The first condition that is required from women is that they shall
know themselves. A woman who is ignorant of her own weaknesses cannot
help others, for she is incapable of correcting distortions caused
by her own fear or anger. The conventional woman hangs conventional
ideas between herself and her own nature, thus negating her deepest
instincts. She despises and represses part of her own humanity;
consequently she has a repressive instead of a fostering effect on
other people. Women must therefore be frankly sincere with themselves
if they are to be creative, and must make allowances for their own
faults in dealing with others. One can only mete out to others the
measure one has already meted to oneself.
But though the instrument is imperfect the possibilities are great.
The second condition for the exercise of creative love is a boundless
faith in the capacity of the human soul for growth. This is where
women cannot let the doctrine of original sin stand between them and
the individuals with whom they have to deal. The gospel for women
is contained in the words, “the kingdom of Heaven is within you,”
qualified by the knowledge that Heaven is not a static condition of
bliss but a vital harmony of body and spirit. Such a belief demands the
fullest scientific knowledge of what promotes or hinders health of body
and of mind; and it is the business of the creative woman to get all
the information she can.
Religion and morality for women thus resolve themselves into a belief
that human life is significant, serving a destiny greater than itself,
and the interpretation of that belief into terms of conduct. Because
each individual is a unique problem the details of this conduct can
never be codified; therefore the morality of women is ultimately
spontaneous and individual, depending for guidance upon their creative
energies, expressed through love.
The whole world needs creative women, and seems to be unaware of its
need. Women themselves do not know how necessary they are. The result
is that many waste themselves in trying to be men, and many are content
to justify their existence by simple drudgery. There still remain many
who feel that a woman should be more to her husband than the keeper of
his house, and some of these reserve themselves for men with obvious
disabilities, because they think that the average man has no real need
of them. But, although the desire is unformulated, nearly all women
desire to have a creative influence on their husbands. If it were not
so, the “best-sellers” which circulate among women would not resemble
each other so strikingly in one respect: the hero is always at odds
with the world and is rescued from a gloomy fate by the great love of
the heroine. If he is a reputed villain so much the better; the field
of action for the heroine is all the clearer. Only a courageous woman
looking for really difficult work would marry an ordinary man instead
of a villain with a heart of gold.
Women’s creative work is implicitly recognised in many beliefs and
customs. The difference between the morality of men and women, for
example, is finely illustrated among the Syrian Arabs, where a
prisoner on his way to execution is absolved from his sentence if he
can lay hold of a woman’s skirts. It is felt, though not understood,
by those men of our own country who complain that women have no sense
of justice. It is exploited by commercial firms who establish women
welfare workers to humanise their business systems, within limits. And
the tradition that woman’s place is the home is possibly not entirely
determined by the subordinate position of women, but may arise from
a sound intuition about the nature of women and their functions. The
home is a strategic centre for the creation of human beings. Moreover,
a home does not imply a husband: marriage is a desirable but not a
necessary condition for women’s creative work. Nor is it bounded by the
four walls of a house; whatever affects the people within the home is a
woman’s proper business.