Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

Vast social phenomena, rising up in what appears to be obedience to an almost universal instinct, must be based on some equally comprehensive social condition, which acts everywhere as its cause; a cause which will not be less irresistibly operative because those who are acted upon by it have not always grasped it intellectually, nor are capable of reasoning on its nature. As those vast herds of antelope which at times sweep down across our South African plains from the north, bearing all before them, are propelled, not by any logical induction, the result of an intellectual process, but are driven onwards, whether they will or no, by the pressure of a stern fact which forces itself painfully on the consciousness of each isolated individual in the herd—the fact, that behind lie parched deserts desolated by drought, while before are green lands;—so nineteenth-century women are urged on by the pressure of a condition which they have not created, and of whose nature they have not even in many cases a clear intellectual perception, yet which acts upon the whole mass, causing irresistible social movement through its pressure on each isolated unit.

Looking at the modern Woman's Movement from the widest standpoint, and analysing, not isolated phenomena connected with it here and there, but its manifestation as a whole, the conviction is forced upon us that the Woman's Movement of the nineteenth century in its ultimate essence is The Movement of a Vast Unemployed.

Let us pause for a moment to consider how and why this is so.

In primitive societies woman performed the major part of the labours necessary for the sustenance of her community, as she still does in Africa and elsewhere, where primitive conditions exist. In addition to child bearing she was the agricultural labourer of the community; and while the male of necessity reserved his energies for war and the chase, the agricultural and domestic labours devolved on woman. Not only did she plant the grain and reap it, but she ground it and made it into bread and beer; it was she who built the hut, shaped the domestic utensils, and in travelling she was the beast of burden, and carried the household goods; she was generally the doctress, and often the wizard or priestess of her people.

In woman, with almost all creatures which give suck to their young, and unlike birds of prey and many orders of insects and sea creatures, the human female tends to be less heavy in build than her male equivalent; and with an equal vitality and a strength of endurance and persistent activity greater than that of the male in some directions, she is not yet as a rule his equal in muscular strength. In a society in which physical force ruled exclusively, and the most muscularly powerful males were of necessity dominant even over their weaker fellow males, woman, less powerful to hold, to strike, and to kill, was also of necessity almost everywhere under the physical control of the male, and often more or less enslaved. But the part she played in the communal life was all important: as a social labourer she often, if not always, exceeded the male in value. As far as physical activity can expand the mind and body, everything tended to increase her vitality and intelligence; and undoubtedly in the primitive societies of the past, as in those still existing at our own day, the woman was found in thoughtfulness and general intelligence the equal or superior of man to an extent surprising to those accustomed to the wide division between the male and female in those classes of modern societies where the male absorbs the larger portion of social labour and the mental training required by it.

Undoubtedly woman suffered, and often suffered heavily, in those primitive societies, but she must always have been clearly conscious, as was the Bantu woman quoted, of the inevitableness of her position. She may have cried out against fate in moments of bitterness, but she must always have recognized her own social importance, and even the anti-sociality of attempting to shirk her obligations, upon the fulfilment of which depended the very life of the society.

Had there arisen a Woman's Movement in any tribe, and had it been successful, that tribe would have become instantly extinct. The labours of war and the chase were inconsistent with the incessant child-bearing and rearing essential where life is precarious; she could not generally have competed on equal terms with men in war and the chase, when these depended on strength of arm and muscle in wielding spear and axe; she would have forsaken the higher and equally essential labours of society for those for which she was less fitted, and the result must have been the destruction of her society. Not only was a Woman's Movement impossible, but had it been possible it would have been anti-social. Her labour formed the solid superstructure on which her society rested; her submission to her condition was the condition of social health and even national and tribal survival. She suffered and knew she suffered, but she knew also that her condition was inevitable and her society was upheld by her toil.

In the later social condition, where war and the chase ceasing to demand the entire attention of the male, men began of necessity to encroach on woman's fields of labour, to undertake her agricultural and outdoor labours generally; woman, though her field of labour became more or less restricted to domestic toil within the dwelling, still retained possession of a full half of the labours of her societies.

Down even to recent times, the woman, whether lord's wife or peasant, with her own hands wove the clothing of her household and of the entire race. If woman no longer planted the grain, it was she who made the bread and brewed the ale, she who knitted the hose and shaped the clothing of her people. It may be questioned whether down to quite modern times woman's domestic labours did not equal or even exceed in general social value those of men in other fields, and were not as complex, demanding as much activity of body and versatility and strength of mind.

In a social condition in which practically all women but religious enthusiasts married, where child-bearing and the rearing and training of her children and the supporting of her household with food and clothing, and through them the whole race, occupied the entire strength and time of woman, she could not complain that she lacked social functions; nor would it have been possible for her to undertake other social duties without deserting those of more importance. If man's work was from sun to sun, while her work was never done, if she laboured under certain social disabilities which were not inevitable, she still knew that her labour was as valuable and essential to her race as that of man, and there is no evidence of any movement on her part to readjust her relations to life and to enter the fields of labour apportioned to the male. In the main she was satisfied with her condition. If isolated women here and there entered new fields of labour, became professors at universities, or took to statecraft or trade, it was because of some great individual aptitude in these directions, and not because woman felt ill at ease and in disco-ordination with her share of the world's labour or her place in social life.