"WOMAN" WITH A BIG "W"
THAT very clever lady, Miss Rose Macaulay, some short time ago delighted an audience mostly of her own sex with an address on "Women as News."
The object of her satire was the habit of generalizing about what she called " Woman ' with a big W' " ; apparently in her view a masculine habit. One need not be so sure about that : but even if she admitted that women journalists and essayists and novelists were at times guilty of the practice, she would probably say that they caught the infection from men. A great deal of nonsense is, to be sure, talked in this particular shape, and she made excellent play with a passage, read aloud, in which a simple transposition, substituting " man " for "woman," yielded just as good sense—or nonsense --as the original. "Man is the home-maker ; he is there to quiet, to allay and to guide " : that is true in just about as many instances as if you left " woman " at the head of the text. For that matter Miss Macaulay might have gone to one of the great generalizers who do not pass for mere platitudinarians. La Rochefou- cautd, for instance, lays down this maxim : "No rule will stand in the minds or affections of women unless their temperament consents to it." Suppose you put " men " instead, would it be less true ? Or for that matter when he writes : Women's virtue is often love for a good name and a quiet life," does that apply to women only ? Or again : "Women use their wit more to back up their folly than their sense." Think of the wittiest men. Sheridan—what did he do with his wit ? Or conversely, Miss Austen : wit was never more completely under the control of reason than with her. These generalizations are as leaky as sieves.
But for all that, generalizations are useful things if one remembers to allow for the exceptions; and both the sexes have always been " sex-conscious " if one may adapt a phrase. The truth seems to be that while certain prophets are endeavouring to drill a section of society into class-consciousness, certain other prophets, and Kiss Macaulay among them, want to break loose from the sex-conscious obsession. They resent generaliza- tions about woman because woman is various, to a degree unknown before she became specialized.
In La Rochefoucauld's time, men and women (in so far as he was concerned with them, and this is a drastic limitation) were first of all separated off by their distinct parts in what Maurice Hewlett used to call "the great affair "—and in all its complex manifestations, approaches, reproaches, diversions, perversions, etcetera. To that extent, sound separate generalizations about either sex could be formed ; though when the aphorist observes that "Women are not aware of all their coquetry," neither, he might have added, are men. The peacock is more coquettish than the peahen, and perhaps men are responsible for giving this useful word a stupidly limited application. But on the other hand, men in La Rochefoucauld's world were subdivided by the business of life into soldiers, sailors, politicians, lawyers, doctors, tax collectors, merchants, and so forth ; while the women—those of his class, with whom alone he was concerned—were simply women. That was their job ; they had no other. Society could generalize, and did— and does—about lawyers, thinking that their nature is subdued to what it works in. But nowadays when we have women lawyers will the generalization need a sub-division ? It is early days yet to talk about the law, because men have still a virtual monopoly. But it should be less difficult to say whether women doctors exhibit the same characteristics as the world habitually attributes to their professional brethren. Probably, yes. There is only one profession which women have for long divided with men, and that is the stage : it puts its mark unmistakably on human character, and many things can be affirmed plausibly about actors as a body. All of them apply to the men just as fitly as to the women. But nobody has ever suggested that actresses were less distinctively women for being actresses ; and there is no reason to believe that women will be any the less women for being doctors ; though they will be none the less doctors for being women.
At least that will be true, on one proviso. Marriage has not been considered as the end of an actress's career : it has been compatible with the exercise of her profession. How does that stand with women doctors ? A great many women at present exercise vocations which in a large percentage of cases they will drop on getting married. They are specialized only for the emergency ; their real• purpose is to get back to their proper task, the job of unspecialized woman. On them, their tem- porary vocation leaves little mark. Heaven knows there are enough typists and typist-secretaries in the world to-day, yet who would generalize about typists as we do about doctors? But there are also an increasing number of 'women who have taken up work that they mean to stick to, married or single, as a man does to his trade : and they are drawn from all classes. If La Rochefoucauld came to life, one of the things that would most surprise him would be Lady This running an antique shop, and Madam That selling hats. Prob- ably among business men (that most unscientific of generic names) there are already useful generalizations about the special qualities of women in business.
Yet, after all, what is new here is only the extension to the " leisured " class of vocations which have been common among women of other classes, since shops began. For the management of a shop comes easy to a woman, and in the least consciously feminist communities, such as the West of Ireland, " businesses " have been con- trolled by them, generally under a man's name, but often under their own. Frenchmen habituallymake their wives partners in their business discussions, to a degree that is very rare in Britain. " Woman " may be less con- spicuously an invader of man's sphere in France than here to-day, but is much less of a newcomer in it.
If the fact of doing work or having responsibilities outside the home could unsex, or alter the qualities of woman as woman, what results would have been seen through the centuries among the doers of manual toil —in field or factory ? Yet Mr. Hardy, who knows, if anyone does, makes his women farm hands as charac- teristically women as his men are men. Supposing that women become as important in politics or in law as they are in the theatre, suppose they successfully invade the Stock Exchange as well as Parliament, it will still be just as possible as ever to generalize intelligently about women and about men. It will be more possible about women ; for in the last resort, so long as the species continues to be reproduced and family life to subsist, there will be a larger proportion of women than of men having identically the same preoccupations and occupations. To that extent general observations about their sex can be more sweeping than about the male ; and therefore there will be always the same special temptation for writers and talkers to lump all women in a single phrase, as angels or the other thing. But Miss Macaulay's test is a useful one to bear in mind. Put " men " instead of " women" and see how it reads. Unless your aphorism makes nonsense in that way, it certainly does not make good sense in the other.
STEPHEN GWYNN. '
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