Women and Economics : Part 4

Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
by C. W. Saleeby, M.D.

(Page 23 of 26)

Of course the reply will be that the biological criticism is simply the ancient and oriental idea of woman as a helpless dependent, reasserted for male advantage in our own day. One cannot believe that it is necessary to rebut that accusation. It is necessary, however, to examine somewhat the words "economic dependence" and "economic independence" which are employed with such naïve antithesis in this controversy.

When we examine Mrs. Gilman's proposal for the salvation of woman, we find it to mean that in future mothers are to do double work. The glorious consummation is to be that woman is no longer "parasitic on the male," which is Mrs. Gilman's way of expressing the great truth that the mother for whom the father works, represents the future supported by the present.

But the future is always supported by the present. Woman, we began by saying, is Nature's supreme organ of the future, and the present must live for her and die for her. When we say the future, we mean childhood. If childhood is to appear and to survive, womanhood must be dedicated to it, and manhood, which stands for the present, must supply its own link in the chain. The following paragraph from an unsigned article which appeared some years ago in the Morning Post states the case in a form which may convince the reader. It was headed "Repairs and Renewals of the People," and ran as follows: -

"It is, indeed, seldom sufficiently realized how much a nation, so to speak, lives always in and for the future. Broadly speaking, of every ten persons living in the United Kingdom now, four are less than twenty years of age, while three of the rest are women (two of them married women) - that is to say, people also mainly concerned, through the care of children, with the future rather than with the present. Upon the remaining three men, one of whom be it noted is over fifty-five, falls the bulk of the work of providing for immediate needs and so releasing the others to provide for the continuance of the race. A definite large share of all the present activities of a people is required and, as it were, pledged to provide for its renewal. If it fails to allow sufficient, it may, just like a company or a municipal concern with an inadequate depreciation fund, show large profits and great prosperity for a time; it cannot be regarded as a sound concern."

The reader must decide whether there is more light and leading in the interpretation that upon men falls the bulk of the work of providing for immediate needs, and so enabling women to provide for the continuance of the race, or, in Mrs. Gilman's version that woman is parasitic upon the male. The future, if she likes to state it in that way, is parasitic upon the present, always has been and always will be. The case which she imagines to be unique and morbid, peculiar to civilized mankind, is precisely the case of the hen bird who sits upon her eggs, incubating the future, while the male goes and forages for her. She is parasitic upon the male, as Mrs. Gilman would put it.

The truth is that, like many other women dominated by gender antagonism - which glares ferociously from such paragraphs as that which was quoted regarding "the brutal combative instinct or the intense gender-vanity of the male" - Mrs. Gilman, in seeking to further the interests of her gender, proposes to dispense with the help of its best friend, which is the other gender. It is not easy to speak with patience of those wh. Therefore seek to set the house of mankind against itself, to the injury of men, women and children alike.

No doubt it is true that Mrs. Gilman's attitude is engendered by gender antagonism as we see it everywhere in men - though for some obscure reason it is only so labeled when displayed by women. No doubt, also, a much better case can be made out for Mrs. Gilman's proposals, up to a point, than could be made out for corresponding proposals on the other side. No one who thinks for a moment can question that all proposals whatsoever to make either gender independent of the other are stark madness; yet there is a certain short-lived plausibility in the argument that women are to be independent of men, and this depends upon the fact which we have already attempted to demonstrate and interpret by means of Mendelism, that women are more than men, and that womanhood includes latent manhood. If, therefore, we are careful with the argument and boldly rush past the really crucial places, such as the conditions and needs of expectant and nursing motherhood, we can make out what looks like a case for the economic dependence of women. Each gender is to work for itself, and then there need be no more quarreling .

But we could not go even so far with any theory for making men independent of women without seeing that we were no less wrong on that side than Mrs. Gilman is on the other. Man's apparent economic independence of women is as complete a myth as women's projected economic independence of men. In the last resort, when we come down to realities, and remember that both men and women are mortal, and that unless they are replaced, everything ends, we see that the introduction of the word economic into this question simply serves to confuse thought, just as the older political economy confused thought and laid itself open to the mercilessly magnificent attacks of Ruskin. Economy is literally the law of the house or the home - where life begins. Of all economies, life is the last judge, because there is no wealth but life. In the last resort the economic dependence of the genders means nothing because the genders cannot independently reproduce themselves.

If Mrs. Gilman is to be arraigned for her error let us see to it most carefully that we do not fail to arraign the men who, with not one-thousandth part of her excuse and with no iota of her ability, fall into the corresponding error on their side. When Women's Suffrage is being debated, there never fails a supply of men who write to the papers to say that men must vote and not women because men and not women "made the State." How much simpler our problems would be if there were some means of distinguishing children who will grow up into men of this type, and carefully refraining from teaching them to read or write! Make the State, indeed! - they can make nothing but fools of themselves, and without women's assistance could not even reproduce their folly.

Of course the retort to all this nonsense is that neither gender ever yet created anything without the other. Every human act and achievement is the product of both genders. When some friend of the past assures us that women should not vote because they cannot bear arms, he is of course reminded that women bear the soldiers. It is true and it is unanswerable. In just the same way, when Mrs. Gilman wishes women to be economically independent of men, whom she considers as animals distinguished by their destructive energy, brutality and intense gender vanity, she is simply ignoring half the truth. Let either gender try to run the earth alone till Halley's comet returns, and what would be left for it to see? Of all follies uttered on this subject, and they are many, the cry, each gender for itself, is the wickedest and worst.

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York.
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley.