In the case of acting the human element is the most important factor,
for here there is not only an audience to act to but the human content
of the acting itself. The human orientation also accounts for the
relatively high position of literature in the list when compared
to sculpture and painting and to musical composition. Finally, the
creativeness of musical performance and acting--two fields in which
woman excels--is concrete when compared to that of literature, the arts
and musical composition. Incidentally, a sidelight is thus thrown on
the case of science where woman’s relative preeminence is found in the
concrete and technical domain of the laboratory.
The preceding analysis leads to the conclusion that woman’s strength
lies in the concrete as contrasted with the abstract, the technical
as contrasted with the ideational, the human as contrasted with the
universal and detached. This conclusion, it may be of interest to
note, harmonizes perfectly with the general consensus of mankind, as
expressed in lay opinion and the judgments of literary men.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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