IS WOMAN REALLY MODERN?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

IS WOMAN REALLY MODERN?

English and American

By KOTARE

JOHN GUNTHER notes that the attitude of English women to their menfolk is still governed by the ideas and conditions of the Victorian era. Here is one country that does not conform to the standards of the modern world. Outwardly it may be in line, but actually in England the , feminine mind is still in 'subjection to the inherited conception of masculine superiority. At least, that is how 1 read his diagnosis of the position today. It may very well be that Mr. Gunther has here put his finger on one of the deepest things in the English way of life. England cannot get away from its past. Its social structure has its roots in the English character and the history that expressed it. It has grown out of the English soil. It has been the slow building of centuries of intimate association of the same type of people in the one environment. There have been no wide gaps in the continuity. Dane and Norman soon fitted into the English scene, the conqueror becoming more English than the English. New ideas that wrought revolution abroad cam®to England and took their colour and direction from the English environment. The impact of that tremendous momentum from the past is and must be the most formative element in any given moment of English history. Some nations seem to have the gift of making themselves over again under the influence of a new idea, or in the presence of a new opportunity. But with England the more it seems to change the more it is the same as it has always been. The planners of new worlds find here their most intractable material. Mr. Wells throws up his hands in despair. He can see so plainly what ought to be. He can make it as clear as crystal in his brilliant expositions. It is all so scientific and obvious. This is what is wrong and this is how to remedy it. But the great mass of England simply carries on. The critic bemoans the national stupidity, the imperviousness to convincing argument. But it is not a colossal native dulness. Neither ,is it a mere inertia, a dull acceptance of things as they are. The great stream moves on. in its own steady fashion with the whole weight _ of its waters, trom its fountain-head downwards, forcing it on. The Victorian Woman The Victorian woman was the in- * evitable outcome of the conditions of| her own epoch and the drive from the nation's past. And it probable that the English woman of to-day is similarly the product of the adjustment to modern conditions of the essentially English type. Mr. Gunther is right in assuming that she is different from the women of America and of all the countries of Europe. It could not be otherwise while the English remain a separate people carrying ► on an age-long national tradition in the ancestral home of the race. It is inevitable in these conditions that ( there should be in English life today /a considerable carry-over from the much-despised Victorian, era. "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" represented in an exceptional case and in exaggerated form the ideas on which the nineteenth century home was built. Woman was 'to be sheltered, and man, who went out to face the hard world and wrest from it the means of living that made that sheltering possible, was given an authority and respect that seem ridiculous to-day. But they were the natural outcome of conditions. Except for the few unusual women who did not want sheltering from the world, the Victorian attitude of men to women and women to men made for the greatest happiness of the greatest number. There were very few opportunities for a woman to make her own living. She was economically dependent all her days. She spent practically her whole life in the home of her father or of her husband. - She moved, if she was lucky, from one shelter to another, and so completed the sum of her days. Masculine Dominance Her dependence on her father until her marriage and her dependence on her husband after marriage gave man a place in her scheme of things that she acknowledged by her general acceptance of the idea of masculine superiority. The daughter found her life narrowed and circumscribed. In her father's house she ministered to the necessities and whims of those nobler creatures, her father and her brothers. That was at once her privilege, her duty, and, strange as it seems to modern eyes, her pleasure as well. When she married she pledged herself to obey her husband, for the higher being's word was her law. That she was happy under the conditions then obtaining there is abundant evidence to prove, probably happier than her counterparts under the conditions of to-day. It is the results of generations of women brought up under this type of tutelage, under this acceptance of 4masculine superiority and authority, that Mr. Gunther notes in the character of English women to-day. He insists that the English civilisation is emphatically masculine. Women in England still defer to man, still instinctively accept masculine authority and dominance. It has changed its form of expression, but it is still there, and it is women who insist on its being there. With al) the growth of the new liberty, with all the doors that have opened to a new way of life, the old instinct is still one of the strongest factors in English public and. private life. One outcome is that English women, far more than any others, ape masculinity, dress as like men as possible, indulge in men's sports, keep their femininity in the background. In America Of course, all such generalisations are bound to represent only an individual's impressions and there are other observers as competent who would roundly challenge Mr. Gunther's conclusions. But his is a point of view, and he has won the right to have his ideas seriously considered. It is amusing to place alongside this outsider's view of English womanhood a distinguished American's view of the women of his own country. John Erskine, who ranks high in American letters and education, complains bitterly in his latest book, "The Men of America —(Those Who Remain)," of the dominance of the American scene by feminine influence. "We live," he says, "in a, woman's world, a phenomenon I deplore.". This dominance of woman he sees as a menace to civilisation. And as women have almost a monopoly of primary education in America he forecasts » very black future unless men begin to assert themselves. "Specifically I hat© tried to say that women will continue to steer our course to suit thenise }es unless we do our share in the of our boys." Perhaps after all England has chosen the better way. ,