WOMAN AND HER CRITICS

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 5, 2 November 1925, Page 27

WOMAN AND HER CRITICS

'Ey BEATRICE KEAN SEYMOUR.

WHEN FEAR HAS BLINDED YOUR JUDGMENT, YOU GIVE AN ADVERSE CRITICISM. IS THAT WHY MOST MALE CRITICISM OF WOMEN IS SO IRRITABLE AND SO ACRIMONIOUS?

IT has always seemed to me an J- extraordinary thing that until quite recent times most of the men who have taken pen in hand to write about women have been misogynists. They nearly all, that is to say, began at the same point—that woman was the fundamental blunder of creation' travelling in a circle came back again to the same spot. The outpourings of most of these commentators upon women, therefore, can quite conveniently be summed up in Nietzsches phrase that woman was “an object to be shut up, something predestined to domesticity.” And they wrote, as Nietzsche did, because it had occurred to them, as to him, that woman was “forgetting her fear of man.” So it comes about that, though between them the dead and gone misogynists have talked a good deal of nonsense about women, they cannot be said to have indulged that much-vaunted male characteristic of originality of thought upon the subject. They have, indeed, been a most lamentable chorus. Tolstoy, Strindberg, Nietzsche, Schopenhauerof them all it is true to say that their contempt for women is “flawless and unanimous.” The story of woman, “told by a man with a man’s ideas about people,” as Dorothy Richardson’s Miriam says of a Tolstoy novel. “It zvas not true, but it zvas true for men. Skimmed off the surface, which zvas all they could see, and set up in forcible, quotable words. The rest could not be shown hi these clever, neat phrases.” . . . It is with that “rest” this little article will attempt to deal. Ignoring the distinguished TN the days when the opportunities for women were very limited, when the way of the rebel was beset with difficulties, there was some sort of excuse for the hasty conclusions at which men arrived concerning

them, though it must be remembered that some of the most virulent critics of women were driven into print less by their contempt for the ordinary woman than by their fear of the woman who had dared to step out of the ranks. But in these days when women have given proof that in a short space of time they can make enormous strides in self-de-velopment, it is a little arbirary of the male critic to preend that in an ever-changing universe woman remains the one unalterable factor. That considerable list of distinguished women which the last fifty years have given us has, for certain masculine critics of women, no significance at all ; they still judge the sex by the lowest common denominator, and, worse, refer to the “rare woman of character,” as though they really believe their adjective a just one, as though they agree with the much-quoted monomaniac, Weininger, that “these talented zuomen arc worth nothing as specimens of the human race.” And even in an age which has given us a Sir Henry Maine, a Stuart Mill, a Jean Finot, an Ibsen and a Shaw, there are men-writers who judge all women by the old bad standard and by the “average” woman which that standard has produced. They carp at the woman who has no interest in life but sex, and at the same time pour scorn upon the woman who cultivates her brain and endeavours to extend the boundaries of her human existence. And once again it is an echo we hear—a Nietzschean echo: “When a woman has scholarly in-

clinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature.” Aire Aten c. Afraid of Women ? COME of them come to us with a text-book in their hands asserting, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that woman is little more than a perambulating disease. Others, like Mr. Mencken from America and Mr. Anthony Ludovici (from the Middle Ages) call the books they write about us “Defences” and “Vindications.” What they really mean is that they are prepared to like women very much so long as they toe the line and restrict themselves to their “proper” sphere, but are prepared to dislike them quite considerably if they persist in their efforts to meet and challenge men on the plane of general human endeavour. What they will not have is feminine competition. Why? Can it be that whilst women are losing their fear of men, men are discovering their fear of women? Al “Defence’ 5 of Women "JW/fR. MENCKEN and Mr. Ludovici, to be sure, quarrel not only with women but with the universe. Humanity, as they perceive it to-day, is a poor thing, and Mr. Mencken’s “defence” of woman seems to consist in his belief that most of the things men do are not worth doing and that women show sound common-sense in refraining from them. Beethoven, he says, apol-

ogising for the generally-accepted belief that women can’t do arithmetic, would have found some difficulty in multiplying 3,482,701 by 99,999, and infers, quite correctly, that this doesn’t matter at all, since Beethoven could do things of immensely more value. Putting aside the fact that the positivism of Auguste Comte had for precursor a woman, Sophie Germain, one of the cleverest mathematicians the world has ever known; putting aside also the testimony of Professor Hickson of the Manchester University that women, when admitted to mathematical studies, show themselves the equal of men, let us admit that there are things of more importance for women than the working of multiplication sums. That does not commit us to agreement with Mr. Mencken that women who want to be mathematicians or to follow any other career only do so through some frustrated sex instinct. “Normal women,” he says, “have fezv serious transactions in life save zuith their husbands. . . . The business of marriage is their dominant concern from adolescence to senility.” It is easy to see, of course, how Mr. Mencken interprets the word “normal,” and safe, I think, to assume that it has never occurred to him that the feminine “norm” is itself a thing of artificial growth and encouragement, women having taken the imprint of their surroundings and believing, as they were taught from the cradle, that feminine existence was a thing of emotions, with no concern at all with the world of thought. CJhe Role of Wife and and dfhCother T IKE all men who would restrict the activities of the feminine

half of the world to the purely physical, Mr. Mencken pays an exaggerated respect to the woman in the role of wife and mother. I say exaggerated, because he has no real respect for a women if she fails to perform this dual function. “A toman zvho has not had a child,” he informs us, ‘‘remains incomplete, ill at ease, and more than a little ridiculous.” In short, a woman justifies her existence, as the late Marriott Watson once said, only in so far as she performs these purely physical functions. But why? Surely a woman is more than a wife and mother? She is a human being. Mr. Ludovici’s argument is like unto Mr. Mencken’sonly more so. Mr. Ludovici’s quarrel with the universe is more bitter and emphatic. It has produced this race of office hermits which he despises, and life, he says, in what seems to be a moment of real insight, “is not an office or a factory.” If that moment could have been somehow prolonged he might also have come to see that neither is life a colossal nursery. EM'asculine Estimates A/TR. LUDOVICI accepts all the old masculine estimates of femininity from his dead and gone masters. He has been an apt and docile pupil. He really believes that all women are liars, imitative animals with a mental life that is no more than a pale reflection of their emotional exercises; that they are unscrupulous by nature, fundamentally lacking in taste, inherently vulgar and with an undying thirst for petty power. But do not imagine that Mr. Ludovici dislikes us for these things. This is where he goes one better than his masters. He sees clearly that these things are but the defects of our qualities—tricks, all of them, of Nature’s, the better to serve her own ends.

All would be enormously well if men had not deteriorated into this race of office hermits no longer able to keep us under proper control. Man is a negative creature who plays cricket and tennis, babbles of freedom and companionship between the sexes and can actually be left alone with a young woman in safety. The spectacle revolts our critic to the point of a passionate appeal for a return to the “medkeval system of respectable and honourable sc-

questration of old maids,” and a demand that women in general shall be placed under the domination of their men folk.

3hCer “Proper" sphere A/TOST of the men of my ac--IV - quaintance would regard this as a fearful bore, and will be relieved to hear that . Mr. Ludovici does not intend to ask them to undertake the impossible task. He will wait for the coming of the Complete Man, the super-man who will be capable of “wisely directing and ordering his womenfolk at every juncture of their lives,” and with which magnificent creature women could not dare to try to compete. Automatically she would return to her proper’ sphere and the world’s problems would be at an end.

Mr. Mencken and Mr. Ludovici are not without support in this last effort to hold the fort of the world for men. They have a goodly company of followers, not all of them sufficiently courageous, however, to put their signatures to their opinions. But they all worship at the same shrine. They all believe that women have no lives at all apart from men which is such a very humourless thing to believe. They have only one contribution to give to life—their sex. They depend upon men for moral support. At all times and in all circumstances they are predominantly sexual. They cannot create, and when they write it is but a form of hysteria. All their energies in whatsoever direction, have a physical cause. They are sex-ridden, sex-driven.

I feel a little sorry for these gentlemen because they were so obviously born too late. They would have been much happier—and much more comfortable—in, say, the Middle Ages. And there is really no hope for them at all, because more and more are women refusing to be regarded merely as sex-creatures or to be trained for sex purposes only. Motherhood no more than fatherhood is the whole of life; life is something more than a “consecration of relationships.” Women have been wiv.es and mothers since the beginning of time, but they are only just beginning to realise that that has not always made them very satisfactory human beings. Women want their place in the sun.