A little while ago, when Britain was floating a large war loan, one
woman told me that she could not understand its terms. We went into them
together, and she found that she understood perfectly. _She was
surprised._ She had always assumed that she did not understand finance,
and the assumption had kept her down, prevented her from understanding
it. Likewise, and until they try, many women think they cannot read maps
and time-tables.
With that heredity environment has coalesced, and I think no one will
deny that a continuous suggestion of helplessness and mental inferiority
must affect woman. It means most during youth, when one is easily
snubbed, when one looks up to one's elders. By the time one has found
out one's elders, it is generally too late; the imprint is made, and
woman, looking upon herself as inferior, hands on to her daughters the
old slavery that was in her forbears' blood. To me this seems foolish,
and during the past thirty or forty years a great many have come to
think so too; they have shown it by opening wide to woman the doors of
colleges, many occupations and professions. Many are to-day impatient
because woman has not done enough, has not justified this new freedom. I
think they are unjust; they do not understand that a generation of
training and of relative liberty is not enough to undo evils neolithic
in origin. All that we are doing to-day by opening gates to women is to
counter-influence the old tradition, to implant in the woman of
to-morrow the new faith that nothing is beyond her powers. It lies with
the woman of to-day to make that faith so strong as to move mountains. I
think she will succeed, for I doubt whether any mental power is inherent
in sex. There are differences of degree, differences of quality; but I
suspect that they are mainly due to sexual heredity, to environment, to
suggestion, and that indeed, if I may trench upon biology, human
creatures are never entirely male or entirely female; there are no men,
there are no women, but only sexual majorities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account