IF what I have written has any truth in it, I have shown that we have
good grounds for believing that the degradation of woman’s position and
the inferiority of woman’s capacities are chiefly due to the compulsory
restriction of her energies and ambitions to the uncertain livelihood
and ill-paid trade of marriage. I have shown that the trade is ill
paid simply because it is largely compulsory; that, in accordance with
economic law, the wife and mother will be held cheap for just so long
as she is a drug in the market. I have shown how the unsatisfactory
position of the wife and mother, the unsatisfactory training to which
she has been subjected from her childhood up, affects the earning and
productive powers of woman in those other occupations which the change
in social and industrial conditions has forced her to adopt; and I
have shown how the new influences engendered by her new surroundings
are gradually and inevitably counteracting the peculiar habit of
mind acquired in the narrow precincts of the home. It remains to be
considered how far these influences are reaching and affecting the life
of the home itself—how far they are likely to improve the position not
only of the woman who earns her own wage and directs her own life, but
of the woman who has no means of augmenting the low remuneration which
is at present considered sufficient for the duties of a wife and mother.
I suppose that in the recent history of woman nothing is more striking
than the enormous improvement that has taken place in the social
position of the spinster. In many ranks of life the lack of a husband
is no longer a reproach; and some of us are even proud of the fact
that we have fought our way in the world without aid from any man’s
arm. At any rate, we no longer feel it necessary to apologize for our
existence; and when we are assured that we have lost the best that
life has to offer us, we are not unduly cast down. (I am speaking,
of course, of the independent woman with an interest in life and
in herself; not of the poor, mateless product of tradition that
we exist only to awaken desire in man. There are still many such,
no doubt—the victims of a servile training. On whom may God have
mercy—man having no use for them and they none for themselves!) By
sheer force of self-assertion we have lifted ourselves from the dust
where we once crawled as worms and not women; we no longer wither on
the virgin thorn—we flourish on it; and ungarnished though we be with
olive-boughs, we are not ashamed when we meet with our enemies in the
gate.
So far as I can see, nothing like the same improvement has taken place
in recent years in the position of the average married woman. So far
as I can see, the average husband, actual or to be, still entertains
the conviction that the word helpmeet, being interpreted, means second
fiddle; and acts in accordance with that honest conviction. He still
feels that it is the duty of his wife to respect him on the ground
that he did not happen to be born a woman; he still considers it
desirable that the mother of his children should not be over wise. He
still clings to the idea that a wife is a creature to be patronized;
with kindness, of course—patted on the head, not thumped—but still
patronized. While he is yet unmated his dream of the coming affinity
still takes the shape of some one smaller than himself who asks him
questions while he strokes her hair. On the whole, therefore, he
tends to avoid marriage with those women who are not fit subjects for
patronage—who, be it noted, also tend to avoid marriage with him; and
thus, in the natural order of things, the average wife is the person
who is willing to submit to be patronized. I do not mean that there are
not many exceptions to this rule, but they are exceptions. And it is
obvious that human beings, men, or women, who consider themselves fit
subjects for patronage are not those who make for progress or possess
any very great power of improving their own status.
Myself I have not the least doubt that such improvement as has already
been affected in the status of the wife and mother has originated
outside herself, and is, to a great extent, the work of the formerly
contemned spinster. I do not mean that the spinster has always laboured
to that end intentionally; I mean, rather, that as she improves her
own position, as she takes advantage of its greater freedom, its less
restricted opportunities, its possibilities of pleasing herself and
directing her own life, she inevitably, by awaking her envy, drags
after her the married woman who once despised her and whose eyes she
has opened to the disadvantages of her own dependent situation. It is
the independent woman with an income, earned or unearned, at her own
disposal, with the right to turn her energies into whatever channel
may seem good to her, who is steadily destroying the prestige of
marriage; and the prestige of marriage has hitherto been an important
factor in the eagerness of women for matrimony. Once it has gone,
once it makes absolutely no difference to the esteem in which a woman
is held, whether she is called Mrs. or whether she is called Miss, a
new inducement will have to be found, at any rate for the woman who
is not obliged to look upon marriage as a means of providing her with
bread and butter. Such women will require some additional advantage
to replace the social prestige to which they no longer attach any
value—that is to say, as a condition of becoming wives and mothers,
they will require their status to be raised; and their action in
raising their own status will tend to raise the status of married women
in general.
Not very long ago, in one of the columns which a daily paper was
devoting to animated correspondence dealing with the rights and wrongs
of an agitation carried on by women, I came across a brief contribution
to the discussion which furnished me with considerable food for
thought. It was a letter written by a palpably infuriated gentleman,
who denounced the agitation in question as the outcome of the unmarried
woman’s jealousy of the privileges of her married sister. This very
masculine view of the controversy had never struck me before; and,
being a new idea to me, I sat down to consider whether it was in any
way justified by facts.
The first step, naturally, was to ascertain what were the special
privileges which were supposed to arouse in those deprived of them a
sense of maddened envy. On this point I did not rely solely on my own
conclusions; I consulted, at various times, interested friends, married
and unmarried; with the result that I have ascertained the privileges
of the married woman to be, at the outside, three in number. (About two
of them there is no doubt; the third is already being invaded, and can
no longer be esteemed the exclusive property of the matron.) They are
as follows—
1. The right to wear on the third finger of the left hand a gold ring
of approved but somewhat monotonous pattern.
2. The right to walk in to dinner in advance of women unfurnished with
a gold ring of the approved, monotonous pattern.
3. The right of the wife and mother to peruse openly and in the
drawing-room certain forms of literature—such as French novels of an
erotic type—which the ordinary unmarried woman is supposed to read
only in the seclusion of her bedroom.
I cannot honestly say that any one of these blessings arouses in me a
spasm of uncontrollable envy, a mad desire to share in it at any cost.
As a matter of fact, I have—like many of my unmarried friends—annexed
one of the above matrimonial privileges, if not in deed, at any rate
potentially and in thought. I have never yet felt the desire to study
French novels of an erotic type; but if I ever do feel it, I shall have
no hesitation whatever in perusing them in public—even on the top of a
’bus.
One does not imagine that the mere wearing of a plain gold ring
would in itself awaken perfervid enthusiasm in any woman of ordinary
intelligence; nor does one imagine that any woman of ordinary
intelligence would be greatly elated or abashed by entering a
dining-room first or seventh—provided, of course, that the table
was furnished with enough food to go round. One feels that these
temptations are hardly glittering enough to entice reluctant woman into
marriage. That there has been a social pressure which has impelled her
into it I have not denied! on the contrary, I have affirmed it. But
that social pressure has not taken the form of a passionate desire for
one or two small and formal distinctions, but of a fear of spinsterhood
with its accompaniments, scorn and confession of failure in your trade.
And as spinsterhood grows more enviable, so does the fear of it grow
less.
It may be objected that in my brief list of the matron’s privileges
I have omitted the most important of them all—motherhood. I have
done so deliberately and for two reasons—because under any system of
more or less compulsory marriage there must always be an appreciable
number of wives who look upon motherhood rather as a burden than as a
privilege; and because motherhood does not appertain exclusively to the
married state. There is such a thing as an illegitimate birth-rate.
I myself am far from desiring that the wife and mother should not
possess privileges; it seems to me that the work of a woman who brings
up children decently, creditably, and honourably is of such immense
importance that it ought to be suitably rewarded. (That, of course,
is a very different thing from admitting that a person who has gone
through a ceremony which entitles her to hold sexual intercourse with
another person is thereby entitled to consider herself my superior.)
But I am very certain that it never will be suitably rewarded until
it is undertaken freely and without pressure, and until the wife and
mother herself summons up courage to insist on adequate payment for
her services. It may not be necessary that that payment should be
made in actual money; but, in whatever form it is made, it must be of
a more satisfactory and substantial nature than the present so-called
privileges of the married woman, involving an all-round improvement
in her status. And that all-round improvement she will demand—and
get—only when it is borne in upon her that her unmarried sisters have
placed themselves in a position to get out of life a great deal more
than she is permitted to get out of it. When she realizes that fact to
the full she will go on strike—and good luck to her!
Meanwhile, it seems to me that there is something more than a little
pathetic in the small airs of superiority which are still affected
by the average unintelligent matron towards her husbandless sister.
Personally I always feel tender towards these little manifestations of
the right to look down on the “incomplete,” the unconsciously servile
imitation of the masculine attitude in this respect. You watch the
dull lives that so many of these married women lead, you realize the
artificial limitations placed upon their powers, you pity them for the
sapping of individuality which is the inevitable result of repression
of their own and unquestioning acceptance of other people’s opinions,
for the cramping of their interests, perhaps for the necessity of
cultivating the animal side of their natures—and you do not grudge
them such small compensations as comes their way. It will be better
for them and for their children when they realize in what this fancied
superiority of the married woman consists; but meanwhile let them enjoy
it.
Only a little while past I met a perfect example of this tendency
on the part of a married woman to plume herself on marriage as
a virtue—or rather, I met her again. She had been my friend
once—several years ago—and I had liked her for her intelligence, her
humour, her individual outlook on life. We knew each other well for
some months; then we were separated, and she wrote to me that she was
getting married; and with her marriage she gave up professional work
and passed out of my life. I heard little and saw nothing of her for
years, until she wrote that she was staying near me and would like us
to meet again. I went, and she told me what her life had been since
she married. It was a story that I can only call foul—of insult,
brutality, and degradation. What sickened me about it was the part
that remained unspoken—the thought that the woman I once knew, clean,
high-minded, and self-respecting, should have consented to stand for
so long in the relation of wife to such a man as she described. One
could see what contact with him had done for her; it had dragged her
down morally and spiritually; the pitch had defiled her. She had,
I knew, a small income of her own—sufficient to live upon without
having recourse to her husband—so I urged her bluntly to leave him.
She refused, crying feebly; made the usual rejoinder of weak-minded
married women run into a corner—that I was not married myself and
could not understand; and spent another hour bewailing her lot with
tears. I saw that her courage and character had been sapped out of her,
that it was no use appealing to what she no longer possessed, and that
all she asked was sympathy of the type that listens with an occasional
pat on the shoulder or soothing stroke on the arm; so I gave of it, in
silence, as well as I could. At the end of a good hour she dried her
tears, and declared that she was selfish to talk about nothing but
herself, that she must hear my news and what I had been doing. I did
not like to refuse, for I thought it better to turn her thoughts away
from her troubles, if only for a little; besides, she had liked me
genuinely once, and I think her interest in me was still genuine. But
as I complied and talked to her about myself, I felt miserably ashamed.
For, as it happened, I was very happy then—happier, in some ways,
than I had ever been in my life, since, almost for the first time in
my life, I had learned the meaning of good luck. I thought of all the
kindness, the friendliness, the consideration that was being shown to
me—I thought of my work and my pleasure in it—of my interest in work
done with others and the sense of comradeship it brings. And I thought
how the poor soul who had wept her handkerchief into a rag must realize
the contrast of our two lives, must feel how unjust it was that one
woman should have so little and another have so much. So, as I say, I
felt ashamed, and talked on, conscious of mental discomfort, until I
saw her looking at me thoughtfully, as if she were about to speak. I
stopped to hear what she had to say; and it was this—
“I suppose you will never marry now?”
For a moment I did not see the real purport of the question, and I dare
say I looked astonished as I answered that it was most unlikely, and I
had no thought of it. She surveyed me steadily, to make sure that I was
speaking the truth; then, having apparently convinced herself that I
was, she sighed.
“It is a pity. Every woman ought to get married. Your life isn’t
complete without it. It is an experience....”
Those, as far as I remember, were the exact words she used. (There
is no danger that she will ever read them.) They left me dumb; their
unconscious irony was so pathetic and so dreadful. Marriage an
experience—it had been one for her! And “your life isn’t complete
without it.” This from a woman whose husband had threatened to knock
pieces out of her with a poker! The situation seemed to me beyond
tears and beyond laughter—the poor, insulted, bullied thing, finding
her one source of pride in the fact that she had experienced sexual
intercourse. If there had been a child I could have understood; but
there had, I think, never been a child—at any rate, there was not one
living. If there had been, I believe I should have said to her what
was in my mind—for the child’s sake; I should have hated to think of
it growing up in that atmosphere, in its mother’s squalid faith in
the essential glory of animalism. But as there was no child, and as
she was so dulled, so broken, I said nothing. It was all she had—the
consciousness that she, from her vantage-ground of completeness and
experience, had the right to look down on me—on one of the unmarried,
a woman who “could not understand.” It was her one ewe-lamb of petty
consolation; and I had not the heart to try and take it from her.