Woman

by Anthony M. Ludovici

In the first place it is work done for the personal ends of the worker herself, and not for some one, or some company of people, with whom she has not the smallest personal concern.

Secondly, it is done in her own time and in her own way.

Thirdly, an enormous amount of it is of such a nature that it is both soothing and wholesome, while it also allows of meditation, thought and that most precious of lost pastimes, communion with self.

Fourthly, when done efficiently and with a good heart it is so soon dispatched that it allows of a good deal of leisure, and,

Fifthly, it is never of that nerve-racking nature which, while demanding unremitting attention, also destroys attention owing to its lack of interest and all personal value.[134] Now, however, that women have become active competitors with men in those very occupations to which modern men owe the principal features of their degeneration, it cannot be expected that the female of the species is going to escape any more happily than her male has done the worst consequences of besotting and specializing labour; and it is therefore inevitable that in a few generations we shall witness the evanescence in woman of that catholicity of tastes and interests and that versatility of gifts which has until lately differentiated her from her male companion.

We shall also witness in her that same bodily degeneration that has come over man, and yet it is difficult to see how or when the movement that now leads women to engage in these pursuits can be arrested. The fact that this movement was largely initiated and supported by that body of unattached females roughly grouped under the heading “Surplus Women,” cannot well be denied; but it does not follow from this that it is a permanent evil in our midst. For, if the problem of the surplus woman, and of those who are misled by her, be attacked along lines which have as their ultimate aim the marriage of all women, it does not seem impossible that something may be done to arrest a tendency which, from the standpoint of woman’s future, must be bad, and which, from the standpoint of the future of the race, is nothing less than alarming.

The surprising feature about this movement which during the last fifty years has led the bulk of girls and young women into the very occupations to which modern man himself owes his besotment and miserable limitations, is that those who become the victims of it—that is to say the vast majority of women workers in Commerce, Industry, the Civil Service and the Professions, enter joyously, and almost with a whoop of triumph into the various callings with which they achieve what they claim to be economic independence. Not only that, but those who contemplate the procession of them marching into these callings, stand and applaud and congratulate each other on the spectacle.

It is true that millions of these women in later life have the intelligence to realize the mistake they have made, and to measure with some approach to accuracy the deterioration it has effected both in their minds and in their bodies in one generation. It would be too much, perhaps, to expect young girls to anticipate these results, when they first leave their homes to earn their own livelihood; but what leaves one marvelling is the fact that the older elements in the population do not seem to understand the doom which will inevitably overtake this female army and its descendants, and that far from making any attempt at driving it back, they shout vociferously and applaud it as a desirable and excellent phenomenon of modern life.

The cynic may reply “All the better! You say that 200 years of commercial, industrial and office occupations have deteriorated man, so that modern woman has very naturally learnt to despise him. Very well, then, if women now suffer a similar amount of deterioration, the balance will once more be restored, and all will be well.”

All those who can derive some comfort from this reflection, in the face of modern tendencies, are welcome to it. But to those who, like myself, realize that hitherto the rapidity of our degeneration has been to some extent checked by the comparative aloofness of one sex from the worst influences of modern civilization, and that henceforth, instead of one stream of degeneration we shall have two which will become confluent at marriage, the future does not seem to be a very bright one, nor does it hold out any promise of producing, from the human elements it will contain, the individuals capable of initiating a counter movement sufficiently powerful to arrest the tide of degeneracy that threatens to sweep everything of value away.