The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

The belief, therefore, is forced upon us that the characteristic feminine and masculine characters are an inherent part of the normal woman and man, a duality that goes back to the very threshold of sexuality. So Nature created them, female and male created she them. To change the metaphor, we have the woman and the man=the unit—the race. While there is no fixing of the precise nature of this constitutional difference between the two sexes, we may yet, broadly speaking, reach the truth. The female, as the giver and keeper of life, is relatively more constructive, relatively less disruptive than the male. It is here, I believe, we touch the spring of those sex differences, which do exist, in spite of all efforts to explain them away between the woman and the man. It is a quality that crops up in many diverse directions and penetrates into every expression of the feminine character.

Now, we cannot get away from a difference so fundamental, so primordial as this. The consecration of the woman's body as the sanctuary of life—that perpetual payment in giving is not safely to be altered. And this I contest against all the Feminists: the real need of the normal woman is the full and free satisfaction of the race-instinct. Do I then accept the subjection of the woman. Assuredly not! To me it is manifest that it is just because of her sex-needs and her sex-power that woman must be free. To leave such a force to be used without understanding is like giving a weapon to a child, in whose hands a cartridge suddenly goes off, leaving the empty and smoking shell in his trembling hands.

It is well to remember, however, that for all women there is conceivably no one simple rule. It is quite possible that the maternal instincts may be overlaid and even destroyed, being replaced by others more clearly masculine. In our artificial social state this is indeed bound to be so. It may be regretted, but it cannot be blamed. And each woman must be free to make her own choice; no man may safely decide for her; she must give life gladly to be able to give it well. This is why any effort to force maternity, even as an ideal, upon women is so utterly absurd. To-day woman is coming slowly and hesitatingly to a new consciousness of herself, and this at present is perhaps preoccupying her attention. But the freed woman of to-morrow will have no need to centre her thoughts in herself, for by that time she will understand. There will come a day when women will no longer live in a prison walled up with fear of love and life. And when she has done with discovering herself and playing at conquests, she will come to the most glorious day of all, when she will know herself for what she is. And to those of us who see already the goal the way is surely clear—let us work to find how best it can be made easy for all women to love gladly and to bring forth their children in joy.

Hitherto, dating from the times of the subjection of mother-right to father-right, the woman's insecure position, with her need of protection during the period of motherhood, has forced her into a state of dependence and subordination to men, which has accentuated and made permanent that physical disadvantage which, apart from motherhood, would scarcely exist, and even with motherhood would not become a source of weakness, under a wiser social organisation, which, understanding the primary importance of the mother, so arranged its domestic and social relationships as to place its women in a position of security. We have seen how this was done in Egypt, and how happy were the results; we have seen, too, that among all primitive peoples women are practically as strong as the men, and as capable in the social duty of work. It is only under the fully established patriarchal system, with its unequal development of the sexes, that motherhood is a source of weakness to women. From the time that society comes again to recognise the position of mothers and their right as the bearers of strength to the race, not only to protection while they are fulfilling that essential function for the community, but to their freedom after they have fulfilled it—the same freedom that men claim for the work they do for the community—from that time will arise a new freedom of women which will once again unite mother-right with father-right. This change will touch and vitally affect many of the deepest problems of the sexual relationship and the race.

We hear much to-day of women, and also men, being over-sexed; to me it seems much nearer the truth to say we are wrongly sexed. It is unquestionable that the progress of civilisation has resulted in a markedly accentuated differentiation between the sexes, which, through inheritance and custom, has become continually more sharply defined. Now, up to a certain point sex differences lead to sex-attraction, but whenever such variability—whether initiated by some natural process or by some intentional guidance of the pressure of civilisation—is unduly exaggerated, the way is opened up for sex-antagonism. That this, indeed, occurs may be seen from the fact we have already established, that an exaggerated outgrowth of the secondary sexual characters is not really favourable to development; the species thus differentiated being bad parents and unsocial in their conduct. The large felines, which are often inclined to commit infanticide in their own interests, the male turkey and other members of the gallinaceæ afford examples, and so does the female phalarope, whose maternal instincts are completely atrophied. Another illustration may be drawn from the debased position of the Athenian women, where the sharp separation between the sexes led, without doubt, not only to the debasing of the marriage relationship, but to the establishment of the hetairæ, and also to the common practice of homo-sexual love.

Under our present civilisation, and mainly owing to the unnatural relation of the sexes, which has unduly emphasised certain qualities of excessive femininity, sex-feeling has been at once over-accentuated and under-disciplined. Thus, an extreme outward sex-attraction has come to veil but thinly a deep inward sex-antipathy, until it seems almost impossible that women and men can ever really understand one another. Herein lie the roots, as I believe, of much of the brutal treatment of women by men and the contempt in which too often they are held. For what is the truth here? In this so-called "duel of sex," while woman's moral equality has not been recognised, women have employed their sex-differences as the most effective weapon for compassing their own ends, and men in the mass—unmindful of the truth that love is an understanding of the contrasted natures, a solution of the riddle—have wished to have it so. What significance arises out of this in the so-much-lauded cry, "Woman's influence!" "By thy submission rule," really means in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, "Rule by sex-seduction and flattery." Yes, we women cannot burk the truth—the seduction and flattery of man by woman is writ large over the face of our present society, it speaks in our literature and in our art. It is to this prostitution of love that sex-differences have carried us.

There is, of course, nothing new in these conditions; and there have always been times when men have rebelled against this sexual tyranny of woman. Misogyny is an old story. It is Euripides who betrays to us the real meaning of such revolt. In a fragment of his we read, The most invincible of all things is a woman! Men are so little sure of themselves that they fear suffering from woman an annihilation of their own personality. There is nothing surprising in this; rather it is one of Nature's laws that may not be overlooked, traceable back to that first coalescence when the female cellule absorbs the male. In one way or another, for Nature's ends or for her own, the female will always absorb the male—the woman the man; she is the river of life, he but the tributary stream. Paracelsus long ago gave utterance to the profound truth, "Woman is nearer to the world than man." Hence the army of misogynists—a Schopenhauer, a Strindberg, a Weininger, even a great Tolstoi, alike moved in a rebellion of disillusion, or satiety, against the power of woman that has been turned into turbid channels of misusage. Thence, too, the hateful Christian doctrine of the fundamentally sinful, evil, devilish nature of woman.

This rebellion of men, and their efforts to free themselves from the thrall of women has been of little avail. We have reached now a new stage in the age-long conflict of the sexes—the rebellion of the woman. There has come a time when the old cry, "Woman, what have I to do with you?" is being changed. It is woman who is whispering to herself and to her sisters, and, as she gains in courage, crying it aloud, "Men, what have we to do with you? We belong to ourselves." It is to this impasse in the confusion and antagonism of the present moment of transition that sex-differences are bringing us.

In face of this we may well pause.

What to do is another matter. But I am mainly concerned just now in trying to see facts clearly. And to me it often seems that woman is in grave danger to-day of becoming intoxicated with herself. She stands out self-affirming, postulating her own—or what she thinks to be her own—nature. In her, perhaps too-sudden, awakening to an entirely new existence of a free personality, an over-consciousness of her rights has arisen, causing a confusion of her instincts, so she fails to see the revelation begotten in her inmost self.