The case of the beehive—The drones—The queen-mother—The sterile-workers—The sacrifice of the sexes to the Life-Force—The maternal instinct among the workers—This has persisted after the atrophy of the sexual needs—Maternal love has expanded out into social affection—Application of the lessons of the beehive—Analogy with modern society—The Intellectuals among women—Do they understand what they really want—The organic necessity of love—The price of sterility—The courtship of the Spider—Mr. Bernard Shaw's Ann—The part played by woman in courtship—Her passivity only apparent—Female superiority with which sexuality began remains in every courtship—The fierce hunger of the male—His absorption by the female—Nothing can, or should, alter this—The importance of woman's activity in love in connection with her claim for emancipation—General observations and conclusion.
CHAPTER III[ToC]
GROWTH AND REPRODUCTION
"Sexually Woman is Nature's contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement. Sexually Man is Woman's contrivance for fulfilling Nature's behest in the most economical way. She knows by instinct that far back in the evolution process she invented him, differentiated him, created him in order to produce something better than the single-cell process can produce."—Don Juan in Hell—Man and Superman.
I.—The Early Position of the Sexes
The opinion of the superiority of the male sex has been so widely, and without question, accepted that it is necessary to emphasise the exact opposite view which was brought forward in the last chapter. From the earliest times it has been contended that woman is undeveloped man.[16] This opinion is at the root of the common estimation of woman's character to-day. Huxley, who was in favour of the emancipation of women, seems to have held this opinion. He says that "in every excellent character the average woman is inferior to the average man in the sense of having that character less in quantity or lower in quality;" and that "the female type of character is neither better nor worse than the male, only weaker." Few have maintained that the sexes are equal, still fewer that women excel.[17] The general bias of opinion has always been in favour of men. Woman almost invariably has been accorded a secondary place, the male has been held to be the primary and essential half of life, all things, as it were, centering around him, while the female, though necessary to the continuance of the race, has been regarded as otherwise unimportant—in fact, a mere accessory to the male.