Читать книгу The Truth About Woman - C. Gasquoine Hartley - Страница 7

"We have not succeeded," he says, "in determining the radical and essential character of men and women uninfluenced by external modifying conditions. We have to recognise that our present knowledge cannot tell us what they might be, but what they actually are, under the conditions of civilisation. … The facts are so numerous that even when we have ascertained the precise significance of some one fact, we cannot be sure that it is not contradicted by other facts. And so many of the facts are modifiable under a changing environment that in the absence of experience we cannot pronounce definitely regarding the behaviour of either the male or female organism under different conditions."

Only a knowledge of the multifarious and complex environmental forces, which in the past have moulded women into what to-day they are, will lead us to our goal. We may examine woman's present character, both physical and mental, with every precision of detail, but the knowledge gained will not settle her inborn Nature. We shall discover what she is, not what she might be. No, rather to do this we must go back through many generations to primitive woman. We must study, in particular, that period known as the Mother-Age, when we find an early civilisation largely built up by woman's activity and developed by her skill. We must find out every fact that we can of woman's physical and mental life in this first period of social growth; we must examine the causes which led to the change from this Mother-rule to that of the Father-rule, or the patriarchate, which succeeded it. Insight into the civilisations of the past is of special value to us in trying to solve our problems of woman's true place in the social life. For one thing, we shall learn that morality and sexual customs and institutions are not fixed, but are peculiar to each age, and are good only in so far as they fulfil the needs of any special period of a people's growth. We must note, in particular, the contributions made by woman to early civilisation, and then seek the reasons why she has lost her former position of power. The savage woman is nearer to Nature than we ourselves are, and in learning of her life we shall come to an understanding of many of the problems of our lives.

This, then, must be the second path of our discovery, and, following it, we shall gain further knowledge of what is artificial and what is real in the character of woman and in the present relations of the sexes.

We find that the external surroundings that influence life are referable to one of two classes: those which tend to increase destructive processes, and find their active expression in expenditure of energy, and those which tend to increase constructive processes, and are passive instead of active, storing energy, not expending it. These two classes of external forces, disruptive and constructive, are called katabolic and anabolic. Looking back on the early natural lives of men and women, we find there has been a very sharp separation in the play of these opposite sets of influences. A hasty survey of the facts suffices to prove that the work of the world was divided into two great parts, the men had the share of killing life, whether that of man or of animals, their attention was given to fighting and hunting; while the women's share was the continuing and nourishing life, their attention being given to the domestic arts—to agriculture and the attendant stationary industries. Woman's position during the matriarchate was largely the result of the need in primitive society of woman's constructive energy, and her power arose from an unfettered use of her special functions. But this divergence of the paths of women from the paths of men continued, and during the patriarchal period became arbitrary with the withdrawal of women from initiative labour, an unnatural arrangement which arose out of later social conditions. The militant side of social activities has belonged to men, the passive to women; and men have been goaded into growth by the conditions and struggles of their lives. They have gathered around themselves a special man-formed environment of institutions and laws, of activities and inventions, of art and literature, of male sentiments, and male systems of opinions, to which they are connected in subtle and numerous relations, and this complex heritage of influences has been reimposed on men generation by generation. In this social working-life women have not had an equal part—and a drag in their development has arisen as the result of this passivity. At a certain period in civilisation women became an inferior class because men with their greater range of opportunities, which brought them within a wider and more variable circle of influences, developed a superior fitness on the motor side. Another contrast is very evident, men's work being performed under more striking circumstances and with more apparent effort and danger, drew to itself prestige, which women's work did not receive; their work, on the contrary, was held in contempt.[7]

Yet, in this connection, it is necessary to say emphatically that, in its origin, there was nothing arbitrary in this division between the sexes. It was, in itself, a natural outcome of natural causes, arising out of the needs of primitive societies. There is nothing derogatory to woman in accepting the passive or, more truly, the constructive power of her nature; rather it is her chief claim for the regaining of her true position in society. I wish at once to say how far it is from my desire to judge woman from a male standpoint. The power and nature that are woman's are not secondary to man's; they are equal, but different, being co-existent and complementary—in fact, just the completion of his.

There is another point that must be made clear.

The separation in the social activities of women and men was not brought about, as is stated so frequently, by men's injustice to women. There is an unfortunate tendency to regard the subjection of woman as wholly due to male selfishness and tyranny. Many leaders of woman's freedom hold to this view as their broad exposition of principle. Such belief is illogical and untrue. It cannot be too often repeated that sex-hatred means retrogression and not progress. I do not mean to say that women have not suffered at men's hands. They have, but not more than men have suffered at their hands. No woman who faces facts can deny this truth. Neither sex can afford to bring railing accusations against the other. The old doctrine of blame is insufficient. Women's disabilities are not, in their origin at least, due to any form of male tyranny. I believe, moreover, that any solution of the woman problem, and of woman's rights, is of ridiculous impotence that attempts to see in man woman's perpetual oppressor. The enemy, if enemy there is, of woman's emancipation, is woman herself.

But, on the other side, it is certain that the long-held opinion—what we may call "the male view of women"—which believes that the position woman occupies in society and the duties she performs are, in the main, what they should be, she being what she is, is equally false. Such theorists throw upon Nature the responsibility of the evils consequent on the deviations from equality of opportunity in the past lives of women. Truly we credit Nature with an absurd blunder do we accept this inferiority of the female half of life. Woman is what she is because she has lived as she has. And no estimate of her character, no effort to fix the limit of her activities, can carry weight that ignores the totally different relations towards society that have artificially grown up, dividing so sharply the life of woman from that of man.

I am brought back to the object of this book.

What are the conditions that have brought woman to her position of dependence upon man? How far is her state of physical and mental inferiority the result of this position? To what extent is she justified in her present revolt? What result will her freedom have on the sexual relationships? Will the change be likely to work for the benefit of the future? In a word, how far are the new claims woman is making consistent with race permanence? It is not one, but a whole group of questions that have to be answered when once the ideal of the right of the present position of the sexes is shaken. The subject is so entangled that a straightforward step-by-step inquiry will not always be possible. Dogmatic conclusions, and the bringing forward of too hasty remedies must alike be avoided. The past must lead us to the present, and thence we must look to the future. The first need is to find out every fact that we can that will help us in our search for the truth. Most writers on the subject, in their desire to fix on a cause of the evil, have selected one factor, or group of factors, and largely neglected all others. Otto Weininger, for instance, the brilliant modern denouncer of woman, refers the whole great difference between women and men to one cause—the bondage of sexuality. Mrs. Stetson, in Woman and Economics, finds a different answer to the same question, and assumes that the whole evil is of economic origin. Both explanations are in part true, but neither is the truth.

To institute reform successfully needs a wider spirit. We must face sex problems with biological and historical knowledge. Before we can understand women's present position in society, or even suggest a future, we must examine the place she has filled in the civilisations of the past; we must fix, too, the part the female half of life has played in the evolution of the sexes. Yet an inquiry into facts is only the first stage, and not the final. When we can go on from these facts to their results, and learn the reasons of what we have discovered, we shall become to some extent, at least, prepared. Then, and then only, can we venture to look forward and intelligently suggest whither the present revolution is leading us.

It is to reach this goal that this book is written. It is an attempt to place the woman question in a wider and more decisive light. It is not an investigation of facts alone, but of causes. The gospel it would preach is a gospel of liberation. And that from which woman must be freed is herself—the unsocial self that has been created by a restricted environment. We have seen that woman's social inferiority in the past has been to a great extent a legitimate thing. To all appearances history would have been impossible without it, just as it would have been impossible without an epoch of slavery and war. Physical strength has ruled in the past, and woman was the weaker. The truth is that woman's time had not come, but now her unconscious evolution must give place to a conscious development. Happiness for women! That must imply wholly independent activities, and complete freedom for the exercise of her work of race production. Woman's duty to society is paramount, she is the guardian of the Race-body and Race-soul. But woman must be responsible to herself; no longer must she follow men. The natural growth force needs to be liberated. Woman must be freed as woman; she must die to arise from death a full human being. There is no other solution to the woman question, and there can be no other.