And so I have been set apart to deal honestly with man and woman and sex and suffer for it:
And so I have been chosen from all the rest as the one who can say what the rest think and desire and dare not justify:
And so I declare for them: for the discredited dreams: for the obscured purposes: declare for them and invite those who are angry to take it out of me:
And so I stand about where the most people are and issue my challenge and wait for the result:
Feeling back of me holding me up the brave beautiful average men and women my comrades who look to me to serve them:
Coming into the big world with my little challenge: receiving my cues from what is suppressed in others:
Casting my uncompromising nos into the faces of the rulers of the earth: defying their fences and their written compacts.
PANKHURST
Pankhurst. The world has been saying that word under its breath and over its breath. You have been saying it. The papers have been saying it. It has been on the lips of professors and agitators. It has been made fun of and been shuddered over. Maybe you have thought it was the name of a woman. So it was. But it was more than that. It was the name of a revolution. As the name of a woman it would mean nothing in particular. As the name of a revolution it becomes prophecy and history. That’s why the people who put the woman in jail found that they couldn’t put the revolution in jail. And if you cant forcibly feed a woman how much less likely you are to forcibly feed a revolution. That single word of two syllables. It cuts into prejudice like the blade of a knife. A woman’s name. Say it over to yourself. At first it may sound commonplace. But keep on. Say it over and over. It will become marching armies. It will become martial music. It will trumpet you to vast victories. Women don’t need to say woman now. They only need to say Pankhurst. You tell me I am talking of an arrogant woman only a few feet high who is bent upon destruction. Yes: I am talking of her. She is the gateway through which I pass. But I am also talking of the revolution which is so high no vision can reach its summit. Pankhurst is a dream come true. Pankhurst is an ideal in action. This law. She’s inveterate. She asserts, she summons, she demands. Yet she’s calm. She: the mother incarnate. She’s the maternal made revolution. She’s sex. Women don’t all recognize her. They are dubious. But she proceeds and says nothing. She asks no favors and gives none. She dont apologize. She asks nobody’s forgiveness. She makes no palsying explanations. She goes on and on. Just as gravitation goes on and on. Just as time goes on and on. My eyes never stop with the woman. I pass to that by which she is fortified. Listen to what she says. Do you belittle her message? Return: listen again: weigh her grave confessions. Every word she says is the word of revolution. Dont you think you’ve been warned enough? Get your impudent property out of the way. That infernal property. It interrupts the vision. But for it we’d go straight to our end. Pankhurst. I heard her speak the other night. It was in a hall. Thousands of people were there. She was on the big stage in the half dark. She spoke to us. The great building disappeared. The woman who spoke and those who were spoken to disappeared. I was left alone with an idea. The pure, the undefiled, idea. Revolution. Are you afraid now? Is the mother in you afraid—or the father? Or is the child in you afraid? Do you shrink back with horror from this issue? You dare to acknowledge mothers. But are you afraid of the maternal? You dare to say woman. But are you afraid to say revolution? Woman is offering no petition. She is not saying her prayers. She is not humbly beseeching anybody for anything. Woman is vehemently afoot full armed marching victoriously across the earth exacting tribute making light of the phantom obstacles that formerly drove her back into the lambpit. If I say Pankhurst I say all of you not one of you. The great auditorium disappeared. I was alone somewhere with an idea. Her phrases are the least of her. Revolution is the most of her. What she was there before my eyes making a speech was as nothing compared with what she became to me in the unseen and the silences. I am awed. The revolution becomes flesh. The revolution becomes woman. She sailed across the ocean in a ship. She put her name on the ship’s register. Revolution came in another name. And the registry registered it in another name. Then they didn’t want her to land. Some of them. They didn’t know her by her real name but even as it was they felt that her ominous entrance promised no good. Revolution waited for revolution. Woman waited for woman. Have you gone about all these years supposing woman wouldn’t finally strike her blow? She waited till it was time. The woman’s day is here. The man’s day, too: for man can have no day without woman nor woman without man. Many of you still tremble. You’d rather she hadn’t come. But it had to happen. The revolution was due. You harbored it under disguise. She set it out in the open. You didn’t want to acknowledge how big round it was. She refused to hide the fact from itself. You were the disciples of revolt. Or the partners. Or the revolutionary faithfuls. But she was more. She was revolution incarnate. She was the godmade woman sent to earth to proclaim the future. There you have it. Not a mere woman. Though a mere woman is no more to be made light of than a mere man or a mere cosmos. Yet not a mere woman. That, surely: then infinitely more than that. Revolution. Pankhurst.
Pankhurst. The shadow on the horizon. The black darkness gathering overhead and around. The threatening forefinger of fate. The menace of maternity. The uprising of a sex. The comrade woman challenges the wife woman. It must be resented. We must throw back the waves of the sea. Here is another revolt against property. These people too put people first. How monstrous. To put a woman or a man first. To put a mother first. We must teach mothers their place. And people too: we must teach them their place. The death of a man or a woman: what is that? But burning down a house: that is an attack on civilization. These new women want everything. They treat husbands as if they were no more than men. They treat property as if it was dirt under their feet. They say nothing matters but hearts and love. Well: hearts and love are not bad if you keep them where hearts and love belong. But if you bring hearts and love into politics or economics then you are invading a forbidden sphere. We’ve got to set back the clock. Time’s going too fast. A man said: I dont like it. I asked him: Dont like what? He said: This woman business. I asked: What woman business? He said: Woman in politics. I asked: Dont you think they’re capable of politics? He exclaimed: My God, yes: too capable! I asked: Then why do you kick? He said: Because if they go into politics they’ll make this a woman’s world and I dont want to live in a woman’s world. That’s it. When the woman becomes real they dont want to live in a woman’s world. Just as profit-believing people don’t want to live in a man’s world when a real man appears. If this is not a mother’s world whose world is it? The man said: I dont want to live in a woman’s world. Just as profit-believing people dont want from their own side: We don’t want to live in a man’s world. Yet if this is not a father’s world whose world is it? You dont want the world the women will make it possible for real fathers to live in. You don’t want the world the men will make it possible for real mothers to live in. You say: Half a world’s a good enough world for me. You say: A whole world’s too big for me. Then you hear the reply. Then you see the reply. Words reply. Mobs reply. Conflagration replies. Quarrels, battles, reply. This still water of man’s peace has been ruffled by woman’s tempest. Things were going on so good. Then these sexless rebels had to come. Just as money says to people in the economic sphere: Things were so serene: then you had to come. Yes, something always has to come. Every time orthodoxy settles itself for a long tenure something has to come. Just as clear days are getting used to themselves stormy days come. We had things arranged just about right. It wasn’t ideal. We acknowledge imperfections. But on the whole it was about right. Woman was just about where she ought to be. Labor too was just about where it ought to be. Then something happened. Something always does happen. Labor got to growling. And now woman’s got to growling. Woman. Haven’t we given woman the choicest tidbits of life? And yet she says no. She says that would be all right if something else was first all right. That something else is her freedom. Is her claim to herself. She says that comes first. Why: that’s just what labor is saying. We’ve got to fight labor. We’ve got to fight her. It’s in fact one quarrel with two wings. And we’ll crush them with one answer. We’ve got to or this world’ll go to pot straightaway. If it’s got so that a man’s got a right to be a man through a woman’s right to be a woman. If it’s got so that a woman’s got a right to be a woman through a man’s right to be a man. If that’s so then I want to know the reason why. This whole liberty stuff is nonsense. Don’t you see how it is? My God! If this keeps up the first thing you know this’ll be a liberty world. Look at it honest. Dont you see it yourself? Reason it out in your own mind. Every other consideration will be set aside. Democracy will run homes, business, states, everything. Horrible. This will be a liberty world. And I dont want to live in a liberty world. Pankhurst.