for adults. She has summarized the results of recent studies in
sex differences in mental variability and in tastes, perceptions,
interests, etc. Her conclusions on this score are interesting: “(1) The
greater variability of males in anatomical traits is not established,
but is debated by authorities of perhaps equal competence. (2) But even
if it were established, it would only suggest, not prove, that men are
more variable in mental traits also. The empirical data at present
available on this point are inadequate and contradictory, and if they
point either way, actually indicate greater female variability....”
(“Variability as Related to Sex Differences in Achievement,” _American
Journal of Sociology_, Vol. XIX, pp. 510-530, Jan., 1914.)
It seems hardly safe scientifically, therefore, to restrict women to
the average levels in education and work and profession on the ground
that eminence is beyond their range. But if the female geniuses have
not been cut off by a comparatively narrowed range of mental ability,
where are they? Certainly history does not reveal them in anything like
satisfactory number. And it is now that women may bring forward their
third weapon of attack. The female geniuses may have been missing not
because of an inherent lack in the make-up of the sex, but because of
the oppressive, restrictive cultural conditions under which women have
been forced to live.
The important rôle played by cultural conditions in the cultural
achievement of various nations and races has been noted with increasing
emphasis by the newer schools of sociology and anthropology. No scholar
can now defend unchallenged a thesis of “lower or higher races” by
urging the achievements of any race as an index of its range of mental
ability. Culture grows by its own laws and the high position of the
white race may be as much a product of favorable circumstances as
of exceptional innate capacities. Similarly the expression taken by
the genius of various nations appears to vary strikingly. This is
especially impressive in the realm of music. The Anglo-Saxon peoples
are singularly lacking in great musical composers. Neither Britain nor
America, nor indeed any of the northern countries have contributed
one composer worthy of mention beside the Beethovens and Wagners and
Chopins of this art. Indeed the great names in music are generally of
German, Latin or Slavic origin. Yet no one thinks of urging this fact
as evidence of an Anglo-Saxon failure of major creativeness. Instead
we point to achievements in other fields or at most attempt to explain
this peculiar lack by some external causation. Similarly all our
impatience with the un-artistic approaches of the American people does
not lead us to frame a theory of their lack of genius. There are many
cultural factors to be considered first.
But as soon as we approach the problem of female genius, too many of us
are apt to bring forward an entirely different kind of interpretation.
We pass over the undoubted female geniuses lightly--granting Sappho and
Bonheur and Brunn and Eliot and Brontë and Amster and Madame Curie and
Caroline Herschel and perhaps even Chaminade and Clara Schumann and
several others. We admit the undoubtedly significant parts women are
playing in modern literature. But the question always remains.
Yet in no national or racial group have cultural influences exercised
so restrictive an influence as among the entire female sex. Not only
has the larger world been closed to them, not only has popular opinion
assumed that “no woman has it in her,” but the bearing and rearing
of children has carried with it in the past the inescapable drudgery
of housework. And this is “a field,” as Dr. Hollingworth points out,
“where eminence is not possible.”
It was Prudhon who sneered in response to a similar argument that
“women could not even invent their distaff.” But we now know enough
about the laws of invention to realize how unfair such sneering
is. Professor Franz Boas and his school have long demonstrated
that cultural achievement and mental ability are not necessarily
correlated. For material culture, once it begins, tends to grow by
accumulation and diffusion. Each generation adds to the existing stock
of knowledge, and as the stock grows the harvests necessarily become
greater. Modern man need have no greater mental ability than the
men of the ice ages to explain why his improvements upon the myriad
machines and tools that are his yield so much larger a harvest than
the Paleolithic hunters’ improvements upon their few flint weapons
and industrial processes. For, as Professor Ogburn has well shown (in
“Social Change,” Part III) all invention contains two elements--a
growing cultural base and inventive genius to work with the materials
it furnishes. The number of new inventions necessarily grows with the
cultural base. Even 50 times 100 make only 5000, but 2 times 1,000,000
make 2,000,000. Countless generations have added their share to the
total material culture which is ours and which we shall hand down still
more enriched to posterity.
It must be at once obvious that there has been no such cultural
growth in housework. Housework has long remained an individualized,
non-cumulative industry, where daughter learns from mother the old
ways of doing things. The small improvements and ingenuities which
most housewives devise seldom find their way into the whole stream of
culture. Thus it is that the recent great inventions which are slowly
revolutionizing this last stronghold of petty individualism have come
from the man-made world. Workers in electricity could more easily
devise the vacuum cleaner than the solitary housewife; the electric
washer, parquet floors, the tin can, quantity production of stockings,
wool, clothing, bread, butter, and all the other instruments that have
really made possible women’s emancipation have naturally come not from
women’s minds (any more than from men’s) but from the growth of culture
and the minds that utilize that growth for further expansion.
Consequently, as women participate in the work of the world and win
the right to acquire the results of past achievement in science and
technique and art, we may expect their contributions to the social
advance to appear in ever greater numbers. Until we give them this
full chance to contribute, we have no right to explain the paucity of
their gifts to society by inherent lacks. And it seems reasonable to
expect that such a chance will render the old quest for female geniuses
properly old-fashioned. For they will be there, these women--the able
and talented and geniuses--working side by side with men, not as “very
great men” nor as necessarily “depraved” nor in any way unusual. They
will be there as human beings and as women.
Man and Woman as Creators
By Alexander Goldenweiser
Alexander Goldenweiser,
_psychologist and anthropologist, is a lecturer at the New School for
Social Research in New York_.
MAN AND WOMAN AS CREATORS
BY ALEXANDER GOLDENWEISER
“A hen is no bird, a woman--no human,” says a Russian proverb. In this
drastic formulation stands written the history of centuries. Woman’s
claim to “human”ness was at times accepted with reservations, at other
times it was boldly challenged and even to-day when woman’s legal,
social, economic and political disabilities have been largely removed,
woman’s acceptance in society as man’s equal remains dependent on a
definition of the “equal.”
As in the case of the mental capacity of races, the question of woman’s
intellectual status was never judged on its merits. Rather, it was
accepted as a practical social postulate, then rationalized into the
likeness of an inductive conclusion. The problem seems so replete with
temptations for special pleading that a thoroughly impartial attitude
becomes well-nigh impossible. However, let us attempt it!
Is woman psychologically identical with man? or, if there is a
difference, is it one of superiority and inferiority? And of what
practical significance is this issue to society?
Two ways of approach are open: subject men and women to psychological
tests, or observe performance in life and, exercising due critical
care, infer capacity.
Both methods have been tried. The first enjoys to-day a certain vogue:
it is the method of science, of experimental psychology. Unfortunately,
the findings of science in this field have to date resulted in
precisely nothing. It was feasible to assume that woman was man’s
equal in elementary sensory capacity, in memory, types and varieties
of associations, attention, sensitiveness to pain, heat and cold, etc.
Experimental psychology has confirmed these assumptions. But what of
it? What can we make of it? Precisely nothing. What we are interested
in is whether woman can think “as logically” as man, whether she is
more intuitive, more emotional, less imaginative, more practical, less
honest, more sensitive, a better judge of human nature. These, among
many other interesting issues cannot even be broached by experimental
psychology “within the present state of our knowledge.”
Remains the second method, to observe performance and infer capacity.
To examine in this fashion all the issues involved would require a
small library. I select only one, creativeness. Is woman man’s equal
in creativeness? The choice is justified by the highly controversial
character of the issue as well as its practical bearings.
Two periods in the history of civilization lend themselves admirably
for our purpose, the primitive and the modern.
The primitive world was not innocent of discrimination against woman.
In social and political leadership, in the ownership and disposition of
property, in religion and ceremonialism, woman was subjected to more
or less drastic restrictions. It would, therefore, be obviously unfair
to expect her creativeness in these fields to have equaled or even
approximated that of man. Not so in industry and art, where division of
labor prevailed, but no sex disability. As one surveys the technical
and artistic pursuits of primitive tribes, woman’s participation is
everywhere in evidence. The baskets of California, the painted pots of
the Pueblos, the beaded embroideries of the Plains, the famous Chilkat
blankets, the tapa cloth of Polynesia, all of these were woman’s
handiwork. Almost everywhere she plans and cuts and sews and decorates
the garments worn by women as well as men. Also, in all primitive
communities she gathers the wild products of vegetation and transforms
them into palatable foods. More than this, in societies that know not
the plow woman is, with few exceptions, the agriculturist. It follows
that the observations, skills, techniques and inventions involved in
these pursuits must also be credited to woman.
It will be conceded that in primitive society woman’s record is
impressive: wherever she is permitted to apply her creativeness she
makes good, and the excellence of her achievement is equal to that of
man, certainly not conspicuously inferior to his.
In evaluating these findings, however, it is important to take
cognizance of the submergence of individual initiative by the tribal
pattern, a feature characteristic of primitive life. This applies
to men and women, to artisans and artists. Imaginative flights being
cut short by traditional norms, the individualism and subjectivism of
modern art are here conspicuous by their absence.
How does this record compare with a survey of the modern period?
Here again woman’s disabilities in the social, political and religious
realms were so marked that creative participation was impossible.
The same is true of architecture. Then come philosophy, mathematics,
science, and sculpture, painting, literature, music and the drama. In
philosophy and mathematics there is no woman in the ranks of supreme
excellence. Even Sonya Kovalevsky, though a talent, was not a great
mathematician. In science also, where women have done fine things, none
are found among the brightest luminaries. It must be added, moreover,
that the few women who have made their mark in the scientific field,
notably Mme. Curie, have done so in the laboratory, not in the more
abstract and imaginative domain of theoretical science.
At this point some may protest that the period during which women
have had a chance to test their talents in philosophy, mathematics and
science was too short, their number too small, and that here once more
performance cannot fairly be used as a measure of possible achievement.
We must heed this protest.
As to sculpture, painting, literature, music and the drama, I claim
that woman’s protracted disabilities cannot in any way be held
accountable for whatever her performance may be found to be. Women
artists, musicians, writers and, of course, actresses, have been with
us for a long time. Their number is large and on the increase. Whether
married or single, they devote their energies to these pursuits quite
unhampered by social taboos. There are in this field no taboos against
women. In the United States, in fact, these occupations are held to be
more suitable for women than for men.
But what do we find?
In painting and sculpture, no women among the best, although
considerable numbers among the second best and below. There is no woman
Rodin or Meunier or Klinger or Renoir or Picasso.
In literature the case for woman stands better. Here women have
performed wonderfully, both in poetry and prose. If they have fallen
short, it is only of supreme achievement.[2]
Finally we come to music and the stage. The case of music is admirably
suited for our purpose, is really a perfect test case. What do we find?
As performers, where minor creativeness suffices, women have equaled
the best among men. As composers, where creativeness of the highest
order is essential, they have failed. We have a Carreño or Novaes to
match a Hofmann or Levitski, a Melba or Sembrich to match a Caruso
or deReszke, a Morini or Powell or Parlow to match a Heifetz or Elman
or Kreisler; but there is no woman to match a Beethoven or Wagner or
Strauss or Mahler or Stravinsky, or Rachmaninoff--a composer-performer.
The situation in drama is almost equally illuminating. Here women
have reached the top, have done it so frequently and persistently, in
fact, as to challenge men, some think successfully so. But as dramatic
writers the few women who tried have never succeeded to rise above
moderate excellence. A Rachel or Duse can hold her own as against a
Possart or Orlenyev, a Bernhardt looms as high as an Irving, Booth or
Salvini; but there is no woman to compare with a Molière or Ostrovski
or Rostand or Hauptmann or Chekhov or Kapek.
If now we glance once more at the primitive record the conclusion
suggested by an analysis of music and the drama is greatly reënforced.
In primitive society woman, whenever opportunity was given her, equaled
man in creativeness; in modern society she has uniformly failed in
the highest ranges. The results are not incompatible. As indicated
before, in early days cultural conditions precluded the exercise of
creativeness on the part of the individual except on a minor scale, in
modern society major creativeness is possible and has been realized.
Woman’s creative achievement reaches the top when the top is relatively
low; when the top itself rises, she falls behind.
To analyze this fact further is no easy task. We may not assume, as
some do, that the difference between major and minor creativeness
lies in degrees of rationality. This is certainly erroneous. The true
creator is what he is, not because of his rationality but because of
what he does with it. The differentia, as I see them, are two: boldness
of imagination and tremendous concentration on self. The creator, when
he creates, is spiritually alone; he dominates his material by drawing
it into the self and he permits his imagination, for once torn off the
moorings of tradition and precedent, to indulge in flights of gigantic
sweep. Imagination and personality exalted to the _n_th power--not
rationality--are the marks of the highest creativeness.
In the possession of these traits, then, as here understood, woman is
somehow restricted. She has them, of course, and exercises them, but
not on the very highest level.
We might stop right here, but it is hard to suppress at least a
tentative interpretation.
If the personality-imagination complex is where woman fails at the
top, then it becomes _a priori_ probable that this difference between
man and woman constitutes a remote sex characteristic. And if this
is so, then it may prove worth our while to look for a corresponding
difference on a level more directly connected with sex life. No sooner
is this done than a difference does indeed appear, and it meets
our expectations, for it lies in the direction of personality or
self-concentration as well as of imagination. Woman is never so much “a
part of” as when she loves, man never so “whole”; her self dissolves,
his crystallizes. Also, woman’s love is less imaginative than man’s:
man is more like what woman’s love makes him out to be than woman is
like what man’s love makes her out to be. Relatively speaking, his love
is romantic, hers realistic.
This difference in the diagnostic features of man’s love and woman’s
love confirms our suspicion that the discrepancy in performance, where
the personality-imagination complex is involved, constitutes a remote
sex characteristic.
We must now turn once more to woman’s achievement in the different
fields of cultural creativeness, for the variation in the degree of
excellence reached by her provides a valuable clue as to where her
strength lies. In an ascending series of woman’s achievements musical
composition is at the bottom of the list, then come sculpture and
painting, then literature (with a strange drop in dramatic writing),
then instrumental and vocal performance; acting, finally, heads the
list.
This order is most illuminating. The relative excellence of woman’s
achievement is seen to rise with the concreteness of the task and
the prominence of the technical and human elements. Creativeness is
more abstract in music than in the plastic and graphic arts, more
abstract in these than in literature; and in each case woman’s relative
achievement increases as abstractness decreases. Even the peculiar drop
in dramatic writing when compared with other forms of literature is
explicable in terms of a more abstract sort of creativeness required
by the formal elements of dramatic art. Again, the high position
in the list of musical performers and actresses, must in part be
ascribed to the importance of the technical element in these arts. The
preeminence of the musical performers is probably entirely due to this
factor, although the intrusion of the human element (performing for an
audience) may also have a share in the result.
In the case of acting the human element is the most important factor,
for here there is not only an audience to act to but the human content
of the acting itself. The human orientation also accounts for the
relatively high position of literature in the list when compared
to sculpture and painting and to musical composition. Finally, the
creativeness of musical performance and acting--two fields in which
woman excels--is concrete when compared to that of literature, the arts
and musical composition. Incidentally, a sidelight is thus thrown on
the case of science where woman’s relative preeminence is found in the
concrete and technical domain of the laboratory.
The preceding analysis leads to the conclusion that woman’s strength
lies in the concrete as contrasted with the abstract, the technical
as contrasted with the ideational, the human as contrasted with the
universal and detached. This conclusion, it may be of interest to
note, harmonizes perfectly with the general consensus of mankind, as
expressed in lay opinion and the judgments of literary men.
To summarize: in all fields of cultural activity opened to her, woman
has shown creative ability, but since cultural conditions have made
major creativeness possible, she has failed, in comparison with man, in
the highest ranges of abstract creativeness. On the other hand, woman
has shown in her psychic disposition affinities for the concrete, the
technical and the human.
Before closing, these findings may be utilized for a prognostication of
woman’s activities in the immediate and more remote future.
The present tendency toward equalizing the cultural opportunities
of man and woman will no doubt persist. Thus the range of woman’s
cultural contributions will expand and the excellence of her creative
achievement will rise, especially in the fields in which she has so far
had but little chance to try her hand. It is to be expected, however,
that in the highest ranges of abstract creativeness in philosophy,
science, art, music, and perhaps literature, she will fail as she
has hitherto failed to equal man. Her concrete-mindedness will ever
continue to provide a useful counterpoise to the more imaginative
and abstract leanings of her male companion. Her technical talents
will shine more brilliantly in a world in which the crafts will again
occupy the prominent place which was theirs once before. But her unique
contributions will come in the range of the human element.
In this respect, woman’s principal affinity is calculated to bear
its choicest fruits in a world better than the one we live in. When
formalism recedes from the field of education, as indeed it has already
begun to do, and gives room for more individual and psychologically
refined processes, woman’s share in education will grow in scope and
creativeness. When the family has left behind the agonies of its
present readjustments, the reconstruction of a freer and happier family
life will largely rest on the shoulders of woman. When prisons will
be turned into hospitals and criminals will be treated as patients,
woman’s sensitiveness, insight and tact will bring her leadership in
this field. When a return of leisure and the reduction of economic
pressure will permit a revival of the more intimate forms of social
intercourse, woman’s social talents will find new fields to conquer.
When the world of nations will sheathe its sword forever--an event
toward the realization of which woman will probably contribute more
than man--woman, to whom nothing human is foreign, will at last be free
to show the world what she can accomplish as the mother of the family
of man.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] We need not mention a Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes or
Milton. Perhaps these are too far back. Not so Tolstoi, Dostoyevski,
Turgenev, Goethe, Heine, Balzac, Maupassant, the Goncourts, Flaubert,
Byron, Browning, Shelley, Emerson, Walt Whitman. Where are their equals
among women? And coming down to the modern period, when literature is
flooded with feminine figures, is there one who can be placed beside
Anatole France or d’Annunzio or Proust or Gorki or even Bernard Shaw
(not to mention Ibsen)? The feminine names that might be cited in
comparison are obvious enough, but would any of them measure up to
these--quite? However, let me mention Katherine Mansfield, Edith
Wharton, Edna St. Vincent Millay. And I may add Sheila Kaye-Smith,
Willa Cather, Selma Lagerlöf and Marguérite Audou.
I realize, of course, that such comparisons, except in a most sweeping
statement, are invidious. A better picture could be obtained by
juxtaposing, one to one, writers of similar type and literary form--but
this is a task for a volume.
Dominant Sexes
By M. Vaerting
M. Vaerting,
_one of a group of German anthropologists whose lectures and articles
have attracted much attention in Europe; is also part author of “The
Dominant Sex,” recently published in the United States._
DOMINANT SEXES
BY M. VAERTING
Certain peculiarities of physical form are to-day considered typical
feminine sex characters. Thus roundness and fullness of figure are
generally regarded as characteristic of women; larger size and strength
among men are accepted as a sex difference, biologically determined.