Part 7

To summarize: in all fields of cultural activity opened to her, woman has shown creative ability, but since cultural conditions have made major creativeness possible, she has failed, in comparison with man, in the highest ranges of abstract creativeness. On the other hand, woman has shown in her psychic disposition affinities for the concrete, the technical and the human.

Before closing, these findings may be utilized for a prognostication of woman’s activities in the immediate and more remote future.

The present tendency toward equalizing the cultural opportunities of man and woman will no doubt persist. Thus the range of woman’s cultural contributions will expand and the excellence of her creative achievement will rise, especially in the fields in which she has so far had but little chance to try her hand. It is to be expected, however, that in the highest ranges of abstract creativeness in philosophy, science, art, music, and perhaps literature, she will fail as she has hitherto failed to equal man. Her concrete-mindedness will ever continue to provide a useful counterpoise to the more imaginative and abstract leanings of her male companion. Her technical talents will shine more brilliantly in a world in which the crafts will again occupy the prominent place which was theirs once before. But her unique contributions will come in the range of the human element.

In this respect, woman’s principal affinity is calculated to bear its choicest fruits in a world better than the one we live in. When formalism recedes from the field of education, as indeed it has already begun to do, and gives room for more individual and psychologically refined processes, woman’s share in education will grow in scope and creativeness. When the family has left behind the agonies of its present readjustments, the reconstruction of a freer and happier family life will largely rest on the shoulders of woman. When prisons will be turned into hospitals and criminals will be treated as patients, woman’s sensitiveness, insight and tact will bring her leadership in this field. When a return of leisure and the reduction of economic pressure will permit a revival of the more intimate forms of social intercourse, woman’s social talents will find new fields to conquer. When the world of nations will sheathe its sword forever--an event toward the realization of which woman will probably contribute more than man--woman, to whom nothing human is foreign, will at last be free to show the world what she can accomplish as the mother of the family of man.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] We need not mention a Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes or Milton. Perhaps these are too far back. Not so Tolstoi, Dostoyevski, Turgenev, Goethe, Heine, Balzac, Maupassant, the Goncourts, Flaubert, Byron, Browning, Shelley, Emerson, Walt Whitman. Where are their equals among women? And coming down to the modern period, when literature is flooded with feminine figures, is there one who can be placed beside Anatole France or d’Annunzio or Proust or Gorki or even Bernard Shaw (not to mention Ibsen)? The feminine names that might be cited in comparison are obvious enough, but would any of them measure up to these--quite? However, let me mention Katherine Mansfield, Edith Wharton, Edna St. Vincent Millay. And I may add Sheila Kaye-Smith, Willa Cather, Selma Lagerlöf and Marguérite Audou.

I realize, of course, that such comparisons, except in a most sweeping statement, are invidious. A better picture could be obtained by juxtaposing, one to one, writers of similar type and literary form--but this is a task for a volume.

Dominant Sexes

By M. Vaerting

M. Vaerting,

_one of a group of German anthropologists whose lectures and articles have attracted much attention in Europe; is also part author of “The Dominant Sex,” recently published in the United States._

DOMINANT SEXES

BY M. VAERTING

Certain peculiarities of physical form are to-day considered typical feminine sex characters. Thus roundness and fullness of figure are generally regarded as characteristic of women; larger size and strength among men are accepted as a sex difference, biologically determined.

But this theory, like the entire doctrine of secondary sex characters, stands upon a doubtful basis. It has grown up out of a comparison of men and women in very unequal situations. The bodies of men and women whose field of work and type of occupation differ widely have been compared. The man attends to the extra-domestic activities, while the woman is chiefly occupied at home. Bachofen writes: “If a man sits at a spinning-wheel a weakening of body and of soul will inevitably follow.” Charles de Coster in his “Wedding Journey” makes the significant remark: “Work in the fields had given Liska hips like a robust man’s.” Certain of the physical differences between men and women may therefore be sociologically determined rather than due to inborn differences.

One may object that the division of labor between the sexes, in which the woman takes the domestic and the man the extra-domestic sphere, is itself determined by inborn sex differences. Even in Socrates’s time it was believed that the nature of the sexes fixed their fields of activity. Man was unquestionably intended for matters which must be attended to outside the house, “while the weak and timid woman was by divine order assigned to the inner work of the home.” After thorough investigation it appears that this hoary theory, which still persists, is false. The division of labor between man and woman corresponds not to an innate difference but to their power-relation. If man dominates he says that woman’s place is the home, and that work outside the home is fit only for men. If woman is dominant then she has the opposite opinion, takes care of business outside the home, and leaves the man to take care of the family and the housekeeping. The ruling sex, whether male or female, always puts the domestic duties on the subordinate sex and takes to itself work outside the home. To-day man is dominant, but there have been many peoples among whom woman was dominant and the rôle of man and woman was the reverse of that common to-day. In ancient Egypt there was a period when women ruled. Herodotus reports that they unnaturally performed “masculine” activities, carried on commerce in the market-place, while the men stayed at home, sewed, and attended to domestic difficulties. To Herodotus, who came from a state where men were dominant, the work of the Egyptian women naturally seemed “male.” In the Talmud Herodotus’s report is confirmed. The children of Israel, it tells us, were disturbed because their men were forced to do women’s work and their women men’s work. In Sophocles’s “Œdipus Kolonos” Œdipus says to his two daughters: “Ha, how they imitate the Egyptians in the manner and meaning of life. There the men stay home and sit at the spinning-wheel, and the women go out to meet the needs of life.” Œdipus also mentions the fact reported also by Herodotus, that only the daughters, not the sons, were compelled in Egypt to support their parents. The sons could not fulfill that duty, Sophocles says, because, like the Greek girls, they stayed at home and had no income from their labor. Furthermore, they had only a limited right to own property.

One might cite many other peoples where the woman was dominant. Among the Kamchadales the men, in the days of female dominance, were such complete housewives that they cooked, sewed, washed, and were never allowed to stay away from home for more than a day. Similarly among the Lapps there was a period when the men did the housework while the women fished and sailed the sea. Under such circumstances the men also took care of the children. Strabo and Humboldt both report of the Vasko-Iberian races that the women worked in the fields; after child birth they turned the child over to the man and themselves resumed their work in the fields. A similar arrangement prevailed in the days when women ruled Lybia, which bordered upon Egypt.

When one sex is dominant there is always a division of labor.

This differentiation of occupation is one of the chief causes of certain differences in physical form between men and women. It changes the fundamental conditions of development--among others the course of the inner secretions. Where man rules he does the active outside work and is accordingly larger and stronger; where woman rules and does the same “man’s work” her body assumes what are to-day regarded as typically male proportions, whereas the man develops what we call feminine characteristics. We have a few definite proofs of this from states dominated by women.

When woman ruled among the Gauls, and worked outside the home, we are told by Strabo that the female was the larger and stronger sex.

Among the Adombies on the Congo women were in power and did all the hard work. According to Ellis they were stronger and better developed than the men. The same was true of the Wateita in East Africa. Fritsch and Hellwald report that the woman is larger than the man among the Bushmen. Female and male pelvises show no differences, but are alike “male” in our sense of the word.

The Spartan women in the days of their rule had a reputation for enormous strength. Aristophanes says that a Spartan woman could strangle an ox bare-handed. The Egyptian women at the height of their power were called by their neighbors the “lionesses of the Nile,” and they seemed to like the name. When Heracles visited the Lybians, whose state bordered on Egypt and of whose rule by women we have many witnesses, he had to work, like the other men of the country, with the distaff. His wife Omphale, however, wandered about clad in a lionskin and armed with a club, and won respect for her strength.

A very striking report comes from near New Guinea, where the woman was stronger than the man. There it was a common sight to see a woman spanking her husband with a paddle. Through the brute force of superior strength she oppressed the man just as men oppress women where the woman is weaker.

Thus through legend and the records of travelers we have clear testimony that man is not larger and stronger than woman because of innate differences, as is generally supposed, but that physical superiority is a characteristic of the dominant sex, regardless whether that be male or female.

Similarly those secondary physical characteristics which are to-day regarded as female are found among males when they occupy the subordinate position in which woman lives to-day. Woman is inclined to-day to full, rounded curves and even to stoutness. Among the Celts the woman dominated, and according to Strabo the men of that people were inclined to be fat and heavy-paunched. The same was true of the Kamchadales in the days of woman rule. The men were strikingly voluptuous and well rounded. The male Eskimos too were inclined to fatness in the days when they did the housekeeping. The more subordinate the fatter.

In this connection the Oriental women are typical; their exuberance of figure is as well known as their absolute subordination and their confinement to the home. They may be contrasted with the fat and subordinate male Kamchadales, whose wives were slim and firm breasted into old age.

Equal rights do away with this division of labor. There are no longer male and female jobs; not sex but inclination and fitness now begin to determine the individual’s occupation. In late Egypt, when the domination of woman was merging into a period of equal rights, there are many indications that both sexes did the same work without any differentiation of occupation. In the marriage contract in the time of Darius, the woman--who then made the contract alone--says, “All, which you and I may together earn....” Victor Marx has studied the position of woman in Babylon in the period 604-485 B.C., and finds a similar situation. In an inheritance case of that period a woman recites that “I and my husband carried on business with my dowry and together bought a piece of land.” Such common businesses by man and woman are frequently mentioned. Under such circumstances it was natural that neither man nor woman bound themselves at marriage to live in the same house, for both went to work outside the home.

To-day, when we are passing from male domination to equal rights it is natural that the woman should be seeking more and more to get out of the home. The greater her power the more she seeks to level the lines between male and female work. This effort is strongest in the subordinate sex--in this case the feminine--because it seeks naturally to better its position. In this transition period, therefore, women are pressing into male pursuits much faster than men into domestic occupations. Yet even in Germany a beginning has been made. For women the male professions seem higher and better, because they have hitherto belonged to the dominant sex, while for the men feminine occupations seem to have about them something degrading; but the more women approach equality the less odium attaches to what has been their sphere, and the more men tend to enter it.

The same phenomenon may be observed in periods of transition from female to male domination. Among the Batta, for instance, both sexes worked in the fields, but the man alone cared for the children. This was obviously a step toward equal rights. The men already shared the extra-domestic occupations of the women, but the women still refused to share the work of the hitherto subordinate men.

When equal rights put an end to the differentiation of occupation the physical differences between men and women also disappear. We are to-day still far enough away from equality of the sexes, but there have been people where equal rights prevailed, and among such people the physical form of the two sexes was so like that they could hardly be distinguished. In Tacitus’s day, when equality was probably general among the Germans, men and women are reported to have had exactly the same weight and strength. Albert Friedenthal says of the Cingalese that a stranger could not distinguish the sexes. Men and women were so alike among the Botocudos that one had to count their tresses to tell them apart. Lallemant found among this people “a swarm of men-women and women-men, not a single man or a single woman in the whole tribe.” This good man came from a state where men dominated and did not suspect that when the power-relation of the sexes changed their physical appearance changed too. If a Botocudo had come to Europe in those days he would presumably have judged by his own standards and noted with equal horror the outer differences of European men and women.

Every age holds its own standards absolute. The domination of one sex depends upon the artificial development of as many and as striking bodily differences as possible, and therefore approves them and insists upon emphasizing them. Equal rights tend to develop the natural similarity of the sexes and considering that the norm, regards it as ideal.

There is ample opportunity to observe to-day that equality of the sexes coincides with a tendency slowly to do away with artificial physical differences. The disappearance of the so-called feminine figure was so striking in America, where the sexes are more nearly equal than in Europe, that Sargent and Alexander prophesied in 1910 that soon men and women could hardly be distinguished from one another. A comparison with pictures of thirty or forty years ago makes it plain that even in Europe male and female figures are coming closer to each other. The narrow waists and full bosoms of the women and the full beards of the men have disappeared. And, as a result of our investigation, we may prophesy that the coming equality will still more completely iron out those differences which hitherto have been regarded as genuine secondary sex characters.

Whenever one sex is dominant there is a tendency to differentiate male and female costume. The more completely one sex dominates the greater will be the differences in clothes, and as the sexes become equal the differences disappear. When the two sexes are really equal they will wear the same clothing.

The clothing of the dominant sex usually tends to be uniform and tasteless, that of the subordinate to be varied and richly ornamented. To-day man is still dominant, and his clothes are monotonous, dull, and less subject to shifts of fashion. Especially in formal dress he wears a sort of uniform. All men, of whatever age or position, wear dress clothes of the same cut and color. A grandfather wears a dinner coat exactly like that of his eighteen-year-old grandson. This seems natural, but the situation is reversed with the subordinate sex, most completely when the subordination is most complete. Only twenty or thirty years ago it was a crime in Germany for a mother to dress as “youthfully” as her unmarried daughter. A grandmother who dared to dress like her eighteen-year-old granddaughter would have been laughed to scorn. As woman’s power has grown, this has changed. Custom no longer requires a grandmother to emphasize her age by her clothes.

Where woman dominates she tends to wear darker and plainer clothing and the man dresses himself more richly and variously. Erman writes of the old Egyptians:

While according to our conceptions it befits the woman to love finery and ornament, the Egyptians of the old Empire seem to have had an opposite opinion. Beside the elaborate costumes of the men the women’s clothing seems very monotonous, for, from the fourth to the eighteenth dynasty, all, from the king’s daughter to the peasant woman, wore the same garb--a simple garment without folds.

Herodotus, indeed, reported that Egyptian men had two suits, women only one. Erman naturally cannot explain the simplicity of the women’s clothes and the eagerness of the men for color and ornament, because it contradicted current theories of the character of the two sexes. To-day the view is current which Runge expressed when he said that “Women’s desire to please and love of ornament is dependent upon her sex life.” This view, though still common, is fundamentally false. The inclination to bright and ornamental clothing is dependent not upon sex but upon the power-relation of the sexes. The subordinate sex, whether male or female, seeks ornament. Strabo tells of the love of finery and cult of the body among Lybian men. They curled their hair, even their beards, wore gold ornaments, diligently brushed their teeth and polished their finger-nails. “They arrange their hair so tenderly,” he writes, “that when walking they never touch one another, in order not to disturb it.” It is usual in states where women are dominant for the men to wear long hair and pay particular attention to their barbering. The men of Tana, in the Hebrides, wore their hair 18 to 20 inches long, divided into six or seven hundred tiny locks, in the days when women ruled. Among the Latuka the men wore their hair so elaborately that it took ten years to arrange it. The Konds also wore very long hair, elaborately arranged.

The stronger tendency of the subordinate sex to ornamentation apparently is closely related to the division of labor. The subordinate sex, working at home, has more leisure and opportunity for ornament than the dominant. Furthermore, leisure stimulates the erotic feelings. Since the partner does not share the leisure the lonely erotic often seeks a way out in self-ornamentation. At the same time the ornament is intended for the partner, for the stimulated eroticism increases the desire to please the other sex.

When the sexes are equal the clothes of the two sexes tend to be alike. We have noted that the Cingalese were physically similar; their clothes were exactly the same. The only difference was that the men wore a mother-of-pearl comb in the hair, the women none. Among the Lepka the sexes can be distinguished only by the fact that the men wear their hair in two braids, the women in one. Tacitus reports that the old Germans wore the same clothes and wore their hair alike.

We can observe the tendency to similarity of costume in this transition period. Many such attempts fail the first time, but finally succeed. More than a decade ago Paris attempted to establish a fashion of knickerbockers and bobbed hair. The attempt failed, but to-day the bobbed head has invaded every civilized country, almost in direct proportion to the degree in which women have acquired equal rights. It is reported from England that English women can already go to their work in trousers, heavy shoes, and short hair without exciting attention. The reader may judge of the accuracy of these reports. In Germany the police forbid one sex to wear the clothes of the other, but during the war when German women had to enter male trades they usually wore men’s clothing.

Among men too the tendency to similarity is evident. Thirty years ago the beard was a generally accepted sign of manhood; it has fallen out of fashion. In the Youth Movement there is a tendency to leave the shirt open at the neck and to adopt a hair-cut like a bobbed girl’s. A note in Jean Paul’s “Levana,” which appeared in 1806, is interesting. He writes: “A few years ago it was fashionable in Russia for the men to fill out their clothing with high false bosoms.” That was in the days following the French Revolution, when a short wave of freedom, even for women, swept across the earth. It showed also in the women’s fashion which Jean Paul mentions:

A fortunate accident for daughters is the Grecian costume of the present Gymnosophists (naked female runners), which, it is true, injures the mothers but hardens the daughters; for as age and custom should avoid every fresh cold so youth exercises itself on it as on every hardship until it can bear greater.... So, likewise, the present naked manner of dressing is a cold bath into which the daughters are dipped, who are exhilarated by it.

Modern Love and Modern Fiction

By J. W. Krutch

Joseph Wood Krutch

_has been Professor of English at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and is now dramatic editor and regular critic of fiction of_ The Nation.

MODERN LOVE AND MODERN FICTION

BY J. W. KRUTCH

Seeing upon the jacket of a recent book the legend “Solves the Sex Problem,” my first reaction was a fervent hope that it did nothing of the sort, for I had no desire that fiction should be rendered supererogatory or, what is the same thing, that life should be made a less difficult art. Problems of housing, wages, taxation, militarism, and the like may be solved, temporarily at least, but what a contemporary writer has called “the irony of being two” is a sufficient guaranty of one never-to-be-resolved complexity. Until each individual of the human species becomes a complete biological entity, until, that is to say, hermaphrodism is universal, there can be no fear lest we should cease to live dangerously.

Were I speaking of happiness I should be compelled to argue that the attitude of society and the individual toward sex is the most important thing in the world, but speaking as I am of life as material for art I must maintain, on the contrary, that it is much less important. As long as they have an attitude and as long as that attitude remains, as it has always remained, an inadequate one, those unresolved discords which make living and reading interesting will continue to arise. As a critic I “view with alarm” nothing except the possibility that the problem should be solved to everybody’s satisfaction, but that calamity does not seem at all likely to occur since I have never heard of a saint in the desert or a debauché in a brothel who was not sufficiently maladjusted to be a fruitful subject for fiction.