When we are offered a "woman's" paper, page, or column, we find it
filled with matter supposed to appeal to women as a sex or class; the
writer mainly dwelling upon the Kaiser's four K's--Kuchen, Kinder,
Kirche, Kleider. They iterate and reiterate endlessly the discussion of
cookery, old and new; of the care of children; of the overwhelming
subject of clothing; and of moral instruction. All this is recognized
as "feminine" literature, and it must have some appeal else the women
would not read it. What parallel have we in "masculine" literature?
"None!" is the proud reply. "Men are people! Women, being 'the sex,'
have their limited feminine interests, their feminine point of view,
which must be provided for. Men, however, are not restricted--to them
belongs the world's literature!"
Yes, it has belonged to them--ever since there was any. They have
written it and they have read it. It is only lately that women,
generally speaking, have been taught to read; still more lately that
they have been allowed to write. It is but a little while since Harriet
Martineau concealed her writing beneath her sewing when visitors came
in--writing was "masculine"--sewing "feminine."
We have not, it Is true, confined men to a narrowly construed "masculine
sphere," and composed a special literature suited to it. Their effect
on literature has been far wider than that, monopolizing this form of
art with special favor. It was suited above all others to the dominant
impulse of self-expression; and being, as we have seen essentially and
continually "the sex;" they have impressed that sex upon this art
overwhelmingly; they have given the world a masculized literature.
It is hard for us to realize this. We can readily see, that if women
had always written the books, no men either writing or reading them,
that would have surely "feminized" our literature; but we have not in
our minds the concept, much less the word, for an overmasculized
influence.
Men having been accepted as humanity, women but a side-issue; (most
literally if we accept the Hebrew legend!), whatever men did or said was
human--and not to be criticized. In no department of life is it easier
to contravert this old belief; to show how the male sex as such differs
from the human type; and how this maleness has monopolized and
disfigured a great social function.
Human life is a very large affair; and literature is its chief art. We
live, humanly, only through our power of communication. Speech gives us
this power laterally, as it were, in immediate personal contact. For
permanent use speech becomes oral tradition--a poor dependence.
Literature gives not only an infinite multiplication to the lateral
spread of communion but adds the vertical reach. Through it we know the
past, govern the present, and influence the future. In its servicable
common forms it is the indispensable daily servant of our lives; in its
nobler flights as a great art no means of human inter-change goes so
far.
In these brief limits we can touch but lightly on some phases of so
great a subject; and will rest the case mainly on the effect of an
exclusively masculine handling of the two fields of history and fiction.
In poetry and the drama the same influence is easily traced, but in the
first two it is so baldly prominent as to defy objection.
History is, or should be, the story of our racial life. What have men
made it? The story of warfare and conquest. Begin at the very
beginning with the carven stones of Egypt, the clay records of Chaldea,
what do we find of history?
"I Pharaoh, King of Kings! Lord of Lords! (etc. etc.), "went down into
the miserable land of Kush, and slew of the inhabitants thereof an
hundred and forty and two thousands!" That, or something like it, is
the kind of record early history gives us.
The story of Conquering Kings, who and how many they killed and
enslaved; the grovelling adulation of the abased; the unlimited
jubilation of the victor; from the primitive state of most ancient
kings, and the Roman triumphs where queens walked in chains, down to our
omni present soldier's monuments: the story of war and conquest--war and
conquest--over and over; with such boasting and triumph, such cock-crow
and flapping of wings as show most unmistakably the natural source.
All this will strike the reader at first as biased and unfair. "That
was the way people lived in those days!" says the reader.
No--it was not the way women lived.
"O, women!" says the reader, "Of course not! Women are different."
Yea, women are different; and _men are different!_ Both of them, as
sexes, differ from the human norm, which is social life and all social
development. Society was slowly growing in all those black blind years.
The arts, the sciences, the trades and crafts and professions,
religion, philosophy, government, law, commerce, agriculture--all the
human processes were going on as well as they were able, between wars.
The male naturally fights, and naturally crows, triumphs over his rival
and takes the prize--therefore was he made male. Maleness means war.
Not only so; but being male, he cares only for male interests. Men,
being the sole arbiters of what should be done and said and written,
have given us not only a social growth scarred and thwarted from the
beginning by continual destruction; but a history which is one unbroken
record of courage and red cruelty, of triumph and black shame.
As to what went on that was of real consequence, the great slow steps of
the working world, the discoveries and inventions, the real progress of
humanity--that was not worth recording, from a masculine point of view.
Within this last century, "the woman's century," the century of the
great awakening, the rising demand for freedom, political, economic, and
domestic, we are beginning to write real history, human history, and not
merely masculine history. But that great branch of literature--Hebrew,
Greek, Roman, and all down later times, shows beyond all question, the
influence of our androcentric culture.
Literature is the most powerful and necessary of the arts, and fiction
is its broadest form. If art "holds the mirror up to nature" this art's
mirror is the largest of all, the most used. Since our very life
depends on some communication; and our progress is in proportion to our
fullness and freedom of communication; since real communication requires
mutual understanding; so in the growth of the social consciousness, we
note from the beginning a passionate interest in other people's lives.
The art which gives humanity consciousness is the most vital art. Our
greatest dramatists are lauded for their breadth of knowledge of "human
nature," their range of emotion and understanding; our greatest poets
are those who most deeply and widely experience and reveal the feelings
of the human heart; and the power of fiction is that it can reach and
express this great field of human life with no limits but those of the
author.
When fiction began it was the legitimate child of oral tradition; a
product of natural brain activity; the legend constructed instead of
remembered. (This stage is with us yet as seen in the constant changes
in repetition of popular jokes and stories.)
Fiction to-day has a much wider range; yet it is still restricted,
heavily and most mischievously restricted.
What is the preferred subject matter of fiction?
There are two main branches found everywhere, from the Romaunt of the
Rose to the Purplish Magazine;--the Story of Adventure, and the Love
Story.
The Story-of-Adventure branch is not so thick as the other by any means,
but it is a sturdy bough for all that. Stevenson and Kipling have
proved its immense popularity, with the whole brood of detective stories
and the tales of successful rascality we call "picaresque" Our most
popular weekly shows the broad appeal of this class of fiction.
All these tales of adventure, of struggle and difficulty; of hunting and
fishing and fighting; of robbing and murdering, catching and punishing,
are distinctly and essentially masculine. They do not touch on human
processes, social processes, but on the special field of predatory
excitement so long the sole province of men.
It is to be noted here that even in the overwhelming rise of industrial
interests to-day, these, when used as the basis for a story, are forced
into line with one, or both, of these two main branches of
fiction;--conflict or love. Unless the story has one of these
"interests" in it, there is no story--so holds the editor; the dictum
being, put plainly, "life has no interests except conflict and love!"
It is surely something more than a coincidence that these are the two
essential features of masculinity--Desire and Combat--Love and War.
As a matter of fact the major interests of life are in line with its
major processes; and these--in our stage of human development--are more
varied than our fiction would have us believe. Half the world consists
of women, we should remember, who are types of human life as well as
men, and their major processes are not those of conflict and adventure,
their love means more than mating. Even on so poor a line of
distinction as the "woman's column" offers, if women are to be kept to
their four Ks, there should be a "men's column" also; and all the
"sporting news" and fish stories be put in that; they are not world
interests; they are male interests.
Now for the main branch--the Love Story. Ninety per cent. of fiction is
In this line; this is preeminently the major interest of life--given in
fiction. What is the love-story, as rendered by this art?
It is the story of the pre-marital struggle. It is the Adventures of
Him in Pursuit of Her--and it stops when he gets her! Story after
story, age after age, over and over and over, this ceaseless repetition
of the Preliminaries.
Here is Human Life. In its large sense, its real sense, it is a matter
of inter-relation between individuals and groups, covering all emotions,
all processes, all experiences. Out of this vast field of human life
fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, as
its necessary base.
"Ah! but we are persons most of all!" protests the reader. "This is
personal experience--it has the universal appeal!"
Take human life personally then. Here is a Human Being, a life,
covering some seventy years; involving the changing growth of many
faculties; the ever new marvels of youth, the long working time of
middle life, the slow ripening of age. Here is the human soul, in the
human body, Living. Out of this field of personal life, with all of its
emotions, processes, and experiences, fiction arbitrarily selects one
emotion, one process, one experience, mainly of one sex.
The "love" of our stories is man's love of woman. If any dare dispute
this, and say it treats equally of woman's love for man, I answer, "Then
why do the stories stop at marriage?"
There is a current jest, revealing much, to this effect:
The young wife complains that the husband does not wait upon and woo her
as he did before marriage; to which he replies, "Why should I run after
the street-car when I've caught it?"
Woman's love for man, as currently treated in fiction is largely a
reflex; it is the way he wants her to feel, expects her to feel; not a
fair representation of how she does feel. If "love" is to be selected
as the most important thing in life to write about, then the mother's
love should be the principal subject: This is the main stream. This is
the general underlying, world-lifting force. The "life-force," now so
glibly chattered about, finds its fullest expression in motherhood; not
in the emotions of an assistant in the preliminary stages.
What has literature, what has fiction, to offer concerning mother-love,
or even concerning father-love, as compared to this vast volume of
excitement about lover-love? Why is the search-light continually
focussed upon a two or three years space of life "mid the blank miles
round about?" Why indeed, except for the clear reason, that on a
starkly masculine basis this is his one period of overwhelming interest
and excitement.
If the beehive produced literature, the bee's fiction would be rich and
broad; full of the complex tasks of comb-building and filling; the care
and feeding of the young, the guardian-service of the queen; and far
beyond that it would spread to the blue glory of the summer sky, the
fresh winds, the endless beauty and sweetness of a thousand thousand
flowers. It would treat of the vast fecundity of motherhood, the
educative and selective processes of the group-mothers; and the passion
of loyalty, of social service, which holds the hive together.
But if the drones wrote fiction, it would have no subject matter save
the feasting of many; and the nuptial flight, of one.
To the male, as such, this mating instinct is frankly the major interest
of life; even the belligerent instincts are second to it. To the
female, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a passing interest.
In nature's economy, his is but a temporary devotion, hers the slow
processes of life's fulfillment.
In Humanity we have long since, not outgrown, but overgrown, this stage
of feeling. In Human Parentage even the mother's share begins to pale
beside that ever-growing Social love and care, which guards and guides
the children of to-day.
The art of literature in this main form of fiction is far too great a
thing to be wholly governed by one dominant note. As life widened and
intensified, the artist, if great enough, has transcended sex; and in
the mightier works of the real masters, we find fiction treating of
life, life in general, in all its complex relationships, and refusing to
be held longer to the rigid canons of an androcentric past.
This was the power of Balzac--he took in more than this one field. This
was the universal appeal of Dickens; he wrote of people, all kinds of
people, doing all kinds of things. As you recall with pleasure some
preferred novel of this general favorite, you find yourself looking
narrowly for the "love story" in it. It is there--for it is part of
life; but it does not dominate the whole scene--any more than it does in
life.
The thought of the world is made and handed out to us in the main. The
makers of books are the makers of thoughts and feelings for people in
general. Fiction is the most popular form in which this world-food is
taken. If it were true, it would teach us life easily, swiftly, truly;
teach not by preaching but by truly re-presenting; and we should grow up
becoming acquainted with a far wider range of life in books than could
even be ours in person. Then meeting life in reality we should be
wise--and not be disappointed.
As it is, our great sea of fiction is steeped and dyed and flavored all
one way. A young man faces life--the seventy year stretch, remember,
and is given book upon book wherein one set of feelings is continually
vocalized and overestimated. He reads forever of love, good love and
bad love, natural and unnatural, legitimate and illegitimate; with the
unavoidable inference that there is nothing else going on.
If he is a healthy young man he breaks loose from the whole thing,
despises "love stories" and takes up life as he finds it. But what
impression he does receive from fiction is a false one, and he suffers
without knowing it from lack of the truer broader views of life it
failed to give him.
A young woman faces life--the seventy year stretch remember; and is
given the same books--with restrictions. Remember the remark of
Rochefoucauld, "There are thirty good stories in the world and
twenty-nine cannot be told to women." There is a certain broad field of
literature so grossly androcentric that for very shame men have tried to
keep it to themselves. But in a milder form, the spades all named
teaspoons, or at the worst appearing as trowels--the young woman is
given the same fiction. Love and love and love--from "first sight" to
marriage. There it stops--just the fluttering ribbon of announcement,
"and lived happily ever after."
Is that kind of fiction any sort of picture of a woman's life? Fiction,
under our androcentric culture, has not given any true picture of
woman's life, very little of human life, and a disproportioned section
of man's life.
As we daily grow more human, both of us, this noble art is changing for
the better so fast that a short lifetime can mark the growth. New
fields are opening and new laborers are working in them. But it is no
swift and easy matter to disabuse the race mind from attitudes and
habits inculcated for a thousand years. What we have been fed upon so
long we are well used to, what we are used to we like, what we like we
think is good and proper.
The widening demand for broader, truer fiction is disputed by the slow
racial mind: and opposed by the marketers of literature on grounds of
visible self-interest, as well as lethargic conservatism.
It is difficult for men, heretofore the sole producers and consumers of
literature; and for women, new to the field, and following masculine
canons because all the canons were masculine; to stretch their minds to
a recognition of the change which is even now upon us.
This one narrow field has been for so long overworked, our minds are so
filled with heroes and heroes continually repeating the one-act play,
that when a book like David Harum is offered the publisher refuses it
repeatedly, and finally insists on a "heart interest" being injected by
force.
Did anyone read David Harum for that heart interest? Does anyone
remember that heart interest? Has humanity no interests but those of
the heart?
Robert Ellesmere was a popular book--but not because of its heart
interest.
Uncle Tom's Cabin appealed to the entire world, more widely than any
work of fiction that was ever written; but if anybody fell in love and
married in it they have been forgotten. There was plenty of love in
that book, love of family, love of friends, love of master for servant
and servant for master; love of mother for child; love of married people
for each other; love of humanity and love of God.
It was extremely popular. Some say it was not literature. That opinion
will live, like the name of Empedocles.
The art of fiction is being re-born in these days. Life is discovered
to be longer, wider, deeper, richer, than these monotonous players of
one June would have us believe.
The humanizing of woman of itself opens five distinctly fresh fields of
fiction: First the position of the young woman who is called upon to
give up her "career"--her humanness--for marriage, and who objects to
it; second, the middle-aged woman who at last discovers that her
discontent is social starvation--that it is not more love that she
wants, but more business in life: Third the interrelation of women with
women--a thing we could never write about before because we never had it
before: except in harems and convents: Fourth the inter-action between
mothers and children; this not the eternal "mother and child," wherein
the child is always a baby, but the long drama of personal relationship;
the love and hope, the patience and power, the lasting joy and triumph,
the slow eating disappointment which must never be owned to a living
soul--here are grounds for novels that a million mothers and many
million children would eagerly read: Fifth the new attitude of the
full-grown woman who faces the demands of love with the high standards
of conscious motherhood.
There are other fields, broad and brilliantly promising, but this
chapter is meant merely to show that our one-sided culture has, in this
art, most disproportionately overestimated the dominant instincts of the
male--Love and War--an offense against art and truth, and an injury to
life.
Read next: CHAPTER VI - GAMES AND SPORTS
Read previous: CHAPTER IV - MEN AND ART.
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