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 WO/VIAN, AMD HER PLACE 
 IN A FREE SOCIETY
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 
 
 
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 WOMAN, 
 
 AND HER PLACE IN A FREE SOCIETY: 
 
 EDWARD CARPENTER ; 
 
 PRICE SIXPENCE. 
 
 MANCHESTER: 
 The Labour Press Society Limited, Printers and Publishers, 59, Tib Street. 
 
 1894.
 
 HQ. 
 
 WOMAN 
 
 "^A/'HAT a word is this ! In its brief compass what 
 thousand-year-long tragedies He enshrined ! Since 
 the far-back time when in the early societies the thought 
 of inequality had hardly arisen, and the female in her 
 own way — as sole authenticator of birth and parentage, 
 as guardian of the household, as inventress of agriculture 
 and the peaceful arts, as priestess or prophetess or 
 sharer in the councils of the tribe — was as powerful as 
 man in his, and sometimes even more so ; down to 
 to-day, what centuries of suffering, of repression, of 
 slave-hood, of dumbness and obscurity have been the 
 lot of woman ! It seems strange that with the growth of 
 invention and produ(flion the status of the female sex 
 should have tended to decline rather than to improve. 
 Yet such has only too often been the case. For as the 
 sentiment of private Property — the chief incentive to 
 Civilisation — has from time to time risen and spread 
 with a kind of contagion over the advancing races of 
 mankind, the human male, bitten by the greed of 
 
 3054121
 
 4 WOMAN 
 
 individual ownership, and casting his eyes about to see 
 what fresh acquisitions he could claim, has continually 
 ended by enslaving and appropriating his own free mate, 
 his second self, and reducing her also to a mere chattel, 
 an exclusive possession and luxury, a minister to his 
 wants and pleasures, and a toy and soul-less plaything. 
 
 With whatever occasional exceptions, the periods of 
 Civilisation, and even the societies or sections of society 
 in which civilisation has made the greatest progress, 
 have been the scenes of a most notable sadness and 
 degradation of woman : the Man, all through, more and 
 more calmly assuming that it must be her province to 
 live and work for him ; tending more and more to shut 
 her from the free world and the following of her own 
 bent, into the seclusion of the boudoir and the harem, or 
 down to the drudgery of the hearth ; confining her body, 
 her mind ; playing always upon her sex-nature, 
 accentuating always that — as though she were indeed 
 nought else but sex ; yet furious if her feelings were not 
 always obedient to his desire ; arrogating to himself a 
 masculine licence, yet revenging the least unfaithfulness 
 on her part by casting her out into the scorned life of the 
 prostitute ; and granting her more and more but one 
 choice in life — to be a free woman, and to die, unsexed, 
 in the gutter ; or for creature-comforts and a good 
 name to sell herself, soul and body, into life-long
 
 WOMAN 5 
 
 bondage to a lord whom too soon, alas ! she might 
 come to hate. 
 
 She, more and more, accepting as inevitable the 
 situation ; moving, sad-eyed, to her patient and uncom- 
 plaining work ; to the narrow sphere and petty details 
 of household labor and life, and to the obscurity of 
 unrecognised cares and interests ; filling the world with 
 her myriad nameless unrecorded acts of tenderness and 
 love, of drudgery and daily tendance, of patience and 
 self-effacement, little noticed and less understood ; yet 
 all the while with her own impulses and character, her 
 own talents and genius, smothered away and blighted 
 by confinement and neglect ; her brain dwarfed ; and 
 her outlook on the world marred by all falsity and 
 ignorance. Such has been, the fate of woman through 
 the centuries. Till at last, becoming indeed only too 
 well adapted to the external conditions of her life, she 
 has often even mentally lapsed into the chattel and 
 property of the male, and (like the wage-earner) been 
 able only to see her good in clinging for support to 
 the very person who used her for his profit and his 
 pleasure. 
 
 And if, like man. Woman had been light-armed for 
 her own defence, it might have been possible to say it 
 was her own fault that she allowed all this to take 
 place ; but when we remember that she all the while has
 
 b WOMAN 
 
 had to bear the great and speechless burden of Sex — to 
 be herself the ark and cradle of the Race down the ages 
 — then we may perhaps understand what a tragedy has 
 lain involved in her destiny. For the fulfilment of sex is 
 a relief and a condensation to the Man. He goes his 
 way, and, so to speak, thinks no more about it. But to 
 the Woman it is the culmination of her life, her profound 
 and secret mission to humanity, of incomparable import 
 and delicacy. It is her momentous burden, which she 
 can never lay aside nor forget- — which she must first lift 
 before she can raise herself. 
 
 Few probably among men, if any, ever understand the 
 depth and sacredness of the mother-feeling in woman — 
 its joys and hopes, nor its leaden weight of cares and 
 anxieties. The burden of her pregnancy and gestation, 
 the deep inner solicitude, and despondency, as she 
 realises more and more the grave changes that are in 
 progress, the fears that all may not be well, the 
 indrawing and absorption of her life into the life of the 
 child, the increasing effort to attend to anything else, to 
 care for anything else; her willingness e\en to die if only 
 the child may be born safe : these are things which man 
 — except it be occasionally in his role as artist or 
 inventor — does but faintly imagine. Then, later on, 
 the dedication to the young life or lives, the years of 
 daylong and nightlong labor and forethought, in which
 
 WOMAN 7 
 
 the very thought of self is effaced, of tender service for 
 which there is no recognition, nor ever will or can be — 
 except in the far future ; the sacrifice of personal 
 interests and expansions in the ever-narrowing round of 
 domestic duty ; and in the end the sad wonderment and 
 grievous unfulfilled yearning as one by one the growing 
 boy and girl push their way into the world and disavow 
 their home-ties and dependence ; the sundering of heart- 
 strings even as the navel-cord had to be sundered before : 
 for these things, too. Woman can hope but little 
 sympathy and understanding from the other sex. 
 
 Yet when we consider that She during all the centuries 
 of her emprisonment and degradation has had to bear 
 this great and sacred burden, has had to discharge this 
 priceless and inviolable trust — while we realise the better 
 how difficult it has been for her to fight for her own 
 independence, we feel all the more acutely perhaps 
 for this very reason the part of callousness and 
 indifference which man has played ; and are not without 
 surprise that humanity has indeed survived a period 
 fraught with such danger to its very reproduction 
 and continuance. Far back out of the brows of Greek 
 goddess and Sibyll, and Norse and German seeress and 
 prophetess, over all this petty civilisation look the grand 
 untamfed eyes of a primal woman the equal and the mate 
 of man ; and in sad plight should we be if we might not
 
 <5 WOMAN 
 
 already, lighting up the horizon from East and West 
 and South and North, discern the answering looks 
 of those new-comers who as the period of women's 
 degradation and enslavement is passing away send 
 glances of recognition across the ages to their elder 
 sisters. 
 
 For underneath all the w\arping influences of the period 
 of which we have spoken, and underneath the artificial 
 relationships arising from the sense of property, may we 
 not say that there is a deep and in some sense eternal 
 relation between man and woman which must inevitably 
 assert itself again ? To this relation the physiological 
 differences perhaps afford the key. In woman — modern- 
 science has shown — the more fundamental and primitive 
 nervous centres, and the great sympathetic and vaso-motor 
 system of nerves generally, are developed to a greater 
 extent than in man ; in woman the whole structure and 
 life rallies more closely and obviously round the sexual 
 function than in man ; and, as a general rule, in the 
 evolution of the human race, as well as of the lower 
 races, the female is less subjecl to variation and is more 
 constant to and conservative of the type of the race than 
 the male. With these physiological differences are 
 naturally allied the facts that, of the two, Woman is the 
 more primitive, the more intuitive, the more emotional ; 
 the great unconscious and cosmic processes of Nature lie
 
 WOMAN 9 
 
 somehow nearer to her ; to her, sex is a deep and sacred 
 
 instinct:, carrying with it a sense of natural purity ; nor 
 
 does she often experience that divorce between the 
 
 sentiment of Love and the physical passion which is so 
 
 common with men, and which causes them to be aware 
 
 of a grossness and a conflict in their own natures ; she is, 
 
 or should be, the interpreter of Love to man, and in some 
 
 degree his guide in sexual matters. INIore, since she 
 
 keeps to the great lines of evolution and is less biassed 
 
 and influenced by the momentary currents of the day ; 
 
 since her life is bound up with the life of the child ; since 
 
 in a way she is nearer the child herself, and nearer to 
 
 the savage ; it is to her that Man, after his excursions and 
 
 wanderings, mental and physical, continually tends to 
 
 return as to his primitive home and resting-place, to 
 
 restore his balance, to find his centre of life, and to draw 
 
 stores of energy and inspiration for fresh conquests of the 
 
 outer world. "In women men find beings who have 
 
 not wandered so far as they have from the typical life of 
 
 earth's creatures ; women are for men the human 
 
 embodiments of the restful responsiveness of Nature. 
 
 To every man, as Michelet has put it, the woman whom 
 
 he loves is as the Earth was to her legendary son ; he 
 
 has but to fall down and kiss her breast and he is strong 
 
 again." ■■'• 
 
 * Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis. Contemporary Science 
 Series.
 
 lO WOMAN 
 
 If it be true that by natural and physiological right 
 Woman stands in some such primitive relationship to 
 Man, then we may expect this relationship to emerge 
 again into clear and reasonable light in course of time ; 
 though it does not of course follow that a relationship 
 founded on physiological distinctions is absolutely 
 permanent — since these latter may themselves vary to 
 some degree. That a more natural and sensible relation of 
 some kind between the sexes is actually coming to birth, 
 few who care to read the signs of the times can well 
 doubt. P^or the moment, however, and by way of 
 parenthesis before looking to the future, we have to 
 consider a little more in detail the present position of 
 women under civilisation. Not that the consideration 
 will be altogether gracious and satisfactory, but that it 
 may — we are fain to hope — afford us some hints for the 
 future. 
 
 Man's craze for property and individual ownership, 
 to which we ha\e alluded, culminated perhaps not 
 unnaturally in woman — his most precious and beloved 
 object. But the consequence of this was the absurd 
 anomaly that he tried to deprive his dearest mate of her 
 freedom, and to make her, who should ha^•e been his 
 heart's delight, his chattel slave. From this radically 
 false position flowed in course of time all manner of 
 other falsities. On the one hand woman was treated to
 
 WOMAN II 
 
 insincere flattery. ai}d_rose water adorations, on th e other 
 hand she was condemned to contemptuous bondage and 
 confinement. As Havelock EUis says, she was looked 
 upon as a cross between an angel and an idiot. And as 
 a cross between an angel and an idiot, and used as such, 
 her character was developed along lines utterly foreign 
 to her true nature — the real woman was lost in a 
 travesty of womanhood. Moreover, by taking possession 
 of her always in the name and for the purposes of sex, 
 and ordering her life and captivity simply from that 
 point of view, man inevitably accentuated her sexual 
 nature in a false direiftion, over-specialised what was 
 specialised already—/.^., her domestic instincl: — and by 
 the confinement of her life and its separation from his 
 own, caused that divergence of interest between the 
 sexes, which too often makes a real sympathy between 
 them almost impossible to attain — and which leads the 
 males and females of civilised society, except when the 
 sex-attrac5tion from time to time compels them as it were 
 to come together, to congregate in separate herds, and 
 to talk languages each almost unintelligible to the other. 
 
 As a consequence, and after long centuries of such 
 false position, the female stands to-day deeply and 
 painfully misunderstood, absurdly and painfully 
 misunderstanding herself — her nature turned topsy- 
 turvy, and strained out of its proper bearings — till 
 
 ?W
 
 12 WOMAN 
 
 the great, grave, beautiful, unself-conscious word 
 Woman has become a symbol for frivolity and 
 degradation, and can, in some quarters, hardly be used 
 without offence. Says the author of the Woman's 
 Question : " I admit there is no room for pharisaical 
 self-laudation here. The bawling mass of viankind on a 
 race-course or the stock-exchange is degrading enough 
 in all conscience. Yet this even is hardly so painful as 
 the sight which meets our eyes between three and 
 four in the afternoon in any fashionable London street 
 Hundreds of women — mere dolls — gazing intently into 
 shop- windows at various bits of coloured ribbon. . . . 
 Perhaps nothing is more disheartening than this, except 
 the mob of women in these very same streets between 
 twelve and one at night." 
 
 [ The ' lady,' the household drudge, and the prostitute, 
 are the three main types of woman resulting in our 
 modern civilisation from the process of the past-J— and it 
 is hard to know which is the most wretched, which is 
 the most wronged, and which is the most unlike that 
 which in her own heart every true woman would desire 
 to be. 
 
 In some sense the ' lady' of the period which is just 
 beginning to pass away is the most characteristic produ(5i: 
 of Commercialism. The sense of Private Property, 
 arising and joining with the 'angel and idiot' theory,
 
 WOMAN 13 
 
 turned Woman more and more — especially of course 
 among the possessing classes — into an emblem of 
 possession — a mere doll, an empty idol, a brag of the 
 man's exclusive right in the sex — till at last, as her vain 
 splendors increased and her real usefulness diminished, she 
 ultimated into the ' perfecfl lady.' But let every woman 
 who piques and preens herself to the fulfilment of this 
 ideal in her own person, remember what is the cost and 
 what is the meaning of her quest : the covert enslavement 
 to, and the covert contempt of Man. 
 
 The instincfl of helpful personal service is so strong in 
 women, and such a deep-rooted part of their natures, 
 that to be treated as a mere target for other people's 
 worship and service — especially when this is tainted with 
 insincerity — must be at heart most obnoxious to them. 
 To think that women exist by hundreds and hundreds of 
 thousands to-day, women with hearts and hands formed 
 for love and helpfulness, who are brought up as ' ladies ' 
 and condemned to spend their lives doing next to 
 nothing but receive the specious and often contemptuous 
 homage of men (with its accompaniment of idiotic 
 platitudes), and the unloving and wage-bought services 
 of domestics, makes one shudder as at the contemplation 
 of some vast mass of suffering. The modern ' gentleman ' 
 is bad enough, but the 'lady' of bourgeois-dom, literally 
 — too literally — " crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper" —
 
 14 WOMAN 
 
 prostituted to a life which in her heart she hates — with 
 its petty ideals, its narrow horizon, and its empty honors 
 — is indeed a pitiful spectacle. 
 
 In Baronial times the household centred round the 
 Hall, where the baron sat supreme ; to-day it centres 
 round the room where the lady reigns. The ' with ' is 
 withdrawn from the withdrawing-room, and that 
 apartment has become the most important of all. Yet 
 there is an effect of mockery in the homage paid to the 
 new sovereign ; and, as far as her rule is actual, a doubt 
 whether she is really qualified yet for the position. The 
 contrast between the two societies, the Feudal and the 
 Commercial, is not inaptly represented by this domestic 
 change. The former society was rude and rough, but 
 generous and straightforward ; the latter is polished and 
 nice, but full of littleness and finesse. The Drawing- 
 room, with its feeble manners and effects of curtains and 
 embroidery, gives its tone to our lives now-a-days. But 
 we look forward to a time when this room also will cease 
 to be the centre of the house, and another — perhaps the 
 Common-room — will take its place. 
 
 Below a certain level in society — the distiniflively 
 commercial — there are no drawing-rooms. Among the 
 working masses, where the woman is of indispensable 
 importance in daily life, and is not sequestered as an 
 idol, there is no room specially set apart for her worship
 
 WOMAN 15 
 
 — a curious change takes place in her nominal position, 
 and whereas in the supernal sphere she sits in state and 
 has her tea and bread and butter brought to her by 
 obsequious males, in the cottage the men take their ease 
 and are served by the women. The customs of the cottage, 
 however, are rooted in a natural division of labor by 
 which the man undertakes the outdoor, and the woman 
 the indoor work ; and there is, I think, quite as much 
 real respecl shown to her here as in the drawing-room. 
 
 In the cottage, nevertheless, the unfortunate one falls 
 into the second pit that is prepared for her — that of the 
 household drudge ; and here she leads a life which, if it 
 has more honesty and reality in it than that of the 
 ' lady,' is one of abject slavery. Few men again realise, 
 or trouble themselves to realise, what a life this of the 
 working house-wife is. They are accustomed to look 
 upon their own employment, whatever it may be, as 
 ' work ' (perhaps because it brings with it ' wages ') ; 
 the woman's they regard as a kind of pastime. They 
 forget what monotonous drudgery it really means, and 
 yet what incessant forethought and care ; they forget 
 that the woman has no eight hours day, that her work is 
 always staring her in the face, and waiting for her, even 
 on into the night ; that the body is wearied, and the 
 mind narrowed down, "scratched to death by rats and 
 mice " in a perpetual round of petty cares. For not
 
 l6 WOMAN 
 
 only does civilisation and multifarious invention (including 
 smoke) make the burden of domestic life immensely 
 complex, but the point is that each housewife has to 
 sustain this burden to herself in lonely effort. What 
 a sight, in any of our great towns, to enter into the 
 cottages or tenements which form the endless rows of 
 tuburban streets, and to find in each one a working wife 
 struggling alone in semi-darkness and seclusion with 
 the toils of an entire separate household — with meals to 
 be planned and provided, with bread to be baked, clothes 
 to be washed and mended, children to be kept in order, 
 a husband to be humored, and a house to be swept and 
 dusted ; herself wearied and worried, debilitated with 
 confinement and want of fresh air, and low-spirited for 
 want of change and society ! How sad the waste of 
 labor involved in all these separated households, and 
 the dreariness of the lives that sustain them, even if 
 to that dreariness there be not added the neglecfl of 
 a callous husband ! 
 
 There remains the third alternative for women ; nor 
 can it be wondered at that some deliberately choose a 
 life of prostitution as their only escape from the existence 
 of the lady or the drudge. Yet what a choice it is ! On 
 the one hand is the caged Woman, and on the other 
 hand is the free : and which to choose ? " How can 
 tliere be a doubt," says one, " surely freedom is always
 
 WOMAN 17 
 
 best." Then there falls a hush. "Ah!" says society, 
 pointing with its finger, " but a free Woman ! " 
 
 And yet is it possible for Woman ever to be worthy 
 her name, unless she is free? 
 
 To-day, or up to to-day, just as the wage-worker has 
 had no means of livelihood except by the sale of his 
 bodily labor, so woman has had no means of livelihood 
 except by the surrender of her bodily sex. She could 
 dispose of it to one man for life, and have in return the 
 respect of society and the caged existence of the lady or 
 the drudge, or she could sell it night by night and be a 
 ' free woman,' scorned of the world and portioned to die 
 in the gutter. In either case (if she really thinks about 
 the matter at all) she must lose her self-respect. What 
 a choice, what a frightful choice ! — and this has been the 
 fate of Woman for how many centuries ? 
 
 If as a consequence of this treatment that she has 
 undergone, and of this lopsided relationship between her 
 and Man, Woman has suffered degradation, moral or 
 mental or physical — there is little doubt that Man has 
 suffered an equal degradation. Nothing I think can be 
 more clear — and this I believe should be taken as the 
 basis of any discussion on the relation of the sexes — than 
 that whatever injures the one sex injures the other ; 
 and that whatever defecls or partialities may be found in 
 the one must from the nature of the case be tallied by
 
 1 8 WOMAN 
 
 corresponding defedls and partialities in the other. 
 The two halves of the human race are complementary to 
 each other, and it is useless for one to attempt to glorify 
 itself at the expense of the other. As in 01i\e Schreiner's 
 allegory of Woman (" Three Dreams in a Desert "), 
 man and woman are bound together by a vital band, and 
 the one cannot move a step in advance of the other. 
 
 Looking for a moment at the special and, we may 
 fairly hope, temporary defecl:s on the two sides, inbred 
 through this long period by the false property-relation 
 subsisting between them, we may characterise these 
 defec^ts as brutality and conceit on the one hand, and 
 finesse and subtlety on the other. If man, as Owner, has 
 tended to become arrogant and callous and egoistic, 
 woman as the owned has only too naturally tended to 
 become slavish and crafty and unreal. The one thing 
 follows from the other. 
 
 As a matter of fact, and allowing that sweeping 
 generalisations of this kind are open to a good many 
 exceptions, we do find (at any rate in the British Isles) a 
 most wonderful and celestial indifference to anything but 
 their own affairs amongst the " lords of creation," which 
 easily branches out at times, on the one hand into sheer 
 Egoism, and on the other into sheer Brutality — an 
 indifference so ingrained and constitutional that it is 
 rarely conscious of itself, and which assumes quite easily
 
 WOMAN I 9 
 
 and naturally that the weaker sex exists for the purpose 
 of playing the foil, so to speak, to the chief actor in life's 
 drama. Nor does the fact that this indifference is 
 tempered, from time to time, by a little gallantry afford 
 much consolation — as may be imagined — to the woman 
 who perceives that the gallantry is inspired by nothing 
 more than a passing sex-desire. 
 
 On the other hand, the woman has not been left 
 without her defence, and has in consequence of her 
 position developed (through scores of generations) an 
 unrivalled power of finesse, by which, underneath man's 
 indifference, she can pursue her own purposes, often 
 through the most difficult passes, without ever exposing 
 her hand. This, combined with the glamor of her sex, 
 of which she is often an accomplished mistress, gives her 
 an extraordinary sway, and enables her many a time to 
 twirl her would-be master about her little finger ! I say 
 finesse, because the thing with the mass of women may 
 be said to take the form of a subtle instincfl of concealed 
 design, which is so perfectly natural with them, and in a 
 sense justifiable (since they have no other weapon), that 
 it is not really charaClerised by any more unmannerly 
 -ji^term — more especially as this instincft may often be seen 
 ■' in operation where the design, is quite reasonable and 
 of general utility. Nevertheless great as the power of 
 finesse may be, and admissible as its use occasionally for
 
 20 WOMAN 
 
 large and noble purposes, it is a dangerous weapon — and 
 all the more so on account of the profound distrust it is 
 liable to breed, when once its double edge is clearly seen. 
 Possibly this is the reason why women distrust each 
 other so much more than men distrust each other. 
 Certainly one of the rarest of God's creatures is a truly 
 undesigning female, but — when dowered with intellect 
 such as might seem to justify it in being designing — one 
 of the most admirable and beautiful ! 
 
 Looking a little deeper, and below the superficial 
 contrast which an unsatisfactory relation between the 
 sexes has doubtless created, one seems to discern some 
 of those more vital and deep-rooted differentiations 
 spoken of on an earlier page. It is a commonly received 
 opinion that woman tends more to intuition and man to 
 logic ; ''' and certainly the male mind seems better able to 
 deal with abstractions and generalisations, and the 
 female mind with the personal and the detailed and the 
 concrete. And while this difference may be in part 
 attributable to the artificial confinement of women to 
 the domestic sphere, there is probably something more 
 organic in it than that. At any rate it gives to Woman 
 some of her best qualities — a quick and immediate 
 perception, appreciation of character, ta(5l, and a kind of 
 
 * Physiologically speaking a certain excess of affedability and 
 excitability in women over men seems to be distinctly traceable.
 
 WOMAN 21 
 
 artistic sense in the ordering of her own life, so that you 
 do not see the tags and unraveled ends which appear in 
 man's conduct. While the man is blundering about, 
 fighting with himself, hesitating, doubting, weighing, 
 trying vainly to co-ordinate all the elements of his 
 nature, the woman (often no doubt in a smaller sphere) 
 moves serene and prompt to her ends^j^/- Her actions are 
 characterised by grace and finality ; she is more at unity 
 with herself; and she has the inestimable advantage of 
 living in the world of persons — which may well seem so 
 much more important and full of interest than that of 
 things. 
 
 On the other hand, this want of the power of 
 generalisation has made it difficult for woman (at any 
 rate up to to-day) to emerge from a small circle of 
 interests, and to look at things from the point of view of 
 public advantage and good. While her sympathies for 
 individuals are keen and quick, abstra^ and general 
 ideas such as those of Justice, Truth, and the like have 
 been difficult of appreciation to her ; and her deficiency 
 in logic has made it almost impossible to adi upon her 
 through the brain. A man, if he is on the wrong tack, 
 can be argued with ; but with a woman of this type, if 
 her motives are nefarious, there is no means of changing 
 them by appeal to her reason, or to the general sense of 
 Justice and Right — and unless controlled by the stronger
 
 sway of a determined personal will (of a man) her career 
 is liable to be pretty bad. 
 
 Generally it will be admitted, as we are dealing with 
 points of difference between the sexes, that as far as 
 moral qualities are concerned, INI an has developed the 
 more ad live, and W'oman the more passive virtues ; and 
 it is pretty obvious, here too, that this difference is not 
 only due to centuries of social inequality and of property- 
 marriage, but roots back in some degree to the very 
 nature of their respecl;ive sexual functions. That there 
 are permanent complementary distinclions between the 
 male and female, dating first perhaps from sex, and 
 thence spreading over the whole natures, physical 
 mental and moral, of each, no one can reasonably doubt. 
 These complementary distinclions have however, we 
 contend, been strangely accentuated and exaggerated 
 during the historic period — till at last a point of 
 maximum divergence and absolute misunderstanding 
 has been reached — from which we are happily already 
 receding. Having given in this first part of the paper 
 some attention to the mutual misapprehensions and 
 mutilations which have thus arisen, we may consider in 
 the following part how the growth of a real equality will 
 perhaps cause these to gradually disappear again in 
 favour of a healthier and happier relation between the 
 sexes.
 
 II. 
 
 It will be pretty clear, from what has been said, that 
 the liberation of Woman from her position of dependence 
 on Man is at present the very next step in her line of 
 progress, and that her status is not likely to be improved 
 until she is able to face man on an equality ; to find, 
 self-balanced, her natural relation to him ; and to 
 dispose of herself and of her sex perfed;ly freely, and 
 not as a thrall must do. Doubtless if man were an 
 ideal creature his mate might be secure of equal and 
 considerate treatment from him without having to 
 insist upon an absolute economic independence ; but 
 as that IS only too obviously not the case there is 
 nothing" left for her to-day but to unfold the warflag of 
 her ' rights,' and (dull and tiresome as it may be) to go 
 through a whole weary round of battles till peace is 
 concluded again upon a better understanding. 
 
 Yet it must never be forgotten that nothing short 
 of large social changes, stretching beyond the sphere 
 of women only, can bring about the desired and 
 complete emancipation. Not till our whole commercial 
 system, with its barter and sale of human labor and 
 human love for gain, is done away, and not till a whole 
 new code of ideals and customs of life has come in, will
 
 24 WOMAN 
 
 women really be free. They must remember that their 
 cause is also the cause of the oppressed laborer over the 
 whole earth, and the laborer must remember that his 
 cause is theirs. 
 
 And first of all, and going to the root of the matter, 
 since woman's greatest and incomparable fundliion is 
 Motherhood, it will be understood that a sane maternity 
 is the indispensable condition of her future advance ; 
 not meaning of course that her fundlions should be in 
 any way narrowed down to that of maternity, nor 
 suggesting that maternity itself when properly fulfilled, 
 does not really involve the broadest and largest culture 
 —but simply taking perfecft motherhood as the necessary 
 and obvious start-point of any adequate new conception 
 in the matter. Perhaps this might seem to some only 
 too obvious ; yet when for a moment we glance around 
 at the current ideals, when we see what Whitman calls 
 " the incredible holds and webs of silliness, millinery 
 and every kind of dyspeptic depletion " in which women 
 themselves live, when we see the absolute want of 
 training for motherhood and the increasing physical 
 incapacity for it, and even the feminine censure of those 
 who pass through the ordeal too easily, we begin to 
 realise how little the present notion of what woman 
 should be is associated with the healthy fulfilment 
 of her most perfect work. A woman capable at all
 
 WOMAN 25 
 
 points, to bear children, to guard them, to teach them, 
 to turn them out strong and healthy citizens of the great 
 world, stands at the farthest remove from the finnikin 
 doll or the meek drudge whom man by a kind of false 
 sexual selecflion has through many centuries evolved as 
 his ideal. 
 
 The nervous and sexual systems of women to-day, 
 ruined among the rich by a life and occupations which 
 stimulate the emotional sensibilities without ever giving 
 the strength and hardiness which flow from healthy and 
 regular industry, and often ruined among the poor 
 by excessive labor carried on under most unhealthy 
 conditions, make true wifehood and motherhood 
 things almost unknown. " Injudicious training", says 
 Bebel, " miserable social conditions (food, dwelling, 
 occupation) produce weak, bloodless, nervous beings, 
 incapable of fulfilling the duties of matrimony. The 
 consequences are menstrual troubles and disturbances 
 in the various organs connected with sexual funcTiions, 
 rendering maternity dangerous or impossible. Instead 
 of a healthy, cheerful companion, a capable mother, a 
 helpmate equal to the calls made upon her acflivity, the 
 husband has a nervous excitable wife, permanently 
 under the docflor's hands, and too fragile to bear the 
 shghtest draught or noise." 
 
 We say then that no effecftual progress for Woman
 
 26 WOMAN 
 
 is possible until this question of her capacity ifor 
 maternity is fairly faced — for healthy maternity 
 whether in physical mental or moral respecfts — 
 iuA-olving of course the thorough exercise and 
 development of the body, a life far more in the open 
 air than at present, some amount of regular manual 
 work (for all), yet good opportunities of rest when 
 needful, a knowledge of the laws of health and 
 physiology, and such wider training in mental 
 outlook and self-reliance and nature -hardihood as 
 may be feasible ; and that once this, together with 
 her economic independence, is conceded. Woman will 
 spring naturally into quite a different position from 
 heretofore — as the equal, the mate, and the comrade 
 of man — fully equipped to meet him on level terms, 
 to take up her own voluntary relation towards him, 
 and to engage alongside of him in labors at least 
 equal in importance to his. 
 
 Before any such new conception we are fain to see 
 that the poor little pinched ideal of the 'lady,' Avhich has 
 ruled society so long, will fade away into distance and 
 obscurity. It is possible indeed that before long women 
 will themselves discountenance the mock salutations and 
 heroic politenesses of the conventional male as a mere 
 veneer concealing the odious fact of their own real 
 servitude, and prefer sheer bluntness if only it be the
 
 WOMAN 27 
 
 sign of honesty. What, it may be asked, do they think 
 to-day of the mockery of the doffed hat — with its 
 suggestion either of a homage which is not felt, or of a 
 deference to weakness and incapacity which can only be 
 regarded as a sneer ? What do they think of the 
 unwritten law which condemns them, if occupying any 
 place in society, to bridle in their chins and use an 
 affecled speech in order that it may be patent to 
 everybody that they are not free ; which forbids natural 
 and spontaneous gesture and expression as unbecoming 
 and suspicious — and indeed in any public place as liable 
 to the attention of the policeman ? What do they think 
 of the perpetual lies under which they live — as to their 
 selves which they conceal, as to their sexual needs 
 which must never be spoken of, as to their actual 
 relations to their husbands, and of their husbands to 
 them ? And yet there are thousands of women of these 
 classes who long, if only for once, to meet a man on the 
 simple basis of equality and honesty, to brush away the 
 cobwebs of concealment and of insincere flattery, and to 
 be, as two men-friends or two women-friends might be, 
 open and equal comrades in the great battle of life. 
 
 As a matter of facft — and an encouraging facft — it is 
 evident that there are to-day quite a number of women 
 who are rising out of the 'lady' and leaving that ideal 
 behind. I take it that — as with the 'gentleman' — not
 
 28 WOMAN 
 
 much good is to be expec^led from this setftion of folk as 
 long as they remain in the toils of mere high-class 
 philanthropy. Yet to deliberately rejedt the mark of 
 society's acceptance and to do things which are neither 
 'lady-like' nor 'gentlemanly' seems hard — especially for 
 the lady. The thing however has to be done, and short 
 of it little or nothing can be done. It is the ordeal 
 which everyone who wishes to win the honorable title of 
 Man or Woman in the world's Modern Chivalry must 
 encounter and pass through. 
 
 That a neAV code of manners between the sexes, 
 founded not on covert lust but on open and mutual 
 helpfulness, must come in, is obvious enough. The cry 
 of equality need not like a red rag infuriate the 
 Philistine bull. That woman is in general muscularly 
 weaker than man, and that there are certain kinds of 
 effort, even mental, for which she is less litted — as there 
 are other kinds of effort for which she is more fitted — 
 may easily be granted, but this only means, in the 
 language of all good manners, that there are special 
 ways in which men can assist women, as there are 
 special ways in which women can assist men. 
 Anything which goes beyond this, and the friendly 
 exchange of equal services, and which assumes, in the 
 conventionalities of the private household or the public 
 place, that the female claims a general indulgence
 
 WOMAN 29 
 
 (because of her general incapacity) is an offence — 
 against the encouragement of which women themselves 
 will no doubt be on their guard. 
 
 I say there are healthy signs of revolt on the part of 
 some of the lady class — revolt long delayed, but -now 
 spreading all along the line. When, however, we come 
 to the second type of woman mentioned in the preceding 
 pages, the drudge, we — naturaiiy enough — do not find 
 much conscious movement. The life of the household 
 drudge is too like that of a slave, too much consumed 
 in mere toil, too little illuminated by any knowledge, 
 for her to rise of herself to any other conception of 
 existence. Nevertheless it is not difficult to see that 
 general and social changes are working to bring about 
 her liberation also. Improved house -construcftion, 
 public bakeries and laundries, and so forth, and, what 
 is much more important, a more rational and simple and 
 healthful notion of food and furniture, are tending 
 very largely to reduce the labors of Housework and 
 Cookery ; and conservative though women are in 
 their habits, when these changes are brought to their 
 doors, they cannot but see the advantage of them. 
 Public institutions too are more and more taking 
 over the responsibilities and the cost of educating 
 and rearing children ; and even here and there we 
 may discern a drift towards the amalgamation of
 
 30 WOMAN 
 
 households, which by introducing a common Hfe and 
 division of labor among the women-folk will probably 
 do much to cheer and lighten their lot. None of these 
 changes, however, will be of great use unless or until 
 they wake the overworked woman herself to see and 
 insist on her rights to a better life, and until they 
 force from the man a frank acknowledgment of her 
 claim. And surely here and there the man himself 
 will do something to educate his mate to this point. 
 We see no reason indeed why he should not assist 
 in some part of the domestic work, and thus contribute 
 his share of labor and intelligence to the condu(ft of 
 the house ; nor w^hy the woman — being thus relieved 
 — should not occasionally, and when desirable, find 
 salaried work outside, and so contribute to the 
 maintenance of the family, and to her own security 
 and sense of independence. The over-differentiation 
 of the labors of the sexes to-day is at once a 
 perpetuation of the servitude of woman and a cause 
 of misunderstanding between her and man, and of 
 lack of interest in each other's doings. 
 
 The third type of woman, the prostitute, pro\ides us 
 with that question which — according to Bebel — is the 
 sphinx-riddle that modern society cannot sohe, and yet 
 which unsolved threatens society's destruction. The 
 commercial prostitution of love is the last outcome of
 
 WOMAN ■ 31 
 
 our whole social system, and its most dangerous 
 downfall. It flaunts in our streets, it hides itself in the 
 garment of respedlability under the name of matrimony, 
 it eats in ad:ual physical disease and death right through 
 our hearts; it is fed by the oppression and the ignorance 
 of women, by their poverty and denied means of 
 livelihood, and by the hypocritical puritanism which 
 forbids them by millions not only to gratify but even to 
 speak of their natural desires ; and it is encouraged by 
 the callousness of an age which has accustomed men to 
 buy and sell for money every most precious thing — even 
 the life-long labor of their brothers, therefore why not 
 also the very bodies of their sisters ? 
 
 Here there is no solution except the freedom of woman 
 — which means of course also the freedom of the masses 
 of the people, men and women, and the ceasing 
 altogether of economic slavery. There is no solution 
 which will not include the redemption of the terms 
 ' free w^oman ' and ' free lo\-e ' to their tnie and rightful 
 significance. Let every woman whose heart bleeds for 
 the sufferings of her sex, hasten to declare herself, and 
 to constitute herself as far as she possibly can, a free 
 woman. Let her accept the term with all the odium 
 that belongs to it ; let her insist on her right to speak, 
 dress, think, acl, and above all to use her sex, as she 
 deems best ; let her face the scorn and the ridicule ; let
 
 32 WOMAN 
 
 her ' lose her own Hfe ' if she Ukes ; assured that only so 
 can come deliverance, and that only when the free 
 woman is honored w'ill the prostitute cease to exist. 
 And let every man who really would respect his 
 counterpart, entreat her also to a.c\ so ; let him never by 
 word or deed tempt her to grant as a bargain what can 
 only be precious as a gift ; let him see her with pleasure 
 stand a little aloof ; let him help her to gain her feet ; so 
 at last, by what slight sacrifices on his part such a 
 course may involve, will it dawn upon him that he has 
 gained a real companion and helpmate on life's journey. 
 
 The whole evil of commercial prostitution arises 
 out of the domination of Man in matters of sex. Better 
 indeed were a Saturnalia of free men and women than 
 the spectacle which as it is our great cities present 
 at night. Here in Sex, the women's instincts are, 
 as a rule, so clean, so direcft, so well-rooted in the needs 
 of the race, that except for man's domination they 
 would scarcely have suffered this perversion. Sex in 
 man is an unorganised passion, an individual need 
 or impetus ; but in woman it may more properly 
 be termed a construcflive instinct, with the larger 
 signification that that involves. Even more than 
 man should woman be ' free ' to work out the problem 
 of her sex-relations as may commend itself best to her 
 — hampered as little as possible by legal, conventional,
 
 WOMAN 33 
 
 or economic considerations, and relying chiefly on her 
 own native sense and tacl in the matter. Once thu3 
 free — free from the mere cash-nexus to a husband, 
 from the money-slavery of the streets, from the 
 nameless terrors of social opinion, and from the threats 
 of the choice of perpetvial virginity or perpetual 
 bondage — would she not indeed choose her career 
 (whether that of wife and mother, or that of free 
 companion, or one of single blessedness) far better 
 for herself than it is chosen for her to-day — regarding 
 really in some degree the needs of society, and the 
 welfare of children, and the sincerity and durability 
 of her relations to her lovers, and less the petty motives 
 of profit and of fear. 
 
 The point is that the whole conception of a nobler 
 Womanhood for the future has to proceed candidly from 
 this basis of her complete freedom as to the disposal of 
 her sex, and from the healthy convicftion that, with 
 whatever individual aberrations, she will on the whole 
 use that freedom rationally and well. And surely this 
 — in view too of some decent education of the young on 
 sexual matters — is not too great a demand to make on 
 our faith in woman. If it is, then indeed we are undone 
 ■ —for short of this we can only retain women in servitude, 
 and society in its form of the hell on earth which it 
 largely is to-day.
 
 34 WOMAN 
 
 Refreshing therefore in its way is the spirit of revolt 
 which is spreading amongst women. Let us hope such 
 revolt will continue. If it lead here and there to 
 strained or false situations, or to temporary 
 misunderstandings — still, declared enmity is better than 
 unreal acquiescence. Too long have women acted the 
 part of mere appendages to the male, suppressing their 
 own individuality and fostering his self-conceit. In 
 order to have souls of their own they must free 
 themselves, and greatly by their own efforts: they 
 must learn to fight. Whitman in his poem "A woman 
 waits for me" draws a picture of a woman who stands 
 in the sharpest possible contrast with the feeble 
 bourgeois ideal — a woman who can "swim, row, ride, 
 wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, defend herself," &c. ; 
 and Bebel, in his book on Woman, while pointing out 
 that in Sparta, " where the greatest attention was paid 
 to the physical development of both sexes, boys and 
 girls went about naked till they had reached the age of 
 puberty, and w"ere trained together in bodily exercises, 
 games and wrestling," complains that nowadays "the 
 notion that women require strength, courage and 
 resolution is regarded as very heterodox." But the 
 truth is that qualities of courage and independence are 
 not agreeable in a slave, and that is why man during all 
 these centuries has consistently discountenanced them
 
 WOMAN 35 
 
 — till at last the female herself has come to consider 
 them 'unwomanly.' Yet this last epithet is absurd; for 
 if tenderness is the crown and glory of woman, nothing 
 can be more certain than that true tenderness is only 
 found in strong and courageous natures ; the tenderness 
 of a servile person is no tenderness at all. 
 
 It has not escaped the attention of thinkers on these 
 subje(fi:s that the rise of Women into freedom and larger 
 social life here alluded to — and already indeed indicated 
 by the march of events — is likely to have a profound 
 influence on the future of our race. It is pointed out 
 that among most of the higher animals, and indeed 
 among many of the early races of mankind, the males 
 have been selected by the females on account of their 
 prowess or superior strength or beauty, and this has led 
 to the evolution in the males and in the race at large of 
 a type which (in a dim and unconscious manner) was 
 the ideal of the female. But as soon as in the history of 
 mankind the property-love set in, and woman became 
 the chattel of man, this action ceased. Woman, being- 
 no longer free, could not possibly choose man, but rather 
 the opposite took place, and man began to select woman 
 for the characteristics pleasing to Jiim. Woman now 
 adorned herself to gratify his taste, and the female type 
 and consequently the type of the whole race have been 
 correspondingly affecfled. ^^"ith the return of woman to
 
 36 WOMAN 
 
 freedom the ideal of the female may again resume its 
 sway. It is possible indeed that the more dignified and 
 serious attitude of women towards sex may give to 
 sexual selection when exercised by them a nobler 
 influence than when exercised by the males. Anyhow 
 it is not difficult to see that women really free would 
 never countenance for their mates the many mean and 
 unclean types of men who to-daj?^ seem to l-'^'.ve things 
 all their own way, nor consent to have children by such 
 men ; nor is it difficult to imagine that the feminine 
 influence might thus sway to the evolution of a more 
 manly and dignified race than has been disclosed in 
 these last days of commercial civilisation ! 
 
 That — to come to practical matters — the rise of 
 women will mean the active participation of some of 
 them in political life is pretty clear. Most of those 
 who are freeing themselves — often with serious 
 struggles — from the ' lady ' chrysalis are fired with 
 an ardent social enthusiasm. Indeed in that stratum 
 of life there is a good deal more real social enthusiasm 
 among the women than among the men — while among 
 the working masses the balance is decidedly the 
 other way. And of these liberationist women a few 
 — though probably only a few — will take to political 
 life. Still the influence of a few will perhaps sufiice 
 for their purpose — that of freeing the sex from legal
 
 WOMAN 37 
 
 disabilities and giving it due voice in all matters which 
 specially concern itself. 
 
 That women should be conservative (e\'en in a grand 
 sense) in their general habits and instincfls goes as we 
 have seen with their sex, which also demands that they 
 should accept and build up rather than (like men) 
 remodel and destroy. A woman has a tremendous work 
 to perform — the production and rearing of children — and 
 like all artists she desires to have the conditions under 
 which she is to work settled, not in a state of constant 
 flux. That she has contributed but little original 
 advance hitherto in most departments in life — that even 
 such things as dressmaking and cookery, which might 
 be thought specialities of hers, are chiefly led, down to 
 the present day, by the invention and research of men — 
 does not by any means prove that woman will always 
 remain so merely stationary. As she emerges from 
 the blank thraldom of the past it is abundantly probable 
 that her energies will find outlet in more varied ways — 
 even if not to the same degree as in the case of men. 
 
 But after all it will probably appear and be recognised, 
 as time goes on, that her great function (and there can 
 be none greater) is race-propagation and the care of the 
 young ; only with her participation in the free social life 
 these most important of human labors will be carried on 
 with a degree of conscious intelligence impossible before,
 
 38 WOMAN 
 
 and which will raise them from the fulfihnent of a mere 
 instine'l to the completion of a splendid social purpose. 
 To save the souls of children as well as their bodies, to 
 raise heroic as well as prosperous citizens, will be the 
 desire and the work of the mothers of our race.' 
 
 It will perhaps be said that after going about to show (as 
 in the earlier part of this paper) the deficiency of women 
 hitherto in the matter of the generalising faculty, it is 
 somewhat inconsistent to express any great hope that 
 they will ever sincerely and in permanent and wide 
 degree take an active interest in the general social life to 
 which they belong; but indeed the answer to this is that 
 they are already beginning to do so. The social 
 enthusiasm and acftivity shown by women in Britain, 
 Russia, and the United States is so great and well-rooted 
 that it is impossible to believe it a mere ephemeral 
 event ; and though in the older of these countries it is at 
 present confined to the more wealthy classes, we can 
 augur from that — according to a well-known principle — 
 that it will in time spread downwards to the women of 
 the nation. 
 
 * As to the maternal teaching of children, it must be confessed 
 that it has, during these latter times, been most dismal. Whether 
 among the masses or the classes the idea has been first and foremost 
 to impress upon them the necessity of sliding through life as 
 comfortably as possible, and the parting word to the boy leaving 
 home to launch into the great world has seldom risen to a more 
 heroic strain than "Don't forget your flannels! "
 
 WOMAN 39 
 
 Important as is the tendency of women in tlie 
 countries mentioned to higher education and brain 
 development, I think it is probable that the widening 
 and socialisation of their interests will not take place so 
 much through mere study of books and the passing of 
 examinations in political economy and other sciences, 
 as through the extended actual experience which the 
 life of the day is bringing to them. Certainly the 
 book-studies are important and must not be neglecled ; 
 but above all is it imperative (and men, if they are to 
 have any direct sway in the future destinies of the other 
 sex, must look to it) that women, so long confined 
 to the narrowest mere roittine and limited circle of 
 domestic life, should see and get experience, all they 
 can, of the ac'tual world. The theory, happily now 
 exploding, of keeping them ' innocent ' through sheer 
 ignorance partakes too much of the ' angel and idiot ' 
 view. To see the Hfe of slum and palace and workshop, 
 to enter into the trades and professions, to become 
 doctors, nurses, and so forth, to have to look after 
 themselves and to hold their own as against men, to 
 travel, to meet with sexual experience, to work together 
 in trade-unions, to join in social and political uprisings 
 and rebellions, etc., is what women want just now. And 
 it is evident enough that at any rate among the more 
 prosperous secT.ions in this country such a movement
 
 40 WOMAN 
 
 is going on apace. If the existence of the enormous 
 
 hordes of unattached females that we find Hving on 
 
 interest and dividends to-day is a blemish from a 
 
 Socialistic point of view ; if we find them on the 
 
 prowl all over the countrj^, filling the theatres and 
 
 concert - rooms and public entertainments in the 
 
 proportion of three to one male, besetting the trains, 
 
 swarming on to the tops of the 'buses, making speeches 
 
 at street corners, blocking the very pavements in the 
 
 front of fashionable shops, we must not forget that for 
 
 the objedls w"e have just sketched, even this class is 
 
 going the most diredl way to work, and laying in stores 
 
 of experience, which will make it impossible for it ever 
 
 to return to the petty life of times gone by. 
 
 At the last, and after centuries of misunderstanding 
 
 and association of triviality and superficiality with the 
 
 female sex, it will perhaps dawn upon the world that the 
 
 truth really lies in an opposite direction — that, in a 
 
 sense, there is something more deeplying fundamental 
 
 and primitive in the woman nature than in that of the 
 
 man ; that instead of being the over-sensitive hysterical 
 
 creature that civilisation has too often made her, she is 
 
 essentially of calm large acceptive and untroubled 
 
 temperament. " Her shape arises," says Walt Whitman, 
 
 " She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever, 
 The gross and soil'd she moves among do not make her 
 gross and soil'd.
 
 WOMAN 41 
 
 She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is concealed 
 
 from her, 
 She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor. 
 She is the best belov'd, it is without exception ; she has no 
 
 reason to fear, and she does not fear." 
 
 The Greek goddesses look down and across the ages 
 to the very outposts beyond civilisation; and already 
 from far America, Australasia, Africa, Norway, Russia, 
 as even in our midst from those who have crossed the 
 border-line of all class and caste, glance forth the 
 features of a grander type — fearless and untamed — the 
 primal merging into the future Woman ; who, combining 
 broad sense with sensibility, the passion for Nature with 
 the love of INIan, and commanding indeed the details of 
 life, yet risen out of all localism and convention, shall 
 undo the bands of death which encircle the present 
 society, and open for us the doors to a new and a wider 
 Hfe.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY, 
 
 Third Edition, 1892, with numerous added poems, 366 pp. Large 
 Crown 8vo., Cloth gilt, price 5/- 
 
 Published by T. Fisher Unvvin, Paternoster Sq., London. 
 
 CHANTS OF LABOUR : A Song Book of the People. Being 
 a collection of over 50 songs, set to music ; with frontispiece 
 and title-page by Walter Crane. Cloth 2/-, Paper i/-. 
 
 CIVILISATION : ITS CAUSE AND CURE, and other Essays- 
 including Criticisms of Modern Science and Ethics. Crown 
 8vo., Cloth 2/6. 
 
 ENGLAND'S IDEAL, and other papers on Social Subjects. 
 Crown 8vo., Cloth 2/6, Paper i/-. 
 
 Published by Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Paternoster Sq. 
 
 SEX-LOVE, AND ITS PLACE IN A FREE SOCIETY. 32 p.p.. PriCC 
 
 Fourpence. 
 Published by The Labour Press Society Ltd., Manchester.
 
 University of California Library 
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