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diff --git a/33584.txt b/33584.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..da3e397 --- /dev/null +++ b/33584.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1940 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Women as World Builders, by Floyd Dell + +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: Women as World Builders + Studies in Modern Feminism + +Author: Floyd Dell + +Release Date: August 30, 2010 [EBook #33584] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN AS WORLD BUILDERS *** + + + + +Produced by Eleni, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + + WOMEN AS WORLD BUILDERS + + + + + Women + as + World Builders + + + Studies in + Modern Feminism + + BY + FLOYD DELL + + [Illustration] + + CHICAGO + FORBES AND COMPANY + 1913 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY + FORBES AND COMPANY + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I The Feminist Movement 7 + + II Charlotte Perkins Gilman 22 + + III Emmeline Pankhurst and Jane Addams 30 + + IV Olive Schreiner and Isadora Duncan 41 + + V Beatrice Webb and Emma Goldman 52 + + VI Margaret Dreier Robins 65 + + VII Ellen Key 76 + + VIII Freewomen and Dora Marsden 90 + + + + +Women as World Builders + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT + + +The feminist movement can be dealt with in two ways: it can be treated +as a sociological abstraction, and discussed at length in heavy +monographs; or it can be taken as the sum of the action of a lot of +women, and taken account of in the lives of individual women. The latter +way would be called "journalistic," had not the late William James used +it in his "Varieties of Religious Experience." It is a method which +preserves the individual flavor, the personal tone and color, which, +after all, are the life of any movement. It is, therefore, the method I +have chosen for this book. + +The ten women whom I have chosen are representative: they give the +quality of the woman's movement of today. Charlotte Perkins Gilman--Jane +Addams--Emmeline Pankhurst--Olive Schreiner--Isadora Duncan--Beatrice +Webb--Emma Goldman--Margaret Dreier Robins--Ellen Key: surely in these +women,[see also the chapter "Freewomen and Dora Marsden."] if anywhere, +is to be found the soul of modern feminism! + +One may inquire why certain other names are not included. There is +Maria Montessori, for instance. Her ideas on the education of children +are of the utmost importance, and their difference from those of Froebel +is another illustration of the difference between the practical minds of +women and the idealistic minds of men. But Madame Montessori's relation +to the feminist movement is, after all, ancillary. A tremendous lot +remains to be done in the way of cooperation for the management of +households and the education of children before women who are wives and +mothers will be set free to take their part in the work of the outside +world. But it is the setting of mothers free, and not the specific kind +of education which their children are to receive, which is of interest +to us here. + +Again, one may inquire why, since I have not blinked the fact that the +feminist movement is making for a revolution of values in sex--why I +have not included any woman who has distinguished herself by defying +antiquated conventions which are supposed to rule the relations of the +sexes. This requires a serious answer. The adjustment of one's social +and personal relations, so far as may be, to accord with one's own +convictions--that is not feminism, in my opinion: it is only common +sense. The attempt to discover how far social laws and traditions must +be changed to accord with the new position of women in society--that is +a different thing, and I have dealt with it in the paper on Ellen Key. + +Another reason is my belief that it is with woman as producer that we +are concerned in a study of feminism, rather than with woman as lover. +The woman who finds her work will find her love--and I do not doubt will +cherish it bravely. But the woman who sets her love above everything +else I would gently dismiss from our present consideration as belonging +to the courtesan type. + +It is not very well understood what the courtesan really is, and so I +pause to describe her briefly. It is not necessary to transgress certain +moral customs to be a courtesan; on the other hand, the term may +accurately be applied to women of irreproachable morals. There are some +women who find their destiny in the bearing and rearing of children, +others who demand independent work like men, and still others who make a +career of charming, stimulating, and comforting men. These types, of +course, merge and combine; and then there is that vast class of women +who belong to none of these types--who are not good for anything! + +The first of these types may be called the mother type, the second the +worker type, and the third--the kind of women which is not drawn either +to motherhood or to work, but which is greatly attracted to men and +which possesses special qualities of sympathy, stimulus, and charm, and +is content with the more or less disinterested exercise of these +qualities--this may without prejudice be called the courtesan type. It +will be seen that the courtesan qualities may find play as well within +legal marriage as without, and that the transgression of certain moral +customs is only incidental to the type. Where circumstances encourage +it, and where the moral tradition is weakened by experience or +temperament, the moral customs will be transgressed: but it is the human +qualities of companionship, and not the economic basis of that +companionship, which is the essential thing. + +When a girl with such qualities marries, and she usually marries, much +depends upon the character of her husband. If her husband appreciates +her, if he does not expect her to give up her career of charming +straightway, and restrict herself to cooking, sewing, and the incubating +of babies; and, furthermore, if he does not baffle those qualities in +his wife by sheer failure in his own career, then there is a happy and +virtuous marriage. Otherwise, there is separation or divorce, and the +woman sometimes becomes the companion of another man without the +sanction of law. But she has been, it will be perceived, a courtesan all +along. And while I do not wish to seem to deprecate her comfortable +qualities, she does not come in the scope of this inquiry. + +But there is another figure which I wish I had been able to include. +Not wishing to involve my publisher in a libel suit, I refrain. She is +the young woman of the leisure class, whose actions, as represented to +us in the yellow journals, shock or divert us, according to our +temperaments. I confess to having the greatest sympathy for her, and in +her endeavor to create a livelier, a more hilarious and human morale, +she is doing, I feel, a real service to the cause of women. Our American +pseudo-aristocracy is capable to teach us, despite its fantastic +excesses, how to play. And emancipation from middle-class standards of +taste, morality, and intellect is, so far as it goes, a good thing. "Too +many cocktails," a lady averred to me the other day, "is better than +smugness; risque conversation far better than none at all." And that +celebrated "public-be-damned" attitude of the pseudo-aristocracy is a +great moral improvement over the cowardly, hysterical fear of the +neighbors which prevails in the middle class. + +But, if I sympathize with the "hell raising" tendency--no other phrase +describes it--of the young woman of the leisure class, I have more pity +than sympathy for the one who is trying to realize the ideal of the +"salon." For she must, after sad experience and bitter disillusionment, +be content with the tawdry activities which, relieved by the orgiastic +outbreaks alluded to above, constitute social life in America. + +The establishment of a salon is, in itself, a healthful ideal. If +civilization were destroyed, and rebuilt on any plan, the tradition of +the salon would be a good starting point for the creation of a medium of +satisfying social intercourse. Social intercourse we must have, or the +best of us lapse into boorishness. The ego only properly functions in +contact with other and various egos. So that, in any case, we should +have to have something in the nature of our contemporary "society." +All the more do we need "society" at present, since those ancient +institutions, the church and the cafe, have almost entirely lost the +character of real social centers. + +Recognizing this need, and supposing the best intentions in the world, +what can people do at present in the creation of a "society" which shall +be useful to the community instead of a laughing stock for the +intelligent? + +That is a fair question. Many an ambitious and idealistic young American +matron has tried to solve it. She has found that the materials were a +little scarce--the people who could talk brilliantly are very rare. But +brilliancy is always a miracle, and it can be dispensed with. The real +trouble lies elsewhere. + +The fact is that in our present industrial system the need for social +life is in inverse ratio to the opportunity for it. The people who need +social intercourse are those who do hard work. The people who have most +money and leisure, the most opportunity for social life, are those who +have too much of it, anyway. Moreover--and this is an important +point--no one profits less by leisure and money than those who have a +great deal of it. Consequently, the basis of "society" today is a class +of people naturally and inevitably inferior. It is this class which +dominates "society," which gives the tone, and which sets the standard. +So long, then, as "society" is dominated by inferiors, intelligent men +and women will not be inclined to waste what time they have for social +intercourse in such stupid activities as those that "society" can +furnish. They will flock by themselves, and if they become undemocratic +and unsocial as a result, that will appear to them the lesser evil. So +that, however catholic our standards, the saloniere, as a bounden +failure, has no place in this transcript of feminism. + +One thing will be observed with regard to these following +papers--though they are imbued with an intense interest in women, they +are devoid of the spirit of Romance. I mean that attitude toward woman +which accepts her sex as a miraculous justification for her existence, +the belief that being a woman is a virtue in itself, apart from the +possession of other qualities: in short, woman-worship. The reverence +for woman as virgin, or wife, or mother, irrespective of her capacities +as friend or leader or servant--that is Romance. It is an attitude +which, discovered in the Middle Ages, has added a new glamour to +existence. To woman as a superior being, a divinity, one may look for +inspiration--and receive it. For those who cannot be fired by an +abstract idea, she gives to imagination "some pure light in human form +to fix it." She is the sustenance of hungry souls. Believe in her and +you shall be saved--so runs the gospel of Petrarch, of Dante, of +Browning, of George Meredith. + +So runs not mine. I have hearkened to the voice of modern science, which +tells me that woman is an inferior being, with a weak body, a stunted +mind, poor in creative power, poor in imagination, poor in critical +capacity--a being who does not know how to work, nor how to talk, nor +how to play! I hope no one will imagine that I am making these charges +up maliciously out of my own head: such a notion would indicate that a +century of pamphleteering on the woman question had made no impression +on a mind saturated in the ideology of popular fiction. + +But--I have hearkened even more eagerly to the voice of sociology, +which tells me of woman's wonderful possibilities. It is with these +possibilities that this book is, in the main, concerned. + +But first the explanation of why I, a man, write these articles on +feminism. It involves the betrayal of a secret: the secret, that is, of +the apparent indifference or even hostility of men toward the woman's +movement. The fact is, as has been bitterly recited by the rebellious +leaders of their sex, that women have always been what man wanted them +to be--have changed to suit his changing ideals. The fact is, +furthermore, that the woman's movement of today is but another example +of that readiness of women to adapt themselves to a masculine demand. + +Men are tired of subservient women; or, to speak more exactly, of the +seemingly subservient woman who effects her will by stealth--the pretty +slave with all the slave's subtlety and cleverness. So long as it was +possible for men to imagine themselves masters, they were satisfied. But +when they found out that they were dupes, they wanted a change. If only +for self-protection, they desired to find in woman a comrade and an +equal. In reality they desired it because it promised to be more fun. + +So that we have as the motive behind the rebellion of women an obscure +rebellion of men. Why, then, have men appeared hostile to the woman's +rebellion? Because what men desire are real individuals who have +achieved their own freedom. It will not do to pluck freedom like a +flower and give it to the lady with a polite bow. She must fight for it. + +We are, to tell the truth, a little afraid that unless the struggle is +one which will call upon all her powers, which will try her to the +utmost, she will fall short of becoming that self-sufficient, able, +broadly imaginative and healthy-minded creature upon whom we have set +our masculine desire. + +It is, then, as a phase of the great human renaissance inaugurated by +men that the woman's movement deserves to be considered. + +And what more fitting than that a man should sit in judgment upon the +contemporary aspects of that movement, weighing out approval or +disapproval! Such criticism is not a masculine impertinence but +a masculine right, a right properly pertaining to those who are +responsible for the movement, and whose demands it must ultimately fulfill. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN + + +Of the women who represent and carry on this many-sided movement today, +the first to be considered from this masculine viewpoint should, I +think, be Charlotte Perkins Gilman. For she is, to a superficial view, +the most intransigent feminist of them all, the one most exclusively +concerned with the improvement of the lot of woman, the least likely to +compromise at the instance of man, child, church, state, or devil. + +Mrs. Gilman is the author of "Women and Economics" and several other +books of theory, "What Diantha Did" and several other books of fiction; +she is the editor and publisher of a remarkable journal, The Forerunner, +the whole varied contents of which is written by herself; she has a +couple of plays to her credit, and she has published a book of poems. +If in spite of all this publicity it is still possible to misunderstand the +attitude of Mrs. Gilman, I can only suppose it to be because her poetry +is less well known than her prose. For in this book of verse, "In This +Our World," Mrs. Gilman has so completely justified herself that no man +need ever be afraid of her--nor any woman who, having a lingering +tenderness for the other sex, would object to living in a beehive world, +full of raging efficient females, with the males relegated to the +position of drones. + +Of course, I do but jest when I speak of this fear; but there is, to +the ordinary male, something curiously objectionable at the first glance +in Mrs. Gilman's arguments, whether they are for cooeperative kitchens or +for the labor of women outside the home. And the reason for that +objection lies precisely in the fact that her plans seem to be made in a +complete forgetfulness of him and his interests. It all has the air of a +feminine plot. The cooeperative kitchens, and the labor by which women's +economic independence is to be achieved, seem the means to an end. + +And so they are. But the end, as revealed in Mrs. Gilman's poems, is +that one which all intelligent men must desire. I do not know whether or +not the more elaborate cooeperative schemes of Mrs. Gilman are practical; +and I fancy that she rather exaggerates the possibilities of independent +work for women who have or intend to have children. But the spirit +behind these plans is one which cannot but be in the greatest degree +stimulating and beneficent in its effect upon her sex. + +For Mrs. Gilman is, first of all, a poet, an idealist. She is a lover +of life. She rejoices in beauty and daring and achievement, in all the +fine and splendid things of the world. She does not merely disapprove of +the contemporary "home" as wasteful and inefficient--she hates it +because it vulgarizes life. In this "home," this private food-preparing +and baby-rearing establishment, she sees a machine which breaks down all +that is good and noble in women, which degrades and pettifies them. The +contrast between the instinctive ideals of young women and the sordid +realities into which housekeeping plunges them is to her intolerable. +And in the best satirical verses of modern times she ridicules these +unnecessary shames. In one spirited piece she points out that the +soap-vat, the pickle-tub, even the loom and wheel, have lost their +sanctity, have been banished to shops and factories: + + But bow ye down to the Holy Stove, + The Altar of the Home! + +The real feeling of Mrs. Gilman is revealed in these lines, which voice, +indeed, the angry mood of many an outraged housewife who finds herself +the serf of a contraption of cast-iron: + + ... We toil to keep the altar crowned + With dishes new and nice, + And Art and Love, and Time and Truth, + We offer up, with Health and Youth + In daily sacrifice. + +Mrs. Gilman is not under the illusion that the conditions of work +outside the home are perfect; she is, indeed, a socialist, and as such +is engaged in the great task of revolutionizing the basis of modern +industry. But she has looked into women's souls, and turned away in +disgust at the likeness of a dirty kitchen which those souls present. + +Into these lives corrupted by the influences of the "home" nothing can +come unspoiled--nothing can enter in its original stature and beauty. +She says: + + Birth comes. Birth-- + The breathing re-creation of the earth! + All earth, all sky, all God, life's sweet deep whole, + Newborn again to each new soul! + "Oh, are you? What a shame! Too bad, my dear! + How well you stand it, too! It's very queer + The dreadful trials women have to carry; + But you can't always help it when you marry. + Oh, what a sweet layette! What lovely socks! + What an exquisite puff and powder box! + Who is your doctor? Yes, his skill's immense-- + But it's a dreadful danger and expense!" + +And so with love, and death, and work--all are smutted and debased. And +her revolt is a revolt against that which smuts and debases +them--against those artificial channels which break up the strong, pure +stream of woman's energy into a thousand little stagnant canals, covered +with spiritual pond-scum. + +It is a part of her idealism to conceive life in terms of war. So it is +that she scorns compromise, for in war compromise is treason. And so it +is that she has heart for the long, slow marshaling of forces, and the +dingy details of the commissariat--for these things are necessary if the +cry of victory is ever to ring out over the battlefield. Some of her +phrases have so militant an air that they seem to have been born among +the captains and the shouting. They make us ashamed of our vicious +civilian comfort. + +Mrs. Gilman's attitude toward the bearing and rearing of children is +easy to misapprehend. She does seem to relegate these things to the +background of women's lives. She does deny to these things a tremendous +importance. Why, she asks, is it so important that women should bear and +rear children to live lives as empty and poor as their own? Surely, she +says, it is more important to make life something worth giving to +children! No, she insists, it is not sufficient to be a mother: an +oyster can be a mother. It is necessary that a woman should be a person +as well as a mother. She must know and do. + +And as for the ideal of love which is founded on masculine privilege, +she satirizes it very effectively in some verses entitled "Wedded +Bliss": + + "O come and be my mate!" said the Eagle to the Hen; + "I love to soar, but then + I want my mate to rest + Forever in the nest!" + Said the Hen, "I cannot fly + I have no wish to try, + But I joy to see my mate careering through the sky!" + They wed, and cried, "Ah, this is Love, my own!" + And the Hen sat, the Eagle soared, alone. + +Woman, in Mrs. Gilman's view, must not be content with Hendom: the sky +is her province, too. Of all base domesticity, all degrading love, she +is the enemy. She gives her approval only to that work which has in it +something high and free, and that love which is the dalliance of the +eagles. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +EMMELINE PANKHURST AND JANE ADDAMS + + +A few months ago it was rather the fashion to reply to some political +verses by Mr. Kipling which assumed to show that women should not be +given the ballot, and which had as their refrain: + + The female of the species is more deadly than the male! + +But it seems that no one pointed out that this fact, even in the limited +sense in which it is a fact in the human species, is an argument for +giving women the vote. + +For if women are, as Mr. Kipling says, lacking in a sense of abstract +justice, in patience, in the spirit of compromise; if they are violent +and unscrupulous in gaining an end upon which they have set their +hearts, then by all means they should be rendered comparatively harmless +by being given the ballot. For it is characteristic of a republic that +its political machinery, created in order to carry out the will of the +people, comes to respond with difficulty to that will, while being +perfectly susceptible to other influences. Republican government, when +not modified by drastic democratic devices, is an expensive, cumbrous, +and highly inefficient method of carrying out the popular will; and +casting a vote is like nothing so much as casting bread upon the waters. +It shall return--after many days. By voting, by exercising an +infinitesimal pressure on our complex, slow-moving political mechanism, +one cannot--it is a sad fact--do much good; but one cannot--and it +should encourage the pessimistic Mr. Kipling--one cannot, even though a +woman, do much harm. + +This is not, however, a disquisition on woman suffrage. There is only +one argument for woman suffrage: women want it; there are no arguments +against it. But one may profitably inquire, What will be the effect of +the emergence of women into politics upon politics itself? And one may +hope to find an answer in the temperament and career of certain +representative leaders of the woman's movement. Let us accordingly turn +to the accredited leader of the English "votes for women" movement, and +to the woman in the American movement who is best known to the public. + +That Miss Jane Addams has become known chiefly through other activities +does not matter here. It is temperament and career in which we are +immediately interested. What is perhaps the most outstanding fact in the +temperament of Miss Addams is revealed only indirectly in her +autobiography: it may be called the passion of conciliation. + +Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst has by her actions written herself down for a +fighter. She has but recently been released from Holloway jail, where +she was serving a term of imprisonment for "conspiracy and violence." In +a book by H. G. Wells, which contains a very bitter attack on the +woman's suffrage movement (I refer to "Ann Veronica"), she is described +as "implacable"; and I believe that it is she to whom Mr. Wells refers +as being "as incapable of argument as a steam roller broken loose." The +same things might have been said of Sherman on his dreadful march to the +sea. These phrases, malicious as they are, contain what I am inclined to +accept as an accurate description of Mrs. Pankhurst's temperament. + +No one would call Mrs. Pankhurst a conciliator. And no one would call +Miss Addams "implacable." It is not intended to suggest that Miss Addams +is one of those inveterate compromisers who prefer a bad peace to a good +war. But she has the gift of imaginative sympathy; and it is impossible +for her to have toward either party in a conflict the cold hostility +which each party has for the other. She sees both sides; and even though +one side is the wrong side, she cannot help seeing why its partisans +believe in it. + +"If the under dog were always right," Miss Addams has said, "one might +quite easily try to defend him. The trouble is that very often he is but +obscurely right, sometimes only partially right, and often quite wrong, +but perhaps he is never so altogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly +reprehensible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession +of prejudice to the other almost insuperable difficulties in +understanding him." + +Miss Addams has taken in good faith the social settlement ideal--"to +span the gulf between the rich and the poor, or between those who have +had cultural opportunities and those who have not, by the process of +neighborliness." In her writings, as in her work, there is never sounded +the note of defiance. Even in defense of the social settlement and its +methods of conciliation (which have been venomously assailed by the +newspapers during Chicago's fits of temporary insanity, as in the +Averbuch case), Miss Addams has not become militant. She has never +ceased to be serenely reasonable. + +But when one comes to ask how powerful Miss Addams' example has been, +one is forced to admit that it has been limited. There are two other +settlement houses in Chicago which are managed in the spirit of Hull +House. But all the others--and there are about forty settlement houses +in the city--have discarded almost openly the principle of conciliation. +They are efficient, or religious, or something else, but they are afraid +of being too sympathetic with the working class. They do not, for +instance, permit labor unions to meet in their halls. The splendid +social idealism of the '80s, of which Miss Addams is representative, has +disappeared, leaving two sides angry and hostile and with none but Miss +Addams believing in the possibility of finding any common ground for +action. One event after another from the Pullman strike to the Averbuch +case has brought this hostility out into the open, with Miss Addams +occupying neutral ground, and left high and dry upon it. + +It is the fact that Miss Addams has not been able to imbue the movement +in which she is a leader with her own spirit. Her career has been +successful only so far as individual genius could make it successful. If +one compares her achievement to that of Mrs. Pankhurst, one sees that +the latter is startingly social in its nature. + +For Mrs. Pankhurst has called upon women to be like herself, to display +her own Amazonian qualities. She called upon shop girls and college +students and wives and old women to make physical assaults on cabinet +ministers, to raid parliament and fight with policemen, to destroy +property and go to prison, to endure almost every indignity from the +mobs and from their jailers, to suffer in health and perhaps to die, +exactly as soldiers suffer and die in a campaign. + +And they did. They answered her call by the thousands. They have fought +and suffered, and some of them have died. If this had been the result of +individual genius in Mrs. Pankhurst, transforming peaceful girls into +fighters out of hand, she would be the most extraordinary person of the +age. But it is impossible to believe that all this militancy was created +out of the void. It was simply awakened where it lay sleeping in these +women's hearts. + +Mrs. Pankhurst has performed no miracle. She has only shown to us the +truth which we have blindly refused to see. She has had the insight to +recognize in women generally the same fighting spirit which she found in +herself, and the courage to draw upon it. She has enabled us to see what +women really are like, just as Miss Addams has by her magnificent +anomalies shown us what women are not like. + +Can anyone doubt this? Can anyone, seeing the lone eminence of Miss +Addams, assert that imaginative sympathy, patience, and the spirit of +conciliation are the ordinary traits of women? Can anyone, seeing the +battle frenzy which Mrs. Pankhurst has evoked with a signal in thousands +of ordinary Englishwomen, deny that women have a fighting soul? + +And can anyone doubt the effect which the emergence of women into +politics will have, eventually, on politics? Eventually, for in spite of +their boasted independence the decorous example of men will rule them at +first. But when they have become used to politics--well, we shall find +that we have harnessed an unruly Niagara! + +In women as voters we shall have an element impatient of restraint, +straining at the rules of procedure, cynical of excuses for inaction; +not always by any means on the side of progress; making every mistake +possible to ignorance and self-conceit; but transforming our politics +from a vicious end to an efficient means--from a cancer into an organ. + +This, with but little doubt, is the historic mission of women. They +will not escape a certain taming by politics. But that they should be +permanently tamed I find impossible to believe. Rather they will subdue +it to their purposes, remold it nearer to their hearts' desire, change +it as men would never dream of changing it, wreck it savagely in the +face of our masculine protest and merrily rebuild it anew in the face of +our despair. With their aid we may at last achieve what we seem to be +unable to achieve unaided--a democracy. + +Meanwhile let us understand this suffrage movement. Let us understand +that we have in militancy rather than in conciliation, in action rather +than in wisdom, the keynote of woman in politics. And we males, who have +so long played in our politics at innocent games of war, we shall have +an opportunity to fight in earnest at the side of the Valkyrs. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +OLIVE SCHREINER AND ISADORA DUNCAN + + +I hope that no one will see in the conjuncture of these names a mere +wanton fantasy, or a mere sensational contrast. To me there is something +extraordinarily appropriate in that conjuncture, inasmuch as the work of +Olive Schreiner and the work of Isadora Duncan supplement each other. + +It is the drawback of the woman's movement that in any one of its +aspects (heightened and colored as such an aspect often is by the +violence of propaganda) it may appear too fiercely narrow. That women +should make so much fuss about getting the vote, or that they should so +excite themselves over the prospect of working for wages, will appear +incomprehensible to many people who have a proper regard for art, for +literature, and for the graces of social intercourse. It is only when +the woman's movement is seen broadly, in a variety of its aspects, that +there comes the realization that here is a cause in which every fine +aspiration has a place, a cause from which sincere lovers of truth and +beauty have nothing really to fear. + +Mrs. Olive Schreiner stands, by virtue of her latest book, "Women and +Labor," as an exponent of the doctrine that would send women into every +field of economic activity; or, rather, the doctrine that finds in the +forces which are driving them there a savior of her sex from the +degradation of parasitism. In behalf of this doctrine she has expended +all that eloquence and passion which have made her one of the figures in +modern literature and a spokesman for all women who have not learned to +speak that hieratic language which is heard, as the inexpressive speech +of daily life is not heard, across space and time. + +Miss Isadora Duncan stands as representative of the renaissance in +dancing. She has brought back to us the antique beauty of an art of +which we have had only relics and memento in classic sculpture and +decoration. She has made us despise the frigid artifice of the ballet, +and taught us that in the natural movements of the body are contained +the highest possibilities of choregraphic beauty. It has been to many of +us one of the finest experiences of our lives to see, for the first +time, the marble maiden of the Grecian urn come to life in her, and all +the leaf-fringed legends of Arcady drift before our enamored eyes. She +has touched our lives with the magic of immemorial loveliness. + +But to class Olive Schreiner as a sociologist and Isadora Duncan as a +dancer, to divorce them by any such categories, is to do them both an +injustice. For they are sister workers in the woman's movement. They +have each shown the way to a new freedom of the body and the soul. + +The woman's movement is a product of the evolutionary science of the +nineteenth century. Women's rebellions there have been before, utopian +visions there have been, which have contributed no little to the modern +movement by the force of their tradition and ever-living spirit. No Joan +of Arc has led men to victory, no Lady Godiva has sacrificed her +modesty--nay, even, no courtesan has taught a feeble king how to rule +his country--without feeding the flame of feminine aspiration. But it is +modern science which, by giving us a new view of the body, its +functions, its needs, its claim upon the world, has laid the basis for a +successful feminist movement. When the true history of this movement is +written it will contain more about Herbert Spencer and Walt Whitman, +perhaps, than about Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin. In any +case, it is to the body that one looks for the Magna Charta of feminism. + +The eye--that is to say--is guarantor for the safety of art in a future +regime under the dominance of women; and the ear for poetry. These have +their functions and their needs, and the woman of the future will not +deny them. + +It is the hand that Olive Schreiner would emancipate from idleness. She +knows the significance of the hand in human history. It was by virtue of +the hand that we, and not some other creature, gained lordship over the +earth. It was the hand (marvelous instrument, coaxing out of the +directing will an ever-increasing subtlety) that made possible the human +brain, and all the vistas of reason and imagination by which our little +lives gain their peculiar grandeur. + +And this hand, if it be a woman's in the present day, is doomed to the +smallest activities. "Our spinning wheels are all broken ...Our hoes and +grindstones passed from us long ago.... Year by year, day by day, there +is a silently working but determined tendency for the sphere of women's +domestic labors to contract itself." Even the training of her child is +taken away from the mother by the "mighty and inexorable demands of +modern civilization." That condition is to her intolerable; and it is on +behalf of women's empty hands that she makes her 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 +honored and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labor of +the Children of Woman." + +And what of Miss Duncan--what is her part in the woman's movement? In +her book on "The Dance" she tells a story: "A woman once asked me why I +dance with bare feet, and I replied, 'Madam, I believe in the religion +of the beauty of the human foot'; and the lady replied, 'But I do not,' +and I said: 'Yet you must, Madam, for the expression and intelligence of +the human foot is one of the greatest triumphs of the evolution of man.' +'But,' said the lady, 'I do not believe in the evolution of man.' At +this said I, 'My task is at an end. I refer you to my most revered +teachers, Mr. Charles Darwin and Mr. Ernst Haeckel--' 'But,' said the +lady, 'I do not believe in Darwin and Haeckel--' At this point I could +think of nothing more to say. So you see that, to convince people, I am +of little value and ought not to speak." + +But rather to dance! Yet it is good to find so explicit a statement of +the idea which she nobly expresses in her dancing. For, as the hand is +the symbol of that constructive exertion of the body which we call work, +so is the foot the symbol of that diffusive exertion of the body which +we call play. Isadora Duncan would emancipate the one as Olive Schreiner +would emancipate the other--to new activities and new delights. + +And if such work is not a thing for itself only, but a gateway to a new +world, so is such play not a thing for itself only. "It is not only a +question of true art," writes Miss Duncan, "it is a question of race, of +the development of the female sex to beauty and health, of the return to +the original strength and the natural movements of woman's body. It is a +question of the development of perfect mothers and the birth of healthy +and beautiful children." Here we have an inspiriting expression of the +idea which through the poems of Walt Whitman and the writings of various +moderns, has renovated the modern soul and made us see, without any +obscene blurring by Puritan spectacles, the goodness of the whole body. +This is as much a part of the woman's movement as the demand for a vote +(or, rather, it is more central and essential a part); and only by +realizing this is it possible to understand that movement. + +The body is no longer to be separated in the thought of women from the +soul: "The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have +grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul +will have become the movement of the body. The dancer will not belong to +a nation, but to all humanity. She will dance, not in the form of nymph, +nor fairy, nor coquette, but in the form of woman in its greatest and +purest expression. She will realize the mission of woman's body and the +holiness of all its parts. She will dance the changing life of nature, +showing how each part is transformed into the other. From all parts of +her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the +message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women. She shall +dance the freedom of woman. + +"She will help womankind to a new knowledge of the possible strength and +beauty of their bodies, and the relation of their bodies to the earth +nature and to the children of the future. She will dance, the body +emerging again from centuries of civilized forgetfulness, emerging not +in the nudity of primitive man, but in a new nakedness, no longer at war +with spirituality and intelligence, but joining itself forever with this +intelligence in a glorious harmony. + +"Oh, she is coming, the dancer of the future; the free spirit, who will +inhabit the body of new women; more glorious than any woman that has yet +been; more beautiful than the Egyptian, than the Greek, the early +Italian, than all women of past centuries--the highest intelligence in +the freest body!" + +If the woman's movement means anything, it means that women are +demanding everything. They will not exchange one place for another, nor +give up one right to pay for another, but they will achieve all rights +to which their bodies and brains give them an implicit title. They will +have a larger political life, a larger motherhood, a larger social +service, a larger love, and they will reconstruct or destroy +institutions to that end as it becomes necessary. They will not be +content with any concession or any triumph until they have conquered all +experience. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +BEATRICE WEBB AND EMMA GOLDMAN + + +The careers of these two women serve admirably to exhibit the woman's +movement in still another aspect, and to throw light upon the essential +nature of woman's character. These careers stand in plain contrast. +Beatrice Webb has compiled statistics, and Emma Goldman has preached the +gospel of freedom. It remains to be shown which is the better and the +more characteristically feminine gift to the world. + +Beatrice Potter was the daughter of a Canadian railway president. Born +in 1858, she grew up in a time when revolutionary movements were in the +making. She was a pupil of Herbert Spencer, and it was perhaps from him +that she learned so to respect her natural interest in facts that the +brilliancy of no generalization could lure her into forgetting them. At +all events, she was captured permanently by the magic of facts. She +studied working-class life in Lancashire and East London at first hand, +and in 1885 joined Charles Booth in his investigations of English social +conditions. These investigations (which in my amateur ignorance I always +confused with those of General Booth of the Salvation Army!) were +published in four large volumes entitled "Life and Labor of the People." +Miss Potter's special contributions were articles on the docks, the +tailoring trade, and the Jewish community. Later she published a book on +"The Cooeperative Movement in Great Britain." Then, in 1892, she married +Sidney Webb, a man extraordinarily of her own sort, and became +confirmed, if such a thing were necessary, in her statistical habit of +mind. + +Meanwhile, in 1883, the Fabian Society had been founded. But first a +word about statistics. "Statistics" does not mean a long list of +figures. It means the spreading of knowledge of facts. Statistics may be +called the dogma that knowledge is dynamic--that it is somehow operative +in bringing about that great change which all intelligent people desire +(and which the Fabians conceived as Socialism). The Fabian Society was +founded on the dogma of statistics as on a rock. The Fabians did not +start a newspaper, nor create a new political party, nor organize public +meetings; but they wrote to the newspapers already in existence, ran for +office on party tickets already in the field, and made speeches to other +organizations. That is to say, they went about like the cuckoo, laying +their statistical eggs in other people's nests and expecting to see them +hatch into enlightened public opinion and progressive legislation. + +Some of them hatched and some of them didn't. The point is that we have +in this section of Beatrice Webb's career something typical of herself. +She has gone on, serving on government commissions, writing (with her +husband) the history of Trades Unionism, patiently collecting statistics +and getting them printed in black ink on white paper, making detailed +plans for the abolition of poverty, and always concerning herself with +the homely fact. + +At the time that Beatrice Potter joined Mr. Booth in his social +investigations there was a 16-year-old Jewish girl living in the +German-Russian province of Kurland. A year later, in 1886, this girl, +Emma Goldman by name, came to America, to escape the inevitable +persecutions attending on any lover of liberty in Russia. She had been +one of those who had gone "to the people"; and it was as a working girl +that she came to America. + +She had, that is to say, the heightened sensibilities, the keen +sympathies, of the middle class idealist, and the direct contact with +the harsh realities of our social and industrial conditions which is the +lot of the worker. Her first experiences in America disabused her of the +traditional belief that America was a refuge where the oppressed of all +lands were welcome. The treatment of immigrants aboard ship, the +humiliating brutalities of the officials at Castle Garden, and the +insolent tyranny of the New York police convinced her that she had +simply come from one oppressed land to another. + +She went to work in a clothing factory, her wages being $2.50 a week. +She had ample opportunities to see the degradations of our economic +system, especially as it affects women. So it was not strange that she +should be drawn into the American labor movement, which was then, with +the Knights of Labor, the eight-hour agitation, and the propaganda of +the Socialists and the Anarchists, at its height. She became acquainted +with various radicals, read pamphlets and books, and heard speeches. She +was especially influenced by the eloquent writings of Johann Most in his +journal Freiheit. + +So little is known, and so much absurd nonsense is believed, about the +Anarchists, that it is necessary to state dogmatically a few facts. If +these facts seem odd, the reader is respectfully urged to verify them. +One fact is that secret organizations of Anarchists plotting a violent +overthrow of the government do not exist, and never have existed, save +in the writings of Johann Most and in the imagination of the police: the +whole spirit of Anarchism is opposed to such organizations. Another fact +is that Anarchists do not believe in violence of any kind, or in any +exercise of force; when they commit violence it is not as Anarchists, +but as outraged human beings. They believe that violent reprisals are +bound to be provoked among workingmen by the tyrannies to which they are +subjected; but they abjure alike the bomb and the policeman's club. + +There was a brief period in which Anarchists, under the influence of +Johann Most, believed in (even if they did not practice) the use of +dynamite. But this period was ended, in America, by the hanging of +several innocent men in Chicago in 1887; which at least served the +useful purpose of showing radicals that it was a bad plan even to talk +of dynamite. And this hanging, which was the end of what may be called +the Anarchist "boom" in this country, was the beginning of Emma +Goldman's career as a publicist. + +Since 1887 the Anarchists have lost influence among workingmen until +they are today negligible--unless one credits them with Syndicalism--as +a factor in the labor movement. The Anarchists have, in fact, left the +industrial field more and more and have entered into other kinds of +propaganda. They have especially "gone in for kissing games." + +And Emma Goldman reflects, in her career, the change in Anarchism. She +has become simply an advocate of freedom--freedom of every sort. She +does not advocate violence any more than Ralph Waldo Emerson advocated +violence. It is, in fact, as an essayist and speaker of the kind, if not +the quality, of Emerson, Thoreau, or George Francis Train, that she is +to be considered. + +Aside from these activities (and the evading of our overzealous police +in times of stress) she has worked as a trained nurse and midwife; she +conducted a kind of radical salon in New York, frequented by such people +as John Swinton and Benjamin Tucker; she traveled abroad to study social +conditions; she has become conversant with such modern writings as those +of Hauptmann, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, and Thomas Hardy. It is stated +that the "Rev. Mr. Parkhurst, during the Lexow investigation, did his +utmost to induce her to join the Vigilance Committee in order to fight +Tammany Hall." She was the manager of Paul Orlenoff and Mme. Nazimova. +She was a friend of Ernest Crosby. Her library, it is said, would be +taken for that of a university extension lecturer on literature. + +It will thus be seen that Emma Goldman is of a type familiar enough in +America, and conceded a popular respect. She has a legitimate social +function--that of holding before our eyes the ideal of freedom. She is +licensed to taunt us with our moral cowardice, to plant in our souls the +nettles of remorse at having acquiesced so tamely in the brutal artifice +of present day society. + +I submit the following passage from her writings ("Anarchism and Other +Essays") as at once showing her difference from other radicals and +exhibiting the nature of her appeal to her public: + +"The misfortune of woman is not that she is unable to do the work of a +man, but that she is wasting her life force to outdo him, with a +tradition of centuries which has left her physically incapable of +keeping pace with him. Oh, I know some have succeeded, but at what cost, +at what terrific cost! The import is not the kind of work woman does, +but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give suffrage +or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that +will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her +independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting +herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by +refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children +unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, +society, the husband, the family, etc.; by making her life simpler, but +deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance +of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of +public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, +will set woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the +world; a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine +fire, of life giving; a creator of free men and women." + +There is little in this that Ibsen would not have said amen to. But--and +this is the conclusion to which my chapter draws--Ibsen has said it +already, and said it more powerfully. Emma Goldman--who (if among women +anyone) should have for us a message of her own, striking to the +heart--repeats, in a less effective cadence, what she has learned from +him. + +The work of Beatrice Webb is the prose of revolution. The work of Ibsen +is its poetry. Beatrice Webb has performed her work--one comes to +feel--as well as Ibsen has his. And one wonders if, after all, the prose +is not that which women are best endowed to succeed in. + +A book review (written by a woman) which I have at hand contains some +generalizations which bear on the subject. "This is a woman's book [says +the reviewer], and a book which could only have been written by a woman, +though it is singularly devoid of most of the qualities which are +usually recognized as feminine. For romance and sentiment do not +properly lie in the woman's domain. She deals, when she is herself, with +the material facts of the life she knows. Her talent is to exhibit them +in the remorseless light of reality and shorn of all the glamour of +idealism. Great and poetical imagination rarely informs her art, but +within the strictness of its limits it lives by an intense and +scrupulous sincerity of observation and an uncompromising recognition of +the logic of existence." + +If that is true, shall we not then expect a future more largely +influenced by women to have more of the hard, matter-of-fact quality, +the splendid realism characteristic of woman "when she is herself"? + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +MARGARET DREIER ROBINS + + +The work of Margaret Dreier Robins has been done in the National Women's +Trade Union League. It might be supposed that the aim of such an +organization is sufficiently explicit in its title: to get higher wages +and shorter hours. But I fancy that it would be a truer thing to say +that its aim is to bring into being that ideal of American womanhood +which Walt Whitman described: + + They are not one jot less than I am, + They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds, + Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength, + They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, + retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves, + They are ultimate in their own right--they are + calm, clear, well-possessed of themselves. + +When Whitman made this magnificent prophecy for American womanhood the +Civil War had not been fought and its economic consequences were +unguessed at. The factory system, which had come into England in the +last century, bringing with it the most unspeakable exploitation of +women and children, had hardly gained a foothold in this country. In +1840, of the seven employments open to women (teaching, needlework, +keeping boarders, working in cotton mills, in bookbinderies, typesetting +and household service) only one was representative of the new industrial +condition which today affects so profoundly the feminine physique. And +to the daughters of a nation that was still imbued with the pioneer +spirit, work in cotton mills appealed so little that they undertook it +only for unusually high pay. Anyone of that period seeing the +red-cheeked, robust, intelligent, happy girl operatives of Lowell might +have dismissed his fears of the factory as a sinister influence in the +development of American womanhood and gone on to dream, with Walt +Whitman, of a race of "fierce, athletic girls." + +But two things happened. With the growing flood of immigration, the +factories were abandoned more and more to the "foreigners," the +native-born citizens losing their pride in the excellence of working +conditions and the character of the operatives. And all the while the +factory was becoming more and more an integral part of our civilization, +demanding larger and larger multitudes of girls and women to attend its +machinery. So that, with the enormous development of industry since the +Civil War, the factory has become the chief field of feminine endeavor +in America. In spite of the great opening up of all sorts of work to +women, in spite of the store, the office, the studio, the professions, +still the factory remains most important in any consideration of the +health and strength of women. + +If the greatest part of our womankind spends its life in factories, and +if it further appears that this is no temporary situation, but +(practically speaking) a permanent one, then it becomes necessary to +inquire how far the factory is hindering the creation of that ideal +womanhood which Walt Whitman predicted for us. + +As opposed to the old-fashioned method of manufacture in the home (or +the sweatshop, which is the modern equivalent), the factory often shows +a gain in light and air, a decrease of effort, an added leisure; while, +on the other hand, there is a considerable loss of individual freedom +and an increase in monotony. But child labor, a too long working day, +bad working conditions, lack of protection from fire, personal +exploitation by foremen, inhumanly low wages, and all sorts of petty +injustice, though not essential to the system, are prominent features of +factory work as it generally exists. + +People who consider every factory an Inferno, however, and have only +pity for its workers, are far from understanding the situation. Here is +a field of work which is capable of competing successfully with domestic +service, and even of attracting girls from homes where there exists no +absolute necessity for women's wages. Yet at its contemporary best, with +a ten-hour law in operation, efficient factory inspection, decent +working conditions and a just and humane management, the factory remains +an institution extremely perilous to the Whitmanic ideal of womanhood. + +But there are women who, undaunted by the new conditions brought about +by a changing economic system, seize upon those very conditions to use +them as the means to their end: such a woman is Mrs. Robins. Has a new +world, bounded by factory walls and noisy with the roar of machinery, +grown up about us, to keep women from their heritage? She will help them +to use those very walls and that very machinery to achieve their +destiny, a destiny of which a physical well-being is, as Walt Whitman +knew it to be, the most certain symbol. + +The factory already gives women a certain independence. It may yet give +them pleasure, the joy of creation. Indeed, it must, when the workers +require it; and those who are most likely to require it are the women +workers. + +It is well known that with the ultra-development of the machine, the +subdivision of labor, the regime of piecework, it has become practically +impossible for the worker to take any artistic pleasure in his product. +It is not so well known how necessary such pleasure in the product is to +the physical well-being of women--how utterly disastrous to their +nervous organization is the monotony and irresponsibility of piecework. +This method--which men workers have grumbled at, but to which they seem +to have adjusted themselves--bears its fruits among women in +neurasthenia, headaches, and the derangement of the organs which are the +basis of their different nervous constitution. It is sufficiently clear +to those who have seen the personal reactions of working girls to the +piecework system, that when women attain, as men in various industries +have attained, the practical management of the factory, piecework will +get a setback. + +But not merely good conditions, not merely a living wage, not merely a +ten or an eight hour day--all that self-government in the shop can bring +is the object of the Women's Trade Union League. + +"The chief social gain of the union shop," says Mrs. Robins, "is not +its generally better wages and shorter hours, but rather the incentive +it offers for initiative and social leadership, the call it makes, +through the common industrial relationship and the common hope, upon the +moral and reasoning faculties, and the sense of fellowship, independence +and group strength it develops. In every workshop of say thirty girls +there is undreamed of initiative and capacity for social leadership and +control--unknown wealth of intellectual and moral resources." + +It is, in fact, this form of activity which to many thousands of factory +girls makes the difference between living and existing, between a +painful, necessary drudgery and a happy exertion of all their faculties. +It can give them a more useful education than any school, a more vital +faith than any church, a more invigorating sense of power than any other +career open to them. + +To do all these things it must be indigenous to working-class soil. No +benefaction originating in the philanthropic motives of middle-class +people, no enterprise of patronage, will ever have any such meaning. A +movement, to have such meaning, must be of the working class, and by the +working class, as well as for the working class. It must be imbued with +working-class feeling, and it must subserve working-class ideals. + +It is the distinction of Mrs. Robins that she has seen this. She has +gone to the workers to learn rather than to teach--she has sought to +unfold the ideals and capacities latent in working girls rather than +impress upon them the alien ideals and capacities of another class. + +"Just"--it is Mrs. Robins that speaks--"as under a despotic church and +a feudal state the possible power and beauty of the common people was +denied expression, so under industrial feudalism the intellectual and +moral powers of the workers are slowly choked to death, with +incalculable loss to the individual and the race. It is easy to kill; it +requires a great spirit as well as a great mind to arouse the dormant +energies, to vitalize them and to make them creative forces for good." + +One is reminded of the words of John Galsworthy, addressed to +workingwomen: "There is beginning to be a little light in the sky; +whether the sun is ever to break through depends on your constancy, and +courage, and wisdom. The future is in your hands more than in the hands +of men; it rests on your virtues and well-being, rather than on the +virtues and the welfare of men, for it is you who produce and mold the +Future." + +There are 6,000,000 working women in the United States, and half of +them are girls under 21. One may go out any day in the city streets, at +morning or noon or evening, and look at a representative hundred of +them. The factories have not been able to rob them of beauty and +strength and the charm of femininity, and in that beauty and strength +and charm there is a world of promise. And that promise already begins +to be unfolded when to them comes Mrs. Robins with a gospel germane to +their natures, saying, "Long enough have you dreamed contemptible +dreams." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +ELLEN KEY + + +In these chapters a sincere attempt has been made not so much to show +what a few exceptional women have accomplished as to exhibit through a +few prominent figures the essential nature of women, and to show what +may be expected from a future in which women will have a larger freedom +and a larger influence. + +It has been pointed out that the peculiar idealism of women is one that +works itself out through the materials of workaday life, and which seeks +to break or remake those materials by way of fulfilling that idealism; +it has been shown that this idealism, as contrasted with the more +abstract and creative idealism of men, deserves to be called +practicalism, a practicalism of a noble and beautiful sort which we are +far from appreciating; and as complementing these forms of activity, the +play instinct, the instinct of recreation, has been pointed out as the +parallel to the creative or poetic instinct of men. + +Woman as reconstructor of domestic economics, woman as a destructive +political agent of enormous potency, woman as worker, woman as dancer, +woman as statistician, woman as organizer of the forces of labor--in +these it has been the intent to show the real woman of today and of +tomorrow. + +There have been other aspects of her deserving of attention in such a +series, notably her aspect as mother and as educator. If she has not +been shown as poet, as artist, as scientist, as talker (for talk is a +thing quite as important as poetry or science or art), it has not been +so much because of an actual lack of specific examples of women +distinguished in these fields as because of the unrepresentative +character of such examples. + +Here, then, is a man's view of modern woman. To complete that view, to +round off that conception, I now speak of Ellen Key. + +Her writings have had a peculiar career in America, one which perhaps +prevents a clear understanding of their character. On the one hand, they +have seemed to many to be radically "advanced"; to thousands of +middle-class women, who have heard vaguely of these new ideas, and who +have secretly and strongly desired to know more of them, her "Love and +Marriage" has come as a revolutionary document, the first outspoken word +of scorn for conventional morality, the first call to them to take their +part in the breaking of new paths. + +On the other hand, it must be remembered that America is the home of +Mormonism, of the Oneida Community, of the Woodhull and Claflin +"free-love" movement of the '70s, of "Dianism" and a hundred other +obscure but pervasive sexual cults--in short, of movements of greater or +less respectability, capable of giving considerable currency to their +beliefs. And they have given considerable currency to their beliefs. In +spite of the dominant tone of Puritanism in American thought, our social +life has been affected to an appreciable extent by these beliefs. + +And these beliefs may be summed up hastily, but, on the whole, justly, +as materialistic--in the common and unfavorable sense. They have +converged, from one direction or another, upon the opinion that sex is +an animal function, no more sacred than any other animal function, +which, by a ridiculous over-estimation, is made to give rise to +jealousy, unhappiness, madness, vice, and crime. + +It is a fact that the Puritan temperament readily finds this opinion, +if not the program which accompanies it, acceptable, as one may discover +in private conversation with respectable Puritans of both sexes. And it +is more unfortunately true that the present-day rebellion against +conventional morality in America has found, in Hardy and Shaw and other +anti-romanticists, a seeming support of this opinion. So that one finds +in America today (though some people may not know about it) an +undercurrent of impatient materialism in matters of sex. To become freed +from the inadequate morality of Puritanism is, for thousands of young +people, to adopt another morality which is, if more sound in many ways, +certainly as inadequate as the other. + +So that Ellen Key comes into the lives of many in this country as a +conservative force, holding up a spiritual ideal, the ideal of monogamy, +and defending it with a breadth of view, a sanity, and a fervor that +make it something different from the cold institution which these +readers have come to despise. She makes every allowance for human +nature, every concession to the necessities of temperament, every +recognition of the human need for freedom, and yet makes the love of one +man and one woman seem the highest ideal, a thing worth striving and +waiting and suffering for. + +She cherishes the spiritual magic of sex as the finest achievement of +the race, and sees it as the central and guiding principle in our social +and economic evolution. She seeks to construct a new morality which will +do what the present one only pretends, and with the shallowest and most +desperately pitiful of pretenses, to do. She would help our struggling +generation to form a new code of ethics, and one of subtle stringency, +in this most important and difficult of relations. + +Thus her writings, of which "Love and Marriage" will here be taken as +representative, have a twofold aspect--the radical and the conservative. +But of the two, the conservative is by far the truer. It is as a +conservator, with too firm a grip on reality to be lured into the +desertion of any real values so far achieved by the race, that she may +be best considered. + +And germane to her conservatism, which is the true conservatism of her +sex, is her intellectual habit, her literary method. She is not a +logician, it is true. She lacks logic, and with it order and clearness +and precision, because of the very fact of her firm hold on realities. +The realities are too complex to be brought into any completely logical +and orderly relation, too elusive to be stated with utter precision. +There is a whole universe in "Love and Marriage"; and it resembles the +universe in its wildness, its tumultuousness, its contradictory quality. +Her book, like the universe, is in a state of flux--it refuses to remain +one fixed and dead thing. It is a book which in spite of some attempt at +arrangement may be begun at any point and read in any order. It is a +mixture of science, sociology, and mysticism; it has a wider range than +an orderly book could possibly have; it touches more points, includes +more facts, and is more convincing, in its queer way, than any other. + +"Love and Marriage" is the Talmud of sexual morality. It contains +history, wisdom, poetry, psychological analysis, shrewd judgments, +generous sympathies, ... and it all bears upon the creation of that new +sexual morality for which in a thousand ways--economic, artistic, and +spiritual--we are so astonishing a mixture of readiness and unreadiness. + +Ellen Key is fundamentally a conservator. But she is careful about what +she conservates. It is the right to love which she would have us +cherish, rather than the right to own another person--the beauty of +singleness of devotion rather than the cruel habit of trying to force +people to carry out rash promises made in moments of exaltation. She +conserves the greatest things and lets the others go: motherhood, as +against the exclusive right of married women to bear children; and that +personal passion which is at once physical and spiritual rather than any +of the legally standardized relations. Nor does she hesitate to speak +out for the conservation of that old custom which persists among peasant +and primitive peoples all over the world and which has been reintroduced +to the public by a recent sociologist under the term of "trial +marriage"; it must be held, she says, as the bulwark against the +corruption of prostitution and made a part of the new morality. + +It is perhaps in this very matter that her attitude is capable of +being most bitterly resented. For we have lost our sense of what is old +and good, and we give the sanction of ages to parvenu virtues that are +as degraded as the rococo ornaments which were born in the same year. We +have (or the Puritans among us have) lost all moral sense in the true +meaning of the word, in that we are unable to tell good from bad if it +be not among the things that were socially respectable in the year 1860. +Ellen Key writes: "The most delicate test of a person's sense of +morality is his power in interpreting ambiguous signs in the ethical +sphere; for only the profoundly moral can discover the dividing line, +sharp as the edge of a sword, between new morality and old immorality. +In our time, ethical obtuseness betrays itself first and foremost by the +condemnation of those young couples who freely unite their destinies. +The majority does not perceive the advance in morality which this +implies in comparison with the code of so many men who, without +responsibility--and without apparent risk--purchase the repose of their +senses. The free union of love, on the other hand, gives them an +enhancement of life which they consider that they gain without injuring +anyone. It answers to their idea of love's chastity, an idea which is +justly offended by the incompleteness of the period of engagement, with +all its losses in the freshness and frankness of emotion. When their +soul has found another soul, when the senses of both have met in a +common longing, then they consider that they have a right to full unity +of love, although compelled to secrecy, since the conditions of society +render early marriage impossible. They are thus freed from a wasteful +struggle which would give them neither peace nor inner purity, and which +would be doubly hard for them, since they have attained the +end--love--for the sake of which self-control would have been imposed." + +It is almost impossible to quote any passage from "Love and Marriage" +which is not subject to further practical modification, or which does +not present an incomplete idea of which the complement may be found +somewhere else. Even this passage is one which states a brief for the +younger generation rather than the author's whole opinion. Still, with +all these limitations, her view is one which is so different from that +commonly held by women that it may seem merely fantastic to hold it up +as an example of the conservative instinct of women. Nevertheless, it is +so. It must be remembered that the view which holds that the chastity of +unmarried women is well purchased at the price of prostitution, is a +masculine view. It is a piece of the sinister and cruel idealism of the +male mind, divorced (as the male mind is so capable of being) from +realities. No woman would ever have created prostitution to preserve the +chastity of part of her sex; and the more familiar one becomes with the +specific character of the feminine mind, the more impossible does it +seem that women will, when they have come to think and act for +themselves, permanently maintain it. Nor will they--one is forced to +believe--hesitate long at the implications of that demolition. + +No, I think that with the advent of women into a larger life our +jerry-built virtues will have to go, to make room for mansions and +gardens fit to be inhabited by the human soul. + +It will be like the pulling down of a rotten tenement. First (with a +great shocked outcry from some persons of my own sex) the facade goes, +looking nice enough, but showing up for painted tin what pretended to be +marble; then the dark, cavelike rooms exposed, with their blood-stained +floors and their walls ineffectually papered over the accumulated filth +and disease; and so on, lath by lath, down to the cellars, with their +hints of unspeakable horrors in the dark. + +It is to this conclusion that these chapters draw: That women have a +surer instinct than men for the preservation of the truest human values, +but that their very acts of conservation will seem to the timid minds +among us like the shattering of all virtues, the debacle of +civilization, the Goetterdaemmerung! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +FREEWOMEN AND DORA MARSDEN + + +This is by way of a postscript. Dora Marsden is a new figure in the +feminist movement. Just how she evolved is rather hard to say. Her +family were Radicals, it seems, smug British radicals; and she broke +away, first of all, into a sort of middle class socialism. She went into +settlement work. Here, it seems, she discovered what sort of person she +really was. + +She was a lover of freedom. So of course she rebelled against the +interference of the middle class with the affairs of the poor, and threw +overboard her settlement work and her socialism together. She was a +believer in woman suffrage, but the autocratic government of the +organization irked her. And, besides, she felt constrained to point out +that feminism meant worlds more than a mere vote. The position of woman, +not indeed as the slave of man, but as the enslaver of man, but with the +other end of the chain fastened to her own wrist, and depriving her +quite effectually of her liberties--this irritated her. Independence to +her meant achievement, and when she heard the talk about "motherhood" +by which the women she knew excused their lack of achievement, she +was annoyed. Finally, the taboo upon the important subject of sex +exasperated her. So she started a journal to express her discontent with +all these things, and to change them. + +Naturally, she called her journal The Freewoman. "Independent" +expresses much of Dora Marsden's feeling, but that word has been of late +dragged in a mire of pettiness and needs dry cleaning. It has come to +signify a woman who isn't afraid to go out at night alone or who holds a +position downtown. A word had to be chosen which had in it some +suggestion of the heroic. Hence The Freewoman. + +The Freewoman was a weekly. It lived several months and then suspended +publication, and now all the women I know are poring over the back +numbers while waiting for it to start again as a fortnightly. It was a +remarkable paper. For one thing, it threw open its columns to such a +discussion of sex that dear Mrs. Humphry Ward wrote a shocked letter to +The Times about it. Of course, a good many of the ideas put forth in +this correspondence were erroneous or trivial, but it must have done the +writers no end of good to express themselves freely. For once sex was on +a plane with other subjects, a fact making tremendously for sanity. In +this Miss Marsden not only achieved a creditable journalistic feat, but +performed a valuable public service. + +Her editorials were another distinctive thing. In the first issue was +an editorial on "Bondwomen," from which it would appear that perhaps +even such advanced persons as you, my dear lady, are still far from +free. + +"Bondwomen are distinguished from Freewomen by a spiritual distinction. +Bondwomen are the women who are not separate spiritual entities--who are +not individuals. They are complements merely. By habit of thought, by +form of activity, and largely by preference, they round off the +personality of some other individual, rather than create or cultivate +their own. Most women, as far back as we have any record, have fitted +into this conception, and it has borne itself out in instinctive working +practice. + +"And in the midst of all this there comes a cry that woman is an +individual, and that because she is an individual she must be set free. +It would be nearer the truth to say that if she is an individual she +_is_ free, and will act like those who are free. The doubtful aspect in +the situation is as to whether women are or can be individuals--that is, +free--and whether there is not danger, under the circumstances, in +labelling them free, thus giving them the liberty of action which is +allowed to the free. It is this doubt and fear which is behind the +opposition which is being offered the vanguard of those who are 'asking +for' freedom. It is the kind of fear which an engineer would have in +guaranteeing an arch equal to a strain above its strength. The opponents +of the Freewomen are not actuated by spleen or by stupidity, but by +dread. This dread is founded upon ages of experience with a being who, +however well loved, has been known to be an inferior, and who has +accepted all the conditions of inferiors. Women, women's intelligence, +and women's judgments have always been regarded with more or less secret +contempt, and when woman now speaks of 'equality,' all the natural +contempt which a higher order feels for a lower order when it presumes +bursts out into the open. This contempt rests upon quite honest and +sound instinct, so honest, indeed, that it must provide all the charm of +an unaccustomed sensation for fine gentlemen like the Curzons and +Cromers and Asquiths to feel anything quite so instinctive and +primitive. + +"With the women opponents it is another matter. These latter apart, +however, it is for would-be Freewomen to realize that for them this +contempt is the healthiest thing in the world, and that those who +express it honestly feel it; that these opponents have argued quite +soundly that women have allowed themselves to be used, ever since there +has been any record of them; and that if women had had higher uses of +their own they would not have foregone them. They have never known women +to formulate imperious wants, this in itself implying lack of wants, and +this in turn implying lack of ideals. Women as a whole have shown +nothing save 'servant' attributes. All those activities which presuppose +the master qualities, the standard-making, the law-giving, the +moral-framing, belong to men. Religions, philosophies, legal codes, +standards in morals, canons in art, have all issued from men, while +women have been the 'followers,' 'believers,' the 'law-abiding,' the +'moral,' the conventionally admiring. They have been the administrators, +the servants, living by borrowed precept, receiving orders, doing +hodmen's work. For note, though some men must be servants, all women are +servants, and all the masters are men. That is the difference and +distinction. The servile condition is common to all women." + +This was only the beginning of such a campaign of radical propaganda as +feminism never knew before. Miss Marsden went on to attack all the +things which bind women and keep them unfree. As such she denounced what +she considered the cant of "motherhood." + +"Considering, therefore, that children, from both physiological and +psychological points of view, belong more to the woman than to the man; +considering, too, that not only does she need them more, but, as a rule, +wants them more than the man, the parental situation begins to present +elements of humor when the woman proceeds to fasten upon the man, in +return for the children she has borne him, the obligation from that time +to the end of her days, not only for the children's existence, but for +her own, also!" + +When asked under what conditions, then, women should have children, she +replied that women who wanted them should save for them as for a trip to +Europe. This is frankly a gospel for a minority--a fact which does not +invalidate it in the eyes of its promulgator--but she does believe that +if women are to become the equals of men they must find some way to have +children without giving up the rest of life. It has been done! + +Then, having been rebuked for her critical attitude toward the woman +suffrage organization, she showed herself in no mood to take orders from +even that source. She subjected the attitude of the members of the +organization to an examination, and found it tainted with +sentimentalism. "Of all the corruptions to which the woman's movement is +now open," she wrote, "the most poisonous and permeating is that which +flows from sentimentalism, and it is in the W. S. P. U. [Women's Social +and Political Union] that sentimentalism is now rampant.... It is this +sentimentalism that is abhorrent to us. We fight it as we would fight +prostitution, or any other social disease." + +She called upon women to be individuals, and sought to demolish in +their minds any lingering desire for Authority. "There is," she wrote, +"a genuine pathos in our reliance upon the law in regard to the affairs +of our own souls. Our belief in ourselves and in our impulses is so +frail that we prefer to see it buttressed up. We are surer of our +beliefs when we see their lawfulness symbolized in the respectable blue +cloth of the policeman's uniform, and the sturdy good quality of the +prison's walls. The law gives them their passport. Well, perhaps in this +generation, for all save pioneers, the law will continue to give its +protecting shelter, but with the younger generations we believe we shall +see a stronger, prouder, and more insistent people, surer of themselves +and of the pureness of their own desires." + +She did not stick at the task of formulating for women a new moral +attitude to replace the old. "We are seeking," she said, "a morality +which shall be able to point the way out of the social trap we find we +are in. We are conscious that we are concerned in the dissolution of one +social order, which is giving way to another. Men and women are both +involved, but women differently from men, because women themselves are +very different from men. The difference between men and women is the +whole difference between a religion and a moral code. Men are pagan. +They have never been Christian. Women are wholly Christian, and have +assimilated the entire genius of Christianity. + +"The ideal of conduct which men have followed has been one of +self-realization, tempered by a broad principle of equity which has been +translated into practice by means of a code of laws. A man's desire and +ideal has been to satisfy the wants which a consciousness of his several +senses gives rise to. His vision of attainment has therefore been a +sensuous one, and if in his desire for attainment he has transgressed +the law, his transgression has sat but lightly upon him. A law is an +objective thing, laid upon a man's will from outside. It does not enter +the inner recesses of consciousness, as does a religion. It is nothing +more than a body of prohibitions and commands, which can be obeyed, +transgressed or evaded with little injury to the soul. With women moral +matters have been wholly different. Resting for support upon a religion, +their moral code has received its sanction and force from within. It has +thus laid hold on consciousness with a far more tenacious grip. Their +code being subjective, transgression has meant a darkening of the +spirit, a sullying of the soul. Thus the doctrine of self-renunciation, +which is the outstanding feature of Christian ethics, has had the most +favorable circumstances to insure its realization, and with women it has +won completely--so completely that it now exerts its influence +unconsciously. Seeking the realization of the will of others, and not +their own, ever waiting upon the minds of others, women have almost lost +the instinct for self-realization, the instinct for achievement in their +own persons." + +Whether she is right is a moot question. Certainly in such matters as +testimony in court, the customs-tariff, and the minor city ordinances, +women show no particular respect for the law. Ibsen sought in "The +Doll's House" to show that her morality had no connection with the laws +of the world of men. Even in matters of human relationship it is +doubtful if women give any more of an "inner assent" to law than do men. +Woman's failure to achieve that domination of the world which +constitutes individuality and freedom--this Dora Marsden would explain +on the ground of a dulling of the senses. It may be more easily +explained as a result of a dulling of the imagination. The trouble is +that they are content with petty conquests. + +There you have it! Inevitably one argues with Dora Marsden. That is her +value. She provokes thought. And she welcomes it. She wants everybody to +think--not to think her thoughts necessarily, nor the right thoughts +always, but that which they can and must. She is a propagandist, it is +true. But she does not create a silence, and call it conversion. + +She stimulates her readers to cast out the devils that inhabit their +souls--fear, prejudice, sensitiveness. She helps them to build up their +lives on a basis of will--the exercise, not the suppression, of will. +She indurates them to the world. She liberates them to life. She is the +Max Stirner of feminism. + +Freedom! That is the first word and the last with Dora Marsden. She +makes women understand for the first time what freedom means. She makes +them want to be free. She nerves them to the effort of emancipation. She +sows in a fertile soil the dragon's teeth which shall spring up as a +band of capable females, knowing what they want and taking it, asking no +leave from anybody, doing things and enjoying life--Freewomen! + + + * * * * * + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES + +Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired. +On p. 36 sucessful changed to successful (has been successful). + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Women as World Builders, by Floyd Dell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN AS WORLD BUILDERS *** + +***** This file should be named 33584.txt or 33584.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/5/8/33584/ + +Produced by Eleni, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +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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