WOMAN

A correspondent has written me an able and interesting letter in the

matter of some allusions of mine to the subject of communal kitchens.

He defends communal kitchens very lucidly from the standpoint of the

calculating collectivist; but, like many of his school, he cannot

apparently grasp that there is another test of the whole matter, with

which such calculation has nothing at all to do. He knows it would be

cheaper if a number of us ate at the same time, so as to use the same

table. So it would. It would also be cheaper if a number of us slept at

different times, so as to use the same pair of trousers. But the

question is not how cheap are we buying a thing, but what are we

buying? It is cheap to own a slave. And it is cheaper still to be a

slave.

My correspondent also says that the habit of dining out in restaurants,

etc., is growing. So, I believe, is the habit of committing suicide. I

do not desire to connect the two facts together. It seems fairly clear

that a man could not dine at a restaurant because he had just committed

suicide; and it would be extreme, perhaps, to suggest that he commits

suicide because he has just dined at a restaurant. But the two cases,

when put side by side, are enough to indicate the falsity and

poltroonery of this eternal modern argument from what is in fashion.

The question for brave men is not whether a certain thing is

increasing; the question is whether we are increasing it. I dine very

often in restaurants because the nature of my trade makes it

convenient: but if I thought that by dining in restaurants I was

working for the creation of communal meals, I would never enter a

restaurant again; I would carry bread and cheese in my pocket or eat

chocolate out of automatic machines. For the personal element in some

things is sacred. I heard Mr. Will Crooks put it perfectly the other

day: “The most sacred thing is to be able to shut your own door.”

My correspondent says, “Would not our women be spared the drudgery of

cooking and all its attendant worries, leaving them free for higher

culture?” The first thing that occurs to me to say about this is very

simple, and is, I imagine, a part of all our experience. If my

correspondent can find any way of preventing women from worrying, he

will indeed be a remarkable man. I think the matter is a much deeper

one. First of all, my correspondent overlooks a distinction which is

elementary in our human nature. Theoretically, I suppose, every one

would like to be freed from worries. But nobody in the world would

always like to be freed from worrying occupations. I should very much

like (as far as my feelings at the moment go) to be free from the

consuming nuisance of writing this article. But it does not follow that

I should like to be free from the consuming nuisance of being a

journalist. Because we are worried about a thing, it does not follow

that we are not interested in it. The truth is the other way. If we are

not interested, why on earth should we be worried? Women are worried

about housekeeping, but those that are most interested are the most

worried. Women are still more worried about their husbands and their

children. And I suppose if we strangled the children and poleaxed the

husbands it would leave women free for higher culture. That is, it

would leave them free to begin to worry about that. For women would

worry about higher culture as much as they worry about everything else.

I believe this way of talking about women and their higher culture is

almost entirely a growth of the classes which (unlike the journalistic

class to which I belong) have always a reasonable amount of money. One

odd thing I specially notice. Those who write like this seem entirely

to forget the existence of the working and wage-earning classes. They

say eternally, like my correspondent, that the ordinary woman is always

a drudge. And what, in the name of the Nine Gods, is the ordinary man?

These people seem to think that the ordinary man is a Cabinet Minister.

They are always talking about man going forth to wield power, to carve

his own way, to stamp his individuality on the world, to command and to

be obeyed. This may be true of a certain class. Dukes, perhaps, are not

drudges; but, then, neither are Duchesses. The Ladies and Gentlemen of

the Smart Set are quite free for the higher culture, which consists

chiefly of motoring and Bridge. But the ordinary man who typifies and

constitutes the millions that make up our civilisation is no more free

for the higher culture than his wife is.

Indeed, he is not so free. Of the two sexes the woman is in the more

powerful position. For the average woman is at the head of something

with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders

and do nothing else. He has to put one dull brick on another dull

brick, and do nothing else; he has to add one dull figure to another

dull figure, and do nothing else. The woman’s world is a small one,

perhaps, but she can alter it. The woman can tell the tradesman with

whom she deals some realistic things about himself. The clerk who does

this to the manager generally gets the sack, or shall we say (to avoid

the vulgarism), finds himself free for higher culture. Above all, as I

said in my previous article, the woman does work which is in some small

degree creative and individual. She can put the flowers or the

furniture in fancy arrangements of her own. I fear the bricklayer

cannot put the bricks in fancy arrangements of his own, without

disaster to himself and others. If the woman is only putting a patch

into a carpet, she can choose the thing with regard to colour. I fear

it would not do for the office boy dispatching a parcel to choose his

stamps with a view to colour; to prefer the tender mauve of the

sixpenny to the crude scarlet of the penny stamp. A woman cooking may

not always cook artistically; still she can cook artistically. She can

introduce a personal and imperceptible alteration into the composition

of a soup. The clerk is not encouraged to introduce a personal and

imperceptible alteration into the figures in a ledger.

The trouble is that the real question I raised is not discussed. It is

argued as a problem in pennies, not as a problem in people. It is not

the proposals of these reformers that I feel to be false so much as

their temper and their arguments. I am not nearly so certain that

communal kitchens are wrong as I am that the defenders of communal

kitchens are wrong. Of course, for one thing, there is a vast

difference between the communal kitchens of which I spoke and the

communal meal (_monstrum horrendum, informe_) which the darker and

wilder mind of my correspondent diabolically calls up. But in both the

trouble is that their defenders will not defend them humanly as human

institutions. They will not interest themselves in the staring

psychological fact that there are some things that a man or a woman, as

the case may be, wishes to do for himself or herself. He or she must do

it inventively, creatively, artistically, individually—in a word,

badly. Choosing your wife (say) is one of these things. Is choosing

your husband’s dinner one of these things? That is the whole question:

it is never asked.

And then the higher culture. I know that culture. I would not set any

man free for it if I could help it. The effect of it on the rich men

who are free for it is so horrible that it is worse than any of the

other amusements of the millionaire—worse than gambling, worse even

than philanthropy. It means thinking the smallest poet in Belgium

greater than the greatest poet of England. It means losing every

democratic sympathy. It means being unable to talk to a navvy about

sport, or about beer, or about the Bible, or about the Derby, or about

patriotism, or about anything whatever that he, the navvy, wants to

talk about. It means taking literature seriously, a very amateurish

thing to do. It means pardoning indecency only when it is gloomy

indecency. Its disciples will call a spade a spade; but only when it is

a grave-digger’s spade. The higher culture is sad, cheap, impudent,

unkind, without honesty and without ease. In short, it is “high.” That

abominable word (also applied to game) admirably describes it.

No; if you were setting women free for something else, I might be more

melted. If you can assure me, privately and gravely, that you are

setting women free to dance on the mountains like mænads, or to worship

some monstrous goddess, I will make a note of your request. If you are

quite sure that the ladies in Brixton, the moment they give up cooking,

will beat great gongs and blow horns to Mumbo-Jumbo, then I will agree

that the occupation is at least human and is more or less entertaining.

Women have been set free to be Bacchantes; they have been set free to

be Virgin Martyrs; they have been set free to be Witches. Do not ask

them now to sink so low as the higher culture.

I have my own little notions of the possible emancipation of women; but

I suppose I should not be taken very seriously if I propounded them. I

should favour anything that would increase the present enormous

authority of women and their creative action in their own homes. The

average woman, as I have said, is a despot; the average man is a serf.

I am for any scheme that any one can suggest that will make the average

woman more of a despot. So far from wishing her to get her cooked meals

from outside, I should like her to cook more wildly and at her own will

than she does. So far from getting always the same meals from the same

place, let her invent, if she likes, a new dish every day of her life.

Let woman be more of a maker, not less. We are right to talk about

“Woman;” only blackguards talk about women. Yet all men talk about men,

and that is the whole difference. Men represent the deliberative and

democratic element in life. Woman represents the despotic.