Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

But this kind of view is of a most superficial sort, and one that, comparatively speaking, is new. Before the coming of industrialism the ideals of women were far different and were centred in the home. The family was then firmly established on the patriarchal system.

I have just read a Russian book[70] which gives a perfect picture of the patriarchal home. The scene is described by a child: the head of the house has died and the new male-head comes from the death-bed. He is thus received by the women of the house—

“Suddenly the door opened, and my father came in. He looked thin and pale and sad. Instantly all rose and went to meet him; even grandmother, who was very stout and could not walk without some one supporting her, dragged herself towards him, and all his four sisters fell down at his feet and began to ‘keen.’ It was impossible to catch all they said and part I now forget, but I remember the words, ‘You are our father now: be kind to us poor orphans.’ My father with tears lifted them all up and embraced them; when his mother advanced towards him, he bowed to the ground before her, kissed her hands, and vowed that he would always submit to her authority, and that no changes would be made by him.… They then sat down to eat so heartily—my mother did not—that I watched them with astonishment. My Aunt Tatyana helped fish-soup out of a large tureen, and, as she put bits of roe and liver on the plates, she begged all to do justice to them: ‘How poor father loved the roe and the liver!’”

Now, to the self-assertive, feminist mind, imbued with industrial ideals, this scene may make no appeal. Its peace is too quiet. Here is none of the modern unrest, the boredom, the moving about in worlds unrealised. But I do not think this will be noted. The one suggestion that will leap to the thoughts is the dependent position of the women. This is true, but it is equally true that the power of the women is far greater than it is in any industrial home. And we find that such power is not exercised by the young women and on account of any sexual attraction, in the way to which we are accustomed and have come to expect, but the power is held by the mother, whose desires through life are a law to her son. I can hardly emphasise too strongly this power and influence of the mother at all times when the family is firmly established. I think it must be granted that the mother has lost her position of influence in the home wherever industrial views of life have penetrated. She has little power over her grown-up sons or even over her daughters. Self-assertion is also the desire of the children; they want to break away from the mother. Perhaps this is inevitable, and maybe it is right. It is very difficult to be certain.

I will not dwell on this question. I would, however, ask you to keep fixed in your attention this hesitation that has entered as a disease into our modern consciousness. We are without purpose, and have no absolute standard of conduct. And the result for most of us is a life of confused aims, restless and seeking, achieving by accident what is achieved at all.

There have been, of course, many separate causes and influences uniting to bring this unrest, but the disorganisation of the patriarchal home, with the change in the ideal and desires of women, has acted very strongly as a disturbing force. We have lost, especially, that harmony in life which woman alone is able to create.

Within the patriarchal family-group women lived a life that was complete in itself, the home was self-contained because it included all the elements necessary for the carrying on of a useful and healthy life. True this home life, complete as it was in itself, was not life in the fullest sense of living, for it lacked some of the larger elements that only freedom of action can give. It was for women a restricted, and, in later times, even a stunted life: in the end it came to be a parasitic life. But for long it was a natural and satisfying life and it was always entirely feminine, because motherhood embraced it all, inspiring every motive and guiding every act.

What we want is the family reconstructed, with all its historic bonds of unity and sanctity preserved and yet fitted to meet modern needs. It must be a home where life can be lived in its fulness and its depth. It is clear that this reconstruction is not going to be easy. Such a task must even be held to be absurd, if we view life from the modern standpoint, which can only be that of the doctrine of self-assertion. Where the Self is so insistent, there can be no consciousness of duty as something fixed and of life as being purposive, consecrated to an end, which may not be left or taken up. And the first thing necessary is to break through the separate aims that cause such confusion in women’s thoughts and desires. No standard of action can be fixed until we know what we want. Separation must arise from self-assertion. Nothing worth doing can be done until the collective consciousness of women has found itself and regained a unifying ideal.

Life at the moment is in a state of too violent instability for any attempts to reconstruct the home to be of any avail, and, in any case, it is difficult to believe that any new form of the family can in modern times exercise the sway that the patriarchal system wielded in times gone by. And yet some standard we must have, or the confusion in women’s lives will go on, and all feminine idealism must perish through the very number of its varieties.

Now, it may be that the forces which acted against the family in its past history are acting again to-day. Communal living and group homes have been tried already in the beginnings of civilisation. They were developed on account of conditions of danger which threatened the primitive family-groups, forcing them to unite with one another for mutual protection and help.[71] To-day again the home is threatened. Industrialism has steadily undermined its foundations, and changed the desire of women. Industrial workers have departed far indeed from the ideal of absolute self-dedication and service to the home that once was the supreme conception of woman. And now a further step has been taken. War has made necessary conditions that industrialism first taught women to desire. For the first time in our industrial history a demand has arisen for women’s labour as pressing and large as the supply. Hundreds and thousands of women and girls have been called from their homes to carry on the necessary work of the country. There are already 195,000 women employed in munition work, while 275,000 more women are engaged in industrial occupations.[72]