict and dissension +in all parts of the body social, and suffering would ensue, where all +before was fixed and determinate. So also if the strangers introduced +new and improved methods of agriculture, and food became abundant, it +would then at once strike the most far-seeing and readily adaptable +members of the community, both male and female, that there was no +necessity for the destruction of their offspring; old men and women +would begin seriously to object to being hastened to death when they +realised that starvation did not necessarily stare them in the face +if they survived to an extreme old age; the most stupid and hide-bound +members of the community would still continue to sacrifice parents and +offspring long after the necessity had ceased, under the influence of +traditional bias; many persons would be in a state of much moral doubt +as to which course of action to pursue, the old or the new; and bitter +conflict might rage in the community on all these points. Were the +strangers to bring with them telescopes, looking through which it might +at once clearly be seen that an eclipse of the sun was caused merely by +the moon's passing over its face, the more intelligent members of the +community would at once come to the conclusion that the insect was not +the cause of eclipses, would cease to regard it as a god, and might even +kill it; the more stupid and immobile section of the community might +refuse to look through the telescope, or looking might refuse to see +that it was the moon which caused the eclipse, and their deep-seated +reverence for the insect, which was the growth of ages, would lead them +to regard as impious those individuals who denied its godhead, and might +even lead to the physical destruction of the first unbelievers. The +society, once so homogeneous and co-ordinated in all its parts, would +become at once a society rent by moral and social problems; and endless +suffering must arise to individuals in the attempt to co-ordinate the +ideals, manners, and institutions of the society to the new conditions! +There might be immense gain in many directions; lives otherwise +sacrificed would be spared, a higher and more satisfactory stage of +existence might be entered on; but the disco-ordination and struggle +would be inevitable until the society had established an equilibrium +between its knowledge, its material conditions, and its social, sexual, +and religious ideals and institutions. + +An analogous condition, but of a far more complex kind, exists at the +present day in our own societies. Our material environment differs in +every respect from that of our grandparents, and bears little or no +resemblance to that of a few centuries ago. Here and there, even in our +civilised societies in remote agricultural districts, the old social +conditions may remain partly undisturbed; but throughout the bulk of +our societies the substitution of mechanical for hand-labour, the +wide diffusion of knowledge through the always increasing cheap +printing-press; the rapidly increasing gathering of human creatures into +vast cities, where not merely thousands but millions of individuals are +collected together under physical and mental conditions of life which +invert every social condition of the past; the increasingly rapid means +of locomotion; the increasing intercourse between distant races and +lands, brought about by rapid means of intercommunication, widening +and changing in every direction the human horizon--all these produce a +society, so complex and so rapidly altering, that social co-ordination +between all its parts is impossible; and social unrest, and the strife +of ideals of faiths, of institutions, and consequent human suffering is +inevitable. + +If the ancient guns and agricultural implements which our fathers +taught us to use are valueless in the hands of their descendants, if the +samplers our mothers worked and the stockings they knitted are become +superfluous through the action of the modern loom, yet more are their +social institutions, faiths, and manners of life become daily and +increasingly unfitted to our use; and friction and suffering inevitable, +especially for the most advanced and modified individuals in our +societies. This suffering, if we analyse it closely, rises from three +causes. + +Firstly, it is caused by the fact that mere excessive rapidity of change +tends always easily to become painful, by rupturing violently already +hardened habits and modes of thought, as a very rapidly growing tree +ruptures its bark and exudes its internal juices. + +Secondly, it arises from the fact that individuals of the same human +society, not adapting themselves at the same rate to the new conditions, +or being exposed to them in different degrees, a wide and almost +unparalleled dissimilarity has today arisen between the different +individuals composing our societies; where, side by side with men and +women who have rapidly adapted or are so successfully seeking to adapt +themselves to the new conditions of knowledge and new conditions of +life, that, were they to reappear in future ages in more co-ordinated +societies, they might perhaps hardly appear wholly antiquated, are to be +found men and women whose social, religious, and moral ideals would not +constitute them out of harmony if returned to the primitive camps of the +remote forbears of the human race; while, between these extreme classes +lies that large mass of persons in an intermediate state of development. +This diversity is bound to cause friction and suffering in the +interactions of the members of our societies; more especially, as the +individuals composing each type are not sorted out into classes and +families, but are found scattered through all classes and grades in our +societies. (One of the women holding the most advanced and modern view +of the relation of woman to life whom we have met was the wife of a +Northamptonshire shoemaker; herself engaged in making her living by the +sewing of the uppers of men's boots.) Persons bound by the closest ties +of blood or social contiguity and compelled to a continual intercourse, +are often those most widely dissevered in their amount of adaptation +to the new conditions of life; and the amount of social friction and +consequent human suffering arising from this fact is so subtle and +almost incalculable, that perhaps it is impossible adequately to portray +it in dry didactic language: it is only truly describable in the medium +of art, where actual concrete individuals are shown acting and reacting +on each other--as in the novel or the drama. We are like a company of +chess-men, not sorted out in kinds, pawns together, kings and queens +together, and knights and rooks together, but simply thrown at haphazard +into a box, and jumbled side by side. In the stationary societies, where +all individuals were permeated by the same political, religious, moral, +and social ideas; and where each class had its own hereditary and fixed +traditions of action and manners, this cause of friction and suffering +had of necessity no existence; individual differences and discord might +be occasioned by personal greeds, ambitions, and selfishnesses, but +not by conflicting conceptions of right and wrong, of the desirable and +undesirable, in all branches of human life. (Only those who have been +thrown into contact with a stationary and homogeneous society such +as that of primitive African tribes before coming in contact with +Europeans; or such as the up-country Boers of South Africa were twenty +years ago, can realise adequately how wholly free from moral and social +problems and social friction such a society can be. It is in studying +such societies that the truth is vividly forced on one, that the key to +half, and more than half, of the phenomena in our own social condition, +can be found only in our rapidly changing conditions necessitating +equally rapid change in our conceptions, ideals, and institutions.) + +Thirdly, the unrest and suffering peculiar to our age is caused by +conflict going on within the individual himself. So intensely rapid is +the change which is taking place in our environment and knowledge that +in the course of a single life a man may pass through half a dozen +phases of growth. Born and reared in possession of certain ideas and +manners of action, he or she may, before middle life is reached, have +had occasion repeatedly to modify, enlarge, and alter, or completely +throw aside those traditions. Within the individuality itself of such +persons, goes on, in an intensified form, that very struggle, conflict, +and disco-ordination which is going on in society at large between its +different members and sections; and agonising moments must arise, when +the individual, seeing the necessity for adopting new courses of action, +or for accepting new truths, or conforming to new conditions, will yet +be tortured by the hold of traditional convictions; and the man or woman +who attempts to adapt their life to the new material conditions and to +harmony with the new knowledge, is almost bound at some time to rupture +the continuity of their own psychological existence. + +It is these conditions which give rise to the fact so often noticed, +that the art of our age tends persistently to deal with subtle social +problems, religious, political, and sexual, to which the art of the past +holds no parallel; and it is so inevitably, because the artist who would +obey the artistic instinct to portray faithfully the world about him, +must portray that which lies at the core of its life. The "problem" +play, novel, and poem are as inevitable in this age, as it was +inevitable that the artist of the eleventh century should portray +tournaments, physical battles, and chivalry, because they were the +dominant element in the life about him. + +It is also inevitable that this suffering and conflict must make itself +felt in its acutest form in the person of the most advanced individual +of our societies. It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen +stream who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it +broken, and the last find it gone. It is the man or woman who first +treads down the path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, +who must find themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is +deadly. The fact that any course of human action leading to adjustment, +leads also to immediate suffering, by dividing the individual from +the bulk of his fellows; is no argument against it; that solitude and +suffering is the crown of thorns which marks the kingship of earth's +Messiahs: it is the mark of the leader. + +Thus, social disco-ordination, and subjective conflict and suffering, +pervade the life of our age, making themselves felt in every division +of human life, religious, political, and domestic; and, if they are more +noticeable, and make themselves more keenly felt in the region of sex +than in any other, even the religious, it is because when we enter the +region of sex we touch, as it were, the spinal cord of human existence, +its great nerve centre, where sensation is most acute, and pain and +pleasure most keenly felt. It is not sex disco-ordination that is at the +root of our social unrest; it is the universal disco-ordination which +affects even the world of sex phenomena. + +Also it is necessary to note that the line which divides the progressive +sections of our communities, seeking to co-ordinate themselves to the +new conditions of life, from the retrogressive, is not a line running +coincidentally with the line of sex. A George Sand and a Henrik Ibsen +belong more essentially to the same class in the order of modern +development, than either belongs to any class composed entirely of their +own sex. If we divide humanity into classes according to type, in each +division will be found the male with his complementary female. Side by +side with the old harlot at the street corner anxious to sell herself, +stands the old aboriginal male, whether covered or not with a veneer of +civilisation, eager and desiring to buy. Side by side with the parasitic +woman, seeking only increased pleasure and luxury from her relations +with man, stands the male seeking only pleasure and self-indulgence from +his relations with her. Side by side with the New Woman, anxious for +labour and seeking from man only such love and fellowship as she gives, +stands the New Man, anxious to possess her only on the terms she offers. +If the social movement, through which the most advanced women of our +day are attempting to bring themselves into co-ordination with the new +conditions of life, removes them immeasurably from certain types of the +primitive male; the same movement equally removes the new male from the +old female. The sexual tragedy of modern life lies, not in the fact that +woman as such is tending to differ fundamentally from man as such; but +that, in the unassorted confusion of our modern life, it is continually +the modified type of man or woman who is thrown into the closest +personal relations with the antiquated type of the opposite sex; that +between father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, husband +and wife, may sometimes be found to intervene not merely years, but even +centuries of social evolution. + +It is not man as man who opposes the attempt of woman to readjust +herself to the new conditions of life: that opposition arises, perhaps +more often, from the retrogressive members of her own sex. And it is a +fact which will surprise no one who has studied the conditions of modern +life; that among the works of literature in all European languages, +which most powerfully advocate the entrance of woman into the new fields +of labour, and which most uncompromisingly demand for her the widest +training and freedom of action, and which most passionately seek for +the breaking down of all artificial lines which sever the woman from the +man, many of the ablest and most uncompromising are the works of males. + +The New Man and Woman do not resemble two people, who, standing on a +level plain, set out on two roads, which diverging at different angles +and continued in straight lines, must continue to take them farther and +farther from each other the longer they proceed in them; rather, they +resemble two persons who start to climb a spur of the same mountain from +opposite sides; where, the higher they climb the nearer they come to +each other, being bound ultimately to meet at the top. + +Even that opposition often made by males to the entrance of woman into +the new fields of labour, of which they at present hold the monopoly, +is not fundamentally sexual in its nature. The male who opposes the +entrance of woman into the trade or profession in which he holds more +or less a monopoly, would oppose with equal, and perhaps even greater +bitterness, the opening of its doors to numbers of his own sex who +had before been excluded, and who would limit his gains and share his +privileges. It is the primitive brute instinct to retain as much +as possible for the ego, irrespective of justice or humanity, which +dominates all the lower moral types of humanity, both male and female, +which acts here. The lawyer or physician who objects to the entrance of +women to his highly fenced professional enclosure, would probably object +yet more strenuously if it were proposed to throw down the barriers of +restraint and monetary charges, which would result in the flooding +of his profession by other males: while the mechanic, who resists the +entrance of woman into his especial field, is invariably found even +more persistently to oppose any attempt at entrance on the part of other +males, when he finds it possible to do so. + +This opposition of the smaller type of male, to the entrance of woman +into the callings hitherto apportioned to himself, is sometimes taken as +implying the impossibility of fellowship and affection existing between +the men and women employed in common labour, that the professional +jealousy of the man must necessitate his feeling a hatred and antagonism +towards any one who shares his fields of toil. But the most superficial +study of human life negates such a supposition. Among men, in spite +of the occasional existence of the petty professional jealousies and +antagonism, we find, viewing society as a whole, that common interests, +and above all common labours, are the most potent means of bringing them +into close and friendly relations; and, in fact, they seem generally +essential for the formation of the closest and most permanent human +friendships. In every walk of human life, whether trade, or profession, +we find men associating by choice mainly with, and entertaining often +the profoundest and most permanent friendships for, men engaged in +their own callings. The inner circle of a barrister's friendships almost +always consists of his fellow-barristers; the city man, who is free to +select his society where he will, will be oftenest found in company with +his fellow-man of business; the medical man's closest friendship is, in +a large number of cases, for some man who was once his fellow-student +and has passed through the different stages of his professional life +with him; the friends and chosen companions of the actor are commonly +actors; of the savant, savants; of the farmer, farmers; of the sailor, +sailors. So generally is this the case that it would almost attract +attention and cause amusement were the boon companion of the sea captain +a leading politician, and the intimate friend of the clergyman an actor, +or the dearest friend of the farmer an astronomer. Kind seeks kind. +The majority of men by choice frequent clubs where those of their own +calling are found, and especially as life advances and men sink deeper +into their professional grooves, they are found to seek fellowship +mainly among their fellow-workers. That this should be so is inevitable; +common amusements may create a certain bond between the young, but +the performance of common labours, necessitating identical knowledge, +identical habits, and modes of thought, forms a far stronger bond, +drawing men far more powerfully towards social intercourse and personal +friendship and affection than the centrifugal force of professional +jealousies can divide them. + +That the same condition would prevail where women became fellow-workers +with men might be inferred on abstract grounds: but practical experience +confirms this. The actor oftenest marries the actress, the male musician +the female; the reception-room of the literary woman or female +painter is found continually frequented by men of her own calling; the +woman-doctor associates continually with and often marries one of her +own confreres; and as women in increasing numbers share the fields of +labour with men, which have hitherto been apportioned to them alone, the +nature and strength of the sympathy arising from common labours will be +increasingly clear. + +The sharing by men and women of the same labours, necessitating a common +culture and therefore common habits of thought and interests, would +tend to fill that painful hiatus which arises so continually in modern +conjugal life, dividing the man and woman as soon as the first sheen of +physical sexual attraction which glints only over the unknown begins to +fade, and from which springs so large a part of the tragedy of modern +conjugal relations. The primitive male might discuss with her his +success in hunting and her success in finding roots; as the primitive +peasant may discuss today with his wife the crops and cows in which both +are equally interested and which both understand; there is nothing in +their order of life to produce always increasingly divergent habits of +thought and interest. + +In modern civilised life, in many sections, the lack of any common +labour and interests and the wide dissimilarity of the life led by the +man and the woman, tend continually to produce increasing divergence; so +that, long before middle life is reached, they are left without any +bond of co-cohesion but that of habit. The comradeship and continual +stimulation, rising from intercourse with those sharing our closest +interests and regarding life from the same standpoint, the man tends to +seek in his club and among his male companions, and the woman accepts +solitude, or seeks dissipations which tend yet farther to disrupt the +common conjugal life. A certain mental camaraderie and community of +impersonal interests is imperative in conjugal life in addition to a +purely sexual relation, if the union is to remain a living and always +growing reality. It is more especially because the sharing by woman of +the labours of man will tend to promote camaraderie and the existence of +common, impersonal interests and like habits of thought and life, that +the entrance of women into the very fields shared by men, and not into +others peculiarly reserved for her, is so desirable. (The reply once +given by the wife of a leading barrister, when reference was made to the +fact that she and her husband were seldom found in each other's society, +throws a painful but true light on certain aspects of modern life, +against which the entire woman's movement of our age is a rebellion. +"My husband," she said, "is always increasingly absorbed in his legal +duties, of which I understand nothing, and which so do not interest me. +My children are all growing up and at school. I have servants enough to +attend to my house. When he comes home in the evening, if I try to amuse +him by telling him of the things I have been doing during the day, of +the bazaars I am working for, the shopping I have done, the visits I +have paid, he is bored. He is anxious to get away to his study, his +books, and his men friends, and I am left utterly alone. If it were not +for the society of women and other men with whom I have more in common, +I could not bear my life. When we first met as boy and girl, and fell +in love, we danced and rode together and seemed to have everything in +common; now we have nothing. I respect him and I believe he respects me, +but that is all!" It is, perhaps, only in close confidences between +man and man and woman and woman that this open sore, rising from the +divergence in training, habits of life, and occupation between men +and women is spoken of; but it lies as a tragic element at the core of +millions of modern conjugal relations, beneath the smooth superficial +surface of our modern life; breaking out to the surface only +occasionally in the revelations of our divorce courts.) + +It is a gracious fact, to which every woman who has achieved success or +accomplished good work in any of the fields generally apportioned to men +will bear witness, whether that work be in the field of literature, of +science, or the organised professions, that the hands which have been +most eagerly stretched our to welcome her have been those of men; that +the voices which have most generously acclaimed her success have been +those of male fellow-workers in the fields into which she has entered. + +There is no door at which the hand of woman has knocked for admission +into a new field of toil but there have been found on the other side the +hands of strong and generous men eager to turn it for her, almost before +she knocks. + +To those of us who, at the beginning of a new century, stand with shaded +eyes, gazing into the future, striving to descry the outlines of the +shadowy figures which loom before us in the distance, nothing seems of +so gracious a promise, as the outline we seem to discern of a condition +of human life in which a closer union than the world has yet seen shall +exist between the man and the woman: where the Walhalla of our old +Northern ancestors shall find its realisation in a concrete reality, +and the Walkurie and her hero feast together at one board, in a brave +fellowship. + +Always in our dreams we hear the turn of the key that shall close the +door of the last brothel; the clink of the last coin that pays for the +body and soul of a woman; the falling of the last wall that encloses +artificially the activity of woman and divides her from man; always we +picture the love of the sexes, as, once a dull, slow, creeping worm; +then a torpid, earthy chrysalis; at last the full-winged insect, +glorious in the sunshine of the future. + +Today, as we row hard against the stream of life, is it only a blindness +in our eyes, which have been too long strained, which makes us see, far +up the river where it fades into the distance, through all the mists +that rise from the river-banks, a clear, a golden light? Is it only a +delusion of the eyes which makes us grasp our oars more lightly and bend +our backs lower; though we know well that long before the boat reaches +those stretches, other hands than ours will man the oars and guide its +helm? Is it all a dream? + +The ancient Chaldean seer had a vision of a Garden of Eden which lay in +a remote past. It was dreamed that man and woman once lived in joy and +fellowship, till woman ate of the tree of knowledge and gave to man to +eat; and that both were driven forth to wander, to toil in bitterness; +because they had eaten of the fruit. + +We also have our dream of a Garden: but it lies in a distant future. We +dream that woman shall eat of the tree of knowledge together with man, +and that side by side and hand close to hand, through ages of much toil +and labour, they shall together raise about them an Eden nobler than any +the Chaldean dreamed of; an Eden created by their own labour and made +beautiful by their own fellowship. + +In his apocalypse there was one who saw a new heaven and a new earth; +we see a new earth; but therein dwells love--the love of comrades and +co-workers. + +It is because so wide and gracious to us are the possibilities of the +future; so impossible is a return to the past, so deadly is a passive +acquiescence in the present, that today we are found everywhere raising +our strange new cry--"Labour and the training that fits us for labour!" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman and Labour, by Olive Schreiner + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN AND LABOUR *** + +***** This file should be named 1440.txt or 1440.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/4/1440/ + +Produced by Sue Asscher + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher <asschers@aia.net.au> + + + + + +Woman and Labour + +by + +Olive Schreiner + +Author of "Dreams," "The Story of an African Farm," "Trooper Peter Halket," +"Dream Life and Real Life," etc. etc. + +Dedicated to Constance Lytton + +"Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, +Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea-- +Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong-- +Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she: +Give her the glory of going on and still to be." + +Tennyson. + +Olive Schreiner. +De Aar, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. 1911. + + + + +Contents + +Introduction + +Chapter I. Parasitism + +Chapter II. Parasitism (continued) + +Chapter III. Parasitism (continued) + +Chapter IV. Woman and War + +Chapter V. Sex Differences + +Chapter VI. Certain Objections + + + + +Introduction. + +It is necessary to say a few words to explain this book. The original +title of the book was "Musings on Woman and Labour." + +It is, what its name implies, a collection of musings on some of the points +connected with woman's work. + +In my early youth I began a book on Woman. I continued the work till ten +years ago. It necessarily touched on most matters in which sex has a part, +however incompletely. + +It began by tracing the differences of sex function to their earliest +appearances in life on the globe; not only as when in the animal world, two +amoeboid globules coalesce, and the process of sexual generation almost +unconsciously begins; but to its yet more primitive manifestations in plant +life. In the first three chapters I traced, as far as I was able, the +evolution of sex in different branches of non-human life. Many large facts +surprised me in following this line of thought by their bearing on the +whole modern sex problem. Such facts as this; that, in the great majority +of species on the earth the female form exceeds the male in size and +strength and often in predatory instinct; and that sex relationships may +assume almost any form on earth as the conditions of life vary; and that, +even in their sexual relations towards offspring, those differences which +we, conventionally, are apt to suppose are inherent in the paternal or the +maternal sex form, are not inherent--as when one studies the lives of +certain toads, where the female deposits her eggs in cavities on the back +of the male, where the eggs are preserved and hatched; or, of certain sea +animals, in which the male carries the young about with him and rears them +in a pouch formed of his own substance; and countless other such. And +above all, this important fact, which had first impressed me when as a +child I wandered alone in the African bush and watched cock-o-veets singing +their inter-knit love-songs, and small singing birds building their nests +together, and caring for and watching over, not only their young, but each +other, and which has powerfully influenced all I have thought and felt on +sex matters since;--the fact that, along the line of bird life and among +certain of its species sex has attained its highest and aesthetic, and one +might almost say intellectual, development on earth: a point of +development to which no human race as a whole has yet reached, and which +represents the realisation of the highest sexual ideal which haunts +humanity. + +When these three chapters we ended I went on to deal, as far as possible, +with woman's condition in the most primitive, in the savage and in the +semi-savage states. I had always been strangely interested from childhood +in watching the condition of the native African women in their primitive +society about me. When I was eighteen I had a conversation with a Kafir +woman still in her untouched primitive condition, a conversation which made +a more profound impression on my mind than any but one other incident +connected with the position of woman has ever done. She was a woman whom I +cannot think of otherwise than as a person of genius. In language more +eloquent and intense than I have ever heard from the lips of any other +woman, she painted the condition of the women of her race; the labour of +women, the anguish of woman as she grew older, and the limitations of her +life closed in about her, her sufferings under the condition of polygamy +and subjection; all this she painted with a passion and intensity I have +not known equalled; and yet, and this was the interesting point, when I +went on to question her, combined with a deep and almost fierce bitterness +against life and the unseen powers which had shaped woman and her +conditions as they were, there was not one word of bitterness against the +individual man, nor any will or intention to revolt; rather, there was a +stern and almost majestic attitude of acceptance of the inevitable; life +and the conditions of her race being what they were. It was this +conversation which first forced upon me a truth, which I have since come to +regard as almost axiomatic, that, the women of no race or class will ever +rise in revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment of +their relation to their society, however intense their suffering and +however clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of +their society requires their submission: that, wherever there is a general +attempt on the part of the women of any society to readjust their position +in it, a close analysis will always show that the changed or changing +conditions of that society have made woman's acquiescence no longer +necessary or desirable. + +Another point which it was attempted to deal with in this division of the +book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that woman's +physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain other directions +was the price which woman has been compelled to pay for the passing of the +race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state to the erect; and which was +essential if humanity as we know it was to exist (this of course was dealt +with by a physiological study of woman's structure); and also, to deal with +the highly probable, though unproved and perhaps unprovable, suggestion, +that it was largely the necessity which woman was under of bearing her +helpless young in her arms while procuring food for them and herself, and +of carrying them when escaping from enemies, that led to the entirely erect +position being forced on developing humanity. + +These and many other points throwing an interesting light on the later +development of women (such as the relation between agriculture and the +subjection of women) were gone into in this division of the book dealing +with primitive and semi-barbarous womanhood. + +When this division was ended, I had them type-written, and with the first +three chapters bound in one volume about the year 1888; and then went on to +work at the last division, which I had already begun. + +This dealt with what is more popularly known as the women's question: with +the causes which in modern European societies are leading women to attempt +readjustment in their relation to their social organism; with the direction +in which such readjustments are taking place; and with the results which in +the future it appears likely such readjustments will produce. + +After eleven years, 1899, these chapters were finished and bound in a large +volume with the first two divisions. There then only remained to revise +the book and write a preface. In addition to the prose argument I had in +each chapter one or more allegories; because while it is easy clearly to +express abstract thoughts in argumentative prose, whatever emotion those +thoughts awaken I have not felt myself able adequately to express except in +the other form. (The allegory "Three Dreams in a Desert" which I published +about nineteen years ago was taken from this book; and I have felt that +perhaps being taken from its context it was not quite clear to every one.) +I had also tried throughout to illustrate the subject with exactly those +particular facts in the animal and human world, with which I had come into +personal contact and which had helped to form the conclusions which were +given; as it has always seemed to me that in dealing with sociological +questions a knowledge of the exact manner in which any writer has arrived +at his view is necessary in measuring its worth. The work had occupied a +large part of my life, and I had hoped, whatever its deficiencies, that it +might at least stimulate other minds, perhaps more happily situated, to an +enlarged study of the question. + +In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was +ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of two +months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I arrived +at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but Martial Law had already been +proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to allow my return +to my home in Johannesburg and sent me to the Colony; nor was I allowed to +send any communication through, to any person, who might have extended some +care over my possessions. Some eight months after, when the British troops +had taken and entered Johannesburg; a friend, who, being on the British +side, had been allowed to go up, wrote me that he had visited my house and +found it looted, that all that was of value had been taken or destroyed; +that my desk had been forced open and broken up, and its contents set on +fire in the centre of the room, so that the roof was blackened over the +pile of burnt papers. He added that there was little in the remnants of +paper of which I could make any use, but that he had gathered and stored +the fragments till such time as I might be allowed to come and see them. I +thus knew my book had been destroyed. + +Some months later in the war when confined in a little up-country hamlet, +many hundreds of miles from the coast and from Johannesburg; with the brunt +of the war at that time breaking around us, de Wet having crossed the +Orange River and being said to have been within a few miles of us, and the +British columns moving hither and thither, I was living in a little house +on the outskirts of the village, in a single room, with a stretcher and two +packing-cases as furniture, and with my little dog for company. Thirty-six +armed African natives were set to guard night and day at the doors and +windows of the house; and I was only allowed to go out during certain hours +in the middle of the day to fetch water from the fountain, or to buy what I +needed, and I was allowed to receive no books, newspapers or magazines. A +high barbed wire fence, guarded by armed natives, surrounded the village, +through which it would have been death to try to escape. All day the pom- +poms from the armoured trains, that paraded on the railway line nine miles +distant, could be heard at intervals; and at night the talk of the armed +natives as they pressed against the windows, and the tramp of the watch +with the endless "Who goes there?" as they walked round the wire fence +through the long, dark hours, when one was allowed neither to light a +candle nor strike a match. When a conflict was fought near by, the dying +and wounded were brought in; three men belonging to our little village were +led out to execution; death sentences were read in our little market-place; +our prison was filled with our fellow-countrymen; and we did not know from +hour to hour what the next would bring to any of us. Under these +conditions I felt it necessary I should resolutely force my thought at +times from the horror of the world around me, to dwell on some abstract +question, and it was under these circumstances that this little book was +written; being a remembrance mainly drawn from one chapter of the larger +book. The armed native guards standing against the uncurtained windows, it +was impossible to open the shutters, and the room was therefore always so +dark that even the physical act of writing was difficult. + +A year and a half after, when the war was over and peace had been +proclaimed for above four months, I with difficulty obtained a permit to +visit the Transvaal. I found among the burnt fragments the leathern back +of my book intact, the front half of the leaves burnt away; the back half +of the leaves next to the cover still all there, but so browned and +scorched with the flames that they broke as you touched them; and there was +nothing left but to destroy it. I even then felt a hope that at some +future time I might yet rewrite the entire book. But life is short; and I +have found that not only shall I never rewrite the book, but I shall not +have the health even to fill out and harmonise this little remembrance from +it. + +It is therefore with considerable pain that I give out this fragment. I am +only comforted by the thought that perhaps, all sincere and earnest search +after truth, even where it fails to reach it, yet, often comes so near to +it, that other minds more happily situated may be led, by pointing out its +very limitations and errors, to obtain a larger view. + +I have dared to give this long and very uninteresting explanation, not at +all because I have wished by giving the conditions under which this little +book was written, to make excuse for any repetitions or lack of literary +perfection, for these things matter very little; but, because (and this +matters very much) it might lead to misconception on the subject-matter +itself if its genesis were not exactly understood. + +Not only is this book not a general view of the whole vast body of +phenomena connected with woman's position; but it is not even a bird's-eye +view of the whole question of woman's relation to labour. + +In the original book the matter of the parasitism of woman filled only one +chapter out of twelve, and it was mainly from this chapter that this book +was drawn. The question of the parasitism of woman is, I think, very +vital, very important; it explains many phenomena which nothing else +explains; and it will be of increasing importance. But for the moment +there are other aspects of woman's relation to labour practically quite as +pressing. In the larger book I had devoted one chapter entirely to an +examination of the work woman has done and still does in the modern world, +and the gigantic evils which arise from the fact that her labour, +especially domestic labour, often the most wearisome and unending known to +any section of the human race, is not adequately recognised or recompensed. +Especially on this point I have feared this book might lead to a +misconception, if by its great insistence on the problem of sex parasitism, +and the lighter dealing with other aspects, it should lead to the +impression that woman's domestic labour at the present day (something quite +distinct from, though indirectly connected with, the sexual relation +between man and woman) should not be highly and most highly recognised and +recompensed. I believe it will be in the future, and then when woman gives +up her independent field of labour for domestic or marital duty of any +kind, she will not receive her share of the earnings of the man as a more +or less eleemosynary benefaction, placing her in a position of subjection, +but an equal share, as the fair division, in an equal partnership. (It may +be objected that where a man and woman have valued each other sufficiently +to select one another from all other humans for a lifelong physical union, +it is an impertinence to suppose there could be any necessity to adjust +economic relations. In love there is no first nor last! And that the +desire of each must be to excel the other in service. + +That this should be so is true; that it is so now, in the case of union +between two perfectly morally developed humans, is also true, and that this +condition may in a distant future be almost universal is certainly true. +But dealing with this matter as a practical question today, we have to +consider not what should be, or what may be, but what, given traditions and +institutions of our societies, is, today.) Especially I have feared that +the points dealt with in this little book, when taken apart from other +aspects of the question, might lead to the conception that it was intended +to express the thought, that it was possible or desirable that woman in +addition to her child-bearing should take from man his share in the support +and care of his offspring or of the woman who fulfilled with regard to +himself domestic duties of any kind. In that chapter in the original book +devoted to the consideration of man's labour in connection with woman and +with his offspring more than one hundred pages were devoted to illustrating +how essential to the humanising and civilising of man, and therefore of the +whole race, was an increased sense of sexual and paternal responsibility, +and an increased justice towards woman as a domestic labourer. In the last +half of the same chapter I dealt at great length with what seems to me an +even more pressing practical sex question at this moment--man's attitude +towards those women who are not engaged in domestic labour; toward that +vast and always increasing body of women, who as modern conditions develop +are thrown out into the stream of modern economic life to sustain +themselves and often others by their own labour; and who yet are there +bound hand and foot, not by the intellectual or physical limitations of +their nature, but by artificial constrictions and conventions, the remnants +of a past condition of society. It is largely this maladjustment, which, +deeply studied in all its ramifications, will be found to lie as the +taproot and central source of the most terrible of the social diseases that +afflict us. + +The fact that for equal work equally well performed by a man and by a +woman, it is ordained that the woman on the ground of her sex alone shall +receive a less recompense, is the nearest approach to a wilful and +unqualified "wrong" in the whole relation of woman to society today. That +males of enlightenment and equity can for an hour tolerate the existence of +this inequality has seemed to me always incomprehensible; and it is only +explainable when one regards it as a result of the blinding effects of +custom and habit. Personally, I have felt so profoundly on this subject, +that this, with one other point connected with woman's sexual relation to +man, are the only matters connected with woman's position, in thinking of +which I have always felt it necessary almost fiercely to crush down +indignation and to restrain it, if I would maintain an impartiality of +outlook. I should therefore much regret if the light and passing manner in +which this question has been touched on in this little book made it seem of +less vital importance than I hold it. + +In the last chapter of the original book, the longest, and I believe the +most important, I dealt with the problems connected with marriage and the +personal relations of men and women in the modern world. In it I tried to +give expression to that which I hold to be a great truth, and one on which +I should not fear to challenge the verdict of long future generations-- +that, the direction in which the endeavour of woman to readjust herself to +the new conditions of life is leading today, is not towards a greater +sexual laxity, or promiscuity, or to an increased self-indulgence, but +toward a higher appreciation of the sacredness of all sex relations, and a +clearer perception of the sex relation between man and woman as the basis +of human society, on whose integrity, beauty and healthfulness depend the +health and beauty of human life, as a whole. Above all, that it will lead +to a closer, more permanent, more emotionally and intellectually complete +and intimate relation between the individual man and woman. And if in the +present disco-ordinate transitional stage of our social growth it is found +necessary to allow of readjustment by means of divorce, it will not be +because such readjustments will be regarded lightly, but rather, as when, +in a complex and delicate mechanism moved by a central spring, we allow in +the structure for the readjustment and regulation of that spring, because +on its absolute perfection of action depends the movement of the whole +mechanism. In the last pages of the book, I tried to express what seems to +me a most profound truth often overlooked--that as humanity and human +societies pass on slowly from their present barbarous and semi-savage +condition in matters of sex into a higher, it will be found increasingly, +that over and above its function in producing and sending onward the +physical stream of life (a function which humanity shares with the most +lowly animal and vegetable forms of life, and which even by some noted +thinkers of the present day seems to be regarded as its only possible +function,) that sex and the sexual relation between man and woman have +distinct aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual functions and ends, apart +entirely from physical reproduction. That noble as is the function of the +physical reproduction of humanity by the union of man and woman, rightly +viewed, that union has in it latent, other, and even higher forms, of +creative energy and life-dispensing power, and that its history on earth +has only begun. As the first wild rose when it hung from its stem with its +centre of stamens and pistils and its single whorl of pale petals, had only +begun its course, and was destined, as the ages passed, to develop stamen +upon stamen and petal upon petal, till it assumed a hundred forms of joy +and beauty. + +And, it would indeed almost seem, that, on the path toward the higher +development of sexual life on earth, as man has so often had to lead in +other paths, that here it is perhaps woman, by reason of those very sexual +conditions which in the past have crushed and trammelled her, who is bound +to lead the way, and man to follow. So that it may be at last, that sexual +love--that tired angel who through the ages has presided over the march of +humanity, with distraught eyes, and feather-shafts broken, and wings +drabbled in the mires of lust and greed, and golden locks caked over with +the dust of injustice and oppression--till those looking at him have +sometimes cried in terror, "He is the Evil and not the Good of life!" and +have sought, if it were not possible, to exterminate him--shall yet, at +last, bathed from the mire and dust of ages in the streams of friendship +and freedom, leap upwards, with white wings spread, resplendent in the +sunshine of a distant future--the essentially Good and Beautiful of human +existence. + +I have given this long and very wearisome explanation of the scope and +origin of this little book, because I feel that it might lead to grave +misunderstanding were it not understood how it came to be written. + +I have inscribed it to my friend, Lady Constance Lytton; not because I +think it worthy of her, nor yet because of the splendid part she has played +in the struggle of the women fighting today in England for certain forms of +freedom for all women. It is, if I may be allowed without violating the +sanctity of a close personal friendship so to say, because she, with one or +two other men and women I have known, have embodied for me the highest +ideal of human nature, in which intellectual power and strength of will are +combined with an infinite tenderness and a wide human sympathy; a +combination which, whether in the person of the man or the woman, is +essential to the existence of the fully rounded and harmonised human +creature; and which an English woman of genius summed in one line when she +cried in her invocation of her great French sister:-- + +"Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man!" + +One word more I should like to add, as I may not again speak or write on +this subject. I should like to say to the men and women of the generations +which will come after us--"You will look back at us with astonishment! You +will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished so little; at the, to +you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did not take; at the +intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we sat down passive; at +the great truths staring us in the face, which we failed to see; at the +truths we grasped at, but could never quite get our fingers round. You +will marvel at the labour that ended in so little--but, what you will never +know is how it was thinking of you and for you, that we struggled as we did +and accomplished the little which we have done; that it was in the thought +of your larger realisation and fuller life, that we found consolation for +the futilities of our own." + +"What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me." + +O.S. + + +Chapter I. Parasitism. + +In that clamour which has arisen in the modern world, where now this, and +then that, is demanded for and by large bodies of modern women, he who +listens carefully may detect as a keynote, beneath all the clamour, a +demand which may be embodied in such a cry as this: Give us labour and the +training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves alone, +but for the race. + +If this demand be logically expanded, it will take such form as this: Give +us labour! For countless ages, for thousands, millions it may be, we have +laboured. When first man wandered, the naked, newly-erected savage, and +hunted and fought, we wandered with him: each step of his was ours. +Within our bodies we bore the race, on our shoulders we carried it; we +sought the roots and plants for its food; and, when man's barbed arrow or +hook brought the game, our hands dressed it. Side by side, the savage man +and the savage woman, we wandered free together and laboured free together. +And we were contented! + +Then a change came. + +We ceased from our wanderings, and, camping upon one spot of earth, again +the labours of life were divided between us. While man went forth to hunt, +or to battle with the foe who would have dispossessed us of all, we +laboured on the land. We hoed the earth, we reaped the grain, we shaped +the dwellings, we wove the clothing, we modelled the earthen vessels and +drew the lines upon them, which were humanity's first attempt at domestic +art; we studied the properties and uses of plants, and our old women were +the first physicians of the race, as, often, its first priests and +prophets. + +We fed the race at our breast, we bore it on our shoulders; through us it +was shaped, fed, and clothed. Labour more toilsome and unending than that +of man was ours; yet did we never cry out that it was too heavy for us. +While savage man lay in the sunshine on his skins, resting, that he might +be fitted for war or the chase, or while he shaped his weapons of death, he +ate and drank that which our hands had provided for him; and while we knelt +over our grindstone, or hoed in the fields, with one child in our womb, +perhaps, and one on our back, toiling till the young body was old before +its time--did we ever cry out that the labour allotted to us was too hard +for us? Did we not know that the woman who threw down her burden was as a +man who cast away his shield in battle--a coward and a traitor to his race? +Man fought--that was his work; we fed and nurtured the race--that was ours. +We knew that upon our labours, even as upon man's, depended the life and +well-being of the people whom we bore. We endured our toil, as man bore +his wounds, silently; and we were content. + +Then again a change came. + +Ages passed, and time was when it was no longer necessary that all men +should go to the hunt or the field of war; and when only one in five, or +one in ten, or but one in twenty, was needed continually for these labours. +Then our fellow-man, having no longer full occupation in his old fields of +labour, began to take his share in ours. He too began to cultivate the +field, to build the house, to grind the corn (or make his male slaves do +it); and the hoe, and the potter's tools, and the thatching-needle, and at +last even the grindstones which we first had picked up and smoothed to +grind the food for our children, began to pass from our hands into his. +The old, sweet life of the open fields was ours no more; we moved within +the gates, where the time passes more slowly and the world is sadder than +in the air outside; but we had our own work still, and were content. + +If, indeed, we might no longer grow the food for our people, we were still +its dressers; if we did not always plant and prepare the flax and hemp, we +still wove the garments for our race; if we did no longer raise the house +walls, the tapestries that covered them were the work of our hands; we +brewed the ale, and the simples which were used as medicines we distilled +and prescribed; and, close about our feet, from birth to manhood, grew up +the children whom we had borne; their voices were always in our ears. At +the doors of our houses we sat with our spinning-wheels, and we looked out +across the fields that were once ours to labour in--and were contented. +Lord's wife, peasant's, or burgher's, we all still had our work to do! + +A thousand years ago, had one gone to some great dame, questioning her why +she did not go out a-hunting or a-fighting, or enter the great hall to +dispense justice and confer upon the making of laws, she would have +answered: "Am I a fool that you put to me such questions? Have I not a +hundred maidens to keep at work at spinning-wheels and needles? With my +own hands daily do I not dispense bread to over a hundred folk? In the +great hall go and see the tapestries I with my maidens have created by the +labour of years, and which we shall labour over for twenty more, that my +children's children may see recorded the great deeds of their forefathers. +In my store-room are there not salves and simples, that my own hands have +prepared for the healing of my household and the sick in the country round? +Ill would it go indeed, if when the folk came home from war and the chase +of wild beasts, weary or wounded, they found all the womenfolk gone out a- +hunting and a-fighting, and none there to dress their wounds, or prepare +their meat, or guide and rule the household! Better far might my lord and +his followers come and help us with our work, than that we should go to +help them! You are surely bereft of all wit. What becomes of the country +if the women forsake their toil?" + +And the burgher's wife, asked why she did not go to labour in her husband's +workshop, or away into the market-place, or go a-trading to foreign +countries, would certainly have answered: "I am too busy to speak with +such as you! The bread is in the oven (already I smell it a-burning), the +winter is coming on, and my children lack good woollen hose and my husband +needs a warm coat. I have six vats of ale all a-brewing, and I have +daughters whom I must teach to spin and sew, and the babies are clinging +round my knees. And you ask me why I do not go abroad to seek for new +labours! Godsooth! Would you have me to leave my household to starve in +summer and die of cold in winter, and my children to go untrained, while I +gad about to seek for other work? A man must have his belly full and his +back covered before all things in life. Who, think you, would spin and +bake and brew, and rear and train my babes, if I went abroad? New labour, +indeed, when the days are not long enough, and I have to toil far into the +night! I have no time to talk with fools! Who will rear and shape the +nation if I do not?" + +And the young maiden at the cottage door, beside her wheel, asked why she +was content and did not seek new fields of labour, would surely have +answered: "Go away, I have no time to listen to you. Do you not see that +I am spinning here that I too may have a home of my own? I am weaving the +linen garments that shall clothe my household in the long years to come! I +cannot marry till the chest upstairs be full. You cannot hear it, but as I +sit here alone, spinning, far off across the hum of my spinning-wheel I +hear the voices of my little unborn children calling to me--'O mother, +mother, make haste, that we may be!'--and sometimes, when I seem to be +looking out across my wheel into the sunshine, it is the blaze of my own +fireside that I see, and the light shines on the faces round it; and I spin +on the faster and the steadier when I think of what shall come. Do you ask +me why I do not go out and labour in the fields with the lad whom I have +chosen? Is his work, then, indeed more needed than mine for the raising of +that home that shall be ours? Oh, very hard I will labour, for him and for +my children, in the long years to come. But I cannot stop to talk to you +now. Far off, over the hum of my spinning-wheel, I hear the voices of my +children calling, and I must hurry on. Do you ask me why I do not seek for +labour whose hands are full to bursting? Who will give folk to the nation +if I do not?" + +Such would have been our answer in Europe in the ages of the past, if asked +the question why we were contented with our field of labour and sought no +other. Man had his work; we had ours. We knew that we upbore our world on +our shoulders; and that through the labour of our hands it was sustained +and strengthened--and we were contented. + +But now, again a change has come. + +Something that is entirely new has entered into the field of human labour, +and left nothing as it was. + +In man's fields of toil, change has accomplished, and is yet more quickly +accomplishing, itself. + +On lands where once fifty men and youths toiled with their cattle, today +one steam-plough, guided by but two pair of hands, passes swiftly; and an +automatic reaper in one day reaps and binds and prepares for the garner the +produce of fields it would have taken a hundred strong male arms to harvest +in the past. The iron tools and weapons, only one of which it took an +ancient father of our race long months of stern exertion to extract from +ore and bring to shape and temper, are now poured forth by steam-driven +machinery as a millpond pours forth its water; and even in war, the male's +ancient and especial field of labour, a complete reversal of the ancient +order has taken place. Time was when the size and strength of the muscles +in a man's legs and arms, and the strength and size of his body, largely +determined his fighting powers, and an Achilles or a Richard Coeur de Lion, +armed only with his spear or battle-axe, made a host fly before him; today +the puniest mannikin behind a modern Maxim gun may mow down in perfect +safety a phalanx of heroes whose legs and arms and physical powers a Greek +god might have envied, but who, having not the modern machinery of war, +fall powerless. The day of the primary import to humanity of the strength +in man's extensor and flexor muscles, whether in labours of war or of +peace, is gone by for ever; and the day of the all-importance of the +culture and activity of man's brain and nerve has already come. + +The brain of one consumptive German chemist, who in his laboratory +compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of the modern +peoples than ten thousand soldierly legs and arms; and the man who invents +one new labour-saving machine may, through the cerebration of a few days, +have performed the labour it would otherwise have taken hundreds of +thousands of his lusty fellows decades to accomplish. + +Year by year, month by month, and almost hour by hour, this change is +increasingly showing itself in the field of the modern labour; and crude +muscular force, whether in man or beast, sinks continually in its value in +the world of human toil; while intellectual power, virility, and activity, +and that culture which leads to the mastery of the inanimate forces of +nature, to the invention of machinery, and to that delicate manipulative +skill often required in guiding it, becomes ever of greater and greater +importance to the race. Already today we tremble on the verge of a +discovery, which may come tomorrow or the next day, when, through the +attainment of a simple and cheap method of controlling some widely +diffused, everywhere accessible, natural force (such, for instance, as the +force of the great tidal wave) there will at once and for ever pass away +even that comparatively small value which still, in our present stage of +material civilisation, clings to the expenditure of mere crude, mechanical, +human energy; and the creature, however physically powerful, who can merely +pull, push, and lift, much after the manner of a machine, will have no +further value in the field of human labour. + +Therefore, even today, we find that wherever that condition which we call +modern civilisation prevails, and in proportion as it tends to prevail-- +wherever steam-power, electricity, or the forces of wind and water, are +compelled by man's intellectual activity to act as the motor-powers in the +accomplishment of human toil, wherever the delicate adaptions of +scientifically constructed machinery are taking the place of the simple +manipulation of the human hand--there has arisen, all the world over, a +large body of males who find that their ancient fields of labour have +slipped or are slipping from them, and who discover that the modern world +has no place or need for them. At the gates of our dockyards, in our +streets, and in our fields, are to be found everywhere, in proportion as +modern civilisation is really dominant, men whose bulk and mere animal +strength would have made them as warriors invaluable members of any +primitive community, and who would have been valuable even in any simpler +civilisation than our own, as machines of toil; but who, owing to lack of +intellectual or delicate manual training, have now no form of labour to +offer society which it stands really in need of, and who therefore tend to +form our Great Male Unemployed--a body which finds the only powers it +possesses so little needed by its fellows that, in return for its intensest +physical labour, it hardly earns the poorest sustenance. The material +conditions of life have been rapidly modified, and the man has not been +modified with them; machinery has largely filled his place in his old field +of labour, and he has found no new one. + +It is from these men, men who, viewed from the broad humanitarian +standpoint, are often of the most lovable and interesting type, and who +might in a simpler state of society, where physical force was the +dominating factor, have been the heroes, leaders, and chiefs of their +people, that there arises in the modern world the bitter cry of the male +unemployed: "Give us labour or we die!" (The problem of the unemployed +male is, of course, not nearly so modern as that of the unemployed female. +It may be said in England to have taken its rise in almost its present form +as early as the fifteenth century, when economic changes began to sever the +agricultural labourer from the land, and rob him of his ancient forms of +social toil. Still, in its most acute form, it may be called a modern +problem.) + +Yet it is only upon one, and a comparatively small, section of the males of +the modern civilised world that these changes in the material conditions of +life have told in such fashion as to take all useful occupation from them +and render them wholly or partly worthless to society. If the modern man's +field of labour has contracted at one end (the physical), at the other (the +intellectual) it has immeasurably expanded! If machinery and the command +of inanimate motor-forces have rendered of comparatively little value the +male's mere physical motor-power, the demand upon his intellectual +faculties, the call for the expenditure of nervous energy, and the exercise +of delicate manipulative skill in the labour of human life, have +immeasurably increased. + +In a million new directions forms of honoured and remunerative social +labour are opening up before the feet of the modern man, which his +ancestors never dreamed of; and day by day they yet increase in numbers and +importance. The steamship, the hydraulic lift, the patent road-maker, the +railway-train, the electric tram-car, the steam-driven mill, the Maxim gun +and the torpedo boat, once made, may perform their labours with the +guidance and assistance of comparatively few hands; but a whole army of men +of science, engineers, clerks, and highly-trained workmen is necessary for +their invention, construction, and maintenance. In the domains of art, of +science, of literature, and above all in the field of politics and +government, an almost infinite extension has taken place in the fields of +male labour. Where in primitive times woman was often the only builder, +and patterns she daubed on her hut walls or traced on her earthen vessels +the only attempts at domestic art; and where later but an individual here +and there was required to design a king's palace or a god's temple or to +ornament it with statues or paintings, today a mighty army of men, a +million strong, is employed in producing plastic art alone, both high and +low, from the traceries on wall-paper and the illustrations in penny +journals, to the production of the pictures and statues which adorn the +national collections, and a mighty new field of toil has opened before the +anciently hunting and fighting male. Where once one ancient witch-doctress +may have been the only creature in a whole district who studied the nature +of herbs and earths, or a solitary wizard experimenting on poisons was the +only individual in a whole territory interrogating nature; and where later, +a few score of alchemists and astrologers only were engaged in examining +the structure of substances, or the movement of planets, today thousands of +men in every civilised community are labouring to unravel the mysteries of +nature, and the practical chemist, the physician, the anatomist, the +engineer, the astronomer, the mathematician, the electrician, form a mighty +and always increasingly important army of male labourers. Where once an +isolated bard supplied a nation with its literatures, or where later a few +thousand priests and men of letters wrote and transcribed for the few to +read, today literature gives labour to a multitude almost as countless as a +swarm of locusts. From the penny-a-liner to the artist and thinker, the +demand for their labour continually increases. Where one town-crier with +stout legs and lusty lungs was once all-sufficient to spread the town and +country news, a score of men now sit daily pen in hand, preparing the +columns of the morning's paper, and far into the night a hundred +compositors are engaged in a labour which requires a higher culture of +brain and finger than most ancient kings and rulers possessed. Even in the +labours of war, the most brutal and primitive of the occupations lingering +on into civilised life from the savage state, the new demand for labour of +an intellectual kind is enormous. The invention, construction, and working +of one Krupp gun, though its mere discharge hardly demands more crude +muscular exertion than a savage expends in throwing his boomerang, yet +represents an infinitude of intellectual care and thought, far greater than +that which went to the shaping of all the weapons of a primitive army. +Above all, in the domain of politics and government, where once a king or +queen, aided by a handful of councillors, was alone practically concerned +in the labours of national guidance or legislation; today, owing to the +rapid means of intercommunication, printing, and the consequent diffusion +of political and social information throughout a territory, it has become +possible, for the first time, for all adults in a large community to keep +themselves closely informed on all national affairs; and in every highly- +civilised state the ordinary male has been almost compelled to take his +share, however small, in the duties and labours of legislation and +government. Thus there has opened before the mass of men a vast new sphere +of labour undreamed of by their ancestors. In every direction the change +which material civilisation has wrought, while it has militated against +that comparatively small section of males who have nothing to offer society +but the expenditure of their untrained muscular energy (inflicting much and +often completely unmerited suffering upon them), has immeasurably extended +the field of male labour as a whole. Never before in the history of the +earth has the man's field of remunerative toil been so wide, so +interesting, so complex, and in its results so all-important to society; +never before has the male sex, taken as a whole, been so fully and +strenuously employed. + +So much is this the case, that, exactly as in the earlier conditions of +society an excessive and almost crushing amount of the most important +physical labour generally devolved upon the female, so under modern +civilised conditions among the wealthier and fully civilised classes, an +unduly excessive share of labour tends to devolve upon the male. That +almost entirely modern, morbid condition, affecting brain and nervous +system, and shortening the lives of thousands in modern civilised +societies, which is vulgarly known as "overwork" or "nervous breakdown," is +but one evidence of the even excessive share of mental toil devolving upon +the modern male of the cultured classes, who, in addition to maintaining +himself, has frequently dependent upon him a larger or smaller number of +entirely parasitic females. But, whatever the result of the changes of +modern civilisation may be with regard to the male, he certainly cannot +complain that they have as a whole robbed him of his fields of labour, +diminished his share in the conduct of life, or reduced him to a condition +of morbid inactivity. + +In our woman's field of labour, matters have tended to shape themselves +wholly otherwise! The changes which have taken place during the last +centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term "modern +civilisation," have tended to rob woman, not merely in part but almost +wholly, of the more valuable of her ancient domain of productive and social +labour; and, where there has not been a determined and conscious resistance +on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to her new and +compensatory fields. + +It is this fact which constitutes our modern "Woman's Labour Problem." + +Our spinning-wheels are all broken; in a thousand huge buildings steam- +driven looms, guided by a few hundred thousands of hands (often those of +men), produce the clothings of half the world; and we dare no longer say, +proudly, as of old, that we and we alone clothe our peoples. + +Our hoes and our grindstones passed from us long ago, when the ploughman +and the miller took our place; but for a time we kept fast possession of +the kneading-trough and the brewing-vat. Today, steam often shapes our +bread, and the loaves are set down at our very door--it may be by a man- +driven motor-car! The history of our household drinks we know no longer; +we merely see them set before us at our tables. Day by day machine- +prepared and factory-produced viands take a larger and larger place in the +dietary of rich and poor, till the working man's wife places before her +household little that is of her own preparation; while among the wealthier +classes, so far has domestic change gone that men are not unfrequently +found labouring in our houses and kitchens, and even standing behind our +chairs ready to do all but actually place the morsels of food between our +feminine lips. The army of rosy milkmaids has passed away for ever, to +give place to the cream-separator and the, largely, male-and-machinery +manipulated butter pat. In every direction the ancient saw, that it was +exclusively the woman's sphere to prepare the viands for her household, has +become, in proportion as civilisation has perfected itself, an antiquated +lie. + +Even the minor domestic operations are tending to pass out of the circle of +woman's labour. In modern cities our carpets are beaten, our windows +cleaned, our floors polished, by machinery, or extra domestic, and often +male labour. Change has gone much farther than to the mere taking from us +of the preparation of the materials from which the clothing is formed. +Already the domestic sewing-machine, which has supplanted almost entirely +the ancient needle, begins to become antiquated, and a thousand machines +driven in factories by central engines are supplying not only the husband +and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of clothing from +vest to jacket; while among the wealthy classes, the male dress-designer +with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers is helping finally to +explode the ancient myth, that it is woman's exclusive sphere, and a part +of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the garments she or her household +wear. + +Year by year, day by day, there is a silently working but determined +tendency for the sphere of woman's domestic labours to contract itself; and +the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex condition +which we term "modern civilisation" is advanced. + +It manifests itself more in England and America than in Italy and Spain, +more in great cities than in country places, more among the wealthier +classes than the poorer, and is an unfailing indication of advancing modern +civilisation. (There is, indeed, often something pathetic in the attitude +of many a good old mother of the race, who having survived, here and there, +into the heart of our modern civilisation, is sorely puzzled by the change +in woman's duties and obligations. She may be found looking into the eyes +of some ancient crone, who, like herself, has survived from a previous +state of civilisation, seeking there a confirmation of a view of life of +which a troublous doubt has crept even into her own soul. "I," she cries, +"always cured my own hams, and knitted my own socks, and made up all the +linen by hand. We always did it when we were girls--but now my daughters +object!" And her old crone answers her? "Yes, we did it; it's the right +thing; but it's so expensive. It's so much cheaper to buy things ready +made!" And they shake their heads and go their ways, feeling that the +world is strangely out of joint when duty seems no more duty. Such women +are, in truth, like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her +ducklings to the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is +left but baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to +it, and walks about with flapping wings and anxious quack, trying to induce +them to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far +off the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up +to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that is +growing up beside it; and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on the +baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And they +leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to seek for +new pastures--perhaps to lose themselves upon the way?--perhaps to find +them? To the old mother one is inclined to say, "Ah, good old mother duck, +can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the water back +into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was +there, but it has gone for ever; and, would you and yours swim again, it +must be in other waters." New machinery, new duties.) + +But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women's material +domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient field +of labour. + +Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult years +were reached. Hers was the training and influence which shaped them. From +the moment when the infant first lay on her breast, till her daughters left +her for marriage and her sons went to take share in man's labour, they were +continually under the mother's influence. Today, so complex have become +even the technical and simpler branches of education, so mighty and +inexorable are the demands which modern civilisation makes for specialised +instruction and training for all individuals who are to survive and retain +their usefulness under modern conditions, that, from the earliest years of +its life, the child is of necessity largely removed from the hands of the +mother, and placed in those of the specialised instructor. Among the +wealthier classes, scarcely is the infant born when it passes into the +hands of the trained nurse, and from hers on into the hands of the +qualified teacher; till, at nine or ten, the son in certain countries often +leaves his home for ever for the public school, to pass on to the college +and university; while the daughter, in the hands of trained instructors and +dependents, owes in the majority of cases hardly more of her education or +formation to maternal toil. While even among our poorer classes, the +infant school, and the public school; and later on the necessity for manual +training, takes the son and often the daughter as completely, and always +increasingly as civilisation advances, from the mother's control. So +marked has this change in woman's ancient field of labour become, that a +woman of almost any class may have borne many children and yet in early +middle age be found sitting alone in an empty house, all her offspring gone +from her to receive training and instruction at the hands of others. The +ancient statement that the training and education of her offspring is +exclusively the duty of the mother, however true it may have been with +regard to a remote past, has become an absolute misstatement; and the woman +who should at the present day insist on entirely educating her own +offspring would, in nine cases out of ten, inflict an irreparable injury on +them, because she is incompetent. + +But, if possible, yet more deeply and radically have the changes of modern +civilisation touched our ancient field of labour in another direction--in +that very portion of the field of human labour which is peculiarly and +organically ours, and which can never be wholly taken from us. Here the +shrinkage has been larger than in any other direction, and touches us as +women more vitally. + +Time was, and still is, among almost all primitive and savage folk, when +the first and all-important duty of the female to her society was to bear, +to bear much, and to bear unceasingly! On her adequate and persistent +performance of this passive form of labour, and of her successful feeding +of her young from her own breast, and rearing it, depended, not merely the +welfare, but often the very existence, of her tribe or nation. Where, as +is the case among almost all barbarous peoples, the rate of infant +mortality is high; where the unceasing casualties resulting from war, the +chase, and acts of personal violence tend continually to reduce the number +of adult males; where, surgical knowledge being still in its infancy, most +wounds are fatal; where, above all, recurrent pestilence and famine, +unfailing if of irregular recurrence, decimated the people, it has been all +important that woman should employ her creative power to its very uttermost +limits if the race were not at once to dwindle and die out. "May thy +wife's womb never cease from bearing," is still today the highest +expression of goodwill on the part of a native African chief to his +departing guest. For, not only does the prolific woman in the primitive +state contribute to the wealth and strength of her nation as a whole, but +to that of her own male companion and of her family. Where the social +conditions of life are so simple that, in addition to bearing and suckling +the child, it is reared and nourished through childhood almost entirely +through the labour and care of the mother, requiring no expenditure of +tribal or family wealth on its training or education, its value as an adult +enormously outweighs, both to the state and the male, the trouble and +expense of rearing it, which falls almost entirely on the individual woman +who bears it. The man who has twenty children to become warriors and +labourers is by so much the richer and the more powerful than he who has +but one; while the state whose women are prolific and labour for and rear +their children stands so far insured against destruction. Incessant and +persistent child-bearing is thus truly the highest duty and the most +socially esteemed occupation of the primitive woman, equalling fully in +social importance the labour of the man as hunter and warrior. + +Even under those conditions of civilisation which have existed in the +centuries which divide primitive savagery from high civilisation, the +demand for continuous, unbroken child-bearing on the part of the woman as +her loftiest social duty has generally been hardly less imperious. +Throughout the Middle Ages of Europe, and down almost to our own day, the +rate of infant mortality was almost as large as in a savage state; medical +ignorance destroyed innumerable lives; antiseptic surgery being unknown, +serious wounds were still almost always fatal; in the low state of sanitary +science, plagues such as those which in the reign of Justinian swept across +the civilised world from India to Northern Europe, well nigh depopulating +the globe, or the Black Death of 1349, which in England alone swept away +more than half the population of the island, were but extreme forms of the +destruction of population going on continually as the result of zymotic +disease; while wars were not merely far more common but, owing to the +famines which almost invariably followed them, were far more destructive to +human life than in our own days, and deaths by violence, whether at the +hands of the state or as the result of personal enmity, were of daily +occurrence in all lands. Under these conditions abstinence on the part of +woman from incessant child-bearing might have led to almost the same +serious diminution or even extinction of her people, as in the savage +state; while the very existence of her civilisation depended on the +production of an immense number of individuals as beasts of burden, without +the expenditure of whose crude muscular force in physical labour of +agriculture and manufacture those intermediate civilisations would, in the +absence of machinery, have been impossible. Twenty men had to be born, fed +at the breast, and reared by women to perform the crude brute labour which +is performed today by one small, well-adjusted steam crane; and the demand +for large masses of human creatures as mere reservoirs of motor force for +accomplishing the simplest processes was imperative. So strong, indeed, +was the consciousness of the importance to society of continuous child- +bearing on the part of woman, that as late as the middle of the sixteenth +century Martin Luther wrote: "If a woman becomes weary or at last dead +from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, she is there +to do it;" and he doubtless gave expression, in a crude and somewhat brutal +form, to a conviction common to the bulk of his contemporaries, both male +and female. + +Today, this condition has almost completely reversed itself. + +The advance of science and the amelioration of the physical conditions of +life tend rapidly toward a diminution of human mortality. The infant +death-rate among the upper classes in modern civilisations has fallen by +more than one-half; while among poorer classes it is already, though +slowly, falling: the increased knowledge of the laws of sanitation has +made among all highly civilised peoples the depopulation by plague a thing +of the past, and the discoveries of the next twenty or thirty years will +probably do away for ever with the danger to man of zymotic disease. +Famines of the old desolating type have become an impossibility where rapid +means of transportation convey the superfluity of one land to supply the +lack of another; and war and deeds of violence, though still lingering +among us, have already become episodal in the lives of nations as of +individuals; while the vast advances in antiseptic surgery have caused even +the effects of wounds and dismemberments to become only very partially +fatal to human life. All these changes have tended to diminish human +mortality and protract human life; and they have today already made it +possible for a race not only to maintain its numbers, but even to increase +them, with a comparatively small expenditure of woman's vitality in the +passive labour of child-bearing. + +But yet more seriously has the demand for woman's labour as child-bearer +been diminished by change in another direction. + +Every mechanical invention which lessens the necessity for rough, +untrained, muscular, human labour, diminishes also the social demand upon +woman as the producer in large masses of such labourers. Already +throughout the modern civilised world we have reached a point at which the +social demand is not merely for human creatures in the bulk for use as +beasts of burden, but, rather, and only, for such human creatures as shall +be so trained and cultured as to be fitted for the performance of the more +complex duties of modern life. Not, now, merely for many men, but, rather, +for few men, and those few, well born and well instructed, is the modern +demand. And the woman who today merely produces twelve children and +suckles them, and then turns them loose on her society and family, is +regarded, and rightly so, as a curse and down draught, and not the +productive labourer, of her community. Indeed, so difficult and expensive +has become in the modern world the rearing and training of even one +individual, in a manner suited to fit it for coping with the complexities +and difficulties of civilised life, that, to the family as well as to the +state, unlimited fecundity on the part of the female has already, in most +cases, become irremediable evil; whether it be in the case of the artisan, +who at the cost of immense self-sacrifice must support and train his +children till their twelfth or fourteenth year, if they are ever to become +even skilled manual labourers, and who if his family be large often sinks +beneath the burden, allowing his offspring, untaught and untrained, to +become waste products of human life; or, in that of the professional man, +who by his mental toil is compelled to support and educate, at immense +expense, his sons till they are twenty or older, and to sustain his +daughters, often throughout their whole lives should they not marry, and to +whom a large family proves often no less disastrous; while the state whose +women produce recklessly large masses of individuals in excess of those for +whom they can provide instruction and nourishment is a state, in so far, +tending toward deterioration. The commandment to the modern woman is now +not simply "Thou shalt bear," but rather, "Thou shalt not bear in excess of +thy power to rear and train satisfactorily;" and the woman who should today +appear at the door of a workhouse or the tribunal of the poor-law guardians +followed by her twelve infants, demanding honourable sustenance for them +and herself in return for the labour she had undergone in producing them, +would meet with but short shrift. And the modern man who on his wedding- +day should be greeted with the ancient good wish, that he might become the +father of twenty sons and twenty daughters, would regard it as a +malediction rather than a blessing. It is certain that the time is now +rapidly approaching when child-bearing will be regarded rather as a lofty +privilege, permissible only to those who have shown their power rightly to +train and provide for their offspring, than a labour which in itself, and +under whatever conditions performed, is beneficial to society. (The +difference between the primitive and modern view on this matter is aptly +and quaintly illustrated by two incidents. Seeing a certain Bantu woman +who appeared better cared for, less hard worked, and happier than the mass +of her companions, we made inquiry, and found that she had two impotent +brothers; because of this she herself had not married, but had borne by +different men fourteen children, all of whom when grown she had given to +her brothers. "They are fond of me because I have given them so many +children, therefore I have not to work like the other women; and my +brothers give me plenty of mealies and milk," she replied, complacently, +when questioned, "and our family will not die out." And this person, whose +conduct was so emphatically anti-social on all sides when viewed from the +modern standpoint, was evidently regarded as pre-eminently of value to her +family and to society because of her mere fecundity. On the other hand, a +few weeks back appeared an account in the London papers of an individual +who, taken up at the East End for some brutal offence, blubbered out in +court that she was the mother of twenty children. "You should be ashamed +of yourself!" responded the magistrate; "a woman capable of such conduct +would be capable of doing anything!" and the fine was remorselessly +inflicted. Undoubtedly, if somewhat brutally, the magistrate yet gave true +voice to the modern view on the subject of excessive and reckless child- +bearing.) + +Further, owing partly to the diminished demand for child-bearing, rising +from the extreme difficulty and expense of rearing and education, and to +many other complex social causes, to which we shall return later, millions +of women in our modern societies are so placed as to be absolutely +compelled to go through life not merely childless, but without sex +relationship in any form whatever; while another mighty army of women is +reduced by the dislocations of our civilisation to accepting sexual +relationships which practically negate child-bearing, and whose only +product is physical and moral disease. + +Thus, it has come to pass that vast numbers of us are, by modern social +conditions, prohibited from child-bearing at all; and that even those among +us who are child-bearers are required, in proportion as the class of race +to which we belong stands high in the scale of civilisation, to produce in +most cases a limited number of offspring; so that even for these of us, +child-bearing and suckling, instead of filling the entire circle of female +life from the first appearance of puberty to the end of middle age, becomes +an episodal occupation, employing from three or four to ten or twenty of +the threescore-and-ten-years which are allotted to human life. In such +societies the statement (so profoundly true when made with regard to most +savage societies, and even largely true with regard to those in the +intermediate stages of civilisation) that the main and continuous +occupation of all women from puberty to age is the bearing and suckling of +children, and that this occupation must fully satisfy all her needs for +social labour and activity, becomes an antiquated and unmitigated +misstatement. + +Not only are millions of our women precluded from ever bearing a child, but +for those of us who do bear the demand is ever increasingly in civilised +societies coupled with the condition that if we would act socially we must +restrict our powers. (As regards modern civilised nations, we find that +those whose birthrate is the highest per woman are by no means the +happiest, most enlightened, or powerful; nor do we even find that the +population always increases in proportion to the births. France, which in +many respects leads in the van of civilisation, has one of the lowest +birthrates per woman in Europe; and among the free and enlightened +population of Switzerland and Scandinavia the birthrate is often +exceedingly low; while Ireland, one of the most unhappy and weak of +European nations, had long one of the highest birthrates, without any +proportional increase in population or power. With regard to the different +classes in one community, the same effect is observable. The birthrate per +woman is higher among the lowest and most ignorant classes in the back +slums of our great cities, than among the women of the upper and cultured +classes, mainly because the age at which marriages are contracted always +tends to become higher as the culture and intelligence of individuals +rises, but also because of the regulation of the number of births after +marriage. Yet the number of children reared to adult years among the more +intelligent classes probably equals or exceeds those of the lowest, owing +to the high rate of infant mortality where births are excessive.) + +Looking round, then, with the uttermost impartiality we can command, on the +entire field of woman's ancient and traditional labours, we find that fully +three-fourths of it have shrunk away for ever, and that the remaining +fourth still tends to shrink. + +It is this great fact, so often and so completely overlooked, which lies as +the propelling force behind that vast and restless "Woman's Movement" which +marks our day. It is this fact, whether clearly and intellectually +grasped, or, as is more often the case, vaguely and painfully felt, which +awakes in the hearts of the ablest modern European women their passionate, +and at times it would seem almost incoherent, cry for new forms of labour +and new fields for the exercise of their powers. + +Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this: We do not ask that +the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life flow +backward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning-wheels be again +resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old +grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake +himself entirely to his ancient province of war and the chase, leaving to +us all domestic and civil labour. We do not even demand that society shall +immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a child- +bearer (deep and over-mastering as lies the hunger for motherhood in every +virile woman's heart!); neither do we demand that the children whom we bear +shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. This, we know, +cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone for ever; no +will of man can recall them; but this is our demand: We demand that, in +that strange new world that is arising alike upon the man and the woman, +where nothing is as it was, and all things are assuming new shapes and +relations, that in this new world we also shall have our share of honoured +and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labour of the Children +of Woman. We demand nothing more than this, and we will take nothing less. +This is our "WOMAN'S RIGHT!" + + +Chapter II. Parasitism (continued). + +Is it to be, that, in the future, machinery and the captive motor-forces of +nature are largely to take the place of human hand and foot in the labour +of clothing and feeding the nations; are these branches of industry to be +no longer domestic labours?--then, we demand in the factory, the warehouse, +and the field, wherever machinery has usurped our ancient labour-ground, +that we also should have our place, as guiders, controllers, and +possessors. Is child-bearing to become the labour of but a portion of our +sex?--then we demand for those among us who are allowed to take no share in +it, compensatory and equally honourable and important fields of social +toil. Is the training of human creatures to become a yet more and more +onerous and laborious occupation, their education and culture to become +increasingly a high art, complex and scientific?--if so, then, we demand +that high and complex culture and training which shall fit us for +instructing the race which we bring into the world. Is the demand for +child-bearing to become so diminished that, even in the lives of those +among us who are child-bearers, it shall fill no more than half a dozen +years out of the three-score-and-ten of human life?--then we demand that an +additional outlet be ours which shall fill up with dignity and value the +tale of the years not so employed. Is intellectual labour to take ever and +increasingly the place of crude muscular exertion in the labour of life?-- +then we demand for ourselves that culture and the freedom of action which +alone can yield us the knowledge of life and the intellectual vigour and +strength which will enable us to undertake the same share of mental which +we have borne in the past in physical labours of life. Are the rulers of +the race to be no more its kings and queens, but the mass of the peoples?-- +then we, one-half of the nations, demand our full queens' share in the +duties and labours of government and legislation. Slowly but +determinately, as the old fields of labour close up and are submerged +behind us, we demand entrance into the new. + +We make this demand, not for our own sakes alone, but for the succour of +the race. + +A horseman, riding along on a dark night in an unknown land, may chance to +feel his horse start beneath him; rearing, it may almost hurl him to the +earth: in the darkness he may curse his beast, and believe its aim is +simply to cast him off, and free itself for ever of its burden. But when +the morning dawns and lights the hills and valleys he has travelled, +looking backward, he may perceive that the spot where his beast reared, +planting its feet into the earth, and where it refused to move farther on +the old road, was indeed the edge of a mighty precipice, down which one +step more would have precipitated both horse and rider. And he may then +see that it was an instinct wiser than his own which lead his creature, +though in the dark, to leap backward, seeking a new path along which both +might travel. (Is it not recorded that even Balaam's ass on which he rode +saw the angel with flaming sword, but Balaam saw it not?) + +In the confusion and darkness of the present, it may well seem to some, +that woman, in her desire to seek for new paths of labour and employment, +is guided only by an irresponsible impulse; or that she seeks selfishly +only her own good, at the cost of that of the race, which she has so long +and faithfully borne onward. But, when a clearer future shall have arisen +and the obscuring mists of the present have been dissipated, may it not +then be clearly manifest that not for herself alone, but for her entire +race, has woman sought her new paths? + +For let it be noted exactly what our position is, who today, as women, are +demanding new fields of labour and a reconstruction of our relationship +with life. + +It is often said that the labour problem before the modern woman and that +before the unemployed or partially or almost uselessly employed male, are +absolutely identical; and that therefore, when the male labour problem of +our age solves itself, that of the woman will of necessity have met its +solution also. + +This statement, with a certain specious semblance of truth, is yet, we +believe, radically and fundamentally false. It is true that both the male +and the female problems of our age have taken their rise largely in the +same rapid material changes which during the last centuries, and more +especially the last ninety years, have altered the face of the human world. +Both men and women have been robbed by those changes of their ancient +remunerative fields of social work: here the resemblance stops. The male, +from whom the changes of modern civilisation have taken his ancient field +of labour, has but one choice before him: he must find new fields of +labour, or he must perish. Society will not ultimately support him in an +absolutely quiescent and almost useless condition. If he does not +vigorously exert himself in some direction or other (the direction may even +be predatory) he must ultimately be annihilated. Individual drones, both +among the wealthiest and the poorest classes (millionaires' sons, dukes, or +tramps), may in isolated cases be preserved, and allowed to reproduce +themselves without any exertion or activity of mind or body, but a vast +body of males who, having lost their old forms of social employment, should +refuse in any way to exert themselves or seek for new, would at no great +length of time become extinct. There never has been, and as far as can be +seen, there never will be, a time when the majority of the males in any +society will be supported by the rest of the males in a condition of +perfect mental and physical inactivity. "Find labour or die," is the +choice ultimately put before the human male today, as in the past; and this +constitutes his labour problem. (The nearest approach to complete +parasitism on the part of a vast body of males occurred, perhaps, in +ancient Rome at the time of the decay and downfall of the Empire, when the +bulk of the population, male as well as female, was fed on imported corn, +wine, and oil, and supplied even with entertainment, almost entirely +without exertion or labour of any kind; but this condition was of short +duration, and speedily contributed to the downfall of the diseased Empire +itself. Among the wealthy and so-called upper classes, the males of +various aristocracies have frequently tended to become completely parasitic +after a lapse of time, but such a condition has always been met by a short +and sharp remedy; and the class has fallen, or become extinct. The +condition of the males of the upper classes in France before the Revolution +affords an interesting illustration of this point.) + +The labour of the man may not always be useful in the highest sense to his +society, or it may even be distinctly harmful and antisocial, as in the +case of the robber-barons of the Middle Ages, who lived by capturing and +despoiling all who passed by their castles; or as in the case of the share +speculators, stock-jobbers, ring-and-corner capitalists, and monopolists of +the present day, who feed upon the productive labours of society without +contributing anything to its welfare. But even males so occupied are +compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a low intelligence in +their callings; and, however injurious to their societies, they run no +personal risk of handing down effete and enervated constitutions to their +race. Whether beneficially or unbeneficially, the human male must, +generally speaking, employ his intellect, or his muscle, or die. + +The position of the unemployed modern female is one wholly different. The +choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labour slip from her, +is not generally or often at the present day the choice between finding new +fields of labour, or death; but one far more serious in its ultimate +reaction on humanity as a whole--it is the choice between finding new forms +of labour or sinking slowly into a condition of more or less complete and +passive sex-parasitism! (It is not without profound interest to note the +varying phenomena of sex-parasitism as they present themselves in the +animal world, both in the male and in the female form. Though among the +greater number of species in the animal world the female form is larger and +more powerful rather than the male (e.g., among birds of prey, such as +eagles, falcons, vultures, &c., and among fishes, insects, &c.), yet sex- +parasitism appears among both sex forms. In certain sea-creatures, for +example, the female carries about in the folds of her covering three or +four minute and quite inactive males, who are entirely passive and +dependent upon her. Among termites, on the other hand, the female has so +far degenerated that she has entirely lost the power of locomotion; she can +no longer provide herself or her offspring with nourishment, or defend or +even clean herself; she has become a mere passive, distended bag of eggs, +without intelligence or activity, she and her offspring existing through +the exertions of the workers of the community. Among other insects, such, +for example, as certain ticks, another form of female parasitism prevails, +and while the male remains a complex, highly active, and winded creature, +the female, fastening herself by the head into the flesh of some living +animal and sucking its blood, has lost wings and all activity, and power of +locomotion; having become a mere distended bladder, which when filled with +eggs bursts and ends a parasitic existence which has hardly been life. It +is not impossible, and it appears, indeed, highly probable, that it has +been this degeneration and parasitism on the part of the female which has +set its limitation to the evolution of ants, creatures which, having +reached a point of mental development in some respects almost as high as +that of man, have yet become curiously and immovably arrested. The whole +question of sex-parasitism among the lower animals is one throwing +suggestive and instructive side-lights on human social problems, but is too +extensive to be here entered on.) + +Again and again in the history of the past, when among human creatures a +certain stage of material civilisation has been reached, a curious tendency +has manifested itself for the human female to become more or less +parasitic; social conditions tend to rob her of all forms of active, +conscious, social labour, and to reduce her, like the field-tick, to the +passive exercise of her sex functions alone. And the result of this +parasitism has invariably been the decay in vitality and intelligence of +the female, followed after a longer or shorter period by that of her male +descendants and her entire society. + +Nevertheless, in the history of the past the dangers of the sex-parasitism +have never threatened more than a small section of the females of the human +race, those exclusively of some comparatively small dominant race or class; +the mass of women beneath them being still compelled to assume many forms +of strenuous activity. It is at the present day, and under the peculiar +conditions of our modern civilisation, that for the first time sex- +parasitism has become a danger, more or less remote, to the mass of +civilised women, perhaps ultimately to all. + +In the very early stages of human growth, the sexual parasitism and +degeneration of the female formed no possible source of social danger. +Where the conditions of life rendered it inevitable that all the labour of +a community should be performed by the members of that community for +themselves, without the assistance of slaves or machinery, the tendency has +always been rather to throw an excessive amount of social labour on the +female. Under no conditions, at no time, in no place, in the history of +the world have the males of any period, of any nation, or of any class, +shown the slightest inclination to allow their own females to become +inactive or parasitic, so long as the actual muscular labour of feeding and +clothing them would in that case have devolved upon themselves! + +The parasitism of the human female becomes a possibility only when a point +in civilisation is reached (such as that which was attained in the ancient +civilisations of Greece, Rome, Persia, Assyria, India, and such as today +exists in many of the civilisations of the East, such as those of China and +Turkey), when, owing to the extensive employment of the labour of slaves, +or of subject races or classes, the dominant race or class has become so +liberally supplied with the material goods of life, that mere physical toil +on the part of its own female members has become unnecessary. It is when +this point has been reached, and never before, that the symptoms of female +parasitism have in the past almost invariably tended to manifest +themselves, and have become a social danger. The males of the dominant +class have almost always contrived to absorb to themselves the new +intellectual occupations, with the absence of necessity for the old forms +of physical toil made possible in their societies; and the females of the +dominant class or race, for whose muscular labours there was now also no +longer any need, not succeeding in grasping or attaining to these new forms +of labour, have sunk into a state in which, performing no species of active +social duty, they have existed through the passive performance of sexual +functions alone, with how much or how little of discontent will now never +be known, since no literary record has been made by the woman of the past, +of her desires or sorrows. Then, in place of the active labouring woman, +upholding society by her toil, has come the effete wife, concubine, or +prostitute, clad in fine raiment, the work of others' fingers; fed on +luxurious viands, the result of others' toil, waited on and tended by the +labour of others. The need for her physical labour having gone, and mental +industry not having taken its place, she bedecked and scented her person, +or had it bedecked and scented for her, she lay upon her sofa, or drove or +was carried out in her vehicle, and, loaded with jewels, she sought by +dissipations and amusements to fill up the inordinate blank left by the +lack of productive activity. And as the hand whitened and frame softened, +till, at last, the very duties of motherhood, which were all the +constitution of her life left her, became distasteful, and, from the +instant when her infant came damp from her womb, it passed into the hands +of others, to be tended and reared by them; and from youth to age her +offspring often owed nothing to her personal toil. In many cases so +complete was her enervation, that at last the very joy of giving life, the +glory and beatitude of a virile womanhood, became distasteful; and she +sought to evade it, not because of its interference with more imperious +duties to those already born of her, or to her society, but because her +existence of inactivity had robbed her of all joy in strenuous exertion and +endurance in any form. Finely clad, tenderly housed, life became for her +merely the gratification of her own physical and sexual appetites, and the +appetites of the male, through the stimulation of which she could maintain +herself. And, whether as kept wife, kept mistress, or prostitute, she +contributed nothing to the active and sustaining labours of her society. +She had attained to the full development of that type which, whether in +modern Paris or New York or London, or in ancient Greece, Assyria, or Rome, +is essentially one in its features, its nature, and its results. She was +the "fine lady," the human female parasite - the most deadly microbe which +can make its appearance on the surface of any social organism. (The +relation of female parasitism generally, to the peculiar phenomenon of +prostitution, is fundamental. Prostitution can never be adequately dealt +with, either from the moral or the scientific standpoint, unless its +relation to the general phenomenon of female parasitism be fully +recognised. It is the failure to do this which leaves so painful a sense +of abortion on the mind, after listening to most modern utterances on the +question, whether made from the emotional platform of the moral reformer, +or the intellectual platform of the would-be scientist. We are left with a +feeling that the matter has been handled but not dealt with: that the +knife has not reached the core.) + +Wherever in the history of the past this type has reached its full +development and has comprised the bulk of the females belonging to any +dominant class or race, it has heralded its decay. In Assyria, Greece, +Rome, Persia, as in Turkey today, the same material conditions have +produced the same social disease among wealthy and dominant races; and +again and again when the nation so affected has come into contact with +nations more healthily constituted, this diseased condition has contributed +to its destruction. + +In ancient Greece, in its superb and virile youth, its womanhood was richly +and even heavily endowed with duties and occupations. Not the mass of the +woman alone, but the king's wife and the prince's daughter do we find going +to the well to bear water, cleansing the household linen in the streams, +feeding and doctoring their households, manufacturing the clothing of their +race, and performing even a share of the highest social functions as +priestesses and prophetesses. It was from the bodies of such women as +these that sprang that race of heroes, thinkers, and artists who laid the +foundations of Grecian greatness. These females underlay their society as +the solid and deeply buried foundations underlay the more visible and +ornate portions of a great temple, making its structure and persistence +possible. In Greece, after a certain lapse of time, these virile labouring +women in the upper classes were to be found no more. The accumulated +wealth of the dominant race, gathered through the labour of slaves and +subject people, had so immensely increased that there was no longer a call +for physical labour on the part of the dominant womanhood; immured within +the walls of their houses as wives or mistresses, waited on by slaves and +dependents, they no longer sustained by their exertion either their own +life or the life of their people. The males absorbed the intellectual +labours of life; slaves and dependents the physical. For a moment, at the +end of the fifth and beginning of the fourth century, when the womanhood of +Greece had already internally decayed, there was indeed a brilliant +intellectual efflorescence among her males, like to the gorgeous colours in +the sunset sky when the sun is already sinking; but the heart of Greece was +already rotting and her vigour failing. Increasingly, division and +dissimilarity arose between male and female, as the male advanced in +culture and entered upon new fields of intellectual toil while the female +sank passively backward and lower in the scale of life, and thus was made +ultimately a chasm which even sexual love could not bridge. The abnormal +institution of avowed inter-male sexual relations upon the highest plane +was one, and the most serious result, of this severance. The inevitable +and invincible desire of all highly developed human natures, to blend with +their sexual relationships their highest intellectual interests and +sympathies, could find no satisfaction or response in the relationship +between the immured, comparatively ignorant and helpless females of the +upper classes, in Greece, and the brilliant, cultured, and many-sided males +who formed its dominant class in the fifth and fourth centuries. Man +turned towards man; and parenthood, the divine gift of imparting human +life, was severed from the loftiest and profoundest phases of human +emotion: Xanthippe fretted out her ignorant and miserable little life +between the walls of her house, and Socrates lay in the Agora, discussing +philosophy and morals with Alcibiades; and the race decayed at its core. +(See Jowett's translation of Plato's "Banquet"; but for full light on this +important question the entire literature of Greece in the fifth and fourth +centuries B.C. should be studied.) Here and there an Aspasia, or earlier +still a Sappho, burst through the confining bonds of woman's environment, +and with the force of irresistible genius broke triumphantly into new +fields of action and powerful mental activity, standing side by side with +the male; but their cases were exceptional. Had they, or such as they, +been able to tread down a pathway, along which the mass of Grecian women +might have followed them; had it been possible for the bulk of the women of +the dominant race in Greece at the end of the fifth century to rise from +their condition of supine inaction and ignorance and to have taken their +share in the intellectual labours and stern activities of their race, +Greece would never have fallen, as she fell at the end of the fourth +century, instantaneously and completely, as a rotten puff-ball falls in at +the touch of a healthy finger; first, before the briberies of Philip, and +then yet more completely before the arms of his yet more warlike son, who +was also the son of the fierce, virile, and indomitable Olympia. (Like +almost all men remarkable for either good or evil, Alexander inherited from +his mother his most notable qualities--his courage, his intellectual +activity, and an ambition indifferent to any means that made for his own +end. Fearless in her life, she fearlessly met death "with a courage worthy +of her rank and domineering character, when her hour of retribution came"; +and Alexander is incomprehensible till we recognise him as rising from the +womb of Olympia.) Nor could she have been swept clean, a few hundred years +later, from Thessaly to Sparta, from Corinth to Ephesus, her temples +destroyed, her effete women captured by the hordes of the Goths--a people +less skilfully armed and less civilised than the descendants of the race of +Pericles and Leonidas, but who were a branch of that great Teutonic folk +whose monogamous domestic life was sound at the core, and whose fearless, +labouring, and resolute women yet bore for the men they followed to the +ends of the earth, what Spartan women once said they alone bore--men. + +In Rome, in the days of her virtue and vigour, the Roman matron laboured +mightily, and bore on her shoulders her full half of the social burden, +though her sphere of labour and influence was even somewhat smaller than +that of the Teutonic sisterhood whose descendants were finally to supplant +her own. From the vestal virgin to the matron, the Roman woman in the days +of the nation's health and growth fulfilled lofty functions and bore the +whole weight of domestic toil. From the days of Lucretia, the great Roman +dame whom we find spinning with her handmaidens deep into the night, and +whose personal dignity was so dear to her that, violated, she sought only +death, to those of the mother of the Gracchi, one of the last of the great +line, we find everywhere, erect, labouring, and resolute, the Roman woman +who gave birth to the men who built up Roman greatness. A few centuries +later, and Rome also had reached that dangerous spot in the order of social +change which Greece had reached centuries before her. Slave labour and the +enjoyment of the unlimited spoils of subject races had done away for ever +with the demand for physical labour on the part of the members of the +dominant race. Then came the period when the male still occupied himself +with the duties of war and government, of legislation and self-culture; but +the Roman matron had already ceased for ever from her toils. Decked in +jewels and fine clothing, brought at the cost of infinite human labour from +the ends of the earth, nourished on delicate victuals, prepared by others' +hands, she sought now only with amusement to pass away a life that no +longer offered her the excitement and joy of active productive exertion. +She frequented theatres or baths, or reclined on her sofa, or drove in her +chariot; and like more modern counterparts, painted herself, wore patches, +affected an artistic walk, and a handshake with the elbow raised and the +fingers hanging down. Her children were reared by dependents; and in the +intellectual labour and government of her age she took small part, and was +fit to take none. There were not wanting writers and thinkers who saw +clearly the end to which the enervation of the female was tending, and who +were not sparing in their denunciations. "Time was," cries one Roman +writer of that age, "when the matron turned the spindle with the hand and +kept at the same time the pot in her eye that the pottage might not be +singed, but now," he adds bitterly, "when the wife, loaded with jewels, +reposes among pillows, or seeks the dissipation of baths and theatres, all +things go downward and the state decays." Yet neither he nor that large +body of writers and thinkers who saw the condition towards which the +parasitism of woman was tending to reduce society, preached any adequate +remedy. (Indeed, must not the protest and the remedy in all such cases, if +they are to be of any avail, take their rise within the diseased class +itself?) + +Thoughtful men sighed over the present and yearned for the past, nor seem +to have perceived that it was irrevocably gone; that the Roman lady who, +with a hundred servants standing idle about her, should, in imitation of +her ancestress, have gone out with her pitcher on her head to draw water +from the well, while in all her own courtyards pipe-led streams gushed +forth, would have acted the part of the pretender; that had she insisted on +resuscitating her loom and had sat up all night to spin, she could never +have produced those fabrics which alone her household demanded, and would +have been but a puerile actor; that it was not by attempting to return to +the ancient and for ever closed fields of toil, but by entering upon new, +that she could alone serve her race and retain her own dignity and +virility. That not by bearing water and weaving linen, but by so training +and disciplining herself that she should be fitted to bear her share in the +labour necessary to the just and wise guidance of a great empire, and be +capable of training a race of men adequate to exercise an enlightened, +merciful, and beneficent rule over the vast masses of subject people--that +so, and so only, could she fulfil her duty toward the new society about +her, and bear its burden together with man, as her ancestresses of bygone +generations had borne the burden of theirs. + +That in this direction, and this alone, lay the only possible remedy for +the evils of woman's condition, was a conception apparently grasped by +none; and the female sank lower and lower, till the image of the parasitic +woman of Rome (with a rag of the old Roman intensity left even in her +degradation!)--seeking madly by pursuit of pleasure and sensuality to fill +the void left by the lack of honourable activity; accepting lust in the +place of love, ease in the place of exertion, and an unlimited consumption +in the place of production; too enervated at last to care even to produce +offspring, and shrinking from every form of endurance--remains, even to the +present day, the most perfect, and therefore the most appalling, picture of +the parasite female that earth has produced--a picture only less terrible +than it is pathetic. + +We recognise that it was inevitable that this womanhood--born it would seem +from its elevation to guide and enlighten a world, and in place thereof +feeding on it--should at last have given birth to a manhood as effete as +itself, and that both should in the end have been swept away before the +march of those Teutonic folk, whose women were virile and could give birth +to men; a folk among whom the woman received on the morning of her +marriage, from the man who was to be her companion through life, no +contemptible trinket to hang about her throat or limbs, but a shield, a +spear, a sword, and a yoke of oxen, while she bestowed on him in return a +suit of armour, in token that they two were henceforth to be one in toil +and in the facing of danger; that she too should dare with him in war and +suffer with him in peace; and of whom another writer tells us, that their +women not only bore the race and fed it at their breasts without the help +of others' hands, but that they undertook the whole management of house and +lands, leaving the males free for war and chase; of whom Suetonius tells +us, that when Augustus Caesar demanded hostages from a tribe, he took +women, not men, because he found by experience that the women were more +regarded than men, and of whom Strabo says, that so highly did the Germanic +races value the intellect of their women that they regarded them as +inspired, and entered into no war or great undertaking without their advice +and counsel; while among the Cimbrian women who accompanied their husbands +in the invasion of Italy were certain who marched barefooted in the midst +of the lines, distinguished by their white hair and milk-white robes, and +who were regarded as inspired, and of whom Florus, describing an early +Roman victory, says, "The conflict was not less fierce and obstinate with +the wives of the vanquished; in their carts and wagons they formed a line +of battle, and from their elevated situation, as from so many turrets, +annoyed the Romans with their poles and lances. (The South African Boer +woman after two thousand years appears not wholly to have forgotten the +ancestral tactics.) Their death was as glorious as their martial spirit. +Finding that all was lost, they strangled their children, and either +destroyed themselves in one scene of mutual slaughter, or with the sashes +that bound up their hair suspended themselves by the neck to the boughs of +trees or the tops of their wagons." It is of these women that Valerius +Maximus says, that, "If the gods on the day of battle had inspired the men +with equal fortitude, Marius would never have boasted of his Teutonic +victory;" and of whom Tacitus, speaking of those women who accompanied +their husbands to war, remarks, "These are the darling witnesses of his +conduct, the applauders of his valour, at once beloved and valued. The +wounded seek their mothers and their wives; undismayed at the sight, the +women count each honourable scar and suck the gushing blood. They are even +hardy enough to mix with the combatants, administering refreshment and +exhorting them to deeds of valour," and adds moreover, that "To be +contented with one wife was peculiar to the Germans; while the woman was +contented with one husband, as with one life, one mind, one body." + +It was inevitable that before the sons of women such as these, the sons of +the parasitic Roman should be swept from existence, as the offspring of the +caged canary would fall in conflict with the offspring of the free. + +Again and again with wearisome reiteration, the same story repeats itself. +Among the Jews in the days of their health and growth, we find their women +bearing the major weight of agricultural and domestic toil, full always of +labour and care--from Rachel, whom Jacob met and loved as she watered her +father's flocks, to Ruth, the ancestress of a line of kings and heroes, +whom her Boas noted labouring in the harvest-fields; from Sarah, kneading +and baking cakes for Abraham's prophetic visitors, to Miriam, prophetess +and singer, and Deborah, who judging Israel from beneath her palm-tree, +"and the land had rest for forty years." Everywhere the ancient Jewish +woman appears, an active sustaining power among her people; and perhaps the +noblest picture of the labouring woman to be found in any literature is +contained in the Jewish writings, indited possibly at the very time when +the labouring woman was for the first time tending among a section of the +Jews to become a thing of the past; when already Solomon, with his seven +hundred parasitic wives and three hundred parasitic concubines, loomed +large on the horizon of the national life, to take the place of flock- +tending Rachel and gleaning Ruth, and to produce amid their palaces of +cedar and gold, among them all, no Joseph or David, but in the way of +descendant only a Rehoboam, under whose hand the kingdom was to totter to +its fall. (The picture of the labouring as opposed to the parasitic ideal +of womanhood appears under the heading, "The words of King Lemuel; the +oracle which his mother taught him." At risk of presenting the reader with +that with which he is already painfully familiar, we here transcribe the +passage; which, allowing for differences in material and intellectual +surroundings, paints also the ideal of the labouring womanhood of the +present and of the future:- + "Her price is far above rubies, + The heart of her husband trusteth in her, + And he shall have no lack of gain, + She doeth him good and not evil + All the days of her life, + She seeketh wool and flax, + And worketh willingly with her hands, + She is like the merchant ships; + She bringeth her food, from afar, + She riseth up while it is yet night + And giveth meat to her household, + And their task to her maidens, + She considereth a field, and buyeth it; + With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. + She girdeth her loins with strength, + And maketh strong her arms. + She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable; + Her lamp goeth not out by night, + She layeth her hands to the distaff, + And her hands hold the spindle. + She spreadeth out her hand to the poor: + Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, + She is not afraid of the snow for her household, + For all her household are clothed with scarlet. + She maketh herself carpets of tapestry; + Her clothing is fine and purple. + Her husband is known in the gates, + When he sitteth among the elders of the land, + She maketh linen garments and selleth them, + And delivereth girdles unto the merchant. + Strength and dignity are her clothing; + And she laugheth at the time to come. + She openeth her mouth with wisdom, + And the law of kindness is on her tongue, + She looketh well to the ways of her household, + And eateth not the bread of idleness. + Her children rise up and call her blessed, + Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, + Many daughters have done virtuously, + But thou excellest them all, + Give her the fruit of her hand, + And let her works praise her in the gate." + +In the East today the same story has wearisomely written itself: in China, +where the present vitality and power of the most ancient of existing +civilisations may be measured accurately by the length of its woman's +shoes; in Turkish harems, where one of the noblest dominant Aryan races the +world has yet produced, is being slowly suffocated in the arms of a +parasite womanhood, and might, indeed, along ago have been obliterated, had +not a certain virility and strength been continually reinfused into it +through the persons of purchased wives, who in early childhood and youth +had been themselves active labouring peasants. Everywhere, in the past as +in the present, the parasitism of the female heralds the decay of a nation +or class, and as invariably indicates disease as the pustules of smallpox +upon the skin indicate the existence of a purulent virus in the system. + +We are, indeed, far from asserting that the civilisations of the past which +have decayed, have decayed alone through the parasitism of their females. +Vast, far-reaching social phenomena have invariably causes and reactions +immeasurably too complex to be summed up under one so simple a term. +Behind the phenomenon of female parasitism has always lain another and yet +larger social phenomenon; it has invariably been preceded, as we have seen, +by the subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, either as +slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the excessive +labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation of unearned +wealth in the hands of the dominant class or race. It has invariably been +by feeding on this wealth, the result of forced or ill-paid labour, that +the female of the dominant race or class has in the past lost her activity +and has come to exist purely through the passive performance of her sexual +functions. Without slaves or subject classes to perform the crude physical +labours of life and produce superfluous wealth, the parasitism of the +female would, in the past, have been an impossibility. + +There is, therefore, a profound truth in that universal saw which states +that the decay of the great nations and civilisations of the past has +resulted from the enervation caused by excessive wealth and luxury; and +there is a further, and if possible more profound, truth underlying the +statement that their destruction has ultimately been the result of the +enervation of the entire race, male and female. + +But when we come further to inquire how, exactly, this process of decay +took place, we shall find that the part which the parasitism of the female +has played has been fundamental. The mere use of any of the material +products of labour, which we term wealth, can never in itself produce that +decay, physical or mental, which precedes the downfall of great civilised +nations. The eating of salmon at ten shillings a pound can in itself no +more debilitate and corrupt the moral, intellectual, and physical +constitution of the man consuming it, than it could enervate his naked +forefathers who speared it in their rivers for food; the fact that an +individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a worm, can no more +deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than were it made of sheep's +wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces, faring delicately, and clad +in silks, and surrounded by the noblest products of literature and plastic +art, so those palaces, viands, garments, and products of art were the +result of their own labours, could never be enervated by them. The +debilitating effect of wealth sets in at that point exactly (and never +before) at which the supply of material necessaries and comforts, and of +aesthetic enjoyments, clogs the individuality, causing it to rest satisfied +in the mere passive possession of the results of the labour of others, +without feeling any necessity or desire for further productive activity of +its own. (Of the other deleterious effects of unearned wealth on the +individual or class possessing it, such as its power of lessening human +sympathy, &c., &c., we do not now speak, as while ultimately and +indirectly, undoubtedly, tending to disintegrate a society, they do not +necessarily and immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point we +are here considering.) + +The exact material condition at which this point will be reached will vary, +not only with the race and the age, but with the individual. A Marcus +Aurelius in a palace of gold and marble was able to retain his simplicity +and virility as completely as though he had lived in a cow-herd's hut; +while on the other hand, it is quite possible for the wife of a savage +chief who has but four slaves to bring her her corn and milk and spread her +skins in the sun, to become almost as purely parasitic as the most +delicately pampered female of fashion in ancient Rome, or modern Paris, +London, or New York; while the exact amount of unearned material wealth +which will emasculate individuals in the same society, will vary exactly as +their intellectual and moral fibre and natural activity are strong or weak. +(It is not uncommon in modern societies to find women of a class relatively +very moderately wealthy, the wives and daughters of shopkeepers or +professional men, who if their male relations will supply them with a very +limited amount of money without exertion on their part, will become as +completely parasitic and useless as women with untold wealth at their +command.) + +The debilitating effect of unlaboured-for wealth lies, then, not in the +nature of any material adjunct to life in itself, but in the power it may +possess of robbing the individual of all incentive to exertion, thus +destroying the intellectual, the physical, and finally, the moral fibre. + +In all the civilisations of the past examination will show that almost +invariably it has been the female who has tended first to reach this point, +and we think examination will show that it has almost invariably been from +the woman to the man that enervation and decay have spread. + +Why this should be so is obvious. Firstly, it is in the sphere of domestic +labour that slave or hired labour most easily and insidiously penetrates. +The force of blows or hireling gold can far more easily supply labourers as +the preparers of food and clothing, and even as the rearers of children, +than it can supply labourers fitted to be entrusted with the toils of war +and government, which have in the past been the especial sphere of male +toil. The Roman woman had for generations been supplanted in the sphere of +her domestic labours and in the toil of rearing and educating her +offspring, and had long become abjectly parasitic, before the Roman male +had been able to substitute the labour of the hireling and barbarian for +his own, in the army, and in the drudgeries of governmental toil. + +Secondly, the female having one all-important though passive function which +cannot be taken from her, and which is peculiarly connected with her own +person, in the act of child-bearing, and her mere sexual attributes being +an object of desire and cupidity to the male, she is liable in a peculiarly +insidious and gradual manner to become dependent on this one sexual +function alone for her support. So much is this the case, that even when +she does not in any way perform this function there is still a curious +tendency for the kudos of the function still to hang about her, and for her +mere potentiality in the direction of a duty which she may never fulfil, to +be confused in her own estimation and that of society with the actual +fulfilment of that function. Under the mighty aegis of the woman who bears +and rears offspring and in other directions labours greatly and actively +for her race, creeps in gradually and unnoticed the woman who does none of +these things. From the mighty labouring woman who bears human creatures to +the full extent of her power, rears her offspring unaided, and performs at +the same time severe social labour in other directions (and who is, +undoubtedly, wherever found, the most productive toiler known to the race); +it is but one step, though a long one, from this woman to the woman who +produces offspring freely but does not herself rear them, and performs no +compensatory social labour. While from this woman, again, to the one who +bears few or no children, but who, whether as a wife or mistress, lives by +the exercise of her sex function alone, the step is short. There is but +one step farther to the prostitute, who affects no form of productive +labour, and who, in place of life, is recognised as producing disease and +death, but who exists parasitically through her sexual attribute. Enormous +as is the distance between the women at the two extremes of this series, +and sharply opposed as their relation to the world is, there is yet, in +actual life, no sharp, clear, sudden-drawn line dividing the women of the +one type from those of the other. They shade off into each other by +delicate and in sensible degrees. And it is down this inclined plane that +the women of civilised races are peculiarly tempted, unconsciously, to +slip; from the noble height of a condition of the most strenuous social +activity, into a condition of complete, helpless, and inactive parasitism, +without being clearly aware of the fact themselves, and without society's +becoming so--the woman who has ceased to rear her own offspring, or who has +ceased to bear offspring at all, and who performs no other productive +social function, yet shields the fact from her own eyes by dwelling on the +fact that she is a woman, in whom the capacity is at least latent. (There +is, indeed, an interesting analogous tendency on the part of the parasitic +male, wherever found, to shield his true condition from his own eyes and +those of the world by playing at the ancient ancestral forms of male +labour. He is almost always found talking loudly of the protection he +affords to helpless females and to society, though he is in truth himself +protected through the exertion of soldiers, policemen, magistrates, and +society generally; and he is almost invariably fond of dangling a sword or +other weapon, and wearing some kind of uniform, for the assumption of +militarism without severe toil delights him. But it is in a degenerate +travesty of the ancient labour of hunting (where, at terrible risk to +himself, and with endless fatigue, his ancestors supplied the race with its +meat and defended it from destruction by wild beasts) that he finds his +greatest satisfaction; it serves to render the degradation and uselessness +of his existence less obvious to himself and to others than if he passed +his life reclining in an armchair. + +On Yorkshire moors today may be seen walls of sod, behind which hide +certain human males, while hard-labouring men are employed from early dawn +in driving birds towards them. As the birds are driven up to him, the +hunter behind his wall raises his deadly weapon, and the bird, which it had +taken so much human labour to rear and provide, falls dead at his feet; +thereby greatly to the increase of the hunter's glory, when, the toils of +the chase over, he returns to his city haunts to record his bag. One might +almost fancy one saw arise from the heathery turf the shade of some ancient +Teutonic ancestor, whose dust has long reposed there, pointing a finger of +scorn at his degenerate descendant, as he leers out from behind the sod +wall. During the the later Roman Empire, Commodus, in the degenerate days +of Rome, at great expense had wild beasts brought from distant lands that +he might have the glory of slaying them in the Roman circus; and medals +representing himself as Hercules slaying the Nemean lion were struck at his +orders. We are not aware that any representation has yet been made in the +region of plastic art of the hero of the sod wall; but history repeats +itself--and that also may come. It is to be noted that these hunters are +not youths, but often ripely adult men, before whom all the lofty +enjoyments and employments possible to the male in modern life, lie open.) + +These peculiarities in her condition have in all civilised societies laid +the female more early and seriously open to the attacks of parasitism than +the male. And while the accumulation of wealth has always been the +antecedent condition, and the degeneracy and effeteness of the male the +final and obvious cause, of the decay of the great dominant races of the +past; yet, between these two has always lain, as a great middle term, the +parasitism of the female, without which the first would have been +inoperative and the last impossible. + +Not slavery, nor the most vast accumulations of wealth, could destroy a +nation by enervation, whose women remained active, virile, and laborious. + +The conception which again and again appears to have haunted successive +societies, that it was a possibility for the human male to advance in +physical power and intellectual vigour, while his companion female became +stationary and inactive, taking no share in the labours of society beyond +the passive fulfilment of sexual functions, has always been negated. It +has ended as would end the experiment of a man seeking to raise a breed of +winning race-horses out of unexercised, short-winded, knock-kneed mares. +No, more disastrously! For while the female animal transmits herself to +her descendant only or mainly by means of germinal inheritance, and through +the influence she may exert over it during gestation, the human female, by +producing the intellectual and moral atmosphere in which the early infant +years of life are passed, impresses herself far more indelibly on her +descendants. Only an able and labouring womanhood can permanently produce +an able and labouring manhood; only an effete and inactive male can +ultimately be produced by an effete and inactive womanhood. The curled +darling, scented and languid, with his drawl, his delicate apparel, his +devotion to the rarity and variety of his viands, whose severest labour is +the search after pleasure, and for whom even the chase, which was for his +remote ancestor an invigorating and manly toil essential for the meat and +life of his people, becomes a luxurious and farcical amusement;--this male, +whether found in the later Roman Empire, the Turkish harem of today, or in +our Northern civilisations, is possible only because generations of +parasitic women have preceded him. More repulsive than the parasite female +herself, because a yet further product of decay, it is yet only the scent +of his mother's boudoir that we smell in his hair. He is like to the bald +patches and rotten wool on the back of a scabby sheep; which indeed +indicate that, deep beneath the surface, a parasite insect is eating its +way into the flesh, but which are not so much the cause of disease, as its +final manifestation. + +As we have said it is the power of the human female to impress herself on +her descendants, male and female, not only through germinal inheritance, +through influence during the period of gestation, but above all by +producing the mental atmosphere in which the impressionable infant years of +life are passed, which makes the condition of the child-bearing female one +of paramount interest of the race. It is this fact which causes even +prostitution (in many other respects the most repulsive of all the forms of +female parasitism which afflicts humanity) to be, probably, not more +adverse to the advance and even to the conservation of a healthy and +powerful society, than the parasitism of its child-bearing women. For the +prostitute, heavily as she weights society for her support, returning +disease and mental and emotional disintegration for what she consumes, does +not yet so immediately affect the next generation as the kept wife, or kept +mistress, who impresses her effete image indelibly on the generations +succeeding. (It cannot be too often repeated that the woman who merely +bears and brings a child into the world, and then leaves it to be fed and +reared by the hands of another, has performed very much less than half of +the labour of producing adult humans; in such cases it is the nurse and not +the mother who is the most important labourer.) + +No man ever yet entered life farther than the length of one navel-cord from +the body of the woman who bore him. It is the woman who is the final +standard of the race, from which there can be no departure for any distance +for any length of time, in any direction: as her brain weakens, weakens +the man's she bears; as her muscle softens, softens his; as she decays, +decays the people. + +Other causes may, and do, lead to the enervation and degeneration of a +class or race; the parasitism of its child-bearing women must. + +We, the European women of this age, stand today where again and again, in +the history of the past, women of other races have stood; but our condition +is yet more grave, and of wider import to humanity as a whole than theirs +ever was. Let us again consider more closely why this is so. + + +Chapter III. Parasitism (continued). + +We have seen that, in the past, no such thing as the parasitism of the +entire body or large majority of the females inhabiting any territory was +possible. Beneath that body of women of the dominant class or race, who +did not labour either mentally or physically, there has always been of +necessity a far more vast body of females who not only performed the crude +physical toil essential to the existence of society before the introduction +of mechanical methods of production, but who were compelled to labour the +more intensely because there was a parasite class above them to be +maintained by their physical toil. The more the female parasite flourished +of old, in one class or race, the more certainly all women of other classes +or races were compelled to labour only too excessively; and ultimately +these females and their descendants were apt to supplant the more enervated +class or race. In the absence of machinery and of a vast employment of the +motor-forces of nature, parasitism could only threaten a comparatively +small section of any community, and a minute section of the human race as a +whole. Female parasitism in the past resembled gout--a disease dangerous +only to the over-fed, pampered, and few, never to the population of any +society as a whole. + +At the present day, so enormous has been the advance made in the +substitution of mechanical force for crude, physical, human exertion +(mechanical force being employed today even in the shaping of feeding- +bottles and the creation of artificial foods as substitutes for mother's +milk!), that it is now possible not only for a small and wealthy section of +women in each civilised community to be maintained without performing any +of the ancient, crude, physical labours of their sex, and without depending +on the slavery of, or any vast increase in the labour of, other classes of +females; but this condition has already been reached, or is tending to be +reached, by that large mass of women in civilised societies, who form the +intermediate class between poor and rich. During the next fifty years, so +rapid will undoubtedly be the spread of the material conditions of +civilisation, both in the societies at present civilised and in the +societies at present unpermeated by our material civilisation, that the +ancient forms of female, domestic, physical labour of even the women of the +poorest classes will be little required, their place being taken, not by +other females, but by always increasingly perfected labour-saving +machinery. + +Thus, female parasitism, which in the past threatened only a minute section +of earth's women, under existing conditions threatens vast masses, and may, +under future conditions, threaten the entire body. + +If woman is content to leave to the male all labour in the new and all- +important fields which are rapidly opening before the human race; if, as +the old forms of domestic labour slip from her for ever and evitably, she +does not grasp the new, it is inevitable, that, ultimately, not merely a +class, but the whole bodies of females in civilised societies, must sink +into a state of more or less absolute dependence on their sexual functions +alone. (How real is this apparently very remote danger is interestingly +illustrated by a proposition gravely made a few years ago by a man of note +in England. He proposed that a compulsory provision should be made for at +least the women of the upper and middle classes, by which they might be +maintained through life entirely without regard to any productive labour +they might perform, not even the passive labour of sexual reproduction +being of necessity required of them. That this proposal was received by +the women striving to reconstruct the relation of the modern woman to life +without acclamation and with scorn, may have surprised its maker; but with +no more reason than that man would have for feeling surprise who, seeing a +number of persons anxious to escape the infection of some contagious +disease, should propose as a cure to inoculate them all with it in its most +virulent form!) + +As new forms of natural force are mastered and mechanical appliances +perfected, it will be quite possible for the male half of all civilised +races (and therefore ultimately of all) to absorb the entire fields of +intellectual and highly trained manual labour; and it would be entirely +possible for the female half of the race, whether as prostitutes, as kept +mistresses, or as kept wives, to cease from all forms of active toil, and, +as the passive tools of sexual reproduction, or, more decadently still, as +the mere instruments of sexual indulgence, to sink into a condition of +complete and helpless sex-parasitism. + +Sex-parasitism, therefore, presents itself at the end of the nineteenth +century and beginning of the twentieth in a guise which it has never before +worn. We, the European women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, +stand therefore in a position the gravity and importance of which was not +equalled by that of any of our forerunners in the ancient civilisation. As +we master and rise above, or fall and are conquered by, the difficulties of +our position, so also will be the future, not merely of our own class, or +even of our own race alone, but also of those vast masses who are following +on in the wake of our civilisation. The decision we are called on to make +is a decision for the race; behind us comes on the tread of incalculable +millions of feet. + +There is thus no truth in the assertion so often made, even by thoughtful +persons, that the male labour question and the woman's question of our day +are completely one, and that, would the women of the European race of today +but wait peacefully till the males alone had solved their problem, they +would find that their own had been solved at the same time. + +Were the entire male labour problem of this age satisfactorily settled +tomorrow; were all the unemployed or uselessly employed males at both ends +of societies, whom the changes of modern civilisation have robbed of their +ancient forms of labour, so educated and trained that they were perfectly +fitted for the new conditions of life; and were the material benefit and +intellectual possibilities, which the substitution of mechanical for human +labour now makes possible to humanity, no longer absorbed by the few but +dispersed among the whole mass of males in return for their trained labour, +yet the woman's problem might be further from satisfactory solution than it +is today; and, if it were affected at all, might be affected for the worse. +It is wholly untrue that fifty pounds, or two thousand, earned by the male +as the result of his physical or mental toil, if part of it be spent by him +in supporting non-labouring females, whether as prostitutes, wives, or +mistresses, is the same thing to the female or to the race as though that +sum had been earned by her own exertion, either directly as wages or +indirectly by toiling for the man whose wages supported her. For the +moment, truly, the woman so tended lies softer and warmer than had she been +compelled to exert herself; ultimately, intellectually, morally, and even +physically, the difference in the effect upon her as an individual and on +the race is the difference between advance and degradation, between life +and death. The increased wealth of the male no more of necessity benefits +and raises the female upon whom he expends it, than the increased wealth of +his mistress necessarily benefits mentally or physically a poodle because +she can give him a down cushion in place of one of feathers, and chicken in +place of beef. The wealthier the males of a society become, the greater +the temptation, both to themselves and to the females connected with them, +to drift toward female parasitism. + +The readjustment of the position of the male worker, if it led to a more +equitable distribution of wealth among males, might indeed diminish +slightly the accompanying tendency to parasitism in the very wealthiest +female class; but it would, on the other hand, open up exactly those +conditions which make parasitism possible to millions of women today +leading healthy and active lives. (The fact cannot be too often dwelt upon +that parasitism is not connected with any definite amount of wealth. Any +sum supplied to an individual which will so far satisfy him or her as to +enable them to live without exertion may absolutely parasitise them; while +vast wealth (unhealthy as its effects generally tend to be) may, upon +certain rare and noble natures, exert hardly any enervating or deleterious +influence. An amusing illustration of the different points at which +enervation is reached by different females came under our own observation. +The wife of an American millionaire was visited by a woman, the daughter +and also the widow of small professional men. She stated that she was in +need of both food and clothing. The millionaire's wife gave her a leg of +mutton and two valuable dresses. The woman proceeded to whine, though in +vigorous health, that she had no one to carry them home for her, and could +not think of carrying them herself. The American, the descendant of +generations of able, labouring, New England, Puritan women, tucked the leg +of mutton under one arm and the bundle of clothes under the other and +walked off down the city street towards the woman's dwelling, followed by +the astonished pauper parasite. + +The most helpless case of female degeneration we ever came into contact +with was that of a daughter of a poor English officer on half-pay and who +had to exist on a few hundreds a year. This woman could neither cook her +own food nor make her own clothes, nor was she engaged in any social, +political, or intellectual or artistic labour. Though able to dance for a +night or play tennis for an afternoon, she was yet hardly able to do her +own hair or attire herself, and appeared absolutely to have lost all power +of compelling herself to do anything which was at the moment fatiguing or +displeasing, as all labour is apt to be, however great its ultimate reward. +In a life of twenty-eight years this woman had probably not contributed one +hour's earnest toil, mental or physical, to the increase of the sum total +of productive human labour. Surrounded with acres of cultivable land, she +would possibly have preferred to lie down and die of hunger rather than +have cultivated half an acre for food. This is an extreme case; but the +ultimate effect of parasitism is always a paralysis of the will and an +inability to compel oneself into any course of action for the moment +unpleasurable and exhaustive.) + +That the two problems are not identical is shown, if indeed evidence were +needed, by the fact that those males most actively employed in attempting +to readjust the relations of the mass of labouring males to the new +conditions of life, are sometimes precisely those males who are most +bitterly opposed to woman in her attempt to readjust her own position. Not +even by the members of those professions, generally regarded as the +strongholds of obstructionism and prejudice, has a more short-sighted +opposition often been made to the attempts of woman to enter new fields of +labour, than have again and again been made by male hand-workers, whether +as isolated individuals or in their corporate capacity as trade unions. +They have, at least in some certain instances, endeavoured to exclude +women, not merely from new fields of intellectual and social labour, but +even from those ancient fields of textile manufacture and handicraft, which +have through all generations of the past been woman's. The patent and +undeniable fact, that where the male labour movement flourishes the woman +movement also flourishes, rises not from the fact that they are identical, +but that the same healthy and virile condition in a race or society gives +rise to both. + +As two streams rising from one fountain-head and running a parallel course +through long reaches may yet remain wholly distinct, one finding its way +satisfactorily to the sea, while the other loses itself in sand or becomes +a stagnant marsh, so our modern male and female movements, taking their +rise from the same material conditions in modern civilisation, and +presenting endless and close analogies with one another in their cause of +development, yet remain fundamentally distinct. By both movements the +future of the race must be profoundly modified for good or evil; both touch +the race in a manner absolutely vital; but both will have to be fought out +on their own ground, and independently: and it can be only by determined, +conscious, and persistent action on the part of woman that the solution of +her own labour problems will proceed co-extensively with that of the other. + +How distinct, though similar, is the underlying motive of the two +movements, is manifested most clearly by this fact, that, while the male +labour movement takes its rise mainly among the poor and hand-labouring +classes, where the material pressure of the modern conditions of life fall +heaviest, and where the danger of physical suffering and even extinction +under that pressure is most felt; the Woman Labour Movement has taken its +rise almost as exclusively among the wealthy, cultured, and brain-labouring +classes, where alone, at the present day, the danger of enervation through +non-employment, and of degeneration through dependence on the sex function +exists. The female labour movement of our day is, in its ultimate essence, +an endeavour on the part of a section of the race to save itself from +inactivity and degeneration, and this, even at the immediate cost of most +heavy loss in material comfort and ease to the individuals composing it. +The male labour movement is, directly and in the first place, material; +and, or at least superficially, more or less self-seeking, though its +ultimate reaction on society by saving the poorer members from degradation +and dependency and want is undoubtedly wholly social and absolutely +essential for the health and continued development of the human race. In +the Woman's Labour Movement of our day, which has essentially taken its +rise among women of the more cultured and wealthy classes, and which +consists mainly in a demand to have the doors leading to professional, +political, and highly skilled labour thrown open to them, the ultimate end +can only be attained at the cost of more or less intense, immediate, +personal suffering and renunciation, though eventually, if brought to a +satisfactory conclusion, it will undoubtedly tend to the material and +physical well-being of woman herself, as well as to that of her male +companions and descendants. + +The coming half-century will be a time of peculiar strain, as mankind seeks +rapidly to adjust moral ideals and social relationships and the general +ordering of life to the new and continually unfolding material conditions. +If these two great movements of our age, having this as their object, can +be brought into close harmony and co-operation, the readjustment will be +the sooner and more painlessly accomplished; but, for the moment, the two +movements alike in their origin and alike in many of their methods of +procedure, remain distinct. + +It is this fact, the consciousness on the part of the women taking their +share in the Woman's Movement of our age, that their efforts are not, and +cannot be, of immediate advantage to themselves, but that they almost of +necessity and immediately lead to loss and renunciation, which gives to +this movement its very peculiar tone; setting it apart from the large mass +of economic movements, placing it rather in a line with those vast +religious developments which at the interval of ages have swept across +humanity, irresistibly modifying and reorganising it. + +It is the perception of this fact, that, not for herself, nor even for +fellow-women alone, but for the benefit of humanity at large, it is +necessary she should seek to readjust herself to life, which lends to the +modern woman's most superficial and seemingly trivial attempts at +readjustment, a certain dignity and importance. + +It is this profound hidden conviction which removes from the sphere of the +ridiculous the attitude of even the feeblest woman who waves her poor +little "Woman's rights" flag on the edge of a platform, and which causes us +to forgive even the passionate denunciations, not always wisely thought +out, in which she would represent the suffering and evils of woman's +condition, as wrongs intentionally inflicted upon her, where they are +merely the inevitable results of ages of social movement. + +It is this over-shadowing consciousness of a large impersonal obligation, +which removes from the sphere of the contemptible and insignificant even +the action of the individual young girl, who leaves a home of comfort or +luxury for a city garret, where in solitude, and under that stern pressure +which is felt by all individuals in arms against the trend of their +environment, she seeks to acquire the knowledge necessary for entering on a +new form of labour. It is this profound consciousness which makes not less +than heroic the figure of the little half-starved student, battling against +gigantic odds to take her place beside man in the fields of modern +intellectual toil, and which, whether she succeed or fail, makes her a +landmark in the course of our human evolution. It is this consciousness of +large impersonal ends to be attained, and to the attainment of which each +individual is bound to play her part, however small, which removes from the +domain of the unnecessary, and raises to importance, the action of each +woman who resists the tyranny of fashions in dress or bearing or custom +which impedes her in her strife towards the new adjustment. + +It is this consciousness which renders almost of solemn import the efforts +of the individual female after physical or mental self-culture and +expansion; this, which fills with a lofty enthusiasm the heart of the young +girl, who, it may be, in some solitary farm-house, in some distant wild of +Africa or America, deep into the night bends over her books with the +passion and fervour with which an early Christian may have bent over the +pages of his Scriptures; feeling that, it may be, she fits herself by each +increase of knowledge for she knows not what duties towards the world, in +the years to come. It is this consciousness of great impersonal ends, to +be brought, even if slowly and imperceptibly, a little nearer by her +action, which gives to many a woman strength for renunciation, when she +puts from her the lower type of sexual relationship, even if bound up with +all the external honour a legal bond can confer, if it offers her only +enervation and parasitism; and which enables her often to accept poverty, +toil, and sexual isolation (an isolation even more terrible to the woman +than to any male), and the renunciation of motherhood, that crowning +beatitude of the woman's existence, which, and which alone, fully +compensates her for the organic sufferings of womanhood--in the conviction +that, by so doing, she makes more possible a fuller and higher attainment +of motherhood and wifehood to the women who will follow her. It is this +consciousness which makes of solemn importance the knock of the humblest +woman at the closed door which shuts off a new field of labour, physical or +mental: is she convinced that, not for herself, but in the service of the +whole race, she knocks. + +It is this abiding consciousness of an end to be attained, reaching beyond +her personal life and individual interests, which constitutes the religious +element of the Woman's Movement of our day, and binds with the common bond +of an impersonal enthusiasm into one solid body the women of whatsoever +race, class, and nation who are struggling after the readjustment of woman +to life. + +This it is also, which in spite of defects and failures on the part of +individuals, yet makes the body who these women compose, as a whole, one of +the most impressive and irresistible of modern forces. The private soldier +of the great victorious army is not always an imposing object as he walks +down the village street, cap on side of head and sword dangling between his +legs, nor is he always impressive even when he burnishes up his +accoutrements or cleans his pannikins; but it is of individuals such as +these that the great army is made, which tomorrow, when it is gathered +together, may shake the world with its tread. + +Possibly not one woman in ten, or even one woman in twenty thousand among +those taking part in this struggle, could draw up a clear and succinct +account of the causes which have led to the disco-ordination in woman's +present position, or give a full account of the benefits to flow from +readjustment; as probably not one private soldier in an army of ten or even +of twenty thousand, though he is willing to give his life for his land, +would yet be able to draw up a clear and succinct account of his land's +history in the past and of the conditions which have made war inevitable; +and almost as little can he often paint an exact and detailed picture of +the benefits to flow from his efts. He knows his land has need of him; he +knows his own small place and work. + +It is possible that not one woman in ten thousand has grasped with +scientific exactitude, and still less could express with verbal sharpness, +the great central conditions which yet compel and animate her into action. + +Even the great, central fact, that with each generation the entire race +passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing +with the indelible marks of that mould upon it, that as the os cervix of +woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms a +ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human head, a size +which could only increase if in the course of ages the os cervix of woman +should itself slowly expand; and that so exactly the intellectual capacity, +the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms also an +untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive generation the +limits of the expansion of the human race;--even this fact she may not so +clearly have grasped intellectually as to be able to throw it into the form +of a logical statement. The profound truth, that the continued development +of the human race on earth (a development which, as the old myths and +dreams of a narrow personal heaven fade from our view, becomes increasingly +for many of us the spiritual hope by light of which we continue to live), a +development which we hope shall make the humanity of a distant future as +much higher in intellectual power and wider in social sympathy than the +highest human units of our day, as that is higher than the first primeval +ancestor who with quivering limb strove to walk upright and shape his lips +to the expression of a word, is possible only if the male and female halves +of humanity progress together, expanding side by side in the future as they +have done in the past--even this truth it is possible few women have +exactly and logically grasped as the basis of their action. The truth +that, as the first primitive human males and females, unable to count +farther than their fingers, or grasp an abstract idea, or feel the +controlling power of social emotion, could only develop into the Sapphos, +Aristotles, and Shelleys of a more expanded civilisation, if side by side, +and line by line, male and female forms have expanded together; if, as the +convolutions of his brain increased in complexity, so increased the +convolutions in hers; if, as her forehead grew higher, so developed his; +and that, if the long upward march of the future is ever to be accomplished +by the race, male and female must march side by side, acting and reacting +on each other through inheritance; or progress is impossible. The truth +that, as the existence of even the male Bushman would be impossible without +the existence of the analogous Bushwoman with the same gifts; and that as +races which can produce among their males a William Kingdon Clifford, a +Tolstoy, or a Robert Browning, would be inconceivable and impossible, +unless among its females it could also produce a Sophia Kovalevsky, a +George Eliot, or a Louise Michel; so, also, in the future, that higher and +more socialised human race we dream of can only come into existence, +because in both the sex forms have evolved together, now this sex and then +that, so to speak, catching up the ball of life and throwing it back to the +other, slightly if imperceptibly enlarging and beautifying it as it passes +through their hands. The fact that without the reaction of interevolution +between the sexes, there can be no real and permanent human advance; +without the enlarged deep-thinking Eve to bear him, no enlarged Adam; +without the enlarged widely sympathising Adam to beget her, no enlarged +widely comprehending Eve; without an enlarged Adam and an enlarged Eve, no +enlarged and beautified generation of mankind on earth; that an arrest in +one form is an arrest in both; and in the upward march of the entire human +family. The truth that, if at the present day, woman, after her long +upward march side by side with man, developing with him through the +countless ages, by means of the endless exercise of the faculties of mind +and body, has now, at last, reached her ultimate limit of growth, and can +progress no farther; that, then, here also, today, the growth of the human +spirit is to be stayed; that here, on the spot of woman's arrest, is the +standard of the race to be finally planted, to move forward no more, for +ever:--that, if the parasite woman on her couch, loaded with gewgaws, the +plaything and amusement of man, be the permanent and final manifestation of +female human life on the globe, then that couch is also the death-bed of +human evolution. These profound underlying truths, perhaps, not one woman +in twenty thousand of those actively engaged in the struggle for +readjustment has so closely and keenly grasped that she can readily throw +them into the form of exact language; and yet, probably, not the feeblest +woman taking share in our endeavour toward readjustment and expansion fails +to be animated by a vague but profound consciousness of their existence. +Beyond the small evils, which she seeks by her immediate, personal action +to remedy, lie, she feels; large ills of which they form but an off-shoot; +beyond the small good which she seeks to effect, lies, she believes, a +great and universal beatitude to be attained; beyond the little struggle of +today, lies the larger struggle of the centuries, in which neither she +alone nor her sex alone are concerned, but all mankind. + +That such should be the mental attitude of the average woman taking part in +the readjustive sexual movement of today; that so often on the public +platform and in literature adduces merely secondary arguments, and is +wholly unable logically to give an account of the great propelling +conditions behind it, is sometimes taken as an indication of the +inefficiency, and probably the ultimate failure, of the movement in which +she takes part. But in truth, that is not so. It is rather an indication +which shows how healthy, and deeply implanted in the substance of human +life, are the roots of this movement; and it places it in a line with all +those vast controlling movements which have in the course of the ages +reorganised human life. + +For those great movements which have permanently modified the condition of +humanity have never taken their rise amid the chopped logic of schools; +they have never drawn their vitality from a series of purely intellectual +and abstract inductions. They have arisen always through the action of +widely spread material and spiritual conditions, creating widespread human +needs; which, pressing upon the isolated individuals, awakens at last +continuous, if often vague and uncertain, social movement in a given +direction. Mere intellectual comprehension may guide, retard, or +accelerate the great human movements; it has never created them. It may +even be questioned whether those very leaders, who have superficially +appeared to create and organise great and successful social movements, have +themselves, in most cases, perhaps in any, fully understood in all their +complexity the movements they themselves have appeared to rule. They have +been, rather, themselves permeated by the great common need; and being +possessed of more will, passion, intensity, or intellect, they have been +able to give voice to that which in others was dumb, and conscious +direction to that which in others was unconscious desire: they have been +but the foremost crest of a great wave of human necessity: they have not +themselves created the wave which bears themselves, and humanity, onwards. +The artificial social movements which have had their origin in the +arbitrary will of individuals, guided with however much determination and +reason, have of necessity proved ephemeral and abortive. An Alexander +might will to weld a Greece and an Asia into one; a Napoleon might resolve +to create of a diversified Europe one consolidated state; and by dint of +skill and determination they might for a moment appear to be accomplishing +that which they desired; but the constraining individual will being +withdrawn, the object of their toil has melted away, as the little heap of +damp sand gathered under the palm of a child's hand on the sea-shore, melts +away, scattered by the wind and washed out by the waves, the moment the +hand that shaped it is withdrawn; while the small, soft, indefinite, watery +fragment of jelly-fish lying beside it, though tossed hither and thither by +water and wind, yet retains its shape and grows, because its particles are +bound by an internal and organic force. + +Our woman's movement resembles strongly, in this matter, the gigantic +religious and intellectual movement which for centuries convulsed the life +of Europe; and had, as its ultimate outcome, the final emancipation of the +human intellect and the freedom of the human spirit. Looked back upon from +the vantage-point of the present, this past presents the appearance of one +vast, steady, persistent movement proceeding always in one ultimate +direction, as though guided by some controlling human intellect. But, to +the mass of human individuals taking part in it, it presented an appearance +far otherwise. It was fought out, now here, now there, by isolated +individuals and small groups, and often for what appeared small and almost +personal ends, having sometimes, superficially, little in common. Now it +was a Giordano Bruno, burnt in Rome in defence of abstract theory with +regard to the nature of the First Cause; then an Albigense hurled from his +rocks because he refused to part with the leaves of his old Bible; now a +Dutch peasant woman, walking serenely to the stake because she refused to +bow her head before two crossed rods; then a Servetus burnt by Protestant +Calvin at Geneva; or a Spinoza cut off from his tribe and people because he +could see nothing but God anywhere; and then it was an exiled Rousseau or +Voltaire, or a persecuted Bradlaugh; till, in our own day the last sounds +of the long fight are dying about us, as fading echoes, in the guise of a +few puerile attempts to enforce trivial disabilities on the ground of +abstract convictions. The vanguard of humanity has won its battle for +freedom of thought. + +But, to the men and women taking part in that mighty movement during the +long centuries of the past, probably nothing was quite clear, in the +majority of cases, but their own immediate move. Not the leaders--most +certainly not good old Martin Luther, even when he gave utterance to his +immortal "I can no otherwise" (the eternal justification of all reformers +and social innovators!), understood the whole breadth of the battlefield on +which they were engaged, or grasped with precision the issues which were +involved. The valiant Englishman, who, as the flames shot up about him, +cried to his companion in death, "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall by +God's grace this day light such a candle in England, as shall never be put +out!" undoubtedly believed that the candle lighted was the mere tallow +rushlight of a small sectarian freedom for England alone; nor perceived +that what he lighted was but one ray of the vast, universal aurora of +intellectual and spiritual liberty, whose light was ultimately to stream, +not only across England, but across the earth. Nevertheless, undoubtedly, +behind all these limited efforts, for what appeared, superficially, limited +causes, lay, in the hearts of the men and women concerned, through the +ages, a profound if vague consciousness of ends larger than they clearly +knew, to be subserved by their action; of a universal social duty and a +great necessity. + +That the Woman's Movement of our day has not taken its origin from any mere +process of theoretic argument; that it breaks out, now here and now there, +in forms divergent and at times superficially almost irreconcilable; that +the majority of those taking part in it are driven into action as the +result of the immediate pressure of the conditions of life, and are not +always able logically to state the nature of all causes which propel them, +or to paint clearly all results of their action; so far from removing it +from the category of the vast reorganising movements of humanity, places it +in a line with them, showing how vital, spontaneous, and wholly organic and +unartificial is its nature. + +The fact that, at one point, it manifests itself in a passionate, and at +times almost incoherent, cry for an accredited share in public and social +duties; while at another it makes itself felt as a determined endeavour +after self-culture; that in one land it embodies itself mainly in a +resolute endeavour to enlarge the sphere of remunerative labour for women; +while in another it manifests itself chiefly as an effort to reco-ordinate +the personal relation of the sexes; that in one individual it manifests +itself as a passionate and sometimes noisy struggle for liberty of personal +action; while in another it is being fought out silently in the depth of +the individual consciousness--that primal battle-ground, in which all +questions of reform and human advance must ultimately be fought and +decided;--all this diversity, and the fact that the average woman is +entirely concerned in labour in her own little field, shows, not the +weakness, but the strength of the movement; which, taken as a whole, is a +movement steady and persistent in one direction, the direction of increased +activity and culture, and towards the negation of all possibility of +parasitism in the human female. Slowly, and unconsciously, as the child is +shaped in the womb, this movement shapes itself in the bosom of our time, +taking its place beside those vast human developments, of which men, noting +their spontaneity and the co-ordination of their parts, have said, in the +phraseology of old days, "This thing is not of man, but of God." + +He who today looks at some great Gothic cathedral in its final form, seems +to be looking at that which might have been the incarnation of the dream of +some single soul of genius. But in truth, its origin was far otherwise. +Ages elapsed from the time the first rough stone was laid as a foundation +till the last spire and pinnacle were shaped, and the hand which laid the +foundation-stone was never the same as that which set the last stone upon +the coping. Generations often succeeded one another, labouring at +gargoyle, rose-window, and shaft, and died, leaving the work to others; the +master-builder who drew up the first rough outline passed away, and was +succeeded by others, and the details of the work as completed bore +sometimes but faint resemblance to the work as he devised it; no man fully +understood all that others had done or were doing, but each laboured in his +place; and the work as completed had unity; it expressed not the desire and +necessity of one mind, but of the human spirit of that age; and not less +essential to the existence of the building was the labour of the workman +who passed a life of devotion in carving gargoyles or shaping rose-windows, +than that of the greatest master who drew general outlines: perhaps it was +yet more heroic; for, for the master-builder, who, even if it were but +vaguely, had an image of what the work would be when the last stone was +laid and the last spire raised, it was easy to labour with devotion and +zeal, though well he might know that the placing of that last stone and the +raising of that last spire would not be his, and that the building in its +full beauty and strength he should never see; but for the journeyman +labourer who carried on his duties and month by month toiled at carving his +own little gargoyle or shaping the traceries in his own little oriel +window, without any complete vision, it was not so easy; nevertheless, it +was through the conscientious labours of such alone, through their heaps of +chipped and spoiled stones, which may have lain thick about them, that at +the last the pile was reared in its strength and beauty. + +For a Moses who could climb Pisgah, and, though it were through a mist of +bitter tears, could see stretching before him the land of the inheritance, +a land which his feet should never tread and whose fruit his hand should +never touch, it was yet, perhaps, not so hard to turn round and die; for, +as in a dream, he had seen the land: but for the thousands who could climb +no Pisgah, who were to leave their bones whitening in the desert, having +even from afar never seen the true outline of the land; those who, on that +long march, had not even borne the Ark nor struck the timbrel, but carried +only their small household vessels and possessions, for these it was +perhaps not so easy to lie down and perish in the desert, knowing only that +far ahead somewhere, lay a Land of Promise. Nevertheless, it was by the +slow and sometimes wavering march of such as these, that the land was +reached by the people at last. + +For her, whose insight enables her to see, through the distance, those +large beatitudes towards which the struggles and suffering of the women of +today may tend; who sees beyond the present, though in a future which she +knows she will never enter, an enlarged and strengthened womanhood bearing +forward with it a strengthened and expanded race, it is not so hard to +renounce and labour with unshaken purpose: but for those who have not that +view, and struggle on, animated at most by a vague consciousness that +somewhere ahead lies a large end, towards which their efforts tend; who +labour year after year at some poor little gargoyle of a Franchise Bill, or +the shaping of some rough little foundation-stone of reform in education, +or dress a stone (which perhaps never quite fits the spot it was intended +for, and has to be thrown aside!); or who carve away all their lives to +produce a corbel of some reform in sexual relations, in the end to find it +break under the chisel; who, out of many failures attain, perhaps, to no +success, or but to one, and that so small and set so much in the shade that +no eye will ever see it; for such as these, it is perhaps not so easy to +labour without growing weary. Nevertheless, it is through the labours of +these myriad toilers, each working in her own minute sphere, with her own +small outlook, and out of endless failures and miscarriages, that at last +the enwidened and beautified relations of woman to life must rise, if they +are ever to come. + +When a starfish lies on the ground at the bottom of a sloping rock it has +to climb, it seems to the onlooker as though there were nothing which could +stir the inert mass and no means for taking it to the top. Yet watch it. +Beneath its lower side, hidden from sight, are a million fine tentacles; +impulses of will from the central nerve radiate throughout the whole body, +and each tiny fibre, fine as a hair, slowly extends itself, and seizes on +the minute particle of rough rock nearest to it; now a small tentacle slips +its hold, and then it holds firmly, and then slowly and slowly the whole +inert mass rises to the top. + +It is often said of those who lead in this attempt at the readaption of +woman's relation to life, that they are "New Women"; and they are at times +spoken of as though they were a something portentous and unheard-of in the +order of human life. + +But, the truth is, we are not new. We who lead in this movement today are +of that old, old Teutonic womanhood, which twenty centuries ago ploughed +its march through European forests and morasses beside its male companion; +which marched with the Cimbri to Italy, and with the Franks across the +Rhine, with the Varagians into Russia, and the Alamani into Switzerland; +which peopled Scandinavia, and penetrated to Britain; whose priestesses had +their shrines in German forests, and gave out the oracle for peace or war. +We have in us the blood of a womanhood that was never bought and never +sold; that wore no veil, and had no foot bound; whose realised ideal of +marriage was sexual companionship and an equality in duty and labour; who +stood side by side with the males they loved in peace or war, and whose +children, when they had borne them, sucked manhood from their breasts, and +even through their foetal existence heard a brave heart beat above them. +We are women of a breed whose racial ideal was no Helen of Troy, passed +passively from male hand to male hand, as men pass gold or lead; but that +Brynhild whom Segurd found, clad in helm and byrne, the warrior maid, who +gave him counsel "the deepest that ever yet was given to living man," and +"wrought on him to the performing of great deeds;" who, when he died, +raised high the funeral pyre and lay down on it beside him, crying, "Nor +shall the door swing to at the heel of him as I go in beside him!" We are +of a race of women that of old knew no fear, and feared no death, and lived +great lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of us have fallen on +evil and degenerate times, there moves in us yet the throb of the old +blood. + +If it be today on no physical battlefield that we stand beside our men, and +on no march through no external forest or morass that we have to lead; it +is yet the old spirit which, undimmed by two thousand years, stirs within +us in deeper and subtler ways; it is yet the cry of the old, free Northern +woman which makes the world today. Though the battlefield be now for us +all, in the laboratory or the workshop, in the forum or the study, in the +assembly and in the mart and the political arena, with the pen and not the +sword, of the head and not the arm, we still stand side by side with the +men we love, "to dare with them in war and to suffer with them in peace," +as the Roman wrote of our old Northern womanhood. + +Those women, of whom the old writers tell us, who, barefooted and white +robed, led their Northern hosts on that long march to Italy, were animated +by the thought that they led their people to a land of warmer sunshine and +richer fruitage; we, today, believe we have caught sight of a land bathed +in a nobler than any material sunlight, with a fruitage richer than any +which the senses only can grasp: and behind us, we believe there follows a +longer train than any composed of our own race and people; the sound of the +tread we hear behind us is that of all earth's women, bearing within them +the entire race. The footpath, yet hardly perceptible, which we tread down +today, will, we believe, be life's broadest and straightest road, along +which the children of men will pass to a higher co-ordination and harmony. +The banner which we unfurl today is not new: it is the standard of the +old, free, monogamous, labouring woman, which, twenty hundred years ago, +floated over the forests of Europe. We shall bear it on, each generation +as it falls passing it into the hand of that which follows, till we plant +it so high that all nations of the world shall see it; till the women of +the humblest human races shall be gathered beneath its folds, and no child +enter life that was not born within its shade. + +We are not new! If you would understand us, go back two thousand years, +and study our descent; our breed is our explanation. We are the daughters +of our fathers as well as of our mothers. In our dreams we still hear the +clash of the shields of our forefathers as they struck them together before +battle and raised the shout of "Freedom!" In our dreams it is with us +still, and when we wake it breaks from our own lips! We are the daughters +of those men. + +But, it may be said, "Are there not women among you who would use the +shibboleth, of freedom and labour, merely as a means for opening a door to +a greater and more highly flavoured self-indulgence, to a more lucrative +and enjoyable parasitism? Are there not women who, under the guise of +'work,' are seeking only increased means of sensuous pleasure and self- +indulgence; to whom intellectual training and the opening to new fields of +labour side by side with man, mean merely new means of self-advertisement +and parasitic success?" We answer: There may be such, truly; among us-- +but not of us! This at least is true, that we, ourselves, are seldom +deceived by them; the sheep generally recognise the wolf however carefully +fitted the sheepskin under which he hides, though the onlookers may not; +and though not always be able to drive him from the flock! The outer world +may be misled; we, who stand shoulder to shoulder with them, know them; +they are not many; neither are they new. They are one of the oldest +survivals, and among the most primitive relics in the race. They are as +old as Loki among the gods, as Lucifer among the Sons of the Morning, as +the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as pain and dislocation in the web of +human life. + +Such women are as old as that first primitive woman who, when she went with +her fellows to gather wood for the common household, put grass in the +centre of the bundle that she might appear to carry as much as they, yet +carry nothing; she is as old as the first man who threw away his shield in +battle, and yet, when it was over, gathered with the victors to share the +spoils, as old as cowardice and lust in the human and animal world; only to +cease from being when, perhaps, an enlarged and expanded humanity shall +have cast the last slough of its primitive skin. + +Every army has its camp-followers, not among its accredited soldiers, but +who follow in its train, ready to attack and rifle the fallen on either +side. To lookers on, they may appear soldiers; but the soldier knows who +they are. At the Judean supper there was one Master, and to the onlooker +there may have seemed twelve apostles; in truth only twelve were of the +company, and one was not of it. There has always been this thirteenth +figure at every sacramental gathering, since the world began, wherever the +upholders of a great cause have broken spiritual bread; but it may be +questioned whether in any instance this thirteenth figure has been able to +destroy, or even vitally to retard, any great human movement. Judas could +hang his Master by a kiss; but he could not silence the voice which for a +thousand years rang out of that Judean grave. Again and again, in social, +political, and intellectual movements, the betrayer betrays;--and the cause +marches on over the body of the man. + +There are women, as there are men, whose political, social, intellectual, +or philanthropic labours are put on, as the harlot puts on paint, and for +the same purpose: but they can no more retard the progress of the great +bulk of vital and sincere womanhood, than the driftwood on the surface of a +mighty river can ultimately prevent its waters from reaching the sea. + + +Chapter IV. Woman and War. + +But it may also be said, "Granting fully that you are right, that, as +woman's old fields of labour slip from her, she must grasp the new, or must +become wholly dependent on her sexual function alone, all the other +elements of human nature in her becoming atrophied and arrested through +lack of exercise: and, granting that her evolution being arrested, the +evolution of the whole race will be also arrested in her person: granting +all this to the full, and allowing that the bulk of human labour tends to +become more and more intellectual and less and less purely mechanical, as +perfected machinery takes the place of crude human exertion; and that +therefore if woman is to be saved from degeneration and parasitism, and the +body of humanity from arrest, she must receive a training which will +cultivate all the intellectual and all the physical faculties with which +she is endowed, and be allowed freely to employ them; nevertheless, would +it not be possible, and perhaps be well, that a dividing line of some kind +should be drawn between the occupations of men and of women? Would it not, +for example, be possible that woman should retain agriculture, textile +manufacture, trade, domestic management, the education of youth, and +medicine, in addition to child-bearing, as her exclusive fields of toil; +while, to the male, should be left the study of abstract science, law and +war, and statecraft; as of old, man took war and the chase, and woman +absorbed the further labours of life? Why should there not be again a fair +and even division in the field of social labour?" + +Superficially, this suggestion appears rational, having at least this to +recommend it, that it appears to harmonise with the course of human +evolution in the past; but closely examined, it will, we think, be found to +have no practical or scientific basis, and to be out of harmony with the +conditions of modern life. In ancient and primitive societies, the mere +larger size and muscular strength of man, and woman's incessant physical +activity in child-bearing and suckling and rearing the young, made almost +inevitable a certain sexual division of labour in almost all countries, +save perhaps in ancient Egypt. (The division of labour between the sexes +in Ancient Egypt and other exceptional countries, is a matter of much +interest, which cannot here be entered on.) Woman naturally took the heavy +agricultural and domestic labours, which were yet more consistent with the +continual dependence of infant life on her own, than those of man in war +and the chase. There was nothing artificial in such a division; it threw +the heaviest burden of the most wearying and unexciting forms of social +labour on woman, but under it both sexes laboured in a manner essential to +the existence of society, and each transmitted to the other, through +inheritance, the fruit of its slowly expanding and always exerted powers; +and the race progressed. + +Individual women might sometimes, and even often, become the warrior chief +of a tribe; the King of Ashantee might train his terrible regiment of +females; and men might now and again plant and weave for their children: +but in the main, and in most societies, the division of labour was just, +natural, beneficial; and it was inevitable that such a division should take +place. Were today a band of civilised men, women, and infants thrown down +absolutely naked and defenceless in some desert, and cut off hopelessly +from all external civilised life, undoubtedly very much the old division of +labour would, at least for a time, reassert itself; men would look about +for stones and sticks with which to make weapons to repel wild beasts and +enemies, and would go a-hunting meat and fighting savage enemies and tend +the beasts when tamed: (The young captured animals would probably be tamed +and reared by the women.) women would suckle their children, cook the meat +men brought, build shelters, look for roots and if possible cultivate them; +there certainly would be no parasite in the society; the woman who refused +to labour for her offspring, and the man who refused to hunt or defend +society, would not be supported by their fellows, would soon be +extinguished by want. As wild beasts were extinguished and others tamed +and the materials for war improved, fewer men would be needed for hunting +and war; then they would remain at home and aid in building and planting; +many women would retire into the house to perfect domestic toil and +handicrafts, and on a small scale the common ancient evolution of society +would probably practically repeat itself. But for the present, we see no +such natural and spontaneous division of labour based on natural sexual +distinctions in the new fields of intellectual or delicately skilled manual +labour, which are taking the place of the old. + +It is possible, though at present there is nothing to give indication of +such a fact, and it seems highly improbable, that, in some subtle manner +now incomprehensible, there might tend to be a subtle correlation between +that condition of the brain and nervous system which accompanies ability in +the direction of certain modern forms of mental, social labour, and the +particular form of reproductive function possessed by an individual. It +may be that, inexplicable as it seems, there may ultimately be found to be +some connection between that condition of the brain and nervous system +which fits the individual for the study of the higher mathematics, let us +say, and the nature of their sex attributes. The mere fact that, of the +handful of women who, up to the present, have received training and been +allowed to devote themselves to abstract study, several have excelled in +the higher mathematics, proves of necessity no pre-eminent tendency on the +part of the female sex in the direction of mathematics, as compared to +labour in the fields of statesmanship, administration, or law; as into +these fields there has been practically no admittance for women. It is +sometimes stated, that as several women of genius in modern times have +sought to find expression for their creative powers in the art of fiction, +there must be some inherent connection in the human brain between the +ovarian sex function and the art of fiction. The fact is, that modern +fiction being merely a description of human life in any of its phases, and +being the only art that can be exercised without special training or +special appliances, and produced in the moments stolen from the +multifarious, brain-destroying occupations which fill the average woman's +life, they have been driven to find this outlet for their powers as the +only one presenting itself. How far otherwise might have been the +directions in which their genius would naturally have expressed itself can +be known only partially even to the women themselves; what the world has +lost by that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have +been its most natural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one +can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber +the ground, we see often a pathetic figure, when we recognise that beneath +that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie buried a sound +legislator, an able architect, an original scientific investigator, or a +good judge. Scientifically speaking, it is as unproven that there is any +organic relation between the brain of the female and the production of art +in the form of fiction, as that there is an organic relation between the +hand of woman and a typewriting machine. Both the creative writer and the +typist, in their respective spheres, are merely finding outlets for their +powers in the direction of least resistance. The tendency of women at the +present day to undertake certain forms of labour, proves only that in the +crabbed, walled-in, and bound conditions surrounding woman at the present +day, these are the lines along which action is most possible to her. + +It may possibly be that in future ages, when the male and female forms have +been placed in like intellectual conditions, with like stimuli, like +training, and like rewards, that some aptitudes may be found running +parallel with the line of sex function when humanity is viewed as a whole. +It may possibly be that, when the historian of the future looks back over +the history of the intellectually freed and active sexes for countless +generations, that a decided preference of the female intellect for +mathematics, engineering, or statecraft may be made clear; and that a like +marked inclination in the male to excel in acting, music, or astronomy may +by careful and large comparison be shown. But, for the present, we have no +adequate scientific data from which to draw any conclusion, and any attempt +to divide the occupations in which male and female intellects and wills +should be employed, must be to attempt a purely artificial and arbitrary +division: a division not more rational and scientific than an attempt to +determine by the colour of his eyes and the shape and strength of his legs, +whether a lad should be an astronomer or an engraver. Those physical +differences among mankind which divide races and nations--not merely those +differences, enormously greater as they are generally, than any physical +differences between male and female of the same race, which divide the Jew +and the Swede, the Japanese and the Englishman, but even those subtle +physical differences which divide closely allied races such as the English +and German--often appear to be allied with certain subtle differences in +intellectual aptitudes. Yet even with regard to these differences, it is +almost impossible to determine scientifically in how far they are the +result of national traditions, environment, and education, and in how far +the result of real differences in organic conformation. (In thinking of +physical sex differences, the civilised man of modern times has always to +guard himself against being unconsciously misled by the very exaggerated +external sex differences which our unnatural method of sex clothing and +dressing the hair produces. The unclothed and natural human male and +female bodies are not more divided from each other than those of the lion +and lioness. Our remote Saxon ancestors, with their great, almost naked, +white bodies and flowing hair worn long by both sexes, were but little +distinguished from each other; while among their modern descendants the +short hair, darkly clothed, manifestly two-legged male differs absolutely +from the usually long-haired, colour bedizened, much beskirted female. +Were the structural differences between male and female really one half as +marked as the artificial visual differences, they would be greater than +those dividing, not merely any species of man from another, but as great as +those which divide orders in the animal world. Only a mind exceedingly +alert and analytical can fail ultimately to be misled by habitual visual +misrepresentation. There is not, probably, one man or woman in twenty +thousand who is not powerfully influenced in modern life in their +conception of the differences, physical and intellectual, dividing the +human male and female, by the grotesque exaggerations of modern attire and +artificial manners.) + +No study of the mere physical differences between individuals of different +races would have enabled us to arrive at any knowledge of their mental +aptitude; nor does the fact that certain individuals of a given human +variety have certain aptitudes form a rational ground for compelling all +individuals of that variety to undertake a certain form of labour. + +No analysis, however subtle, of the physical conformation of the Jew could +have suggested a priori, and still less could have proved, apart from ages +of practical experience, that, running parallel with any physical +characteristics which may distinguish him from his fellows, was an innate +and unique intellectual gift in the direction of religion. The fact that, +during three thousand years, from Moses to Isaiah, through Jesus and Paul +on to Spinoza, the Jewish race has produced men who have given half the +world its religious faith and impetus, proves that, somewhere and somehow, +whether connected organically with that physical organisation that marks +the Jew, or as the result of his traditions and training, there does go +this gift in the matter of religion. Yet, on the other hand, we find +millions of Jews who are totally and markedly deficient in it, and to base +any practical legislation for the individual even on this proven +intellectual aptitude of the race as a whole would be manifestly as +ridiculous as abortive. Yet more markedly, with the German--no +consideration of his physical peculiarities, though it proceeded to the +subtlest analysis of nerve, bone, and muscle, could in the present stage of +our knowledge have proved to us what generations of experience appear to +have proved, that, with that organisation which constitutes the German, +goes an unique aptitude for music. There is always the possibility of +mistaking the result of training and external circumstance for inherent +tendency, but when we consider the passion for music which the German has +shown, and when we consider that the greatest musicians the world has seen, +from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to Wagner, have been of that race, it +appears highly probable that such a correlation between the German +organisation and the intellectual gift of music does exist. Similar +intellectual peculiarities seem to be connoted by the external differences +which mark off other races from each other. Nevertheless, were persons of +all of these nationalities gathered in one colony, any attempt to legislate +for their restriction to certain forms of intellectual labour on the ground +of their apparently proved national aptitudes or disabilities, would be +regarded as insane. To insist that all Jews, and none but Jews, should +lead and instruct in religious matters; that all Englishmen, and none but +Englishmen, should engage in trade; that each German should make his living +by music, and none but a German allowed to practise it, would drive to +despair the unfortunate individual Englishman, whose most marked deficiency +might be in the direction of finance and bartering trade power; the Jew, +whose religious instincts might be entirely rudimentary; or the German, who +could not distinguish one note from another; and the society as a whole +would be an irremediable loser, in one of the heaviest of all forms of +social loss--the loss of the full use of the highest capacities of all its +members. + +It may be that with sexes as with races, the subtlest physical difference +between them may have their fine mental correlatives; but no abstract +consideration of the human body in relation to its functions of sex can, in +the present state of our knowledge, show us what intellectual capacities +tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing in the present or past +condition of male and female give us more than the very faintest possible +indication of the relation of their intellectual aptitudes and their sexual +functions. And even were it proved by centuries of experiment that with +the possession of the uterine function of sex tends to go exceptional +intellectual capacity in the direction of mathematics rather than natural +history, or an inclination for statecraft rather than for mechanical +invention; were it proved that, generally speaking and as a whole, out of +twenty thousand women devoting themselves to law and twenty thousand to +medicine, they tended to achieve relatively more in the field of law than +of medicine, there would yet be no possible healthy or rational ground for +restricting the activities of the individual female to that line in which +the average female appeared rather more frequently to excel. (Minds not +keenly analytical are always apt to mistake mere correlation of appearance +with causative sequence. We have heard it gravely asserted that between +potatoes, pigs, mud cabins and Irishmen there was an organic connection: +but we who have lived in Colonies, know that within two generations the +pure-bred descendant of the mud cabiner becomes often the successful +politician, wealthy financier, or great judge; and shows no more +predilection for potatoes, pigs, and mud cabins than men of any other +race.) + +That even one individual in a society should be debarred from undertaking +that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes an unnecessary +deficit in the general social assets. That one male Froebel should be +prohibited or hampered in his labour as an educator of infancy, on the +ground that infantile instruction was the field of the female; that one +female with gifts in the direction of state administration, should be +compelled to instruct an infants' school, perhaps without the slightest +gift for so doing, is a running to waste of social life-blood. + +Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, is +essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be determined. +And our demand today is that natural conditions, inexorably, but +beneficently, may determine the labours of each individual, and not +artificial restrictions. + +As there is no need to legislate that Hindus, being generally supposed to +have a natural incapacity for field sports, shall not betake themselves to +them--for, if they have no capacity, they will fail; and, as in spite of +the Hindus' supposed general incapacity for sport, it is possible for an +individual Hindu to become the noted batsman of his age; so, also, there is +no need to legislate that women should be restricted in her choice of +fields of labour; for the organic incapacity of the individual, if it +exist, will legislate far more powerfully than any artificial, legal, or +social obstruction can do; and it may be that the one individual in ten +thousand who selects a field not generally sought by his fellows will +enrich humanity by the result of an especial genius. Allowing all to start +from the one point in the world of intellectual culture and labour, with +our ancient Mother Nature sitting as umpire, distributing the prizes and +scratching from the lists the incompetent, is all we demand, but we demand +it determinedly. Throw the puppy into the water: if it swims, well; if it +sinks, well; but do not tie a rope round its throat and weight it with a +brick, and then assert its incapacity to keep afloat. + +For the present our cry is, "We take all labour for our province!" + +From the judge's seat to the legislator's chair; from the statesman's +closet to the merchant's office; from the chemist's laboratory to the +astronomer's tower, there is no post or form of toil for which it is not +our intention to attempt to fit ourselves; and there is no closed door we +do not intend to force open; and there is no fruit in the garden of +knowledge it is not our determination to eat. Acting in us, and through +us, nature we know will mercilessly expose to us our deficiencies in the +field of human toil, and reveal to us our powers. And, for today, we take +all labour for our province! + +But, it may then be said: "What of war, that struggle of the human +creature to attain its ends by physical force and at the price of the life +of others: will you take part in that also?" We reply: Yes; more +particularly in that field we intend to play our part. We have always +borne part of the weight of war, and the major part. It is not merely that +in primitive times we suffered from the destruction of the fields we tilled +and the houses we built; or that in later times as domestic labourers and +producers, though unwaged, we, in taxes and material loss and additional +labour, paid as much as our males towards the cost of war; nor is it that +in a comparatively insignificant manner, as nurses of the wounded in modern +times, or now and again as warrior chieftainesses and leaders in primitive +and other societies, we have borne our part; nor is it even because the +spirit of resolution in its women, and their willingness to endure, has in +all ages again and again largely determined the fate of a race that goes to +war, that we demand our controlling right where war is concerned. Our +relation to war is far more intimate, personal, and indissoluble than this. +Men have made boomerangs, bows, swords, or guns with which to destroy one +another; we have made the men who destroyed and were destroyed! We have in +all ages produced, at an enormous cost, the primal munition of war, without +which no other would exist. There is no battlefield on earth, nor ever has +been, howsoever covered with slain, which is has not cost the women of the +race more in actual bloodshed and anguish to supply, then it has cost the +men who lie there. We pay the first cost on all human life. + +In supplying the men for the carnage of a battlefield, women have not +merely lost actually more blood, and gone through a more acute anguish and +weariness, in the long months of bearing and in the final agony of +childbirth, than has been experienced by the men who cover it; but, in the +long months and years of rearing that follow, the women of the race go +through a long, patiently endured strain which no knapsacked soldier on his +longest march has ever more than equalled; while, even in the matter of +death, in all civilised societies, the probability that the average woman +will die in childbirth is immeasurably greater than the probability that +the average male will die in battle. + +There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have borne children, or be merely +potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a battlefield covered +with slain, but the thought would rise in her, "So many mothers' sons! So +many bodies brought into the world to lie there! So many months of +weariness and pain while bones and muscles were shaped within; so many +hours of anguish and struggle that breath might be; so many baby mouths +drawing life at woman's breasts;--all this, that men might lie with glazed +eyeballs, and swollen bodies, and fixed, blue, unclosed mouths, and great +limbs tossed--this, that an acre of ground might be manured with human +flesh, that next year's grass or poppies or karoo bushes may spring up +greener and redder, where they have lain, or that the sand of a plain may +have a glint of white bones!" And we cry, "Without an inexorable cause, +this should not be!" No woman who is a woman says of a human body, "It is +nothing!" + +On that day, when the woman takes her place beside the man in the +governance and arrangement of external affairs of her race will also be +that day that heralds the death of war as a means of arranging human +differences. No tinsel of trumpets and flags will ultimately seduce women +into the insanity of recklessly destroying life, or gild the wilful taking +of life with any other name than that of murder, whether it be the +slaughter of the million or of one by one. And this will be, not because +with the sexual function of maternity necessarily goes in the human +creature a deeper moral insight, or a loftier type of social instinct than +that which accompanies the paternal. Men have in all ages led as nobly as +women in many paths of heroic virtue, and toward the higher social +sympathies; in certain ages, being freer and more widely cultured, they +have led further and better. The fact that woman has no inherent all-round +moral superiority over her male companion, or naturally on all points any +higher social instinct, is perhaps most clearly exemplified by one curious +very small fact: the two terms signifying intimate human relationships +which in almost all human languages bear the most sinister and antisocial +significance are both terms which have as their root the term "mother," and +denote feminine relationships--the words "mother-in-law" and step-mother." + +In general humanity, in the sense of social solidarity, and in magnanimity, +the male has continually proved himself at least the equal of the female. + +Nor will women shrink from war because they lack courage. Earth's women of +every generation have faced suffering and death with an equanimity that no +soldier on a battlefield has ever surpassed and few have equalled; and +where war has been to preserve life, or land, or freedom, unparasitised and +labouring women have in all ages known how to bear an active part, and die. + +Nor will woman's influence militate against war because in the future woman +will not be able physically to bear her part in it. The smaller size of +her muscle, which would severely have disadvantaged her when war was +conducted with a battle-axe or sword and hand to hand, would now little or +at all affect her. If intent on training for war, she might acquire the +skill for guiding a Maxim or shooting down a foe with a Lee-Metford at four +thousand yards as ably as any male; and undoubtedly, it has not been only +the peasant girl of France, who has carried latent and hid within her +person the gifts that make the supreme general. If our European nations +should continue in their present semi-civilised condition, which makes war +possible, for a few generations longer, it is highly probable that as +financiers, as managers of the commissariat department, as inspectors of +provisions and clothing for the army, women will play a very leading part; +and that the nation which is the first to employ its women so may be placed +at a vast advantage over its fellows in time of war. It is not because of +woman's cowardice, incapacity, nor, above all, because of her general +superior virtue, that she will end war when her voice is fully, finally, +and clearly heard in the governance of states--it is because, on this one +point, and on this point almost alone, the knowledge of woman, simply as +woman, is superior to that of man; she knows the history of human flesh; +she knows its cost; he does not. (It is noteworthy that even Catharine of +Russia, a ruler and statesman of a virile and uncompromising type, and not +usually troubled with moral scruples, yet refused with indignation the +offer of Frederick of Prussia to pay her heavily for a small number of +Russian recruits in an age when the hiring out of soldiers was common among +the sovereigns of Europe.) + +In a besieged city, it might well happen that men in the streets might +seize upon statues and marble carvings from public buildings and galleries +and hurl them in to stop the breaches made in their ramparts by the enemy, +unconsideringly and merely because they came first to hand, not valuing +them more than had they been paving-stones. But one man could not do this- +-the sculptor! He, who, though there might be no work of his own chisel +among them, yet knew what each of these works of art had cost, knew by +experience the long years of struggle and study and the infinitude of toil +which had gone to the shaping of even one limb, to the carving of even one +perfected outline, he could never so use them without thought or care. +Instinctively he would seek to throw in household goods, even gold and +silver, all the city held, before he sacrificed its works of art! + +Men's bodies are our woman's works of art. Given to us power of control, +we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human +relationships made by international ambitions and greeds. The thought +would never come to us as woman, "Cast in men's bodies; settle the thing +so!" Arbitration and compensation would as naturally occur to her as +cheaper and simpler methods of bridging the gaps in national relationships, +as to the sculptor it would occur to throw in anything rather than +statuary, though he might be driven to that at last! + +This is one of those phases of human life, not very numerous, but very +important, towards which the man as man, and the woman as woman, on the +mere ground of their different sexual function with regard to reproduction, +stand, and must stand, at a somewhat differing angle. The physical +creation of human life, which, in as far as the male is concerned, consists +in a few moments of physical pleasure; to the female must always signify +months of pressure and physical endurance, crowned with danger to life. To +the male, the giving of life is a laugh; to the female, blood, anguish, and +sometimes death. Here we touch one of the few yet important differences +between man and woman as such. + +The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean, to +the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be borne within +them for months, given birth to in anguish, fed from their breasts and +reared with toil, if the numbers of the tribe and the strength of the +nation are to be maintained. In nations continually at war, incessant and +unbroken child-bearing is by war imposed on all women if the state is to +survive; and whenever war occurs, if numbers are to be maintained, there +must be an increased child-bearing and rearing. This throws upon woman as +woman a war tax, compared with which all that the male expends in military +preparations is comparatively light. + +The relations of the female towards the production of human life influences +undoubtedly even her relation towards animal and all life. "It is a fine +day, let us go out and kill something!" cries the typical male of certain +races, instinctively. "There is a living thing, it will die if it is not +cared for," says the average woman, almost equally instinctively. It is +true, that the woman will sacrifice as mercilessly, as cruelly, the life of +a hated rival or an enemy, as any male; but she always knows what she is +doing, and the value of the life she takes! There is no light-hearted, +careless enjoyment in the sacrifice of life to the normal woman; her +instinct, instructed by practical experience, steps in to prevent it. She +always knows what life costs; and that it is more easy to destroy than +create it. + +It is also true, that, from the loftiest standpoint, the condemnation of +war which has arisen in the advancing human spirit, is in no sense related +to any particular form of sex function. The man and the woman alike, who +with Isaiah on the hills of Palestine, or the Indian Buddha under his bo- +tree, have seen the essential unity of all sentient life; and who therefore +see in war but a symptom of that crude disco-ordination of life on earth, +not yet at one with itself, which affects humanity in these early stages of +its growth: and who are compelled to regard as the ultimate goal of the +race, though yet perhaps far distant across the ridges of innumerable +coming ages, that harmony between all forms of conscious life, +metaphorically prefigured by the ancient Hebrew, when he cried, "The wolf +shall dwell with the lamb; and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and +the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child +shall lead them!"--to that individual, whether man or woman, who has +reached this standpoint, there is no need for enlightenment from the +instincts of the child-bearers of society as such; their condemnation of +war, rising not so much from the fact that it is a wasteful destruction of +human flesh, as that it is an indication of the non-existence of that co- +ordination, the harmony which is summed up in the cry, "My little children, +love one another." + +But for the vast bulk of humanity, probably for generations to come, the +instinctive antagonism of the human child-bearer to reckless destruction of +that which she has at so much cost produced, will be necessary to educate +the race to any clear conception of the bestiality and insanity of war. + +War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to +the female an equal share in the control and governance of modern national +life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its extinction will not +be delayed much longer. + +It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men's bodies, +who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour and ardour +of battle, but singly, and alone, with a three-in-the-morning courage, shed +our blood and face death that the battlefield may have its food, a food +more precious to us than our heart's blood; it is we especially, who in the +domain of war, have our word to say, a word no man can say for us. It is +our intention to enter into the domain of war and to labour there till in +the course of generations we have extinguished it. + +If today we claim all labour for our province, yet more especially do we +claim those fields in which the difference in the reproductive function +between man and woman may place male and female at a slightly different +angle with regard to certain phases of human life. + + +Chapter V. Sex Differences. + +If we examine the physical phenomenon of sex as it manifests itself in the +human creature, we find, in the first stages of the individual's existence, +no difference discernible, by any means we have at present at our command, +between those germs which are ultimately to become male or female. Later, +in the foetal life, at birth, and through infancy though the organs of sex +serve to distinguish the male from the female, there is in the general +structure and working of the organism little or nothing to divide the +sexes. + +Even when puberty is reached, with its enormous development of sexual and +reproductive activity modifying those parts of the organism with which it +is concerned, and producing certain secondary sexual characteristics, there +yet remains the major extent of the human body and of physical function +little, or not at all, affected by sex modification. The eye, the ear, the +sense of touch, the general organs of nutrition and respiration and +volition are in the main identical, and often differ far more in persons of +the same sex than in those of opposite sexes; and even on the dissecting- +table the tissues of the male and female are often wholly +indistinguishable. + +It is when we consider the reproductive organs themselves and their forms +of activity, and such parts of the organism modified directly in relation +to them, that a real and important difference is found to exist, radical +though absolutely complemental. It is exactly as we approach the +reproductive functions that the male and female bodies differ; exactly as +we recede from them that they become more and more similar, and even +absolutely identical. Taking the eye, perhaps the most highly developed, +complex organ in the body, and, if of an organ the term may be allowed, the +most intellectual organ of sense, we find it remains the same in male and +female in structure, in appearance, and in function throughout life; while +the breast, closely connected with reproduction, though absolutely +identical in both forms in infancy, assumes a widely different organisation +when reproductive activity is actually concerned. + +When we turn to the psychic phase of human life an exactly analogous +phenomenon presents itself. The intelligence, emotions, and desires of the +human infant at birth differ not at all perceptibly, as its sex may be male +or female; and such psychic differences as appear to exist in later +childhood are undoubtedly very largely the result of artificial training, +forcing on the appearance of psychic sexual divergencies long before they +would tend spontaneously to appear; as where sports and occupations are +interdicted to young children on the ground of their supposed sexual +unfitness; as when an infant female is forcibly prevented from climbing or +shouting, and the infant male from amusing himself with needle and thread +or dolls. Even in the fully adult human, and in spite of differences of +training, the psychic activities over a large extent of life appear to be +absolutely identical. The male and female brains acquire languages, solve +mathematical problems, and master scientific detail in a manner wholly +indistinguishable: as illustrated by the fact that in modern universities +the papers sent in by male and female candidates are as a rule absolutely +identical in type. Placed in like external conditions, their tastes and +emotions, over a vast part of the surface of life, are identical; and, in +an immense number of those cases where psychic sex differences appear to +exist, subject to rigid analysis they are found to be purely artificial +creations, for, when other races or classes are studied, they are found +non-existent as sexual characteristics; as when the female is supposed by +ignorant persons in modern European societies to have an inherent love for +bright colours and ornaments, not shared by the male; while experience of +other societies and past social conditions prove that it is as often the +male who has been even more desirous of attiring himself in bright raiment +and adorning himself with brilliant jewels; or as when, among certain +tribes of savages, the use of tobacco is supposed to be a peculiarly female +prerogative, while, in some modern societies, it is supposed to have some +relation to masculinity. (The savage male of today when attired in his +paint, feathers, cats' tails and necklaces is an immeasurably more +ornamented and imposing figure than his female, even when fully attired for +a dance in beads and bangles: the Oriental male has sometimes scarcely +been able to walk under the weight of his ornaments; and the males of +Europe a couple of centuries ago, with their powdered wigs, lace ruffles +and cuffs, paste buckles, feathered cocked hats, and patches were quite as +ridiculous in their excess of adornment as the complementary females of +their own day, or the most parasitic females of this. Both in the class +and the individual, whether male or female, an intense love of dress and +meretricious external adornment is almost invariably the concomitant and +outcome of parasitism. Were the parasite female class in our own societies +today to pass away, French fashions with their easeless and grotesque +variations (shaped not for use or beauty, but the attracting of attention) +would die out. And the extent to which any woman today, not herself +belonging to the parasite class and still labouring, attempts to follow +afar off the fashions of the parasite, may be taken generally as an almost +certain indication of the ease with which she would accept parasitism were +its conditions offered her. The tendency of the cultured and +intellectually labouring woman of today to adopt a more rational type of +attire, less shaped to attract attention to the individual than to confer +comfort and abstain from impeding activity, is often spoken of as an +attempt on the part of woman slavishly to imitate man. What is really +taking place is, that like causes are producing like effects on human +creatures with common characteristics.) + +But there remain certain psychic differences in attitude, on the part of +male and female as such, which are inherent and not artificial: and, in +the psychic human world, it is exactly as we approach the sphere of sexual +and reproductive activity, with those emotions and instincts connected +directly with sex and the reproduction of the race, that a difference does +appear. + +In the animal world all forms of psychic variations are found allying +themselves now with the male sex form, and then with the female. In the +insect and fish worlds, where the female forms are generally larger and +stronger than the male, the female is generally more pugnacious and +predatory than the male. Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form +is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem very +small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly monogamous, +the affection of the female for the male is so great that she is said never +to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over and care for the young +with extreme solicitude. The ostrich male form, though perhaps larger than +the female, shares with her the labour of hatching the eggs, relieving the +hen of her duty at a fixed hour daily: and his care for the young when +hatched is as tender as hers. Among song-birds, in which the male and +female forms are so alike as sometimes to be indistinguishable, and which +are also monogamous, the male and female forms not only exhibit the same +passionate affection for each other (in the case of the South African cock- +o-veet, they have one answering love-song between them; the male sounding +two or three notes and the female completing it with two or three more), +but they build the nest together and rear the young with an equal devotion. +In the case of the little kapok bird of the Cape, a beautiful, white, +fluffy round nest is made by both out of the white down of a certain plant, +and immediately below the entrance to the cavity in which the little female +sits on the eggs is a small shelf or basket, in which the tiny male sits to +watch over and guard them. It is among certain orders of birds that sex +manifestations appear to assume their most harmonious and poetical forms on +earth. Among gallinaceous birds, on the other hand, where the cock is much +larger and more pugnacious than the female, and which are polygamous, the +cock does not court the female by song, but seizes her by force, and shows +little or no interest in his offspring, neither sharing in the brooding nor +feeding the young; and even at times seizing any tempting morsel which the +young or the hen may have discovered. + +Among mammals the male form tends to be slightly larger than the female, +though not always (the female whale, for instance, being larger than the +male); the male also tends to be more pugnacious and less careful of the +young; though to this rule also there are exceptions. In the case of the +South African mierkat, for instance, the female is generally more combative +and more difficult to tame than the male; and it is the males who from the +moment of birth watch over the young with the most passionate and tender +solicitude, keeping them warm under their persons, carrying them to places +of safety in their mouths, and feeding them till full grown; and this they +do not only for their own young, but to any young who may be brought in +contact with them. We have known a male mierkat so assiduous in feeding +young that were quite unrelated to himself, taking to them every morsel of +food given him, that we have been compelled to shut him up in a room alone +when feeding him, to prevent his starving himself to death: the male +mierkat thus exhibiting exactly those psychic qualities which are generally +regarded as peculiarly feminine; the females, on the other hand, being far +more pugnacious towards each other than are the males. + +Among mammals generally, except the tendency to greater pugnacity shown by +the male towards other males, and the greater solicitude for the young +shown generally by the female form, but not always; the psychic differences +between the two sex forms are not great. Between the male and female +pointer as puppies, there is as little difference in mental activity as in +physical; and even when adult, on the hunting ground, that great non-sexual +field in which their highest mental and physical activities are displayed, +there is little or nothing which distinguishes materially between the male +and female; in method, manner, and quickness they are alike; in devotion to +man, they are psychically identical. (It is often said the female dog is +more intelligent than the male; but I am almost inclined to doubt this, +after long and close study of both forms.) It is at the moment when the +reproductive element comes fully into play that similarity and identity +cease. In the intensity of initial sex instinct they are alike; the female +will leap from windows, climb walls, and almost endanger her life to reach +the male who waits for her, as readily as he will to gain her. It is when +the bitch lies with her six young drawing life from her breast, and gazing +with wistful and anguished solicitude at every hand stretched out to touch +them, a world of emotion concentrated on the sightless creatures, and a +whole body of new mental aptitudes brought into play in caring for them, it +is then that between her and the male who begot them, but cares nothing for +them, there does rise a psychic difference that is real and wide. Alike in +the sports of puppydom and the non-sexual activities of adult age; alike in +the possession of the initial sexual instinct which draws the sex to the +sex, the moment active sexual reproduction is concerned, there is opened to +the female a certain world of sensations and experiences, from which her +male companion is for ever excluded. + +So also is our human world: alike in the sports, and joys, and sorrows of +infancy; alike in the non-sexual labours of life; alike even in the +possession of that initial instinct which draws sex to sex, and which, +differing slightly in its forms of manifestation is of corresponding +intensity in both; the moment actual reproduction begins to take place, the +man and the woman enter spheres of sensation, perception, emotion, desire, +and knowledge which are not, and cannot be, absolutely identical. Between +the man who, in an instant of light-hearted enjoyment, begets the infant +(who may even beget it in a state of half-drunken unconsciousness, and may +easily know nothing of its existence for months or years after it is born, +or never at all; and who under no circumstances can have any direct +sensational knowledge of its relation to himself) and the woman who bears +it continuously for months within her body, and who gives birth to it in +pain, and who, if it is to live, is compelled, or was in primitive times, +to nourish it for months from the blood of her own being--between these, +there exists of necessity, towards a limited but all-important body of +human interests and phenomena, a certain distinct psychic attitude. At +this one point, the two great halves of humanity stand confronting certain +great elements in human existence, from angles that are not identical. +From the moment the universal initial attraction of sex to sex becomes +incarnate in the first concrete sexual act till the developed offspring +attains maturity, no step in the reproductive journey, or in their relation +to their offspring, has been quite identical for the man and the woman. +And this divergence of experiences in human relations must react on their +attitude towards that particular body of human concerns which directly is +connected with the sexual reproduction of the race; and, it is exactly in +these fields of human activity, where sex as sex is concerned, that woman +as woman has a part to play which she cannot resign into the hands of +others. + +It may be truly said that in the laboratory, the designing-room, the +factory, the mart, the mathematician's study, and in all fields of purely +abstract or impersonal labour, while the entrance of woman would add to the +net result of human labour in those fields, and though a grave injustice is +done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps the only field she is +fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman has probably little or nothing +to contribute in those fields that is radically distinct from that which +man might supply; there would be a difference in quantity but probably none +in kind, in the work done for the race. + +But in those spheres of social activity, dealing especially with certain +relations between human creatures because of their diverse if complementary +relation to the production of human life, the sexes as sexes have often +each a part to play which the other cannot play for them; have each a +knowledge gained from phases of human experience, which the other cannot +supply; here woman as woman has something radically distinct to contribute +to the sum-total of human knowledge, and her activity is of importance, not +merely individually, but collectively, and as a class. + +That demand, which today in all democratic self-governing countries is +being made by women, to be accorded their share in the electoral, and +ultimately in the legislative and executive duties of government, is based +on two grounds: the wider, and more important, that they find nothing in +the nature of their sex-function which exonerates them, as human beings, +from their obligation to take part in the labours of guidance and +government in their state: the narrower, but yet important ground, that, +in as far as in one direction, i.e., in the special form of their sex +function takes, they do differ from the male, they, in so far, form a class +and are bound to represent the interests of, and to give the state the +benefit of, the insight of their class, in certain directions. + +Those persons who imagine that the balance of great political parties in +almost any society would be seriously changed by the admission of its women +in public functions are undoubtedly wholly wrong. The fundamental division +of humans into those inclined to hold by the past and defend whatever is, +and those hopeful of the future and inclined to introduce change, would +probably be found to exist in much the same proportion were the males or +the females of any given society compared: and the males and females of +each class will in the main share the faults, the virtues, and the +prejudices of their class. The individuals may lose by being excluded on +the ground of sex from a share of public labour, and by being robbed of a +portion of their lawful individual weight in their own society; and the +society as a whole may lose by having a smaller number to select its chosen +labourers from; yet, undoubtedly, on the mass of social, political, and +international questions, the conclusions arrived at by one sex would be +exactly those arrived at by the other. + +Were a body of humans elected to adjudicate upon Greek accents, or to pass +a decision on the relative fineness of woollens and linens, the form of sex +of the persons composing it would probably have no bearing on the result; +there is no rational ground for supposing that, on a question of Greek +accents or the thickness of cloths, equally instructed males and females +would differ. Here sex plays no part. The experience and instructedness +of the individuals would tell: their sexual attributes would be +indifferent. + +But there are points, comparatively small, even very small, in number, yet +of vital importance to human life, in which sex does play a part. + +It is not a matter of indifference whether the body called to adjudicate +upon the questions, whether the temporary sale of the female body for +sexual purposes shall or shall not be a form of traffic encouraged and +recognised by the state; or whether one law shall exist for the licentious +human female and another for the licentious human male; whether the claim +of the female to the offspring she bears shall or shall not equal that of +the male who begets it; whether an act of infidelity on the part of the +male shall or shall not terminate the contract which binds his female +companion to him, as completely as an act of infidelity on her part would +terminate her claim on him; it is not a matter of indifference whether a +body elected to adjudicate on such points as these consists of males +solely, or females solely, or of both combined. As it consists of one, or +the other, or of both, so not only will the answers vary, but, in some +cases, will they be completely diverse. Here we come into that very +narrow, but important, region, where sex as sex manifestly plays its part; +where the male as male and the female as female have each their body of +perceptions and experiences, which they do not hold in common; here one sex +cannot adequately represent the other. It is here that each sexual part +has something radically distinct to contribute to the wisdom of the race. + +We, today, take all labour for our province! We seek to enter the non- +sexual fields of intellectual or physical toil, because we are unable to +see today, with regard to them, any dividing wall raised by sex which +excludes us from them. We are yet equally determined to enter those in +which sex difference does play its part, because it is here that woman, the +bearer of the race, must stand side by side with man, the begetter; if a +completed human wisdom, an insight that misses no aspect of human life, and +an activity that is in harmony with the entire knowledge and the entire +instinct of the entire human race, is to exist. It is here that the man +cannot act for the woman nor the woman for the man; but both must interact. +It is here that each sexual half of the race, so closely and +indistinguishably blended elsewhere, has its own distinct contribution to +make to the sum total of human knowledge and human wisdom. Neither is the +woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, the completed human +intelligence. + +Therefore;--We claim, today, all labour for our province! Those large +fields in which it would appear sex plays no part, and equally those +smaller in which it plays a part. + + +Chapter VI. Certain Objections. + +It has been stated sometimes, though more often implicitly than in any +direct or logical form, (this statement being one it is not easy to make +definitely without its reducing itself to nullity!) that woman should seek +no fields of labour in the new world of social conditions that is arising +about us, as she has still her function as child-bearer: a labour which, +by her own showing, is arduous and dangerous, though she may love it as a +soldier loves his battlefield; and that woman should perform her sex +functions only, allowing man or the state to support her, even when she is +only potentially a child-bearer and bears no children. (Such a scheme, as +has before been stated, was actually put forward by a literary man in +England some years ago: but he had the sense to state that it should apply +only to women of the upper classes, the mass of labouring women, who form +the vast bulk of the English women of the present day, being left to their +ill-paid drudgery and their child-bearing as well! + +There is some difficulty in replying to a theorist so wholly delusive. Not +only is he to be met by all the arguments against parasitism of class or +race; but, at the present day, when probably much more than half the +world's most laborious and ill-paid labour is still performed by women, +from tea pickers and cocoa tenders in India and the islands, to the +washerwomen, cooks, and drudging labouring men's wives, who in addition to +the sternest and most unending toil, throw in their child-bearing as a +little addition; and when, in some civilised countries women exceed the +males in numbers by one million, so that there would still be one million +females for whom there was no legitimate sexual outlet, though each male in +the nation supported a female, it is somewhat difficult to reply with +gravity to the assertion, "Let Woman be content to be the 'Divine Child- +bearer,' and ask no more." + +Were it worth replying gravely to so idle a theorist, we might answer:-- +Through all the ages of the past, when, with heavy womb and hard labour- +worn hands, we physically toiled beside man, bearing up by the labour of +our bodies the world about us, it was never suggested to us, "You, the +child-bearers of the race, have in that one function a labour that equals +all others combined; therefore, toil no more in other directions, we pray +of you; neither plant, nor build, nor bend over the grindstone; nor far +into the night, while we sleep, sit weaving the clothing we and our +children are to wear! Leave it to us, to plant, to reap, to weave, to +work, to toil for you, O sacred child-bearer! Work no more; every man of +the race will work for you!" This cry in all the grim ages of our past +toil we never heard. + +And today, when the lofty theorist, who tonight stands before the drawing- +room fire in spotless shirtfront and perfectly fitting clothes, and +declaims upon the amplitude of woman's work in life as child-bearer, and +the mighty value of that labour which exceeds all other, making it +unnecessary for her to share man's grosser and lower toils: is it certain +he always in practical life remembers his theory? When waking tomorrow +morning, he finds that the elderly house drudge, who rises at dawn while he +yet sleeps to make his tea and clean his boots, has brought his tea late, +and polished his boots ill; may he not even sharply condemn her, and assure +her she will have to leave unless she works harder and rises earlier? Does +he exclaim to her, "Divine child-bearer! Potential mother of the race! +Why should you clean my boots or bring up my tea, while I lie warm in bed? +Is it not enough you should have the holy and mysterious power of bringing +the race to life? Let that content you. Henceforth I shall get up at dawn +and make my own tea and clean my own boots, and pay you just the same!" +Or, should his landlady, now about to give birth to her ninth child, send +him up a poorly-cooked dinner or forget to bring up his scuttle of coals, +does he send for her and thus apostrophise the astonished matron: "Child- +bearer of the race! Producer of men! Cannot you be contented with so +noble and lofty a function in life without toiling and moiling? Why carry +up heavy coal-scuttles from the cellar and bend over hot fires, wearing out +nerve and brain and muscle that should be reserved for higher duties? We, +we, the men of the race, will perform its mean, its sordid, its grinding +toil! For woman is beauty, peace, repose! Your function is to give life, +not to support it by labour. The Mother, the Mother! How wonderful it +sounds! Toil no more! Rest is for you; labour and drudgery for us!" +Would he not rather assure her that, unless she laboured more assiduously +and sternly, she would lose his custom and so be unable to pay her month's +rent; and perhaps so, with children and an invalid or drunken husband whom +she supports, be turned out into the streets? For, it is remarkable, that, +with theorists of this class, it is not toil, or the amount of toil, +crushing alike to brain and body, which the female undertakes that is +objected to; it is the form and the amount of the reward. It is not the +hand-labouring woman, even in his own society, worn out and prematurely +aged at forty with grinding domestic toil, that has no beginning and knows +no end-- + +"Man's work is from sun to sun, + But the woman's work is never done"-- + +it is not the haggard, work-crushed woman and mother who irons his shirts, +or the potential mother who destroys health and youth in the sweater's den +where she sews the garments in which he appears so radiantly in the +drawing-room which disturbs him. It is the thought of the woman-doctor +with an income of some hundreds a year, who drives round in her carriage to +see her patients, or receives them in her consulting-rooms, and who spends +the evening smoking and reading before her study fire or receiving her +guests; it is the thought of the woman who, as legislator, may loll for +perhaps six hours of the day on the padded seat of legislative bench, +relieving the tedium now and then by a turn in the billiard- or +refreshment-room, when she is not needed to vote or speak; it is the +thought of the woman as Greek professor, with three or four hundred a year, +who gives half a dozen lectures a week, and has leisure to enjoy the +society of her husband and children, and to devote to her own study and +life of thought; it is she who wrings his heart. It is not the woman, who, +on hands and knees, at tenpence a day, scrubs the floors of the public +buildings, or private dwellings, that fills him with anguish for womanhood: +that somewhat quadrupedal posture is for him truly feminine, and does not +interfere with his ideal of the mother and child-bearer; and that, in some +other man's house, or perhaps his own, while he and the wife he keeps for +his pleasures are visiting concert or entertainment, some weary woman paces +till far into the night bearing with aching back and tired head the +fretful, teething child he brought into the world, for a pittance of twenty +or thirty pounds a year, does not distress him. But that the same woman by +work in an office should earn one hundred and fifty pounds, be able to have +a comfortable home of her own, and her evening free for study or pleasure, +distresses him deeply. It is not the labour, or the amount of labour, so +much as the amount of reward that interferes with his ideal of the eternal +womanly; he is as a rule quite contented that the women of the race should +labour for him, whether as tea-pickers or washerwomen, or toilers for the +children he brings into the world, provided the reward they receive is not +large, nor in such fields as he might himself at any time desire to enter. + +When master and ass, drawing a heavy burden between them, have climbed a +steep mountain range together; clambering over sharp rocks and across +sliding gravel where no water is, and herbage is scant; if, when they were +come out on the top of the mountain, and before them stretch broad, green +lands, and through wide half-open gates they catch the glimpse of trees +waving, and there comes the sound of running waters, if then, the master +should say to his ass, "Good beast of mine, lie down! I can push the whole +burden myself now: lie down here; lie down, my creature; you have toiled +enough; I will go on alone!" then it might be even the beast would whisper +(with that glimpse through the swinging gates of the green fields beyond)-- +"Good master, we two have climbed this mighty mountain together, and the +stones have cut my hoofs as they cut your feet. Perhaps, if when we were +at the foot you had found out that the burden was two heavy for me, and had +then said to me, 'Lie down, my beastie; I will carry on the burden alone; +lie down and rest!' I might then have listened. But now, just here, where +I see the gates swinging open, a smooth road, and green fields before us, I +think I shall go on a little farther. We two have climbed together; maybe +we shall go on yet, side by side." + +For the heart of labouring womanhood cries out today to the man who would +suggest she need not seek new fields of labour, that child-bearing is +enough for her share in life's labour, "Do you dare say to us now, that we +are fit to do nothing but child-bear, that when that is performed our +powers are exhausted? To us, who yet through all the ages of the past, +when child-bearing was persistent and incessant, regarded it hardly as a +toil, but rather as the reward of labour; has our right hand lost its +cunning and our heart its strength, that today, when human labour is easier +and humanity's work grows fairer, you say to us, 'You can do nothing now +but child-bear'? Do you dare to say this, to us, when the upward path of +the race has been watered by the sweat of our brow, and the sides of the +road by which humanity has climbed are whitened on either hand by the bones +of the womanhood that has fallen there, toiling beside man? Do you dare +say this, to us, when even today the food you eat, the clothes you wear, +the comfort you enjoy, is largely given you by the unending muscular toil +of woman?" + +As the women of old planted and reaped and ground the grain that the +children they bore might eat; as the maidens of old spun that they might +make linen for their households and obtain the right to bear men; so, +though we bend no more over grindstones, or labour in the fields, or weave +by hand, it is our intention to enter all the new fields of labour, that we +also may have the power and right to bring men into the world. It is our +faith that the day comes in which not only shall no man dare to say, "It is +enough portion for a woman in life that she bear a child," but when it will +rather be said, "What noble labour has that woman performed, that she +should have the privilege of bringing a man or woman child into the world?" + +But, it has also been objected, "What, and if the female half of humanity, +though able, in addition to the exercise of its reproductive functions, to +bear its share in the new fields of social labour as it did in the old, be +yet in certain directions a less productive labourer than the male? What +if, in the main, the result of the labour of the two halves of humanity +should not be found to be exactly equal?" + +To this it may be answered, that it is within the range of possibility +that, mysteriously co-ordinated with the male reproductive function in the +human, there may also be in some directions a tendency to possess gifts for +labour useful and beneficial to the race in the stage of growth it has now +reached, in excess of those possessed by the female. We see no reason why +this should be so, and, in the present state of our knowledge, this is a +point on which no sane person would dogmatise; but it is possible! It may, +on the other hand be, that, taken in the bulk, when all the branches of +productive labour be considered, as the ages pass, the value of the labour +of the two halves of humanity will be found so identical and so closely to +balance, that no superiority can possibly be asserted of either, as the +result of the closest analysis. This also is possible. + +But, it may also be, that, when the bulk and sum-total of human activities +is surveyed in future ages, it will be found that the value of the labour +of the female in the world that is rising about us, has exceeded in quality +or in quantity that of the male. We see no reason either, why this should +be; there is nothing in the nature of the reproductive function in the +female human which of necessity implies such superiority. + +Yet it may be, that, with the smaller general bulk and the muscular +fineness, and the preponderance of brain and nervous system in net bulk +over the fleshy and osseous parts of the organism, which generally, though +by no means always, characterises the female as distinguished from the male +of the human species, there do go mental qualities which will peculiarly +fit her for the labours of the future. It may be, that her lesser +possession of the mere muscular and osseous strength, which were the +elements of primary importance and which gave dominance in one stage of +human growth, and which placed woman at a social disadvantage as compared +with her companion, will, under new conditions of life, in which the value +of crude mechanical strength as distinguished from high vitality and strong +nervous activity is passing away, prove as largely to her advantage, as his +muscular bulk and strength in the past proved to the male. It is quite +possible, in the new world which is arising about us, that the type of +human most useful to society and best fitted for its future conditions, and +who will excel in the most numerous forms of activity, will be, not merely +the muscularly powerful and bulky, but the highly versatile, active, vital, +adaptive, sensitive, physically fine-drawn type; and, as that type, though, +like the muscularly heavy and powerful, by no means peculiar to and +confined to one sex, is yet rather more commonly found in conjunction with +a female organism, it is quite possible that, taken in the bulk and on the +whole, the female half of humanity may, by virtue of its structural +adaptions, be found most fitted for the bulk of human labours in the +future! + +As with individuals and races, so also with sexes, changed social +conditions may render exactly those subtile qualities, which in one social +state were a disadvantage, of the highest social advantage in another. + +The skilled diplomatist or politician, so powerful in his own element, on +board ship during a storm becomes at once of less general value or +consideration than the meanest sailor who can reef a sail or guide a wheel; +and, were we to be reduced again suddenly to a state of nature, a company +of highly civilised men and women would at once, as we have before +remarked, find their social value completely inverted; landed on a desert +shore, unarmed and naked, to encounter wild beasts and savages, and to +combat nature for food, the primitive scale of human values would at once +reassert itself. It would not then be the mighty financier, the learned +judge, or great poet and scholar who would be sought after, but the +thickest-headed navvy who could throw a stone so exactly that he brought +down a bird, and who could in a day raise a wall which would shelter the +group; and the man so powerful that he could surely strike an enemy or wild +beast dead with his club, would at once be objects of social regard and +attain individual eminence, and perhaps dominance. It would not be the +skilled dancer, who in one night in a civilised state earns her hundreds, +nor yet the fragile clinging beauty, but the girl of the broad back and the +strong limb, who could collect wood and carry water, who would be the much +considered and much sought after female in such a community. Even in the +animal world, there is the same inversion in values, according as the +external conditions vary. The lion, while ruling over every other creature +in his primitive wilds, by right of his untamable ferocity, size, and +rapacity, is yet bound to become a prey to destruction and extermination +when he comes into contact with the new condition brought by man; while the +wild dog, so immeasurably his inferior in size and ferocity, is tamed, +survives and multiplies, exactly because he has been driven by his smaller +structure and lesser physical force to develop those social instincts and +those forms of intelligence which make him amenable to the new condition of +life and valuable in them. The same inversion in the value of qualities +may be traced in the history of human species. The Jews, whose history has +been one long story of oppression at the hands of more muscular, physically +powerful and pugilistic peoples; whom we find first making bricks under the +lash of the Egyptian, and later hanging his harp as an exile among the +willow-trees of Babylon; who, for eighteen hundred years, has been +trampled, tortured, and despised beneath the feet of the more physically +powerful and pugilistic, but not more vital, keen, intelligent, or +persistent races of Europe; has, today, by the slow turning of the wheel of +life, come uppermost. The Egyptian task-master and warrior have passed; +what the Babylonian was we know no more, save for a few mud tablets and +rock inscriptions recording the martial victories; but the once captive Jew +we see today in every city and every street; until at last, the descendants +of those men who spat when they spoke his name, and forcibly drew his teeth +to extract his money from him, wait patiently behind each other for +admission to his offices and palaces; while nobles solicit his daughters in +marriage and kings are proud to be summoned to his table in hope of golden +crumbs, and great questions of peace and war are often held balanced in the +hand of one little asthmatic Jew. After long ages of disgrace and +pariahism, the time has come, whether for good or for evil, when just those +qualities which the Jew possesses and which subtilely distinguish him from +others, are in demand; while those he has not are sinking into disuse; +exactly that domination of the reflective faculties over the combative, +which once made him slave, also saved him from becoming extinct in wars; +and the intellectual quickness, the far-sighted keenness, the persistent +mental activity and self-control, which could not in those ages save him +from degradation or compensate for his lack of bone and muscle and +combative instinct, are the very qualities the modern world demands and +crowns. The day of Goliath with his club and his oaths is fast passing, +and the day of David with his harp and skilfully constructed sling is +coming near and yet nearer. + +The qualities which give an animal, a race, or an individual, a higher +utility or social dominance must always be influenced by any change in the +environment. As the wheel of life slowly revolves, that which was lowest +comes continually uppermost, and that which was dominant becomes +subservient. + +It is possible, that women, after countless ages, during which that smaller +relative development in weight and muscularity which is incident to almost +all females which suckle their young, and that lesser desire for pugilism +inherent in almost all females who bear their young alive, rendered her +lacking in the two qualities which made for individual dominance in her +societies, may yet, in the future, discover that those changes in human +conditions, which have done away with the primary necessity for muscular +force and pugilistic arts, have also inverted her place in the scale of +social values. + +It is possible, that the human female, like the Jew, the male of that type +farthest removed from the dominant male type of the past, may in the future +find, that, so far from those qualities which, in an earlier condition, +lessened her social value and power of labour, continuing to do so, they +will increase it. That the delicacy of hand, lightness of structure which +were fatal when the dominant labour of life was to wield a battle-axe or +move a weight, may be no restraint but even an assistance in the +intellectual and more delicate mechanical fields of labour; that the +preponderance of nervous and cerebral over muscular material, and the +tendency towards preservative and creative activity over pugilistic and +destructive, so far from shutting her off from the most important fields of +human toil, may increase her fitness for them! We have no certain proof +that it is so at present; but, if woman's long years of servitude and +physical subjection, and her experience as child-bearer and protector of +infancy, should, in any way, be found in the future to have endowed her, as +a kind of secondary sexual characteristic, with any additional strength of +social instinct, with any exceptional width of human sympathy and any +instinctive comprehension; then, it is not merely possible, but certain, +that, in the ages that are coming, in which the labour of the human race +will be not mainly destructive but conservative, in which the building up +and developing of humanity, and not continually the inter-destruction of +part by part, will be the dominant activity of the race, that woman as +woman, and by right of that wherein she differs from the male, will have an +all-important part to play in the activity of the race. + +The matter is one of curious and subtle interest, but what practically +concerns the human race is, not which of the two sexual halves which must +always coexist is best fitted to excel in certain human labours in this or +that direction, at this or that time, nor even which has most to contribute +to the sum-total of human activities; but it is this, that every individual +unit humanity contains, irrespective of race, sex, or type, should find +exactly that field of labour which may most contribute to its development, +happiness, and health, and in which its peculiar faculties and gifts shall +be most effectively and beneficially exerted for its fellows. + +It matters nothing, and less than nothing, to us as women, whether, of +those children we bring into the world, our sons should excel in virtue, +intelligence, and activity, our daughters, or our daughters our sons; so +that, in each child we bring to life, not one potentiality shall be lost, +nor squandered on a lesser when it might have been expended on a higher and +more beneficent task. So that not one desirable faculty of the marvellous +creatures we suffer to bring into existence be left uncultivated, to us, as +women, it matters nothing and less than nothing, which sex type excels in +action, in knowledge, or in virtue, so both attain their best. There is +one thing only on earth, as precious to woman as the daughter who springs +from her body--it is the son. There is one thing only dearer to the woman +than herself--it is the man. As no sane human concerns himself as to +whether the right or left ventricle of his heart works most satisfactorily, +or is most essential to his well-being, so both be perfect in health and +activity; as no sane woman distresses herself lest her right breast should +not excel the left in beauty and use; so no sane man or woman questions +anxiously over the relative perfections of male and female. In love there +is no first nor last. What we request of life is that the tools should be +given to his hand or hers who can best handle them; that the least +efficient should not be forced into the place of the more efficient, and +that an artificially drawn line should never repress the activities of the +individual creature, which we as women bring into the world. + +But it may also be said to us, "What, and if, all your dreams and hopes for +woman and the future of the race be based on air? What, and if, desirable +as it is that woman should not become practically dependent on her sexual +function alone, and should play at least as great a part in the productive +labour of the race in the future as she played in that of the past - what, +if woman cannot take the same vast share in the complex and largely mental +labour fields of the future, as in the largely physical fields of the past? +What, and if, in spite of all her effort and sacrifice to attain this end, +exactly now and when the labour of civilised societies becomes mental +rather than mechanical, woman be found wanting?" + +In Swiss valleys today the traveller comes sometimes on the figure of a +solitary woman climbing the mountain-side, on her broad shoulders a mighty +burden of fodder or manure she is bearing up for the cattle, or to some +patch of cultivated land. Steady, unshrinking eyes look out at you from +beneath the deeply seamed forehead, and a strand of hair, perhaps almost as +white as the mountain snows on the peaks above, escapes from under the edge +of the binding handkerchief. The face is seamed and seared with the stern +marks of toil and endurance, as the mountain-side is with marks of storm +and avalanche. It is the face of one who has brought men into the world in +labour and sorrow, and toiled mightily to sustain them; and dead must be +the mind to the phases of human existence, who does not see in that +toilworn figure one of the mighty pillars, which have in the long ages of +the past sustained the life of humanity on earth, and made possible its +later development; and much must the tinsel of life have dazzled him, who +fails to mark it with reverence and, metaphorically, to bow his head before +it--the type of the mighty labouring woman who has built up life. + +But, it may be said, what if, in the ages to come, it should never again be +possible for any man to stand bowed with the same respect in the presence +of any other of earth's mighty toilers, who should also be mother and +woman? What, if she, who could combine motherhood with the most unending +muscular toil, will fall flaccid and helpless where the labour becomes +mental? What if, struggle as she will, she can become nothing in the +future but the pet pug-dog of the race, lying on its sofa, or the Italian +greyhound, shivering in its silken coat? What if woman, in spite of her +most earnest aspirations and determined struggles, be destined to failure +in the new world that is rising because of inherent mental incapacity? + +There are many replies which may be made to such a suggestion. It is often +said with truth, that the ordinary occupations of woman in the past and +present, and in all classes of society in which she is not parasitic, do +demand, and have always demanded, a very high versatility and mental +activity, as well as physical: that the mediaeval baron's wife who guided +her large household probably had to expend far more pure intellect in doing +so than the baron in his hunting and fighting; that the wife of the city +accountant probably expends today more reason, imagination, forethought, +and memory on the management of her small household, than he in his far +simpler, monotonous arithmetical toil; that, as there is no cause for +supposing that the tailor or shoemaker needs less intellect in his calling +than the soldier or prize-fighter, so there is nothing to suggest that, in +the past, woman has not expended as much pure intellect in the mass of her +callings as the man in his; while in those highly specialised intellectual +occupations, in which long and uninterrupted training tending to one point +is necessary, such as the liberal professions and arts, that, although +woman has practically been excluded from the requisite training, and the +freedom to place herself in the positions in which they can be pursued, +that yet, by force of innate genius and gifts in such directions, she has +continually broken through the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and again +and again taken her place beside man in those fields of labour; showing +thereby not merely aptitude but passionate and determined inclination in +those directions. With equal truth, it is often remarked that, when as an +independent hereditary sovereign, woman has been placed in the only +position in which she has ever been able freely and fully to express her +own individuality, and though selected at random by fate from the mass of +women, by the mere accident of birth or marriage, she has shown in a large +percentage of cases that the female has the power to command, organise, and +succeed in one of the most exacting and complex of human employments, the +government of nations; that from the days of Amalasontha to Isabella of +Spain, Elizabeth of England, and Catharine of Russia, women have not failed +to grasp the large impersonal aspects of life, and successfully and +powerfully to control them, when placed in the supreme position in which it +was demanded. It may also be stated, and is sometimes, with so much +iteration as to become almost wearisome, that women's adequacy in the +modern fields of intellectual or skilled manual labour is no more today an +open matter for debate, than the number of modern women who, as senior +wranglers, doctors, &c., have already successfully entered the new fields, +and the high standard attained by women in all university examinations to +which they are admitted, and their universal success in the administration +of parochial matters, wherever they have been allowed to share it, proves +their intellectual and moral fitness for the new forms of labour. + +All these statements are certainly interesting, and may be unanswerable. +And yet--if the truth be told, it is not ultimately on these grounds that +many of us base our hope and our certitude with regard to the future of +woman. Our conviction as to the plenitude of her powers for the adequate +performance of lofty labours in these new fields, springs not at all from a +categorical enumeration of the attainments or performances of individual +women or bodies of women in the past or present; it has another source. + +There was a bird's egg once, picked up by chance upon the ground, and those +who found it bore it home and placed it under a barn-door fowl. And in +time the chick bred out, and those who had found it chained it by the leg +to a log, lest it should stray and be lost. And by and by they gathered +round it, and speculated as to what the bird might be. One said, "It is +surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we took it to the +water it would swim and gabble." But another said, "It has no webs to its +feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose it will scratch and +cackle with the others on the dung-heap." But a third speculated, "Look +now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, and can crack nuts!" But +a fourth said, "No, but look at its wings; perhaps it is a bird of great +flight." But several cried, "Nonsense! No one has ever seen it fly! Why +should it fly? Can you suppose that a thing can do a thing which no one +has ever seen it do?" And the bird--the bird--with its leg chained close +to the log, preened its wing. So they sat about it, speculating, and +discussing it: and one said this, and another that. And all the while as +they talked the bird sat motionless, with its gaze fixed on the clear, blue +sky above it. And one said, "Suppose we let the creature loose to see what +it will do?"--and the bird shivered. But the others cried, "It is too +valuable; it might get lost. If it were to try to fly it might fall down +and break its neck." And the bird, with its foot chained to the log, sat +looking upward into the clear blue sky; the sky, in which it had never +been--for the bird--the bird, knew what it would do--because it was an +eaglet! + +There is one woman known to many of us, as each human creature knows but +one on earth; and it is upon our knowledge of that woman that we base our +certitude. + +For those who do not know her, and have not this ground, it is probably +profitable and necessary that they painfully collect isolated facts and +then speculate upon them, and base whatever views they should form upon +these collections. It might even be profitable that they should form no +definite opinions at all, but wait till the ages of practical experience +have put doubt to rest. For those of us who have a ground of knowledge +which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to act +fearlessly than to argue. + +Finally, it may be objected to the entrance of woman to the new fields of +labour, and in effect it is often said--"What, and if, all you have sought +be granted you--if it be fully agreed that woman's ancient fields of toil +are slipping from her, and that, if she do not find new, she must fall into +a state of sexual parasitism, dependent on her reproductive functions +alone; and granted, that, doing this, she must degenerate, and that from +her degeneration must arise the degeneration and arrest of development of +the males as well as of the females of her race; and granting also, fully, +that in the past woman has borne one full half, and often more than one +half, of the weight of the productive labours of her societies, in addition +to child-bearing; and allowing more fully that she may be as well able to +sustain her share in the intellectual labours of the future as in the more +mechanical labours of the past; granting all this, may there not be one +aspect of the question left out of consideration which may reverse all +conclusions as to the desirability, and the human good to be attained by +woman's enlarged freedom and her entering into the new fields of toil? +What if, the increased culture and mental activity of woman necessary for +her entrance into the new fields, however desirable in other ways for +herself and the race, should result in a diminution, or in an absolute +abolition of the sexual attraction and affection, which in all ages of the +past has bound the two halves of humanity together? What if, though the +stern and unlovely manual labours of the past have never affected her +attractiveness for the male of her own society, nor his for her; yet the +performance by woman of intellectual labours, or complex and interesting +manual labour, and her increased intelligence and width, should render the +male objectionable to her, and the woman undesirable to the male; so that +the very race itself might become extinct through the dearth of sexual +affection? What, and if, the woman ceases to value the son she bears, and +to feel desire for and tenderness to the man who begets him; and the man to +value and desire the woman and her offspring? Would not such a result +exceed, or at least equal, in its evil to humanity, anything which could +result from the degeneration and parasitism of woman? Would it not be +well, if there exist any possibility of this danger, that woman, however +conscious that she can perform social labour as nobly and successfully +under the new conditions of life as the old, should yet consciously, and +deliberately, with her eyes open, sink into a state of pure intellectual +torpor, with all its attendant evils, rather than face the more irreparable +loss which her development and the exercise of her gifts might entail? +Would it not be well she should deliberately determine, as the lesser of +two evils, to dwarf herself and limit her activities and the expansion of +her faculties, rather than that any risk should be run of the bond of +desire and emotion between the two sexual halves of humanity being severed? +If the race is to decay and become extinct on earth, might it not as well +be through the parasitism and decay of woman, as through the decay of the +sexual instinct? + +It is not easy to reply with rationality, or even gravity, to a +supposition, which appears to be based on the conception that a sudden and +entire subversion of the deepest of those elements on which human, and even +animal, life on the globe is based, is possible from so inadequate a cause: +and it might well be passed silently, were it not that, under some form or +other, this argument frequently recurs, now in a more rational and then in +a more irrational form; constituting sometimes an objection in even +moderately intelligent minds, to the entrance of woman into the new fields +of labour. + +It must be at once frankly admitted that, were there the smallest possible +danger in this direction, the sooner woman laid aside all endeavour in the +direction of increased knowledge and the attainment of new fields of +activity, the better for herself and for the race. + +When one considers the part which sexual attraction plays in the order of +sentient life on the globe, from the almost unconscious attractions which +draw amoeboid globule to amoeboid globule, on through the endless +progressive forms of life; till in monogamous birds it expresses itself in +song and complex courtship and sometimes in the life-long conjugal +affection of mates; and which in the human race itself, passing through +various forms, from the imperative but almost purely physical attraction of +savage male and female for each other, till in the highly developed male +and female it assumes its aesthetic and intellectual but not less +imperative form, couching itself in the songs of poet, and the sometimes +deathless fidelity of richly developed man and woman to each other, we find +it not only everywhere, but forming the very groundwork on which is based +sentient existence; never eradicable, though infinitely varied in its +external forms of expression. When we consider that in the human world, +from the battles and dances of savages to the intrigues and entertainments +of modern Courts and palaces, the attraction of man and woman for each +other has played an unending part; and, that the most fierce ascetic +religious enthusiasm through the ages, the flagellations and starvations in +endless nunneries and monasteries, have never been able to extirpate nor +seriously to weaken for one moment the master dominance of this emotion; +that the lowest and most brutal ignorance, and the highest intellectual +culture leave mankind, equally, though in different forms, amenable to its +mastery; that, whether in the brutal guffaw of sex laughter which rings +across the drinking bars of our modern cities, and rises from the +comfortable armchairs in fashionable clubs; or in the poet's dreams, and +the noblest conjugal relations of men and women linked together for life, +it plays still today on earth the vast part it played when hoary monsters +ploughed after each other through Silurian slime, and that still it forms +as ever the warp on which in the loom of human life the web is woven, and +runs as a thread never absent through every design and pattern which +constitutes the individual existence on earth, it appears not merely as +ineradicable; but it is inconceivable to suppose that that attraction of +sex towards sex, which, with hunger and thirst, lie, as the triune +instincts, at the base of animal life on earth, should ever be exterminable +by the comparatively superficial changes resulting from the performance of +this or that form of labour, or the little more or less of knowledge in one +direction or another. + +That the female who drives steam-driven looms, producing scores of yards of +linen in a day, should therefore desire less the fellowship of her +corresponding male than had she toiled at a spinning-wheel with hand and +foot to produce one yard; that the male should desire less of the +companionship of the woman who spends the morning in doctoring babies in +her consulting-room, according to the formularies of the pharmacopoeia, +than she who of old spent it on the hillside collecting simples for +remedies; that the woman who paints a modern picture or designs a modern +vase should be less lovable by man, than her ancestor who shaped the first +primitive pot and ornamented it with zigzag patterns was to the man of her +day and age; that the woman who contributes to the support of her family by +giving legal opinions will less desire motherhood and wifehood than she who +in the past contributed to the support of her household by bending on hands +and knees over her grindstone, or scrubbing floors, and that the former +should be less valued by man than the latter--these are suppositions which +it is difficult to regard as consonant with any knowledge of human nature +and the laws by which it is dominated. + +On the other hand, if it be supposed that the possession of wealth or the +means of earning it makes the human female objectionable to the male, all +history and all daily experience negates it. The eager hunt for heiresses +in all ages and social conditions, make it obvious that the human male has +a strong tendency to value the female who can contribute to the family +expenditure; and the case is yet, we believe, unrecorded of a male who, +attracted to a female, becomes averse to her on finding she has material +good. The female doctor or lawyer earning a thousand a year will always, +and today certainly does, find more suitors than had she remained a +governess or cook, labouring as hard, earning thirty pounds. + +While, if the statement that the female entering on new fields of labour +will cease to be lovable to the male be based on the fact that she will +then be free, all history and all human experience yet more negates its +truth. The study of all races in all ages, proves that the greater the +freedom of woman in any society, the higher the sexual value put upon her +by the males of that society. The three squaws who walk behind the Indian, +and whom he has captured in battle or bought for a few axes or lengths of +tobacco, and over whom he exercises the despotic right of life and death, +are probably all three of infinitesimal value in his eyes, compared with +the value of his single, free wife to one of our ancient, monogamous German +ancestors; while the hundred wives and concubines purchased by a Turkish +pasha have probably not even an approximate value in his eyes, when +compared with the value which thousands of modern European males set upon +the one comparatively free woman, whom they may have won, often only after +a long and tedious courtship. + +So axiomatic is the statement that the value of the female to the male +varies as her freedom, that, given an account of any human society in which +the individual female is highly valued, it will be perfectly safe to infer +the comparative social freedom of woman; and, given a statement as to the +high degree of freedom of woman in a society, it will be safe to infer the +great sexual value of the individual woman to man. + +Finally, if the suggestion, that men and women will cease to be attractive +to one another if women enter modern fields of labour, be based on the fact +that her doing so may increase her intelligence and enlarge her +intellectual horizon, it must be replied that the whole trend of human +history absolutely negates the supposition. There is absolutely no ground +for the assumption that increased intelligence and intellectual power +diminishes sexual emotion in the human creature of either sex. The +ignorant savage, whether in ancient or modern societies, who violates and +then clubs a female into submission, may be dominated, and is, by sex +emotions of a certain class; but not less dominated have been the most +cultured, powerful, and highly differentiated male intelligences that the +race has produced. A Mill, a Shelley, a Goethe, a Schiller, a Pericles, +have not been more noted for vast intellectual powers, than for the depth +and intensity of their sexual emotions. And, if possible, with the human +female, the relation between intensity of sexual emotion and high +intellectual gifts has been yet closer. The life of a Sophia Kovalevsky, a +George Eliot, an Elizabeth Browning have not been more marked by a rare +development of the intellect than by deep passionate sexual emotions. Nor +throughout the history of the race has high intelligence and intellectual +power ever tended to make either male or female unattractive to those of +the opposite sex. + +The merely brilliantly attired and unintelligent woman, probably never +awakened the same intensity of profound sex emotion even among the men of +her own type, which followed a George Sand; who attracted to herself with +deathless force some of the most noted men of her generation, even when, +nearing middle age, stout, and attired in rusty and inartistic black, she +was to be found rolling her cigarettes in a dingy office, scorning all the +external adornments with which less attractive females seek to supply a +hidden deficiency. Probably no more hopeless mistake could be made by an +ascetic seeking to extirpate sex emotion and the attraction of the sexes +for one another, than were he to imagine that in increasing virility, +intelligence, and knowledge this end could be attained. He might thereby +differentiate and greatly concentrate the emotions, but they would be +intensified; as a widely spread, shallow, sluggish stream would not be +annihilated but increased in force and activity by being turned into a +sharply defined, clear-cut course. + +And if, further, we turn to those secondary manifestations of sexual +emotion, which express themselves in the relations of human progenitors to +their offspring, we shall find, if possible more markedly, that increase of +intelligence and virility does not diminish but increases the strength of +the affections. As the primitive, ignorant male, often willingly selling +his offspring or exposing his female infants to death, often develops, with +the increase of culture and intelligence, into the extremely devoted and +self-sacrificing male progenitor of civilised societies; so, yet even more +markedly, does the female relation with her offspring, become intensified +and permanent, as culture and intelligence and virility increase. The +Bushwoman, like the lowest female barbarians in our own societies, will +often readily dispose of her infant son for a bottle of spirits or a little +coin; and even among somewhat more mentally developed females, strong as is +the affection of the average female for her new born offspring, the +closeness of the relation between mother and child tends rapidly to shrink +as time passes, so that by the time of adolescence is reached the relation +between mother and son becomes little more than a remembrance of a close +inter-union which once existed. It is, perhaps, seldom, till the very +highest point of intellectual growth and mental virility has been reached +by the human female, that her relation with her male offspring becomes a +permanent and active and dominant factor in the lives of both. The +concentrated and all-absorbing affection and fellowship which existed +between the greatest female intellect France has produced and the son she +bore, dominating both lives to the end, the fellowship of the English +historian with his mother, who remained his chosen companion and the sharer +of all his labours through life, the relation of St. Augustine to his +mother, and those of countless others, are relations almost inconceivable +where the woman is not of commanding and active intelligence, and where the +passion of mere physical instinct is completed by the passion of the +intellect and spirit. + +There appears, then, from the study of human nature in the past, no ground +for supposing that if, as a result of woman's adopting new forms of labour, +she should become more free, more wealthy, or more actively intelligent, +that this could in any way diminish her need of the physical and mental +comradeship of man, nor his need of her; nor that it would affect their +secondary sexual relations as progenitors, save by deepening, +concentrating, and extending throughout life the parental emotions. The +conception that man's and woman's need of each other could be touched, or +the emotions binding the sexes obliterated, by any mere change in the form +of labour performed by the woman of the race, is as grotesque in its +impossibility, as the suggestion that the placing of a shell on the +seashore this way or that might destroy the action of the earth's great +tidal wave. + +But, it may be objected, "If there be absolutely no ground for the +formation of such an opinion, how comes it that, in one form or another, it +is so often expressed by persons who object to the entrance of woman into +new or intellectual fields of labour? Where there is smoke must there not +also be fire?" To which it must be replied, "Without fire, no smoke; but +very often the appearance of smoke where neither smoke nor fire exist!" + +The fact that a statement is frequently made or a view held forms no +presumptive ground of its truth; but it is undoubtedly a ground for +supposing that there is an appearance or semblance which makes it appear +truth, and which suggests it. The universally entertained conception that +the sun moved round the world was not merely false, but the reverse of the +truth; all that was required for its inception was a fallacious appearance +suggesting it. + +When we examine narrowly the statement, that the entrance of woman into the +new fields of labour, with its probably resulting greater freedom of +action, economic independence and wider culture, may result in a severance +between the sexes, it becomes clear what that fallacious appearance is, +which suggests this. + +The entrance of a woman into new fields of labour, though bringing her +increased freedom and economic independence, and necessitating increased +mental training and wider knowledge, could not extinguish the primordial +physical instinct which draws sex to sex throughout all the orders of +sentient life; and still less could it annihilate that subtler mental need, +which, as humanity develops, draws sex to sex for emotional fellowship and +close intercourse; but, it might, and undoubtedly would, powerfully react +and readjust the relations of certain men with certain women! + +While the attraction, physical and intellectual, which binds sex to sex +would remain the same in volume and intensity, the forms in which it would +express itself, and, above all, the relative power of individuals to +command the gratification of their instincts and desires, would be +fundamentally altered, and in many cases inverted. + +In the barbarian state of societies, where physical force dominates, it is +the most muscular and pugilistically and brutally and animally successful +male who captures and possesses the largest number of females; and no doubt +he would be justified in regarding any social change which gave to woman a +larger freedom of choice, and which would so perhaps give to the less +brutal but perhaps more intelligent male, whom the woman might select, an +equal opportunity for the gratification of his sexual wishes and for the +producing of offspring, as a serious loss. And, from the purely personal +standpoint, he would undoubtedly be right in dreading anything which tended +to free woman. But he would manifestly not have been justified in +asserting, that woman's increased freedom of choice, or the fact that the +other men would share his advantage in the matter of obtaining female +companionship, would in any way lessen the amount of sexual emotion or the +tenderness of relation between the two halves of humanity. He would not by +brute force possess himself of so many females, nor have so large a circle +of choice, under the new conditions; but what he lost, others would gain; +and the intensity of the sex emotions and the nearness and passion of the +relation between the sexes be in no way touched. + +In our more civilised societies, as they exist today, woman possesses (more +often perhaps in appearance than reality!) a somewhat greater freedom of +sexual selection; she is no longer captured by muscular force, but there +are still conditions entirely unconnected with sex attractions and +affections, which yet largely dominate the sex relations. + +It is not the man of the strong arm, but the man of the long purse, who +unduly and artificially dominates in the sexual world today. Practically, +wherever in the modern world woman is wholly or partially dependent for her +means of support on the exercise of her sexual functions, she is dependent +more or less on the male's power to support her in their exercise, and her +freedom of choice is practically so far absolutely limited. Probably +three-fourths of the sexual unions in our modern European societies, +whether in the illegal or recognised legal forms, are dominated by or +largely influenced by the sex purchasing power of the male. With regard to +the large and savage institution of prostitution, which still lies as the +cancer embedded in the heart of all our modern civilised societies, this is +obviously and nakedly the case; the wealth of the male as compared to the +female being, with hideous obtrusiveness, its foundation and source of +life. But the purchasing power of the male as compared with the poverty of +the female is not less painfully, if a little less obtrusively, displayed +in those layers of society lying nearer the surface. From the fair, effete +young girl of the wealthier classes in her city boudoir, who weeps +copiously as she tells you she cannot marry the man she loves, because he +says he has only two hundred a year and cannot afford to keep her; to the +father who demands frankly of his daughter's suitor how much he can settle +on her before consenting to his acceptance, the fact remains, that, under +existing conditions, not the amount of sex affection, passion, and +attraction, but the extraneous question of the material possessions of the +male, determines to a large extent the relation of the sexes. The +parasitic, helpless youth who has failed in his studies, who possesses +neither virility, nor charm of person, nor strength of mind, but who +possesses wealth, has a far greater chance of securing unlimited sexual +indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest maid, than her +brother's tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and physical grace and +mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of nothing but material +good, has, especially among the so-called upper classes of our societies, a +far greater chance of securing the sex companionship of any woman he +desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, than the most physically +attractive and mentally developed male, who may have nothing to offer to +the dependent female but affection and sexual companionship. + +To the male, whenever and wherever he exists in our societies, who depends +mainly for his power for procuring the sex relation he desires, not on his +power of winning and retaining personal affection, but, on the purchasing +power of his possessions as compared to the poverty of the females of his +society, the personal loss would be seriously and at once felt, of any +social change which gave to the woman a larger economic independence and +therefore greater freedom of sexual choice. It is not an imaginary danger +which the young dude, of a certain type which sits often in the front row +of the stalls in a theatre, with sloping forehead and feeble jaw, watching +the unhappy women who dance for gold--sees looming before him, as he lisps +out his deep disapproval of increased knowledge and the freedom of +obtaining the means of subsistence in intellectual fields by woman, and +expresses his vast preference for the uncultured ballet-girl over all types +of cultured and productive labouring womenhood in the universe. A subtle +and profound instinct warns him, that with the increased intelligence and +economic freedom of woman, he, and such as he, might ultimately be left +sexually companionless; the undesirable, the residuary, male old-maids of +the human race. + +On the other hand, there is undoubtedly a certain body of females who would +lose, or imagine they would lose, heavily by the advance of woman as a +whole to a condition of free labour and economic independence. That +female, wilfully or organically belonging to the parasite class, having +neither the vigour of intellect nor the vitality of body to undertake any +form of productive labour, and desiring to be dependent only upon the +passive performance of sex function merely, would, whether as prostitute or +wife, undoubtedly lose heavily by any social change which demanded of woman +increased knowledge and activity. (She would lose in two directions: by +the social disapprobation which, as the new conditions became general, +would rest on her; and yet more by the competition of the more developed +forms. She would practically become non-existent.) + +It is exactly by these two classes of persons that the objection is raised +that the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour and her increased +freedom and intelligence will dislocate the relations of the sexes; and, +while from the purely personal standpoint, they are undoubtedly right, +viewing human society as a whole they are fundamentally wrong. The loss of +a small and unhealthy section will be the gain of human society as a whole. + +In the male voluptuary of feeble intellect and unattractive individuality, +who depends for the gratification of his sexual instincts, not on his power +of winning and retaining the personal affection and admiration of woman, +but on her purchaseable condition, either in the blatantly barbarous field +of sex traffic that lies beyond the pale of legal marriage, or the not less +barbarous though more veiled traffic within that pale, the entrance of +woman into the new fields of labour, with an increased intellectual culture +and economic freedom, means little less than social extinction. But, to +those males who, even at the present day, constitute the majority in our +societies, and who desire the affection and fellowship of woman rather than +a mere material possession; for the male who has the attributes and gifts +of mind or body, which, apart from any weight of material advantage, would +fit him to hold the affection of woman, however great her freedom of +choice, the gain will be correspondingly great. Given a society in which +the majority of women should be so far self-supporting, that, having their +free share open to them in the modern fields of labour, and reaping the +full economic rewards of their labour, marriage or some form of sexual sale +was no more a matter of necessity to them; so far from this condition +causing a diminution in the number of permanent sex unions, one of the +heaviest bars to them would be removed. It is universally allowed that one +of the disease spots in our modern social condition is the increasing +difficulty which bars conscientious men from entering on marriage and +rearing families, if limited means would in the case of their death or +disablement throw the woman and their common offspring comparatively +helpless into the fierce stream of our modern economic life. If the woman +could justifiably be looked to, in case of the man's disablement or death, +to take his place as an earner, thousands of valuable marriages which +cannot now be contracted could be entered on; and the serious social evil, +which arises from the fact that while the self-indulgent and selfish freely +marry and produce large families, the restrained and conscientious are +often unable to do so, would be removed. For the first time in the history +of the modern world, prostitution, using that term in its broadest sense to +cover all forced sexual relationships based, not on the spontaneous +affection of the woman for the man, but on the necessitous acceptance by +woman of material good in exchange for the exercise of her sexual +functions, would be extinct; and the relation between men and women become +a co-partnership between freemen. + +So far from the economic freedom and social independence of the woman +exterminating sexual love between man and woman, it would for the first +time fully enfranchise it. The element of physical force and capture which +dominated the most primitive sex relations, the more degrading element of +seduction and purchase by means of wealth or material good offered to woman +in our modern societies, would then give place to the untrammelled action +of attraction and affection alone between the sexes, and sexual love, after +its long pilgrimage in the deserts, would be enabled to return at last, a +king crowned. + +But, apart from the two classes of persons whose objection to the entrance +of woman to new fields of labour is based more or less instinctively on the +fear of personal loss, there is undoubtedly a small, if a very small, +number of sincere persons whose fear as to severance between the sexes to +result from woman's entrance into the new field, is based upon a more +abstract and impersonal ground. + +It is not easy to do full justice in an exact statement to views held +generally rather nebulously and vaguely, but we believe we should not +mistake this view, by saying that there are a certain class of perfectly +sincere and even moderately intelligent folk who hold a view which, +expressed exactly, would come to something like this--that the entrance of +woman into new fields would necessitate so large a mental culture and such +a development of activity, mental and physical, in the woman, that she +might ultimately develop into a being so superior to the male and so widely +different from the man, that the bond of sympathy between the sexes might +ultimately be broken and the man cease to be an object of affection and +attraction to the woman, and the woman to the man through mere +dissimilarity. The future these persons seem to see, more or less vaguely, +is of a social condition, in which, the males of the race remaining +precisely as they are today, the corresponding females shall have advanced +to undreamed of heights of culture and intelligence; a condition in which +the hand-worker, and the ordinary official, and small farmer, shall be +confronted with the female astronomer or Greek professor of astonishing +learning and gifts as his only possible complementary sex companion; and +the vision naturally awakens in these good folk certain misgivings as to +sympathy between and suitability for each other, of these two widely +dissimilar parts of humanity. + +It must of course at once be admitted, that, were the two sexual halves of +humanity distinct species, which, having once entered on a course of +evolution and differentiation, might continue to develop along those +distinct lines for countless ages or even for a number of generations, +without reacting through inheritance on each other, the consequences of +such development might ultimately almost completely sever them. + +The development of distinct branches of humanity has already brought about +such a severance between races and classes which are in totally distinct +stages of evolution. So wide is the hiatus between them often, that the +lowest form of sex attraction can hardly cross it; and the more highly +developed mental and emotional sex passion cannot possibly bridge it. In +the world of sex, kind seeks kind, and too wide a dissimilarity completely +bars the existence of the highest forms of sex emotion, and often even the +lower and more purely animal. + +Were it possible to place a company of the most highly evolved human +females--George Sands, Sophia Kovalevskys, or even the average cultured +females of a highly evolved race--on an island where the only males were +savages of the Fugean type, who should meet them on the shores with matted +hair and prognathous jaws, and with wild shouts, brandishing their +implements of death, to greet and welcome them, it is an undoubted fact +that, so great would be the horror felt by the females towards them, that +not only would the race become extinct, but if it depended for its +continuance on any approach to sex affection on the part of the women, that +death would certainly be accepted by all, as the lesser of two evils. +Hardly less marked would be the sexual division if, in place of cultured +and developed females, we imagine males of the same highly evolved class +thrown into contact with the lowest form of primitive females. A Darwin, a +Schiller, a Keats, though all men capable of the strongest sex emotion and +of the most durable sex affections, would probably be untouched by any +emotion but horror, cast into the company of a circle of Bushmen females +with greased bodies and twinkling eyes, devouring the raw entrails of +slaughtered beasts. + +But leaving out even such extreme instances of diversity, the mere division +in culture and mental habits, dividing individuals of the same race but of +different classes, tends largely to exclude the possibility of at least the +nobler and more enduring forms of sex emotion. The highly cultured denizen +of a modern society, though he may enter into passing and temporary and +animal relations with the uncultured peasant or woman of the street, seldom +finds awakened within him in such cases the depth of emotion and sympathy +which is necessary for the enjoyment of the closer tie of conjugal life; +and it may be doubted whether the highest, most permanent, and intimate +forms of sexual affection ever exist except among humans very largely +identical in tastes, habits of thought, and moral and physical education. +(In Greece at a certain period (as we have before noted) there does appear +to have been a temporary advance of the male, so far in advance of the +female as to make the difference between them almost immeasurable; but he +quickly fell back to the level of the woman.) Were it possible that the +entrance of woman into the new fields of labour should produce any +increased divergence between man and woman in ideals, culture, or tastes, +there would undoubtedly be a dangerous responsibility incurred by any who +fostered such a movement. + +But the most superficial study of human life and the relation of the sexes +negates such a conception. + +The two sexes are not distinct species but the two halves of one whole, +always acting and interacting on each other through inheritance, and +reproducing and blending with each other in each generation. The human +female is bound organically in two ways to the males of her society: +collaterally they are her companions and the co-progenitors with her of the +race; but she is also the mother of the males of each succeeding +generation, bearing, shaping, and impressing her personality upon them. +The males and females of each human society resemble two oxen tethered to +one yoke: for a moment one may move slightly forward and the other remain +stationary; but they can never move farther from each other than the length +of the yoke that binds them; and they must ultimately remain stationary or +move forward together. That which the women of one generation are mentally +or physically, that by inheritance and education the males of the next tend +to be: there can be no movement or change in one sex which will not +instantly have its co-ordinating effect upon the other; the males of +tomorrow are being cast in the mould of the women of today. If new ideals, +new moral conceptions, new methods of action are found permeating the minds +of the women of one generation, they will reappear in the ideals, moral +conceptions, methods of action of the men of thirty years hence; and the +idea that the males of a society can ever become permanently farther +removed from its females than the individual man is from the mother who +bore and reared him, is at variance with every law of human inheritance. + +If, further, we turn from an abstract consideration of this supposition, +and examine practically in the modern world men and women as they exist +today, the irrationality of the supposition is yet more evident. + +Not merely is the Woman's Movement of our age not a sporadic and abnormal +growth, like a cancer bearing no organic relation to the development of the +rest of the social organism, but it is essentially but one important phase +of a general modification which the whole of modern life is undergoing. +Further, careful study of the movement will show that, not only is it not a +movement on the part of woman leading to severance and separation between +the woman and the man, but that it is essentially a movement of the woman +towards the man, of the sexes towards closer union. + +Much is said at the present day on the subject of the "New Woman" (who, as +we have seen, is essentially but the old non-parasitic woman of the remote +past, preparing to draw on her new twentieth-century garb): and it cannot +truly be said that her attitude finds a lack of social attention. On every +hand she is examined, praised, blamed, mistaken for her counterfeit, +ridiculed, or deified--but nowhere can it be said, that the phenomenon of +her existence is overlooked. + +But there exists at the present day another body of social phenomena, quite +as important, as radical, and if possible more far-reaching in its effects +on the present and future, which yet attracts little conscious attention or +animadversion, though it makes itself everywhere felt; as the shade of a +growing tree may be sat under year after year by persons who never remark +its silent growth. + +Side by side with the "New Woman," corresponding to her, as the two sides +of a coin cast in one mould, though differing from each other in +superficial detail, are yet of one metal, one size, and one value; old in +the sense in which she is old, being merely the reincarnation under the +pressure of new conditions of the ancient forms of his race; new in the +sense in which she is new, in that he is an adaptation to material and +social conditions which have no exact counterpart in the past; more diverse +from his immediate progenitors than even the woman is from hers, side by +side with her today in every society and in every class in which she is +found, stands--the New Man! + +If it be asked, How comes it to pass, if, under the pressure of social +conditions, man shows an analogous change of attitude toward life, that the +change in woman should attract universal attention, while the corresponding +change in the man of her society passes almost unnoticed?--it would seem +that the explanation lies in the fact that, owing to woman's less +independence of action in the past, any attempt at change or readaptation +on her part has had to overcome greater resistance, and it is the noise and +friction of resistance, more than the amount of actual change which has +taken place, which attracts attention; as when an Alpine stream, after a +long winter frost, breaks the ice, and with a crash and roar sweeps away +the obstructions which have gathered in its bed, all men's attention is +attracted to it, though when later a much larger body of water silently +forces its way down, no man observes it. (An interesting practical +illustration of this fact is found in the vast attention and uproar created +when the first three women in England, some thirty odd years ago, sought to +enter the medical profession. At the present day scores of women prepare +to enter it yearly without attracting any general attention; not that the +change which is going on is not far more in volume and social importance, +but that, having overcome the first obstruction, it is now noiseless.) + +Between the Emilias and Sophy Westerns of a bygone generation and the most +typical of modern women, there exists no greater gap (probably not so great +a one) as that which exists between the Tom Joneses and Squire Westerns of +that day and the most typical of entirely modern men. + +The sexual and social ideals which dominated the fox-hunting, hard- +drinking, high-playing, recklessly loose-living country squire, clergyman, +lawyer, and politician who headed the social organism of the past, are at +least as distinct from the ideals which dominate thousands of their male +descendants holding corresponding positions in the societies of today, as +are the ideals of her great-great-grand mother's remote from those +dominating the most modern of New Women. + +That which most forces itself upon us as the result of a close personal +study of those sections of modern European societies in which change and +adaptation to the new conditions of life are now most rapidly progressing, +is, not merely that equally large bodies of men and women are being rapidly +modified as to their sexual and social ideals and as to their mode of life, +but that this change is strictly complementary. + +If the ideal of the modern woman becomes increasingly one inconsistent with +the passive existence of woman on the remuneration which her sexual +attributes may win from man, and marriage becomes for her increasingly a +fellowship of comrades, rather than the relationship of the owner and the +bought, the keeper and the kept; the ideal of the typically modern man +departs quite as strongly from that of his forefathers in the direction of +finding in woman active companionship and co-operation rather than passive +submission. If the New Woman's conception of parenthood differs from the +old in the greater sense of the gravity and obligation resting on those who +are responsible for the production of the individual life, making her +attitude toward the production of her race widely unlike the reckless, +unreasoning, maternal reproduction of the woman of the past, the most +typical male tends to feel in at least the same degree the moral and social +obligation entailed by awakening lifehood: if the ideal which the New +Woman shapes for herself of a male companion excludes the crudely animal +hard-drinking, hard-swearing, licentious, even if materially wealthy +gallant of the past; the most typically modern male's ideal for himself +excludes at least equally this type. The brothel, the race-course, the +gaming-table, and habits of physical excess among men are still with us; +but the most superficial study of our societies will show that these have +fallen into a new place in the scale of social institutions and manners. +The politician, the clergyman, or the lawyer does not improve his social or +public standing by violent addictions in these directions; to drink his +companions under the table, to be known to have the largest number of +illicit sex relations, to be recognised as an habitual visitant of the +gambling saloon, does not, even in the case of a crowned head, much enhance +his reputation, and with the ordinary man may ultimately prove a bar to all +success. If the New Woman's conception of love between the sexes is one +more largely psychic and intellectual than crudely and purely physical, and +wholly of an affection between companions; the New Man's conception as +expressed in the most typical literature and art, produced by typically +modern males, gives voice with a force no woman has surpassed to the same +new ideal. If to the typical modern woman the lifelong companionship of a +Tom Jones or Squire Western would be more intolerable than death or the +most complete celibacy, not less would the most typical of modern men +shrink from the prospect of a lifelong fetterment to the companionship of +an always fainting, weeping, and terrified Emilia or a Sophia of a bygone +epoch. + +If anywhere on earth exists the perfect ideal of that which the modern +woman desires to be--of a labouring and virile womanhood, free, strong, +fearless and tender--it will probably be found imaged in the heart of the +New Man; engendered there by his own heighest needs and aspirations; and +nowhere would the most highly developed modern male find an image of that +which forms his ideal of the most fully developed manhood, than in the +ideal of man which haunts the heart of the New Woman. + +Those have strangely overlooked some of the most important phenomena of our +modern world, who see in the Woman's Movement of our day any emotional +movement of the female against the male, of the woman away from the man. + +We have called the Woman's Movement of our age an endeavour on the part of +women among modern civilised races to find new fields of labour as the old +slip from them, as an attempt to escape from parasitism and an inactive +dependence upon sex function alone; but, viewed from another side, the +Woman's Movement might not less justly be called a part of a great movement +of the sexes towards each other, a movement towards common occupations, +common interests, common ideals, and towards an emotional sympathy between +the sexes more deeply founded and more indestructible than any the world +has yet seen. + +But it may be suggested, and the perception of a certain profound truth +underlies this suggestion; How is it, if there be this close reciprocity +between the lines along which the advanced and typical modern males and +females are developing, that there does exist in our modern societies, and +often among the very classes forming our typically advanced sections, so +much of pain, unrest, and sexual disco-ordination at the present day? + +The reply to this pertinent suggestion is, that the disco-ordination, +struggle, and consequent suffering which undoubtedly do exist when we +regard the world of sexual relationships and ideals in our modern +societies, do not arise in any way from a disco-ordination between the +sexes as such, but are a part of the general upheaval, of the conflict +between old ideals and new; a struggle which is going on in every branch +the human life in our modern societies, and in which the determining +element is not sex, but the point of evolution which the race or the +individual has reached. + +It cannot be too often repeated, even at the risk of the most wearisome +reiteration, that our societies are societies in a state of rapid evolution +and change. The continually changing material conditions of life, with +their reaction on the intellectual, emotional, and moral aspects of human +affairs, render our societies the most complex and probably the most mobile +and unsettled which the world has ever seen. As the result of this +rapidity of change and complexity, there must continually exist a large +amount of disco-ordination, and consequently, of suffering. + +In a stationary society where generation has succeeded generation for +hundreds, or it may be for thousands, of years, with little or no change in +the material conditions of life, the desires, institutions, and moral +principles of men, their religious, political, domestic, and sexual +institutions, have gradually shaped themselves in accordance with these +conditions; and a certain harmony, and homogeneity, and tranquillity, +pervades the society. + +In societies in that rapid state of change in which our modern societies +find themselves, where not merely each decade, but each year, and almost +day brings new forces and conditions to bear on life, not only is the +amount of suffering and social rupture, which all rapid, excessive, and +sudden change entails on an organism, inevitable; but, the new conditions, +acting at different angles of intensity on the different individual members +composing the society, according to their positions and varying +intelligence, are producing a society of such marvellous complexity and +dissimilarity in the different individual parts, that the intensest rupture +and disco-ordination between individuals is inevitable; and sexual ideals +and relationships must share in the universal condition. + +In a primitive society (if a somewhat prolix illustration may be allowed) +where for countless generations the conditions of life had remained +absolutely unchanged; where for ages it had been necessary that all males +should employ themselves in subduing wild beasts and meeting dangerous +foes, polygamy might universally have been a necessity, if the race were to +exist and its numbers be kept up; and society, recognising this, polygamy +would be an institution universally approved and submitted to, however much +suffering it entailed. If food were scarce, the destruction of superfluous +infants and of the aged might also always have been necessary for the good +of the individuals themselves as well as of society, and the whole society +would acquiesce in it without any moral doubt. If an eclipse of the sun +had once occurred in connection with the appearance of a certain new +insect, they mighty universally regard that insect as a god causing it; and +ages might pass without anything arising to disprove their belief. There +would be no social or religious problem; and the view of one man would be +the view of all men; and all would be more or less in harmony with the +established institution and customs. + +But, supposing the sudden arrival of strangers armed with superior weapons +and knowledge, who should exterminate all wild beasts and render war and +the consequent loss of male life a thing of the past; not only would the +male be driven to encroach on the female's domain of domestic agriculture +and labour generally, but the males, not being so largely destroyed, they +would soon equal and surpass in numbers the females; and not only would it +then become a moot matter, "a problem," which labours were or were not to +be performed by man and which by woman, but very soon, not the woman alone +nor the man alone, but both, would be driven to speculate as to the +desirability or necessity of polygamy, which, were men as numerous as +women, would leave many males without sex companions. The more intelligent +and progressive individuals in the community would almost at once arrive at +the conclusion that polygamy was objectionable; the most fearless would +seek to carry their theory into action; the most ignorant and unprogressive +would determinately stick to the old institutions as inherited from the +past, without reason or question; differences of ideal would cause conflict +and dissension in all parts of the body social, and suffering would ensue, +where all before was fixed and determinate. So also if the strangers +introduced new and improved methods of agriculture, and food became +abundant, it would then at once strike the most far-seeing and readily +adaptable members of the community, both male and female, that there was no +necessity for the destruction of their offspring; old men and women would +begin seriously to object to being hastened to death when they realised +that starvation did not necessarily stare them in the face if they survived +to an extreme old age; the most stupid and hide-bound members of the +community would still continue to sacrifice parents and offspring long +after the necessity had ceased, under the influence of traditional bias; +many persons would be in a state of much moral doubt as to which course of +action to pursue, the old or the new; and bitter conflict might rage in the +community on all these points. Were the strangers to bring with them +telescopes, looking through which it might at once clearly be seen that an +eclipse of the sun was caused merely by the moon's passing over its face, +the more intelligent members of the community would at once come to the +conclusion that the insect was not the cause of eclipses, would cease to +regard it as a god, and might even kill it; the more stupid and immobile +section of the community might refuse to look through the telescope, or +looking might refuse to see that it was the moon which caused the eclipse, +and their deep-seated reverence for the insect, which was the growth of +ages, would lead them to regard as impious those individuals who denied its +godhead, and might even lead to the physical destruction of the first +unbelievers. The society, once so homogeneous and co-ordinated in all its +parts, would become at once a society rent by moral and social problems; +and endless suffering must arise to individuals in the attempt to co- +ordinate the ideals, manners, and institutions of the society to the new +conditions! There might be immense gain in many directions; lives +otherwise sacrificed would be spared, a higher and more satisfactory stage +of existence might be entered on; but the disco-ordination and struggle +would be inevitable until the society had established an equilibrium +between its knowledge, its material conditions, and its social, sexual, and +religious ideals and institutions. + +An analogous condition, but of a far more complex kind, exists at the +present day in our own societies. Our material environment differs in +every respect from that of our grandparents, and bears little or no +resemblance to that of a few centuries ago. Here and there, even in our +civilised societies in remote agricultural districts, the old social +conditions may remain partly undisturbed; but throughout the bulk of our +societies the substitution of mechanical for hand-labour, the wide +diffusion of knowledge through the always increasing cheap printing-press; +the rapidly increasing gathering of human creatures into vast cities, where +not merely thousands but millions of individuals are collected together +under physical and mental conditions of life which invert every social +condition of the past; the increasingly rapid means of locomotion; the +increasing intercourse between distant races and lands, brought about by +rapid means of intercommunication, widening and changing in every direction +the human horizon--all these produce a society, so complex and so rapidly +altering, that social co-ordination between all its parts is impossible; +and social unrest, and the strife of ideals of faiths, of institutions, and +consequent human suffering is inevitable. + +If the ancient guns and agricultural implements which our fathers taught us +to use are valueless in the hands of their descendants, if the samplers our +mothers worked and the stockings they knitted are become superfluous +through the action of the modern loom, yet more are their social +institutions, faiths, and manners of life become daily and increasingly +unfitted to our use; and friction and suffering inevitable, especially for +the most advanced and modified individuals in our societies. This +suffering, if we analyse it closely, rises from three causes. + +Firstly, it is caused by the fact that mere excessive rapidity of change +tends always easily to become painful, by rupturing violently already +hardened habits and modes of thought, as a very rapidly growing tree +ruptures its bark and exudes its internal juices. + +Secondly, it arises from the fact that individuals of the same human +society, not adapting themselves at the same rate to the new conditions, or +being exposed to them in different degrees, a wide and almost unparalleled +dissimilarity has today arisen between the different individuals composing +our societies; where, side by side with men and women who have rapidly +adapted or are so successfully seeking to adapt themselves to the new +conditions of knowledge and new conditions of life, that, were they to +reappear in future ages in more co-ordinated societies, they might perhaps +hardly appear wholly antiquated, are to be found men and women whose +social, religious, and moral ideals would not constitute them out of +harmony if returned to the primitive camps of the remote forbears of the +human race; while, between these extreme classes lies that large mass of +persons in an intermediate state of development. This diversity is bound +to cause friction and suffering in the interactions of the members of our +societies; more especially, as the individuals composing each type are not +sorted out into classes and families, but are found scattered through all +classes and grades in our societies. (One of the women holding the most +advanced and modern view of the relation of woman to life whom we have met +was the wife of a Northamptonshire shoemaker; herself engaged in making her +living by the sewing of the uppers of men's boots.) Persons bound by the +closest ties of blood or social contiguity and compelled to a continual +intercourse, are often those most widely dissevered in their amount of +adaptation to the new conditions of life; and the amount of social friction +and consequent human suffering arising from this fact is so subtle and +almost incalculable, that perhaps it is impossible adequately to portray it +in dry didactic language: it is only truly describable in the medium of +art, where actual concrete individuals are shown acting and reacting on +each other--as in the novel or the drama. We are like a company of chess- +men, not sorted out in kinds, pawns together, kings and queens together, +and knights and rooks together, but simply thrown at haphazard into a box, +and jumbled side by side. In the stationary societies, where all +individuals were permeated by the same political, religious, moral, and +social ideas; and where each class had its own hereditary and fixed +traditions of action and manners, this cause of friction and suffering had +of necessity no existence; individual differences and discord might be +occasioned by personal greeds, ambitions, and selfishnesses, but not by +conflicting conceptions of right and wrong, of the desirable and +undesirable, in all branches of human life. (Only those who have been +thrown into contact with a stationary and homogeneous society such as that +of primitive African tribes before coming in contact with Europeans; or +such as the up-country Boers of South Africa were twenty years ago, can +realise adequately how wholly free from moral and social problems and +social friction such a society can be. It is in studying such societies +that the truth is vividly forced on one, that the key to half, and more +than half, of the phenomena in our own social condition, can be found only +in our rapidly changing conditions necessitating equally rapid change in +our conceptions, ideals, and institutions.) + +Thirdly, the unrest and suffering peculiar to our age is caused by conflict +going on within the individual himself. So intensely rapid is the change +which is taking place in our environment and knowledge that in the course +of a single life a man may pass through half a dozen phases of growth. +Born and reared in possession of certain ideas and manners of action, he or +she may, before middle life is reached, have had occasion repeatedly to +modify, enlarge, and alter, or completely throw aside those traditions. +Within the individuality itself of such persons, goes on, in an intensified +form, that very struggle, conflict, and disco-ordination which is going on +in society at large between its different members and sections; and +agonising moments must arise, when the individual, seeing the necessity for +adopting new courses of action, or for accepting new truths, or conforming +to new conditions, will yet be tortured by the hold of traditional +convictions; and the man or woman who attempts to adapt their life to the +new material conditions and to harmony with the new knowledge, is almost +bound at some time to rupture the continuity of their own psychological +existence. + +It is these conditions which give rise to the fact so often noticed, that +the art of our age tends persistently to deal with subtle social problems, +religious, political, and sexual, to which the art of the past holds no +parallel; and it is so inevitably, because the artist who would obey the +artistic instinct to portray faithfully the world about him, must portray +that which lies at the core of its life. The "problem" play, novel, and +poem are as inevitable in this age, as it was inevitable that the artist of +the eleventh century should portray tournaments, physical battles, and +chivalry, because they were the dominant element in the life about him. + +It is also inevitable that this suffering and conflict must make itself +felt in its acutest form in the person of the most advanced individual of +our societies. It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen stream +who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it broken, and +the last find it gone. It is the man or woman who first treads down the +path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, who must find +themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is deadly. The fact that +any course of human action leading to adjustment, leads also to immediate +suffering, by dividing the individual from the bulk of his fellows; is no +argument against it; that solitude and suffering is the crown of thorns +which marks the kingship of earth's Messiahs: it is the mark of the +leader. + +Thus, social disco-ordination, and subjective conflict and suffering, +pervade the life of our age, making themselves felt in every division of +human life, religious, political, and domestic; and, if they are more +noticeable, and make themselves more keenly felt in the region of sex than +in any other, even the religious, it is because when we enter the region of +sex we touch, as it were, the spinal cord of human existence, its great +nerve centre, where sensation is most acute, and pain and pleasure most +keenly felt. It is not sex disco-ordination that is at the root of our +social unrest; it is the universal disco-ordination which affects even the +world of sex phenomena. + +Also it is necessary to note that the line which divides the progressive +sections of our communities, seeking to co-ordinate themselves to the new +conditions of life, from the retrogressive, is not a line running +coincidentally with the line of sex. A George Sand and a Henrik Ibsen +belong more essentially to the same class in the order of modern +development, than either belongs to any class composed entirely of their +own sex. If we divide humanity into classes according to type, in each +division will be found the male with his complementary female. Side by +side with the old harlot at the street corner anxious to sell herself, +stands the old aboriginal male, whether covered or not with a veneer of +civilisation, eager and desiring to buy. Side by side with the parasitic +woman, seeking only increased pleasure and luxury from her relations with +man, stands the male seeking only pleasure and self-indulgence from his +relations with her. Side by side with the New Woman, anxious for labour +and seeking from man only such love and fellowship as she gives, stands the +New Man, anxious to possess her only on the terms she offers. If the +social movement, through which the most advanced women of our day are +attempting to bring themselves into co-ordination with the new conditions +of life, removes them immeasurably from certain types of the primitive +male; the same movement equally removes the new male from the old female. +The sexual tragedy of modern life lies, not in the fact that woman as such +is tending to differ fundamentally from man as such; but that, in the +unassorted confusion of our modern life, it is continually the modified +type of man or woman who is thrown into the closest personal relations with +the antiquated type of the opposite sex; that between father and daughter, +mother and son, brother and sister, husband and wife, may sometimes be +found to intervene not merely years, but even centuries of social +evolution. + +It is not man as man who opposes the attempt of woman to readjust herself +to the new conditions of life: that opposition arises, perhaps more often, +from the retrogressive members of her own sex. And it is a fact which will +surprise no one who has studied the conditions of modern life; that among +the works of literature in all European languages, which most powerfully +advocate the entrance of woman into the new fields of labour, and which +most uncompromisingly demand for her the widest training and freedom of +action, and which most passionately seek for the breaking down of all +artificial lines which sever the woman from the man, many of the ablest and +most uncompromising are the works of males. + +The New Man and Woman do not resemble two people, who, standing on a level +plain, set out on two roads, which diverging at different angles and +continued in straight lines, must continue to take them farther and farther +from each other the longer they proceed in them; rather, they resemble two +persons who start to climb a spur of the same mountain from opposite sides; +where, the higher they climb the nearer they come to each other, being +bound ultimately to meet at the top. + +Even that opposition often made by males to the entrance of woman into the +new fields of labour, of which they at present hold the monopoly, is not +fundamentally sexual in its nature. The male who opposes the entrance of +woman into the trade or profession in which he holds more or less a +monopoly, would oppose with equal, and perhaps even greater bitterness, the +opening of its doors to numbers of his own sex who had before been +excluded, and who would limit his gains and share his privileges. It is +the primitive brute instinct to retain as much as possible for the ego, +irrespective of justice or humanity, which dominates all the lower moral +types of humanity, both male and female, which acts here. The lawyer or +physician who objects to the entrance of women to his highly fenced +professional enclosure, would probably object yet more strenuously if it +were proposed to throw down the barriers of restraint and monetary charges, +which would result in the flooding of his profession by other males: while +the mechanic, who resists the entrance of woman into his especial field, is +invariably found even more persistently to oppose any attempt at entrance +on the part of other males, when he finds it possible to do so. + +This opposition of the smaller type of male, to the entrance of woman into +the callings hitherto apportioned to himself, is sometimes taken as +implying the impossibility of fellowship and affection existing between the +men and women employed in common labour, that the professional jealousy of +the man must necessitate his feeling a hatred and antagonism towards any +one who shares his fields of toil. But the most superficial study of human +life negates such a supposition. Among men, in spite of the occasional +existence of the petty professional jealousies and antagonism, we find, +viewing society as a whole, that common interests, and above all common +labours, are the most potent means of bringing them into close and friendly +relations; and, in fact, they seem generally essential for the formation of +the closest and most permanent human friendships. In every walk of human +life, whether trade, or profession, we find men associating by choice +mainly with, and entertaining often the profoundest and most permanent +friendships for, men engaged in their own callings. The inner circle of a +barrister's friendships almost always consists of his fellow-barristers; +the city man, who is free to select his society where he will, will be +oftenest found in company with his fellow-man of business; the medical +man's closest friendship is, in a large number of cases, for some man who +was once his fellow-student and has passed through the different stages of +his professional life with him; the friends and chosen companions of the +actor are commonly actors; of the savant, savants; of the farmer, farmers; +of the sailor, sailors. So generally is this the case that it would almost +attract attention and cause amusement were the boon companion of the sea +captain a leading politician, and the intimate friend of the clergyman an +actor, or the dearest friend of the farmer an astronomer. Kind seeks kind. +The majority of men by choice frequent clubs where those of their own +calling are found, and especially as life advances and men sink deeper into +their professional grooves, they are found to seek fellowship mainly among +their fellow-workers. That this should be so is inevitable; common +amusements may create a certain bond between the young, but the performance +of common labours, necessitating identical knowledge, identical habits, and +modes of thought, forms a far stronger bond, drawing men far more +powerfully towards social intercourse and personal friendship and affection +than the centrifugal force of professional jealousies can divide them. + +That the same condition would prevail where women became fellow-workers +with men might be inferred on abstract grounds: but practical experience +confirms this. The actor oftenest marries the actress, the male musician +the female; the reception-room of the literary woman or female painter is +found continually frequented by men of her own calling; the woman-doctor +associates continually with and often marries one of her own confreres; and +as women in increasing numbers share the fields of labour with men, which +have hitherto been apportioned to them alone, the nature and strength of +the sympathy arising from common labours will be increasingly clear. + +The sharing by men and women of the same labours, necessitating a common +culture and therefore common habits of thought and interests, would tend to +fill that painful hiatus which arises so continually in modern conjugal +life, dividing the man and woman as soon as the first sheen of physical +sexual attraction which glints only over the unknown begins to fade, and +from which springs so large a part of the tragedy of modern conjugal +relations. The primitive male might discuss with her his success in +hunting and her success in finding roots; as the primitive peasant may +discuss today with his wife the crops and cows in which both are equally +interested and which both understand; there is nothing in their order of +life to produce always increasingly divergent habits of thought and +interest. + +In modern civilised life, in many sections, the lack of any common labour +and interests and the wide dissimilarity of the life led by the man and the +woman, tend continually to produce increasing divergence; so that, long +before middle life is reached, they are left without any bond of co- +cohesion but that of habit. The comradeship and continual stimulation, +rising from intercourse with those sharing our closest interests and +regarding life from the same standpoint, the man tends to seek in his club +and among his male companions, and the woman accepts solitude, or seeks +dissipations which tend yet farther to disrupt the common conjugal life. A +certain mental camaraderie and community of impersonal interests is +imperative in conjugal life in addition to a purely sexual relation, if the +union is to remain a living and always growing reality. It is more +especially because the sharing by woman of the labours of man will tend to +promote camaraderie and the existence of common, impersonal interests and +like habits of thought and life, that the entrance of women into the very +fields shared by men, and not into others peculiarly reserved for her, is +so desirable. (The reply once given by the wife of a leading barrister, +when reference was made to the fact that she and her husband were seldom +found in each other's society, throws a painful but true light on certain +aspects of modern life, against which the entire woman's movement of our +age is a rebellion. "My husband," she said, "is always increasingly +absorbed in his legal duties, of which I understand nothing, and which so +do not interest me. My children are all growing up and at school. I have +servants enough to attend to my house. When he comes home in the evening, +if I try to amuse him by telling him of the things I have been doing during +the day, of the bazaars I am working for, the shopping I have done, the +visits I have paid, he is bored. He is anxious to get away to his study, +his books, and his men friends, and I am left utterly alone. If it were +not for the society of women and other men with whom I have more in common, +I could not bear my life. When we first met as boy and girl, and fell in +love, we danced and rode together and seemed to have everything in common; +now we have nothing. I respect him and I believe he respects me, but that +is all!" It is, perhaps, only in close confidences between man and man and +woman and woman that this open sore, rising from the divergence in +training, habits of life, and occupation between men and women is spoken +of; but it lies as a tragic element at the core of millions of modern +conjugal relations, beneath the smooth superficial surface of our modern +life; breaking out to the surface only occasionally in the revelations of +our divorce courts.) + +It is a gracious fact, to which every woman who has achieved success or +accomplished good work in any of the fields generally apportioned to men +will bear witness, whether that work be in the field of literature, of +science, or the organised professions, that the hands which have been most +eagerly stretched our to welcome her have been those of men; that the +voices which have most generously acclaimed her success have been those of +male fellow-workers in the fields into which she has entered. + +There is no door at which the hand of woman has knocked for admission into +a new field of toil but there have been found on the other side the hands +of strong and generous men eager to turn it for her, almost before she +knocks. + +To those of us who, at the beginning of a new century, stand with shaded +eyes, gazing into the future, striving to descry the outlines of the +shadowy figures which loom before us in the distance, nothing seems of so +gracious a promise, as the outline we seem to discern of a condition of +human life in which a closer union than the world has yet seen shall exist +between the man and the woman: where the Walhalla of our old Northern +ancestors shall find its realisation in a concrete reality, and the +Walkurie and her hero feast together at one board, in a brave fellowship. + +Always in our dreams we hear the turn of the key that shall close the door +of the last brothel; the clink of the last coin that pays for the body and +soul of a woman; the falling of the last wall that encloses artificially +the activity of woman and divides her from man; always we picture the love +of the sexes, as, once a dull, slow, creeping worm; then a torpid, earthy +chrysalis; at last the full-winged insect, glorious in the sunshine of the +future. + +Today, as we row hard against the stream of life, is it only a blindness in +our eyes, which have been too long strained, which makes us see, far up the +river where it fades into the distance, through all the mists that rise +from the river-banks, a clear, a golden light? Is it only a delusion of +the eyes which makes us grasp our oars more lightly and bend our backs +lower; though we know well that long before the boat reaches those +stretches, other hands than ours will man the oars and guide its helm? Is +it all a dream? + +The ancient Chaldean seer had a vision of a Garden of Eden which lay in a +remote past. It was dreamed that man and woman once lived in joy and +fellowship, till woman ate of the tree of knowledge and gave to man to eat; +and that both were driven forth to wander, to toil in bitterness; because +they had eaten of the fruit. + +We also have our dream of a Garden: but it lies in a distant future. We +dream that woman shall eat of the tree of knowledge together with man, and +that side by side and hand close to hand, through ages of much toil and +labour, they shall together raise about them an Eden nobler than any the +Chaldean dreamed of; an Eden created by their own labour and made beautiful +by their own fellowship. + +In his apocalypse there was one who saw a new heaven and a new earth; we +see a new earth; but therein dwells love--the love of comrades and co- +workers. + +It is because so wide and gracious to us are the possibilities of the +future; so impossible is a return to the past, so deadly is a passive +acquiescence in the present, that today we are found everywhere raising our +strange new cry--"Labour and the training that fits us for labour!" + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner + diff --git a/old/old/wmlbr10.zip b/old/old/wmlbr10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea06590 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/old/wmlbr10.zip |