The main issue of her story was lost sight of, alike by herself and by her audience. This was--or so it seemed to one among the latter: What manner of men were these who required or tolerated it that a woman should take them thus in hand, and, as though they had been whipped children, dispose of them and their men"s affairs--between worker and employer, between man and man? What order of creature will be the sons and the grandsons of men ever further emasculated by every further generation of subjection by such masterful persons; female-Dominants who arrogate the virile rights and prerogatives of their menkind; their initiative and enterprise; their capacity to think, to speak, to plan and to act for themselves?
The Subjection of woman by man--What was that evil compared with this other enormity: the Subjection of man by woman, which is fast replacing it?
Men who--saving under stress of War--permit women to usurp the functions and prerogatives of their natural domain, in capacities of Mayor, of Chairman of Companies and so forth, are, frankly speaking--m.u.f.fs!
Not of such sires were our great Anglo-Saxon Races gotten. Not such was it who have made England what she is! And the England we look to will never be the England we look to--until such effeminate blood shall have been bred out of her sons.
The male becomes emasculate when women invade his domain. And with the increasing Hugger-mugger of the s.e.xes, it grows, every day, more and more difficult for men to escape into the bracing, invigorating environment and moral of their own s.e.x--a moral untempered by amenities due to the other, and one indispensable to string them to the pitch of virile thought and action. Our sailors and soldiers and aviators are still _men_, because woman has not so far invaded the Navy, the Army, or the Air.
Feminine invasion everywhere else--in schools and colleges, in the arts, in politics, in commerce and in sports--is undoubtedly enfeebling the fibre of our manhood and the quality of masculine achievements. Man is a pioneer; aggressive, progressive, ever breaking new ground; conquering new territory and new forces of Nature. And this alike in politics, in commerce, and in other material affairs. When he fails to pioneer, reaching out to new horizons of thought and activity, engineering new enterprises, while at the same time strengthening and consolidating all he had already acquired--then the world, in place of progressing, regresses. And for pioneering, whether in political or in geographical regions, woman"s presence hampers him.
The less men are in a position to escape from the other s.e.x, the more they lose the impetus and characteristics of their own.
The like applies to women. Women who mix too much and too freely with men deteriorate signally in womanly values and quality.
Both s.e.xes benefit by segregation from the other, in order to adapt--each to its own characteristic morale and moral. Neither s.e.x is wholly unconstrained and candid when in company of the other--unless both are demoralised.
s.e.x operates as a stimulant. And to be always under influence of a stimulant is enervating. On the other hand, when, from over-indulgence, s.e.x or any other stimulant ceases to release new inspiration and forces, it is sign of a permanently enervated state. Or s.e.x operates as a hypnotic. And to be always under hypnotic influence is as destructive of individuality as it is fatal to achievement.
The s.e.xes require to separate, accordingly, in order to derive fresh impulse on coming together again.
Both work more seriously and sincerely, more efficiently and more effectively, apart; taking counsel, when need be, one of the other.
The dilettante spirit and amenities of mixed companies, destructive of "thoroughness," are greatly to blame for that decline of British commerce which has followed on the Feminist invasion of business-houses.
Significant of the trend is the fact that young and pretty and inefficient girls are selected for business positions, as clerks and so forth, while older women of experience and accredited ability are rejected summarily. It is, doubtless, amusing and flattering to masculine employers to be surrounded by attractive youth of the opposite s.e.x. But it is conducive neither to commercial enterprise nor to achievement.
IV
Because of the intrinsic variability underlying her duality of const.i.tution, the happy mean and balance (difficult to all humans) are especially difficult to woman.
Man, like herself, is of dual const.i.tution. But he is more firmly, because less finely, poised between his two orders of Traits. She, on the contrary, tends to oscillate between the opposite extremes of her two-sided nature. A bent which may be traced, throughout history, in the excesses, in one or the other direction, that have characterised the careers of many famous women-personages.
The Ultra-Feminine extreme, which results from lack of due balance of her woman-side by the masculine side of her, and the Mannish extreme, occasioned by over-development of her masculine inherences, may be regarded as, respectively, the Scylla and Charybdis--the rocks of the Male-traits, or the vortex of the Female-traits--whereon, equally, may be wrecked the n.o.blest characteristics and the highest values of the s.e.x, when it fails to steer clear, _in medias res_, of either.
In a number of women, the Feminist and the Femininist (Ultra-Feminine) types alternate in the same person. In place of being stably and permanently centred in the woman-side of them, with the masculine to steady and intelligise, such persons act and re-act, in more or less violent pendulum-swing, between their two orders of impulse. Thus we get women, intellectual, progressive, strenuous, engrossed for part of their time in serious, perhaps in public avocations--and then plunging, in violent recoil, into social frivolities; vanities, dissipations, pranks, intrigues, excesses.
Men, too, act between extremes. In far less degree, however. Life demands from most of them over-accentuation and concentration of their male-abilities, in physical and mental specialisations. And in reaction, they plunge into follies and vices. But the more virile keep their heads, and preserve a certain stability and conformity in their aberrations. While effeminate men, it is mainly who lapse into vicious excess.
Since woman supplies the inspiration and the morale of life, however, and since her momentous function of motherhood empowers her to make or to mar the Race whereof she is creatrix, a nation has a greater claim upon its women, and has, at the same time, more reason and more right to restrict their liberty of action, and to direct their bent, than it has in the case of its men. Its survival and its downfall tremble in the scales of Life which woman holds. To compensate her for such restriction and limitation of her scope, obviously it owes her privileges, personal and economic. And a subconscious recognition of this fact has been, doubtless, the source of such privileges as she now enjoys.
There have always been, as history shows, women in whom, from faulty heredity or culture, or from stress of circ.u.mstance, the Male-traits have been abnormally developed; virile-brained, stout-hearted, muscular chieftainesses, chatelaines, abbesses, matrons; or (in less agreeable guise) amazons, shrews and viragoes. But always such were recognised as being abnormal, and for the most part as being repellant. It was not sought to manufacture them. It is only of late years that Mannishness has become a serious Cult.
And now a dangerous thing has happened. Because where formerly symptoms of Feminism attacked individuals only--and these mainly the mature and eccentric--now the young and the normal are being indoctrinated wholesale. Young girls taken during the malleable phases of growth and development, and forcibly shaped to masculine modes, become more or less irretrievably male of trait and bent; losing all power to recover the womanly normal.
While on the other hand, there are a.s.sembling to-day, in an opposite ever-increasing and menacing camp, those others for whom Feminism, with its extremist, exacting, self-reliant codes and modes, has no appeal; the pretty mindless, the idle frivolous, the pleasure-seeker, the freakish and the conscienceless--in a word, the Ultra-Feminines; in whom the woman-failings are unfortunately more conspicuous than are the woman-virtues. Between these two extremes stand (and stand so far in gratifying number) the natural, admirably-balanced, n.o.ble and invaluable Moderates--normal women content to be normal women, and to fulfil the destined role of such. And these are the saving grace of nations.
Apart from these, the s.e.x is ever further and more dangerously separating into the two extremist camps; the Mannish and strenuous, and the Over-Feminised and purposeless, more or less idle and frivolous, selfishly absorbed in clothes, in luxury and pleasures; exacting masculine tribute in mind and kind, with but little return in affection or ministry.
In place, accordingly, of that fine normal poise of the Contrasting Man and Woman-Traits--which is the way of Evolution and of Progress--there is being subst.i.tuted in the s.e.x this degenerative segregation of its Traits in two wholly opposite, and equally lopsided types. And of these, the purposeful and strenuous, all the while making for masculine standards, are all the while further discarding the beauty, the emotions, the delicacy and morale of true woman; while the mindless and vain, the attractive and charming, are more and more divorcing themselves from purpose, from seriousness, from n.o.ble endeavour and usefulness.
And since rights accorded to women are shared by all, every new privilege Feminists win for the s.e.x in the sweat of their a.s.siduous brows--liberty, latchkeys and general lat.i.tude--the Ultra-Feminines s.n.a.t.c.h, and apply to frivolous and profitless, or to demoralising ends; licence, extravagances, vices.
The Ultra-Feminine, for the most part shallow and mindless (although many clever women belong to this order), absorbed in complacent culture of her oftentimes alluring personality, enhancing it, attiring it, developing its charm and graces, eager of homage and of tribute, is example of that Parasitism Miss Schreiner condemns in the s.e.x; example of qualities normally making for beauty, but from loss of balance, owing to warp, hereditary or of misdirection, morbidly feeding upon themselves.
This Parasitism is seen in its worst guise in the vast armies of prost.i.tutes, who in every clime and epoch ravage the fair fruits of human life and achievement.
Against this Parasitism in herself, self-absorbing, self-indulgent, enervating--defect of her reposefulness, of her aestheticism and vital self-consciousness--every woman needs to be upon her guard; to repress with firmness the smooth easy lapse it prompts toward sloth and pleasure; to exorcise the soft dry-rot of it, by power of aspiration and by prayer of ministry. (For n.o.ble truth it is that _Laborare est orare_.)
The Woman"s Movement did good service for the s.e.x in the early chapters of its history, when it made for due education of woman"s higher masculine inherences; intelligence, application, self-reliance; as also in finding further fields of usefulness and self-expression for her.
But unfortunately in the later chapters, over-cultivation of these traits has increasingly annulled and extinguished her own. And this with the unforeseen, disquieting resultant that a compensatory movement has set in apace among that other faction of the s.e.x. So that the more mannish the Feminists become in mode and aim, the more womanish become the Effeminates. Thus, albeit sincerely despising and decrying this, Feminism has nevertheless indirectly fostered the growth of Effeminacy.
While, by supplying it with ever further liberty and scope for the indulgence of its freaks and failings, Feminist propaganda has directly played into its hands. Motherhood strikes deeper roots of attribute even in the Ultra-Feminine; brings thin streams of altruism to her neurasthenic b.r.e.a.s.t.s. In her children she forgets clothes, grows less greedy of masculine tribute, forgoes pleasures and excitements that had been the breath of life to her.
The increasing emanc.i.p.ation of the s.e.x from home-functions and from womanly and mother-duties, however--claimed and obtained with a view to further economic scope and application of its powers--has been exultantly hailed and exploited by the Ultra-Feminines for ever further indulgence of and wider range of action for their dangerous defects. And Feminism will find--and this soon to its dismay--that the battle it has waged against the other s.e.x has been as nothing to the battle it has yet to wage against its own, in the person of the Eternal Effeminate; idle, luxurious, parasitic and effete, who, with her brood, engenders the dry-rot which crumbles mighty civilisations, or topples them in Revolution.
V
Of the two camps, the vast majority of masculines will always seek their loves and wives among the Ultra-Feminines; frail and erratic, but attractive and more or less womanly. So long as men are men, the feminine graces, even in their spurious forms of Effeminacy, will possess more vital appeal for them than do the intelligences and utilities.
The Feminist camp, further and further commandeering the intelligent and self-reliant, the worthy and purposeful of the s.e.x, while more and more discarding the charms and the softness thereof, will be further and further deserted by men. And of the happy mean--the well-balanced woman, at once tender and intelligent, devoted and charming--there will be ever fewer available.
What then is the future, biological and sociological, of Races whose wives and mothers will have been drawn mainly from the shallow-brained and shallow-hearted, from the less dutiful, the less high and right-minded? To say nothing of the less const.i.tutionally-sound, the Ultra-Feminine being, for the most part, a neurotic? The great majority of such will decline part, indeed, in functions so dull and distasteful as the mothering and rearing of children.
The Feminist wife, with her intelligent grip of economics and her stern sense of citizen-duty, would fulfil her racial function (in accordance with Malthusius) during intervals of more absorbing and strenuous activities. But when once the novelty--which gives a certain piquancy for some men to a mannishness some women are able to wear quite prettily and attractively in early youth--shall have worn away, the poor Feminist"s chances of marriage will be few, indeed; save with men-weaklings, requiring the virile support of a strong-minded, muscular wife.
The Feminist makes a far more honest and reliable, sincere and helpful, mate than does the Ultra-Feminine. But men prefer the latter.
Male characteristics are to be found among their male acquaintance. And it is not a normal, nor is it a wholesome instinct in a man, to seek in s.e.x the traits of his own.
In the cult of Mannishness, woman loses her strongest, her n.o.blest and tenderest appeal for true men--the appeal of her womanhood. And losing it, she abandons the male to the toils of the enemy camp; to those whose womanishness partakes, at all events, of the attributes of a s.e.x complementary and supplementary to his own.
Unhappy wights! How Nature has handicapped them--in order to spur them to their virile part of founding and providing for the family!
VI
As innocent of misappropriating that which is Caesar"s as they are ignorant of the biological verities, some Women-leaders and Prime-movers in Feminism exact and exult in the warm young, zealous adulation and hero-worship of their followers; never suspecting that such tribute is rendered, in fact, to the _male_ in them. Both they and their votaries believe themselves loyal and thrall to their finger-tips to Woman and The Woman-Cause. Whereas they are, in reality, hero-worshipping, on the one hand, the Male in their Cult, and on the other, the Masculine traits of its female exponents. Against man himself and the Maleness that is his by natural right, many are filled with hottest distrust and aversion. Yet while s.e.x-antagonism is thus strong in them in fealty to their creed, Nature is strong in them too. And with gentle irony she exacts their homage for the traits of the foe--masquerading in guise of a female!
Heroes to worship, every naturally-const.i.tuted woman craves. And it is the hero--far less than it is the heroine--in the Feminist leaders, their qualities of fight and masterfulness, of virile brain and concrete enterprise, which evoke their adherents" devotion and tribute.
Some Feminist leaders bid, indeed, as strenuously for and claim as jealously the undivided loyalty and subjection of their flock as ever Tyrant-Man demanded of the s.e.x.