The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

The re-birth of woman is no dream.

We have become accustomed to listen to the opinion voiced by men. We have heard that belief in women is a symptom of youth or of inexperience of the sex, which a riper mind and wider knowledge will invariably tend to dissipate. So woman has come to regard herself as almost an indiscretion on the part of the Creator, necessary indeed to man, but something which he must try to hide and hush up. We have, in fact, put into practice Milton's ideal: "He, for God only, she, for God in him." Some such arguments from the lips of disillusioned men have been possible, perhaps, with some measure of reason. But the time has come for men to hold their peace.

Woman is learning to believe in herself.

Now, so far, the great result of the long years of repression has been the sterility of women's lives. Sterility is a deadly sin. To-day so many of our activities are sterile. The women of our richer classes have been impotent by reason of their soft living; the women of our workers have had their vitality sweated out of them by their filthy labours; they could bear only dead things. Life ought to be a struggle of desire towards adventures of expression, whose nobility will fertilise the mind and lead to the conception of new and glorious births. Women have been forced to use life wastefully. They have been spiritually sterile; consuming, not giving: getting little from life, giving back little to life.

But woman is awakening to find her place in the eternal purpose. She is adding understanding to her feeling and passion.

Never before throughout the history of modern womankind has her own character evoked so earnest and profound an interest as to-day: never has she considered herself from so truly a social standpoint as now. It is true that the change has not yet, except in very few women, reached deep enough to the realities of the things that most matter. Women have to learn to utilise every advantage of their nature, not one side only. They will do this; because they will come to have truer and stronger motives. They are beginning even now to be sifted clean through the sieve of work. The waste of womanhood cannot for long continue.

One great and hopeful sign is a new consciousness among all women of personal responsibility to their own sex. The most fruitful outgrowth from the present agitation for the rights of citizens—the Vote! the symbol of this awakening—is a solidarity unknown among women before, which now binds them in one common purpose. Yet there is a possible danger lurking in this enthusiasm. Women will gain nothing by snatching at reform. Many have no eyes to see the beyond; they are hurried forward by a cry of wrongs, while others are held back by fear of change. Woman is by her temperament inclined to do too much or to do nothing. Looked at from this standpoint of the immediate present, when only the semi-hysterical and illogical aspects of the struggle are manifest, the future may appear dark. The revolution is accompanied by much noise and violence. Perhaps this is inevitable. I do not know. There is, what must seem to many of us who stand outside the fight, a terrible wastage, a straining and a shattering of the forces of life and love. To earn salvation quickly and riotously may not, indeed, be the surest way. It may be only a further development of the sin of woman, the wastage of her womanhood.

Women say that the fault rests with men. Again I do not know. Certainly it is much easier and pleasanter to see the mote in our brother's eye than it is to recognise a possible beam as clouding our own sight. One of the worst results of the protection of woman by man is that he has had to bear her sins. Women have grown accustomed to this; they do not even know how greatly their sex shields them. They will not readily yield up their scapegoat or sacrifice their privileges. But the personal responsibility that is making itself felt among women must teach them to be ready to answer for their own actions, and, if need be, to pay for them. Freedom carries with it the acceptance of responsibility. Women must accept this: they are working towards it.

In a new and free relationship of the sexes women have at least as much to learn as men. The possession of the vote is not going to transform women. Changes that matter are never so simple as that. Women estimating their future powers tend to become presumptuous. One is reminded sometimes of the people Nietzsche describes as "those who 'briefly deal' with all the real problems of life." It frequently appears as if the modern woman expects to hold tight to her old privileges as the protected child, as well as to gain her new rights as the human woman. In a word, to stay on her pedestal when it is convenient, and to climb down whenever she wants to. This cannot be. And the grasping of both sides of the situation leads to what is worse than all else—strife between women and men. Just in measure as the sexes fall away from love and understanding of each other, do they fall away from life into the mere futility of personal ends. It is to go on with man, and not to get from man, that is the goal of Woman's Freedom. There are other conditions of change that women have to be ready to meet. This must be. For however much some may sigh for the ease and the ignorant repose of the passing generation, we cannot go back. It is as impossible to live behind one's generation as before it. We have to live our lives in the pulse of the new knowledge, the new fears, the new increasing responsibilities. Women must train themselves to keep pace with men. There is a price to be paid for free womanhood. Are women ready and willing to pay it? If so, they must cease to profit and live by their sex. They must come out and be common women among common men. This, as I believe, is a better solution than to bring men up to women's level. For, as I have said before, I doubt, and still doubt, if women are really better than men.

If the constructive synthetic purpose of life, which I have tried to make the ruling idea of my book, is that all growth is a succession of upward development through the action of love between the two sexes, then not only must woman in her individual capacity—physically as wife and mother, and mentally as home-builder and teacher—contribute to the further progress of life by a nobler use of her sex; but the collective work of women in their social and political activities must all be set towards the same purpose. It is in this light, the welfare of the lives of the future and the building up of a finer race—that the individual and collective conduct of women must be judged. Women have talked and thought too much about their sex, and all the time they have totally under-estimated the real strength of the strongest thing in life. I think the force, the power, the driving intensity of love will come as a surprise and a wonder to awakened women. I think they will come to realise, as they have never realised before, the tremendous force sex is.