Part 4 (1/2)
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So much, then, for the mental revolution and its eventual effects on the position of women in the arts, the trades, and the schools. In the industrial section, especially, we have already had an indication of the main line of the Feminist att.i.tude, a claim to a right to choose. This right is indeed the only one for which the Feminists are struggling, and they struggle for those obscure reasons which lie at the root of our wish to live and to perpetuate the race. It is no wonder, then, that the Feminists should have designs upon the most fundamental of human inst.i.tutions, marriage and motherhood.
In the main, Feminists are opposed to indissoluble Christian marriage.
Some satisfaction has been given to them in a great many states by the extension of divorce facilities, but they are not content with piecemeal reform such as has been carried out in the United States, for they realize quite well that divorce cuts both ways, and that it is not satisfactory for a wife to be married in one state, and divorced under a slack law in another. Indeed I believe that one of the first Feminist demands in America would be for a federal marriage law.
But alterations in the law are minor points by the side of the emotional revolution that is to be engineered. Roughly speaking, we have to-day reasonable men and instinctive women. Such notably was Ibsen's view: ”Woman cannot escape her primitive emotions.” But he thought she should control these inevitables so far as possible: ”As soon as woman no longer dominates her pa.s.sions, she fails to achieve her objects.”[6] The distinction between reason and instinct, however, is not so wide as it seems; for reason is merely the conscious use of observation, while instinct is the unconscious use of the same faculty; but as the trend of Feminism is to make woman self-conscious and s.e.x-conscious, the Feminists can be said broadly to be warring against instinct, and on the side of reason. They look upon instinct as indicative of a low mentality. For instance, the horse is less instinctive than the zebra, and a curious instance of this was yielded by certain horses in the South African war, which were unable to crop the gra.s.s because they had always eaten from mangers. Civilization, we may say, had caused the horses to degenerate, but n.o.body will contend that the horse is not more intelligent than the zebra, more capable of love, even of thought.
Briefly, the horse approximates more closely to a reasonable being than does the instinctive wild beast.
[6] _La Femme dans le Theatre d'Ibsen_, by FRIEDERICKE BOETTCHER.--THE AUTHOR.
The Feminists therefore propose, by training woman's reason, to place her beyond the scope of mere emotion and mere prejudice, to enable her to judge, to select a mate for herself and a father for her children,--a double and necessary process.
There is a flavor of eugenics about these ideas: the right to choose means that women wish to be placed in such a position that, being economically independent to the extent of having equal opportunities, they will not be compelled to sell themselves in marriage as they now very often do. I do not refer to entirely loveless marriages, for these are not very common in Anglo-Saxon states, but to marriages dictated by the desire of woman to escape the authority of her parents, and to gain the dignity of a wife, the possession of a home and of money to spend.
In the Feminist view, these are bad unions because love does not play the major part in them, and often plays hardly any part at all. The Feminists believe that the educated woman, informed on the subject of s.e.x-relations, able to earn her own living, to maintain a political argument, will not fall an easy prey to the offer held out to her by a man who will be her master, because he will have bought her on a truck system.
Under Feminist rule, women will be able to select, because they will be able to sweep out of their minds the monetary consideration; therefore they will love better, and unless they love, they will not marry at all.
It is therefore probable that they will raise the standard of masculine attractiveness by demanding physical and mental beauty in those whom they choose; that they will apply personal eugenics. The men whom they do not choose will find themselves in exactly the same position as the old maids of modern times: that is to say, these men, if they are unwed, will be unwed because they have chosen to remain so, or because they were not sought in marriage. The eugenic characteristic appears, in that women will no longer consent to accept as husbands the old, the vicious, the unpleasant. They will tend to choose the finest of the species, and those likely to improve the race. As the Feminist revolution implies a social revolution, notably ”proper work for proper pay”, it follows that marriage will be easy, and that those women who wish to mate will not be compelled to wait indefinitely for the consummation of their loves. Incidentally, also, the Feminists point out that their proposals hold forth to men a far greater chance of happiness than they have had hitherto, for they will be sure that the women who select them do so because they love them, and not because they need to be supported.
This does not mean that Feminism is entirely a creed of reason; indeed a number of militant Feminists who collected round the English paper, _The Freewoman_, have as an article of their faith that one of the chief natural needs of woman and society is not less pa.s.sion, but more. If they wish to raise women's wages, to give them security, education, opportunity, it is because they want to place them beyond material temptations, to make them independent of a protector, so that nothing may stand in the way of the pa.s.sionate development of their faculties.
To this effect, of course, they propose to introduce profound changes in the conception of marriage itself.
Without committing themselves to free union, the Feminists wish to loosen the marriage tie, and they might not be averse to making marriage less easy, to raising, for instance, the marriage age for both s.e.xes; but as they are well aware that, in the present state of human pa.s.sions, impediments to marriage would lead merely to an increase in irregular alliances, they lay no stress upon that point. Moreover, as they are not prepared to admit that any moral damage ensues when woman contracts more than one alliance in the course of her life,--which view is accepted very largely in the United States, and in all countries with regard to widows,--they incline rather to repair the effects of bad marriages, than to prevent their occurrence.
Plainly speaking, the Feminists desire simpler divorce. They are to a certain extent ready to surround divorce with safeguards, so as to prevent the young from rus.h.i.+ng into matrimony; indeed they might ”steep up” the law of the ”Divorce States.” On the other hand, they would introduce new causes for divorce where they do not already exist, and they would make them the same for women and men. For instance, in Great Britain a divorce can be granted to a man on account of the infidelity of his wife, while it can be granted to a woman only if to infidelity the husband adds cruelty or desertion. Such a difference the Feminists would sweep away, and they would probably add to the existing causes certain others, such as infectious and incurable diseases, chronic drunkenness, insanity, habitual cruelty, and lengthy desertion. It should be observed that the campaign is thus as favorable to men as it is to women, for many men who have now no relief would gain it under the new laws. As Feminism is international, the programme of course includes the introduction of divorce where it does not exist,--in Austria, Spain, South American states, and so forth.
What exact form the new divorce laws would take, I cannot at present say, for Feminism is as evolutionary as it is revolutionary, and Feminists are prepared to accept transitory measures of reform. Thus, in the existing circ.u.mstances, they would accept a partial extension of divorce facilities, subject to an adequate provision for all children.
In the ultimate condition, to which I refer later on, this might not be necessary, but as a temporary expedient, Feminists desire to protect woman while she is developing from the chattel condition to the free-woman condition. Until she is fit for her new liberty, it is necessary that she should be enabled to use this liberty without paying too heavy a price therefor. Indeed this clash between the transitory and the ultimate is one of the difficulties of Feminism. The rebels must accept situations such as the financial responsibility of man, while they struggle to make woman financially independent of man, and it is for this reason that different proposals appear in the works of Ellen Key, Rosa Mayreder, Charlotte Gilman, Olive Schreiner, and others, but these divergences need not trouble us, for Feminism is an inspiration rather than a gospel, and if it lays down a programme, it is a temporary programme.
Personally, I am inclined to believe that the ultimate aim of Feminism with regard to marriage is the practical suppression of marriage and the inst.i.tution of free alliance. It may be that thus only can woman develop her own personality, but society itself must so greatly alter, do so very much more than equalize wages and provide work for all, that these ultimate ends seem very distant. They lie beyond the decease of Capitalism itself, for they imply a change in the nature of the human being which is not impossible when we consider that man has changed a great deal since the Stone Age, but is still inconceivably radical.
Ultimate ends of Feminism will be attained only when socialization shall have been so complete that the human being will no longer require the law, but will be able to obey some obscure but n.o.ble categorical imperative; when men and women can a.s.sociate voluntarily, without thrall of the State, for the production and enjoyment of the goods of life. How this will be achieved, by what propaganda, by what struggles and by what battles, is difficult to say; but in common with many Feminists I incline to place a good deal of reliance on the enn.o.bling of the nature of the male. That there is a s.e.x war, and will be a s.e.x war, I do not deny, but the entry of women into the modern world of art and business shows that an immense enlightenment has come over the male, that he no longer wishes to crush as much as he did, and therefore that he is loving better and more sanely. Therein lies a profound lesson: if men do not make war upon women, women will not make war upon men. I have spoken of s.e.x war, but it takes two sides to make a war, and I do not see that in the event of conflict the Feminists can _alone_ be guilty.
One feature manifests itself, and that is a change of att.i.tude in woman with regard to the child. Indications in modern novels and modern conversation are not wanting to show that a type of woman is arising who believes in a new kind of matriarchate, that is to say, in a state of society where man will not figure in the life of woman except as the father of her child. Two cases have come to my knowledge where English women have been prepared to contract alliances with men with whom they did not intend to pa.s.s their lives,--this because they desired a child.
They consider that the child is the expression of the feminine personality, while after the child's birth, the husband becomes a mere excrescence. They believe that the ”Wife” should die in childbirth, and the ”Mother” rise from her ashes. There is nothing utopian about this point of view, if we agree that Feminists can so rearrange society as to provide every woman with an independent living; and I do not say that this is the prevalent view. It is merely one view, and I do not believe it will be carried to the extreme, for the a.s.sociation of human beings in couples appears to respond to some deep need; still, it should be taken into account as an indication of s.e.x revolt.
That part of the programme belongs to the ultimates. Among the transitory ideas, that is, the ideas which are to fit Feminism into the modern State, are the endowment of motherhood and the lien on wages. The Feminists do not commit themselves to a view on the broad social question whether it is desirable to encourage or discourage births.
Taking births as they happen, they lay down that a woman being incapacitated from work for a period of weeks or months while she is giving birth to a child, her liberty can be secured only if the fact of the birth gives her a call upon the State. Failing this, she must have a male protector in whose favor she must abdicate her rights because he is her protector. As man is not handicapped in his work by becoming a father, they propose to remove the disability that lies upon woman by supplying her with the means of livelihood for a period surrounding the birth, of not less than six weeks, which some place at three months.
There is nothing wild in this scheme, for the British Insurance Act (1912) gives a maternity endowment of seven dollars and fifty cents whether a mother be married or single. The justice of the proposal may be doubted by some, but I do not think its expediency will be questioned. On mere grounds of humanity, it is barbarous to compel a woman to labor while she is with child; on social grounds it is not advantageous for the race to allow her to do so: premature births, child-murder, child-neglect by working mothers, all these facts point to the social value of the endowment.
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The last of the transitory measures is the lien on wages. In the present state of things, women who work in the home depend for money on husbands or fathers. The fact of having to ask is, in the Feminists' view, a degradation. They suggest that the housekeeper should be ent.i.tled to a proportion of the man's income or salary, and one of them, Mrs. M. H.
Wood, picturesquely ill.u.s.trates her case by saying that she hopes to do away with ”pocket-searching” while the man is asleep. Mrs. Wood's ideas certainly deserve sympathy; though many men pay their wives a great deal more than they are worth and are shamefully exploited--a common modern position--it is also quite true that many others expect their wives to run their household on inadequate allowances, and to come to them for clothes or pleasure in a manner which establishes the man as a pasha.