WOMEN IN ART

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 122, 25 May 1928, Page 3

WOMEN IN ART

PLACE AMONG AUTHORS REPLY TO CRITICISM LATE WON FKEEDOM (From "The Post's" .Representative.) ■ LONDON, 21st March. In a speech -at the Authors' Club, on tho position of women in literature, Lord Birkenhead, while not ungenerous in his appreciation of women writers, reached a rather, disinheriting conclusion. He. remarked: -"Women writers are not in any way' comparable' to men writers of distinction." The "Morning Post" admits that the judgment is unanswerable according to tho record of the past, but the argument from tho past is not conclusive. There are a seoro of reasons, social, political, and traditional, which have in • earlier ages deterred women .from authorship. The real emancipation of woman is a very recent phenomenon. In liberty, in leisure, and in range of experience, she has been cribbed, cabin'd, and confined since the stone age, and the marvel is that, under such conditions, women should have written, not so little, but s much that the world cares to.remember. ■ ' •. It is irrelevant, besides (continues the commentator) to point out that no woman has written a "Hamlet" or a "Paradise Lost." Woman's genius is i: t man's genius. She has her own "metier," and it is answer enough to this argur/ont to reply that no man living or dead could have written Jane Austen's novels. It is unnecessary to rehearse the list of famous women writers of earlier times; the significant fact is ■ that in authorship, both of prose and verse, women have become increasingly successful during the last hundred years; Their achievements to-day are not less '• remarkable for being accepted as a matter of course. We have travelled a long way since the days of George Eliot and "Ouida," and Miss Braddon. The art of fiction has been almost transformed, and yet who shall say that at least one book by Miss May Sinclair and one by Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith are not as notable and distinguished as those of any living author, except one or two? Who will say what Miss Katherine Mansfield, had she lived, might not have achieved? With such capacity in evidence, it is impossible to set bounds to its possibilities. Clearly there is nothing inherently lacking in the sex which can produce such literature, and as tp-day thero is nothing to prevent the career from opening to the talents, it is reasonable .to conclude that in the future the temple of literary fame is likely to fol- i lonr the example of so many of our exclusive clubs^a'nd open its doors to women. '. ' \ ■ LACK OF OPPORTUNITY. Various well-known women writers have .since expressed briefly their views. Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith, whose books Lord Birkenhead said lie never allowed to pass without attention,"did not see the necessity for sex distinctions in literature. "It seems to me idiotic to compare men and women writers," she said. "I can't see that you can divide them like that. They are both writers, and some are better or worso than others—it- is not a matter of sex at all. There are moro eminent men writers because more men than women have written up to now." "Give the. women time," said Mrs. Baillie Keynolds. "Women have been put back for generation after generation, until a couple of generations ago --put back to tho beginning of things. They were, never allowed to progress. They have had only two generations in which to develop, and look what they have done in that short time. They have taken high places iii business, in' politics, science, and. various careers, and gained high degrees at the universities, and surely, in a generation or two, they will bo able to give more time to philosophy, and thought, and literature. It seems absurd to me to compare at present the performances of women in such a sphere as writing with those of men, who have had every facility for centuries." '.. " ■ Miss Cicely Hamilton agreed with Lord Birkenhead that women in art did not, with rare exceptions, approac. men. "Women have been brought up as a parasitic race, and you don't get fine thoughts from a parasitic race," she. said. "As long as women continue to prefer to see things through other people's eyes, they will not get the entirely free and independent" outlook that is absolutely necessary." . Mrs. Belloc Lowndes: "When it comes to any form of art, women are just as good as men—when they get ■the same opportunity. Up to now they h'.ve not had the same opportunity. I consider Emily Bronte was as good a woman' poet as any man poet of the last century." \ PROOF OF HISTORY. The "Evening StandardJ' maintains that all tho replies have suffered from one essential flaw—tho fact that what' Lord Birkenhead said was demonstrably true, and that no' amount of talking can<niak& it untrue. *A certain,amount of writing might, but not a less amount than would occupy several generations. "The overwhelming bulk of the world's literature in the past has been written by men. This is no matter on which the male ser ma ■ congratulate itself. It is true, but it is a pity that it is true. To the lover of literature,, a good book is a good book, no matter who may have written it, and the fact tjiat wo have had few great women authors means only that we have fewer good books than we might have had, and that literature in general is poor in a valuable element. For, whenever a woman has written well,' she has not aped men, but has written as no one but a woman could write. "If one traces the feminine; stream in letters from its beginning this be* c ios obvious. Sappho, Erinna, and the rest, of whom there are fragments sufficient for a judgment, betray their sex as much by their sentiments as1 over by their dress. When we come to later times, the best English poetesses, from the Countess of Winchilsea on, through Mrs. Browning and Christina Eossetti to Mrs. Meynell, are all markedly feminine.. It is a quality as unmistakable in them as the tone of a voice, as charming as the sound of women's voices, but, unfortunately, "so much rarer." ■..