“A woman capable at all points to bear children, to guard them, to teach them, to turn them out strong and healthy citizens of the great world, stands at the farthest remove from the finnikin doll or the meek drudge whom man by a kind of false sexual selection has through many centuries evolved as his ideal.”—Edward Carpenter.

What new contribution have women to offer the world in return for their emancipation? In the women’s movement there is a strong feeling that under the influence of the dominant male, women have had to conform to an ideal not their own, and that this forcible compression of all women into one mould—and that a mould not of their own choosing—has been bad for women, and therefore bad for women’s work, and in the end bad for men. In order to come to a clearer view of whether this is so or not, I propose in this chapter and the next to treat of the man’s woman and the woman’s woman. Everybody would probably agree that there is a very great distinction, and that, taking them in the mass, the qualities which women love and admire in women are not the[127] same as those which, in the past, have most attracted men. This does not matter so much if the conditions of society be such as to make it possible for women to be independent of their attraction of men. But if women are kept dependent upon men for any scope or freedom or joy of life, then there may be imposed upon them an alien standard which may very seriously cripple them. It is unnecessary to labour the point that in sexual relations the qualities which make each sex attractive to the other will always be of importance. What the progressive women deprecate is that all their chances in life should be dependent on sexual charm, and some of them badly crave for a rest from sex, and they desire to be just broadly human.

Generally speaking, the conception of women which is the relic of barbarism is that they are not themselves human beings, but only related to human beings. In his sacred books man has taken care to suggest that woman was an afterthought of the Creator, and that she was “given” to man in a sense in which man was not “given” to woman. He could have her and hold her by force, and what he asked of her were the qualities agreeable to himself. Since every man has been a child and has some slight memories of childhood, the notion of certain motherly qualities being desirable in woman has existed side by side with the notion of other qualities more adapted to adult requirements; but since memory is faint, and present[128] desire strong, the motherly qualities in a woman are of secondary attractive force to most men in determining their choice, though, undoubtedly, once mated, a man finds the motherly qualities invaluable. Men write books and poems about the beauty and sacredness of motherhood, but if one looks round the world one lives in, one finds that men are, for the most part, not charmed by the motherly qualities in women, and that the women upon whom men have in the past lavished titles and jewels and wealth are not the motherly type at all. Every woman who has lived long in the world has known many women most richly endowed for motherhood who have not attracted any men worthy to be their mates, and has known other women, with few of the qualities needed for motherhood, who have strung the hearts of a score of men round their necks as trophies. One might make a very good case to show that, in relation to men, there are really three types of women: (1) those who attract men, (2) those by whom men say they are attracted, (3) those by whom men ought (for the greatest happiness of the greatest number) to be attracted.

Ask the average man what he means by a “womanly” woman—take Mr. Austen Chamberlain: “Their qualities which we most admire are their lofty devotion to ideals, their dependence upon others, upon husband, or brother, or the hero of their imaginations, their willingness to yield their opinions, their almost passionate desire for self-sacrifice,[129] often, it must be admitted, on behalf of objects very little worthy of their great devotion” (12th July 1910, Debate on the Second Reading of the Conciliation Bill). He proceeded to declare that these were not “political virtues,” and added, “God forbid that they should abandon their qualities, which are our pride and theirs!” It seems clear that if women generally are willing to yield their opinions to unworthy persons, it is safer not to give this disastrous tendency much practical scope, but what is really illuminating is Mr. Chamberlain’s na?ve confession that he likes women to be this sort of fools. These are the qualities that are agreeable to himself, provided he can prevent women from exercising their dangerous preference for unworthy objects. One wonders if it has never occurred to Mr. Chamberlain that one reason why women crave direct representation is that they recognise that men are often devoted to women who are “very little worthy,” and that when men tell them they “consult women,” and we inquire “what women?” we discover that they are not those whom women themselves would consult or trust or follow. There is this foundation at least for the frequent statement that women “do not wish to be ruled by women.” They do not wish to be ruled by women who have been selected by men, because they know from experience that a man’s woman and a woman’s woman are not the same.

If we examine the qualities of Mr. Chamberlain’s[130] womanly woman, we find that they are quite frankly selected for his own satisfaction, and not because they are of any use either to woman herself or to the world. He likes a woman to be dependent on a man; he likes her to give up her own opinions; he likes her to sacrifice herself, even although it be often on unworthy objects. What does the dependence of a woman on a man and her yielding of her opinions to him involve? It involves the misunderstanding and neglect of all the specifically womanly sides of life. The woman who yields her belief to a man, not by conviction, but by submission, is shirking her work, and is a traitor to the future of which she is the guardian. She is, in fact, the unwomanly woman, for she has yielded the fruits of her instinct, her knowledge, her experience as a woman, and has adopted, to command, a man’s opinion based on man’s instinct, knowledge and experience. She is “aping man” and is (what the reactionaries falsely call the progressive woman), in truth, a “feeble imitation.”

Dependence of this sort means degradation. There is a sense, of course, in which we are all, of necessity, dependent upon each other, men upon women and women upon men. But the sort of dependence which means that men do all they do for women as grace and favour, but that women do all they do for men from subjection and compulsion,—because they can’t help themselves,—is degrading to both men and women. One knows the exquisite delight there is in serving or being served by a[131] beloved person; but all women do not love all men, and there is no joy whatever in dependence upon those whom you do not love. Even the pleasure to be derived from dependence on a loved one is a purely personal matter, and varies with individuals and with times, and is not proper matter upon which to base institutions.

As a matter of fact, women down all the ages have escaped from the degradation of entirely becoming faint echoes of men by the lesser degradation of humbugging and lying to men. Men have wanted them to yield their opinions? Very well, they would pretend to do so. But the true woman never did. She was true to the greater reality of sex. Now women are revolting against the necessity of telling even the lesser lie, and are insisting that they want to do their work unhampered by ignorance and meddling. If we take a large part of women’s work as being essentially social, the bearing and rearing of children, education and the care of the human family in all its wide interests of health and morality, how can anyone in their senses assert that a woman who has not the education and culture to know and appreciate facts is as helpful as one who has them? Yet progressives have had to fight reactionaries for every bit of education and culture.............