CHAPTER IX

APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING CHAPTER WITH SOME FURTHER REMARKS ON SEX

DIFFERENCES

I.--_Women and Labour_

"The fullest ideal of the woman-worker is she who works not

merely or mainly for men as the help and instrument of their

purpose, but who works with men as the instrument yet material

of her purpose."--GEDDES AND THOMPSON.

When we come to consider the detailed differences between woman and

man, a sharp separation of them into female qualities and male

qualities no longer squares with the known facts. Any attempt to

lessen the natural differences, as also to weaken at all the

attractions arising from this divergence, must be regarded with

extreme distrust. There is a real and inherent prejudice against the

masculine woman and the feminine man. It is nevertheless necessary

very carefully to discriminate between innate qualities of femaleness

and maleness and those differences that have been acquired as the

direct result of peculiarities of environmental conditions. It is

certain that many differences in the physical and mental capacity of

women must be referred not to Nature but to Nurture, _i.e._ the

effects of conditions and training. Let me give one concrete case, for

one clear illustration is more eloquent than any statement. Long ago

Professor Karl Vogt pointed out that women were awkward manipulators.

Thomas, in _Sex and Society_, answers this well: "The awkwardness in

manual manipulation shown by these girls was surely due to lack of

practice. The fastest type-writer in the world is to-day a woman; the

record for roping steers (a feat depending on manual dexterity rather

than physical force) is held by a woman." I may add to this an example

of my own observation. In a recent International Fly and Bait Casting

Tournament, held at the Crystal Palace, a woman was among the

competitors, and gave an admirable exhibition of skill in salmon

fly-casting. In this competition she threw one cast 34 feet and two of

33 feet, making an aggregate of 100 yards, which gained her the prize

over the male competitors. It has also been recently stated that women

show equal skill with men in shooting at a target.

It is plain that the more we examine the question of sex-differences

the more it baffles us. The only safeguard against utter confusion and

idleness of thought is to fall back on the common-sense view that

_woman is what she is largely, because she has lived as she has_, and

further, that in the present transition no _arbitrary rules may be

laid down by men as to what she should, or should not, can, or cannot

do_. Even in fear of possible danger to be incurred, woman must no

longer be "grandfathered." The scope of this chapter is to make this

clear.

It is no part of my purpose, even if it were possible for me within

the limits at my command, to enter into an examination of all the

numerous statements and theories with regard to the real or supposed

secondary sexual characters of woman. For though the practical

utility of such detailed knowledge is obvious, while there is no

certainty of opinion even among experts to fix the distinctions

between the sexes, it is wiser in one who, like myself, can claim no

scientific knowledge to avoid the hazard of any conclusion. I confess

that a most careful study of the many differing opinions has left me

in a state of mental confusion. One is tempted to adopt those views

that fit in with one's own observations and to neglect others probably

equally right that do not do this. What is wanted is a much larger

number of careful experiments and scientific observations. Some of

these have been made already, and their value is great, but the basis

is still too narrow for any safe generalisations. All kinds of error

are clearly very likely to arise. I may, perhaps, be allowed to state

my surprise, not to say amusement, at the conviction evidenced by some

male writers in their estimate of the character of my sex. I find

myself given many qualities that I am sure I have not got, and

deprived of others that I am equally certain I possess. Thus, I have

found myself wondering, as I sought sincerely to find truth, whether I

am indeed woman or man? or, to be more exact, whether the female

qualities in me do not include many others regarded as masculine? This

has forced the thought--is the difference between the sexes, after

all, so complete?

I am aware that what I am now saying appears to be in contradiction

with my other statements. I cannot help it. The fact is, that truth is

always more diverse than we suspect. This is a question that reaches

so deeply that apparent contradiction is sometimes inevitable. We find

we are rooted into outside things, and we melt away, as it were, into

them, and no woman or man can say, "I consist absolutely of this or

that"; nor define herself or himself so certainly as to be sure where

the differences between the sexes end and the points of contact begin.

Many qualities of the personality appear no more female than male; no

more belonging to the woman than the man. And yet, underlying these

common qualities there is a deep under-current in which all our nature

finds expression in our sex.

Science has of late years advanced far in this matter, yet it has not

much more than begun. There is, as yet, no approximation to unanimity

of decision, though the way has been cleared of many errors. This is

all that has really been done by the ablest observers, who seem,

however, unwilling, if one may say so without presumption, to accept

the conclusions to which their own experiments and observations would

seem to point. Take an illustration. The early certitude on the

sex-differences in the weight of the brain and in the proportion of

the cerebral lobes has been completely turned upside down. The long

believed opinion of the inferiority of the woman in this direction has

been proved to be founded on prejudice, fallacies, and over-hasty

generalisations, so that now it is allowed that the sexual differences

in the brain are at most very small. An even more instructive example

arises from the ancient theory that there was a natural difference in

the respiratory movements of the sexes. Hutchinson even argued that

this costal breathing was an adaptation to the child-bearing function

in woman. Further investigations, however, with a wider basis and more

accurate methods--and one may surely add more common-sense--have

changed the whole aspect of the matter. This difference has been

proved to be due, not to Nature at all, but wholly to the effect of

corset-wearing and woman's conventional dress. There is, it would

seem, no limit to the quagmire of superstition and error into which

sex-difference have drawn even the most careful inquirers if once they

fail to cut themselves adrift from that superficial view of Nature's

scheme, by which the woman is considered as being handicapped in every

direction by her maternal function.

Enough has now been said to indicate the complication of the facts, to

say nothing of their practical application. I must refer my readers

for further details to convenient summaries of the sexual differences,

in Havelock Ellis's _Man and Woman_; Geddes and Thomson's _Sex and

Evolution_; Thomas's _Sex and Society_; and H. Campbell's _Differences

in the Nervous Organisation of Men and Women_: the first of these is a

treasure store of facts, and may be regarded as the foundation of all

later research; the last is, perhaps, the most generally interesting,

certainly it is the most favourable in its estimate of women. Dr.

Campbell urges with much force the fallacy of many popular views. He

does not seem to believe in the fundamental origin of maleness and

femaleness, holding them rather to be secondary and derived, the

result, in fact, of selection.

I have already sufficiently guarded against being supposed to have any

desire to establish identity between woman and man. I do, however,

object to any general conclusion of an arbitrary and excessive

sex-separation, without the essential preliminary inquiry being made

as to the effects of conditions and training; that is, whether the

opportunities of development have been at all equal. But here, to save

falling into a misconception, it is necessary to point out that I do

not say _the same opportunities, but equal_. This difference is so

important that, risking the fear of being tedious, I must restate my

belief in the unlikeness of the sexes. As Havelock Ellis says, "A man

is a man to his very thumbs, and a woman is a woman down to her little

toes." What I do mean, then, is this: _Have the opportunities of the

woman to develop as woman been equal to the opportunities of the man

to develop as man?_ It is on this question, it seems to me, that our

attention should be fixed.

Leaving for a little any attempt to find out in what directions this

development of woman can be most fully carried out, let us now clear

our way by glancing very briefly at certain plain facts of the actual

position of women as they present themselves in our society to-day.

In 1901 there were 1,070,000 more women than men in this country; this

surplus of women has increased slowly but steadily in every census

since 1841! Thus, those who hold (as all who look straight at this

matter must) that the essential need for the normal woman are

conditions that make possible the fulfilment of her sex-functions, are

placed in an awkward dilemma when they wish to restrict her activities

to marriage and the home. By such narrowing of the sexual sphere they

are not taking into consideration the facts as they exist to-day. In a

society where the women outnumber the men by more than a million, it

is sufficiently evident that justice can be done to these primary

needs of woman only by adopting one of two courses, the placing of

women in a position which secures to them the possession of property,

or, if their dependence on the labours of men is maintained, the

recognition of some form of polygamy. Here is no advocacy of any

sexual licence or of free-love, but I do set up a claim for free

motherhood, and however great the objections that may, and, as I

think, must be raised against polygamy, I am unhesitating in stating

my belief that any open and brave facing of the facts of the sex

relationship is better than our present ignorance or hypocritical

indifference, which is spread like a shroud over our national

conditions of concealed polygamy for men, side by side with enforced

celibacy and unconcealed prostitution for a great number of women. The

most hopeful sign of the woman's movement is a new solidarity that is

surely killing the fatalism of a past acquiescing in wrongs, and is

slowly giving birth to a fine spiritual apprehension of the great

truth that what concerns any woman concerns all women, and, I would

add, also all men. This last--that there can be no woman's question

that is not also a man's question--is so essentially a part of any

fruitful change in our domestic and social relationship that women

must not permit themselves for a moment to forget it. It is the very

plain things that so often we do overlook.

So it becomes clear that the parrot cries "Woman's Place!" "Woman's

Sphere!" "Her place is the home!" have lost much, even if not all,

their significance. For, in the first place, it is obvious that under

present conditions there are not enough homes to go round; and

second, even if we neglect this essential fact, women may well answer

such demands by saying "much depends on the character and conditions

of the home we are to stay in." It was a many-sided home of free and

full activity in which woman evolved and wherein for long ages she

worked; a home, in fact, which gave free opportunities for the

exercise of those qualities of constructive energy that women, broadly

speaking, may be said to possess. The woman's so-called natural

position in the home is not now natural at all. The conditions of life

have changed. Everything is drifting towards separation from worn-out

conditions. We are increasingly conscious of a growing discontent at

waste. The home with its old full activities has passed from women's

hands. But woman's work is not less needed. To-day the State claims

her; the Nation's housekeeping needs the vitalising mother-force more

than anything else.

The old way of looking at the patriarchal family was, from one point

of thought, perfectly right and reasonable as long as every woman was

ensured the protection of, and maintenance by, some man. Nor do I

think there was any unhappiness or degradation involved to women in

this co-operation of the old days, where the man went out to work and

the woman stayed to do work at least equally valuable in the home. It

was, as a rule, a co-operation of love, and, in any case, it was an

equal partnership in work. But what was true once is not true now. We

are living in a continually changing development and modification of

the old tradition of the relationship of woman and man. It is very

needful to impress this factor of constant change on our attention,

and to fix it there. To ignore it, and it is too commonly ignored, is

to falsify every issue. "The Hithertos," as Mr. Zangwill has aptly

termed them, are helpless. Things are so, and we are carried on; and

as yet we know not whither, and we are floundering not a little as we

seek for a way. The women of one class have been forced into labour by

the sharp driving of hunger. Among the women of the other class have

arisen a great number who have turned to seek occupation from an

entirely different cause; the no less bitter driving of an

unstimulating and ineffective existence, a kind of boiling-over of

women's energy wasted, causing a revolt of the woman-soul against a

life of confused purposes, achieving by accident what is achieved at

all. Between the women who have the finest opportunities and the women

who have none there is this common kinship--the wastage not so much of

woman as of womanhood.

Let us consider for a moment the women who have been forced into the

cheating, damning struggle for life. There are, according to the

estimate of labour experts, 5,000,000 women industrially employed in

England. The important point to consider is that during the last sixty

years the women who work are gaining numerically at a greater rate

than men are. The average weekly wage paid is seven shillings.

Nine-tenths of the sweated work of this country is done by women. I

have no wish to give statistics of the wages in particular trades;

these are readily accessible to all. Unfortunately the facts do not

allow any exaggeration; they are saddening and horrible enough in

themselves. The life-blood of women, that should be given to the race,

is being stitched into our ready-made clothes; is washed and ironed

into our linen; wrought into the laces and embroideries, the feathers

and flowers, the sham furs with which we other women bedeck ourselves;

it is poured into our adulterated foods; it is pasted on our matches

and pin-boxes; stuffed into our furniture and mattresses; and spent on

the toys we buy for our children. The china that we use for our foods

and the tins in which we cook them are damned with the lead-poison

that we offer to women as the reward of labour.

It is these wrongs that the mothers with the fathers of the race have

to think out the way to alter. There is no one among us who is

guiltless in this matter. Things that are continuously wrong need

revolutionising, and not patching up.

What, then, is the real cause of the lowness of remuneration offered

to women for work when compared with men? Thousands of women and girls

receive wages that are insufficient to support life. They do not die,

they live; but how? The answer is plain. Woman possesses a marketable

value attached to her personality which man has not got. This enables

her to live, if she has children, to feed them, and also not

infrequently to support the man, forced out of work by the lowness of

the wages she can accept. The woman's sex is a saleable thing.

Prostitution is the door of escape freely opened to all women. It is

because of the reserve fund thus established that their honest wages

suffer. Not all sweated women are prostitutes. Many are legally

married, they exist somehow; but the wages of all women are

conditioned by this sexual resource. It can be readily seen that this

is a survival of the patriarchal idea of the property value of woman.

To-day it affords a striking example of the conflict between the old

rights of men with the rising power of women. The value of woman is

her sexual value; her value as a worker is as yet unrecognised, except

as a secondary matter. You may refuse to be convinced of this. Yet the

fact remains that our society is so organised that women are more

highly paid and better treated as prostitutes than they are as honest

workers.

I shall say no more on this question here, as I propose to deal with

prostitution more fully in a later chapter. I would, however, point

out that what I have said in no way implies an opinion that women

should be driven out of the labour market. This is as unfair as that

they should be driven into it. It is the conditions of labour that

must be changed. I am not even able to accept the opinion that the

strength of woman is necessarily less than that of man, only that it

is different. It is, in fact, just this difference that is so

important. If woman's capacity in work was the same as men's no great

advantage could arise from women's entrance into the work of the

State. It might well lead to even worse confusion. It is the special

qualities that belong to woman that humanity is waiting for. Just as

at the dawn of civilisation society was moulded and in great measure

built up by women, then probably unconscious of their power and the

end it made towards, so, in the future, our society will be carried on

and humanised by women, deliberately working for the race, their

creative energy having become self-conscious and organised in a final

and fruitful period of civilisation.

I want to look a little further into this question of the strength of

woman as compared with the strength of man. On the whole it seems

right to say that the man is the more muscular type, and stronger in

relation to isolated feats and spasmodic efforts. But against this may

be placed the relative greater tenacity of life in women. They are

longer lived, alike in infancy and in old age; they also show a

greater power of resisting death. The difference in the incidence of

disease, again, in the two sexes is far from furnishing conclusive

evidence as to the greater feebleness of women. Their constitution

seems to have staying powers greater than the man's. The theory that

women are "natural invalids" cannot be accepted. Every care must be

taken to guard against any misdifferentiation of function in the kind

of work women are to do, but there is no evidence to prove that

healthy work is less beneficial to women than to men. Indeed, all the

evidence points in the opposite direction. Even in the matter of

muscular power it is difficult to make any absolute statement. The

muscular development of women among primitive peoples is well known.

Japanese women will coal a vessel with a rapidity unsurpassable by

men. The pit-brow women of the Lancashire collieries are said to be of

finer physical development than any other class of women workers. I

have seen the women of Northern Spain perform feats of strength that

seem extraordinary.

It is worth while to wait to consider these Spanish women, who are

well known to me. The industrial side of primitive culture has always

belonged to women, and in Galicia, the north-west province of Spain,

the old custom is still in active practice, owing to the widespread

emigration of the men. The farms are worked by women, the ox-carts are

driven by women, the seed is sown and reaped by women--indeed, all

work is done by women. What is important is that these women have

benefited by this enforced engaging in activities which in most

countries have been absorbed by men. The fine physical qualities of

these workers can scarcely be questioned. I have taken pains to gain

all possible information on this subject. Statistics are not

available, because in Galicia they have not been kept from this point

of view. I find, however, that it is the opinion of many eminent

doctors and the most thoughtful men of the province, that this labour

does not damage the health or beauty of the women, but the contrary,

nor does it prejudice the life and health of their children. As

workers they are most conscientious and intelligent, apt to learn, and

ready to adopt improvements. From my personal observations I can bear

witness that their children are universally well cared for. What

impressed me was that these women looked happy. They are full of

energy and vigour, even to an advanced age. They are evidently happy,

and the standard of beauty among them will compare favourably with the

women of any other nation. I once witnessed an interesting episode

during a motor-ride in the country. A robust and comely Gallegan woman

was riding _a ancas_ (pillion fashion) with a young _caballero_,

probably her son. The passing of our motor-car frightened the steed,

with the result that both riders were unhorsed. Neither was hurt, but

it was the woman who pursued the runaway horse. She caught it without

assistance and with surprising skill. What happened to the man I

cannot say. When I saw him he was standing in the road brushing the

dust from his clothes. I presume the woman returned with the horse to

fetch him.

Women were the world's primitive carriers. In Galicia I have seen

women bearing immense burdens, unloading boats, acting as porters and

firemen, and removing household furniture. I saw one woman with a

chest of drawers easily poised upon her head, another woman bore a

coffin, while another, who was old, carried a small bedstead. A

beautiful woman porter in one village carried our heavy luggage,

running with it on bare feet, without sign of effort. She was the

mother of four children, and her husband was at the late Cuban war.

She was upright as a young pine, with the shapeliness that comes from

perfect bodily equipoise. I do not wish to judge from trivial

incidents, but I saw in the Gallegan women a strength and a beauty

that has become rare among women to-day. I recall a conversation with

an Englishman I met at La Coruna, of the not uncommon strongly

patriotic and censorious type. We were walking together on the quay;

he pointed to a group of the Gallegan burden-bearers, who were

unloading a vessel, remarking in his indiscriminate British gallantry,

"I can't bear to see women doing work that ought to be done by men."

"Look at the women!" was the answer I made him.

It is, of course, impossible to compare the industrial conditions of

such a country as Spain with England. We may associate the position of

women in Galicia with some of the old matriarchal conditions. Women

are held in honour. There is a proverb common over all Northern Spain

to the effect that he who is unfortunate and needs assistance should

"seek his Gallegan mother." Many primitive customs survive, and one of

the most interesting is that by which the eldest daughter in some

districts takes precedence over the sons in inheritance. In no country

does less stigma fall upon a child born out of wedlock. As far back as

the fourth century Spanish women insisted on retaining their own names

after marriage. We find the Synod of Elvira trying to limit this

freedom. The practice is still common for the children to use the name

of the mother coupled with that of the father, and in some cases,

alone, showing the absence of preference for the paternal

descent.[318] The introduction of modern institutions, and especially

the empty forms of chivalry, has lowered the position of women. Yet

there can be no question that some feature of the ancient mother-right

customs have left the imprint on the domestic life of the people.

Spanish women have, in certain directions, preserved a freedom and

privilege which in England has never been established and is only now

being claimed.[319]

How completely all difficulties vanish from the relationship of the

sexes where society is more sanely organised--with a wiser

understanding of the things that really matter. The question is not:

are our women fit for labour? but this: are the conditions of labour

in England fit either for women or men? The supply of cheap labour on

which the whole fabric of our society is built up is giving way--and

it has to go. We have to plan out new and more tolerable conditions

for the workers in every sort of employment. But first we have to

organise the difficult period of transition from the present disorder.

I will not dwell on this. I would, however, point out that women must

be trained and ready to take their part with men in this work of

industrial re-organisation. They are even more deeply concerned than

men. The conditions of under-payment for woman's work are not

restricted to sweated workers; it is the same in skilled work, and in

all trades and professions that are open to women. For exactly the

same work a lower rate of payment is offered. Female labour is cheap,

just as slave labour is cheap, the woman is not considered as

belonging to herself.

There is no question here of the real value of woman's labour. The cry

of man to woman under the patriarchal system has always been, and

still for the most part is, "Your value in our eyes is your sexuality,

for your work we care not." But mark this! The penalty of this false

adjustment has fallen upon men. For women, in their turn, have come to

value men first in their capacity as providers for them, caring as

little for the man's sex-value as men care for woman's work-value.

From the moment when woman had to place the economic considerations in

love first, her faculties of discrimination were no more of service

for the selection of the fittest man. Here we may find the explanation

of the kind of men girls have been willing to marry--old men, the

unfit fathers, the diseased. Yes, any man who was able to do for them

what they have not been allowed to do for themselves. And it is the

race that suffers and rots; the sins of the mother must be visited on

the child.

It is clear, then, there is one remedy and one alone. This separation

of values must cease. All women's work must be paid at a rate based on

the quality and quantity of the work done; not upon her sexuality. I

do not mean by this that there should be any ignoring of woman's

special sex-function; to do this, in my opinion, would be fatal. The

bearing of fit children is woman's most important work for the State.

The economic stress which forces women into unlimited competition with

men is, I am certain, harmful. _Women do not do this because they like

it, but because they are driven to it._

The true effort of women, I conceive, should be centred on the freeing

of the sexual relationship from the domination of a viciously directed

compulsion, and from the hardly less disastrous work-struggle of sex

against sex. The emancipated woman must work to gain economic

recognition, not necessarily the same as the man's, but her own. It is

to the direct interest of men to stop under-cutting by women; but the

way to do this is not to force women out of labour, compelling their

return to the home--that is impossible--rather it rests in an equal

value of service being recognised in both sexes. The fully developed

woman of the future is still to be, and first there must be a time of

what may well prove to be dangerous experiments. This may be

regretted, it cannot be avoided. The finding out of new paths entails

some losing of the way.

Women have to find out what work they can best do; what work they want

to do, and _what work men want them to do_. I must insist, against all

the Feminists, on this factor of men's wishes being equally considered

with woman's own. It may not safely be neglected. Woman without man at

her side, after obtaining her freedom, will advance even less far than

man has advanced with his freedom, without her help. To deny this is

to show an absurd misunderstanding of the problem. Neither the

male-force alone, nor the female-power is sufficient; no theory of

sex-superiority shall prevail. The setting up of women against men, or

men against women, to the disadvantage of one or the other, belongs to

a day that is over. We must recognise that both the work of women and

the work of men are in equal measure essential to satisfy the needs of

the State; the force of both sexes must be united to plan and carry

out those measures of reform now called for by the new ideals of a

civilised humanity. It is only by loosening all the chains of all

women and all men alike that the inherent energies of the world's

workers can be set free for the eventual ennobling of the race.

There is a fundamental difference in respect to the modes of energy in

woman and man. Is it, then, too much to hope for, that in the

enlightened civilisation, whose dawn is even now breaking the

darkness, we shall recognise and use this difference in work-power and

claim from women the kinds of labour they can give best to the State;

and reward them for doing this in such a way that their primary

social service of child-bearing is in no way impaired? But as yet the

day is not. There is an outlook that causes foreboding. The female sex

is in a dangerous state of disturbance. New and strange urgencies are

at work amongst us, forces for which the word "revolution" is only too

faithfully appropriate. Little is being done to allay these forces,

much conspires to exasperate them. Whither are they taking us? To this

we women have to find an answer.

Other questions force themselves as wisely we wait to think. What will

women do when they have gained the voice to control the attitude the

State shall assume in the regulation of their work? Will their

decisions be founded on wide knowledge, that recognises all the facts

and accepts the responsibilities and restrictions that any true

freedom for their sex entails, or will it be merely continued revolt,

tending to embitter and intensify the struggle of sex against sex?

Will their action reveal the wise patience, the sympathy and

understanding of the mother, or will it prove to be the illogical,

short-sighted, and bewildered behaviour of the spoilt child? No one

can answer these questions. Hitherto, it has seemed that women stand

in danger of losing sight of great issues in grasping at immediate

gains. Goaded by the wrongs they see so plainly waiting to be righted,

they are in such a desperate hurry. But "hurry" should not belong to

the woman's nature. There is a "grasp" quality of this age that can

bring nothing but harm to women. It is a great thing to be a woman,

greater, as I believe, than to be a man. For the first time for long

ages women are beginning again to understand this and all that it

signifies. Women and not men are the responsible sex in the great

things of life that really matter. They are that "Stubborn Power of

Permanency" of which Goethe speaks. The female not only typifies the

race, she is the race. It is man who constitutes the changing, the

experimenting, sex. Thus, woman has to be steadier than man, yes, and

more self-sacrificing. She may not safely escape from her work as "the

giver," and if she does not give in life, she must give in something.

We have got to do more than bear men, we have to carry them with us

through life--our sons, our lovers, our husbands. We must free them

now as well as ourselves, if our freedom is to count for anything. Let

us not, then, in any impatience, neglect to pause, to prepare, to be

ready, that the pregnancy of the present may bring fair birth when the

days are fulfilled. For, after all, what shall it profit women if, in

gaining the world, they lose themselves?

II.--_Sexual Differences in Mind and the Artistic Impulse in Women_

"The most secret elements of woman's nature, in association with

the magic mystery of her organisation, indicate the existence in

her of peculiar and deep-lying creative ideas."--THEODOR MUNDT.

What is true of the physical differences between women and men is true

also of the mental differences. We may readily accept the saturating

influence of sex on woman's mind. I mean a deep-lying distinction, not

superficial and to be explained away as due to outside things, but

based on the essential fact of her womanhood--her capacity for

maternity. But the impracticability of making any definite statement as

to the exact nature or extent of such mental sexual differentiation is

evident. First must be cleared up the difficulty of distinguishing

between those differences that are fundamental and constitutional as

being directly dependent on the woman character and those that have, or

seem to have, arisen through distinction of training or environment,

which may be termed evolutionary differences, and are likely to be

changed by altered conditions. Even the trained biologist is unable to

draw an undisputed line of demarcation between the two kinds of

differences, and, even if it were drawn, the conclusion would not help

us very much. For with regard to these evolutionary differences that

are liable to change many questions have to be considered. Can they

safely be modified or disregarded? Do we want them changed? Will the

alteration really be of benefit to women? Only such qualities as can be

proved clearly to be mis-differentiations--_i.e._ directly harmful--can

be contemptuously dismissed. Thus the problem is an extraordinarily

difficult one. I can only touch its outer fringe.

It is held that men have greater mental variability and more

originality, while women have greater stability and more common sense.

In this connection may be noticed the characteristic male

restlessness; man is probably more inclined to experiment with his

body and his mind and with other people, while woman's constitution

and temper is relatively more conservative. It is held that women have

the greater integrating intelligence, while men are stronger in

differentiation. The thinking power of woman is deductive, that of

man inductive; woman's influence on knowledge is thus held to be

indirect rather than direct. But women have greater receptive powers,

retain impressions better and have more vivid and surer memories; for

which reason women are generally more receptive for facts than for

laws, more for concrete than for general ideas. The feminine mind

shows greater patience, more open-mindedness and tact, and keener

insight into character, greater appreciation of subtle details and,

consequently, what we call intuition. The masculine mind, on the other

hand, tends to a greater height of sudden efforts, of scientific

insight and experiment, greater frequency of genius, and this is

associated with an unobservant or impatient disregard of details, but

a stronger grasp of general ideas.

Now it is easy to make comparisons of this kind, but to accept them as

at all final calls for great caution. Let me take, as an instance, the

opinion so continuously affirmed, that women are distinguished by good

memories, in particular, for details. Now to regard this as

necessarily a mental sexual character is entirely to mistake the

facts. A tenacious memory for details that are often quite

unimportant, belongs to all people of limited impressions and

unskilled in thought; it maybe noticed in all children. Without a wide

experience of life and practice in constructive thinking the mind

inevitably falls back on fact-memory. I knew an agricultural labourer

who could only tell his age by reckoning the years he had been

dung-spreading. Thus a good memory for details may be a sign of an

untrained mind. It is an entirely different thing from that acuteness

of true memory, which ensures the retention of all experiences that

have made an impression on the mind, with a corresponding rejection of

what has failed to interest. Thus before anything can be said with

regard to this memory power of woman, we have to decide on what it

depends--_i.e._ is it really a mental quality of woman, or is it

simply dependent on, and brought about by, the circumstances of her

life and a limited experience? But to answer this question I shall

wait till later in this chapter.

It would be easy to follow a similar train of argument with regard to

each of these mental differences of the sexes. Few women have yet

entered even the threshold of the mental world of men, and those who

have done this stand in the position of strangers or visitors. To be

in it, in any true sense, would be to be born into it and to live in

it by right; to absorb the same experiences, not consciously and by

special effort, but unconsciously as a child absorbs words and learns

to speak. Whenever this happens, and not till then, shall we be in a

position to compare positively the mental efficiency of woman with

men. At present no more can be affirmed than that the differences in

woman's mental expression are no greater than they must be in view of

the existing differences in their experience. And I am not sure, even

if such similarity of mental life were possible, that it would be of

benefit to women. Indeed, I am almost sure that it would not. What is

needed is an ungrudging recognition of the value of the special

feminine qualities. This would do much to lessen the regrettable

competition that undoubtedly prevails at present, which is due, it

seems to me, to the foolish denial of the value of any save masculine

characteristics in our art, as also in our public and professional

life.

But leaving this point for the present, there is another question

arising from this first that also brings me doubt. Few will deny that

women are more instinctive than logical; more intuitive than cerebral.

Men find their conclusions by searching for and observing facts, while

women, to a great extent, arrive at the same end by instinct. _They

know, rather than know how, or why, they know._ Now, too often we hear

these qualities of woman treated with contempt. Is this wise? What I

doubt is this: when women by education and evolution have been able to

learn and to practise the inductive process of reasoning--if, indeed,

they do come to do this--will they lose their present faculty of

gaining conclusions by instinct? I believe that they must do so to a

large extent, and I am not convinced that the gain would at all fully

make up for the loss. Looking at human conduct, it is regulated quite

as much by instinct as by reason. I think it will be impossible to

prevent this being so, and if this is true, woman's instinct may

remain of greater service to her than the gaining of a higher

reasoning faculty. The true distinction between the psychology of

woman and man is as the difference between feeling and thought. Woman

thinks through her emotions, man feels through his brain. This is

obviously an exaggeration, but it will show what I mean by the

different process of thought that, broadly speaking, is usual to the

two sexes. Mistakes are, of course, made by both processes, but more

often, as I believe, by reasoning than by instinct--this is probably

because I am a woman. But it is certain that each sex contributes to

the thought-power of the other, each is indispensable to the other, on

the mental plane no less than on the physical.

The importance of the above will become obvious when we consider, as

we will now do, the artistic impulse in woman. Strange difficulties

have been raised on all sides concerning the occurrence of genius

among women. It seems to be accepted that in respect of artistic

endowment the male sex is unquestionably superior to the female.

Havelock Ellis, for instance, in dealing with this question says, "The

assertion of Moebius[320] that the art impulse is of the nature of a

male secondary sexual character, in the same sense as the beard,

cannot be accepted without some qualification, but it may well

represent an approximation of the truth." By some it is held that

genius is linked with maleness: that it represents an ideal

masculinity in the highest form; and from genius the feminine mind

must, therefore, be excluded. But in truth it is not easy to credit

such assumptions, or to see the strangeness of the difficulties in an

exact opposite view, if we understand the significance of those

qualities of femaleness which are allowed to women by those who most

deny to her the possibility of genius. Such a denial serves only to

show the absurd presumption of present knowledge of this kind in its

hope to solve a problem so difficult.

Let me try to sift out the facts. And first we must inquire on what

grounds this opinion is based. I have already alluded to the general

belief in the greater degree of variability in men, which, if

established, would on the psychical side involve an accentuated

individualism and hence a greater possibility of genius. This view

has been supported by John Hunter, Burdach, Darwin, Havelock Ellis,

and others. Ellis, in the chapter on "The Artistic Impulse" in _Man

and Woman_, says, "The rarity of women artists of the first rank is

largely due to the greater variational tendency of men." Now, this

biological fact is certainly of great importance, _if it can be

proved_. But can it? It has recently been contested by anthropologists

at least as distinguished as those who have given it their support.

Manouvrier, Karl Pearson, Frossetto, and especially Guiffrida-Ruggieri

have brought forward evidence to prove the fallacy of this belief in

the slighter variability and infantile character of woman. Now, it is

clearly impossible for me in the space at my command to go into the

conclusions brought forward on both sides of this difficult question.

What I want to make clear is that this greater variability of man has

not been established, and therefore cannot be accepted as a condition

of male genius. I am glad to be able to give a statement on this

question by Professor Arthur Thomson, which will sufficiently show

that my opinion is not put forward wantonly and without due

consideration, but that it coincides with the conclusion of one who is

an acknowledged leader in the advanced biological study of the sexes.

Professor Thomson writes thus[321]--

"We would guard against the temptation to sum up the contrast of

the sexes in epigrams. We regard the woman as relatively more

anabolic, man as relatively more katabolic, and whether this

biological hypothesis is a good one or not, it certainly does no

social harm. But when investigators begin to say that woman is

more infantile and man more senile, that woman is "undeveloped

man" and man is "evolved woman," we get among generalisations

not only unscientific but practically dangerous. Not the least

dangerous of these generalisations is one of the most familiar,

that man is more variable than woman, that the raw materials of

evolution make their appearance in greatest abundance in man.

There seems to be no secure basis for this generalisation; it

seems doubtful whether any generalisation of the kind is

feasible. Prof. Karl Pearson has made seventeen groups of

measurements of different parts of the body, in eleven groups

the female is more variable than the male, and in six the male

is more variable than the female. _Moreover the differences of

variability are slight, less than those between members of the

same race living in different conditions._ Furthermore, an

elementary remark may be pardoned. Since inheritance is

bi-parental, and since variation means some peculiarity in the

inheritance, a greater variability in men, if true, would not

mean that men had any credit for varying. The stimulus to

variation may have come from the mother as well as the father.

_If proved it would only mean that the male constitution gives

free play to the expression of variations, which are kept latent

in the female constitution._ But what is probably true is that

some variations find expression more readily in man and others

more readily in woman."

The italics in the passage are mine, for they make abundantly clear

the falseness of the old view, and show how much the question needs

reopening from the common-sense standpoint of opportunity. I shall,

therefore, only restate my opinion that it is impossible to assume a

fundamental difference in individuality as existing between woman and

man until it can be proved that the same free-play to the expression

has been common alike to both sexes.

To me it seems probable that what Samuel Butler insists upon is true,

and that the origin of variations must be looked for in the needs and

experiences of the creature varying. But let this pass, as it opens up

too large and difficult a question to enter upon here. The effects of

environment and function must act as a kind of arbiter directing

conduct and, in particular, mental expression. It is the very A B C of

the question that appropriate training and opportunities of use are

essential if any mind is to develop. Supply such mental stimuli to the

boy and man, deny them to the girl and woman, and then call "the art

impulse of the nature of a male secondary sexual character," because

woman has as yet played but a small and secondary part in any of the

arts! The source of error is so plain that one can only wonder at the

fallacies that have been accepted as truth. Thus, when one finds so

just and careful an investigator as Havelock Ellis saying, "It is

unthinkable that a woman should have discovered the Copernician

system!" it can but be regarded as an example of that sex-bias which

marks so strikingly men's statements on this subject of mental

sex-differences. We may well ask, Why unthinkable? As answer I will

give the finely just acknowledgment of Iwan Bloch on this very

question. He refers to this statement of Havelock Ellis, and then

says, "I need merely call to mind the widely known physical

discoveries of Madame Curie, whose thoroughly independent work

qualified her to succeed her husband as professor at the Sorbonne. We

cannot, therefore, exclude the possibility that in the sphere of the

natural sciences notable discoveries and inventions may be made in the

future in consequence of the independent work of women."[322] To take

another instance. We find the fact that so far women have gained very

small distinction in music, contrasted with the great number of girls

who are trained to play on musical instruments. But this is surely to

show a complete misunderstanding of the question. It is like saying

that the best preparation for a painter to know the colours reflected

on water by a cloudy or sunny sky would be a course of optics. Music

is at once the most imaginative and the most severely abstract of the

arts, and the absence of women from music must be referred to deeper

causes, which yet, it seems to me, are not far to seek.

Mind, I make no claim for women. I acknowledge fully that in all the

arts, except in acting and in dancing, woman's achievement has been

infinitely less than man's. There have been a few great women

poets--notably a Sappho, many good writers of fiction, and some

capable painters. But to bring forward these particular women and to

try either to exaggerate or belittle their importance can serve

nothing. This search for ability among women is absurd. It already

exists widely, though unused or directed into channels of waste. Of

this I am convinced. The thing that has been rare is opportunity. The

fact that some few women have struggled up out of obscurity does not

so much show that they possessed a special masculine superiority as

that they have been less inextricably bound down than others by the

conventional bonds of a man-ruled society. I believe that this could

be proved in the case of every woman who has attained to fame. And

there is another point. The women who have succeeded in bursting these

bonds have, in most cases, done so at such great cost of energy and

fighting, that their work is rendered crude and often valueless.

Self-assertion can never be the best preparation for achievement. All

this narrows the mental horizon and tends to make the results gained

superficial and unenduring. We have here the explanation of much that

has been, and still is, futile in women's efforts.

The face of the world, however, is changing for women. It may be that

the future will reveal creative ability in them as yet unsuspected. It

is not safe to prophesy, and no one can say, as yet, just in what

direction women will develop. It may prove that their special

qualities will not find expression in the realm of imagination, but

will be turned to diplomacy and to administration and financial work.

I simply affirm that what women can or cannot do is as yet unproved.

Throughout the ages of patriarchal faith one ideal of womanhood has

been impressed upon the world, which is only now being shaken--the

ideal of self-repression and submission to the will of man, of

society, and of God. Women's minds have reflected only the minds of

men. I think that much of the failure of women's work arises from the

arrogance of men, who have always preferred the flattering image of

woman in their own minds to woman herself. Woman has had to accept

this. She could only realise herself through man, not with man, while

he has been able to realise himself, either with her help or without

her.

There is a wide difference between the mental and social attitudes of

men and women. Men have been responsible to society at large for their

work and conduct, woman's outlook has been much narrower; she has been

responsible to men, and has only touched outside life through them.

In this way women have developed on wrong lines. It is significant,

for instance, how many women have written books under men's names.

Women's work and conduct has been largely restricted by this

adjustment to men, with the result that not only their mental capacity

and work-power has suffered, but their attention has been fixed, for

the most part, to the enhancing of the attractiveness of their persons

as an aid to hold men to their service. The feminine mind and

interests have been set so strongly towards personal display that they

will not easily be diverted. The clothes-peg woman is familiar to all:

she gratifies any whim, well knowing that it is her male protector who

will have to pay, not she. She will, on occasions, use her children

for such base ends. She knows the game is in her hand. Even if the man

resists her for a time, she understands how easily she can break down

his objections by a seductive display of silk stockings! The character

of woman as the inherent coquette is very deeply rooted. It is only a

little more baneful to the freedom of the sexes than that opposite

pernicious side of woman as a sort of angel-child, which we all know

to be such a preposterous pretence.

Nor do I think that the change from these conditions can, or will, be

easy. Women may, and do, protest against the triviality of their

lives, but emotional interests are more immediate than intellectual

ones. Human nature does not drift into intellectual pursuits

voluntarily, rather it is forced into them in connection with urgency

and practical activities. It is much easier to be kept, dressed, and

petted, than to work. Women have not participated in the mental

activities of men because it has not been necessary for them; to do

this has been, indeed, a hindrance to their success. The contrast

between the sexes in this respect has been well compared by

Thomas[323] to the relation of the amateur and the professional in

games. "Women may be desperately interested and work to the limit of

endurance at times; but, like the amateur, they enter into the work

late, and have not had a lifetime of practice.... No one will contend

that the amateur has a nervous organisation less fitted to the game

than the professional; it is admitted that the difference lies in the

constant practice." It is only in the case of woman that the obvious

conclusion is passed over for assumptions that cannot be proved.

The revolt against repression has taken amongst many women another

form of abandonment to lives of sexual preoccupation and intrigue.

Scan the history of woman as she is presented in our literature and

drama, and you will find one expression of her character, one idea

alone of her sphere. It is a point of such interest that I would like

to linger upon it. Wherever woman enters she is a disturbing

influence; she is the centre of emotional action, it is true, but with

no recognised position in life outside of her sex; around her rage

seas of stormy passions, which sometimes she calms, sometimes lashes

into angrier foam. In a sense it may be said that she has scarcely an

individual existence; it is solely in her relation to man that her

nature is considered. If she works, or practises one of the arts, she

does this only until marriage. It does not seem to be conceived as

possible that she can follow work, as the artist must, for herself. It

is curious how far we have been misled by that giving-power of woman,

which, in part, is right and natural to her, but also, in much greater

part, has been harmfully forced upon her. The creator's need to find

expression is, I am certain, at least as strongly rooted in woman as

in man, but no plant can attain to growth unless fitting nourishment

is given to it. To ignore this leads very directly to deception. Thus

we find Mr. Wells, usually so true in his insight, keeps up an old

pretence and affirms in his latest novel, _Marriage_--

"They don't care for art or philosophy, or literature or

anything except the things that touch them directly. And the

work----? It's nothing to them. No woman ever painted for the

love of painting, sang for the sounds she made, or philosophised

for the sake of wisdom as men do."

So it is always. Without question it has been taken for granted by

those who have depicted woman that her sole occupation is an emotional

one; here alone is she justified in literature, as in life.

The fully complete woman of the future is still to be created;

assuredly she is not to be found among the women who have been

portrayed so widely for us by recent writers. These are portraits

arising out of the present confusion; as such they are interesting,

but they are quite unreal in their relation to life. They show us

women, and men too, in revolt. Often these women are really nothing

more than feminist stump-orators preaching the doctrine of an

unconsidered individualism: "Free Motherhood," "Free Love"--free

anything, in fact. These portraits are far removed, indeed, from the

perfected woman that is to be. We want something much more than

this--woman with all sides of her nature adequately worked upon and

fully developed.

Now, to look for a moment at the other side of the question. Woman has

been the cause of emotion in men, the fine instrument by which the

poet has sung and the musician played his exquisite music; the

sculptor, the painter, the writer, all have drawn their inspiration

from her. Have men, then, any right to pride themselves to such a

degree on their achievement in the arts? Could they without woman have

advanced anything like so far? And this becomes abundantly evident if

we look a little deeper and back to the beginning of the arts. "Not,"

writes Karl Buecher,[324] "upon the steep summits of society did poetry

originate, it sprang rather from the depths of the pure, strong soul

of the people. Women have striven to produce it, and as civilised man

owes to woman's work much the best of his possessions, so also are her

thoughts interwoven in the spiritual treasure handed down from

generation to generation."

A glance back at the beginnings of human civilisation show that women

were equal, if not superior, to men in productive poetic activity. To

a large extent men first learned from women the elements of the

various handicrafts. I have already referred to this fact in the

historical section, where we see the reasons whereby women lost their

early control over the industrial arts. I wish to refer to a point of

special importance now, which I find is brought forward, in this

connection, by Iwan Bloch.[325] In the start of the industrial

occupations, in sowing and thrashing and grinding the grain, in baking

bread, in the preparation of food and drinks, of wine and beer, in the

making of pots and baskets, and in spinning, the women worked

together; and, as is common still among primitive peoples, these

occupations were largely carried on in a rhythmical manner. From this

co-operation of the women it resulted that they were the first

creators of poetry and music. The men, on the other hand, hunted

singly in the forests. The birth of their poetic activity followed

only after they had monopolised the labours of material production.

Even to-day among many races the influence of woman's poetry can be

followed for a long way into the literary period. I have myself

witnessed something similar to this among the peasants in the rural

districts of Spain. I have heard women in the evenings relate to one

another and to their children the rich legends of their land, carrying

on the old traditions that have come down from generation to

generation, and thus creating among themselves a communion of heroes.

Then, again, these Spanish women seem never to cease from singing as

they carry on their many and heavy labours. The women sing far more

frequently than the men. Music is to them an instinctive means of

expression; they do not learn it, it belongs to them, like dancing

belongs to the natural child. And these folk songs, where the words

are often improvised by the singer, seem to give utterance to natural

out-door things--a symbol of the people's life, of its action, its

work, very strong in its appeal, which blends so strangely joy with

sadness. A special quality that often surprised me in these songs was

the way in which the people translate and use the music of other

countries. I have heard popular English tunes sung by the women as

they work, which have ceased to be common in their sentiment and

become full of a tenderness into which passion has fallen; even slangy

music-hall tunes take a new character, a lively brilliance that no

longer is vulgar. This music is the true singing of the people, and if

you would feel all the beauty of its appeal you must be in touch with

the spirit that cries in it, with work, and passion, and life.

It may seem that all this has taken us rather far away from our

inquiry into the strength of the artistic impulse in women. The way,

however, is largely cleared. We have proved that there is, at least, a

possible mistake in the opinion that those experiments in creative

expression, which we call variations, are necessarily inherent in the

male, rather than in the female. Speaking biologically, we may regard

woman, in common with man, as a potentially creative agent with a

striving will, and thus able to change under the stimulus of

appropriate opportunity.

Now, to look at the question for a moment in a different light--in

relation to the special qualities that are facts of actual experience

in woman's character as it is to-day. It is proved--if scientific

determination of such qualities were necessary--that women are more

sensitive to suggestion and receptive of outward influences; that they

have keener affectability, and thus tend to be more emotional and,

within certain limits, more imaginative than men. They react to both

physical and psychical stimuli more readily, and it would seem that

their brain action is more rapid. Experimental tests have shown that

in respect of quickness of comprehension and intellectual mobility

women are distinctly superior to men.

It is, of course, an open question how far all this is due to Nature

and how far merely to education. Must we regard this emotional

endowment of woman as permanent or alterable? Havelock Ellis has

detected a decline in the emotivity of modern women under the

influence of new conditions, especially as the result of the more

healthy life and out-door games among girls. But he does not believe

that any present or future change in activities can lead to a complete

abolition of the emotional differences between the sexes. These

qualities are correlated with the essential physical function of

women, and are probably in part of similar deep origin, and are

therefore not likely to change. Nietzsche, as is well known, denies

this emotional capacity of women, and considers them much more

remarkable for their intelligence than for their sensitiveness and

feeling. I believe, however, the view of Havelock Ellis to be the

right one. Throughout Nature it would seem to be indispensable that

the mother should have finer and quicker sensibility than the father.

The female selects the male that she may use him for the race. Women,

for the reasons we have seen, have, as I believe, lost much of the

fineness of their selective sensitiveness. But whether this greater

emotional power in women has been weakened or not, it is--as all

nature proves to us--an actual quality of the female, and in it we

have, therefore, a positive ground to start from in estimating the

potential artistic endowment of women.

Let us accept, then, this sensitiveness both physical and psychical,

as at least the natural character of femaleness. How does it place

women in her relation to the arts?

Consider what are the qualities essential to success in any one of the

arts. Are not the most essential of these a quick reception of

impressions, added to an acute memory for all that has been

experienced? The poet and the writer can reach deeper into the nature

of others, the architect, the sculptor, the painter can see more

clearly, the musician hear more finely; and so it is with all the

arts. Does not the genius, or even the man of talent, take his place

as one who understands incomparably more than others; or, to express

it a little differently, the genius is he who is conscious of most and

of that most acutely. And what is it that enables him to do this, if

it is not a greater sensitiveness and a finer response to every

outward suggestion? It would seem, then, that genius must possess the

emotional qualities that are the natural endowment of woman; while

woman herself is to be excluded from genius. A conclusion that is

plainly absurd.

The further we follow this the more striking the likeness between the

qualities of genius and the high, nervous affectability of woman

becomes. The intuition of woman is really direct vision and may mean

only a quicker power of reasoning. Exactly the same quality must be

acknowledged as distinguishing the genius. He, too, _knows, rather

than reasons how he knows_.

Take, again, the alleged superiority of the feminine mind in matter of

memory. There is the same difference between the memory of the

ordinary man and the man of genius. Mental recognition is proportional

to the intensity of consciousness. Because the life of the genius is

more continuously emotional--nearer, in fact, in its nature to the

woman's--he is more ready to receive impressions and to keep them. And

here we may note the incitement towards autobiography common to gifted

men, which would seem to arise from the same psychological condition

which forces women so strongly to self-revelations. So also with all

the mental qualities we shall find, I believe, the same connection

between the special characters of woman and those of genius. Woman's

mental mobility, her tendency towards nervous outbursts, with a

corresponding irritability and greater susceptibility to fatigue,

except under the support of excitement, as also in the resulting

qualities of her power of ready adaptation to changes of habits and

response to new influences, her tact, her keener insight into

character, her quickness in pity, her impulsiveness, her finer

discrimination, her innate sense of symmetry or fitness--each of these

qualities may be said to accord also with the character of genius, but

no one among them is common to the ordinary man.

Even in so obvious a point as facial expression the same relation may

be traced. It is a matter of constant observation that women's faces

are more expressive than men's, showing greater mobility, through the

instinctive response to suggestions from without and within. A similar

mobility will be readily noted in the appearance of almost all men of

special giftedness. The faces of such men rarely exhibit the

stereotyped expressions that characterise most male countenances. No

one mood leaves a permanent imprint on the features, for through the

amplitude of feeling a new side of the mind is continuously revealed.

Faces with an unchanging expression belong really to people low in

artistic endowment.

Of some significance, again, is the variability in the mental power of

genius, leading to what may be called "a periodicity in production."

Goethe has spoken somewhere of "the recurrence of puberty" in the

artist. This idea may perhaps, without too much straining, be compared

with the functional periodicity of woman. The periods in the life of a

creative artist often assume the character of a crisis--a kind of

climax of vital energy. Sterile years precede productive periods, to

be followed by more barren years. The circle of activity is not

broken, it is but interrupted; the years of apparent sterility really

leading up to, and preparing for, the creative periods. I may point

out here a thought in passing in connection with the child-bearing

functions of women. This is brought forward by many as the most

serious objection to women being able to attain success in any of the

arts. The objection is not really sound. No creative work can be

carried on without interruptions. The important part in all such work

is not to be uninterrupted, but to be able to begin again. The new

experiences gained give new power; a fresh and wider view. And woman

has in her supreme function of motherhood--an experience denied to

men; this should give her greater, and not less, creative capacity.

What is really needed is the freedom, the training and the desire that

shall direct expression, so that woman may enrich the arts with her

own special experience.

It is useless to argue that woman's past record in the arts holds out

no such promise. We know really very little about woman's genius. One

thing is, however, certain: the only possible test of it is trial, for

without this there is no basis of judgment, no means of deciding

whether there be genius or no. If, as I believe, woman's creative

capacity arises out of, and is essentially connected with, her sexual

functions, how can it have been possible to employ such power in the

arts in a society where the natural use of her sex has been restricted

and not allowed a free expression?--a society, moreover, in which the

pregnant woman has been regarded as an object of shame or ridicule.

To look at this question of woman's achievement in the arts in the old

way is no longer possible. We have proved that the natural emotional

endowment of woman is rich and varied. But there are two things

necessary for achievement: inherent aptitude and opportunity--that is,

a favourable environment for expression, in which power may be

directed into useful channels and saved from wastefully expending

itself. To deny genius to women when the opportunity for its

development has been absent is obviously unjust. The influence of

education, and the stronger driving of habit and social opinion, must

be taken into the account. Women have up till now been without two

essential qualities necessary for creating--subjectivity and

initiative. In practice they have not been able, or only very rarely,

to get beyond imitation. Through the circumstances of their lives they

have lacked the courage and conviction, even if opportunity had

arisen, necessary for creative work. For the highest achievement in

the arts they have missed the concentration, the severe devotion to

work, the control of thought and complete self-restraint, which can

come only from discipline, from long training, and freedom. Yet I make

the claim that woman, from her constitutional femininity, is a

compound of all those qualities that genius demands. The channels of

woman's energy have been everywhere choked. No great creative art has

ever been produced by a subjugated class. Art comes with freedom, with

the strong incentive of the communal spirit, and with the sense of

power. For centuries woman has been artificially individualised. Her

special function of motherhood has remained unacknowledged as a

communal work. Her emotional and mental capacities have been turned

back upon herself and her immediate belongings, with the result that

her social usefulness has been suppressed or thwarted. The emotional

feelings of woman are ever pressing, and only need to be brought into

stricter command in order to achieve. What women will accomplish no

man can say.

One word more. Let us look in this new direction, the direction of the

future, because it is there that this possible future entrance of

women into the arts becomes important. We stand in the first rush of a

new movement. It is the day of experiments. The extraordinary

enthusiasm now sweeping through womanhood reveals behind its immediate

fevered expression a great power of emotional and spiritual

initiative. Wide and radically sweeping are the changes in woman's

social outlook. So much stronger is the promise of a vital force,

when they are free to enter and to work in the various departments of

the arts. It is the commonest error to think of art as if it stood

outside the other activities of life. Under the cloak of art much

self-amusement and vulgar self-display tries to justify itself, and

many mercenary interests are concerned in stinting its vitality. All

living and valuable art is really communal. It must fit into its right

place with all phases of human activities, and to do this it must have

somewhere in it the social citizen spirit.

You see how women stand in this matter. The social ideal is becoming a

very near ideal to women. And this quickening in her of the citizen

spirit may well come to revive our art to a more true and social

service. This is no idle fancy. Throughout the ages of patriarchal

faith women have been confined in the home, so that an understanding

of the needs of the home is in their blood. May not the old ideals

remain for service and find expression in the new work? Much that has

passed with us as art has to be swept away. Let women bring this sense

of home into our civic life, and surely it will be reflected in the

arts. It is the sense of fitness to the common use and needs of the

larger family of the State that has been almost wholly eliminated from

our architecture, our statues, our paintings, our music, and much of

our literature. The arts have withered and lost their vitality in our

narrow and blighting commercial society.

I do not want to weary the reader with what can only be suggestions. I

am certain, however, that this vital factor of the home cannot safely

be excluded from the State. Consider any one of the old mediaeval

towns, with its buildings, its cathedral, its churches, its halls, its

homes--all that it contains a splendid witness to the civic life of

its people. Contrast this with what we have been willing to accept as

art in our industrial towns. In the old days the city was in a very

literal sense the home of its citizens, now it is merely a centre of

trade. Is it unfair to connect this with the subjection of women and

the rush of male activities, that has destroyed the need of beauty and

fitness which once was the possession of all? For art you must have

human qualities, and you must have emotion. The time has come when we

are yielding to the new forces, that yet are old. This age will leave

its own track behind it, and those, who are beating out the way now,

must start on the right path--freeing for the service of the future

all the intellectual and emotional forces of women as well as men.

To think boldly, untrammelled by conventions from the past, to search

sedulously for the truth within themselves and follow it fearlessly,

this should be the faith of all those women who love art. Let them

have the courage of their own deep emotions. Let them look forward

into the future, instead of clinging timorously to the stone wall of

their past imitation of men. Then, indeed, woman may be freed--able to

give expression to those creative ideas which are wrapped up with the

elements of her nature. But women must beware of sham emotion and

lachrymose sentimentality. It is her own feelings she must voice, not

the feelings that have been supposed to belong to her. Then, indeed,

the work of women will begin to count. The two things most peculiar

to woman--her pursuing-love of man and her need of a child, will find

their expression in women's art.

It is an appalling commentary on the condition of our thoughts on this

subject that the pregnant woman was but recently considered unfit to

be represented in the statues placed on one of our public buildings.

How convincingly this speaks to women, "Be not ashamed of anything,

but to be ashamed."

III.--_The Affectability of Woman--Its Connection with the Religious

Impulse_

"Religion shares with the sexual impulse the unceasing yearning,

the sentiment of everlastingness, the mystic absorption into the

depths of life, the longing for the coalescence of

individualities in an eternally blessed union, free from earthly

fetters."--IWAN BLOCH.

Now, this affectability, that we have found to be a characteristic

feminine feature, leads us directly to an inquiry into the part

religion has played in the lives of women, and to the wider

consideration of the religious impulse in general, and its close

connection with the sexual instinct. I had intended to treat this

subject in some detail, especially in relation to religious hypnotic

phenomena, a matter of very deep significance in estimating woman's

character. I should have liked, too, to have traced the influence of

the early and late Christian teaching upon woman's mind, to have

examined her position in the social and domestic relationship, and

then to have contrasted this with the almost complete liberty and

distinction enjoyed by women in Pagan culture. But the field opened up

by these inquiries is too wide. The previous sections of this chapter

have grown to such length that all that is possible to me now, if I am

to have space for the matters I want still to investigate, are a few

scattered remarks and suggestions which seem to me to throw some light

on this important side of woman's life.

No one will question woman's aptitude for religion, whatever the

opinion held as to what the organic basis of that aptitude may be. If

we accept that woman is more sensitive to suggestion, more emotional,

and more imaginative in her nature, it is plain why religion affects

her more deeply than men. The extraordinary way in which woman can be

influenced by religious suggestion is similar in its nature to that

saturation of her innermost thoughts with love, which is due in part,

as I believe, to the special qualities of her sex-functions, but also,

in part, to the over-emphasised sexuality produced in her by an

artificial existence. Women have accepted religious beliefs as they

have accepted man's valuation of temporal things, even although these

may be utterly at variance with their nature and their desires.

It has been said that the disposition of woman makes her peculiarly

conservative and uncritical of religious beliefs. Others suggest that

there is a "specific religious sense" in women related with a higher

standard of character. This I do not believe: it is part of the

fiction of woman's superior morality. I think in most women is hidden

an immense appetite for life, an immense capacity for expenditure of

force. She does not often dare to listen to these deeps within her

soul; yet the insurgent voices fill her. There is in the life of most

women something wanting, some general idea, some aim to hold life

together. The effort of woman--often unconscious, but always

present--to realise herself in love has forced her to practise

duplicity and to accept dependence. And this sense of dependence in

her on a protector, not always forthcoming, and, even when present,

not always able to protect, has sent her in search of something

outside and beyond the known and fallible, and has prepared her to

accept with eagerness any professed revelation of the infallible

unknown.

We have seen again and again in the course of our inquiry how deep and

natural the sex impulse is in woman, and this, combined with the much

greater complexity of her sexual life, renders her position peculiarly

liable to be affected disastrously by any failure of love. It must be

recognised that unbounded piety is often no more than a sex symptom,

proceeding from deprivation or from satiety of love, as also from

love's failure in loveless marriage. It seems to me that this

connection of the religious impulse with sexuality is a very important

thing for women to understand. In our achievement of facing the truth

in the place of evasions about fundamental things, lies the path, I

believe along which woman can escape, if ever she is to escape, from

the confusion of purposes that distract her at present.

The intimate association between religious ideas and feelings and the

sexual life is abundantly proved by the history of all peoples. We

first meet it in the widespread early practice of religious

prostitution, which has aptly been called "lust sacrifice." It is even

more manifest in the ancient religious erotic festivals. Of these we

have examples in the festivals of Isis in Egypt, in the Dionysian and

Eleusinian festivals of the Hellenes, in the Roman Bacchanalia and

festival of Flora, and among the Jews in the feast of Baal-peor. In

these festivals the frenzy of religious mysticism merges with the

wildest sexual licence. Sexual mysticism found its way also into

Christianity, a fact to which the lives of the saints furnish an

illuminating witness. And down to the present day we may notice its

manifestations in the most diverse sects during any period of

religious revival. We still meet with sexual excesses under the shadow

of faith, as, for instance, occurred in the late revival in Wales.

Havelock Ellis has laid stress on the leading significance of

religious sexual perceptions, and their special importance on the

emotional feminine character. This subject is so deeply connected with

women that I shall, I hope, be pardoned if I pause for a moment to

relate a personal experience which may help to make this truth more

clear.

In my girlhood I was strongly drawn to religion, partly through

training and example, but more, as I now know, by the affectability of

my strongly feminine temperament. My religious enthusiasm was so

intense that often I was in a condition which must have been closely

connected with erotic religious ecstasy. Salvation was the essential

fact of my life; seeking for it brought me the excitement I

unconsciously craved of conflicts and fulfilled desires. I sought for

God as the passionate woman seeks her lover. I recall a period--I was

approaching womanhood--during which I prayed continuously and

earnestly that it might be granted to me, as to the saints of old, to

see God and the Risen Christ. For long I received no answer. This did

not weaken my faith, but the great trouble of my mind became for long

a consciousness of my own unworthiness. I began an absurd and childish

system of self-punishments, and what I thought would lead to

purification. Then there came a night--it was summer and I was looking

from my window out at the beautiful evening sky--when my prayer was

answered. I seemed, in very truth, to see God. From that time, and for

long, I lived in extraordinary happiness. I am sure that I must have

become hysterical. I felt that I was set apart by God; I conceived the

idea of founding a new religious sect. That I made no attempt to do

this was due to circumstances, which forced me into active work to

gain my own living. Religion continued very largely in my life, but I

was too healthily occupied to be favoured with any more visions. But

the essential point in all this is its close connection with my sexual

development. So far I had never been in love. I believe that the

natural sex desires awakened consciously in me much later than is

common. My need for religion lasted until my sex needs were fully

satisfied, then, little by little, it faded. I want to state the

truth. I did not then trace, nor should I have understood, this

connection. The knowledge came to me long years afterwards; how it

does not matter, but I am certain that in me the religious impulse and

the sex impulse are one.

Love has in it much of the same supernatural element as religion. Both

the sex-act and the act of finding salvation come into intimate

association with woman's need of dependence; hence arises the

remarkable relation between the two, and that easy transition of

sexual emotion into religious emotion which is manifest in so many

women. In both cases the surrender, the renunciation of personal will,

is an experience fraught with passionate pleasure. "Love," as H.G.

Wells has said, "is the individualised correlation of salvation, like

that it is a synthetic consequence of conflict and confusions." It is

true that few women render love the compliment of taking it seriously.

To many it is merely this: a little amusement, clothes, a home, money

to buy new toys; some mild pleasure, a little chagrin, a little

weariness, and then the end. They do not realise or ever desire love

in its full joy of personal surrender. So, too, many women never, save

in some time of personal bewilderment, desire or seek salvation. But

such aimlessness brings its own emptiness, and women strain and seek

towards the god-head. For the truth remains, woman's need of love is

greater than man's need, and for this reason, where love fails her,

her desire for salvation is deeper than man's desire. And here again,

and once again, we see the difference between the sexes. The woman

pays the higher price for her implicit, unquestioning, and unconscious

obedience to Nature. And society has made the payment still heavier.

Let us for this last pity women! The dice they have had to throw in

the game of life is their sex, and they have only been allowed one

throw, and when they have thrown wastefully--yes, it is here that

religion has entered into the game. It may almost be said to measure

the failures and false boundaries in women's loves. The songs of love

and the songs of faith are alike; and women act worship as also they

are often driven to act love. The woman who knows her own heart must

know that this is true. And one cannot wish to see the opium of

religion taken from women until the game is made a fairer one for them

to play.

There is another point to consider.

Many great thinkers have striven against this profound and primitive

connection between the bodily and spiritual impulses, which has seemed

to them an intrusion of evil, impairing their pure spirituality by the

sexual life. They have thus recommended and followed asceticism in

order to arrive at a heightened spirituality. The error here is

obvious. The spiritual activities cannot be divided from the physical;

as well cut the flower off from its roots, and then expect to gather

the fruit. This is why sex-denial and sex-excesses so often go

together. Hence the undeniable unchastity of the mediaeval cloisters.

Nor need the manifestations of sex be physical. Erotic imagination and

voluptuous revelations are expressions of sex-passion. The monstrous

sexual visions of the saints reflect in a typical manner the

incredible violence of the sexual perception of ascetics.

We observe it, then, as a fact of wide experience that the ascetic

life is rooted really in the functional impulses; and further, that it

is only through sexual perception that the spiritual and imaginative

can be grasped and reached. What the ascetic has done is to fear

overmuch. It must not be overlooked that this continual battle with

the primary force of life is necessarily futile in accomplishing its

own aim. For the woman or man who, for the religious or any other

ideal, wishes to overcome the sex-needs must keep the subject always

before her, or his, consciousness. Thus it comes about that the

ascetic is always more occupied with sex than the normal individual.

It seems to me that this is a truth few women have learnt to face.

I am not for a moment denying that the potential energy of the sexual

impulse may be transformed with benefit into productive spiritual

activities, finding its vent in religion, as also in poetry, in art,

and in all creative work. Plato must have had this in his mind when he

speaks of "thought as a sublimated sexual impulse." Schopenhauer, and

many other thinkers, lay stress on the connection between the work of

productive genius and the modification of the sexual impulse. This may

be illustrated--if examples are needed in proof--by the power that has

been exercised so conspicuously by women throughout the world in

religious movements. Two of the greater festivals of the Catholic

Church, for instance, owe their origin to the illumination of women;

the mystic writings of Santa Teresa of Avila give classic expression

to the highest powers of the spirit. Take again the part played by

women as religious leaders of the convents in the early Middle Ages.

In them women of spirit and capacity found a wide and satisfying

career, many of them showing great administrative ability and a quite

remarkable power for government. In recent times mention may be made

of the Theosophists, the most important modern religious movement

established in this country and led by women; and of Christian

Science, which, under the able guidance of Mrs. Eddy, has sprung up

and flourished. It is instructive to note that both these religions

are connected with, and largely established on, magical faith and

esoteric doctrines and practices. In almost all the religions founded

by women we may trace a similar relation with hypnotic phenomena which

must be regarded as closely dependent on sexual sources. The proof is

wider even than these particular instances. It is without doubt the

transformation of suppressed sexual instincts that has made women the

chief supporters of all religions.

It may be said that the religious impulse has to a large extent lost

its hold upon women. This is true. A new age must expect to see a new

departure. As women take active participation in the work of the world

their sense of dependence and need for protection will diminish, and

we may look for a corresponding decrease in that display of excessive

religious emotion that dependence has fostered. But the needs of woman

can never be satisfied alone with work. The natural desires remain

imperative; deny these, and there will be left only the barren tree

robbed of its fruits. Sexuality first breathes into woman's spiritual

being warm and blooming life.

The religious ascetic is not common among us to-day. Yet the old

seeking for something is there. The impulse towards asceticism has, I

think, rather changed its form than passed from women. The place of

the female saint is being taken by the social ascetic. Desire is not

now set to gain salvation, but is turned towards a heightened

intellectual individuation, showing itself in nervous mental

activity. No one can have failed to note the immense egoism of the

modern woman. Women are still in fear of life and love. They have been

made ascetics through the long exercise of restraint upon their

explosively emotional temperament. They have restrained their natures

to remain _pure_. This false ideal of chastity was in the first place

forced upon them, but by long habit it has been accentuated and has

been backed up by woman's own blindness and fear. Thus to-day, in

their new-found freedom, women are seeking to bind men up in the same

bonds of denial which have restrained them. In the past they have

over-readily imbibed the doctrine of a different standard of purity

for the sexes, now they are in revolt--indeed, they are only just

emerging from a period of bitterness in relation to this matter. Men

made women into puritans, and women are arising in the strength of

their faith to enforce puritanism on men. Is this malice or is it

revenge? In any case it is foolishness. Bound up as the sexual impulse

is with the entire psychic emotional being, there would be left behind

without it only the wilderness of a cold abstraction. The Christian

belief in souls and bodies separate, and souls imprisoned in vile

clay, has wrought terrible havoc to women. I believe the two--soul and

body--are one and indivisible. Women have yet this lesson to learn:

the capacity for sense-experience is the sap of life. The power to

feel passion is in direct ratio to the strength of the individual's

hold upon life; and may be said to mark the height of his, or her,

attainment in the scale of being. It is only another out of many

indications of the strength of sexual emotion in women that so many

of them are afraid of the beauty and the natural joys of love.

There is one thing more I would wish to point out in closing this very

insufficient survey of an exceedingly complicated and difficult

subject. To me it seems that here, in this finer understanding of

love, we open the door to the only remedy that will wipe out the

hateful fear of women, which has wrought such havoc in the

relationship between the sexes. Woman, restrained to purity, has of

necessity fallen often into impurity. And men, knowing this better

than woman herself, have feared her, though they have failed in any

true understanding of the cause. Let me give you the estimate of woman

which Maupassant, in _Moonlight_, has placed in the mouth of a priest.

It is the most illuminating passage in one of the most exquisite of

his stories--

"He hated woman, hated her unconsciously and instinctively

despised her. He often repeated to himself the words of Christ:

'Woman, what have I to do with thee?' And he would add, 'It

seems as if God Himself felt discontented with that particular

creation.' For him was that child of whom the poet speaks,

impure, through and through impure. She was the temptress who

had led away the first man, and still continued her work of

perdition; a frail creature but dangerous, mysteriously

disturbing. And even more than their sinful bodies he hated

their loving souls.... God, in his opinion, had created woman

solely to tempt man, to put him to the proof."

One lesson women and men have to learn: so easy to be put into words,

so difficult to carry out by deeds. To get good from each other the

sexes must give love the one to the other. The human heart in

loneliness eats out itself, causes its own emptiness, creates its own

terrors. Nature gives lavishly, wantonly, and woman is nearer to

Nature than man is, therefore she must give the more freely, the more

generously. There can be no such thing as the goodness of one-half of

life without the goodness of the other half. Love between woman and

man is mutual; is continual giving. Not by storing up for the good of

one sex or in waste for the pleasure of the other, but by free

bestowing is salvation. Wherefore, not in the enforced chastity of

woman, but in her love, will man gain his new redemption.

FOOTNOTES:

[318] Velazquez is known to us only by the name of his mother; his

father's name was de Silva.

[319] I have taken these passages from the chapter on "The Women of

Galicia," in my _Spain Revisited_.

[320] _Man and Woman_, p. 377; Moebius, _Stachylogie_, 1901.

[321] The passage occurs in a lecture by Prof. Thomson and Mrs.

Thomson on "The Position of Woman Biologically Considered," and was

one of a series delivered in Edinburgh to consider and estimate the

recent changes in the position of woman. The addresses have been

published in a book entitled _The Position of Woman, Actual and

Ideal_.

[322] _Sexual Life of Our Times_, p. 74.

[323] _Sex and Society_, pp. 306, 307.

[324] Quoted by Bloch, _Sexual Life of Our Times_, p. 80.

[325] _Sexual Life of Our Times_, pp. 80, 81.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER X

THE SOCIAL FORMS OF THE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP

I.--_Marriage_

The difficulty of the problem of marriage--Facts to be

considered--Marriage and the family among the animals--Among

primitive peoples--Progress from lower to higher forms of the

sexual association--An examination of the purpose of

marriage--The fear of hasty reforms--Practical

morality--Marriage an institution older than mankind--The

practical moral ends of marriage--The racial and individual

factors--No real antagonism between the two--What is good for

the individual must react also for the benefit of the

race--Various systems of marriage--Monogamy the form that has

prevailed--The higher law of the true marriage--Conventional

monogamic marriage--Its failure in practical

morality--Coexistence with polygamy and prostitution--Chief

grounds for the reform of marriage--An indictment by Mr.

Wells--Our marriage system based upon the rights of

property--This not necessarily evil--The Egyptian marriage

contracts--The Roman marriage--The influence of

Christianity--Asceticism and the glorification of

virginity--Confusions and absurdities--The failure of our

sexual morality--Mammon marriages--Sins against the race--Two

examples from my own experience--The iniquity of our bastardy

laws--The waste of love--Free-love--Its failure as a

practical solution--The reform of marriage--The tendency to

place the form of the sexual relationship above the facts of

love--The dependence of the consciousness of duty upon

freedom--The sexual responsibility of women.

II.--_Divorce_

Traditional morality--Practical conditions of divorce--The moral

code--This must be modified to meet new conditions--The

enforced continuance of an unreal marriage--This the grossest

form of immorality--The barbarism of our divorce laws--The

action of the Church and State--Confusion and

absurdities--Divorce relief from misfortune, not a

crime--Personal responsibility in marriage--A recognition of

the equality of the mother with the father--Sanction by the

State of free divorce--The example of Egypt and Babylon--The

Roman divorce by consent--The condemnation of free divorce

not the outcome of true morality--The immorality of

indissoluble marriage--Loyalty and duty in love--The claims

of the child--One advantage of free divorce--Adoption of

children under the State--Growing disinclination against

coercive marriage--The waste to the race--Our responsibility

to the future.

III.--_Prostitution_

The dependence of prostitution upon marriage--The extent and

difficulties of the problem involved--Prostitution

essentially a woman's question--Women's past attitude towards

it--The diffusion of disease by means of prostitution--Apathy

and ignorance of women--This changing--What action will women

take in the future?--Grounds for fear--The White Slave

Bill--Its absurd futility--The opinion of Bernard

Shaw--Poverty as a cause of prostitution--This not the only

factor--The real evil lies deeper--The economic reformer--The

moral crusade--Men's passions--Seduction--These causes need

careful examination--Lippert's view--Idleness, frivolity, and

love of finery as causes--The desire for excitement--The need

for personal knowledge of the prostitute--What I have learnt

from different members of this profession--The prostitute's

attitude towards her trade--The sale of sex very profitable

to the expert trader--The sexual frigidity of the

prostitute--Importance and significance of this--A further

examination into the causes of the evil--Poverty seldom the

chief motive for prostitution--The influence of inheritance

upon the sexual life--The degradation of our legitimate loves

the ultimate cause of prostitution--The demand for the

prostitute by men--Causes of this demand--Repression of the

primitive sexual instincts by civilisation--The foolishness

of casting blame upon men--The duplex morality of the

sexes--Its influence on the degradation of passion--Woman's

unprofitable service to chastity--The connection with

prostitution--My belief in passion as the only source of

help.