THE MAN’S WOMAN: WOMANLY
“A woman capable at all points to bear children, to guard them,
to teach them, to turn them out strong and healthy citizens
of the great world, stands at the farthest remove from the
finnikin doll or the meek drudge whom man by a kind of false
sexual selection has through many centuries evolved as his
ideal.”—EDWARD CARPENTER.
What new contribution have women to offer the world in return for their
emancipation? In the women’s movement there is a strong feeling that
under the influence of the dominant male, women have had to conform to
an ideal not their own, and that this forcible compression of all women
into one mould—and that a mould not of their own choosing—has been bad
for women, and therefore bad for women’s work, and in the end bad for
men. In order to come to a clearer view of whether this is so or not, I
propose in this chapter and the next to treat of the man’s woman and the
woman’s woman. Everybody would probably agree that there is a very great
distinction, and that, taking them in the mass, the qualities which women
love and admire in women are not the same as those which, in the past,
have most attracted men. This does not matter so much if the conditions
of society be such as to make it possible for women to be independent of
their attraction of men. But if women are kept dependent upon men for any
scope or freedom or joy of life, then there may be imposed upon them an
alien standard which may very seriously cripple them. It is unnecessary
to labour the point that in sexual relations the qualities which make
each sex attractive to the other will always be of importance. What the
progressive women deprecate is that all their chances in life should be
dependent on sexual charm, and some of them badly crave for a rest from
sex, and they desire to be just broadly human.
Generally speaking, the conception of women which is the relic of
barbarism is that they are not themselves human beings, but only related
to human beings. In his sacred books man has taken care to suggest that
woman was an afterthought of the Creator, and that she was “given” to man
in a sense in which man was not “given” to woman. He could have her and
hold her by force, and what he asked of her were the qualities agreeable
to himself. Since every man has been a child and has some slight memories
of childhood, the notion of certain motherly qualities being desirable in
woman has existed side by side with the notion of other qualities more
adapted to adult requirements; but since memory is faint, and present
desire strong, the motherly qualities in a woman are of secondary
attractive force to most men in determining their choice, though,
undoubtedly, once mated, a man finds the motherly qualities invaluable.
Men write books and poems about the beauty and sacredness of motherhood,
but if one looks round the world one lives in, one finds that men are,
for the most part, not charmed by the motherly qualities in women, and
that the women upon whom men have in the past lavished titles and jewels
and wealth are not the motherly type at all. Every woman who has lived
long in the world has known many women most richly endowed for motherhood
who have not attracted any men worthy to be their mates, and has known
other women, with few of the qualities needed for motherhood, who have
strung the hearts of a score of men round their necks as trophies. One
might make a very good case to show that, in relation to men, there are
really three types of women: (1) those who attract men, (2) those by whom
men say they are attracted, (3) those by whom men ought (for the greatest
happiness of the greatest number) to be attracted.
Ask the average man what he means by a “womanly” woman—take Mr. Austen
Chamberlain: “Their qualities which we most admire are their lofty
devotion to ideals, _their dependence upon others_, upon husband, or
brother, or the hero of their imaginations, their _willingness to yield
their opinions_, their almost _passionate desire for self-sacrifice_,
often, it must be admitted, on behalf of objects very little worthy of
their great devotion” (12th July 1910, Debate on the Second Reading of
the Conciliation Bill). He proceeded to declare that these were not
“_political_ virtues,” and added, “God forbid that they should abandon
their qualities, which are our pride and theirs!” It seems clear that if
women generally are willing to yield their opinions to unworthy persons,
it is safer not to give this disastrous tendency much practical scope,
but what is really illuminating is Mr. Chamberlain’s naïve confession
that he _likes_ women to be this sort of fools. These are the qualities
that are agreeable to himself, provided he can prevent women from
exercising their dangerous preference for unworthy objects. One wonders
if it has never occurred to Mr. Chamberlain that one reason why women
crave direct representation is that they recognise that men are often
devoted to women who are “very little worthy,” and that when men tell
them they “consult women,” and we inquire “what women?” we discover
that they are not those whom women themselves would consult or trust or
follow. There is this foundation at least for the frequent statement that
women “do not wish to be ruled by women.” They do not wish to be ruled by
women who have been selected by men, because they know from experience
that a man’s woman and a woman’s woman are not the same.
If we examine the qualities of Mr. Chamberlain’s womanly woman, we find
that they are quite frankly selected for his own satisfaction, and not
because they are of any use either to woman herself or to the world. He
likes a woman to be dependent on a man; he likes her to give up her own
opinions; he likes her to sacrifice herself, even although it be often on
unworthy objects. What does the dependence of a woman on a man and her
yielding of her opinions to him involve? It involves the misunderstanding
and neglect of all the specifically womanly sides of life. The woman who
yields her belief to a man, not by conviction, but by submission, is
shirking her work, and is a traitor to the future of which she is the
guardian. She is, in fact, the _un_womanly woman, for she has yielded the
fruits of her instinct, her knowledge, her experience as a woman, and has
adopted, to command, a man’s opinion based on man’s instinct, knowledge
and experience. She is “aping man” and is (what the reactionaries falsely
call the progressive woman), in truth, a “feeble imitation.”
Dependence of this sort means degradation. There is a sense, of course,
in which we are all, of necessity, dependent upon each other, men upon
women and women upon men. But the sort of dependence which means that
men do all they do for women as grace and favour, but that women do all
they do for men from subjection and compulsion,—because they can’t help
themselves,—is degrading to both men and women. One knows the exquisite
delight there is in serving or being served by a beloved person; but all
women do not love all men, and there is no joy whatever in dependence
upon those whom you do not love. Even the pleasure to be derived from
dependence on a loved one is a purely personal matter, and varies with
individuals and with times, and is not proper matter upon which to base
institutions.
As a matter of fact, women down all the ages have escaped from the
degradation of entirely becoming faint echoes of men by the lesser
degradation of humbugging and lying to men. Men have wanted them to
yield their opinions? Very well, they would pretend to do so. But the
true woman never did. She was true to the greater reality of sex. Now
women are revolting against the necessity of telling even the lesser
lie, and are insisting that they want to do their work unhampered by
ignorance and meddling. If we take a large part of women’s work as being
essentially social, the bearing and rearing of children, education and
the care of the human family in all its wide interests of health and
morality, how can anyone in their senses assert that a woman who has not
the education and culture to know and appreciate facts is as helpful as
one who has them? Yet progressives have had to fight reactionaries for
every bit of education and culture. How can anyone think that a woman
who suppresses her deep and peculiar knowledge of childhood is as good
a mother, teacher, nurse as the woman who bravely follows the light? Or
with the sympathy and insight that women have into sickness of souls
and bodies, can anyone really believe that the world’s work of healing
and redemption is best done if the fruits of this sympathy and insight
are packed into baskets and handed over to men who, with all the other
matters about which they are so much keener on their hands, will just
forget the baskets and allow the fruits to rot?
There is in women—no one can doubt it who has studied their works—a
peculiar combination of idealism and practicality. The one without the
other is either vapid or dry: the two together can move mountains. What
distinguished the work of Elizabeth Fry, of Florence Nightingale, of
Octavia Hill, of Lady Henry Somerset is just this combination. What makes
the reports of the women factory inspectors so much more interesting than
those of the men is again the same combination. When men in the House of
Commons discuss the Housing Question, or what they call Education, the
dulness of the debate is enough to send one to sleep. Why is it so dull?
Because it lacks both actuality and ideality. Once the speakers have lost
sight altogether of the child, and can begin to fight each other on the
so-called religious question, they are at home, and the House fills; once
they can leave off talking about the houses which are the homes of the
people and the workshops of the mothers, and get to quarrelling about
some party cry, they begin to revive. The fact is, that anyone worth his
or her salt is keen about his or her job. The more you separate your
legislative and executive powers from your intelligence department the
more you weaken those powers, and men’s legislation and administration is
largely divorced from women’s intelligence.
When the fight has been made and has been justified by its success, we
are all ready to acclaim the fighter, but we seem unable to grasp the
principle which the fight ought to have established. Florence Nightingale
was invited to go to Scutari by a broad-minded man who had faith in
what she could do; but when she got out there, she found the usual
reactionaries, and unless she had insisted upon having a position of
undisputed authority, she would have accomplished only a small fraction
of her great work. She braved the authorities, and broke open the cases
of stores which were sealed with red tape. We are all ready now—probably
even Mr. Austen Chamberlain—to acclaim Florence Nightingale as a womanly
woman. But where was her “dependence,” her “willingness to yield her
opinions”? And another point is most deserving of note. This is, that
when men do get a real live woman, born “to warn, to comfort and command”
among them, and have had time to get over the first little shock to their
prejudices, they find what an admirable colleague or chief they have
gotten, and are generous in their service and co-operation. Men are, in
fact, almost always better far than their apologists will allow them to
be.
In private life men must have always experienced the value of the
strong-natured woman. Only some are still faithless about the value of
such women in public life. They are afraid, afraid for their masculine
prerogative, afraid (as I have heard it expressed) that women “will
legislate men out of existence.” Well, the antidote to that is surely
more co-operation between men and women, not less; more knowledge and
understanding of each other’s point of view, not less. So many men are at
present greatly concerned to keep women to their duty; perhaps many women
are also too much concerned to keep men to their duty. There is all to be
gained by putting together these aspirations for the improvement of—other
people!
In an earlier chapter I have shown the danger that there lies in the low
status of women in their not having pride in themselves and confidence in
their work. The clinging dependence, the softness, the approachableness,
the complaisance which men find so attractive in women also have their
very great dangers. Women who have devoted themselves to the salving of
the wrecks of womanhood know that often it has been this very softness
of fibre which has been the cause of a girl’s undoing. “Be weak!” men
cry; “we love you for it. It makes us feel superior!” And when they
have “loved” after their fashion, they leave the human wreckage their
“love” has made and pass on to “love” again elsewhere. It is as you love
duckling, and cry, “Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!” Now women are
increasingly feeling that it is not womanly to be weak, it is womanly to
be strong, strong for work and love and understanding.
The individual man may want individual woman to be weak for him only, but
the laws which men together make require women to be strong, not even
as women, but as superwomen. Because men have experienced the use of
women as individuals, because they still have relics of the old barbaric
ownership feeling, they desire still to keep women individual, isolated,
unorganised. Now even if a woman, by her mother wit, influence and powers
of cajoling and tormenting, may be supposed capable of dealing with her
individual man, the situation becomes very different when man begins to
band himself together with man in guilds, unions, corporations, parties
and armies. He can then proceed to crush women by his organisations.
The individual appeal of love and family is powerless against the
impersonality of law, the combination of millions of persons all of
one sex. It is curious to note that, though men have been organising
themselves for centuries, and for the most part rigidly excluding women
from their organisations, yet women have not complained, nor suggested
that this was “anti-woman”; on the contrary, they have universally done
what they could to help the men’s organisations. But now that women are
beginning to organise themselves, there is raised here and there and
everywhere the alarm cry of “Anti-man!” and sentimental appeals are made
to women which are totally inappropriate in this connection.
Mr. Harold Owen falls into this mistake when he says (_Woman Adrift_,
p. 234): “The relations between man and woman are not political or even
social, they are personal in the highest degree, and in a kind that
exists in no other relation of life whatever.” Such a mistake, like
another of which mention has already been made, is only possible by the
use of the rhetorical singular, and even then it does not follow that,
because _a_ man and _a_ woman may have personal relations, there are not
social and political matters of the greatest moment involved in those
relations. That there are, man has acknowledged ages back, by making laws
to regulate the relations of men and women. We know that a woman has no
personal relations at all with the millions of men who govern the world
she has to live in, and we resent the misplaced appeal to sentiment of a
personal kind in such a connection. Social, political, racial sentiment
there may be, but personal sentiment can only exist between individuals,
and all sentiment is not good either,—the sentiment of power and
ownership, for instance, when they are held over human beings.
The reactionary man is very fond of asserting that women don’t want
this, that or the other. He generally can give no reason for this
statement; enough that he knows it. When it is pointed out to him that
all articulate and organised women do want it and say so, he declares
contemptuously that these women don’t count. It is not womanly to
organise. Everyone knows that the traditional woman, the womanly woman,
can’t organise. Therefore these hundreds of thousands of organised women
are unsexed, negligible, not to be listened to. The only woman to be
listened to is “the quiet woman in the home,” and man will go forth into
the world and proclaim what that quiet woman wants, and will give it to
her. It does not seem to dawn upon him that it is more than a little
suspicious that he should pronounce all those to be negligible who can
speak for themselves.