[26] See chapter on Education of Adolescent Girls, in Adolescence, by G. Stanley Hall. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1904.
It is most unfortunate that these real issues should be obscured by sex rivalry. There can be no real rivalry between a man's soul and his body, between science and religion, between man and woman. Such antagonisms rest back in the failure to realize the incompleteness of man or woman alone, for any purposes of life. And there is, too, that evil notion which still affects economics, that when two trade one must lose. The fact is that in all honest exchange buyer and seller gain alike, and all who participate become rich. It is so in all honest relations between these half-creatures we call men and women. In agreement, association, coöperation, lies strongest significant life for both. In separation, competition and antagonism lie arid, poor, mean lives, conceited and egotistic, vapid and contemptible.
IV
The Feminizing of Culture
With the weakening of sex prejudices and the removal of legal restrictions on women's freedom it was inevitable that they should invade fields of activity where formerly only men were found. Since women must eat every one knew that they must work, and the sight of a woman at work was no new experience. Even in the days when they were most secluded and protected, the number kept in ease was always very small compared with the women slaves and servants who spun, cooked and served. Hence men were used to seeing women at work; and while industrial adjustments have not been easily made, they have still been accepted as a matter of course. But who, fifty years ago, could have imagined that to-day women would be steadily monopolizing learning, teaching, literature, the fine arts, music, the church and the theater? And yet that is the condition at which we have arrived. We may scoff at the way women are doing the work, and reject the product, but that does not alter the fact that step by step women are taking over the field of liberal culture as opposed to the field of immediately productive work.
Some of the reasons for this change are so clear that it seems as though they might have been anticipated. In a comparatively few years the greater part of Western Europe and all of America has become rich, not this time through the enslavement of other peoples and the confiscating of their wealth, but through the enslaving and exploitation of the material forces of nature. This wealth is not well distributed, but large numbers of families have received enough so that the women do not have to work constantly with their hands. At this point all historic precedent would have turned these women into luxury-loving parasites and playthings. A good many of them have taken this easiest way and entered the peripatetic harems of the rich. But several million women refused to repeat the old cycle of ruin; they knew too much.[27] What then should they do? Faith in the value of conventual life for women had passed; industrial changes had transformed their homes so that the endless spinning, weaving, sewing and knitting were no longer there, even to be supervised. Penelope's tasks had passed to foremen, working under trades union agreements, in the factories of Fall River and Birmingham. Even the function of the lady bountiful who looked after the spiritual and family affairs of her tenants and servants and distributed doles and Christmas baskets was gone. Her tenants owned their own farms, and her chauffeur resented her interference with his personal life. What should she do?
[27] Rheta Childe Dorr, What Eight Million Women Want, Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1910.
And this movement was not confined to the rich, for those who were not yet economically free were still deeply influenced by the changes which were taking place. The Goulds, Stanfords, Vanderbilts, Floods, Carnegies and Schwabs had all been lifted from the level of the masses to financial grandeur before the eyes of the multitude, and democratic ambitions drove parents who thought themselves in the line of financial advancement to secure culture for their girls in time. If the daughter was destined to live on Fifth Avenue, or to marry a duke, it was best to get her ready while young. In all our industrial democracies, armies of American parents have devoted themselves to labor, and even sacrificed comforts and necessities, that the daughters might get ready to live easier and fuller lives than the parents had known. If the choice had to be made between the girl and her brother, the chivalry of the father and the ambition of the mother very often gave the opportunity to the girl.
And so an emancipated army of leisure has been formed which has transformed the very nature of the culture with which it has busied itself. Books, periodicals, musical instruments, travel became cheaper and cheaper as the demand increased. Wholesale production makes almost any luxury accessible to every one. It is also possible to find modern and agreeable forms for older academic exercises. If Greek and Latin were too full or too difficult, courses in Romanic and Germanic philology would do as well. Anglo-Saxon gave way to Old English; and Chaucer to the Lake Poets. Philosophy struggled for favor with the English novel on equal terms. The works of Raphael were photographed and lithographed until the Sistine Madonna became as commonly known as the face of any strenuous and popular statesman of the day. With the aid of these art productions, and John Addington Symonds, every woman with leisure became an art critic. If economics was not interesting, sociology was available; and it could be democratized to any degree desired. If travel was troublesome, one could leave it to Cook; buy a ticket and he would do the rest.