WOMEN THE WORLD OVER

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21808, 13 June 1936, Page 3

WOMEN THE WORLD OVER

(SMU'IILLT WKITTIX lOX TO [By " ATALANTA."! Let “Atalanta” not be condemned as a one-idea woman because she follows up a very recent train of thought and reminiscence. I have chanced upon the greatest and the last book of that brilliant author and champion of just causes, Winifred Holtby, whose death left the world poorer six months ago, and feel the first moment is the best moment to describe such a find as “Woman” The research and constructiveness it reveals amazes readers who know how diversely and socially her time was taken up between her youthful war years and 1935. But of her it can be said that she absdrbed knowledge like a sponge and gave it out like a fountain. Undigested knowledge is often a doubtful gift to pass on; she assimilated her store to the last particle. Not that all she has said will pass all readers uncontroverted; wide statement of a wide subject cannot well achieve that. However entertaining, “Woman” is not entertainment; it is a text-book for generations to come, taking its stand with epochal things like Frances Swiney’s “Awakening oi Women” and Olive Schreiner s “Woman and Labour” Winifred Holtby wastes little speculation on primitive woman, not even naming that inferential Golden Age of a sort, the Matriarchate. Informed feminists follow her easily when she shows women circumscribed indeed, but comparatively free in the dawn of history, and far more dignified in the first glimpses of Egyptian, European and Hebrew civilisation than in centuries nearer our own time. Yet at that remote time began that strange fear of her, hardened into a network of hostile custom and restriction, which civilised man is slowly shedding still, mainly now on the economic plane. To primitive man she was at once power and terror in her unique role as the life-giver, and yet as one whose intermittent weaknesses seemed a threat to his own strength: she was a being both above and below the rude fighting standards of the tribal unit. Time went on, but the formless fear persisted; it was easier to burn a woman as a witch than a man as a wizard. But long ere that, her comparative early freedom had vanished in the jealous possessiveness that reared walls to the zenana and the harem in the East, and barriers of an unequal domestic code in the West. She had to belong to him as he did not and would not belong to her. Out of this morass of mixed thinking civilised man has only slowly lifted his head; there is a residue of slimy tangle on it in places yet. Woman and Revolution Coming to later realities, Winifred Holtby connects the march of women in the eighteenth century with three revolutions—the social changes that created the Leisured Lady, the Industrial Revolution, and the French Revolution, The monastic and the feudal systems gave power and dignity at least to the heads of religious houses and to mothers or wives of absent barons. When these systems fell, neo-mod-ern conditions offered women no equivalent. The rich man’s wife and • daughters did not direct the spinning, brewing and needlecraft of the establishment as of old. They

were now merely the visible clotheshangers on which his wealth and consequence were best displayed. The Leisured Lady dazzled the eye, but her mind atrophied with disuse, and she set a false standard. She was feminism’s worst enemy. This mischief was largely undid by the almost simultaneous Industrial Revolution and the French Reign of Terror. It was the woman worker who first cried for economic freedom. The French cataclysm shook Europe out of the sleep of ages; the fall of the Bastille loosed mental shackles as well as literal fetters. One way and another women were set for the battle that began with Mary Wollstonecraft’s bold defiance, and went on to the political arena, where women were nobly sponsored by J. S. Mill, and carried to victory by Millicent Garrett Fawcett. Such a thinker as Olive Schreiner could now boldly declare that the fight was now not for rights, but for opportunities. This is not so tangible as it sounds. The opportunities, or granted openings, of one generation naturally become the rights of the next. It is not possible even to epitomise this book here, with all its trenchant reflections, and its flashlights on modern conditions for women m changing countries like Spain and Russia, together with its masterly summing up of the new world tor women in British lands. Two outstanding features remain throughout —first, the author’s easy grasp ot a tangled, branching argument; every point being listed and gathered up in its place; second, the author s abounding charity. However darh were the facts, new or old, she nevei descends to vituperation. A gentle irony brings up the climax every time. It is a human narrative, showing the unescapable law of balance, it proves that i;' man ground down his partner in creation, he came down himself, either in poor fortune or poor physique, as his offence against nature or against economic law determined. And when man learns that, his education is far through.

France and Feminism As I write, the new drama of progress is transferred to France, an arid field in general for women. But M. Leon Blum, th ■ go-ahead Socialist who has just formed a new government in Paris, has taken the remarkable step of including three women in his Cabinet. It is to be hoped that these ladies will prove the same success as England’s first woman Minister, Margaret Bondfield, and that they will wear the honour longer than she was permitted to do. For most of us, the wisdom of M. Blum’s choice stands on the obvious fitijess of placing Madame Joliot Curie where she will direct scientific research in a country famed for achievement in that field. There would seem to be a Gallic compliment to Madame Curie’s daughter in that her maiden name is last, not first after our British fashion, in her conjoined surname. But M. Blum can hardly take the credit for that. Madame Brunschvig’s outland name has been seen often enough in women’s journals to warrant hope that she will prove eminently fitted for oversight of state orphans and war widows, while Madame Suzanne Lacore should make good in the also peculiarly feminine field of child welfare. Two thoughts inevitably arise: first, the anomaly of a woman as Cabinet Minister where she is not permitted to be a member of Parliament; second, how long will Frenchmen perpetuate the disability which creates the anomaly? Now one thinks of it, the cables are unusually vocal as to the activities of French suffragists at this juncture,

and eligibility can hardly lag behind Cabinet rank for any length of time. It was the other half of the loaf that we received ourselves in 1893, and no one can say it was not put to excellent use. The world is moving faster now, and France’s patient daughters may soon have the whole Gallic loaf intact, that is, if M. Blum’s Government does not vanish in a night in the light-hearted fashion peculiar to th. Quai d’Orsay.