In the middle ages there still existed in Europe, especially in Germany and France, certain industries which were exclusively in the hands of women—for instance, the silk-spinners, silk-weavers, tailoresses, and girdle-makers. In all these occupations there were mistresses, maids, and female apprentices. It was not until the sixteenth century that manufactures became a monopoly of the male sex. In the eighteenth century women were actually forbidden by law to take part in manufactures, until in recent times a reaction in their favour took place.
Therefore we must not from the present conditions judge the capacity of women for practical activity outside the home. I quite agree with Gerland, who assumes that during this oppression of the female sex for thousands of years, a certain deteriorating influence must have been exercised, and I agree also with Havelock Ellis, who hopes much from the development in the civilization of the future of an equal freedom for man and woman, and who demands that we should acquire experience by unlimited experiment regarding the qualifications of the female sex for all departments of activity. Golden words as to the necessity for a comprehensive emancipation of woman were uttered in 1865 by the celebrated anthropologist Thomas Huxley, in his essay on “Emancipation—Black and White,” in which he strongly condemns the present system for the education of girls:
“Let us have ‘sweet girl graduates’ by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the ‘golden hair’ will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within. Nay, if obvious practical difficulties can be overcome, let those women who feel inclined to do so descend into the gladiatorial arena of life, not merely in the guise of retiariæ, as heretofore, but as bold sicariæ, breasting the open fray. Let them, if they so please, become merchants, barristers, politicians. Let them have a fair field, but let them understand, as the necessary correlative, that they are to have no favour. Let Nature alone sit high above the lists, ‘rain influence and judge the prize.’”
And that men would maintain their old position cannot be doubted. The only change would be that women, too, would take part in the work of civilization.[28] They would introduce a new and fresh element into this work; and inasmuch as every woman would be brought up systematically with a view to her life’s work, the physically and psychically disastrous idleness of unmarried young girls, of “old maids,” and of “misunderstood women,” would come to an end, and these unattractive types would pass away for ever. The work of mother and housewife must, in correspondence with these changes, be more highly esteemed than has hitherto been the case. The technique and the theory of domestic economy can even now, with sufficient intelligence devoted to the question, be remodelled and transformed to a satisfying activity.[29]
Woman is an integral constituent of the processes of civilization, which, without her, becomes unthinkable. The present moment is a turning-point in the history of the feminine world. The woman of the past is disappearing, to give place to the woman of the future; instead of the bound, there appears the free personality.
Appendix: SEXUAL SENSIBILITY IN WOMAN
An old and still unsettled subject of dispute is the strength and nature of sexual sensibility in woman. Whilst the manifestation of sexual appetite and sexual enjoyment in the male are fairly simple—and in man, as A. Eulenburg has proved, the copulatory impulse is much more powerful than the reproductive impulse—the sexual sensibility of woman is still involved in obscurity. Magendie remarked that no two women are exactly alike in respect of their sexual sensations and perceptions. There is no question that among women the varieties of erotic type are far more numerous than among men. Rosa Mayreder, for instance, distinguishes an erotic-eccentric, an altruistic-sentimental, and an egoistic-frigid type. The attempt has been made to prove that the last-named type is the most widely diffused—that it is, in fact, the characteristic type of woman. Lombroso and Ferrero were the first to maintain the slight sexual sensibility of woman; Harry Campbell took the same view; and recently a Berlin physician—Dr. O. Adler—has published a book on the “Deficient Sexual Sensibility of Woman,” the conclusions of which are that
“the sexual impulse (desire, libido) of woman is, alike in its first spontaneous origin and in its later manifestation, notably less intense than that of man; and further, that libido must first be aroused in a suitable manner, and that often it never appears at all.”
Albert Eulenburg, in an article in Zukunft (December 2, 1893), and later in his “Sexual Neuropathy,” pp. 88, 89 (Leipzig, 1895), first opposed this doctrine of the physiological sexual anæsthesia of woman, and quoted in support of his view the following passage from the writings of the celebrated gynæcologist Kisch: