Love's Coming of Age: Woman, the Serf

WOMAN

THE SERF

A HALF-GROWN man is of course a tyrant. And so it has come about that the rule of Man in the world has for many ages meant the serfdom of Woman.

Far back in History, at a time when in the early societies the thought of inequality had hardly arisen, it would appear that the female in her own way--as sole authenticator of birth and parentage, as guardian of the household, as inventress of agriculture and the peaceful arts, as priestess or prophetess or sharer in the councils of the tribe--was as powerful as man in his, and sometimes even more so. But from thence, down to to-day, what centuries of repression, of slavehood, of dumbness and obscurity have been her lot!

There is much to show that the greed of Private Property was the old Serpent which brought about the fall of our first parents; for as this sentiment--the chief incentive to modern Civilisation--rose and spread with a kind of contagion over the advancing

1  With these physiological differences are naturally allied the facts that, of the two, Woman is the more primitive, the more intuitive, the more emotional. If not so large and cosmic in her scope, the great unconscious processes of Nature lie somehow nearer to her; to her, sex is a deep and sacred instinct, carrying with it a sense of natural purity; nor does she often experience that divorce between the sentiment of Love and the physical passion which is so common with men, and which causes them to be aware of a grossness and a conflict in their own natures; she is, or should be, the interpreter of Love to man, and in some degree his guide in sexual matters. More, since she keeps to the great lines of evolution and is less biassed and influenced by the momentary currents of the day; since her life is bound up with the life of the child; since in a way she is nearer the child herself, and nearer to the savage; it is to her that Man, after his excursions and wanderings, mental and physical, continually tends to return as to his primitive home and resting-place, to restore his balance, to find his centre of life, and to draw stores of energy and inspiration for fresh conquests of the outer world. "In women men find beings who have not wandered so far as they have from the typical life of earth's

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If it be true that by natural and physiological right Woman stands in some such primitive relationship to Man, then we may expect this relationship to emerge again into clear and reasonable light in course of time; though it does not of course follow that a relationship founded on physiological distinctions is absolutely permanent--since these latter may themselves vary to some degree. That a more natural and sensible relation of some kind between the sexes is actually coming to birth, few who care to read the signs of the times can well doubt. For the moment, however, and by way of parenthesis before looking to the future, we have to consider a little more in detail the present position of women under civilisation. Not that the consideration will be altogether gracious and satisfactory, but that it may--we are fain to hope--afford us some hints for the future.

It was perhaps not altogether unnatural that

Woman's Question: "I admit there is no room for pharisaical self-laudation here. The bawling mass of mankind on a race-course or the stock-exchange is degrading enough in all conscience. Yet this even is hardly so painful as the sight which meets our eyes

The 'lady,' the household drudge, and the prostitute, are the three main types of woman resulting in our modern civilisation from the process of the past-and it is hard to know which is the most wretched, which is the most wronged, and which is the most unlike that which in her own heart every true woman would desire to be.

In some sense the 'lady' of the period which is just beginning to pass away is the most characteristic product of Commercialism. The sense of Private Property, arising and joining with the "angel and idiot" theory, turned Woman more and more--especially of course among the possessing classes--into an emblem of possession--a mere doll, an empty idol, a brag of the man's exclusive right in the sex--till at last, as her vain splendors increased and her real usefulness diminished, she ultimated into the 'perfect lady.' But let every woman who piques and preens herself to the fulfilment of this ideal in her own person, remember what is the cost

In Baronial times the household centred round the Hall, where the baron sat supreme; to-day it centres round the room where the lady reigns. The "with" is withdrawn from the withdrawing-room, and that apartment has become the most important of all. Yet there is an effect of mockery in the homage paid to the new sovereign; and, as far as

Woman!"

And yet is it possible for Woman ever to be worthy her name, unless she is free?

To-day, or up to to-day, just as the wage-worker has had no means of livelihood except by the sale of his bodily labor, so woman has had no means of livelihood except by the surrender of her bodily sex.

If, as a consequence of all this, woman has gone down hill, there is no doubt that man has gravitated too. (Or was it really that Jack fell down first, and "Jill came tumbling after"?) Anyhow I think that nothing can be more clear--and this I believe should be taken as the basis of any discussion on the relation of the sexes--than that whatever injures the one sex injures the other; and that whatever defects or partialities may be found in the one must from the nature of the case be tallied by corresponding defects and partialities in the other. The two halves of the human race are complementary, and it is useless for one to attempt to glorify itself at the expense of the other. As in Olive Schreiner's allegory of Woman ("Three Dreams in a Desert"), man and woman are bound together by a vital band, and the one cannot move a step in advance of the other.

, combined with the skilful use of the glamor belonging to her sex, have given her an extraordinary faculty of carrying out her own purposes, often through the most difficult passes, without ever exposing her hand. Possibly the knowledge of this forms one reason why women distrust each other so much more than men distrust each other. Certainly one of the rarest of God's creatures is a truly undesigning female, but--when dowered with intellect such as might seem to justify it in being designing--one of the most admirable and beautiful!

Looking a little deeper, and below the superficial contrast which an unsatisfactory relation between the sexes has doubtless created, one seems to discern some of those more vital and deep-rooted differentiations spoken of on an earlier page. It is a commonly received opinion that woman tends more to intuition and man to logic; 1 and certainly the male mind seems better able to deal with abstractions and generalisations, and the female mind with the personal and the detailed and the concrete. And while this difference may be in part attributable to the artificial confinement of women to the domestic

Footnotes

40:1 For other points of difference see Appendix. 

41:1 Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis. Contemporary Science Series, p. 371,

50:1 Physiologically speaking a certain excess of affectability and excitability in women over men seems to be distinctly traceable.