The Virtues and Vices of Women
Whether we appeal to folklore, to the proverbs of the nations, or
to the earliest legends of mankind, we invariably encounter in the
traditional wisdom of humanity judgments upon woman which are more
or less unanimous in condemning her bad temper, her disloyalty, her
dishonesty, her vanity, her malice and her indolence. The very attitude
of the common people towards witchcraft, after the Reformation, points
to a curious popular readiness to believe in the evil influences
of the female; for the fact that aged women and not aged men were
the suspected parties in the persecutions against supposed cases of
necromancy, is significant, even if we deny the validity of the charges
that were brought against these unfortunate wretches. In another
work[142] I have dealt with the two principal legends of antiquity—that
of Pandora and that of Eve—in which woman is specifically identified
with the introduction of evil on earth, and I shall have to return to
this subject here; for it cannot be merely a coincidence that in these
oldest of human myths there is this connexion between woman and evil.
In the _Law Book of Manu_, which represents ancient Hindu opinion, the
character of women meets again with the same charges. We read:
“Through their passion for men, through their mutable temper, through
their natural heartlessness, they become disloyal to their husbands,
however carefully they may be guarded in this world.
“Knowing their disposition, which the Lord of creatures laid in them
at the creation, to be such, (even) man must strenuously exert himself
to guard them.
“When creating them, Manu allotted to woman (love of their) bed, (of
their) seat and (of) ornament, impure desires, wroth, dishonesty,
malice and bad conduct.”[143]
Lombroso and Ferrero actually regard deception as being “physiological”
in women. They ascribe it to her weakness (which makes it necessary for
her to rely on craft to achieve her ends), to her periodical functional
disturbances, to her modesty, to the pretences necessary to acquiring
an ascendancy over man, to the duties of maternity, and to one or two
other inevitable circumstances in her life.[144] In Chapter VII of
their work, they adduce the testimony of such acute psychologists as
Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, Schopenhauer, Weininger, Molière, to support
their contention that in woman lying is instinctive. We might add
Shakespeare, Luther, Byron, Nietzsche, La Bruyère, and many others
to the list. No matter where we turn, or to whom we refer, we find,
more or less, the same verdict. It lies recorded even in an Arab
proverb,[145] just as it lies, though perhaps more obscurely, in most
of that “tinsel of sentiment” with which, utterly false as it is, woman
insists upon veiling the natural relations of the sexes; while we
must not forget that for hundreds of years a great and very profound
people—the Mussulmans of Europe and Asia—have denied woman a soul.
The evidence of profound psychologists, the substance of myths, the
content of national proverbs, the personal experience, in short, of
all those who have learnt to know women generation after generation,
all point to this conclusion, that there is a certain duplicity and
unscrupulousness in their nature, against which it is only a matter of
ordinary caution for man to be on his guard.
On the other hand, in all countries with a modern, democratic outlook,
where woman’s influence is in the ascendant, and where men are inclined
to a pronounced romanticism of thought, there is no quality, no jewel
of human virtue, too priceless for woman to be thought worthy of it.
Perhaps the most radical attempt to contradict the tradition of ages,
concerning woman, and to cast suspicion for ever upon all those who
might venture to criticize her adversely, was made by that gallant
but, alas! henpecked English “philosopher,” John Stuart Mill, than
whom no writer is perhaps more responsible for the sudden access of
strength that the Feminist movement acquired in the latter half of
the nineteenth century in England. And, before proceeding with our
inquiry, it will be necessary to pause in order to deal with his views
and to dispose of them; for, since they represent the _maximum_ that
can be said on the other side, in accomplishing this, we shall have
dealt vicariously with most of what has been advanced as scientific
argumentation against the verdict of the rest of mankind.
John Stuart Mill admitted that all his writings, except his Logic, were
as much his own work as that of the lady, Mrs. Taylor, who ultimately
became his wife. He was not ashamed to acknowledge that Mrs. John
Taylor was “in part the author of all that is best” in his writings;
and speaking of his treatise on _Liberty_, Mr. W. L. Courtney says it
“was written especially under her authority and encouragement.” The
same author referring to the famous work _The Subjection of Women_,
which is going to occupy our attention, writes: “Mill’s share was the
result of discussions and conversations with his wife.”[146]
Now, quite early in this book on women, the following important remark
occurs: “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently
artificial thing—the result of forced repression in some directions,
unnatural stimulation in others.”[147]
The ingenuity of this sentence, its plausibility in the eyes of
ignorant and prejudiced people, and its dark innuendo, make it one of
the most astonishing utterances that ever issued from the lips of an
alleged philosopher. If it be more than an insincere attempt to quash
all discussion and inquiry regarding the subject for ever, it can mean
only two things.
(1) The word “now” definitely restricts the allegations concerning the
nature of women to the present age. “What is _now_ called the nature
of women,” therefore is implicitly contrasted with what was _once_
called the nature of women. The first possible meaning of the sentence
is therefore as follows: “As compared with what used to be called
the nature of women, what is _now_ called the nature of woman is an
entirely artificial thing.”
In order to dispose of this first possible meaning, we have only to
reply to Mrs. Taylor (for it is obvious that Mill would only have
referred us to her if we had addressed ourselves to him), that, as
the present view of woman’s nature does not differ entirely from
the traditional and ancient view—where there exists no difference
between the two, we may presumably postulate eternities, or constant
factors. And, so long as we abide by those characteristics, in which
the testimony of the present age concurs with tradition and hoary
antiquity, we escape, even if we do not respect, her ruling.
(2) The words, “an eminently artificial thing,” are surely a begging
of the question. Everybody, even the most be-Taylorized thinker,
ought to be able to see this. For, it may be asked, what at present
can be called natural and what can be called artificial in civilized
man and woman? Is it natural to wear clothes, or is it artificial?
Is it natural to use implements instead of our fingers at meals? Is
it natural to speak English? Two thousand years ago no one on earth
spoke English. In the days of Caractacus, if anyone had stood up to
address a crowd in English, he would have been suspected not only of
artificiality, but of dangerous insanity. Is the speaking of English
now artificial? This is not quibbling. We are bound to suspect
insincerity in anyone who, at this late hour, uses the distinctions
“artificial” and “natural” of civilized man or woman—particularly
when they do so without giving us exact definitions of these words.
Many thousands of years ago in Egypt, a certain woman, the wife of
Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, cruelly betrayed a man who
flouted her advances. Similar cases have happened since. We are all
familiar with the saying: “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.”[148]
Is this tendency in woman to retaliate upon him who scorns her,
the mortification she feels at his rebuff, artificial or natural?
Popular tradition in many countries tells us that women are habitual
liars. Lombroso points out that their weakness, relative to man, has
induced them to use craft and deceit to achieve their ends. Is woman’s
weakness relative to man natural or artificial? If it is natural, is
her tendency to use craft and deceit also natural? If her weakness
is artificial, when and how did it become so, and when and how did
prevarication come to her support?
Those who are acquainted with _The Subjection of Women_ will probably
reply that Mrs. Taylor, or Miss Helen,[149] did feel it incumbent upon
them to state a little more precisely what they meant by the use of
the word artificial; for Mill proceeds to write as follows: “It may be
asserted, without scruple [fine scruples these!!!], that no other class
of dependents have had their character so entirely distorted from its
natural proportions by their relations with their masters.”[150] This
means that a “true,” a “natural” woman once fell into man’s hands, and
that since that time she has been distorted out of all recognition.
But we may very relevantly ask Mesdames Taylor, how, when and where
they have had the unique privilege of coming across this wholly “true”
and “natural” woman? Presumably, she was not only a “true” woman, but
also a “truthful” woman; she was not only a “natural” woman, but a
guileless, honest woman, devoid of all malice and vanity—in fact quite
unlike the woman Manu knew, or the woman Adam knew. At what period in
history did she appear and fall into the distorting hands of man? By
what scientific process have Mesdames Taylor acquired any knowledge
of her? We only know of woman as she is seen to-day, in history, in
the literary remains of antiquity, and in savage tribes. Whence comes
this alleged “true” and “natural” woman, beside whom the woman we know
is only a distorted caricature? To postulate a norm that is wholly
hypothetical, and then to argue that by the side of that gratuitous
creation, the woman that we know, and have seen mirrored in history, in
the tradition of mankind, and in the work of our acutest psychologists,
is a monstrous distortion, may prove a useful means of clouding the
issue, but can hardly be allowed to pass as an argument. And the
fact that Mill, the logician, the critic of Spencer and Sir William
Hamilton, wrote this, and the whole of the remaining paragraph, surely
demonstrates how very far he was from being himself when he wrote this
particular book.[151]
We therefore deny the possibility of any second meaning to Mesdames
Taylor’s sentence, except this, that, like “true” women in argument,
they are trying to foist a spurious distinction upon their opponents,
with their two words “artificial” and “natural,” so that henceforth
all those who allege anything but pleasant things about women, may be
promptly gagged with the retort “Artificial!”
A little later on in his _Subjection of Women_ we read the following:
“For, however great and apparently ineradicable the moral and
intellectual differences between men and women might be, the evidence
of their being natural differences could only be negative. Those
only could be inferred to be natural which could not possibly be
artificial—the residuum, after deducting every characteristic of either
sex, which can admit of being explained from education or external
circumstances.”[152]
In this sentence it is difficult not to discern the voice of the
female collaborator in two distinct vibrations: the general sentiment
and the irrational argument; for, apart from the fact that it amounts
practically to a drastic and final veto against all such discussions as
the one I am engaging in at the present moment, it relies upon wholly
specious but plausible biological phraseology for its persuasiveness.
In it, moreover, we not only find a reiteration of the counterfeit
argument, but also an attempt to dress it in a delusively scientific
garb.
According to the evolutionary hypothesis, about which Mrs. and Miss
Taylor must have known (for they moved in circles where these matters
were discussed, and _The Subjection of Women_ appeared eight to ten
years after _The Origin of Species_) it is impossible to say precisely
what is and what is not the outcome of external circumstances in
women. In fact it is ridiculous to speak of a possible residuum
after the influence of external circumstances has been deducted. The
evolutionary hypothesis postulates a method according to which it is
conceivable that biological transformations have occurred in the past.
This method can be summed up in the following words: The survival of
the fittest (the best adapted to life’s circumstances) through the
operation of natural selection. But this very law presupposes the
action of environment on the organism. It may make every allowance
possible for an innate power in the organism to evolve along certain
lines (Darwin gave some weight to this factor), but it must reckon
with the influence of external circumstances notwithstanding. In fact,
“adapted to environment” is exactly what is meant by “fit,” and no
more. In the light of this theory—and this is the only accepted theory
with which they could have been familiar—what becomes of Mesdames Mill
and Taylor’s supposed “residuum,” when once the results of external
circumstances have been deducted? It may mean nothing at all. It may
mean the original protoplasm from which all life is supposed to have
sprung. It may mean a remote member of the anthropoid ape class, or an
antediluvian squirrel.
It was, however, never intended that it should undergo so severe an
inspection. It is simply one example, flagrant but instructive, of a
woman’s “natural” duplicity or dishonesty. If accepted, it makes all
inquiry into the nature of man and woman, even on the broadest lines,
utterly impossible. If taken seriously, it renders every conclusion you
can possibly draw concerning that nature utterly invalid. —And this,
indeed, is its precise intention. This is exactly the function it was
expected to perform. Mrs. Taylor and her daughter could hope to achieve
no more by it.
Advance any opinion on woman’s nature, consonant or not with a sane
view of the women of to-day, the women of history, the women of myth,
and the women of tradition, and immediately Mrs. Taylor would shoot
up from behind her neatly framed and quasi-learned sentence, and
declare that your opinion was quite incompatible with her alleged and
hypothetical “residuum.”[153] All argument was thus stifled for ever,
all discussion, all inquiry, all belief! But what did Mrs. Taylor
care? With all those who were susceptible of being duped by her verbal
conjuring, she had achieved this remarkable success, that she had
silenced them on the subject of her sex’s vices and virtues.
These sentences, and many more like them, constitute the burden of the
argument in _The Subjection of Women_, and make it not only valueless,
but also dangerously misleading. The pamphlet remains the most unhappy
record of Mill’s character as a thinker.
It is impossible here to examine this hermaphrodite pamphlet line
by line; but the fact which makes the disingenuousness of these
early lines so monstrous is that the remainder of the book depends
upon them, evolves necessarily from them, and falls entirely to the
ground if it be deprived of them. When, therefore, it is remembered
that this book has exercised a potent influence over half a century
of English life,[154] and that its principles have formed the basis
of many hundreds of books of the same kind, and of a movement
which ultimately fixed the coping-stone into the arch of stupidity
supporting our political life, we cannot too severely condemn, not
only the carelessness of a man who could so imperfectly distinguish
senile sentimentality from his duty to the public, but also the
unscrupulousness of two full-grown females who could take advantage
of an old man’s blind infatuation in order to mar books, written under
his own signature, with the dialectical tactics of contentious and
indignant housewives.[155]
Even if we examine the historical value of the ostensibly historic
basis of Mill’s contention, we find it entirely unsubstantiated by
fact. Mill says: “What is now called the nature of women is an entirely
artificial thing—_the result of forced regression in some directions,
unnatural stimulation in others_.”
Taken up by a thousand angry female voices, this came to mean
at the end of the nineteenth century that, if women were _as
they were_—inferior to man in intellectual power, in honesty, in
reliability, in social instincts, in taste, etc.—it was because
throughout their history as a sex they had been oppressed and deprived
of the opportunities of improvement.
Now, even if the first part of the sentence were true (and we have
already shown how false it is), the latter part remains utterly
untenable.
The fact that women throughout their history have had to play the part
of mothers, and therefore to stay very much at home, cannot be meant as
the artificial factor in their evolution. We cannot therefore conceive
of Mrs. Taylor’s having been so palpably foolish as to suppose that
it was their motherhood that constituted this “forced repression”
and “unnatural stimulation.” Have there been “forced repression” and
“unnatural stimulation” in other respects—at least in the history of
our race?
Men of the J. S. Mill school say that you can trace women’s bondage
throughout the ages, that you can see how they have been withheld both
from places of responsibility and from opportunities for intellectual
development ever since the dawn of history. But is this a fact? Is the
evidence in favour of this view? Personally, I am convinced that the
evidence is entirely against it.
Within the limits naturally described by their destiny as mothers,
we can, on the contrary, positively assert that, at least in England
and France, nothing—no obstacle, no restriction and no harsh measure
whatsoever have stood in the way of women’s development.
Throughout the whole of its history, our people have been careful to
place no barrier in the path of women’s advancement. It is rather the
other way; everything has been done to enhance and to promote their
importance.
Speaking of the early Teutonic tribes, from which we partly sprang,
Tacitus emphasizes the prominent rôle that was allowed to the women
for generations. “They neither scorn to consult them, nor slight their
answers,” said Tacitus. “They even believe that a certain sanctity
and prescience characterize the female sex. We have seen Veleda ...
long revered as a deity by many. Aurima, besides, and many more,
were formerly treated with the same veneration, but not with slavish
adulation, nor as if they were goddesses.”[156] Speaking of the
neighbours of the Suiones, the Sitones, Tacitus says, they “differ in
submitting to a female ruler; so far have they degenerated, not only
from liberty, but even from slavery.”[157] Gibbon, after referring
more particularly to those women in the early Teutonic tribes who
were revered as goddesses, goes on to say: “The rest of the sex,
without being adored as goddesses, were respected as the free and equal
companions of soldiers; associated even by the marriage ceremony to a
life of toil, of danger and of glory.”[158]
“Even more marked than among the Teutonic and Frisian races,” says Dr.
Browne, “was the recognition of women in the early Celtic races, whose
blood—somewhat diluted—is in our veins.”[159] Two hundred years before
the coming of Christ, in the league between Hannibal and the Celts,
there was the following clause: “If the Celtae have complaints against
the Carthaginians the Carthaginian commander in Spain shall judge it.
But if the Carthaginians have anything to lay to the charge of the
Celtae, it shall be brought before the Celtic women.”[160]
As regards the women of Anglo-Saxon England, the evidence of their
freedom and high cultivation is so voluminous that it would be
impossible to quote it in detail. We have only to mention such names
as Rowena, Guiniver, Bertha, Ethelburga, Eanfled, Redburga and
Osburga[161] the mother of Alfred the Great. Editha, the consort of
Edward the Confessor, appears to have been a remarkable woman. The
Saxon historian, Ingulphus, speaks highly of her learning and her
domestic gifts, while Edith, or Alfgith, Harold’s wife, seems to have
been at least a creature of refined sentiments. We also know that
all mixed monasteries in Anglo-Saxon times were ruled over by able
women.[162] “In 694 five Kentish abbesses were present at the Council
of Beckenham and signed the decrees above all the presbyters,”[163] and
Anglo-Saxon women also became the heads of monastic institutions in
Thuringia. Dr. Browne tells us, moreover, that 1250 years ago those of
our English ancestors who could afford it sent their daughters to Paris
to be educated.[164]
With the arrival of the Normans, the already important position of
women could but be still further enhanced; for, the Normans having
attained to an even higher grade of civilization, brought with them
the notion, created and taught by the troubadours and minstrels of
France and Italy, that the softer sex was entitled, not only to
the protection and tenderness, but also to the homage and service
of all true knights.[165] Certainly if Emma, wife of Ethelred, and
subsequently of Canute, represented the type of Norman women, they
must have been a remarkable breed. I do not attach as much blame to
her, as some are inclined to do, for sacrificing the interests of her
children by her first husband to those by her second marriage with the
Danish conqueror—and this seems the gravamen of the charges brought
against her, even by Edward the Confessor; for we have to remember two
circumstances in mitigation of this charge: (1) Her possible greater
love for her second husband; (2) His ascendancy over her, to which it
is a credit to her to have yielded, and consequently the likelihood of
his having been himself responsible for her attitude to the children
of the first bed. In any case, the fact that Edward the Confessor
himself fell at her feet imploring her pardon with tears, after she had
successfully passed through the ordeal of walking barefoot unscathed
over nine red-hot ploughshares in Winchester cathedral, in order to
clear herself of the charges brought against her by her foes; and the
fact that he submitted to the discipline at the high altar, as a
penance for having exposed her to such a test of her innocence, are, to
my mind, overwhelming evidence in her favour. On this score, alone, I
feel safe in concluding that she must have been a remarkable woman not
only for her own time, but for all time.[166]
In the Middle Ages, therefore, women may be said to have enjoyed
a position, not only of untrammelled freedom, but of exceptional
honour. Matilda of Scotland, Adelicia of Louvaine, the third Matilda,
Berengaria, Eleanor of Castille, were creatures who could only have
deployed the qualities they did deploy, in an age in which every
opportunity was afforded for female education and development. And,
indeed, Mill himself sees an objection to his argument here;[167] for
all historians are unanimous. Women were voting in municipal elections
in France as early as 1316 and 1331. Guizot, writing of the women
of the Middle Ages, says: “_Quand le possesseur de fief d’ailleurs
sortait de son château pour aller chercher la guerre et les aventures,
sa femme y restait, et dans une situation toute différente de celle
que jusque’là les femmes avaient presque toujours eue. Elle y restait
maîtresse, châtelaine représentant son mari, chargée en son absence de
la défense et de l’honneur du fief. Cette situation élevée et presque
souveraine, au sein même de la vie domestique, a souvent donné aux
femmes de l’époque féodale une dignité, un courage, des vertus, un
éclat qu’elles n’avaient point déployés ailleurs, et elle a, sans nul
doute, puissamment contribué à leur développement moral et au progrès
général de leur condition._”[168]
We know that women surgeons were quite common in the Middle Ages;[169]
Queen Philippa had one, Cecilia of Oxford[170]; the Middle Ages also
produced many women writers; while there is even reason to believe that
the ordinary duties of motherhood—which presumably Mill and his female
authority would have regarded as part of the factors making for women’s
subjection—were evaded by certain mediæval mothers.[171]
When we come to more recent times, with the more plentiful material
that lies to hand, we are able to demonstrate beyond a doubt that, if
ever women had limitations forcibly imposed upon the development of
their intellect or character, it was certainly not in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. In France in 1576 they were voting for the
elections of the States-general, and in the same century they held
seats in the States Assembly of Franche-Conté. As regards protection of
the female in France in this and the following two centuries, it was
rigorous to the point of being inhuman. In 1579 there was a law that
made rape a capital offence.[172] In 1709 a certain Sieur La Gravigne
was condemned to capital punishment for having seduced a girl with whom
he had eloped; in 1712 a member of the Paris Parliament was ordered to
pay 60,000 livres damages (or 200,000 francs) for breach of promise,
and in 1738 the Parliament at Dijon condemned the Marquis de Tavannes
to death for having eloped with a Demoiselle de Bron.[173]
Miss Alice Clark has gone to great pains to collect some of the
evidence that may be adduced on this subject, in so far as England of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is concerned, and speaking
of the women of the sixteenth century she says: “The ladies of the
Elizabethan period possessed courage, initiative, resourcefulness and
wit in a high degree. Society expected them to play a great part in the
national life and they rose to the occasion; perhaps it was partly the
comradeship with their husbands in the struggle for existence which
developed in them qualities which had otherwise been atrophied.”[174]
Of the women of the seventeenth century, she has shown how many
were their opportunities of becoming self-reliant, versatile and
resourceful. “At the beginning of the seventeenth century,” she tells
us, “it was usual for the women of the aristocracy to be very busy
with affairs—affairs which concerned their household, their estates,
and even the Government.... Among the nobility the management of the
estate was often left for months in the wife’s care.... In addition to
the household accounts, those of the whole of Judge Fell’s estate at
Swarthmore, Lancashire [_circa_ 1670-1680] were kept by his daughter
Sarah.” These accounts “show that the family affairs included a farm,
a forge, mines, some interest in shipping and something of the nature
of a bank.... A granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, the wife of Thos.
Bendish, was also interested in the salt business, having property in
salt works at Yarmouth in the management of which she was actively
concerned,”[175] etc., etc.
“A book might be wholly filled with the story of the part taken by
women in the political and religious struggles of the period,” says
Miss Clark. “They were also active among the crowd who perpetually
besieged the Court for grants of wardships and monopolies or
patents.”[176]
“From the women who begged for monopolies which if granted must have
involved much worry and labour if they were to be made profitable,”
continues Miss Clark, “we pass naturally to women who actually owned
and managed businesses requiring a considerable amount of capital.
They not infrequently acted as pawn-brokers and money-lenders.... The
names of women often occur in connexion with the shipping trade and
with contracts.... Women’s names appear in lists of contractors to the
Army and Navy,”[177] etc., etc. In short, I cannot do better than refer
the reader to Miss Clark’s excellent treatise; and should he leave it
still thinking, with Mesdames Taylor, that the _Subjection of Women_ is
clearly demonstrated at least by the life of the seventeenth century,
he will have formed an opinion strangely at variance with the facts
adduced.
Now, in the face of all this evidence—and I do not pretend to know,
much less to have adduced, a hundredth part of it—in view, moreover, of
the prominent part that women, even of the most obscure origin, played
in the literature of the eighteenth century, and the independence with
which they moved in society, how can it any longer be maintained,
with any semblance of honesty, that there has been, as if from malice
aforethought, a male conspiracy to achieve the subjection of women?
In trying to explain away certain female characteristics, which are
as unanimously testified to to-day as they have been in all ages of
history, by ascribing them to a distortion of “true” or “natural”
woman—whoever or wherever she may be—as if woman were only just at this
moment coming into her own, as if in fact she were only just emerging
from a dark and stifling obscurity that had stunted her, Mill and his
followers are guilty of a deliberate lie. They imply that which it is
incumbent upon them to prove, and they do so with the full-throated
sentimentality of romanticists, who cannot be quite sensible, who
must have a tear in their eye, and a lump in their throat, when they
pronounce the word “Woman.”
But the falsehood, palpable as it was, succeeded by means of its
flattering innuendo, in convincing every woman in Great Britain,
who had reasons for being discontented and disgruntled. Indeed, so
flattering was the innuendo, that even if the alleged subjection was
not a historical fact, it was felt that at least it ought to have been.
And what was this flattering innuendo in Mrs. Taylor’s falsehood?—It
was this: That if hitherto women had produced no outstanding work,
no epoch-making masterpiece in the arts or in the sciences, if, in
fact, European women had not been so very different from the women of
tradition and antiquity, it was not because men were specially gifted,
or radically different from them, but simply because European women had
been stunted by oppression!
This was much too fascinating a lie ever to be suspected or distrusted
by the overweening champions of Women’s Rights, either in the late
nineteenth or the early twentieth century; hence the eager speed with
which it was swallowed down—hence too Mill’s inordinate popularity! A
large majority of women, it is true, were a little too thoughtful, or
a little too well informed, to be duped by it; but the disgruntled and
arrogant minority won the day.[178]
It is perfectly true, of course—indeed nothing could be plainer—that
man, throughout the ages, even of European history, has been unable
to relieve woman of those duties which, as a mother, and therefore as
a homekeeper, have necessarily devolved upon her;[179] but neither
has he been able to relieve himself of the duties of the soldier, the
sailor, the hewer of wood, and the drawer of water. Nobody in his
senses, however (unless he were infatuated with a second Mrs. Taylor),
would argue that because man has been unable to relieve woman of those
duties, therefore he has distorted her “true” nature.
For the truth is, the fact remains (securely as Mill was blinded to
it) that even in those departments of social life which for centuries,
almost from time immemorial, have constituted practically the
undisputed domain of woman—woman’s Empire, woman’s peculiar field for
enterprise and initiative, where her independence and supremacy have
been unchallenged—in cooking, clothing and child-care, such ineptitude,
such inability to improve, such gross and stubborn stupidity have been
shown, that only when men took over these departments of knowledge, as
special branches of study, was there any sign, any hope, any certainty
of progress being made.
Even if we were so easily hoodwinked as to be led to admit that
woman’s relative intellectual inferiority, her lack of creative and
inventive ability in other spheres, did not constitute a natural
sexual characteristic, but were the outcome of a deliberate attempt
on our part to withhold from her the opportunities of acquiring
ability in those spheres, how are we to explain the marked deficiency
of intelligence and initiative which she has shown as a sex in the
elaboration and perfection of those arts or sciences, such as cooking,
clothing, and child-care, which have practically been her exclusive
domain for ages? Here she was supreme. Here she was entirely free and
untrammelled. By now she could have converted each of these pursuits
into an exact science. She has had the time, the hereditary bias, and
the accumulated knowledge of tradition, all on her side. And yet, as
we know, it was only when men took these departments in hand, that
they began to wear the aspect of properly regulated and scientific
occupations.
To-day the high authorities, the only authorities, on cooking are all
men. To-day, if a woman for some reason or other is unable to nurse
her new-born child, she cannot turn to the traditional wisdom of her
sex,[180] she cannot even turn to a classical work on child welfare
written by _one_ member of her sex, she must turn to man; for the
high authorities on this subject, at the time of writing, are all men
like Dr. Eric Pritchard, or else women who have learnt all they know
directly from them. To-day, every fashion, whether of men’s or of
women’s clothing, is entirely the creation of the male mind. A group
of men in England direct the former, and a group of men in France
autocratically prescribe the latter.
The only circumstance that could possibly make me regret the death of
a woman like Mrs. Taylor, many years before my own birth, is that it
has rendered me unable to confront her with these facts, and to ask
her how she accounts, or how she would have made poor Mill account,
for this colossal, incurable and wellnigh incredible lack of ability
in thousands of generations of women, in occupations where they had
everything their own way for centuries.
In England, in the Middle Ages, a proverb was current to the effect
that “God sent us meat and the devil ordained the cooking of
it.”[181] The cooking of food, which has remained in the hands of
women for a longer period in England than in France, is, in England,
notoriously atrocious. The clothing of women, which in England is
more remote from the male focus of inspiration than in France, is in
England proverbially inferior—despite fashion-books and a constant
cross-Channel stream of British fashion-spies. While the fact that
child-welfare centres are being opened up everywhere (inspired
originally by male doctors, and the results of male research), in order
to teach women how to take care of their babies, is surely proof enough
of the abysmal ignorance into which the traditional mother of history
has sunk, regarding a calling which has been her own exclusive field
from the beginning of time, and which she ought to have perfected at
the very dawn of history.
If Mill had, with one masterly shake of his muddled head, removed
those soft pink fingers from his brow, he might possibly have seen
all this, and have left his MS. in some conspicuous place where his
wise housemaid (who consigned Carlyle’s _French Revolution_ to the
flames) might have done the same by his own _Subjection of Women_. But
with characteristic confusion he mistook erotic vividness for mental
vision, and thus added one great intellectual blunder to the many which
contributed towards forming late nineteenth-century opinion.
* * * * *
Unlike man, whose nature is more variegated and more subject to
variation, woman is possessed of a _primum mobile_ that we can
recognize—that is to say, she is actuated by a mainspring, a ruling
motive, that we can observe in operation. As we have seen, this _primum
mobile_ constitutes her the chief custodian and preserver of Life,
and the chief promoter of Life’s multiplication. In fact, these two
functions constitute her principal importance, and endow her with
her great power and her great value. Everything else in woman is of
minor significance. If, therefore, we assume at this stage in our
treatise—for the point has been demonstrated often enough—that the
positive woman’s incessant and unconscious impetus is in the direction
of Life and its multiplication, we may expect to find in woman all the
virtues that guarantee the survival of the species, and all the vices
which Life itself reveals in the pursuit of this same object.
Seeing that the pursuit of Life and its multiplication is in Nature an
activity that is untrammelled by any moral consideration whatsoever, we
may ask ourselves, whether in view of the difficulty of improving upon
Nature’s methods in this respect, and in view, moreover, of the fact
that woman is a child of Nature, we are not justified in recognizing in
woman a _primum mobile_ that is also completely a-moral.
If we are so justified, then it follows that all woman’s deeper
characteristics, as Nature’s characteristics, are not moral but
immoral, not social but unsocial, not lawful but lawless.[182]
Let us proceed to examine this statement more narrowly. A woman’s
deepest characteristics are termed by us unmoral. What does that
precisely mean? We have admitted that what constitutes woman’s greatest
value and her greatest power is that she is the chief supporter of
the vital functions—the promotion and preservation of Life. If,
therefore, she is also immoral, it must mean that, in the fulfilment
of her destiny, she has often to run counter, as Nature does, to our
standard of moral integrity. Therefore, that if she were moral, this
would be a hindrance and an obstacle in the way of her destiny. But how
will she reveal this immorality, or a-morality?—My reply is, in being
like Nature utterly unscrupulous in the means she adopts to achieve
her vital end—that is to say, more intent on the vital end than on
anything else, such as truth, honour, justice, fair-play, etc., etc.
For morality means scruples, it involves the necessity of regarding
scruples as obstacles in the way of certain actions. If, therefore, we
can show that woman, like Nature, is unscrupulous in her promotion and
preservation of Life, we will have gone some way towards establishing
the fact of her immorality.
Before, however, we proceed with this inquiry, we should like to remind
all readers, who at this point may begin to feel their cheeks mantling
with indignation, that, since from the optimist’s point of view it is
desirable for the human species to survive, a very high sanction indeed
prevails over woman’s vital unscrupulousness, however surprising and
unexpected its consequences may prove to be.[183] For instance, if, as
we hope we have already abundantly shown, woman’s chief and deepest
concern is the multiplication and preservation of life, it is obvious
that, when confronted by a situation in which a lie will secure her
vital end, and one in which truth will defeat it, she will naturally
and instinctively choose to lie—not because she necessarily prefers
to lie, but because _she is more concerned about the end in view than
the means she adopts to achieve it_, and every lie to her is a “white”
lie that secures her vital end. If then from a vital indifference to
truth she ultimately reveals an ordinary indifference to truth in the
common and less vital circumstances of everyday life, we must blame,
not a fundamental perversity of her nature, which would seem to suggest
that moral obliquity is a deep-rooted and ineradicable element of her
psyche, but a self-preservative characteristic of the race which,
though manifesting itself, as it were, unnecessarily and provokingly
in everyday affairs, nevertheless, if absent altogether, would prove
the most serious menace to the survival of humanity. In the form of a
simile we might say that, just as the good army marksman annoys us
when, in peace-time, he disturbs our quiet moments with his incessant
revolver or rifle practice, and his insatiable desire to “pot” anything
and everything, yet we applaud and defend his love of his fire-arm and
his skill with it, when, in time of war, he and his like defend our
homes and ourselves by “accounting” for numbers of the enemy.
Is that clear? In plain English, to take an extreme case, if a girl
is to be equipped with that ability for wiles and small deceptions
which, despite adverse circumstances, are to enable her to secure a
lover and a husband and a large family early in life; if, moreover,
she is to be prepared to go to extreme lengths to defend and promote
the welfare of her children (as all good mothers are), and also to
secure their survival and success over the heads of other and possibly
more deserving or better children (as all good mothers are prepared
to do[184]); if, moreover, in her relations with her husband and her
children, she is to display that tact and diplomacy which always secure
her the victory in domestic negotiations; then, it seems to me, we have
a creature whose special gifts will extend beyond her family and its
vital concerns, and invade all the other circumstances of her life,
and who will inevitably practise wiles and small deceptions in those
conditions where life, its multiplication and preservation are not
necessarily in question.
The fact, however, that such a creature may be detected again and again
in some act of unscrupulousness, not necessarily concerned directly
with Life, or some vital interest, does not mean that she is perverse
or depraved for the sake of perversity and depravity, as ends in
themselves, but simply that her vital unscrupulousness cannot well be
confined to the business of Life and its multiplication, and cannot
exist as a useful characteristic of her being, without manifesting
itself in conditions and circumstances where no vital consideration is
at stake. In other words, if you are to have a good house-dog, who will
protect you from burglars at night, you must warn your milkman and your
dustman, although they have no dishonest intention in entering your
garden, not to go too near him, for his useful characteristic is bound
to manifest itself in circumstances and conditions where its usefulness
is not vital.
When from folklore and myth, from national proverbs and tradition,
and from the text-books of the oldest religions, therefore, we learn
that woman is two-faced, or false, or treacherous, or disloyal, while
we cannot expect these sources of information to give us also their
reasons for their verdict, we have at least a hint that something
deeper is in question than an obliquity of mind. For one would have
thought that centuries of schooling would have eradicated these
characteristics from women, and that if they have failed to do so,
something more essential to woman’s nature than a mere perversion of
mind may be suspected. Neither is it enough to point, as Lombroso
does, to woman’s relative weakness, to her periodical functional
disturbances, to her modesty, etc., to account for a trait so
universally attested.[185]
The positive woman who is disloyal to her absent husband is not
disloyal from weakness, she is disloyal owing to the vital impulse
of her large and important reproductive organs, which, after a spell
of idleness, clamorously demand employment. The woman who lies about
her age, or about her antecedents, or about any other circumstance
of her life, in order to secure a husband or a lover, does not do so
because she is relatively weaker than the man she wishes to secure, but
because, again, her unconscious mind urges her to procure fertilization
at all costs.
The unfairness of the attitude of most psychologists and other men to
the phenomenon of unreliability and deception in woman, consists in
the fact that they condemn it without understanding it; while those
who neither condemn it nor understand it stubbornly, stupidly, and
sentimentally deny it in the face of all the overwhelming evidence
in proof of its existence. But when once you admit that duplicity
and disloyalty in women are part of a vital principle making for the
multiplication and preservation of life, and serving the best interests
of the species, you are no longer even entitled to condemn those same
characteristics when they happen to operate in circumstances and
conditions inconvenient to yourself. You cannot always expect to have
it both ways, and if the species profits by a certain principle in the
female, it must expect to pay for that principle somewhere, somewhen.
To attempt to make woman perfectly honest and upright would therefore
be to attack the most vital impulse within her[186]—that impulse which
causes her to be eager to the point of unscrupulousness in securing
and preserving a multiplication of life. And yet there are many wise
fools, both men and women, who have solemnly set themselves that
object, and are striving to achieve it by every means in their power.
If we observe Nature herself engaged upon the same task that
constitutes woman’s principal concern in life, we observe the same
unscrupulousness. Nature stops at nothing to achieve this end. All
means are good to her: rapine, deception, falsehood, usurpation of
rights, bullying, stealth, robbery, invasion, and complete indifference
to quality and desirability.
Life in Nature is a continuous process of inter-racial and intra-racial
struggles for power and supremacy, with no principle, except the one of
“more life” in each race or species, governing the whole. Every species
behaves as if it alone had the right to exist on earth, irrespective
of all other claims. The fact that there are more species of parasites
than of any other kind of organism shows that this universal process of
rapine and deception is pursued without any natural exercise of favour
for what, from the human standpoint, can be called desirability. The
parasite kills the human genius just as readily as it kills the cow,
and the locusts devour the food which is the only sustenance of the
ewe and her lamb. Without scruple, and without favour, Nature’s one
cry is “Life!” and evermore “Life!” and whether the success of the
struggle falls to what we should call the “nobler” species, or to the
“inferior,” is a matter of utter indifference to her.
When men like Weininger, Lombroso, Havelock Ellis, and many others,
inveigh against Nature turned woman, and see the same unscrupulousness
concentrated on one form of survival—human survival—the fact that
they do not trace this characteristic to a positive and vital source
makes their moral condemnation of women worthless and unworthy of a
scientific thinker.[187]
In woman I recognize some of the principal virtues that make for a
continuance of the human species on earth: (1) Unreflecting constancy
to the demands of Life;[188] (2) Untiring interest in the processes of
Life and its multiplication (which in its minor ramifications lead to
that intense concern about all human affairs, which, in opprobrious
language, is called “a love of scandal-mongering”); (3) A capacity
for desperate bravery in defending or succouring human life; (4) A
capacity for single-minded devotion to her own offspring (which in its
minor ramifications often manifests itself in the virgin, and in the
spinster of all ages, as a single-minded devotion to a purpose, to an
idea, or to a cause); (5) A capacity for bodily purity, or chastity,
which in the more passionate type of woman is based upon an instinct
to withhold herself until her heart and her affections are captured
(this in its spiritual ramifications leads to intellectual obstinacy,
conservatism, or fanaticism. Thus a woman’s citadel of opinions, like
her bodily citadel, is only liable to capitulation when her heart and
her affections are engaged).
These five cardinal virtues of woman constitute her eternal claim to
glory and to respect; in each of them she is a natural mistress, a
gifted virtuosa. They are of so much value, of so much moment, to the
human species, that they overshadow every catalogue of foibles and
vices that has ever been drawn up against her by a Weininger or a
Schopenhauer, and she who possesses them can afford even to forgive
a Weininger or a Schopenhauer. Noble as they are in themselves, they
can claim in addition the highest possible sanction and testimonial
that it is possible for a human character to receive—the sanction and
testimonial of Human Survival itself, without which no virtue on earth
can hope to last or to prevail, and by the side of which the mere
applause and approval of one or many generations of men is but as a
pair of bellows puffing in the wind.
To appreciate these virtues of woman at their proper worth, however,
a stronger and more vital generation of people is needed than any
that has appeared, in England at least, for the last 250 years. The
very fact that, at the present day, the general concensus of opinion
among men would accord to women quite a different set of virtues, is a
sufficient sign of the degeneracy that has occurred.
To-day, for instance, a Parliament of Englishmen or Anglo-Saxons
would, in enumerating woman’s virtues, speak about—(1) Her moralizing
influence on Society;[189] (2) Her unselfishness (whatever that may
mean!); (3) Her powers of self-sacrifice (this is the result of sick
values and a confusion of thought—see pp. 77-79); (4) Her intuition
(a great myth, the outcome of woman’s habit of saying the first thing
that enters her head, and which, according to the laws of chance,
must be right sometimes); (5) Her humanitarianism (a mischievous
misunderstanding)—all weak, or at least, fictitious qualities, that no
full-blooded woman would ever do anything more than pretend to possess,
and which made Huxley say “that woman’s virtue was man’s most poetic
fiction!”
If, however, we choose to dwell on the five cardinal virtues that
derive directly from the great vital impulse within her, and to think
of the many useful minor virtues that spring from them, we have a list
which, if it is less goody-goody than the above, is both hardier and
more compatible with reality.
From (1), which we call the _Unreflecting constancy to the demands
of Life_, we can see the following as derivatives: (_a_) Woman’s
constancy to the circumstances (and therefore to the man) who
enables her to meet the demands of Life. (_b_) Her intensely keen
sense of self-preservation, when the danger threatening her is
not life-promoting. This accounts for her caution, her sagacity
in suspecting the unfamiliar, and her over-anxiousness in public
thoroughfares, or on railway platforms, on board ship, and in the
neighbourhood of restive horses, etc. (_c_) Her quick recognition
of the fact that a given environment cannot procure the demands of
Life—hence her mobility, tractableness, docility, amenability, and
readiness to follow at great personal risk, until such time as she
has found the environment that can procure her the demands of Life.
In all communities where marriage is difficult owing to a superfluity
of women, girls thus show a tendency frequently to change their
environment, and are quite unconscious that in so doing they are
pursuing tactics which are calculated to enable them to meet Life’s
demands. Thus, they will leave home to study Political Economy, or
Sculpture, and when that fails they will change over to child-welfare,
or to nursing, and if that fails they will try secretarial work—giving
as their reason at each change, that the previous work “did not satisfy
them.” If economic pressure compels, they will of course be forced to
remain in one occupation, whether it satisfies the demands of Life or
not; but those who can afford it, will, as a rule, be restless until
they find an environment which promises them fertilization. (_d_) Her
ability to put up with any number of inconveniences and discomforts,
provided that the demands of Life are procured for her—hence her
stoicism in poverty, or any other kind of distress, despite the fact
that her children share it; hence her cheerful courage in those vital
inconveniences connected with an existence in which the demands of
Life are being met—illness, the incessant clatter of many children,
the hard work that a number of children imposes upon a poor female
parent, etc., etc. (_e_) Her ability to treat all life emotionally.
The very quality of unreasoning or unreflecting constancy to the
demands of Life, involves an impulsive attitude towards them. I used
the word “unreflecting” purposely. It is because woman does not pause
to reflect whether it is proper, or expedient, or right, that she
should perform a certain action to meet the demands of Life, that she
can be so thoroughly relied upon to perform it punctually. If she
reflected, it would presuppose hesitation, therefore delay, therefore
possibly inaction. But it should be remembered that this attitude is a
purely emotional one, and since the business of Life, with the various
relationships the family creates, is largely a matter of the emotions
too, and not of the reflective or reasoning faculties, it follows that
the tradition or history of woman’s mental life is largely confined to
the play and the exercise of the emotions. Life, as far as normal woman
is concerned, is a matter of affection, of attachment and devotion,
first to the man of her heart, and lastly to the children of her blood.
Where she may be expected to be practised, gifted and versatile,
therefore, is precisely in this sphere of the emotions; for they alone
are capable of directing that unreflecting form of action that the
demands of Life impose upon her. A mistress of feeling, therefore, we
cannot expect her to be so perfect at reflection.[190]
From (2), which we call the _Untiring interest in the processes of
Life and its multiplication_, we can see the following derivations:
(_a_) Woman’s helpfulness and readiness to be of use in all those
circumstances in a neighbour’s, friend’s, or relative’s home, in which
she comes in close contact with Life’s most serious business, at
moments of child-birth, serious illness, and death, and particularly
at moments of great domestic upheavals, such as times of serious
disagreement, and all tragic occurrences, between couples. The
fact that these virtues necessarily involve such an all-embracing
interest in human affairs, that a love of scandal is an almost
inevitable counterpart of them, is not difficult to see. The evils of
scandal-mongering, however, are grossly exaggerated. All decent, humane
and humanity-loving people revel in scandal, and I have never yet met a
woman who was worth knowing who was not an inveterate scandal-monger.
“The proper study of mankind is Man,” said Pope, and he was entirely
right. But what is scandal-mongering, and the exhaustive discussion
of one’s acquaintances, relatives and friends, but an essential
description of that “proper study”? Husbands who do not sympathize
with their wives’ love of scandal, and who refuse to join with them in
expatiating on tittle-tattle, are usually inhuman and narrow men, such
men as make good engineers, good mathematicians, good chemists, and
good sailors or explorers. These men will expect their wives to listen
breathlessly when they discuss sport or some other futile subject as
remote as possible from humanity, and yet will show impatience if their
wives discuss the marital relations of their next-door neighbour. (_b_)
This virtue makes women very observant of little odd characteristics
in their fellow-creatures. And if women are, as a rule, such good
mimics and imitators, it is due partly to the earnestness with which
they observe other men and women (the other reason for their power of
imitation I shall give under (5)). Women will frequently draw wrong
conclusions from the traits they have observed—this I do not deny—but
the interesting point is that they usually observe the traits.
From (3), which we called _Desperate bravery in defending and
succouring human life_, we can see the following derivatives: (_a_) The
readiness to incur mortal risk for a child of their own (quite common);
for a husband (very rare, except in early days of marriage when
children have not yet arrived); for a loved human creature of any kind.
(_b_) A certain foolhardy and reckless daring in engaging overwhelming
odds for the sake of achieving a vital purpose (a woman will assault
a man twice her size and three or four times her strength at such
moments). (_c_) A capacity for a fierce unrelenting hatred towards
enemies, deceivers, or betrayers of those she loves. (_d_) In the
realm of the spirit, a readiness to perform a mad feat of intrepidity
to defend or promote an idea (Miss Emily Davison in that marvellous
rush at the King’s horse in the Derby of 1913.[191] We loathed the
cause for which she fought, but we honoured and admired the fierce
single-mindedness with which she and the other militant suffragettes
fought for it).
From (4), which we call _A capacity for single-minded devotion to her
own offspring_, we can see the following derivatives: (_a_) Woman’s
unswerving tenacity of purpose in serving and ministering to those she
loves. (_b_) Her indefatigable industry on behalf of those who depend
on her, so that she is able, like a horse, to work herself to death,
provided she loves and knows she is loved. (_c_) In the spiritual
realm, her capacity for fanatical adherence to a cause, to a belief,
to a faith, and her corresponding fierce antagonism to those who
oppose that cause or faith. (_d_) Her pride in her own offspring and
her consequent tendency to undervalue or to dislike the offspring of
others. When this sentiment is stimulated to its zenith by the fact
that the offspring of others happen to be the offspring of the former
possessor of her man’s love, you get the staggering cruelties of the
stepmother. Thus in woman’s nature does good merge into evil, and evil
merge into good.[192]
It is certainly in this _capacity for single-minded devotion to her
own offspring_ that, generally speaking, the greatest beauty of
woman’s character is revealed; and to one who has experienced it in
all its perfection and intensity, there is perhaps some pardonable
difficulty in speaking about it either with calm or with moderation.
The very effort of seeking, in writing, a suitable expression for his
feelings in this matter may well seem to a man to subject them to a
limitation and temperateness which he can hardly regard as sincere;
and, ultimately, in the coldness of the printed page, he can perceive,
at best, but a poor travesty of the sentiments he wished to convey.
Everything connected with this virtue is at once so useful to the race,
and so unique and unforgettable as an individual experience, that
it seems only fitting to pause for a moment here to dwell on one or
two of its most stirring features. Passing over the first months and
years when the only force between helpless, pitiably dependent life,
and death—or at least neglect—is precisely this mother’s instinct,
this jealous care, when inarticulate infancy can neither acknowledge,
return thanks for, nor, what is perhaps more perplexing, realize all
the thousand and one services that are cheerfully performed in order to
promote its growth and its comfort; passing over, too, those moments
of the silent watcher, of the sleepless sentry, in which, during
times of danger, every breath is a prayer, and every smile a song
of thanksgiving; we would like more particularly to concentrate upon
that period of early childhood, on that age of babbling tongue and
unsteady gait, when most of that which is to be of use in life, and
indeed most of that which is never to be forgotten in life, is learnt
at the mother’s side. Not that we would wish to reduce by one iota the
importance of the former period, the most wonderful aspect of which
is, perhaps, the joy that is felt by either side in simply playing its
appointed rôle; but rather because in the latter period both parties
are conscious of this same joy, and are in a position to prolong it,
transmute it and preserve it, until long after that age when the
positions become reversed, and dependence has begun on the side of the
once protecting mother.
There is in the child of a good mother, a spirit so confiding, so
receptive, so perfectly trustful, that possibly at no other age are
the pre-requisites for sound education more completely present than in
those first years of life at the dawn of which a fold of the mother’s
skirt still offers a substantial amount of support to legs that are
learning both bearing power and balance. What happens then, and how it
happens, will, of course, never be properly recorded; for lessons are
given and lessons are learnt without sufficient conscious effort on
either side for the method to be made a subject of exact knowledge. But
the result is gradually made manifest by the marvellous transformation
of an inarticulate little animal, whose whole horizon is bounded by
food, sleep and apparently purposeless limb-exercises, into a creature
that can express its wishes, demand explanations of the things about
it, learn to recognize the first rules of decent behaviour, and, what
is more, shed its own fresh light on the problems of existence; and, if
what it learns later on may, from the standpoint of material utility,
bear a more imposing and less chaotic aspect, certainly nothing it has
failed to learn at this period will ever be acquired at any subsequent
stage of its existence. It cannot be said that it has mastered any
definite system of thought, or that it has memorized any particularly
striking fact; it may not even have learnt the very patience and
gentleness which its mother has constantly exhibited in her care of it.
Nevertheless, it has learnt things which, in solemn truth, can be said
to be little short of priceless.
Let it not be suspected, however, because we can find only vague
phraseology for our purpose, that we wish to claim for this early
education an indispensable character that it really does not possess.
What is it then that makes it almost impossible to give a more
narrow description of it without losing all grasp of its magnitude
and importance?—It is the fact that, from this education are derived
those qualities of heart and mind which, though hardly ever referred
to at critical moments in a man’s life, are nevertheless among the
most serviceable and powerful of life’s weapons. The man who has had
a good mother has learnt to feel a certain confidence in his own
unaided efforts, because the best in him has been diligently sought,
encouraged, and brought to the fore; he has acquired a certain vigorous
sanguineness and courage because, having started life so well, in such
a glorious morning of sunshine, he is conscious of stored-up warmth
within him, upon which he can fall back in his moments of loneliness,
gloom and trouble; but, above all, he has been launched forth into the
world with at least one solid experience, one ineffaceable impression
of human kindness and human beauty, and this, while it gives him a
perpetual criterion of value and criticism, shielding him from the
specious and the base, also prevents him from ever feeling that despair
and doubt about himself and his fellows which in moments of deep
tribulation paralyses effort and precludes the possibility of hope.
This is what the equipment amounts to, with which a loving mother
can endow her son. Quite apart from the joys that are derived from
deep filial emotions, and from that unique relationship of a mother
to her son, these are among the chief benefits that the relationship
necessarily involves. Most of the great men in history owe their
greatness partly to this equipment; most of the great men in
history—Schopenhauer, Byron, de Quincey—whose relationship to their
mothers was not ideal, reveal in their works the effects of this
deficiency; and he who ventures to question that here, indeed, I have
laid my finger on what is quintessential in the education that a good
mother gives to her child, and incapable of satisfactory substitution
by any other means in her absence, is one of those unfortunates from
whom life has withheld this most precious of all her blessings.
It is here that woman excels; it is here that she can defy all
competition, and it is in this rôle that the best in herself, and some
of the best in mankind, is developed and sustained. Anything else
that she may do must be always second best to this; and those who, by
misrepresentation and appeals to vanity, persuade her while she is yet
quite young that there are callings better than, or at least as good
as, motherhood for her, are enemies not only of woman, but also of the
species.
From (5), which we call _A capacity for bodily purity or chastity_,
which is based upon an instinct to resist fertilization until heart
and affection are engaged, we can see the following derivatives:[193]
(_a_) Woman’s tendency to a certain rather becoming dignity and
pride, which come to their zenith at the moment of the most heated
appeal made by the lover who has failed to engage her heart and
affection. This on the spiritual side leads to a power of renitency
against conviction and persuasion, which frequently makes of woman
a most powerful and reliable ally in a secret movement, or in a
secret intrigue. (_b_) Since the demands of Life make it necessary,
when once woman has abandoned her attitude of chaste resistance, to
yield wholly and unreservedly to the male, there is in all women a
certain sequaciousness, a certain docility, a marked predilection in
favour of subservience and subordination to those who have engaged
their affections, which makes of woman the most naturally constituted
follower, disciple, servant, that it is possible to find. On the
spiritual side, it makes her acutely subject to guidance and direction,
to receptivity, to suggestion[194] and to imitation. But seeing that
sequaciousness, imitation, whether in regard to opinion, mannerism or
fashion, is the reverse of original production, and involves an absence
or a weakness of the initiating power of personality, we are bound to
recognize in woman, as a direct consequence of her necessary physical
and psychological surrender, when once the attitude of chastity has
been abandoned, a lack of originating power, a lack of that prehensile
attitude of mind which seizes and does not wait to be seized, and
which is behind all male emancipation, aggression, originality and
inventiveness. This, indeed, is the other reason which under (1)
we said we had yet to give for woman’s power of imitation.[195]
Thus Arabella Kenealy calls the sex-instinct “in the normal girl,
_responsive_ rather than _initiative_.”[196]
From this fifth virtue, which, when the attitude of chastity is
abandoned, becomes converted into subjection and submission, are
thus derived woman’s suppleness, her plasticity, her promptness to
assimilate and to form herself according to another’s pattern, and her
ability to adapt herself to circumstances.
In all these derivatives of the five cardinal virtues of woman we
can trace the indirect but certain connexion with the vital _primum
mobile_ in her nature, which is her deep concern about Life and its
multiplication. On the same principle, therefore, it ought to be
possible to enumerate the cardinal vices of woman and their auxiliary
manifestations. For if a creature’s virtues are the outcome of its
instincts, its bodily formation and the functions it has to perform,
its vices must surely have a similar origin.
In the positive woman[197] only those vices may be recognized which are
inseparable from her functions as a promoter and preserver of life, for
all the other vices she may or may not have in common with man.[198]
Those that are constantly characteristic of her are:—
(1) Duplicity and an indifference to truth; (2) Lack of Taste; (3)
Vulgarity; (4) Love of petty power; (5) Vanity; and (6) Sensuality.
These six cardinal vices have been recognized in her in all ages; they
have been censured and deplored; but no one so far, to the best of my
knowledge, has ever traced them to a basic vital principle within her.
No one has ever said of them, for instance, what I say of them—that to
attempt to eradicate them from her nature would amount to an attack on
the most solid guarantee we possess of human survival.
While discussing the derivative and minor vices that descend from these
six cardinal vices, I shall, however, also show the connexion of the
latter with woman’s innate vital principle, as in some cases this is
not obvious at first sight.
No. 1—Duplicity and an indifference to truth—has already been discussed
above, and its relation to the will to Life abundantly demonstrated.
Let it suffice, therefore, to point out that an additional proof of its
inveteracy in woman is to be found in the tinsel of false sentiment
that women particularly have drawn over the natural relations of the
sexes—a tinsel which not only promotes marriage and parenthood by
concealing their sordid and tiresome side from the young male, but
which also prevents both sexes in most nations from detecting this
less prepossessing side of matrimony throughout their whole lifetime.
If the reader wishes to test which sex really values this tinsel of
false sentiment as its own, as its most powerful weapon, let him
attempt to tear it away from the relations of the sexes in the presence
of both women and men, and then he will see from the unreasoning
fury he provokes in the former which sex is most to blame for its
existence.[199]
Again, women are notorious for their tact and presence of mind in
embarrassing situations;[200] indeed, the tactfulness or “diplomacy”
of women is so well known in France that it has become proverbial. “_On
arrive par la femme_,” say French “climbers,” whose ambitions exceed
their gifts and who have to rely on diplomacy to achieve their ends.
But the presence of mind which is but the necessary mental condition
for saying the right word, for turning away wrath, suspicion, or
envy, for assuaging mortified vanity, and for making people forget
their shortcomings, is in reality only an essential pre-requisite of
successful falsehood. Let the “lying” be as white as you choose in
tactfulness and diplomacy, it matters little; what is important is to
remember that neither tactfulness nor diplomacy is possible without the
essential equipment of the born and resourceful liar—this equipment
being an ability to say something, at a moment’s notice, which is not
the natural or obvious reaction to a given stimulus or provocation.
Little girls show this ability quite early, and easily outclass boys
in the celerity with which they discover a plausible and innocent
explanation for a reprehensible act in which they have been caught
red-handed.[201] The fact that women are difficult to deal with under
cross-examination is well known among lawyers, and their skill in
drawing red-herrings across the path of any enquiry directed against
themselves, makes them stubborn and evasive witnesses at all times when
they have anything to conceal.[202]
No. 2. Woman’s fundamental lack of taste is the fact to which, in my
_Man’s Descent from the Gods_, I ascribed the two myths of Pandora
and Eve, in which woman is depicted as being the cause of the fall of
man, and of the introduction of evil on earth.[203] I demonstrated
this fundamental bad taste by pointing to women’s inability to select
and recognize the best men, and their general preference for inferior
men—the reason of this preference being the greater facility with
which the latter are ruled and made amenable to women’s love of petty
power. I also showed that this bad taste is rooted in the attitude
of the mother to her child, which, consisting as it does, chiefly in
a delight in the exercise of petty power over a helpless creature,
causes women not only to prefer the baby in long clothes before the
full-grown child, but also frequently to prefer the crippled or the
physiologically-botched child before the hale and hearty one, because
of the former’s more permanent helplessness. I showed also how women
prefer lap-dogs before large dogs for the same reason, and reminded
the reader that the Romans wisely left it to the father to decide
which of his children should survive and which should be suppressed,
because they knew that women, having no taste, and being guided only
by what most gratified their lust of petty power, could not be trusted
to make such a decision wisely. I also ascribed to the prevalence and
ascendancy of women’s views and sentiments nowadays the fact that the
world was growing so ugly and degenerate (physically); for only if we
assume the woman’s attitude of irrational tenderness to cripples and
the physiologically botched, can we regard them with anything else than
loathing and impatience.