THE FUTURE OF WOMAN
THE old tradition of the family is intimately connected with the old
ideal of womanhood, and this in turn is summoned to the bar of modern
criticism. A substantial change in the position of woman seems so
revolutionary a disturbance, since it directly affects half the race
and must very seriously affect the home and the State, that our
Conservatives employ against the proposal the whole arsenal of
controversial rhetoric. We hear of the wisdom of the race--as if the
race did not grow wiser as it grows older--and the thin end of the
wedge. We are reminded that the ancient civilisations always came to
an end when their women rebelled against their natural position. We
have private appeals to our sensuous feelings and our instincts of
proprietorship, and open appeals to the ascetic doctrine of the
Pauline Epistles. We have history put before us, as usual, in chosen
fragments, and on the strength of these detached bits of learning we
hear impressive sermons on the "laws" of history and of nature.
The appeal to history, which men like Dr. Emil Reich have so gravely
abused, is in this case singularly unfortunate. In most cases the
candid student of history finds some ancient abuse or irrational
tradition making its way from one civilisation to another, and finds
it natural that our more critical and independent generation should at
length seek to dethrone it. But in the case of woman the Conservative
has not even "the wisdom of the race" to appeal to. Her position
in the past has varied greatly, but it is very far from true that she
had always occupied that state of subjection in which our Victorian
reformers found her. I have elsewhere (_Woman in Political Evolution_)
surveyed the full story of woman's development, and will here be
content with a summary view which makes the Feminist movement of our
time intelligible.
During the greater part of the history of civilisation, in the
Egyptian and Mesopotamian empires, woman had a considerable measure of
freedom and respect. When the Greeks and Romans entered the stage,
they brought with them a different tradition in regard to woman, but
as soon as they reached the height of their cultural development,
their women (and many of their men) rebelled against this tradition.
The civilisation of Greece was extinguished so speedily that the women
of Athens, aided by so eminent a thinker as Plato, had not time to win
their emancipation; but the Roman women did succeed in lifting
themselves from their position of subjection. In the meantime,
however, the political and religious development of Europe led to the
reappearance of the barbaric tradition in a new form. The Christian
leaders had in their sacred documents the social code of a rude
Semitic tribe, the Jews, which was sternly emphasised by St. Paul, and
they brooded darkly over the position of woman. Tertullian fiercely
reminded Christians that, but for woman, the race would never have
been damned. Ambrose ingeniously reflected that Eve was made out of a
mere rib, not out of the brain, of Adam. Augustine regarded woman as
an unpleasant institution created by Providence for the relief of
weak-willed males and for the maintenance of the race. Jerome frowned
heavily on the Roman woman's claim of emancipation. This quaint
mixture of Jewish contempt and ascetic dread was imposed on Europe by
the triumphant priesthood, educated mainly in the opinions of "the
Fathers," and woman sank again to a position of inferiority and
subjection.
Women writers of many countries have written this story of the
degradation of their sex in Christian Europe, and one can only admire
the splendid audacity with which Bishop Welldon assures women that
Jesus Christ (who never uttered a protest against the Jewish
conception or a warning against the coming abuse of it) was "the
first to respect them," or the Bishop of London describes
Christianity as "woman's best friend," or Bishop Diggle
represents the Christian as an advance on the Roman attitude. Our
clergy are distinguished for the facility with which they make
historical statements without giving us any serious evidence of a
command of history; they have the advantage of being able to assure
their followers that it is a "sin" to read more accurate and less
orthodox experts.
The historical truth is that the nineteenth century found woman in a
position far lower than that she had occupied at Rome seventeen
centuries before--far lower, indeed, than she had occupied during
(except for two brief periods) the many thousands of years of the
history of civilisation. It was quite inevitable that a movement for
her emancipation and uplifting should find a place among the great
reforms initiated in the last century. To conceive this movement as a
semi-hysterical rebellion against the settled usage of the race is
merely to betray a gross ignorance of history. Recent experience has
taught us that there is a great deal in the settled usage of the race
to rebel against; but it is false that in this case we are doing so.
The undisputed historical truth is that woman had been comparatively
free and respected during the greater part of the civilised period:
that, when the early civilisations of Greece and Rome had placed her
in subjection for a few centuries, she, at the beginning of the
Christian era, rebelled and won her emancipation: and that the later
period of subjection was merely due to the incorporation in the
Christian religion of the primitive and crude ideal of a polygamous
Arab tribe. Against this intolerable superstition modern civilisation
has rebelled, and we are in the midst of a far deeper discussion of
woman's nature and position than ever occurred before.
The discussion is passing through the three phases which are customary
in these controversies. At first the clergy and the Conservative
quoted the Bible and the Fathers. Then, when women began to show that
they were disposed to examine a little more closely the authority of
documents which taught so obvious an injustice, it was pleaded that in
this case the religious view coincided with "sound" science and
sociology. In that phase we are to-day, discussing claims that
"nature" and our social interest are on the side of the old ideal.
In a few more decades, when the battle is won, the Bishop of London of
the time will be demonstrating that the reform was anticipated by the
Fathers sixteen hundred years ago and was contained, in germ, in the
New Testament.
At present the controversy about woman's position turns largely on
the question of her "nature," and the literature of the subject is
prodigious. Woman has different organs and functions than those of
man, and it is natural to suppose that they will give her a different
character. Here is the opportunity of the male: he has a solid
scientific fact to build upon.
He sagely examines the intellectual life of woman and pronounces it
inferior to that of man: he measures her brain and finds it smaller
than that of man, and thus discovers the scientific basis of her
inferiority; and he never reflects that, since he, on the whole,
forbade her to develop her brain and intelligence during the fifteen
centuries of Christian domination, it may be that her brain is not
working with all the energy of which it is capable. He lays down for
this dependent creature a certain code of deportment and behaviour,
and, when it has enfeebled her, he discourses on her inferior muscular
development: if any girls or women defiantly exercise their muscles
and become strong, he calls them "unwomanly" and happily
exceptional. He observes that woman is more emotional than man; and,
of course, he does not ask physiologists whether this may be merely,
or mainly, the effect (as it is) of the muscular and intellectual
restrictions he has placed on her. He bids her develop pretty curves
on her body for his entertainment, and never thinks about the
physiological and psychological effect of the dead mass of fat and the
flabby muscles. He kindly undertakes (for a consideration) the care of
this weaker companion, and, when she begins to prove that she can fend
for herself, he severely censures her for intruding on his
labour-market. He learns from novelists that she has a peculiar power
of "intuition" (in fiction), and a greater fineness of perception
than man (which exact experiment in America has shown to be untrue),
and is altogether a deep and unfathomable being. And he then, in
virtue of his superior understanding of her "mysterious" nature,
proceeds to dictate to her about her sphere and her capacities.
The absurdities and contradictions of male writers on women, supported
by some women writers, during the last two hundred years, would fill a
volume. They were more or less intelligible, and certainly
entertaining, in the earlier part of the modern period, but at a time
when we have scientific and historical information to guide us they
are neither intelligent nor amusing. We now know that there is no such
thing as an unchangeable nature of a living organism. Structure and
function vary with use and environment, whatever theory of heredity
one follows. Forbid the brain and muscles to function for some
centuries, and they will become feebler: restore their activity and
they will return to strength. Shut a woman out of politics or business
or war, and she will lose her capacity for it: reintroduce her to it,
and her faculties are sharpened. When the kings of Dahomi formed a
regiment of women in their army, the women were found to be more
deadly fighters than the men, and they drank as heavily.
As far as the political phase of the modern Feminist struggle is
concerned, the application of these principles is clear enough. When
statesmen can find no better argument against the enfranchisement of
women than the fact that (like the politicians themselves) they do no
military service, and when scientific men plead only their periodical
perturbations and their "change of life," it is time to cease
arguing. Even in countries which have a system of conscription it has
never been proposed that those who are exempt from service should not
have a vote. In a country like England the objection is supremely
foolish: it reminds one of Plato's ironical argument, in this
connection, that men who are bald should not be allowed to make shoes.
As to the comparative disturbance of judgment which a certain
proportion of women suffer at certain periods, it is preposterous to
suppose that this does not unfit them for more important work, but
_does_ unfit them for casting a vote once in seven years. Is it
suggested that the Conservative matron will, if an election fall in
her period of nervous instability, march in a frenzy to the poll and
vote for Keir Hardie? Even the more or less intoxicated male voter
does not overrule a settled conviction so easily. But it is waste of
time to discuss such matters. A simple investigation of years of
experience in America and Australasia is more valuable than the
pedantic declarations of one or two scientific men. Even Conservative
Australians smiled when I asked them if the consequences of female
enfranchisement, as they are darkly foreboded by serious people in
England, had been observed in their Commonwealth.
The anti-suffrage campaign has been the death-blow of the prejudice
against the enfranchisement of women. It has shown the complete
futility of the Conservative position. Women would probably have the
vote in England to-day if a section of those who demand it had not
taken a false path. The end, however sacred, does not justify criminal
means; nor can any serious statesman yield to violence and
intimidation. Yet there is nothing in this temporary aberration to
strengthen the anti-Feminist position. It was an error of judgment and
a misreading of history. I am well acquainted with many of the ladies
who did these regrettable things, and I know that the suggestion of
"hysteria" is an insult. It is, however, useless to discuss this
question further. Women will be enfranchised in England within a few
years, and in all civilised nations within a quarter of a century.
Then will begin the campaign for the right to sit in Parliament, even
in the Ministry. From sheer force of prejudice the great majority of
the enfranchised women will resist this further claim, and the long
story of education and agitation will be repeated. This is the outcome
of our habit of persistently compromising with false traditions
instead of frankly discarding them. The immortal jokes about women
will be retailed in the House of Commons by our legislators; the same
dark warnings will come from scientific Cassandras who have felt
social influence; the same tragic whispers about "what every woman
knows" will be heard in drawing-rooms. Then, about the year 1930, we
will discover that woman is really capable of undertaking the not very
exacting duties of the average Member of Parliament,--if we have not
in the meantime abolished these aimless long debates on subjects which
all approach with a fixed conviction,--and that it may not be
impossible to find a woman with the capacity of Mr. Reginald M'Kenna
or Lord Gladstone or Mr. Walter Long. Our Mrs. Humphry Wards will be
the first to compete for the office.
I turn to the more serious question of the economic enfranchisement of
women. On this side of the Feminist movement our views are hardly less
hazy than in regard to politics. The middle-class, being the brain as
well as the backbone of England, is chiefly responsible for the maxim
that woman's place is the home; but the middle-class is also the
great employer of labour, and it has found that female labour is
cheaper than male, and has therefore concluded that woman's proper
place is the office or the workshop. More than a fourth of the girls
and women of England work outside the home. This material incentive to
right views is, however, limited in its action. When the middle-class
woman in turn seeks economic independence, she is received with
coldness, if not derision. Women may be clerks, teachers, actresses,
telegraphists, hosiery-makers, etc., but they ought not to aspire to
be doctors, lawyers, or stockbrokers. If they ask the reason, they
hear an inconsistent jumble of statements. In the first place, of
course, they are not clever enough; in the second place, however, they
are likely to be so far successful that they would lessen the
available employment of men.
Certainly in such a haphazard industrial world as ours the accession
of a fresh army of workers will cause, and is causing, confusion. On
the _laissez-faire_ principle this overcrowding of the market is good;
it gives a greater play to selection and promotes efficiency. But we
have, as I said, forced _laissez-faire_ to compromise with decency. We
prefer a little overcrowding, but not too much. The opening of the
doors of all the professions to woman means a worse overcrowding than
ever in the medical and legal worlds, and we naturally hesitate.
Naturally, but not justly or logically. Between logic and justice the
modern man pleads that he is distracted, and he asks time for
reconstruction; asks, in other words, that we should leave the trouble
to another generation. This shrinking from trouble is of no avail. We
have sanctioned the principle of female industry outside the
home--millions of women are so employed in England to-day--and we have
absolutely no ground to limit it except the natural disability of
woman or the social need for her to undertake other functions. Of her
natural disability little need be said here. We have had, in most
countries, decades of experience of the employment of women in many
industries--teaching, nursing, journalism, factory-work, art, theatre,
post-office, type-writing, shop-work, and so on. What proportion of
complaint to the number of workers is there that their periodical
functions make them unfit for employment? We do not need learned
experts on gynecology to tell us of the acute and exceptional cases
which have come under their observation. The scientific and practical
procedure is to make a general inquiry into the net result of our
employment of millions of girls and women. Most of us would await such
a report with confidence. As long as the wages of women are lower than
those of men, we hear very little complaint; nor do we find the work
of our schools or the play of our theatres very much interrupted by
peculiarly feminine weaknesses. Of late years women have shown that
they are equally qualified to be dentists, doctors, chartered
accountants, etc. Common-sense would persuade us, if we would find the
real limits of woman's capacity, to open to her all the doors of the
world of work and learn it by experience.
One must give more serious attention to the claim that this economic
enfranchisement of women will tend to lessen maternity, and will
therefore endanger our social interests. This question of the
birth-rate is, in fact, very important from many points of view, and
it is extremely advisable to have a clear and reasoned grasp of it.
Many people are at once alarmed if it is shown that a practice will
tend to lessen the birth-rate. They rarely examine with critical
attention the reasons which would be alleged by those who maintain
that a lowering of the birth-rate _is_ a social menace.
But one needs no lengthy reflection to discover that at the root of
all this clamour for maintaining or increasing the birth-rate we have
only military requirements. Some, indeed, urge that a nation needs as
many soldiers as possible for her industrial army as well as for her
military forces; but, seeing that each nation already has more than
she can employ, we are not impressed by this phrase. It is not volume
of production, or gross largeness of revenue, which makes a nation
great. It is the proportion of her revenue to her population, and in
that respect some of the smallest States are the most happily
situated. The need of a large army alone justifies complaints about a
falling birth-rate, and it is monstrous that we should lay this strain
on parents merely in order to produce "fodder for cannon." The
actual need of each country, as long as the military system lasts,
must, of course, be met, but--apart from the hope that we will soon
cast off the greater part of this military burden--two circumstances
show that we have not here a sound and permanent social need. The
birth-rate is falling in all civilised countries, and will eventually
reach a common low level; and the war has shown us that a nation with
a reduced population may, like any nation with a small population,
find compensation for its weakness in alliances.
The truth is that the premature advance of France in restricting its
birth-rate has led to a general fallacy. France exposed itself to a
particular danger in face of Germany, and this special weakness of
France was converted into the general statement that any nation which
reduces its birth-rate is in danger. Not only is the general statement
untrue, but the particular case of France is very carelessly
conceived. After 1871 the German Empire had such an advantage in
population over France, and (until 1895) so much less need of
maintaining a fleet, that even a full birth-rate would not have
equipped France confidently for a combat. In any case, we come back
always to military needs, and we may trust that these will not long
impose their terrible strain on civilisation. There is, apart from
them, no reason why the birth-rate should not sink in every country to
the level of the death-rate, and in many countries even lower.
On the other hand, the superficial folk who cry for heavy maternity
and full cradles overlook a very important social fact. I am thinking
chiefly of the men and women who denounce in principle the practice of
restricting births. Not only do they ignore the overcrowding of our
trades and professions,--and they are usually amongst the most
reluctant to organise them,--but they fail to notice that the
increasing application of science and humane sentiment to our modes of
living threatens the earth, as a whole, with enormous over-population,
unless the birth-rate be checked. The population of England has
increased nearly fourfold in the past hundred years, whereas it had
little more than doubled in the previous two hundred years. The
factors which are responsible for this vast modern increase are
becoming more active every decade, and are spreading over the world.
How will the population of Europe and Asia stand when they are fully
applied in Russia, China, and India? Within twenty years the United
States, according to its agricultural experts, will have as large a
population as it can support, and we have already seen Germany very
largely thrust into war because of its superabundant population. The
future is full of peril and misery if we continue to allow this
military demand for men to masquerade as a sound and permanent human
need. The birth-rate _must_ be checked.
We must therefore refuse to allow the path of reform to be obstructed
by either the priest or the drill-sergeant. If ever a time comes when
some real interest of the race is endangered by too low a birth-rate,
we may trust the race to see to it. Conservatives often imagine that
those who would reform life on common-sense lines are devoid of
sentiment. They confuse sentiment and sentimentality, which is
sentiment out of accord with reason. The man of the future will be, in
my judgment, not less, but more emotional than the man of to-day; but
he will not allow ancient prejudices and mere phrases to have the
unchecked support of his feelings. It will not be enough to tell him
that divorce is increasing, or the birth-rate falling, or respect for
the clergy deteriorating. He will ask the precise value in social
terms of your bogy. At present we have, on broad social grounds, much
to gain and nothing to lose by a fall of the birth-rate. Indeed, the
prospect of a fall is, as far as this economic development alone is
concerned, much exaggerated. Millions of employed women have, and will
continue to have, children. Under our present system of industry this
has undoubtedly certain risks and burdens; under the organised system
of employment for which I plead it will be possible to adjust
employment to maternal functions.
And this brings me to the cardinal issue of the whole controversy: the
economic position of the married woman or the mother. Let us face this
graver position quite candidly. The industrial disorganisation will
right itself in the course of time. The middle-class father of our
time whose daughter does a certain amount of work, not in order to
relieve his pocket, but in order to buy additional luxuries for
herself, has assuredly a grievance. She takes part of a man's work
and pay, yet leaves on him the old burden of maintenance. She makes
matters worse by accepting a low wage, because she is not
self-maintaining. I am assuming that women will become independent
economic units, and that the rate of payment will be--equal wage for
equal service.
But the position of the married woman, or of the independent woman who
undertakes maternal functions, forms a special and difficult problem,
which is pressing upon us more heavily every decade. There is
spreading rapidly through the civilised world a feeling of rebellion
against the economic dependence of wife or husband. No Conservative
argumentation, no censure of new ideas, no religious preaching of
self-sacrifice for a doubtful reward in heaven, will relieve us of
this difficulty. Educated women--statistics of college-taught women
are available--are increasingly rebelling against the subjection or
inferiority which this economic dependence seems to entail. It is the
chief motive of the general demand for economic independence (or an
independent place in the industrial world) and has much to do with the
revolt against marriage itself. Whether or no we adopt new ideals of
social life, this revolt will spread.
One very quickly sees that it is not so much marriage as the
traditional practice of husbands which is chiefly responsible for the
revolt. The practice varies considerably, but, apart from a small
class in which the wife brings with her or earns an independent
income, it is still generally true to say that the wife receives what
the husband chooses to give. Now it is plain that this difficulty may
be met in a very large proportion of cases by an equitable voluntary
agreement. Various domestic experiments of the kind are being tried,
and a comparison of experiences would be useful. Many people are
agreed in the just view that, since the wife works at home while the
husband works abroad, all income is joint income. A common fund,
accessible to both, is assigned for household and saving, and an equal
and fixed personal share is taken by each from the income or wage.
Such an arrangement is quite easily practised by middle-class people,
and it seems to me to remove every legitimate suspicion of ignominy
from the wife's position.
When unmarried women have secured economic independence they will be
able to demand some such arrangement before marrying. The kind of
"modesty" which would prevent a woman from having an understanding
before marriage in regard to income and children is a very costly and
foolish luxury. Let them insist that the ritual words, "With all my
worldly goods I thee endow," must mean something more than that they
shall have chocolates and pretty dresses _if_ they humour the moods of
a husband. Our law, which secures for a wife full maintenance when she
has ceased to do any work for it (after a separation), but has no
interest in her when she is working dutifully for twelve or fourteen
hours a day, is infinitely more dangerous to marriage than are the
puritan assaults of Mr. G. B. Shaw. In any case, a voluntary agreement
that a wife has access to the bank and cash-box, and a right to take
for personal use the same sum as her husband, removes all need of
asking money from a husband (which is justly odious to many women),
and makes a wife economically independent in any important sense of
the word.
But it would be futile to hope either that the majority of men will
thus surrender their privileged position, or that all women will
recognise even such an arrangement as economic independence. A grave
conflict undoubtedly lies before us, and there will be an increasing
demand for the State-endowment of wifehood, or at least of motherhood.
The suffrage movement has naturally inflamed the difficulty by
educating women in a sense of grievance. Indeed, it seems to many of
us that Feminist writers have at times gone far beyond legitimate
grievances and set up fictitious and mischievous standards. This is a
very common development of propagandist movements which meet with a
prolonged resistance. The first generation of agitators says the
obvious and just things in regard to the reform: the next generation
must revive the jaded sentiment with stimulating novelties and
exaggerations. It seems to me one of these morbid exaggerations to
speak of marriage as "legalised prostitution"; to imagine that one
is "selling one's body" to a man, or receiving payment for
ministering to his "lust." One Feminist writer of some influence,
and some pretension to knowledge of science, has actually compared the
human male very unfavourably with all other male animals in the world,
on the ground that the latter are content with a restricted period of
"rut"!
This mixture of ancient Puritanism and advanced sociology is as
incongruous as it is mischievous. A woman who sincerely regards
sex-pleasure in the way generally implied by the use of the word
"lust"--a woman who has not the same healthy desire of it as her
partner--has no right to marry: except, of course, to marry a man with
similarly antique views. A wife of such a kind may very well consider
that she is being "paid" to surrender her body. The normal wife is
not paid for that at all. She is paid--if there is any paying--to care
for the home and her children: which is as well earned a payment as
the fee of a lawyer. And from the sentimental point of view it does
not make a particle of difference whether she is paid out of her
husband's income or out of the coffers of the State. She would still
"sell her body," if there is any selling of body. But there is
not. Maternity and sex-pleasure are entirely different matters.
I am deliberately trying to undermine the plea for the endowment of
motherhood, because the proposal seems to me to present very grave
difficulties which even so penetrating a sociologist as Mr. H. G.
Wells has, apparently, not appreciated. Mr. Wells is, of course, in a
very different position from the Feminist writers who advocate the
complete endowment or maintenance of wives or mothers by the State.
Such a scheme would cost about £300,000,000 a year, and need not be
discussed. Mr. Wells suggests rather a modest contribution per child
born (leaving out, I assume, wealthier mothers); a practicable scheme,
with much in its favour. Yet it seems to me that such endowment would
mean that we would encourage the weakest in will, the most sensual,
the least intelligent and least provident of our people, to breed.
Intelligent women would not abandon the practice of restricting births
because the State offered them a few shillings per child. The better
class--whether of manual or professional workers--would have to pay
for the undesirable fertility of the worst class. We are just
beginning to realise that quality of children is more precious than
quantity, and the endowment of motherhood would not encourage this
saner view. The kind of brute who is at present restrained by the
paternity-law would be restrained no longer: the rougher type of
husband--a very numerous type--would pay so much less to his wife when
he found the State contributing (either in cash or kind) to her: the
man who at present practises restriction, not out of consideration for
his wife and family, but to have more shillings for himself, would
cease to practise it, and lay a greater burden on his wife.
But, while there seem to be such grave objections to the endowment of
motherhood that we do better to strengthen women in their individual
demand of justice, we must remember that the wife will have the
advantage of other changes in the home. Domestic service is becoming
more and more repugnant to girls, and some form of co-operative and
efficient housekeeping, with common servants and restaurant, will be
adopted. Some day a photograph of a twentieth-century suburb will
provoke a smile. Perhaps the museum of the future will set up models
of our establishments, just as we set up in our ethnographical
galleries models of a Kaffir or a Papuan household. Boys and girls
will gaze with admiring delight at the naïveté of the model: a
thousand brick boxes, separated by a thousand little gardens, with
three thousand little chimneys smoking, a thousand amateur cooks
perspiring over a thousand fires, and a thousand inefficient
servant-girls flirting with the servants of rival butchers and
dairymen. The common nursery will especially relieve the mother and
lower the death-rate. The State will one day have an interest in
seeing that each babe ushered into the world, at such pain and
sacrifice, becomes a useful citizen. If any mothers care to entrust
the child more fully to it, the State will find it profitable to
respond. These things can be arranged without more detriment to
parental affection than there is in the case of women--often women who
write beautiful things in defence of the old tradition--who have
nurses for the child and send it later to a distant school for the
greater part of the year.
Reforms of this kind will enormously relieve the home life and enable
even mothers to earn, if they wish, quite as much as the State would
ever be able to award them. The work will be better done, by trained
workers, at less cost. People do not reflect that this change has been
proceeding for centuries. Once the wife brewed the ale, and baked the
bread, and spun the linen: later she entrusted these things to experts
working for the community, and reserved for herself the making of
preserves, pickles, underclothing, and antimacassars: now these things
have gone to the expert, and the wife confines her amateur efforts to
scolding children and cooking refractory joints. She will be relieved
when it is all over, and we shall have no more of the "beautiful
doll" or the domestic drudge. The independent position and greater
leisure and broader interest in life will make her intellectual
activity more similar to that of man's.
I speak, of course, of the mass of women, and do not forget that
already the intellect of alert and thoughtful women is equal to that
of men of the corresponding class. The majority will be, as it were,
differently orientated toward life by these changes. A saner muscular
activity will restore the balance of the system, and will rid them of
the excessive nerve-energy, particularly of the sympathetic system,
which finds expression in facile and explosive emotion. There will
assuredly always be a bias toward sentiment in woman, and we have no
reason to fear a deterioration of the distinctively feminine
sentiments of tenderness, refinement, and sympathy. The relief from
the more irritating domesticities ought to accentuate them. On the
other hand, the idea of obeying the male or practising self-sacrifice
for his undue benefit, will certainly disappear; and it is quite time
that it did. Self-sacrifice, in case of need, comes instinctively to
either sex, but the kind of self-sacrifice which a selfish masculine
tradition has pressed on women is degrading to the man and unjust to
wife and daughter. All that is attractive and really beneficent in
woman will be fostered, but on the emotional side it will become less
and less characteristic of one sex. The sharp contrast of the sexes
tends to disappear. There is something grotesque about the traditional
idea that the human male must be distinguished by a greater capacity
for taking alcohol and using meaningless expletives and telling sexual
stories. Even in physical strength and athletic skill the sexes are
approaching; nor does one find any loss of charm or grace in some of
the finest women athletes.
These changes are proceeding, and, apart from inevitable errors and
excesses, on which caricaturists fasten with their genial
unscrupulousness, the result is promising. Contemporary expressions of
alarm are often ludicrous. Thousands of ladies who are horrified at
the emergence of "a new sex" are themselves contriving, by means
which would have caused their prolific grandmothers to raise white
hands to heaven, to limit their families to two children. We take our
reform in small doses, as if complete social health were a thing to be
considered very seriously. Yet if one patiently traces in imagination
the effect of all these changes on the womanhood of the race, one
foresees a generation of women which recalls Shelley's lines:
"And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind
As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be,
Yet, being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill-shame,
The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love."
Grant the poet his licence; women are not more likely than men to
become angels. The moral superiority which some Feminist writers claim
for their sex is founded on a curiously narrow view of life; if man,
instead of woman, had to pay the penalty of sexual intercourse, we
should probably find the aggression on the other side. Yet the most
sober-minded of us must expect from this healthier balance of powers,
this easing of the domestic burden, this limitation of care to a few
children, and this independence of marital generosity or marital
selfishness, a great advancement in the character and happiness of
woman.
Shelley, however, was thinking less of wives than of free women, and
economic independence will swell their numbers. The changes I have
described will make marriage far less onerous, but they will also make
it easier for a woman to dispense with marriage, and before the end of
the twentieth century there will be in every city a growth of
temporary unions and independent conduct. Woman will be mistress,
morally and economically, of her own destiny; she will consult neither
husband nor priest. The plain moral law, which forbids a man to
inflict pain or injustice, will be more faithfully observed than it
ever was before. There will be an immense reduction of the hypocrisy,
the prostitution, the misery and illness, which this fictitious law of
chastity has always caused; and the alteration of public opinion will
remove from a woman the unpleasant consequences which unwedded love
entails at the present time. It is preposterous to say that the State
will be injured by these changes, and it seems clear that woman will
be happier, more healthily developed, and not less tender and graceful
than she can be under the present reign of shams.