My object in writing so far has been to set forth reasons for my belief
that woman, as we know her to-day, is largely a manufactured product;
that the particular qualities which are supposed to be inherent in
her and characteristic of her sex are often enough nothing more than
the characteristics of a repressed class and the entirely artificial
result of her surroundings and training. I have tried to show that,
given such surroundings and training, the ordinary or womanly woman was
the kind of development to be expected; that even if it be the will
of Providence that she should occupy the lower seat, man has actively
assisted Providence by a resolute discouragement of her attempts
to move out of it; and that it is impossible to say whether her
typical virtues and her typical defects are inherent and inevitable,
or induced and artificial, until she has been placed amidst other
surroundings and subjected to the influence and test of a different
system of education. Until such an experiment has been tried no really
authoritative conclusion is possible; one can only make deductions and
point to probabilities.
If, after four or five generations of freer choice and wider life,
woman still persists in confining her steps to the narrow grooves where
they have hitherto been compelled to walk; if she claims no life of
her own, if she has no interests outside her home, if love, marriage
and maternity is still her all in all; if she is still, in spite of
equal education, of emulation and respect, the inferior of man in
brain capacity and mental independence; if she still evinces a marked
preference for disagreeable and monotonous forms of labour, for which
she is paid at the lowest possible rate; if she still attaches higher
value to the lifting of a top hat than to the liberty to direct her
own life; if she is still untouched by public spirit, still unable to
produce an art and a literature that is individual and sincere; if she
is still servile, imitative, pliant—then, when those four or five
generations have passed, the male half of humanity will have a perfect
right to declare that woman is what he has always believed and desired
her to be, that she is the chattel, the domestic animal, the matron or
the mistress, that her subjection is a subjection enjoined by natural
law, that her inferiority to himself is an ordained and inevitable
inferiority. Then he will have that right; but not till then.
Some of us believe and hope with confidence that, given such wider life
and freer choice, he would have to admit himself mistaken, would have
to confess that the limitations once confining us were, for the most
part, of his own invention. And we base that belief and very confident
hope on the knowledge that there are in us, and in our sisters, many
qualities which we are not supposed to possess and which once were
unsuspected by ourselves; and on the certainty that the needs and
circumstances of modern life are encouraging, whether or no we will it,
the development of a side of our nature which we have heretofore been
strictly forbidden to develop—the side that comes in contact with the
world. Economic pressure and the law of self-preservation produced the
“womanly woman”; now, from the “womanly woman” economic pressure and
the law of self-preservation are producing a new type. It is no use for
a bland and fatuous conservatism to repeat the parrot cry anent the
sphere of woman being the home; we could not listen to its chirpings
even if we would. For our stomachs are more insistent than any parrot
cry, and they inform us that the sphere of woman, like the sphere of
man, is the place where daily bread can be obtained.
There was a certain amount of truth in the formula once, in days when
our social and industrial system was run on more primitive lines, when
the factory was not, and the home was a place of trade and business
as well as a place to live in. But the modern civilized home is, as a
rule, and to all intents and purposes, only the shell of what it was
before that revolution in industrial methods which began about the
middle of the eighteenth century.
The alteration in the status and scope of the home is best and most
clearly typified by the divided life led by the modern trader,
manufacturer or man of business; who, in the morning, arises, swallows
his breakfast and goes forth to his shop, his factory or his office;
and, his day’s work done, returns to the suburban residence which
it is the duty of his wife to look after, either personally or by
superintendence of the labour of servants. His place of business and
his place of rest and recreation are separate institutions, situated
miles apart; the only connection between the two is the fact that he
spends a certain portion of the day in each, and that one provides
the money for the upkeep of the other. But his ancestor, if in the
same line of business, had his place of money-making and his place of
rest under the same roof, and both were comprehended in the meaning
of the term “home.” The primitive form of shop, though in gradual
and inevitable process of extinction, is still plentiful enough in
villages, in country towns and even in the by-streets of cities.
It takes the shape of a ground-floor apartment in the proprietor’s
dwelling-house, provided with a counter upon which the customer raps,
with a more or less patient persistence, with the object of arousing
the attention of some member of the hitherto invisible household.
Eventually, in response to the summons, a man, woman or child emerges
from behind the curtained door which separates the family place of
business from the family sitting-room, and proceeds to purvey the
needful string, matches or newspapers. In such an establishment no
outside labour is engaged, the business is carried on under the same
roof as the home and forms an integral part of the duties of the
home; it is a family affair giving a certain amount of employment
to members of the family. And when, owing to the erection round the
corner of a plateglass-windowed establishment run on more business-like
and attractive lines, it fails and has to put up its shutters, those
members of the family who have been dependent on it for a livelihood
will have to seek that livelihood elsewhere. The boy who has been
accustomed to help his parents in looking after the shop, running
errands and delivering orders, will have to turn to a trade, if he is
to be sure of his bread; the girl who has been fulfilling duties of the
same kind will have to enter domestic service, a factory or a shop in
which she is a paid assistant. In other words, she, like her brother,
will be driven out of the home because the home can no longer support
her; and it can no longer support her because its scope has been
narrowed. Formerly it had its bread-winning as well as its domestic
side; now, as an inevitable consequence of the growth of collective
industry, of specialization and centralization, the bread-winning or
productive side has been absorbed, and nothing remains but the domestic
or unproductive. And in the event of the failure of such a family
business as I have described, the head of the household, however firmly
convinced he might be that the true and only sphere of woman is the
home, would probably do his level best to obtain for his daughter a
situation and means of livelihood outside her proper sphere.
As an example of the tendency of the home to split up into departments
I have instanced the familiar process of the disappearance of a small
retail business, simply because it is familiar, and a case where we
can see the tendency at work beneath our own eyes. But, as a matter
of fact, the division of what was formerly the home into unproductive
and productive departments, into domestic work and work outside the
house, has been far less thorough and complete in the retail trade than
in other spheres of labour. The factory, which has absorbed industry
after industry formerly carried on in the house, is a comparatively
modern institution; so is the bake-house. Weaving and spinning were
once domestic trades; so was brewing. Not so very long ago it was usual
enough for the housewife, however well-to-do, to have all her washing
done in her own home; not so very long ago she made her own pickles and
her own jam. When the average household was largely self-supporting,
producing food for its own consumption, and linen for its own wearing,
it gave employment to many more persons than can be employed in it
to-day. The women’s industries of a former date have, for the most
part, been swallowed by the factory. They were never industries at
which she earned much money; so far as the members of a family were
concerned they were rewarded with nothing more than the customary wage
of subsistence; but—and this is the real point—they were industries
at which woman not only earned her wage of subsistence, but indirectly
a profit for her employer, the head of the household—the husband or
father.
The displacement of labour which followed the adoption of machinery
in crafts and manufactures formerly carried on by hand affected the
conditions of women’s work just as it affected the work of men.
Factories and workshops took the place of home industries; the small
trader and the master-craftsman fell under the domination first of the
big employer and later of the limited liability company. It was cheaper
to produce goods in large quantities by the aid of machinery than in
small quantities by hand; so the “little man” who ran his own business
with the aid of his own family, being without capital to expend on
the purchase of machinery, was apt to find competition too much for
him and descend to the position of a wage-earner. For woman the
serious fact was that under the new system of collective industry and
production on a large scale her particular sphere, the home, ceased to
be self-supporting, since its products were under-sold by the products
of the factory. Jam and pickles could be produced more cheaply in a
factory furnished with vats than in a kitchen supplied with saucepans;
it was more economical to buy bread than to bake it, because the most
economical way of baking was to bake it in the mass. A man might esteem
the accomplishment of pickle-making or linen-weaving as an excellent
thing in woman; but unless expense was really no object he would not
encourage his wife and daughters to excel in these particular arts,
since it was cheaper to buy sheets and bottled onions round the corner
than to purchase the raw material and set the female members of his
family to work upon it. In the redistribution of labour which followed
upon the new order of things man, not for the first time, had invaded
the sacred sphere of woman and annexed a share thereof.
The natural and inevitable result of this new and improved state of
things was that woman deprived of the productive industries at which
she had formerly earned her keep and something over for her employer,
was no longer a source of monetary profit to that employer. On the
contrary, so far as money went and so long as she remained in the
home, she was often a distinct loss. Instead of baking bread for her
husband or father, her husband or father had to expend his money on
buying bread for her to eat; she no longer wove the material for other
people’s garments; on the contrary the material for her own had to be
obtained at the draper’s. The position, for man, was a serious one; for
be it remembered, he could not lower the wages of his domestic animal.
These had always been fixed, whatever work she did, at the lowest
possible rate—subsistence rate; so that even when her work ceased to
be profitable her wages could not be made to go any lower—there was
nowhere lower for them to go. One’s daughter had to be fed, clothed and
lodged even if the narrowed scope of the home provided her with no more
lucrative employment than dusting china dogs on the mantelpiece.
Under these circumstances the daughters of a household found
themselves, often enough, face to face with a divided duty: the duty of
earning their keep, which would necessitate emergence from the home,
and the duty of remaining inside the sacred sphere—and confining
their energies to china dogs. Left to themselves the more energetic
and ambitious would naturally adopt the first alternative, the more
slothful and timid as naturally adopt the second; but they were not
always left to themselves, nor were their own desires and predilections
the sole factor in their respective decisions. The views of the head
of the household, who now got little or no return for the outlay he
incurred in supporting them, had also to be taken into consideration;
and his views were usually influenced by the calls made upon his purse.
Theoretically he might hold fast to the belief that woman’s sphere was
the home and nothing but the home. Actually he might object to the
monetary outlay incurred if that belief was acted upon. The father
of five strapping girls (all hungry several times a day), who might
or might not succeed in inducing five desirable husbands to bear the
expense of their support, would probably discover that, even if home
was the sphere of woman, there were times when she was better out of
it. It is a curious fact that when women are blamed for intruding into
departments of the labour market hitherto reserved for men, the abuse
which is freely showered upon the intruders is in no wise poured forth
upon the male persons appertaining to the said intruders—who have
presumably neglected to provide the funds necessary to enable their
female relations to pass a blameless, if unremunerative, existence
making cakes for home consumption, or producing masterpieces in
Berlin wool-work. The different treatment meted out to the guilty
parties in this respect seems to be another example of the practice
of apportioning blame only to the person least able to resent it.
It is quite natural that man should refuse to support healthy and
able-bodied females; but he must not turn round and be nasty when, as a
direct consequence of his refusal, the healthy and able-bodied females
endeavour to support themselves.
For good or for evil a good many millions of us have been forced out of
the environment which we once believed to be proper to our sex; and to
our new environment we have to adapt ourselves—if we are to survive.
Work in the factory or in the office, work which brings us into
contact with the outside world, calls for the exercise of qualities
and attainments which we had no need of before, for the abandonment
of habits and ideas which can only hamper our progress in our changed
surroundings. Our forefathers—those, at any rate, of the upper and
middle class—admired fragility of health in woman; and, in order to
please them, our foremothers fell in with the idea and appealed to
the masculine sense of chivalry by habitual indulgence in complaints
known as swoons and vapours. Persons subject to these tiresome and
inconvenient diseases would stand a very poor chance of regular and
well-paid employment as teachers, sanitary inspectors, journalists and
typists; so teachers, sanitary inspectors, journalists and typists
have repressed the tendency to swoons and vapours. In these classes an
actual uncertainty prevails as to the nature of vapours, and swooning
is practically a lost art. Instead of applying their energies to the
cultivation of these attractive complaints, working and professional
women are inclined to encourage a condition of rude bodily health which
stands them in good stead in their work, and is, therefore, a valuable
commercial asset.
Just as we have been forced by contact with the outside world to
cultivate not weakness but health, so by the same contact we have been
forced to cultivate not folly but intelligence. The silly angel may
be a success in the home; she is not a success in trade or business.
Man may desire to clasp her and kiss her and call her his own; but
there are moments when he tires of seeing her make hay of his accounts
and correspondence. His natural predilection for her type may, and
often does, induce him to give her the preference over her fellows in
business matters; but he usually ends by admitting that, for certain
purposes at least, the human being with brains is preferable to the
seraph without them. It has been borne in upon the modern woman that
it pays her to have brains—even although they must be handled very
cautiously for fear of wounding the susceptibilities of her master.
She learned that lesson not in her own sphere, but in the world
outside it; and it is a lesson that has already had far-reaching
consequences. Having, in the first instance, acquired a modicum of
intelligence because she had to, she is now acquiring it in larger
quantities because she likes it. The trades which do not require the
qualification of stupidity are counteracting the effect upon her of the
trade which did—the compulsory trade of marriage.