Three Guineas (23 page)

— Come nearer Amalia — orders the commandant. She pushes her horse towards us and salutes her chief with the sword.

— Sergeant Amalia Bonilla — continues the chief of the squadron — how old are you?— Thirty-six — Where were you born?— In Granada — Why have you joined the army?— My two daughters were militiawomen. The younger has been killed in the Alto de Leon. I thought I had to supersede her and avenge her.— And how many enemies have you killed to avenge her?— You know it, commandant, five. The sixth is not sure.— No, but you have taken his horse. The amazon Amalia rides in fact a magnificent dapple-grey horse, with glossy hair, which flatters like a parade horse . . . This woman who has killed five men — but who feels not sure about the sixth — was for the envoys of the House of Commons an excellent introducer to the Spanish war.’ (The Martyrdom of Madrid, Inedited Witnesses, by Louis Delaprée, pp. 34, 5, 6. Madrid, 1937.)

16. By way of proof, an attempt may be made to elucidate the reasons given by various Cabinet Ministers in various Parliaments from about 1870 to 1918 for opposing the Suffrage Bill. An able effort has been made by Mrs Oliver Strachey (see chapter ‘The Deceitfulness of Polities’ in her The Cause).

17. ‘We have had women’s civil and political status before the League only since 1935.’ From reports sent in as to the position of the woman as wife, mother and home maker, ‘the sorry fact was discovered that her economic position in many countries (including Great Britain) was unstable. She is entitled neither to salary nor wages and has definite duties to perform. In England, though she may have devoted her whole life to husband and children, her husband, no matter how wealthy, can leave her destitute at his death and she has no legal redress. We must alter this — by legislation (Linda P. Littlejohn, reported in the Listener, 10 November 1937.)

18. This particular definition of woman’s task comes not from an Italian but from a German source. There are so many versions and all are so much alike that it seems unnecessary to verify each separately. But it is curious to find how easy it is to cap them from English sources. Mr Gerhardi for example writes: ‘Never yet have I committed the error of looking on women writers as serious fellow artists. I enjoy them rather as spiritual helpers who, endowed with a sensitive capacity for appreciation, may help the few of us afflicted with genius to bear our cross with good grace. Their true role, therefore, is rather to hold out the sponge to us, cool our brow, while we bleed. If their sympathetic understanding may indeed be put to a more romantic use, how we cherish them for it!’ (Memoirs of a Polyglot, by William Gerhardi, pp. 320, 321.) This conception of woman’s role tallies almost exactly with that quoted above.

19. To speak accurately, ‘a large silver plaque in the form of the Reich eagle . . . was created by President Hindenburg for scientists and other distinguished civilians . . . It may not be worn. It is usually placed on the writing-desk of the recipient.’ (Daily paper, 21 April 1936.)

20. ‘It is a common thing to see the business girl contenting herself with a bun or a sandwich for her midday meal; and though there are theories that this is from choice . . . the truth is that they often cannot afford to eat properly.’ (Careers and Openings for Women, by Ray Strachey, p. 74.) Compare also Miss E. Turner: ‘. . . many offices had been wondering why they were unable to get through their work as smoothly as formerly. It had been found that junior typists were fagged out in the afternoons because they could afford only an apple and a sandwich for lunch. Employers should meet the increased cost of living by increased salaries.’ (The Times, 28 March 1938.)

21. The Mayoress of Woolwich (Mrs Kathleen Rance) speaking at a bazaar, reported in Evening Standard, 20 December 1937.

22. Miss E. R. Clarke, reported in The Times, 24 September 1937.

23. Reported in Daily Herald, 15 August 1936.

24. Canon F. R. Barry, speaking at conference arranged by Anglican Group at Oxford, reported in The Times, 10 January 1933.

25. The Ministry of Women, Report of the Archbishops’ Commission. VII. Secondary Schools and Universities, p. 65.

26. ‘Miss D. Carruthers, Head Mistress of the Green School, Isleworth, said there was a “very grave dissatisfaction” among older schoolgirls at the way in which organized religion was carried on. “The Churches seem somehow to be failing to supply the spiritual needs of young people,” she said. “It is a fault that seems common to all churches.”’ (Sunday Times, 21 November 1937.)

27. Life of Charles Gore, by G. L. Prestige, D.D., p. 353.

28. The Ministry of Women. Report of the Archbishops’ Commission, passim.

29. Whether or not the gift of prophecy and the gift of poetry were originally the same, a distinction has been made between those gifts and professions for many centuries. But the fact that the Song of Songs, the work of a poet, is included among the sacred books, and that propagandist poems and novels, the works of prophets, are included among the secular, points to some confusion. Lovers of English literature can scarcely be too thankful that Shakespeare lived too late to be canonized by the Church. Had the plays been ranked among the sacred books they must have received the same treatment as the Old and New Testaments; we should have had them doled out on Sundays from the mouths of priests in snatches; now a soliloquy from Hamlet; now a corrupt passage from the pen of some drowsy reporter; now a bawdy song; now half a page from Antony and Cleopatra, as the Old and New Testaments have been sliced up and interspersed with hymns in the Church of England service; and Shakespeare would have been as unreadable as the Bible. Yet those who have not been forced from childhood to hear it thus dismembered weekly assert that the Bible is a work of the greatest interest, much beauty, and deep meaning.

30. The Ministry of Women, Appendix I. ‘Certain Psychological and Physiological Considerations’, by Professor Grensted, D.D., pp. 79- 87.

31. ‘At present a married priest is able to fulfil the requirements of the ordination service, “to forsake and set aside all worldly cares and studies”, largely because his wife can undertake the care of the household and the family . . .’ (The Ministry of Women, p. 32.)

The Commissioners are here stating and approving a principle which is frequently stated and approved by the dictators. Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini have both often in very similar words expressed the opinion that ‘There are two worlds in the life of the nation, the world of men and the world of women’; and proceeded to much the same definition of the duties. The effect which this division has had upon the woman; the petty and personal nature of her interests; her absorption in the practical; her apparent incapacity for the poetical and adventurous — all this has been made the staple of so many novels, the target for so much satire, has confirmed so many theorists in the theory that by the law of nature the woman is less spiritual than the man, that nothing more need be said to prove that she has carried out, willingly or unwillingly, her share of the contract. But very little attention has yet been paid to the intellectual and spiritual effect of this division of duties upon those who are enabled by it ‘to forsake all worldly cares and studies’. Yet there can be no doubt that we owe to this segregation the immense elaboration of modern instruments and methods of war; the astonishing complexities of theology; the vast deposit of notes at the bottom of Greek, Latin and even English texts; the innumerable carvings, chasings and unnecessary ornamentations of our common furniture and crockery; the myriad distinctions of Debrett and Burke; and all those meaningless but highly ingenious turnings and twistings into which the intellect ties itself when rid of ‘the cares of the household and the family’. The emphasis which both priests and dictators place upon the necessity for two worlds is enough to prove that it is essential to the domination.

32. Evidence of the complex nature of satisfaction of dominance is provided by the following quotation: ‘My husband insists that I call him “Sir”,’ said a woman at the Bristol Police Court yesterday, when she applied for a maintenance order. ‘To keep the peace I have complied with his request,’ she added. ‘I also have to clean his boots, fetch his razor when he shaves, and speak up promptly when he asks me questions.’ In the same issue of the same paper Sir E. F. Fletcher is reported to have ‘urged the House of Commons to stand up to dictators.’ (Daily Herald, 1 August 1926.) This would seem to show that the common consciousness which includes husband, wife and House of Commons is feeling at one and the same moment the desire to dominate, the need to comply in order to keep the peace, and the necessity of dominating the desire for dominance — a psychological conflict which serves to explain much that appears inconsistent and turbulent in contemporary opinion. The pleasure of dominance is of course further complicated by the fact that it is still, in the educated class, closely allied with the pleasures of wealth, social and professional prestige. Its distinction from the comparatively simple pleasures — e.g. the pleasure of a country walk — is proved by the fear of ridicule which great psychologists, like Sophocles, detect in the dominator; who is also peculiarly susceptible according to the same authority either to ridicule or defiance on the part of the female sex. An essential element in this pleasure therefore would seem to be derived not from the feeling itself but from the reflection of other people’s feelings, and it would follow that it can be influenced by a change in those feelings. Laughter as an antidote to dominance is perhaps indicated.

33. The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Mrs Gaskell.

34. The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake, by Margaret Todd, pp. 67-9, 70- 71, 72.

35. External observation would suggest that a man still feels it a peculiar insult to be taunted with cowardice by a woman in much the same way that a woman feels it a peculiar insult to be taunted with unchastity by a man. The following quotation supports this view. Mr Bernard Shaw writes: ‘I am not forgetting the gratification that war gives to the instinct of pugnacity and admiration of courage that are so strong in women . . . In England on the outbreak of war civilized young women rush about handing white feathers to all young men who are not in uniform. This,’ he continues, ‘like other survivals from savagery is quite natural,’ and he points out that ‘in old days a woman’s life and that of her children depended on the courage and killing capacity of her mate.’ Since vast numbers of young men did their work all through the war in offices without any such adornment, and the number of ‘civilized young women’ who stuck feathers in coats must have been infinitesimal compared with those who did nothing of the kind, Mr Shaw’s exaggeration is sufficient proof of the immense psychological impression that fifty or sixty feathers (no actual statistics are available) can still make. This would seem to show that the male still preserves an abnormal susceptibility to such taunts; therefore that courage and pugnacity are still among the prime attributes of manliness; therefore that he still wishes to be admired for possessing them; therefore that any derision of such qualities would have a proportionate effect. That ‘the manhood emotion’ is also connected with economic independence seems probable. ‘We have never known a man who was not, openly or secretly, proud of being able to support women; whether they were his sisters or his mistresses. We have never known a woman who did not regard the change from economic independence on an employer to economic dependence on a man, as an honourable promotion. What is the good of men and women lying to each other about these things? It is not we that have made them’—(A. H. Orage, by Philip Mairet, vii)— an interesting statement, attributed by G. K. Chesterton to A. H. Orage.

36. Until the beginning of the eighties, according to Miss Haldane, the sister of R. B. Haldane, no lady could work. ‘I should, of course, have liked to study for a profession, but that was an impossible idea unless one were in the sad position of “having to work for one’s bread” and that would have been a terrible state of affairs. Even a brother wrote of the melancholy fact after he had been to see Mrs Langtry act. “She was a lady and acted like a lady, but what a sad thing it was that she should have to do so!’” (From One Century to Another, by Elizabeth Haldane, pp. 73-4.) Harriet Martineau earlier in the century was delighted when her family lost its money, for thus she lost her ‘gentility’ and was allowed to work.

37. Life of Sophia Jex-Blake, by Margaret Todd, pp. 69, 70.

38. For an account of Mr Leigh Smith, see The Life of Emily Davies, by Barbara Stephen. Barbara Leigh Smith became Madame Bodichon.

39. How nominal that opening was is shown by the following account of the actual conditions under which women worked in the R.A. Schools about 1900. ‘Why the female of the species should never be given the same advantages as the male it is difficult to understand. At the R.A. Schools we women had to compete against men for all the prizes and medals that were given each year, and we were only allowed half the amount of tuition and less than half their opportunities for study . . . No nude model was allowed to be posed in the women’s painting room at the R.A. Schools . . . The male students not only worked from nude models, both male and female, during the day, but they were given an evening class as well, at which they could make studies from the figure, the visiting R.A. instructing.’ This seemed to the women students ‘very unfair indeed’; Miss Collyer had the courage and the social standing necessary to beard first Mr Franklin Dicksee, who argued that since girls marry, money spent on their teaching is money wasted; next Lord Leighton; and at length the thin edge of the wedge, that is the undraped figure, was allowed. But ‘the advantages of the night class we never did succeed in obtaining . . .” The women students therefore clubbed together and hired a photographer’s studio in Baker Street. ‘The money that we, as the committee, had to find, reduced our meals to near starvation diet.’ (Life of an Artist, by Margaret Collyer, pp. 19-81, 82.) The same rule was in force at the Nottingham Art School in the twentieth century. ‘Women were not allowed to draw from the nude. If the men worked from the living figure I had to go into the Antique Room . . . the hatred of those plaster figures stays with me till this day. I never got any benefit out of their study.’ (Oil Paint and Grease Paint, by Dame Laura Knight, p. 47.) But the profession of art is not the only profession that is thus nominally open. The profession of medicine is ‘open’, but ‘. . . nearly all the Schools attached to London Hospitals are barred to women students, whose training in London is mainly carried on at the London School of Medicine.’ (Memorandum on the Position of English Women in Relation to that of English Men, by Philippa Strachey, 1935, p. 26.) ‘Some of the girl “medicals” at Cambridge University have formed themselves into a group to ventilate the grievance.’ (Evening News, 25 March 1937.) In 1922 women students were admitted to the Royal Veterinary College, Camden Town. “. . . since then the profession has attracted so many women that the number has recently been restricted to 50.’ (Daily Telegraph, 1 October 1937.)