The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

It is very difficult to write a preface to a work which is expressly intended as a revelation of the faith of the writer. The successive stages of thought and emotion that have been passed through are still too near, and one feels too deeply. I have made several futile attempts to concentrate into a short note the Truths about Woman that I have tried to convey in my book. I find it impossible to do this. The explanation of one's own book would really require the writing of another book, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has proved to us in his delightful prefaces. But to do this one must be freed altogether from the limits of length and time. The fragments of what I wish to say would be of no service to any one.

I then tried to place myself, as it were, outside the book, and to look at it as a stranger might. But the difficulties here were even greater. I grew so interested in criticising my own opinions that my notes soon outran the possibilities of a preface. In this spirit of genuine discrimination, I became aware how easy it would be for any one who does not share my faith to find apparent contradictions of statement and errors in thought—much that is feeble here, extravagant there; to notice some salient fault and to take it as decisive of the writer's incompetence. I am tempted to point these out myself to guide and protect the reader.

Now that my book is done I feel that I have touched only the veriest fringe of a vast subject. But one thing I may say, I have tried to express the truth as I have come to see it. The conception I have of Woman is not new; it is very old. And for that reason it will be rejected by many women to-day. At present the inspiration towards freedom in the Woman's Movement has involved a tendency to follow individual paths, without waiting to consider to what end they lead. There has arisen a sort of glamour about freedom. No one of us can be free, for no one of us stands alone; we are all members one of another. And woman's destiny is rooted in the race. This, rightly considered, is the most vital of all vital facts. I appeal to women to realise more clearly their true place and gifts, as representing that original racial motherhood, out of which the masculine and feminine characters have arisen.

My book is a statement of my faith in Woman as the predominant and responsible partner in the relations of the sexes. To such a belief my opinion was driven, as it were, not deliberately set from the beginning. The time when the resolve to write a book upon Woman first took a place in my thoughts goes back for many years. The child of a Puritan father, who died for the faith in which he believed, the desire to teach was born in my blood. Our character is forged in the past, we cannot escape our inheritance. I began my work as the head-mistress of a school for girls. I was young in experience and very ignorant of life. In my enthusiasm I was quite unconscious of my own limitations, I believed that I was able to train up a new type of free woman. Of course I failed. Looking back now I wonder if I ever taught my pupils one-hundredth part of what they taught me. Perhaps if any of them, separated from me by time and circumstances, chance to read my book, they may be glad to know that it was largely due to them and what I learnt from them that it has come to be written. Certainly it was in those days, when saddened by my own failures, that the purpose came to me, dimly but insistently, to seek out the Truth about Woman and the relations of the sexes. I began to read and to collect material at first for my own guidance and instruction, and as a necessary preparation for my work. I needed it: I must have been slow to learn. For a long time I wandered in the wrong path. My desire was to find proofs that would enable me to ignore all those facts of woman's organic constitution which makes her unlike man. I stumbled blindly into the fatal error of following masculine ideals. I desired freedom for women to enable them to live the same lives that men live and to do the same work that men do. I did not understand that this was a wastage of the force of womanhood; that no freedom can be of service to a woman unless it is a freedom to follow her own nature. I am very glad that the book that is now finished was not written in that period of my belief. I have waited and I have lived.

Five years ago I took up definitely the task of writing the book. At that time the plan of the work was made and the first Introductory chapter written. Circumstances into which I need not enter caused the work again to be put aside. I am glad: I have learnt much in these last years.

There is little more that I need to say.

The book is divided into three parts—the first biological, the second historical. These two parts are preliminary to the third part, which deals with the present-day aspects of the Woman Problem, the differences between woman and man, and the relations of the sexes.

This arrangement of my inquiry into three parts was necessary. It may seem to some that I should have done better to confine my investigations to the present. But the claim of woman for freedom is rooted deep in the past. This fact had to be established. I have tried to give the earlier sections such lighter qualities and interest as would commend them to my readers. It is hardly necessary for me to say I can make no claim to personal scientific knowledge. Probably I have made many mistakes.

It is perhaps foolish to make apologies for work that one has done. But the inclusion of so wide a field has had a disadvantage. My investigations may be objected to as in certain points not being supported by sufficient proof. I know this. My stacks of unused notes remind me of how much I have had to leave out. This is especially the case in the final part. The subject of every chapter treated here could easily form a volume in itself. I hope that at least I have opened up suggestions of many questions on which I could not dwell at length.

Some remarks may be necessary as to the nature of my material. It has been drawn from a variety of sources. I have tried to acknowledge in footnotes the great amount of help I have received. But my notes have been taken during many years, and if any acknowledgment has been forgotten, it is my memory that is at fault, and not my gratitude. The Bibliography (which has been drawn up chiefly from the works I have consulted, and is merely representative) will show how many fields there are from which the student may glean. In particular I am indebted to the works of Havelock Ellis, of Iwan Bloch and Ellen Key. To these writers I would express my warmest thanks for the help and guidance I have gained from their work.