stands upon a doubtful basis. It has grown up out of a comparison of
men and women in very unequal situations. The bodies of men and women
whose field of work and type of occupation differ widely have been
compared. The man attends to the extra-domestic activities, while the
woman is chiefly occupied at home. Bachofen writes: “If a man sits at a
spinning-wheel a weakening of body and of soul will inevitably follow.”
Charles de Coster in his “Wedding Journey” makes the significant
remark: “Work in the fields had given Liska hips like a robust man’s.”
Certain of the physical differences between men and women may therefore
be sociologically determined rather than due to inborn differences.
One may object that the division of labor between the sexes, in which
the woman takes the domestic and the man the extra-domestic sphere, is
itself determined by inborn sex differences. Even in Socrates’s time
it was believed that the nature of the sexes fixed their fields of
activity. Man was unquestionably intended for matters which must be
attended to outside the house, “while the weak and timid woman was by
divine order assigned to the inner work of the home.” After thorough
investigation it appears that this hoary theory, which still persists,
is false. The division of labor between man and woman corresponds not
to an innate difference but to their power-relation. If man dominates
he says that woman’s place is the home, and that work outside the home
is fit only for men. If woman is dominant then she has the opposite
opinion, takes care of business outside the home, and leaves the man to
take care of the family and the housekeeping. The ruling sex, whether
male or female, always puts the domestic duties on the subordinate
sex and takes to itself work outside the home. To-day man is dominant,
but there have been many peoples among whom woman was dominant and the
rôle of man and woman was the reverse of that common to-day. In ancient
Egypt there was a period when women ruled. Herodotus reports that they
unnaturally performed “masculine” activities, carried on commerce in
the market-place, while the men stayed at home, sewed, and attended to
domestic difficulties. To Herodotus, who came from a state where men
were dominant, the work of the Egyptian women naturally seemed “male.”
In the Talmud Herodotus’s report is confirmed. The children of Israel,
it tells us, were disturbed because their men were forced to do women’s
work and their women men’s work. In Sophocles’s “Œdipus Kolonos”
Œdipus says to his two daughters: “Ha, how they imitate the Egyptians
in the manner and meaning of life. There the men stay home and sit at
the spinning-wheel, and the women go out to meet the needs of life.”
Œdipus also mentions the fact reported also by Herodotus, that only
the daughters, not the sons, were compelled in Egypt to support their
parents. The sons could not fulfill that duty, Sophocles says, because,
like the Greek girls, they stayed at home and had no income from their
labor. Furthermore, they had only a limited right to own property.
One might cite many other peoples where the woman was dominant. Among
the Kamchadales the men, in the days of female dominance, were such
complete housewives that they cooked, sewed, washed, and were never
allowed to stay away from home for more than a day. Similarly among
the Lapps there was a period when the men did the housework while the
women fished and sailed the sea. Under such circumstances the men also
took care of the children. Strabo and Humboldt both report of the
Vasko-Iberian races that the women worked in the fields; after child
birth they turned the child over to the man and themselves resumed
their work in the fields. A similar arrangement prevailed in the days
when women ruled Lybia, which bordered upon Egypt.
When one sex is dominant there is always a division of labor.
This differentiation of occupation is one of the chief causes of
certain differences in physical form between men and women. It changes
the fundamental conditions of development--among others the course
of the inner secretions. Where man rules he does the active outside
work and is accordingly larger and stronger; where woman rules and
does the same “man’s work” her body assumes what are to-day regarded
as typically male proportions, whereas the man develops what we call
feminine characteristics. We have a few definite proofs of this from
states dominated by women.
When woman ruled among the Gauls, and worked outside the home, we are
told by Strabo that the female was the larger and stronger sex.
Among the Adombies on the Congo women were in power and did all the
hard work. According to Ellis they were stronger and better developed
than the men. The same was true of the Wateita in East Africa. Fritsch
and Hellwald report that the woman is larger than the man among the
Bushmen. Female and male pelvises show no differences, but are alike
“male” in our sense of the word.
The Spartan women in the days of their rule had a reputation for
enormous strength. Aristophanes says that a Spartan woman could
strangle an ox bare-handed. The Egyptian women at the height of their
power were called by their neighbors the “lionesses of the Nile,”
and they seemed to like the name. When Heracles visited the Lybians,
whose state bordered on Egypt and of whose rule by women we have many
witnesses, he had to work, like the other men of the country, with the
distaff. His wife Omphale, however, wandered about clad in a lionskin
and armed with a club, and won respect for her strength.
A very striking report comes from near New Guinea, where the woman
was stronger than the man. There it was a common sight to see a woman
spanking her husband with a paddle. Through the brute force of superior
strength she oppressed the man just as men oppress women where the
woman is weaker.
Thus through legend and the records of travelers we have clear
testimony that man is not larger and stronger than woman because of
innate differences, as is generally supposed, but that physical
superiority is a characteristic of the dominant sex, regardless whether
that be male or female.
Similarly those secondary physical characteristics which are to-day
regarded as female are found among males when they occupy the
subordinate position in which woman lives to-day. Woman is inclined
to-day to full, rounded curves and even to stoutness. Among the Celts
the woman dominated, and according to Strabo the men of that people
were inclined to be fat and heavy-paunched. The same was true of
the Kamchadales in the days of woman rule. The men were strikingly
voluptuous and well rounded. The male Eskimos too were inclined
to fatness in the days when they did the housekeeping. The more
subordinate the fatter.
In this connection the Oriental women are typical; their exuberance
of figure is as well known as their absolute subordination and their
confinement to the home. They may be contrasted with the fat and
subordinate male Kamchadales, whose wives were slim and firm breasted
into old age.
Equal rights do away with this division of labor. There are no longer
male and female jobs; not sex but inclination and fitness now begin
to determine the individual’s occupation. In late Egypt, when the
domination of woman was merging into a period of equal rights, there
are many indications that both sexes did the same work without any
differentiation of occupation. In the marriage contract in the time of
Darius, the woman--who then made the contract alone--says, “All, which
you and I may together earn....” Victor Marx has studied the position
of woman in Babylon in the period 604-485 B.C., and finds a similar
situation. In an inheritance case of that period a woman recites that
“I and my husband carried on business with my dowry and together
bought a piece of land.” Such common businesses by man and woman are
frequently mentioned. Under such circumstances it was natural that
neither man nor woman bound themselves at marriage to live in the same
house, for both went to work outside the home.
To-day, when we are passing from male domination to equal rights it
is natural that the woman should be seeking more and more to get out
of the home. The greater her power the more she seeks to level the
lines between male and female work. This effort is strongest in the
subordinate sex--in this case the feminine--because it seeks naturally
to better its position. In this transition period, therefore, women
are pressing into male pursuits much faster than men into domestic
occupations. Yet even in Germany a beginning has been made. For
women the male professions seem higher and better, because they have
hitherto belonged to the dominant sex, while for the men feminine
occupations seem to have about them something degrading; but the more
women approach equality the less odium attaches to what has been their
sphere, and the more men tend to enter it.
The same phenomenon may be observed in periods of transition from
female to male domination. Among the Batta, for instance, both sexes
worked in the fields, but the man alone cared for the children. This
was obviously a step toward equal rights. The men already shared the
extra-domestic occupations of the women, but the women still refused to
share the work of the hitherto subordinate men.
When equal rights put an end to the differentiation of occupation
the physical differences between men and women also disappear. We are
to-day still far enough away from equality of the sexes, but there
have been people where equal rights prevailed, and among such people
the physical form of the two sexes was so like that they could hardly
be distinguished. In Tacitus’s day, when equality was probably general
among the Germans, men and women are reported to have had exactly the
same weight and strength. Albert Friedenthal says of the Cingalese
that a stranger could not distinguish the sexes. Men and women were so
alike among the Botocudos that one had to count their tresses to tell
them apart. Lallemant found among this people “a swarm of men-women and
women-men, not a single man or a single woman in the whole tribe.” This
good man came from a state where men dominated and did not suspect that
when the power-relation of the sexes changed their physical appearance
changed too. If a Botocudo had come to Europe in those days he would
presumably have judged by his own standards and noted with equal horror
the outer differences of European men and women.
Every age holds its own standards absolute. The domination of one sex
depends upon the artificial development of as many and as striking
bodily differences as possible, and therefore approves them and insists
upon emphasizing them. Equal rights tend to develop the natural
similarity of the sexes and considering that the norm, regards it as
ideal.
There is ample opportunity to observe to-day that equality of the sexes
coincides with a tendency slowly to do away with artificial physical
differences. The disappearance of the so-called feminine figure was
so striking in America, where the sexes are more nearly equal than in
Europe, that Sargent and Alexander prophesied in 1910 that soon men
and women could hardly be distinguished from one another. A comparison
with pictures of thirty or forty years ago makes it plain that even
in Europe male and female figures are coming closer to each other.
The narrow waists and full bosoms of the women and the full beards of
the men have disappeared. And, as a result of our investigation, we
may prophesy that the coming equality will still more completely iron
out those differences which hitherto have been regarded as genuine
secondary sex characters.
Whenever one sex is dominant there is a tendency to differentiate male
and female costume. The more completely one sex dominates the greater
will be the differences in clothes, and as the sexes become equal the
differences disappear. When the two sexes are really equal they will
wear the same clothing.
The clothing of the dominant sex usually tends to be uniform and
tasteless, that of the subordinate to be varied and richly ornamented.
To-day man is still dominant, and his clothes are monotonous, dull,
and less subject to shifts of fashion. Especially in formal dress he
wears a sort of uniform. All men, of whatever age or position, wear
dress clothes of the same cut and color. A grandfather wears a dinner
coat exactly like that of his eighteen-year-old grandson. This seems
natural, but the situation is reversed with the subordinate sex, most
completely when the subordination is most complete. Only twenty or
thirty years ago it was a crime in Germany for a mother to dress as
“youthfully” as her unmarried daughter. A grandmother who dared to
dress like her eighteen-year-old granddaughter would have been laughed
to scorn. As woman’s power has grown, this has changed. Custom no
longer requires a grandmother to emphasize her age by her clothes.
Where woman dominates she tends to wear darker and plainer clothing and
the man dresses himself more richly and variously. Erman writes of the
old Egyptians:
While according to our conceptions it befits the woman to love finery
and ornament, the Egyptians of the old Empire seem to have had an
opposite opinion. Beside the elaborate costumes of the men the women’s
clothing seems very monotonous, for, from the fourth to the eighteenth
dynasty, all, from the king’s daughter to the peasant woman, wore the
same garb--a simple garment without folds.
Herodotus, indeed, reported that Egyptian men had two suits, women
only one. Erman naturally cannot explain the simplicity of the women’s
clothes and the eagerness of the men for color and ornament, because it
contradicted current theories of the character of the two sexes. To-day
the view is current which Runge expressed when he said that “Women’s
desire to please and love of ornament is dependent upon her sex life.”
This view, though still common, is fundamentally false. The inclination
to bright and ornamental clothing is dependent not upon sex but upon
the power-relation of the sexes. The subordinate sex, whether male or
female, seeks ornament. Strabo tells of the love of finery and cult of
the body among Lybian men. They curled their hair, even their beards,
wore gold ornaments, diligently brushed their teeth and polished their
finger-nails. “They arrange their hair so tenderly,” he writes, “that
when walking they never touch one another, in order not to disturb it.”
It is usual in states where women are dominant for the men to wear long
hair and pay particular attention to their barbering. The men of Tana,
in the Hebrides, wore their hair 18 to 20 inches long, divided into six
or seven hundred tiny locks, in the days when women ruled. Among the
Latuka the men wore their hair so elaborately that it took ten years to
arrange it. The Konds also wore very long hair, elaborately arranged.
The stronger tendency of the subordinate sex to ornamentation
apparently is closely related to the division of labor. The subordinate
sex, working at home, has more leisure and opportunity for ornament
than the dominant. Furthermore, leisure stimulates the erotic feelings.
Since the partner does not share the leisure the lonely erotic often
seeks a way out in self-ornamentation. At the same time the ornament is
intended for the partner, for the stimulated eroticism increases the
desire to please the other sex.
When the sexes are equal the clothes of the two sexes tend to be alike.
We have noted that the Cingalese were physically similar; their clothes
were exactly the same. The only difference was that the men wore a
mother-of-pearl comb in the hair, the women none. Among the Lepka the
sexes can be distinguished only by the fact that the men wear their
hair in two braids, the women in one. Tacitus reports that the old
Germans wore the same clothes and wore their hair alike.
We can observe the tendency to similarity of costume in this transition
period. Many such attempts fail the first time, but finally succeed.
More than a decade ago Paris attempted to establish a fashion of
knickerbockers and bobbed hair. The attempt failed, but to-day the
bobbed head has invaded every civilized country, almost in direct
proportion to the degree in which women have acquired equal rights.
It is reported from England that English women can already go to
their work in trousers, heavy shoes, and short hair without exciting
attention. The reader may judge of the accuracy of these reports. In
Germany the police forbid one sex to wear the clothes of the other, but
during the war when German women had to enter male trades they usually
wore men’s clothing.
Among men too the tendency to similarity is evident. Thirty years ago
the beard was a generally accepted sign of manhood; it has fallen out
of fashion. In the Youth Movement there is a tendency to leave the
shirt open at the neck and to adopt a hair-cut like a bobbed girl’s. A
note in Jean Paul’s “Levana,” which appeared in 1806, is interesting.
He writes: “A few years ago it was fashionable in Russia for the men to
fill out their clothing with high false bosoms.” That was in the days
following the French Revolution, when a short wave of freedom, even for
women, swept across the earth. It showed also in the women’s fashion
which Jean Paul mentions:
A fortunate accident for daughters is the Grecian costume of the
present Gymnosophists (naked female runners), which, it is true,
injures the mothers but hardens the daughters; for as age and custom
should avoid every fresh cold so youth exercises itself on it as on
every hardship until it can bear greater.... So, likewise, the present
naked manner of dressing is a cold bath into which the daughters are
dipped, who are exhilarated by it.
Modern Love and Modern Fiction
By J. W. Krutch
Joseph Wood Krutch
_has been Professor of English at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute,
and is now dramatic editor and regular critic of fiction of_ The Nation.
MODERN LOVE AND MODERN FICTION
BY J. W. KRUTCH
Seeing upon the jacket of a recent book the legend “Solves the Sex
Problem,” my first reaction was a fervent hope that it did nothing
of the sort, for I had no desire that fiction should be rendered
supererogatory or, what is the same thing, that life should be made a
less difficult art. Problems of housing, wages, taxation, militarism,
and the like may be solved, temporarily at least, but what a
contemporary writer has called “the irony of being two” is a sufficient
guaranty of one never-to-be-resolved complexity. Until each individual
of the human species becomes a complete biological entity, until, that
is to say, hermaphrodism is universal, there can be no fear lest we
should cease to live dangerously.
Were I speaking of happiness I should be compelled to argue that
the attitude of society and the individual toward sex is the most
important thing in the world, but speaking as I am of life as
material for art I must maintain, on the contrary, that it is much
less important. As long as they have an attitude and as long as that
attitude remains, as it has always remained, an inadequate one, those
unresolved discords which make living and reading interesting will
continue to arise. As a critic I “view with alarm” nothing except
the possibility that the problem should be solved to everybody’s
satisfaction, but that calamity does not seem at all likely to occur
since I have never heard of a saint in the desert or a debauché in a
brothel who was not sufficiently maladjusted to be a fruitful subject
for fiction.
After all, the things we do are both more significant and less changing
than our attitude toward our acts. We burn men at the stake to light
a Roman garden, to save the world from the horror of heresy, or to
protect the sanctity of female virtue and assure the supremacy of
the white race, but we burn them always; we fight because arms are
glorious, because the service of God demands the rescue of His holy
sepulcher from the infidel, or because we must make the world safe
for peace, but always we fight; and the most important thing is the
insistent lust of cruelty or the impulse to fight rather than the
rationalization of these motives. So, too, with love. Paphnutius is
harried out of apathy into a state in which he sees visions because of
the temptations of the devil, Milton because God gave Eve to Adam as a
comforter, Shelley because woman is the symbol of the unutterable, and
Shaw (presumably) because only by the process of reproduction can the
Life Force perform its perfectionist experiments; but the resultant
impulses are not so very different. Mr. F. W. Myers once referred to
the procreation of children in these lines:
Lo! When a man magnanimous and tender,
Lo! When a woman desperate and true,
Make the inevitable sweet surrender,
Show one another what the Lord can do,...
but I doubt if the states of mind which called forth these lines and,
say, Swinburne’s Dolores were as different as the verses would suggest
or as the authors imagined. Without going so far as to say that the two
poems are of equal literary merit, one can at least say that they are
almost equally interesting and delightful to the observer of life or
art and that as long as the mystical, the ascetic, the sentimental, and
the biological attitudes toward love continue to exist side by side or
to follow one another in succeeding epochs, the critic will not find
literature either dull or monotonous.
If at the end of a period of twenty-five years during which fiction
has frankly concerned itself to an unusual degree with sex the problem
seems more complicated than ever before, there is no cause for
surprise. Even the specious pretense that a solution has been found
can only be maintained when, as during the Victorian era, the mass of
men agree to assume that no difficulties exist which are not solvable
by that rule of thumb known as the social and moral code, and insist
that sexual battles shall be fought out behind closed doors in life and
between the chapters in books. By dragging them out into public view we
have been able, no doubt, to palliate some of the commoner tragedies
of stupidity. But chiefly we have been upon a voyage of discovery,
and it ought to be evident now, if it has never been evident before,
that we cannot possibly solve the problem because its most important
aspects are not social but human. They have their roots in man’s
ironic predicament between gorilla and angel, a predicament perfectly
typified by the fact that as he grows critical he realizes that love
is at once sublime and obscene and that only by walking a spiritual
tight-rope above the abysses can he be said to live at all in any true
sense. The very fact that the social aspects can to a certain extent
be worked out makes them less interesting and explains the fact that
those novels intended to prove, for example, that the mother of an
illegitimate child may still be within the human pale have come to seem
so unutterably dull. No doubt they “did good,” but like all forms of
useful literature their life was short. By far the most interesting
contemporary writers who deal chiefly with sex are largely concerned
with the individual problem.