The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

It is, of course, an open question how far all this is due to Nature and how far merely to education. Must we regard this emotional endowment of woman as permanent or alterable? Havelock Ellis has detected a decline in the emotivity of modern women under the influence of new conditions, especially as the result of the more healthy life and out-door games among girls. But he does not believe that any present or future change in activities can lead to a complete abolition of the emotional differences between the sexes. These qualities are correlated with the essential physical function of women, and are probably in part of similar deep origin, and are therefore not likely to change. Nietzsche, as is well known, denies this emotional capacity of women, and considers them much more remarkable for their intelligence than for their sensitiveness and feeling. I believe, however, the view of Havelock Ellis to be the right one. Throughout Nature it would seem to be indispensable that the mother should have finer and quicker sensibility than the father. The female selects the male that she may use him for the race. Women, for the reasons we have seen, have, as I believe, lost much of the fineness of their selective sensitiveness. But whether this greater emotional power in women has been weakened or not, it is—as all nature proves to us—an actual quality of the female, and in it we have, therefore, a positive ground to start from in estimating the potential artistic endowment of women.

Let us accept, then, this sensitiveness both physical and psychical, as at least the natural character of femaleness. How does it place women in her relation to the arts?

Consider what are the qualities essential to success in any one of the arts. Are not the most essential of these a quick reception of impressions, added to an acute memory for all that has been experienced? The poet and the writer can reach deeper into the nature of others, the architect, the sculptor, the painter can see more clearly, the musician hear more finely; and so it is with all the arts. Does not the genius, or even the man of talent, take his place as one who understands incomparably more than others; or, to express it a little differently, the genius is he who is conscious of most and of that most acutely. And what is it that enables him to do this, if it is not a greater sensitiveness and a finer response to every outward suggestion? It would seem, then, that genius must possess the emotional qualities that are the natural endowment of woman; while woman herself is to be excluded from genius. A conclusion that is plainly absurd.

The further we follow this the more striking the likeness between the qualities of genius and the high, nervous affectability of woman becomes. The intuition of woman is really direct vision and may mean only a quicker power of reasoning. Exactly the same quality must be acknowledged as distinguishing the genius. He, too, knows, rather than reasons how he knows.

Take, again, the alleged superiority of the feminine mind in matter of memory. There is the same difference between the memory of the ordinary man and the man of genius. Mental recognition is proportional to the intensity of consciousness. Because the life of the genius is more continuously emotional—nearer, in fact, in its nature to the woman's—he is more ready to receive impressions and to keep them. And here we may note the incitement towards autobiography common to gifted men, which would seem to arise from the same psychological condition which forces women so strongly to self-revelations. So also with all the mental qualities we shall find, I believe, the same connection between the special characters of woman and those of genius. Woman's mental mobility, her tendency towards nervous outbursts, with a corresponding irritability and greater susceptibility to fatigue, except under the support of excitement, as also in the resulting qualities of her power of ready adaptation to changes of habits and response to new influences, her tact, her keener insight into character, her quickness in pity, her impulsiveness, her finer discrimination, her innate sense of symmetry or fitness—each of these qualities may be said to accord also with the character of genius, but no one among them is common to the ordinary man.

Even in so obvious a point as facial expression the same relation may be traced. It is a matter of constant observation that women's faces are more expressive than men's, showing greater mobility, through the instinctive response to suggestions from without and within. A similar mobility will be readily noted in the appearance of almost all men of special giftedness. The faces of such men rarely exhibit the stereotyped expressions that characterise most male countenances. No one mood leaves a permanent imprint on the features, for through the amplitude of feeling a new side of the mind is continuously revealed. Faces with an unchanging expression belong really to people low in artistic endowment.

Of some significance, again, is the variability in the mental power of genius, leading to what may be called "a periodicity in production." Goethe has spoken somewhere of "the recurrence of puberty" in the artist. This idea may perhaps, without too much straining, be compared with the functional periodicity of woman. The periods in the life of a creative artist often assume the character of a crisis—a kind of climax of vital energy. Sterile years precede productive periods, to be followed by more barren years. The circle of activity is not broken, it is but interrupted; the years of apparent sterility really leading up to, and preparing for, the creative periods. I may point out here a thought in passing in connection with the child-bearing functions of women. This is brought forward by many as the most serious objection to women being able to attain success in any of the arts. The objection is not really sound. No creative work can be carried on without interruptions. The important part in all such work is not to be uninterrupted, but to be able to begin again. The new experiences gained give new power; a fresh and wider view. And woman has in her supreme function of motherhood—an experience denied to men; this should give her greater, and not less, creative capacity. What is really needed is the freedom, the training and the desire that shall direct expression, so that woman may enrich the arts with her own special experience.

It is useless to argue that woman's past record in the arts holds out no such promise. We know really very little about woman's genius. One thing is, however, certain: the only possible test of it is trial, for without this there is no basis of judgment, no means of deciding whether there be genius or no. If, as I believe, woman's creative capacity arises out of, and is essentially connected with, her sexual functions, how can it have been possible to employ such power in the arts in a society where the natural use of her sex has been restricted and not allowed a free expression?—a society, moreover, in which the pregnant woman has been regarded as an object of shame or ridicule.

To look at this question of woman's achievement in the arts in the old way is no longer possible. We have proved that the natural emotional endowment of woman is rich and varied. But there are two things necessary for achievement: inherent aptitude and opportunity—that is, a favourable environment for expression, in which power may be directed into useful channels and saved from wastefully expending itself. To deny genius to women when the opportunity for its development has been absent is obviously unjust. The influence of education, and the stronger driving of habit and social opinion, must be taken into the account. Women have up till now been without two essential qualities necessary for creating—subjectivity and initiative. In practice they have not been able, or only very rarely, to get beyond imitation. Through the circumstances of their lives they have lacked the courage and conviction, even if opportunity had arisen, necessary for creative work. For the highest achievement in the arts they have missed the concentration, the severe devotion to work, the control of thought and complete self-restraint, which can come only from discipline, from long training, and freedom. Yet I make the claim that woman, from her constitutional femininity, is a compound of all those qualities that genius demands. The channels of woman's energy have been everywhere choked. No great creative art has ever been produced by a subjugated class. Art comes with freedom, with the strong incentive of the communal spirit, and with the sense of power. For centuries woman has been artificially individualised. Her special function of motherhood has remained unacknowledged as a communal work. Her emotional and mental capacities have been turned back upon herself and her immediate belongings, with the result that her social usefulness has been suppressed or thwarted. The emotional feelings of woman are ever pressing, and only need to be brought into stricter command in order to achieve. What women will accomplish no man can say.

One word more. Let us look in this new direction, the direction of the future, because it is there that this possible future entrance of women into the arts becomes important. We stand in the first rush of a new movement. It is the day of experiments. The extraordinary enthusiasm now sweeping through womanhood reveals behind its immediate fevered expression a great power of emotional and spiritual initiative. Wide and radically sweeping are the changes in woman's social outlook. So much stronger is the promise of a vital force, when they are free to enter and to work in the various departments of the arts. It is the commonest error to think of art as if it stood outside the other activities of life. Under the cloak of art much self-amusement and vulgar self-display tries to justify itself, and many mercenary interests are concerned in stinting its vitality. All living and valuable art is really communal. It must fit into its right place with all phases of human activities, and to do this it must have somewhere in it the social citizen spirit.