The Little Review, March 1914 (Vol. 1, No. 1) — John Shaqi
The Little Review, March 1914 (Vol. 1, No. 1)Various
General
The Little Review, March 1914 (Vol. 1, No. 1)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
It is altogether too early in the morning of humanity to expect to see
this play or one like it on the stage. That it should be written by a
young American and published by a young Englishman is enough to satisfy
those who would enjoy its presentation, and those to whom it would be
Greek or "unpleasant," whether they saw it or read it, must wait for its
truth through their children--across the dusk!
The Lost Joy
FLOYD DELL
There was once a lady (I forget her name) who said that love was for
women one of the most important things in the world. She made the remark
and let it go at that. She did not write a book about it. If she had
considered it necessary she would doubtless have written such a book.
Consider the possibility--a book entitled _Woman and Love_, a book
proving with logic and eloquence that woman ought to love, and that,
unless she loved, the highest self-development was impossible to her and
to the race!
It is not entirely absurd. Such a book might have been necessary. If
half of all womankind, through some change in our social and ethical
arrangements, refrained from love as something at once disagreeable and
ungenteel, and if the other half loved under conditions disastrous to
health and spirit, then there might have been need for a book preaching
to women the gospel of love. It would have been time to urge that,
hateful as the conditions might be, love was for women, nevertheless, a
good thing, a fine thing, a wonderful and necessary thing. It would have
been time to break down the prejudice which made one-half of womankind
lead incomplete and futile lives, and to raise love itself to its proper
dignity.
Well, we are in a condition like that today, only it is not love, it is
work that has lost its dignity in the lives of women. It is not love, it
is work from which one-half of womankind refrains as from something at
once disagreeable and ungenteel, while the other half of womankind
performs it under conditions disastrous to health and spirit.
There is need today for a book preaching to women the gospel of work. It
is time to break down the prejudice which makes one-half of womankind
lead incomplete and futile, because idle, lives. We need a book to show
women what work should mean to them.
And, curiously enough, the book exists. It is Olive Schreiner's _Woman
and Labor_. It is a wise book and a beautiful book. There are statistics
in it, but there is eloquence flaming on every page. It is a book of the
joy and the significance of work for women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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