If I have dwelt at some length upon woman’s failure to achieve
greatness in art and literature, it is because its art and literature
reflect the inward life of a people, and the puny, trammelled and
almost entirely imitative art of woman is a faithful reflection of the
artificial habit and attitude of mind induced in her by the training
for the married state, or its equivalent outside the law. As I have
already said, the wonder is—when the tendency of that training is
taken into account—not that she has done so little, but that she has
done so much; for it must be borne in mind that as long as sexual
love and maternity are in the slightest degree compulsory upon woman
they can never prove to her the source of inspiration which they have
so often proved to man. It is freedom and unfettered desire, not
inevitable duty or the prospect of monetary gain, which awakens the
creative instinct in humanity. The commercial element has always been
incompatible with effective expression in art; no stockbroker, however
exultant, has burst into lyric rhapsody over a rise in Home Rails, no
grocer lifted up a psalm of praise because his till was full. It is
because her love has always been her livelihood that woman has never
been inspired by it as man has been inspired. And it is just because
it is so business-like that her interest in love is often so keen.
For instance, her customary appreciation of a book or a work of art
dealing with love, and nothing but love, is the outcome of something
more than sentiment and overpowering consciousness of sex. To her a
woman in love is not only a woman swayed by emotion, but a human being
engaged in carving for herself a career or securing for herself a means
of livelihood. Her interest in a love story is, therefore, much more
complex than a man’s interest therein, and the appreciation which she
brings to it is of a very different quality.
Love and maternity, then, have failed because of their compulsory
character to inspire woman to artistic achievement; and from
other sources of inspiration she has, as a rule, been debarred
systematically. One hears, over and over again, of the artist who is
inspired by the spirit of his time, who gives effective expression to
the life and ideals of his time; and one remembers that man has always
desired that woman should be debarred from contact with the life and
spirit of the world in which she lived and moved and had her being, has
always desired that she should drift and stagnate in a backwater of
existence. The inspiration that springs from the sense of community,
of fellowship, from enthusiasm for great interests shared with others
was not to be for her; she was denied part or lot or interest in the
making of contemporary history and to the passions enkindled by it
she must be a stranger. Art has always responded to the uprush of
a genuine popular enthusiasm, has embodied, shaped and moulded the
ideas tossed about from mind to mind, and from man to man in a period
of national effervescence and progress. The men who have left behind
them an enduring name in the annals of art and literature were not
unconscious of the life around them, were often enough caught up in
the swirl of contemporary interests, and played an eager part in that
making of contemporary history which we call politics. How many works
of art do we not owe to the civic consciousness, to a man’s pride in
his own place, his desire to be worthy of it, his sense of comradeship
and his glory in communal service? In every city worthy of the name, in
every city that is anything more than an enlarged manufacturing slum,
there stands, in brick or stone, some witness to the force and reality
of the communal impulse in art. It was an impulse that seldom reached
woman; who stood apart from the communal life, who knew not the service
that brings with it sense of fellowship, who had not so much as a place
to be proud of. Even to-day a woman takes her husband’s nationality,
and the place that was her own is hers no longer. She has drawn no
inspiration from the thought that she is a citizen of no mean city.
We think of Milton as a poet; but to the men of his time he was
something else. Twenty years of his life were given to politics and
statecraft, and his verse is the product not only of his own genius,
but of the national spirit of Puritanism—which was the desire to
establish the kingdom of God upon earth. Dante, to us, is the man who
ascended into heaven and descended into hell and wrote of what he saw;
but it was not for these things, but for his partisanship of a losing
cause, that he ate the bread of a stranger and found it salt. Few, if
any, of the great ones of all time have stood apart in spirit from
their own world with its hopes and its seething discontents; they spoke
of it because they lived in it, loved it and wondered at it. It is
significant that one of the few women whose written words have stood
the test of centuries—St. Teresa—was one whose aspirations were not
narrowed to the duties of a husband’s dwelling, who was passionately
conscious of her part in the life of a great community, who made
herself a power in the public life of the day—a woman capable of
organization and able to bend men and systems to an indomitable will.
My meaning, I hope, will not be misinterpreted or narrowed. I do not
look upon the British House of Commons or the American House of
Representatives, as at present instituted, as a likely forcing-ground
for poets or composers; nor do I consider that no human being is
qualified to produce a decent novel or paint a decent picture until his
name is included in the electoral register. I have endeavoured to make
it clear that it is not the letter of political life, but the spirit
of a conscious communal life which kindles enthusiasm, arouses the
desire of service and awakens art; that, as far as art is concerned,
the important point is participation in ideas, not in elections. When
women are informed that they cannot think publicly, or, as the cant
phrase goes, think imperially, it should be borne in mind that public
or imperial ideas have usually been labelled, “For men only.”
There is, so far as I can see, no reason to suppose that the minds
of women are naturally less accessible than the minds of men to the
influence of what has been termed the crowd spirit. Such subordinate
share as they have been permitted to take in the communal life of the
various sects and churches they have availed themselves of to the
full; at least they have understood the meaning of the term Communion
of Saints. And the few women whose high birth has qualified them for
the responsibilities of practical statesmanship, the guidance and
governance of nations, have usually grasped their responsibilities with
capability and understanding. Public spirit has been manifested in
these exceptions to masculine rule as surely as it was manifested in
the dreadful, hopeful crowd that once went marching to Versailles; and
it has been written that if the men of the Paris Commune had espoused
their cause with the desperate courage of the women, that cause had not
been lost.