What then must feminist mothers demand? The right first of all to the recognition of their work—the most dangerous of all trades and the most neglected and despised. They should ask for endowment from the community. This is opposed by many on the ground that fathers delight to support their children, and it is they who should claim from the community an adequate family-wage. But, after all, it is the mother who bears and tends the child, and, although many women receive the whole of their husbands’ wages, others must fight a humiliating battle against drink and tobacco for the wherewithal to build their children’s bodies. This struggle is exemplified on a large scale in the spending of State revenue, most of which goes on armaments and the forces of destruction, and an infinitesimal portion to aid and support life. If Jason cannot give up his murderous playthings, let him have neither sons to destroy nor daughters to drag through misery. His children shall never be conceived. I have indicated that this is happening already, not as a deliberate revolt, but as a counsel of despair in a world which offers no hope, no joy, and no opportunity to the young.
The mother has a right to demand two years’ rest between pregnancies; and the right to decide the number of her children. For some the call of motherhood is insistent and its charm grows with experience; they would be good mothers and might well have large families. They could help others by superintending nursery-schools in which children from one to five years might have their important meal of the day. But it is imperative that the woman who has children should not be shut out from public life. The ideal would be for a woman to continue her education at least till eighteen, have the first child at twenty-four, then perhaps three others at two-year intervals. This assumes that large numbers of women do not choose to breed. At thirty-five every mother of four children would, in a community of good schools, convenient houses, and well-run restaurants, be free again to take part in public life. It does not follow that she would be separated from her children; they would go to day-schools. But the mother would do the work for which she was best fitted in school,[14] kitchen, hospital, shop, mill, or Parliament. In this way her opinion would count, and her attitude to life help to permeate the community, which is otherwise left to be guided by the outlook of the single woman and the male. Problems of unemployment and competition due to married women’s work are really questions of population pressure, muddled thinking, and bad organization. To discuss all this in close detail is hardly within the scope of this book.
[14] I am strongly of opinion that experience of maternity, even more than of marriage alone, would help the teacher. Some women, even teachers, are bored by children until they have one of their own, whereupon all children of all ages become interesting.
In conclusion, it may be said that the community should never, except on the strongest grounds, deny parenthood to man or woman. Therefore marriages which after two years did not result in a child should be dissoluble at the wish of either party to the contract. This, apart from all other reasons for which the cancelling of marriage should be allowed. Partnership in marriage should in effect be regarded as a partnership for parenthood, and as such should not be entered upon lightly.
V
Jason and Admetus
Men
Before we pass on to an attempt at a summary and conclusion of the argument, it may be as well to re-state briefly what is the matter with men. Certainly they are not such fierce tyrants as when first we fought them; certainly they have some grounds to complain of the feminine arrogance which, not content with proving equality, wants to go on and prove women the superior sex. We might, on grounds of science perhaps, advance this claim, urging that, since a female being needs one more chromosome for its creation than a male, it must, therefore, be of higher importance. Should we do so, and seek to live alone on the planet, producing our children by parthenogenesis, our pride would be doomed to a fall. Such children, there is reason to believe, would all be males. At least, that is what happens when the experiment is tried by sea-urchins. Men, on the other hand, like to pretend that our assumption of intelligence and independence is but a momentary spurt in a race which must end in masculine victory and feminine submission. They admit that the great development of our freedom in body and mind has given us a serious advantage, and the more discerning among them urge their fellows to press on and catch us up. Others trundle the golden apples beseechingly, but still Atalanta runs.
I believe it to be true that the education and outlook of men is more old-fashioned than that of women reared in the freedom of feminist traditions. Men have not yet realized how women’s outlook is changing, nor attempted very seriously to adapt themselves to the change. They will do so, of a certainty; for, true as it may be that above all desires in woman is that to be pleasing to men, it is still truer that the desire of desires in man is to be pleasing to women. I believe that Puritanism or asceticism, of which they accuse us, is very strong in them. One of the compliments or insults that has been hurled during the sex-war is that the feminine mind is pervaded by the physical harmony of the feminine body. One may perhaps retort that the dualism of mind and matter is a very masculine philosophy; and one which, moreover, men have translated into their everyday lives by the sharp division they like to make between fighters and thinkers, games-playing idiots and thin intellectuals. Too often a woman of vitality and intelligence must choose between a soldier-gentleman and Chaucer’s clerk.[15] Should she choose the former, she takes a plunge into the past. This man exults in murder, whether of animals or of his fellow-creatures; deep down within him he is still convinced that women are divided into good and bad—and both require the handling of a master. His wife must beware how she responds to his advances; she may be thought forward or impure. Decency must above all things be preserved. Though games and the classics may have taught the English gentleman the beauty of paganism and the joy of the naked body where man is concerned, he is still stuffy in his approach to sex. He rarely brings the freshness of the morning and the joy of the open skies to the love of mistress or of wife. Plush, gilt and silk stockings express the one; pipe, the armchair at the fireside, dinner, and a coldly furnished bedroom, the other. Conversation is a masculine monologue, punctuated by assent. He will be good to his children, provided they are not odd, and will protect his wife. He will never lift her to rapture. She fears, and will probably deceive him.
A clerk ther was of Oxenford also