THE NEW WOMAN
It can scarcely be disputed, I think, that in the English language there are conspicuous at the present moment two words which designate two unmitigated bores: The Workingman and the Woman. The Workingman and the Woman, the New Woman, be it remembered, meet us at every page of literature written in the English tongue; and each is convinced that on its own special W hangs the future of the world. Both he and she want to have their values artificially raised and rated, and a status given to them by favour in lieu of desert. In an age in which persistent clamour is generally crowned by success they have both obtained considerable attention; is it offensive to say much more of it than either deserves?
A writer, signing the name of Sarah Grand, has of late written on this theme; and she avers that the Cow-Woman and the Scum-Woman, man understands; but that the New Woman is above him. The elegance of these choice appellatives is not calculated to recommend them to educated readers of either sex; and as a specimen of style forces one to hint that the New Woman who, we are told, ‘has been sitting apart in silent contemplation all these years’ might in all these years have studied better models of literary composition.
We are farther on told ‘that the dimmest perception that you may be mistaken, will save you from making an ass of yourself.’ It appears that even this dimmest perception has never dawned upon the New Woman.
We are farther told that ‘thinking and thinking,’ in her solitary, sphinx-like contemplation, she solved the problem and prescribed the remedy (the remedy to a problem!); but what this remedy was we are not told, nor did the New Woman apparently disclose it to the rest of womankind, since she still hears them in ‘sudden and violent upheaval’ like ‘children unable to articulate whimpering for they know not what.’ It is sad to reflect that they might have been ‘easily satisfied at that time’ (at what time?), ‘but society stormed at them until what was a little wail became convulsive shrieks;’ and we are not told why the New Woman who had ‘the remedy for the problem,’ did not immediately produce this remedy. We are not told either in what country or at what epoch this startling upheaval of volcanic womanhood took place in which ‘man merely made himself a nuisance with his opinions and advice,’ but apparently did quell this wailing and gnashing of teeth since it would seem that he has managed still to remain more masterful than he ought to be.
We are further informed that women ‘have allowed him to arrange the whole social system, and manage, or mismanage, it all these ages without ever seriously examining his work with a view to considering whether his abilities and his methods were sufficiently good to qualify him for the task.’
There is something comical in the idea thus suggested, that man has only been allowed to ‘manage or mismanage’ the world because woman has graciously refrained from preventing his doing so. But the comic side of this pompous and solemn assertion does not for a moment offer itself to the New Woman sitting aloof and aloft in her solitary meditation on the superiority of her sex. For the New Woman there is no such thing as a joke. She has listened without a smile to her enemy’s ‘preachments’; she has ‘endured poignant misery for his sins;’ she has ‘meekly bowed her head’ when he called her bad names; and she has never asked for ‘any proof of the superiority’ which could alone have given him a right to use such naughty expressions. The truth about everything has all along been in the possession of woman; but strange and sad perversity of taste! she has ‘cared more for man than for truth, and so the whole human race has suffered!’
‘All that is over, however,’ we are told, and ‘while on the one hand man has shrunk to his true proportions’ she has, during the time of this shrinkage, been herself expanding, and has in a word come to ‘fancy herself’ extremely, so that he has no longer the slightest chance of imposing upon her by his game-cock airs.
Man, ‘having no conception of himself as imperfect’ (what would Hamlet say to this accusation?) will find this difficult to understand at first; but the New Woman ‘knows his weakness,’ and will ‘help him with his lesson.’ ‘Man morally is in his infancy.’ There have been times when there was a doubt as to whether he was to be raised to her level, or woman to be lowered to his, but we ‘have turned that corner at last and now woman holds out a strong hand to the child-man and insists upon helping him up.’ The child-man (Bismarck? Herbert Spencer? Edison? Gladstone? Alexander III.? Lord Dufferin? the Duc d’Aumale?)—the child-man must have his tottering baby steps guided by the New Woman, and he must be taught to live up to his ideals. To live up to an ideal, whether our own or somebody else’s, is a painful process; but man must be made to do it. For, oddly enough, we are assured that despite ‘all his assumption he does not make the best of himself,’ which is not wonderful if he be still only in his infancy; and he has the incredible stupidity to be blind to the fact that ‘woman has self-respect and good sense,’ whilst he has neither, and that ‘she does not in the least intend to sacrifice the privileges she enjoys on the chance of obtaining others.’
I have written amongst other pensées éparses which will some day see the light, the following reflection:—