Woman

by Anthony M. Ludovici

Now, quite early in this book on women, the following important remark occurs: “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing—the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.”[147]

The ingenuity of this sentence, its plausibility in the eyes of ignorant and prejudiced people, and its dark innuendo, make it one of the most astonishing utterances that ever issued from the lips of an alleged philosopher. If it be more than an insincere attempt to quash all discussion and inquiry regarding the subject for ever, it can mean only two things.

(1) The word “now” definitely restricts the allegations concerning the nature of women to the present age. “What is now called the nature of women,” therefore is implicitly contrasted with what was once called the nature of women. The first possible meaning of the sentence is therefore as follows: “As compared with what used to be called the nature of women, what is now called the nature of woman is an entirely artificial thing.”

In order to dispose of this first possible meaning, we have only to reply to Mrs. Taylor (for it is obvious that Mill would only have referred us to her if we had addressed ourselves to him), that, as the present view of woman’s nature does not differ entirely from the traditional and ancient view—where there exists no difference between the two, we may presumably postulate eternities, or constant factors. And, so long as we abide by those characteristics, in which the testimony of the present age concurs with tradition and hoary antiquity, we escape, even if we do not respect, her ruling.

(2) The words, “an eminently artificial thing,” are surely a begging of the question. Everybody, even the most be-Taylorized thinker, ought to be able to see this. For, it may be asked, what at present can be called natural and what can be called artificial in civilized man and woman? Is it natural to wear clothes, or is it artificial? Is it natural to use implements instead of our fingers at meals? Is it natural to speak English? Two thousand years ago no one on earth spoke English. In the days of Caractacus, if anyone had stood up to address a crowd in English, he would have been suspected not only of artificiality, but of dangerous insanity. Is the speaking of English now artificial? This is not quibbling. We are bound to suspect insincerity in anyone who, at this late hour, uses the distinctions “artificial” and “natural” of civilized man or woman—particularly when they do so without giving us exact definitions of these words. Many thousands of years ago in Egypt, a certain woman, the wife of Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, cruelly betrayed a man who flouted her advances. Similar cases have happened since. We are all familiar with the saying: “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.”[148] Is this tendency in woman to retaliate upon him who scorns her, the mortification she feels at his rebuff, artificial or natural? Popular tradition in many countries tells us that women are habitual liars. Lombroso points out that their weakness, relative to man, has induced them to use craft and deceit to achieve their ends. Is woman’s weakness relative to man natural or artificial? If it is natural, is her tendency to use craft and deceit also natural? If her weakness is artificial, when and how did it become so, and when and how did prevarication come to her support?

Those who are acquainted with The Subjection of Women will probably reply that Mrs. Taylor, or Miss Helen,[149] did feel it incumbent upon them to state a little more precisely what they meant by the use of the word artificial; for Mill proceeds to write as follows: “It may be asserted, without scruple [fine scruples these!!!], that no other class of dependents have had their character so entirely distorted from its natural proportions by their relations with their masters.”[150] This means that a “true,” a “natural” woman once fell into man’s hands, and that since that time she has been distorted out of all recognition.

But we may very relevantly ask Mesdames Taylor, how, when and where they have had the unique privilege of coming across this wholly “true” and “natural” woman? Presumably, she was not only a “true” woman, but also a “truthful” woman; she was not only a “natural” woman, but a guileless, honest woman, devoid of all malice and vanity—in fact quite unlike the woman Manu knew, or the woman Adam knew. At what period in history did she appear and fall into the distorting hands of man? By what scientific process have Mesdames Taylor acquired any knowledge of her? We only know of woman as she is seen to-day, in history, in the literary remains of antiquity, and in savage tribes. Whence comes this alleged “true” and “natural” woman, beside whom the woman we know is only a distorted caricature? To postulate a norm that is wholly hypothetical, and then to argue that by the side of that gratuitous creation, the woman that we know, and have seen mirrored in history, in the tradition of mankind, and in the work of our acutest psychologists, is a monstrous distortion, may prove a useful means of clouding the issue, but can hardly be allowed to pass as an argument. And the fact that Mill, the logician, the critic of Spencer and Sir William Hamilton, wrote this, and the whole of the remaining paragraph, surely demonstrates how very far he was from being himself when he wrote this particular book.[151]

We therefore deny the possibility of any second meaning to Mesdames Taylor’s sentence, except this, that, like “true” women in argument, they are trying to foist a spurious distinction upon their opponents, with their two words “artificial” and “natural,” so that henceforth all those who allege anything but pleasant things about women, may be promptly gagged with the retort “Artificial!”

A little later on in his Subjection of Women we read the following: “For, however great and apparently ineradicable the moral and intellectual differences between men and women might be, the evidence of their being natural differences could only be negative. Those only could be inferred to be natural which could not possibly be artificial—the residuum, after deducting every characteristic of either sex, which can admit of being explained from education or external circumstances.”[152]

In this sentence it is difficult not to discern the voice of the female collaborator in two distinct vibrations: the general sentiment and the irrational argument; for, apart from the fact that it amounts practically to a drastic and final veto against all such discussions as the one I am engaging in at the present moment, it relies upon wholly specious but plausible biological phraseology for its persuasiveness. In it, moreover, we not only find a reiteration of the counterfeit argument, but also an attempt to dress it in a delusively scientific garb.