APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING CHAPTER
WITH SOME FURTHER REMARKS ON SEX DIFFERENCES
I.-Women and Labour
“The fullest ideal of the woman-worker
is she who works not merely or mainly for men
as the help and instrument of their purpose, but
who works with men as the instrument yet material
of her purpose.”-GEDDES AND THOMPSON.
When we come to consider the detailed
differences between woman and man, a sharp separation
of them into female qualities and male qualities no
longer squares with the known facts. Any attempt
to lessen the natural differences, as also to weaken
at all the attractions arising from this divergence,
must be regarded with extreme distrust. There
is a real and inherent prejudice against the masculine
woman and the feminine man. It is nevertheless
necessary very carefully to discriminate between innate
qualities of femaleness and maleness and those differences
that have been acquired as the direct result of peculiarities
of environmental conditions. It is certain that
many differences in the physical and mental capacity
of women must be referred not to Nature but to Nurture,
i.e. the effects of conditions and training.
Let me give one concrete case, for one clear illustration
is more eloquent than any statement. Long ago
Professor Karl Vogt pointed out that women were awkward
manipulators. Thomas, in Sex and Society,
answers this well: “The awkwardness in
manual manipulation shown by these girls was surely
due to lack of practice. The fastest type-writer
in the world is to-day a woman; the record for roping
steers (a feat depending on manual dexterity rather
than physical force) is held by a woman.”
I may add to this an example of my own observation.
In a recent International Fly and Bait Casting Tournament,
held at the Crystal Palace, a woman was among the
competitors, and gave an admirable exhibition of skill
in salmon fly-casting. In this competition she
threw one cast 34 feet and two of 33 feet, making
an aggregate of 100 yards, which gained her the prize
over the male competitors. It has also been recently
stated that women show equal skill with men in shooting
at a target.
It is plain that the more we examine
the question of sex-differences the more it baffles
us. The only safeguard against utter confusion
and idleness of thought is to fall back on the common-sense
view that woman is what she is largely, because
she has lived as she has, and further, that in
the present transition no arbitrary rules may be
laid down by men as to what she should, or should not,
can, or cannot do. Even in fear of possible
danger to be incurred, woman must no longer be “grandfathered.”
The scope of this chapter is to make this clear.
It is no part of my purpose, even
if it were possible for me within the limits at my
command, to enter into an examination of all the numerous
statements and theories with regard to the real or
supposed secondary sexual characters of woman.
For though the practical utility of such detailed
knowledge is obvious, while there is no certainty
of opinion even among experts to fix the distinctions
between the sexes, it is wiser in one who, like myself,
can claim no scientific knowledge to avoid the hazard
of any conclusion. I confess that a most careful
study of the many differing opinions has left me in
a state of mental confusion. One is tempted to
adopt those views that fit in with one’s own
observations and to neglect others probably equally
right that do not do this. What is wanted is a
much larger number of careful experiments and scientific
observations. Some of these have been made already,
and their value is great, but the basis is still too
narrow for any safe generalisations. All kinds
of error are clearly very likely to arise. I
may, perhaps, be allowed to state my surprise, not
to say amusement, at the conviction evidenced by some
male writers in their estimate of the character of
my sex. I find myself given many qualities that
I am sure I have not got, and deprived of others that
I am equally certain I possess. Thus, I have
found myself wondering, as I sought sincerely to find
truth, whether I am indeed woman or man? or, to be
more exact, whether the female qualities in me do
not include many others regarded as masculine?
This has forced the thought-is the difference
between the sexes, after all, so complete?
I am aware that what I am now saying
appears to be in contradiction with my other statements.
I cannot help it. The fact is, that truth is
always more diverse than we suspect. This is a
question that reaches so deeply that apparent contradiction
is sometimes inevitable. We find we are rooted
into outside things, and we melt away, as it were,
into them, and no woman or man can say, “I consist
absolutely of this or that”; nor define herself
or himself so certainly as to be sure where the differences
between the sexes end and the points of contact begin.
Many qualities of the personality appear no more female
than male; no more belonging to the woman than the
man. And yet, underlying these common qualities
there is a deep under-current in which all our nature
finds expression in our sex.
Science has of late years advanced
far in this matter, yet it has not much more than
begun. There is, as yet, no approximation to unanimity
of decision, though the way has been cleared of many
errors. This is all that has really been done
by the ablest observers, who seem, however, unwilling,
if one may say so without presumption, to accept the
conclusions to which their own experiments and observations
would seem to point. Take an illustration.
The early certitude on the sex-differences in the
weight of the brain and in the proportion of the cerebral
lobes has been completely turned upside down.
The long believed opinion of the inferiority of the
woman in this direction has been proved to be founded
on prejudice, fallacies, and over-hasty generalisations,
so that now it is allowed that the sexual differences
in the brain are at most very small. An even more
instructive example arises from the ancient theory
that there was a natural difference in the respiratory
movements of the sexes. Hutchinson even argued
that this costal breathing was an adaptation to the
child-bearing function in woman. Further investigations,
however, with a wider basis and more accurate methods-and
one may surely add more common-sense-have
changed the whole aspect of the matter. This difference
has been proved to be due, not to Nature at all, but
wholly to the effect of corset-wearing and woman’s
conventional dress. There is, it would seem,
no limit to the quagmire of superstition and error
into which sex-difference have drawn even the most
careful inquirers if once they fail to cut themselves
adrift from that superficial view of Nature’s
scheme, by which the woman is considered as being handicapped
in every direction by her maternal function.
Enough has now been said to indicate
the complication of the facts, to say nothing of their
practical application. I must refer my readers
for further details to convenient summaries of the
sexual differences, in Havelock Ellis’s Man
and Woman; Geddes and Thomson’s Sex and
Evolution; Thomas’s Sex and Society;
and H. Campbell’s Differences in the Nervous
Organisation of Men and Women: the first of
these is a treasure store of facts, and may be regarded
as the foundation of all later research; the last
is, perhaps, the most generally interesting, certainly
it is the most favourable in its estimate of women.
Dr. Campbell urges with much force the fallacy of
many popular views. He does not seem to believe
in the fundamental origin of maleness and femaleness,
holding them rather to be secondary and derived, the
result, in fact, of selection.
I have already sufficiently guarded
against being supposed to have any desire to establish
identity between woman and man. I do, however,
object to any general conclusion of an arbitrary and
excessive sex-separation, without the essential preliminary
inquiry being made as to the effects of conditions
and training; that is, whether the opportunities of
development have been at all equal. But here,
to save falling into a misconception, it is necessary
to point out that I do not say the same opportunities,
but equal. This difference is so important
that, risking the fear of being tedious, I must restate
my belief in the unlikeness of the sexes. As
Havelock Ellis says, “A man is a man to his
very thumbs, and a woman is a woman down to her little
toes.” What I do mean, then, is this:
Have the opportunities of the woman to develop
as woman been equal to the opportunities of the man
to develop as man? It is on this question, it seems
to me, that our attention should be fixed.
Leaving for a little any attempt to
find out in what directions this development of woman
can be most fully carried out, let us now clear our
way by glancing very briefly at certain plain facts
of the actual position of women as they present themselves
in our society to-day.
In 1901 there were 1,070,000 more
women than men in this country; this surplus of women
has increased slowly but steadily in every census
since 1841! Thus, those who hold (as all who look
straight at this matter must) that the essential need
for the normal woman are conditions that make possible
the fulfilment of her sex-functions, are placed in
an awkward dilemma when they wish to restrict her activities
to marriage and the home. By such narrowing of
the sexual sphere they are not taking into consideration
the facts as they exist to-day. In a society
where the women outnumber the men by more than a million,
it is sufficiently evident that justice can be done
to these primary needs of woman only by adopting one
of two courses, the placing of women in a position
which secures to them the possession of property,
or, if their dependence on the labours of men is maintained,
the recognition of some form of polygamy. Here
is no advocacy of any sexual licence or of free-love,
but I do set up a claim for free motherhood, and however
great the objections that may, and, as I think, must
be raised against polygamy, I am unhesitating in stating
my belief that any open and brave facing of the facts
of the sex relationship is better than our present
ignorance or hypocritical indifference, which is spread
like a shroud over our national conditions of concealed
polygamy for men, side by side with enforced celibacy
and unconcealed prostitution for a great number of
women. The most hopeful sign of the woman’s
movement is a new solidarity that is surely killing
the fatalism of a past acquiescing in wrongs, and is
slowly giving birth to a fine spiritual apprehension
of the great truth that what concerns any woman concerns
all women, and, I would add, also all men. This
last-that there can be no woman’s
question that is not also a man’s question-is
so essentially a part of any fruitful change in our
domestic and social relationship that women must not
permit themselves for a moment to forget it. It
is the very plain things that so often we do overlook.
So it becomes clear that the parrot
cries “Woman’s Place!” “Woman’s
Sphere!” “Her place is the home!”
have lost much, even if not all, their significance.
For, in the first place, it is obvious that under
present conditions there are not enough homes to go
round; and second, even if we neglect this essential
fact, women may well answer such demands by saying
“much depends on the character and conditions
of the home we are to stay in.” It was a
many-sided home of free and full activity in which
woman evolved and wherein for long ages she worked;
a home, in fact, which gave free opportunities for
the exercise of those qualities of constructive energy
that women, broadly speaking, may be said to possess.
The woman’s so-called natural position in the
home is not now natural at all. The conditions
of life have changed. Everything is drifting
towards separation from worn-out conditions.
We are increasingly conscious of a growing discontent
at waste. The home with its old full activities
has passed from women’s hands. But woman’s
work is not less needed. To-day the State claims
her; the Nation’s housekeeping needs the vitalising
mother-force more than anything else.
The old way of looking at the patriarchal
family was, from one point of thought, perfectly right
and reasonable as long as every woman was ensured
the protection of, and maintenance by, some man.
Nor do I think there was any unhappiness or degradation
involved to women in this co-operation of the old
days, where the man went out to work and the woman
stayed to do work at least equally valuable in the
home. It was, as a rule, a co-operation of love,
and, in any case, it was an equal partnership in work.
But what was true once is not true now. We are
living in a continually changing development and modification
of the old tradition of the relationship of woman
and man. It is very needful to impress this factor
of constant change on our attention, and to fix it
there. To ignore it, and it is too commonly ignored,
is to falsify every issue. “The Hithertos,”
as Mr. Zangwill has aptly termed them, are helpless.
Things are so, and we are carried on; and as yet we
know not whither, and we are floundering not a little
as we seek for a way. The women of one class
have been forced into labour by the sharp driving
of hunger. Among the women of the other class
have arisen a great number who have turned to seek
occupation from an entirely different cause; the no
less bitter driving of an unstimulating and ineffective
existence, a kind of boiling-over of women’s
energy wasted, causing a revolt of the woman-soul against
a life of confused purposes, achieving by accident
what is achieved at all. Between the women who
have the finest opportunities and the women who have
none there is this common kinship-the wastage
not so much of woman as of womanhood.
Let us consider for a moment the women
who have been forced into the cheating, damning struggle
for life. There are, according to the estimate
of labour experts, 5,000,000 women industrially employed
in England. The important point to consider is
that during the last sixty years the women who work
are gaining numerically at a greater rate than men
are. The average weekly wage paid is seven shillings.
Nine-tenths of the sweated work of this country is
done by women. I have no wish to give statistics
of the wages in particular trades; these are readily
accessible to all. Unfortunately the facts do
not allow any exaggeration; they are saddening and
horrible enough in themselves. The life-blood
of women, that should be given to the race, is being
stitched into our ready-made clothes; is washed and
ironed into our linen; wrought into the laces and
embroideries, the feathers and flowers, the sham furs
with which we other women bedeck ourselves; it is
poured into our adulterated foods; it is pasted on
our matches and pin-boxes; stuffed into our furniture
and mattresses; and spent on the toys we buy for our
children. The china that we use for our foods
and the tins in which we cook them are damned with
the lead-poison that we offer to women as the reward
of labour.
It is these wrongs that the mothers
with the fathers of the race have to think out the
way to alter. There is no one among us who is
guiltless in this matter. Things that are continuously
wrong need revolutionising, and not patching up.
What, then, is the real cause of the
lowness of remuneration offered to women for work
when compared with men? Thousands of women and
girls receive wages that are insufficient to support
life. They do not die, they live; but how?
The answer is plain. Woman possesses a marketable
value attached to her personality which man has not
got. This enables her to live, if she has children,
to feed them, and also not infrequently to support
the man, forced out of work by the lowness of the
wages she can accept. The woman’s sex is
a saleable thing. Prostitution is the door of
escape freely opened to all women. It is because
of the reserve fund thus established that their honest
wages suffer. Not all sweated women are prostitutes.
Many are legally married, they exist somehow; but
the wages of all women are conditioned by this sexual
resource. It can be readily seen that this is
a survival of the patriarchal idea of the property
value of woman. To-day it affords a striking
example of the conflict between the old rights of
men with the rising power of women. The value
of woman is her sexual value; her value as a worker
is as yet unrecognised, except as a secondary matter.
You may refuse to be convinced of this. Yet the
fact remains that our society is so organised that
women are more highly paid and better treated as prostitutes
than they are as honest workers.
I shall say no more on this question
here, as I propose to deal with prostitution more
fully in a later chapter. I would, however, point
out that what I have said in no way implies an opinion
that women should be driven out of the labour market.
This is as unfair as that they should be driven into
it. It is the conditions of labour that must
be changed. I am not even able to accept the opinion
that the strength of woman is necessarily less than
that of man, only that it is different. It is,
in fact, just this difference that is so important.
If woman’s capacity in work was the same as men’s
no great advantage could arise from women’s
entrance into the work of the State. It might
well lead to even worse confusion. It is the special
qualities that belong to woman that humanity is waiting
for. Just as at the dawn of civilisation society
was moulded and in great measure built up by women,
then probably unconscious of their power and the end
it made towards, so, in the future, our society will
be carried on and humanised by women, deliberately
working for the race, their creative energy having
become self-conscious and organised in a final and
fruitful period of civilisation.
I want to look a little further into
this question of the strength of woman as compared
with the strength of man. On the whole it seems
right to say that the man is the more muscular type,
and stronger in relation to isolated feats and spasmodic
efforts. But against this may be placed the relative
greater tenacity of life in women. They are longer
lived, alike in infancy and in old age; they also show
a greater power of resisting death. The difference
in the incidence of disease, again, in the two sexes
is far from furnishing conclusive evidence as to the
greater feebleness of women. Their constitution
seems to have staying powers greater than the man’s.
The theory that women are “natural invalids”
cannot be accepted. Every care must be taken
to guard against any misdifferentiation of function
in the kind of work women are to do, but there is
no evidence to prove that healthy work is less beneficial
to women than to men. Indeed, all the evidence
points in the opposite direction. Even in the
matter of muscular power it is difficult to make any
absolute statement. The muscular development
of women among primitive peoples is well known.
Japanese women will coal a vessel with a rapidity unsurpassable
by men. The pit-brow women of the Lancashire
collieries are said to be of finer physical development
than any other class of women workers. I have
seen the women of Northern Spain perform feats of strength
that seem extraordinary.
It is worth while to wait to consider
these Spanish women, who are well known to me.
The industrial side of primitive culture has always
belonged to women, and in Galicia, the north-west province
of Spain, the old custom is still in active practice,
owing to the widespread emigration of the men.
The farms are worked by women, the ox-carts are driven
by women, the seed is sown and reaped by women-indeed,
all work is done by women. What is important
is that these women have benefited by this enforced
engaging in activities which in most countries have
been absorbed by men. The fine physical qualities
of these workers can scarcely be questioned.
I have taken pains to gain all possible information
on this subject. Statistics are not available,
because in Galicia they have not been kept from this
point of view. I find, however, that it is the
opinion of many eminent doctors and the most thoughtful
men of the province, that this labour does not damage
the health or beauty of the women, but the contrary,
nor does it prejudice the life and health of their
children. As workers they are most conscientious
and intelligent, apt to learn, and ready to adopt
improvements. From my personal observations I
can bear witness that their children are universally
well cared for. What impressed me was that these
women looked happy. They are full of energy and
vigour, even to an advanced age. They are evidently
happy, and the standard of beauty among them will
compare favourably with the women of any other nation.
I once witnessed an interesting episode during a motor-ride
in the country. A robust and comely Gallegan woman
was riding a ancas (pillion fashion) with a
young caballero, probably her son. The
passing of our motor-car frightened the steed, with
the result that both riders were unhorsed. Neither
was hurt, but it was the woman who pursued the runaway
horse. She caught it without assistance and with
surprising skill. What happened to the man I
cannot say. When I saw him he was standing in
the road brushing the dust from his clothes.
I presume the woman returned with the horse to fetch
him.
Women were the world’s primitive
carriers. In Galicia I have seen women bearing
immense burdens, unloading boats, acting as porters
and firemen, and removing household furniture.
I saw one woman with a chest of drawers easily poised
upon her head, another woman bore a coffin, while
another, who was old, carried a small bedstead.
A beautiful woman porter in one village carried our
heavy luggage, running with it on bare feet, without
sign of effort. She was the mother of four children,
and her husband was at the late Cuban war. She
was upright as a young pine, with the shapeliness that
comes from perfect bodily equipoise. I do not
wish to judge from trivial incidents, but I saw in
the Gallegan women a strength and a beauty that has
become rare among women to-day. I recall a conversation
with an Englishman I met at La Coruña, of
the not uncommon strongly patriotic and censorious
type. We were walking together on the quay; he
pointed to a group of the Gallegan burden-bearers,
who were unloading a vessel, remarking in his indiscriminate
British gallantry, “I can’t bear to see
women doing work that ought to be done by men.”
“Look at the women!” was the answer I made
him.
It is, of course, impossible to compare
the industrial conditions of such a country as Spain
with England. We may associate the position of
women in Galicia with some of the old matriarchal conditions.
Women are held in honour. There is a proverb
common over all Northern Spain to the effect that
he who is unfortunate and needs assistance should
“seek his Gallegan mother.” Many primitive
customs survive, and one of the most interesting is
that by which the eldest daughter in some districts
takes precedence over the sons in inheritance.
In no country does less stigma fall upon a child born
out of wedlock. As far back as the fourth century
Spanish women insisted on retaining their own names
after marriage. We find the Synod of Elvira trying
to limit this freedom. The practice is still
common for the children to use the name of the mother
coupled with that of the father, and in some cases,
alone, showing the absence of preference for the paternal
descent. The introduction of modern institutions,
and especially the empty forms of chivalry, has lowered
the position of women. Yet there can be no question
that some feature of the ancient mother-right customs
have left the imprint on the domestic life of the people.
Spanish women have, in certain directions, preserved
a freedom and privilege which in England has never
been established and is only now being claimed.
How completely all difficulties vanish
from the relationship of the sexes where society is
more sanely organised-with a wiser understanding
of the things that really matter. The question
is not: are our women fit for labour? but this:
are the conditions of labour in England fit either
for women or men? The supply of cheap labour on
which the whole fabric of our society is built up is
giving way-and it has to go. We have
to plan out new and more tolerable conditions for
the workers in every sort of employment. But first
we have to organise the difficult period of transition
from the present disorder.
I will not dwell on this. I would,
however, point out that women must be trained and
ready to take their part with men in this work of
industrial re-organisation. They are even more
deeply concerned than men. The conditions of
under-payment for woman’s work are not restricted
to sweated workers; it is the same in skilled work,
and in all trades and professions that are open to
women. For exactly the same work a lower rate
of payment is offered. Female labour is cheap,
just as slave labour is cheap, the woman is not considered
as belonging to herself.
There is no question here of the real
value of woman’s labour. The cry of man
to woman under the patriarchal system has always been,
and still for the most part is, “Your value
in our eyes is your sexuality, for your work we care
not.” But mark this! The penalty of
this false adjustment has fallen upon men. For
women, in their turn, have come to value men first
in their capacity as providers for them, caring as
little for the man’s sex-value as men care for
woman’s work-value. From the moment when
woman had to place the economic considerations in
love first, her faculties of discrimination were no
more of service for the selection of the fittest man.
Here we may find the explanation of the kind of men
girls have been willing to marry-old men,
the unfit fathers, the diseased. Yes, any man
who was able to do for them what they have not been
allowed to do for themselves. And it is the race
that suffers and rots; the sins of the mother must
be visited on the child.
It is clear, then, there is one remedy
and one alone. This separation of values must
cease. All women’s work must be paid at
a rate based on the quality and quantity of the work
done; not upon her sexuality. I do not mean by
this that there should be any ignoring of woman’s
special sex-function; to do this, in my opinion, would
be fatal. The bearing of fit children is woman’s
most important work for the State. The economic
stress which forces women into unlimited competition
with men is, I am certain, harmful. Women do not
do this because they like it, but because they are
driven to it.
The true effort of women, I conceive,
should be centred on the freeing of the sexual relationship
from the domination of a viciously directed compulsion,
and from the hardly less disastrous work-struggle of
sex against sex. The emancipated woman must work
to gain economic recognition, not necessarily the
same as the man’s, but her own. It is to
the direct interest of men to stop under-cutting by
women; but the way to do this is not to force women
out of labour, compelling their return to the home-that
is impossible-rather it rests in an equal
value of service being recognised in both sexes.
The fully developed woman of the future is still to
be, and first there must be a time of what may well
prove to be dangerous experiments. This may be
regretted, it cannot be avoided. The finding out
of new paths entails some losing of the way.
Women have to find out what work they
can best do; what work they want to do, and what
work men want them to do. I must insist, against
all the Feminists, on this factor of men’s wishes
being equally considered with woman’s own.
It may not safely be neglected. Woman without
man at her side, after obtaining her freedom, will
advance even less far than man has advanced with his
freedom, without her help. To deny this is to
show an absurd misunderstanding of the problem.
Neither the male-force alone, nor the female-power
is sufficient; no theory of sex-superiority shall
prevail. The setting up of women against men,
or men against women, to the disadvantage of one or
the other, belongs to a day that is over. We
must recognise that both the work of women and the
work of men are in equal measure essential to satisfy
the needs of the State; the force of both sexes must
be united to plan and carry out those measures of
reform now called for by the new ideals of a civilised
humanity. It is only by loosening all the chains
of all women and all men alike that the inherent energies
of the world’s workers can be set free for the
eventual ennobling of the race.
There is a fundamental difference
in respect to the modes of energy in woman and man.
Is it, then, too much to hope for, that in the enlightened
civilisation, whose dawn is even now breaking the
darkness, we shall recognise and use this difference
in work-power and claim from women the kinds of labour
they can give best to the State; and reward them for
doing this in such a way that their primary social
service of child-bearing is in no way impaired?
But as yet the day is not. There is an outlook
that causes foreboding. The female sex is in
a dangerous state of disturbance. New and strange
urgencies are at work amongst us, forces for which
the word “revolution” is only too faithfully
appropriate. Little is being done to allay these
forces, much conspires to exasperate them. Whither
are they taking us? To this we women have to
find an answer.
Other questions force themselves as
wisely we wait to think. What will women do when
they have gained the voice to control the attitude
the State shall assume in the regulation of their
work? Will their decisions be founded on wide
knowledge, that recognises all the facts and accepts
the responsibilities and restrictions that any true
freedom for their sex entails, or will it be merely
continued revolt, tending to embitter and intensify
the struggle of sex against sex? Will their action
reveal the wise patience, the sympathy and understanding
of the mother, or will it prove to be the illogical,
short-sighted, and bewildered behaviour of the spoilt
child? No one can answer these questions.
Hitherto, it has seemed that women stand in danger
of losing sight of great issues in grasping at immediate
gains. Goaded by the wrongs they see so plainly
waiting to be righted, they are in such a desperate
hurry. But “hurry” should not belong
to the woman’s nature. There is a “grasp”
quality of this age that can bring nothing but harm
to women. It is a great thing to be a woman,
greater, as I believe, than to be a man. For the
first time for long ages women are beginning again
to understand this and all that it signifies.
Women and not men are the responsible sex in the great
things of life that really matter. They are that
“Stubborn Power of Permanency” of which
Goethe speaks. The female not only typifies the
race, she is the race. It is man who constitutes
the changing, the experimenting, sex. Thus, woman
has to be steadier than man, yes, and more self-sacrificing.
She may not safely escape from her work as “the
giver,” and if she does not give in life, she
must give in something. We have got to do more
than bear men, we have to carry them with us through
life-our sons, our lovers, our husbands.
We must free them now as well as ourselves, if our
freedom is to count for anything. Let us not,
then, in any impatience, neglect to pause, to prepare,
to be ready, that the pregnancy of the present may
bring fair birth when the days are fulfilled.
For, after all, what shall it profit women if, in
gaining the world, they lose themselves?
II.-Sexual Differences in Mind and the Artistic Impulse in Women
“The most secret elements
of woman’s nature, in association with
the magic mystery of her organisation,
indicate the existence in
her of peculiar and deep-lying
creative ideas.”-THEODOR MUNDT.
What is true of the physical differences
between women and men is true also of the mental differences.
We may readily accept the saturating influence of
sex on woman’s mind. I mean a deep-lying
distinction, not superficial and to be explained away
as due to outside things, but based on the essential
fact of her womanhood-her capacity for
maternity. But the impracticability of making
any definite statement as to the exact nature or extent
of such mental sexual differentiation is evident.
First must be cleared up the difficulty of distinguishing
between those differences that are fundamental and
constitutional as being directly dependent on the
woman character and those that have, or seem to have,
arisen through distinction of training or environment,
which may be termed evolutionary differences, and are
likely to be changed by altered conditions. Even
the trained biologist is unable to draw an undisputed
line of demarcation between the two kinds of differences,
and, even if it were drawn, the conclusion would not
help us very much. For with regard to these evolutionary
differences that are liable to change many questions
have to be considered. Can they safely be modified
or disregarded? Do we want them changed?
Will the alteration really be of benefit to women?
Only such qualities as can be proved clearly to be
mis-differentiations-i.e.
directly harmful-can be contemptuously
dismissed. Thus the problem is an extraordinarily
difficult one. I can only touch its outer fringe.
It is held that men have greater mental
variability and more originality, while women have
greater stability and more common sense. In this
connection may be noticed the characteristic male
restlessness; man is probably more inclined to experiment
with his body and his mind and with other people,
while woman’s constitution and temper is relatively
more conservative. It is held that women have
the greater integrating intelligence, while men are
stronger in differentiation. The thinking power
of woman is deductive, that of man inductive; woman’s
influence on knowledge is thus held to be indirect
rather than direct. But women have greater receptive
powers, retain impressions better and have more vivid
and surer memories; for which reason women are generally
more receptive for facts than for laws, more for concrete
than for general ideas. The feminine mind shows
greater patience, more open-mindedness and tact, and
keener insight into character, greater appreciation
of subtle details and, consequently, what we call
intuition. The masculine mind, on the other hand,
tends to a greater height of sudden efforts, of scientific
insight and experiment, greater frequency of genius,
and this is associated with an unobservant or impatient
disregard of details, but a stronger grasp of general
ideas.
Now it is easy to make comparisons
of this kind, but to accept them as at all final calls
for great caution. Let me take, as an instance,
the opinion so continuously affirmed, that women are
distinguished by good memories, in particular, for
details. Now to regard this as necessarily a
mental sexual character is entirely to mistake the
facts. A tenacious memory for details that are
often quite unimportant, belongs to all people of
limited impressions and unskilled in thought; it maybe
noticed in all children. Without a wide experience
of life and practice in constructive thinking the mind
inevitably falls back on fact-memory. I knew an
agricultural labourer who could only tell his age
by reckoning the years he had been dung-spreading.
Thus a good memory for details may be a sign of an
untrained mind. It is an entirely different thing
from that acuteness of true memory, which ensures
the retention of all experiences that have made an
impression on the mind, with a corresponding rejection
of what has failed to interest. Thus before anything
can be said with regard to this memory power of woman,
we have to decide on what it depends-i.e.
is it really a mental quality of woman, or is it simply
dependent on, and brought about by, the circumstances
of her life and a limited experience? But to
answer this question I shall wait till later in this
chapter.
It would be easy to follow a similar
train of argument with regard to each of these mental
differences of the sexes. Few women have yet
entered even the threshold of the mental world of men,
and those who have done this stand in the position
of strangers or visitors. To be in it, in any
true sense, would be to be born into it and to live
in it by right; to absorb the same experiences, not
consciously and by special effort, but unconsciously
as a child absorbs words and learns to speak.
Whenever this happens, and not till then, shall we
be in a position to compare positively the mental
efficiency of woman with men. At present no more
can be affirmed than that the differences in woman’s
mental expression are no greater than they must be
in view of the existing differences in their experience.
And I am not sure, even if such similarity of mental
life were possible, that it would be of benefit to
women. Indeed, I am almost sure that it would
not. What is needed is an ungrudging recognition
of the value of the special feminine qualities.
This would do much to lessen the regrettable competition
that undoubtedly prevails at present, which is due,
it seems to me, to the foolish denial of the value
of any save masculine characteristics in our art,
as also in our public and professional life.
But leaving this point for the present,
there is another question arising from this first
that also brings me doubt. Few will deny that
women are more instinctive than logical; more intuitive
than cerebral. Men find their conclusions by
searching for and observing facts, while women, to
a great extent, arrive at the same end by instinct.
They know, rather than know how, or why, they know.
Now, too often we hear these qualities of woman treated
with contempt. Is this wise? What I doubt
is this: when women by education and evolution
have been able to learn and to practise the inductive
process of reasoning-if, indeed, they do
come to do this-will they lose their present
faculty of gaining conclusions by instinct? I
believe that they must do so to a large extent, and
I am not convinced that the gain would at all fully
make up for the loss. Looking at human conduct,
it is regulated quite as much by instinct as by reason.
I think it will be impossible to prevent this being
so, and if this is true, woman’s instinct may
remain of greater service to her than the gaining of
a higher reasoning faculty. The true distinction
between the psychology of woman and man is as the
difference between feeling and thought. Woman
thinks through her emotions, man feels through his
brain. This is obviously an exaggeration, but
it will show what I mean by the different process
of thought that, broadly speaking, is usual to the
two sexes. Mistakes are, of course, made by both
processes, but more often, as I believe, by reasoning
than by instinct-this is probably because
I am a woman. But it is certain that each sex
contributes to the thought-power of the other, each
is indispensable to the other, on the mental plane
no less than on the physical.
The importance of the above will become
obvious when we consider, as we will now do, the artistic
impulse in woman. Strange difficulties have been
raised on all sides concerning the occurrence of genius
among women. It seems to be accepted that in respect
of artistic endowment the male sex is unquestionably
superior to the female. Havelock Ellis, for instance,
in dealing with this question says, “The assertion
of Moebius that the art impulse is of the nature
of a male secondary sexual character, in the same
sense as the beard, cannot be accepted without some
qualification, but it may well represent an approximation
of the truth.” By some it is held that
genius is linked with maleness: that it represents
an ideal masculinity in the highest form; and from
genius the feminine mind must, therefore, be excluded.
But in truth it is not easy to credit such assumptions,
or to see the strangeness of the difficulties in an
exact opposite view, if we understand the significance
of those qualities of femaleness which are allowed
to women by those who most deny to her the possibility
of genius. Such a denial serves only to show
the absurd presumption of present knowledge of this
kind in its hope to solve a problem so difficult.
Let me try to sift out the facts.
And first we must inquire on what grounds this opinion
is based. I have already alluded to the general
belief in the greater degree of variability in men,
which, if established, would on the psychical side
involve an accentuated individualism and hence a greater
possibility of genius. This view has been supported
by John Hunter, Burdach, Darwin, Havelock Ellis, and
others. Ellis, in the chapter on “The Artistic
Impulse” in Man and Woman, says, “The
rarity of women artists of the first rank is largely
due to the greater variational tendency of men.”
Now, this biological fact is certainly of great importance,
if it can be proved. But can it?
It has recently been contested by anthropologists
at least as distinguished as those who have given it
their support. Manouvrier, Karl Pearson, Frossetto,
and especially Guiffrida-Ruggieri have brought forward
evidence to prove the fallacy of this belief in the
slighter variability and infantile character of woman.
Now, it is clearly impossible for me in the space
at my command to go into the conclusions brought forward
on both sides of this difficult question. What
I want to make clear is that this greater variability
of man has not been established, and therefore cannot
be accepted as a condition of male genius. I
am glad to be able to give a statement on this question
by Professor Arthur Thomson, which will sufficiently
show that my opinion is not put forward wantonly and
without due consideration, but that it coincides with
the conclusion of one who is an acknowledged leader
in the advanced biological study of the sexes.
Professor Thomson writes thus-
“We would guard against the temptation
to sum up the contrast of the sexes in epigrams.
We regard the woman as relatively more anabolic,
man as relatively more katabolic, and whether this
biological hypothesis is a good one or not, it
certainly does no social harm. But when investigators
begin to say that woman is more infantile and
man more senile, that woman is “undeveloped
man” and man is “evolved woman,”
we get among generalisations not only unscientific
but practically dangerous. Not the least dangerous
of these generalisations is one of the most familiar,
that man is more variable than woman, that the
raw materials of evolution make their appearance
in greatest abundance in man. There seems
to be no secure basis for this generalisation; it
seems doubtful whether any generalisation of the
kind is feasible. Prof. Karl Pearson
has made seventeen groups of measurements of different
parts of the body, in eleven groups the female
is more variable than the male, and in six the male
is more variable than the female. Moreover the
differences of variability are slight, less than
those between members of the same race living
in different conditions. Furthermore, an elementary
remark may be pardoned. Since inheritance is
bi-parental, and since variation means some peculiarity
in the inheritance, a greater variability in men,
if true, would not mean that men had any credit
for varying. The stimulus to variation may
have come from the mother as well as the father. If
proved it would only mean that the male constitution
gives free play to the expression of variations,
which are kept latent in the female constitution.
But what is probably true is that some variations
find expression more readily in man and others more
readily in woman.”
The italics in the passage are mine,
for they make abundantly clear the falseness of the
old view, and show how much the question needs reopening
from the common-sense standpoint of opportunity.
I shall, therefore, only restate my opinion that it
is impossible to assume a fundamental difference in
individuality as existing between woman and man until
it can be proved that the same free-play to the expression
has been common alike to both sexes.
To me it seems probable that what
Samuel Butler insists upon is true, and that the origin
of variations must be looked for in the needs and
experiences of the creature varying. But let this
pass, as it opens up too large and difficult a question
to enter upon here. The effects of environment
and function must act as a kind of arbiter directing
conduct and, in particular, mental expression.
It is the very A B C of the question that appropriate
training and opportunities of use are essential if
any mind is to develop. Supply such mental stimuli
to the boy and man, deny them to the girl and woman,
and then call “the art impulse of the nature
of a male secondary sexual character,” because
woman has as yet played but a small and secondary part
in any of the arts! The source of error is so
plain that one can only wonder at the fallacies that
have been accepted as truth. Thus, when one finds
so just and careful an investigator as Havelock Ellis
saying, “It is unthinkable that a woman should
have discovered the Copernician system!” it
can but be regarded as an example of that sex-bias
which marks so strikingly men’s statements on
this subject of mental sex-differences. We may
well ask, Why unthinkable? As answer I will give
the finely just acknowledgment of Iwan Bloch on this
very question. He refers to this statement of
Havelock Ellis, and then says, “I need merely
call to mind the widely known physical discoveries
of Madame Curie, whose thoroughly independent work
qualified her to succeed her husband as professor at
the Sorbonne. We cannot, therefore, exclude the
possibility that in the sphere of the natural sciences
notable discoveries and inventions may be made in the
future in consequence of the independent work of women."
To take another instance. We find the fact that
so far women have gained very small distinction in
music, contrasted with the great number of girls who
are trained to play on musical instruments. But
this is surely to show a complete misunderstanding
of the question. It is like saying that the best
preparation for a painter to know the colours reflected
on water by a cloudy or sunny sky would be a course
of optics. Music is at once the most imaginative
and the most severely abstract of the arts, and the
absence of women from music must be referred to deeper
causes, which yet, it seems to me, are not far to seek.
Mind, I make no claim for women.
I acknowledge fully that in all the arts, except in
acting and in dancing, woman’s achievement has
been infinitely less than man’s. There
have been a few great women poets-notably
a Sappho, many good writers of fiction, and some capable
painters. But to bring forward these particular
women and to try either to exaggerate or belittle
their importance can serve nothing. This search
for ability among women is absurd. It already
exists widely, though unused or directed into channels
of waste. Of this I am convinced. The thing
that has been rare is opportunity. The fact that
some few women have struggled up out of obscurity does
not so much show that they possessed a special masculine
superiority as that they have been less inextricably
bound down than others by the conventional bonds of
a man-ruled society. I believe that this could
be proved in the case of every woman who has attained
to fame. And there is another point. The
women who have succeeded in bursting these bonds have,
in most cases, done so at such great cost of energy
and fighting, that their work is rendered crude and
often valueless. Self-assertion can never be
the best preparation for achievement. All this
narrows the mental horizon and tends to make the results
gained superficial and unenduring. We have here
the explanation of much that has been, and still is,
futile in women’s efforts.
The face of the world, however, is
changing for women. It may be that the future
will reveal creative ability in them as yet unsuspected.
It is not safe to prophesy, and no one can say, as
yet, just in what direction women will develop.
It may prove that their special qualities will not
find expression in the realm of imagination, but will
be turned to diplomacy and to administration and financial
work. I simply affirm that what women can or
cannot do is as yet unproved. Throughout the
ages of patriarchal faith one ideal of womanhood has
been impressed upon the world, which is only now being
shaken-the ideal of self-repression and
submission to the will of man, of society, and of
God. Women’s minds have reflected only the
minds of men. I think that much of the failure
of women’s work arises from the arrogance of
men, who have always preferred the flattering image
of woman in their own minds to woman herself.
Woman has had to accept this. She could only
realise herself through man, not with man, while he
has been able to realise himself, either with her help
or without her.
There is a wide difference between
the mental and social attitudes of men and women.
Men have been responsible to society at large for their
work and conduct, woman’s outlook has been much
narrower; she has been responsible to men, and has
only touched outside life through them. In this
way women have developed on wrong lines. It is
significant, for instance, how many women have written
books under men’s names. Women’s
work and conduct has been largely restricted by this
adjustment to men, with the result that not only their
mental capacity and work-power has suffered, but their
attention has been fixed, for the most part, to the
enhancing of the attractiveness of their persons as
an aid to hold men to their service. The feminine
mind and interests have been set so strongly towards
personal display that they will not easily be diverted.
The clothes-peg woman is familiar to all: she
gratifies any whim, well knowing that it is her male
protector who will have to pay, not she. She
will, on occasions, use her children for such base
ends. She knows the game is in her hand.
Even if the man resists her for a time, she understands
how easily she can break down his objections by a
seductive display of silk stockings! The character
of woman as the inherent coquette is very deeply rooted.
It is only a little more baneful to the freedom of
the sexes than that opposite pernicious side of woman
as a sort of angel-child, which we all know to be
such a preposterous pretence.
Nor do I think that the change from
these conditions can, or will, be easy. Women
may, and do, protest against the triviality of their
lives, but emotional interests are more immediate than
intellectual ones. Human nature does not drift
into intellectual pursuits voluntarily, rather it
is forced into them in connection with urgency and
practical activities. It is much easier to be
kept, dressed, and petted, than to work. Women
have not participated in the mental activities of
men because it has not been necessary for them; to
do this has been, indeed, a hindrance to their success.
The contrast between the sexes in this respect has
been well compared by Thomas to the relation
of the amateur and the professional in games.
“Women may be desperately interested and work
to the limit of endurance at times; but, like the
amateur, they enter into the work late, and have not
had a lifetime of practice.... No one will contend
that the amateur has a nervous organisation less fitted
to the game than the professional; it is admitted
that the difference lies in the constant practice.”
It is only in the case of woman that the obvious conclusion
is passed over for assumptions that cannot be proved.
The revolt against repression has
taken amongst many women another form of abandonment
to lives of sexual preoccupation and intrigue.
Scan the history of woman as she is presented in our
literature and drama, and you will find one expression
of her character, one idea alone of her sphere.
It is a point of such interest that I would like to
linger upon it. Wherever woman enters she is a
disturbing influence; she is the centre of emotional
action, it is true, but with no recognised position
in life outside of her sex; around her rage seas of
stormy passions, which sometimes she calms, sometimes
lashes into angrier foam. In a sense it may be
said that she has scarcely an individual existence;
it is solely in her relation to man that her nature
is considered. If she works, or practises one
of the arts, she does this only until marriage.
It does not seem to be conceived as possible that
she can follow work, as the artist must, for herself.
It is curious how far we have been misled by that
giving-power of woman, which, in part, is right and
natural to her, but also, in much greater part, has
been harmfully forced upon her. The creator’s
need to find expression is, I am certain, at least
as strongly rooted in woman as in man, but no plant
can attain to growth unless fitting nourishment is
given to it. To ignore this leads very directly
to deception. Thus we find Mr. Wells, usually
so true in his insight, keeps up an old pretence and
affirms in his latest novel, Marriage-
“They don’t care for art
or philosophy, or literature or anything except
the things that touch them directly. And the
work ? It’s nothing to
them. No woman ever painted for the love
of painting, sang for the sounds she made, or philosophised
for the sake of wisdom as men do.”
So it is always. Without question
it has been taken for granted by those who have depicted
woman that her sole occupation is an emotional one;
here alone is she justified in literature, as in life.
The fully complete woman of the future
is still to be created; assuredly she is not to be
found among the women who have been portrayed so widely
for us by recent writers. These are portraits
arising out of the present confusion; as such they
are interesting, but they are quite unreal in their
relation to life. They show us women, and men
too, in revolt. Often these women are really nothing
more than feminist stump-orators preaching the doctrine
of an unconsidered individualism: “Free
Motherhood,” “Free Love”-free
anything, in fact. These portraits are far removed,
indeed, from the perfected woman that is to be.
We want something much more than this-woman
with all sides of her nature adequately worked upon
and fully developed.
Now, to look for a moment at the other
side of the question. Woman has been the cause
of emotion in men, the fine instrument by which the
poet has sung and the musician played his exquisite
music; the sculptor, the painter, the writer, all
have drawn their inspiration from her. Have men,
then, any right to pride themselves to such a degree
on their achievement in the arts? Could they without
woman have advanced anything like so far? And
this becomes abundantly evident if we look a little
deeper and back to the beginning of the arts.
“Not,” writes Karl Buecher, “upon
the steep summits of society did poetry originate,
it sprang rather from the depths of the pure, strong
soul of the people. Women have striven to produce
it, and as civilised man owes to woman’s work
much the best of his possessions, so also are her
thoughts interwoven in the spiritual treasure handed
down from generation to generation.”
A glance back at the beginnings of
human civilisation show that women were equal, if
not superior, to men in productive poetic activity.
To a large extent men first learned from women the
elements of the various handicrafts. I have already
referred to this fact in the historical section, where
we see the reasons whereby women lost their early
control over the industrial arts. I wish to refer
to a point of special importance now, which I find
is brought forward, in this connection, by Iwan Bloch.
In the start of the industrial occupations, in sowing
and thrashing and grinding the grain, in baking bread,
in the preparation of food and drinks, of wine and
beer, in the making of pots and baskets, and in spinning,
the women worked together; and, as is common still
among primitive peoples, these occupations were largely
carried on in a rhythmical manner. From this
co-operation of the women it resulted that they were
the first creators of poetry and music. The men,
on the other hand, hunted singly in the forests.
The birth of their poetic activity followed only after
they had monopolised the labours of material production.
Even to-day among many races the influence of woman’s
poetry can be followed for a long way into the literary
period. I have myself witnessed something similar
to this among the peasants in the rural districts
of Spain. I have heard women in the evenings relate
to one another and to their children the rich legends
of their land, carrying on the old traditions that
have come down from generation to generation, and
thus creating among themselves a communion of heroes.
Then, again, these Spanish women seem never to cease
from singing as they carry on their many and heavy
labours. The women sing far more frequently than
the men. Music is to them an instinctive means
of expression; they do not learn it, it belongs to
them, like dancing belongs to the natural child.
And these folk songs, where the words are often improvised
by the singer, seem to give utterance to natural out-door
things-a symbol of the people’s life,
of its action, its work, very strong in its appeal,
which blends so strangely joy with sadness. A
special quality that often surprised me in these songs
was the way in which the people translate and use
the music of other countries. I have heard popular
English tunes sung by the women as they work, which
have ceased to be common in their sentiment and become
full of a tenderness into which passion has fallen;
even slangy music-hall tunes take a new character,
a lively brilliance that no longer is vulgar.
This music is the true singing of the people, and if
you would feel all the beauty of its appeal you must
be in touch with the spirit that cries in it, with
work, and passion, and life.
It may seem that all this has taken
us rather far away from our inquiry into the strength
of the artistic impulse in women. The way, however,
is largely cleared. We have proved that there
is, at least, a possible mistake in the opinion that
those experiments in creative expression, which we
call variations, are necessarily inherent in the male,
rather than in the female. Speaking biologically,
we may regard woman, in common with man, as a potentially
creative agent with a striving will, and thus able
to change under the stimulus of appropriate opportunity.
Now, to look at the question for a
moment in a different light-in relation
to the special qualities that are facts of actual experience
in woman’s character as it is to-day. It
is proved-if scientific determination of
such qualities were necessary-that women
are more sensitive to suggestion and receptive of
outward influences; that they have keener affectability,
and thus tend to be more emotional and, within certain
limits, more imaginative than men. They react
to both physical and psychical stimuli more readily,
and it would seem that their brain action is more
rapid. Experimental tests have shown that in
respect of quickness of comprehension and intellectual
mobility women are distinctly superior to men.
It is, of course, an open question
how far all this is due to Nature and how far merely
to education. Must we regard this emotional endowment
of woman as permanent or alterable? Havelock Ellis
has detected a decline in the emotivity of modern
women under the influence of new conditions, especially
as the result of the more healthy life and out-door
games among girls. But he does not believe that
any present or future change in activities can lead
to a complete abolition of the emotional differences
between the sexes. These qualities are correlated
with the essential physical function of women, and
are probably in part of similar deep origin, and are
therefore not likely to change. Nietzsche, as
is well known, denies this emotional capacity of women,
and considers them much more remarkable for their
intelligence than for their sensitiveness and feeling.
I believe, however, the view of Havelock Ellis to be
the right one. Throughout Nature it would seem
to be indispensable that the mother should have finer
and quicker sensibility than the father. The
female selects the male that she may use him for the
race. Women, for the reasons we have seen, have,
as I believe, lost much of the fineness of their selective
sensitiveness. But whether this greater emotional
power in women has been weakened or not, it is-as
all nature proves to us-an actual quality
of the female, and in it we have, therefore, a positive
ground to start from in estimating the potential artistic
endowment of women.
Let us accept, then, this sensitiveness
both physical and psychical, as at least the natural
character of femaleness. How does it place women
in her relation to the arts?
Consider what are the qualities essential
to success in any one of the arts. Are not the
most essential of these a quick reception of impressions,
added to an acute memory for all that has been experienced?
The poet and the writer can reach deeper into the nature
of others, the architect, the sculptor, the painter
can see more clearly, the musician hear more finely;
and so it is with all the arts. Does not the
genius, or even the man of talent, take his place
as one who understands incomparably more than others;
or, to express it a little differently, the genius
is he who is conscious of most and of that most acutely.
And what is it that enables him to do this, if it
is not a greater sensitiveness and a finer response
to every outward suggestion? It would seem, then,
that genius must possess the emotional qualities that
are the natural endowment of woman; while woman herself
is to be excluded from genius. A conclusion that
is plainly absurd.
The further we follow this the more
striking the likeness between the qualities of genius
and the high, nervous affectability of woman becomes.
The intuition of woman is really direct vision and
may mean only a quicker power of reasoning. Exactly
the same quality must be acknowledged as distinguishing
the genius. He, too, knows, rather than reasons
how he knows.
Take, again, the alleged superiority
of the feminine mind in matter of memory. There
is the same difference between the memory of the ordinary
man and the man of genius. Mental recognition
is proportional to the intensity of consciousness.
Because the life of the genius is more continuously
emotional-nearer, in fact, in its nature
to the woman’s-he is more ready to
receive impressions and to keep them. And here
we may note the incitement towards autobiography common
to gifted men, which would seem to arise from the
same psychological condition which forces women so
strongly to self-revelations. So also with all
the mental qualities we shall find, I believe, the
same connection between the special characters of
woman and those of genius. Woman’s mental
mobility, her tendency towards nervous outbursts, with
a corresponding irritability and greater susceptibility
to fatigue, except under the support of excitement,
as also in the resulting qualities of her power of
ready adaptation to changes of habits and response
to new influences, her tact, her keener insight into
character, her quickness in pity, her impulsiveness,
her finer discrimination, her innate sense of symmetry
or fitness-each of these qualities may
be said to accord also with the character of genius,
but no one among them is common to the ordinary man.
Even in so obvious a point as facial
expression the same relation may be traced. It
is a matter of constant observation that women’s
faces are more expressive than men’s, showing
greater mobility, through the instinctive response
to suggestions from without and within. A similar
mobility will be readily noted in the appearance of
almost all men of special giftedness. The faces
of such men rarely exhibit the stereotyped expressions
that characterise most male countenances. No
one mood leaves a permanent imprint on the features,
for through the amplitude of feeling a new side of
the mind is continuously revealed. Faces with
an unchanging expression belong really to people low
in artistic endowment.
Of some significance, again, is the
variability in the mental power of genius, leading
to what may be called “a periodicity in production.”
Goethe has spoken somewhere of “the recurrence
of puberty” in the artist. This idea may
perhaps, without too much straining, be compared with
the functional periodicity of woman. The periods
in the life of a creative artist often assume the
character of a crisis-a kind of climax
of vital energy. Sterile years precede productive
periods, to be followed by more barren years.
The circle of activity is not broken, it is but interrupted;
the years of apparent sterility really leading up
to, and preparing for, the creative periods. I
may point out here a thought in passing in connection
with the child-bearing functions of women. This
is brought forward by many as the most serious objection
to women being able to attain success in any of the
arts. The objection is not really sound.
No creative work can be carried on without interruptions.
The important part in all such work is not to be uninterrupted,
but to be able to begin again. The new experiences
gained give new power; a fresh and wider view.
And woman has in her supreme function of motherhood-an
experience denied to men; this should give her greater,
and not less, creative capacity. What is really
needed is the freedom, the training and the desire
that shall direct expression, so that woman may enrich
the arts with her own special experience.
It is useless to argue that woman’s
past record in the arts holds out no such promise.
We know really very little about woman’s genius.
One thing is, however, certain: the only possible
test of it is trial, for without this there is no
basis of judgment, no means of deciding whether there
be genius or no. If, as I believe, woman’s
creative capacity arises out of, and is essentially
connected with, her sexual functions, how can it have
been possible to employ such power in the arts in
a society where the natural use of her sex has been
restricted and not allowed a free expression?-a
society, moreover, in which the pregnant woman has
been regarded as an object of shame or ridicule.
To look at this question of woman’s
achievement in the arts in the old way is no longer
possible. We have proved that the natural emotional
endowment of woman is rich and varied. But there
are two things necessary for achievement: inherent
aptitude and opportunity-that is, a favourable
environment for expression, in which power may be
directed into useful channels and saved from wastefully
expending itself. To deny genius to women when
the opportunity for its development has been absent
is obviously unjust. The influence of education,
and the stronger driving of habit and social opinion,
must be taken into the account. Women have up
till now been without two essential qualities necessary
for creating-subjectivity and initiative.
In practice they have not been able, or only very rarely,
to get beyond imitation. Through the circumstances
of their lives they have lacked the courage and conviction,
even if opportunity had arisen, necessary for creative
work. For the highest achievement in the arts
they have missed the concentration, the severe devotion
to work, the control of thought and complete self-restraint,
which can come only from discipline, from long training,
and freedom. Yet I make the claim that woman,
from her constitutional femininity, is a compound
of all those qualities that genius demands. The
channels of woman’s energy have been everywhere
choked. No great creative art has ever been produced
by a subjugated class. Art comes with freedom,
with the strong incentive of the communal spirit,
and with the sense of power. For centuries woman
has been artificially individualised. Her special
function of motherhood has remained unacknowledged
as a communal work. Her emotional and mental
capacities have been turned back upon herself and
her immediate belongings, with the result that her
social usefulness has been suppressed or thwarted.
The emotional feelings of woman are ever pressing,
and only need to be brought into stricter command
in order to achieve. What women will accomplish
no man can say.
One word more. Let us look in
this new direction, the direction of the future, because
it is there that this possible future entrance of
women into the arts becomes important. We stand
in the first rush of a new movement. It is the
day of experiments. The extraordinary enthusiasm
now sweeping through womanhood reveals behind its immediate
fevered expression a great power of emotional and spiritual
initiative. Wide and radically sweeping are the
changes in woman’s social outlook. So much
stronger is the promise of a vital force, when they
are free to enter and to work in the various departments
of the arts. It is the commonest error to think
of art as if it stood outside the other activities
of life. Under the cloak of art much self-amusement
and vulgar self-display tries to justify itself, and
many mercenary interests are concerned in stinting
its vitality. All living and valuable art is
really communal. It must fit into its right place
with all phases of human activities, and to do this
it must have somewhere in it the social citizen spirit.
You see how women stand in this matter.
The social ideal is becoming a very near ideal to
women. And this quickening in her of the citizen
spirit may well come to revive our art to a more true
and social service. This is no idle fancy.
Throughout the ages of patriarchal faith women have
been confined in the home, so that an understanding
of the needs of the home is in their blood. May
not the old ideals remain for service and find expression
in the new work? Much that has passed with us
as art has to be swept away. Let women bring this
sense of home into our civic life, and surely it will
be reflected in the arts. It is the sense of
fitness to the common use and needs of the larger
family of the State that has been almost wholly eliminated
from our architecture, our statues, our paintings,
our music, and much of our literature. The arts
have withered and lost their vitality in our narrow
and blighting commercial society.
I do not want to weary the reader
with what can only be suggestions. I am certain,
however, that this vital factor of the home cannot
safely be excluded from the State. Consider any
one of the old mediaeval towns, with its buildings,
its cathedral, its churches, its halls, its homes-all
that it contains a splendid witness to the civic life
of its people. Contrast this with what we have
been willing to accept as art in our industrial towns.
In the old days the city was in a very literal sense
the home of its citizens, now it is merely a centre
of trade. Is it unfair to connect this with the
subjection of women and the rush of male activities,
that has destroyed the need of beauty and fitness
which once was the possession of all? For art
you must have human qualities, and you must have emotion.
The time has come when we are yielding to the new
forces, that yet are old. This age will leave
its own track behind it, and those, who are beating
out the way now, must start on the right path-freeing
for the service of the future all the intellectual
and emotional forces of women as well as men.
To think boldly, untrammelled by conventions
from the past, to search sedulously for the truth
within themselves and follow it fearlessly, this should
be the faith of all those women who love art.
Let them have the courage of their own deep emotions.
Let them look forward into the future, instead of
clinging timorously to the stone wall of their past
imitation of men. Then, indeed, woman may be freed-able
to give expression to those creative ideas which are
wrapped up with the elements of her nature. But
women must beware of sham emotion and lachrymose sentimentality.
It is her own feelings she must voice, not the feelings
that have been supposed to belong to her. Then,
indeed, the work of women will begin to count.
The two things most peculiar to woman-her
pursuing-love of man and her need of a child, will
find their expression in women’s art.
It is an appalling commentary on the
condition of our thoughts on this subject that the
pregnant woman was but recently considered unfit to
be represented in the statues placed on one of our
public buildings. How convincingly this speaks
to women, “Be not ashamed of anything, but to
be ashamed.”
III.-The Affectability of Woman-Its Connection with the Religious
Impulse
“Religion shares with the sexual
impulse the unceasing yearning, the sentiment
of everlastingness, the mystic absorption into the
depths of life, the longing for the coalescence
of individualities in an eternally blessed union,
free from earthly fetters.”-IWAN
BLOCH.
Now, this affectability, that we have
found to be a characteristic feminine feature, leads
us directly to an inquiry into the part religion has
played in the lives of women, and to the wider consideration
of the religious impulse in general, and its close
connection with the sexual instinct. I had intended
to treat this subject in some detail, especially in
relation to religious hypnotic phenomena, a matter
of very deep significance in estimating woman’s
character. I should have liked, too, to have traced
the influence of the early and late Christian teaching
upon woman’s mind, to have examined her position
in the social and domestic relationship, and then
to have contrasted this with the almost complete liberty
and distinction enjoyed by women in Pagan culture.
But the field opened up by these inquiries is too
wide. The previous sections of this chapter have
grown to such length that all that is possible to me
now, if I am to have space for the matters I want
still to investigate, are a few scattered remarks
and suggestions which seem to me to throw some light
on this important side of woman’s life.
No one will question woman’s
aptitude for religion, whatever the opinion held as
to what the organic basis of that aptitude may be.
If we accept that woman is more sensitive to suggestion,
more emotional, and more imaginative in her nature,
it is plain why religion affects her more deeply than
men. The extraordinary way in which woman can
be influenced by religious suggestion is similar in
its nature to that saturation of her innermost thoughts
with love, which is due in part, as I believe, to
the special qualities of her sex-functions, but also,
in part, to the over-emphasised sexuality produced
in her by an artificial existence. Women have
accepted religious beliefs as they have accepted man’s
valuation of temporal things, even although these
may be utterly at variance with their nature and their
desires.
It has been said that the disposition
of woman makes her peculiarly conservative and uncritical
of religious beliefs. Others suggest that there
is a “specific religious sense” in women
related with a higher standard of character.
This I do not believe: it is part of the fiction
of woman’s superior morality. I think in
most women is hidden an immense appetite for life,
an immense capacity for expenditure of force.
She does not often dare to listen to these deeps within
her soul; yet the insurgent voices fill her.
There is in the life of most women something wanting,
some general idea, some aim to hold life together.
The effort of woman-often unconscious, but
always present-to realise herself in love
has forced her to practise duplicity and to accept
dependence. And this sense of dependence in her
on a protector, not always forthcoming, and, even when
present, not always able to protect, has sent her
in search of something outside and beyond the known
and fallible, and has prepared her to accept with
eagerness any professed revelation of the infallible
unknown.
We have seen again and again in the
course of our inquiry how deep and natural the sex
impulse is in woman, and this, combined with the much
greater complexity of her sexual life, renders her
position peculiarly liable to be affected disastrously
by any failure of love. It must be recognised
that unbounded piety is often no more than a sex symptom,
proceeding from deprivation or from satiety of love,
as also from love’s failure in loveless marriage.
It seems to me that this connection of the religious
impulse with sexuality is a very important thing for
women to understand. In our achievement of facing
the truth in the place of evasions about fundamental
things, lies the path, I believe along which woman
can escape, if ever she is to escape, from the confusion
of purposes that distract her at present.
The intimate association between religious
ideas and feelings and the sexual life is abundantly
proved by the history of all peoples. We first
meet it in the widespread early practice of religious
prostitution, which has aptly been called “lust
sacrifice.” It is even more manifest in
the ancient religious erotic festivals. Of these
we have examples in the festivals of Isis in Egypt,
in the Dionysian and Eleusinian festivals of the Hellènes,
in the Roman Bacchanalia and festival of Flora, and
among the Jews in the feast of Baal-peor.
In these festivals the frenzy of religious mysticism
merges with the wildest sexual licence. Sexual
mysticism found its way also into Christianity, a
fact to which the lives of the saints furnish an illuminating
witness. And down to the present day we may notice
its manifestations in the most diverse sects during
any period of religious revival. We still meet
with sexual excesses under the shadow of faith, as,
for instance, occurred in the late revival in Wales.
Havelock Ellis has laid stress on
the leading significance of religious sexual perceptions,
and their special importance on the emotional feminine
character. This subject is so deeply connected
with women that I shall, I hope, be pardoned if I
pause for a moment to relate a personal experience
which may help to make this truth more clear.
In my girlhood I was strongly drawn
to religion, partly through training and example,
but more, as I now know, by the affectability of my
strongly feminine temperament. My religious enthusiasm
was so intense that often I was in a condition which
must have been closely connected with erotic religious
ecstasy. Salvation was the essential fact of
my life; seeking for it brought me the excitement I
unconsciously craved of conflicts and fulfilled desires.
I sought for God as the passionate woman seeks her
lover. I recall a period-I was approaching
womanhood-during which I prayed continuously
and earnestly that it might be granted to me, as to
the saints of old, to see God and the Risen Christ.
For long I received no answer. This did not weaken
my faith, but the great trouble of my mind became for
long a consciousness of my own unworthiness.
I began an absurd and childish system of self-punishments,
and what I thought would lead to purification.
Then there came a night-it was summer and
I was looking from my window out at the beautiful
evening sky-when my prayer was answered.
I seemed, in very truth, to see God. From that
time, and for long, I lived in extraordinary happiness.
I am sure that I must have become hysterical.
I felt that I was set apart by God; I conceived the
idea of founding a new religious sect. That I
made no attempt to do this was due to circumstances,
which forced me into active work to gain my own living.
Religion continued very largely in my life, but I
was too healthily occupied to be favoured with any
more visions. But the essential point in all
this is its close connection with my sexual development.
So far I had never been in love. I believe that
the natural sex desires awakened consciously in me
much later than is common. My need for religion
lasted until my sex needs were fully satisfied, then,
little by little, it faded. I want to state the
truth. I did not then trace, nor should I have
understood, this connection. The knowledge came
to me long years afterwards; how it does not matter,
but I am certain that in me the religious impulse and
the sex impulse are one.
Love has in it much of the same supernatural
element as religion. Both the sex-act and the
act of finding salvation come into intimate association
with woman’s need of dependence; hence arises
the remarkable relation between the two, and that
easy transition of sexual emotion into religious emotion
which is manifest in so many women. In both cases
the surrender, the renunciation of personal will,
is an experience fraught with passionate pleasure.
“Love,” as H.G. Wells has said, “is
the individualised correlation of salvation, like
that it is a synthetic consequence of conflict and
confusions.” It is true that few women
render love the compliment of taking it seriously.
To many it is merely this: a little amusement,
clothes, a home, money to buy new toys; some mild
pleasure, a little chagrin, a little weariness, and
then the end. They do not realise or ever desire
love in its full joy of personal surrender. So,
too, many women never, save in some time of personal
bewilderment, desire or seek salvation. But such
aimlessness brings its own emptiness, and women strain
and seek towards the god-head. For the truth
remains, woman’s need of love is greater than
man’s need, and for this reason, where love fails
her, her desire for salvation is deeper than man’s
desire. And here again, and once again, we see
the difference between the sexes. The woman pays
the higher price for her implicit, unquestioning, and
unconscious obedience to Nature. And society
has made the payment still heavier. Let us for
this last pity women! The dice they have had to
throw in the game of life is their sex, and they have
only been allowed one throw, and when they have thrown
wastefully-yes, it is here that religion
has entered into the game. It may almost be said
to measure the failures and false boundaries in women’s
loves. The songs of love and the songs of faith
are alike; and women act worship as also they are
often driven to act love. The woman who knows
her own heart must know that this is true. And
one cannot wish to see the opium of religion taken
from women until the game is made a fairer one for
them to play.
There is another point to consider.
Many great thinkers have striven against
this profound and primitive connection between the
bodily and spiritual impulses, which has seemed to
them an intrusion of evil, impairing their pure spirituality
by the sexual life. They have thus recommended
and followed asceticism in order to arrive at a heightened
spirituality. The error here is obvious.
The spiritual activities cannot be divided from the
physical; as well cut the flower off from its roots,
and then expect to gather the fruit. This is
why sex-denial and sex-excesses so often go together.
Hence the undeniable unchastity of the mediaeval cloisters.
Nor need the manifestations of sex be physical.
Erotic imagination and voluptuous revelations are
expressions of sex-passion. The monstrous sexual
visions of the saints reflect in a typical manner the
incredible violence of the sexual perception of ascetics.
We observe it, then, as a fact of
wide experience that the ascetic life is rooted really
in the functional impulses; and further, that it is
only through sexual perception that the spiritual and
imaginative can be grasped and reached. What
the ascetic has done is to fear overmuch. It
must not be overlooked that this continual battle with
the primary force of life is necessarily futile in
accomplishing its own aim. For the woman or man
who, for the religious or any other ideal, wishes
to overcome the sex-needs must keep the subject always
before her, or his, consciousness. Thus it comes
about that the ascetic is always more occupied with
sex than the normal individual. It seems to me
that this is a truth few women have learnt to face.
I am not for a moment denying that
the potential energy of the sexual impulse may be
transformed with benefit into productive spiritual
activities, finding its vent in religion, as also in
poetry, in art, and in all creative work. Plato
must have had this in his mind when he speaks of “thought
as a sublimated sexual impulse.” Schopenhauer,
and many other thinkers, lay stress on the connection
between the work of productive genius and the modification
of the sexual impulse. This may be illustrated-if
examples are needed in proof-by the power
that has been exercised so conspicuously by women
throughout the world in religious movements.
Two of the greater festivals of the Catholic Church,
for instance, owe their origin to the illumination
of women; the mystic writings of Santa Teresa of Avila
give classic expression to the highest powers of the
spirit. Take again the part played by women as
religious leaders of the convents in the early Middle
Ages. In them women of spirit and capacity found
a wide and satisfying career, many of them showing
great administrative ability and a quite remarkable
power for government. In recent times mention
may be made of the Theosophists, the most important
modern religious movement established in this country
and led by women; and of Christian Science, which,
under the able guidance of Mrs. Eddy, has sprung up
and flourished. It is instructive to note that
both these religions are connected with, and largely
established on, magical faith and esoteric doctrines
and practices. In almost all the religions founded
by women we may trace a similar relation with hypnotic
phenomena which must be regarded as closely dependent
on sexual sources. The proof is wider even than
these particular instances. It is without doubt
the transformation of suppressed sexual instincts
that has made women the chief supporters of all religions.
It may be said that the religious
impulse has to a large extent lost its hold upon women.
This is true. A new age must expect to see a new
departure. As women take active participation
in the work of the world their sense of dependence
and need for protection will diminish, and we may
look for a corresponding decrease in that display of
excessive religious emotion that dependence has fostered.
But the needs of woman can never be satisfied alone
with work. The natural desires remain imperative;
deny these, and there will be left only the barren
tree robbed of its fruits. Sexuality first breathes
into woman’s spiritual being warm and blooming
life.
The religious ascetic is not common
among us to-day. Yet the old seeking for something
is there. The impulse towards asceticism has,
I think, rather changed its form than passed from
women. The place of the female saint is being
taken by the social ascetic. Desire is not now
set to gain salvation, but is turned towards a heightened
intellectual individuation, showing itself in nervous
mental activity. No one can have failed to note
the immense egoism of the modern woman. Women
are still in fear of life and love. They have
been made ascetics through the long exercise of restraint
upon their explosively emotional temperament.
They have restrained their natures to remain pure.
This false ideal of chastity was in the first place
forced upon them, but by long habit it has been accentuated
and has been backed up by woman’s own blindness
and fear. Thus to-day, in their new-found freedom,
women are seeking to bind men up in the same bonds
of denial which have restrained them. In the past
they have over-readily imbibed the doctrine of a different
standard of purity for the sexes, now they are in
revolt-indeed, they are only just emerging
from a period of bitterness in relation to this matter.
Men made women into puritans, and women are arising
in the strength of their faith to enforce puritanism
on men. Is this malice or is it revenge?
In any case it is foolishness. Bound up as the
sexual impulse is with the entire psychic emotional
being, there would be left behind without it only
the wilderness of a cold abstraction. The Christian
belief in souls and bodies separate, and souls imprisoned
in vile clay, has wrought terrible havoc to women.
I believe the two-soul and body-are
one and indivisible. Women have yet this lesson
to learn: the capacity for sense-experience is
the sap of life. The power to feel passion is
in direct ratio to the strength of the individual’s
hold upon life; and may be said to mark the height
of his, or her, attainment in the scale of being.
It is only another out of many indications of the
strength of sexual emotion in women that so many of
them are afraid of the beauty and the natural joys
of love.
There is one thing more I would wish
to point out in closing this very insufficient survey
of an exceedingly complicated and difficult subject.
To me it seems that here, in this finer understanding
of love, we open the door to the only remedy that
will wipe out the hateful fear of women, which has
wrought such havoc in the relationship between the
sexes. Woman, restrained to purity, has of necessity
fallen often into impurity. And men, knowing this
better than woman herself, have feared her, though
they have failed in any true understanding of the
cause. Let me give you the estimate of woman
which Maupassant, in Moonlight, has placed in
the mouth of a priest. It is the most illuminating
passage in one of the most exquisite of his stories-
“He hated woman, hated her unconsciously
and instinctively despised her. He often
repeated to himself the words of Christ: ‘Woman,
what have I to do with thee?’ And he would add,
’It seems as if God Himself felt discontented
with that particular creation.’ For
him was that child of whom the poet speaks, impure,
through and through impure. She was the temptress
who had led away the first man, and still continued
her work of perdition; a frail creature but dangerous,
mysteriously disturbing. And even more than
their sinful bodies he hated their loving souls....
God, in his opinion, had created woman solely
to tempt man, to put him to the proof.”
One lesson women and men have to learn:
so easy to be put into words, so difficult to carry
out by deeds. To get good from each other the
sexes must give love the one to the other. The
human heart in loneliness eats out itself, causes
its own emptiness, creates its own terrors. Nature
gives lavishly, wantonly, and woman is nearer to Nature
than man is, therefore she must give the more freely,
the more generously. There can be no such thing
as the goodness of one-half of life without the goodness
of the other half. Love between woman and man
is mutual; is continual giving. Not by storing
up for the good of one sex or in waste for the pleasure
of the other, but by free bestowing is salvation.
Wherefore, not in the enforced chastity of woman,
but in her love, will man gain his new redemption.