One of the quaint hang-overs of the past is that men are the chief interpreters of even the modern woman. It may be that the conquest of varied fields and the strain of establishing the right to individuality has taken all her time and energy. Or it may be that the habit of vicarious expression has left her inarticulate. Whatever it is, in the voluminous literature of the changing order, from the earnest tracts on “How It Feels to Be a Woman,” by a leading male educator to the tawdry and flippant syndicated views of W. L. George, masculine understanders take the lead. And the strange part of their interpretations is that they run true to ancient form. Old adages are put in a more racy vernacular, the X-ray is turned on with less delicacy, but when the froth of their engaging frankness disappears, hoary old ideas remain thickly in the tumbler.
Take the intimate life story of a girl of the younger generation—Janet March—written by that good friend of women, Floyd Dell. The blurb on the jacket of the book announces that she moves toward “not a happy ending but an intelligent one.” And the end? Janet finds her mate and the curtain falls to the soft music of maternity. “One has to risk something,” Janet cries. “All my life I’ve wanted to do something with myself. Something exciting. And this is the one thing I can do. I can”—she hesitated. “I can create a breed of fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers.”
As a conclusion this is acceptable to any one with a heart, but wherein is it intellectual and not happy? Queen Victoria, the Honorable Herbert Asquith, or the Reverend Lyman Abbott would be equally pleased by its one hundred per cent womanliness. And how does it differ from our cherished slogan, “Woman’s place is in the home”? Only because Floyd Dell cuts Janet in a large, free-hand design. The advance pattern calls for a wealth of biological and gynecological explanation, pictures the girl as a healthy young animal who “smoked but drew the line on grounds of health at inhaling,” and, following the fashion of peasants in foreign countries, consummated the marriage before it was celebrated. Yet Janet, who claimed her right to all experience and experiment, finally raises her banner on the platform of fireside and nursery.
Despite its unquestionable orthodoxy, Janet March was retired from circulation. But no one has successfully dammed the flowing tide of W. L. George. He draws with somewhat futuristic effect, at times, but his conclusions are those of the old masters. “No woman,” he enunciates authoritatively, “values her freedom until she is married and then she is proud to surrender it to the man she has won.” Or take this: “All women are courtesans at heart, living only to please the other sex.” Wherein does this differ from the sentiment of Alexander Pope who, one hundred and fifty or more years before the birth of W. L. George, declared:
Men, some to business, some to pleasures take,
But every woman is at heart a rake.
H. L. Mencken, stirred by debates about the intelligence of woman and her newer activities, essayed “In Defense of Women,” to put his old wine in a fancy bottle, but it was the same home brew. Generously conceding brains to women, he proves his point on the evidence that they are used to ensnare men, who weak-minded and feeble in flight are usually bowled over in the battle of wits. “Marriage,” he says, “is the best career a woman can reasonably aspire to—and in the case of very many women, the only one that actually offers a livelihood.”... “A childless woman remains more than a little ridiculous and ill at ease.”... “No sane woman has ever actually muffed a chance.”... “The majority of inflammatory suffragettes of the sex hygiene and birth control species are simply those who have done their best to snare a man and failed.”
In H. L. Mencken’s favor is his absence of the usual gush about feminine beauty. He declares with refreshing honesty that in contrast to the female body a milk jug or even a cuspidor is a thing of intelligent and gratifying design. Of woman’s superior mental ability he says, “A cave man is all muscle and mush. Without a woman to think for him, he is truly a lamentable spectacle, a baby with whiskers, a rabbit with the frame of an aurochs, a feeble and preposterous caricature of God.” What a pity that women use all these advantages of superior mentality and ability only in the age-old game of man-hunting. But do they?
D. H. Lawrence shares this philosophy of the chief business of women, and he is much more gloomy about it. In fact, he is decidedly neurotic in his fear of the ultimate absorption of man. Woman he describes perpetually as a great, magnetic womb, fecund, powerful, drawing, engulfing. Man he sees as a pitiful, struggling creature, ultimately devoured by fierce maternal force. “You absorb, absorb,” cries Paul to Miriam in “Sons and Lovers,” “as if you must fill yourself up with love because you’ve got a shortage somewhere.” The Lawrence model, madly, fiercely possessive, differs from older forms in the abundance of physiological and pathological trimming. His conclusion, as voiced again by Paul to Miriam is, “A woman only works with part of herself; the real and vital part is covered up.” And this hidden reality is her terrific, destructive, fervid determination to drown man in her embrace.
So it goes. To Floyd Dell woman is a Mother, to H. L. Mencken a Wife, to W. L. George a Courtesan, and to D. H. Lawrence a Matrix—always specialized to sex. There may be men who are able to think of woman apart from the pattern of function, but they are inarticulate. Most of them spend their lives associating with a symbol. The set pieces they call Mary, Martha, Elaine, or Marguerite may follow the standardized design of grandmother, mother, or aunt. Or in more advanced circles, the pattern may call for bobbed hair, knickers, and cigarette case. Under any form of radicalism or conservatism the stereotype remains.
The old morality was built upon this body of folk-lore about women. Whether pictured as a chaste and beautiful angel, remote and untainted by life’s realities, or more cynically regarded as a devil and the source of sin, the notion was always according to pattern. Naturally, the relationship of men and women has been built upon the design, and a great many of our social ideals and customs follow it. The angel concept led, of course, to the so-called double standard which provides for a class of Victorian dolls who personify goodness, while their sisters, the prostitutes, serve as sacrificial offerings to the wicked ways of men. The new morality, as yet rather nebulous and somewhat mythical, has fewer class distinctions. The angel picture, for instance, has had some rude blows. As portrayed by the vanguard of radicals and interpreters, however, the changing conventions have their roots in the old generalizations and phantasies.