Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes. C. Gasquoine Hartley
and hardships which could comparatively easily be removed and those limitations and hardships which are due to the nature of their sex. Old traditions, without any discrimination, were cast aside in a violent seeking, and women broke out in unexpected ways, to fight nervously, carelessly, yet hungrily, as if they were trying to force the pace of progress.
Women are possessed of great elasticity and cleverness; they are, and possibly will always remain, more imitative than creative. And from this follows a very real danger, plainly arising from the quick feminine receptiveness which is at once the strength of women as well as the cause of their pitiable weakness. In every direction the new independence and work capacity of woman was proved in following and imitating men. Thus it was easy for women to externalise their life in every way, and to gain success in many different kinds of work. But the question has never been—could women do this, or do that, kind of work? rather it is—what work is it most worth while for them to do?
Wounded by the narrowness of their lives, women spent immense energy out of which much that is good has been gained. Much that was false has crumbled into ruins, but also much that was fine. What was wanting most was this: the complete absence in the entire programme of reform of any kind of feminine idealism.
Did women forget? I think that they did. The realm of woman was still splendid, still vast. Why, then, this rage against all restrictions? Why this continuous effort to obliterate the wise differences of sex?
In their violent seeking for life, women were ready to spend all to gain something which may well prove to be absolutely unnecessary to them. And to many it must have seemed that they wasted the whole of themselves only to lose something within themselves. There was much heroic fighting. Women robbed life for the sake of what they believed was freedom; yet may it not prove that they have been in love with that which is unattainable for women?
The demand of woman to “live her own life” brought, as it seems to some of us, a slavery not less strong or less evil than that from which an escape was sought. Women, however unconsciously, were suppressing themselves in new ways, and still doing things alien to themselves. This restless seeking was but a further foolish forgetting of the truth that the only freedom worth having is the freedom to be one’s self. All that women had promised themselves in a new order of existence must depend on their acceptance of the responsibilities and limitations of their womanhood. And by this I mean a full and glad acceptance of those physical facts of their organic constitution which make them unlike men, and should limit their capacity for many kinds of work. It can never be anything but foolishness to attempt to break down the real differences between the two sexes.
This may be a hard saying to some women: I believe that it is true.
It is necessary to emphasise this fact again, and yet again, because it is the almost complete disregard by women of their own sexual nature and its special needs that is the grave evil that is robbing us of life; this was also the inherent weakness in the Women’s Movement, which, so far from fulfilling the promise of its earlier period, had ceased, even before war brought us back to realities, to exert any widely representative or serious influence.
The predilection for wild pranks, which in this country marked the later efforts of women to gain political recognition, may, I think, be traced back to causes bent on crushing and levelling the sex characteristics. Women had not sufficiently valued themselves, and thus they ceased to care to be essentially feminine. Instead there was an insatiable desire to enjoy experience, arising from lack of disciplined culture and from excess of energy and idleness. It is manifest that militancy gave to women excitement and occupation.
And this avidity to know and feel and shine, to establish new contacts with life and affairs, was coupled also with that deeper seeking of the spirit which has robbed peace from the modern woman. Possibly such defects are essential to such a movement, a mere destructive phase in the process of renewing—a clearing of the ground. But the way to gain freedom is long and toilsome; it is a way that permits of no such energetic short cuts as the militant Suffragists would have achieved. Mixed up with all that was fine in their movement was an infinity of glitter and tinsel, vanity and restlessness. There was present always an intense and theatrical egotism, a yearning to make an impression and force applause at any cost.
There was, of course, another side—a side which most gladly I acknowledge. No movement that was founded merely on excitement would have overcome difficulties as the Suffrage movement did, nor could its members have worked and suffered as they did for a common end. There was always much even in the most mistaken militancy that was generous, ardent and wholesome. But these useful qualities were deformed by a want of proportion and sanity; by feelings run riot that made women impatient of all restraints, overweeningly sure of themselves, and incapable of facing troublesome facts or foreseeing the most certain consequences of their own actions. There is nothing here that should surprise us.
In many cases, perhaps in all, emotion is the sole and strong guide of our actions. At least, I am sure this is true of women. What we do is to invent reasons to justify acts to which we are impelled by some emotion arising from an instinctive need. I do not see how this can be avoided, nor do I at all regard it in itself as evil. Reason by itself too often is an excuse for doing nothing; it is the excuse of all those who take infinite care not to see in case they may come to feel. Reason alone never does anything; it is too reasonable. The necessary thing is first to feel. And the only possible method of guiding emotion is to realise its force and to use it successfully; not to take cover fearfully in avoidance of feeling.
There is, indeed, a very deep reason for this human need for emotion. The springs of our actions may be traced back in almost all cases to certain excitements arising from some need or desire of whose existence in ourselves we are in nine cases out of ten quite unconscious, but which (unless dammed up when the fear of an escape is always great and imminent) will find an expression in characteristic instinctive acts. And the most forcible human excitements are fear and anger: these exercise an energising influence on body and mind often leading to the accomplishment of quite extraordinary acts. Periods of intense excitement will yield a consciousness of overwhelming strength, so that the individual reaches a state of self-forgetfulness in which almost anything may be done. Almost every one must at some time have experienced this super-strength. And what is important to note is that at an opportunity for exercising these emotions, the most peaceable people have felt the stir of the primitive instincts of hate and fear, of anger and the desire to destroy and to hurt. They have developed—often to their own surprise—the destructive capacities of the fight-loving, danger-braving animal. And when such emotions seize on individuals in groups, their effect is greatly intensified and is felt by many who would be only slightly susceptible to such emotions when isolated.
This explains, I believe, the surprising revolt of women and how it was they broke out in such unexpected ways. There is in the sex an immense and unrecognised capacity for adventure, due to the surplus of energy unused that was so painfully present in the lives of many women, and to the expression of which the narrowness of their lives had afforded little opportunity. The danger here was strong for women, because in their lives, to a far greater extent than in the lives of men, there had been so many dammed-up channels of emotion. It is the things they might not do that had mattered for women, and not the things they had been allowed to do. Then the fever of this anger caught hold of them, and they became conscious of an obscure travail in their souls. Here, indeed, were causes of unrest; here were the first shadows of some subtle decay.
The suffrage movement was a search—yes, a wild search—for something to bridge the gap, for something to do that mattered, something to open the gates to adventure. The militant revolt to many women proved an exciting game. This may appear strange; but what I want you to mark is that such violence was a necessary thing for women. They felt impelled to get into their lives something that meant movement, excitement, joy, and the stinging of adventure.
And they have been happy.
To many people, and especially to men, it seemed that in adopting militancy women were departing entirely from their womanhood. But it is just here they were mistaken; they did not grasp the fact that women had felt injured, and that this injury aroused in them an excitement of anger forcing wild action.