A Tour of the Western Woman's World

It will be observed that the clamor which arose, and is still rising, among us over woman's work, her rights, and her duties died down in the West long ago, because the woman's renaissance there has passed beyond the stage of theories. Indeed, I rather think that this stage is nearly at an end among us as well, and that the shouting of the conservatives is no more than a cry in the wilderness, for woman's evolution proceeds — even in the East — quite apart from their opinions.

Let us hear what François Mauriac says — a writer of the earlier generation and a member of the French Academy — when asked his opinion of the modern woman's freedom. He said: The modern woman did not elect her present freedom; rather, this freedom was imposed upon her by evolving industrial and commercial conditions.

Hervé Bazin comments on this, saying: The modern woman's freedom is not the outcome of theories and principles brought forth by writers and peddlers of words. Rather, the spread of factories, the flourishing of offices and stores, and the multiplication of occupations calling for women's work in war and in peace — all this forced her out of her house and granted her the freedom of mingling with the other sex. On the other hand, the crises that follow wars would expose members of the middle class to bankruptcy, so that they were obliged to put their daughters to work.

Then the spread of learning was a further spur to woman toward fruitful work, until we began to see the daughters of the privileged, pampered class grow weary of the life of idleness and of appearances in salons with their stifling air, and enroll in institutes of learning or art or social service, acting on this great modern principle: work is the road to freedom... Woman tasted freedom for the first time when she drew her first monthly salary and realized that she was no longer a burden on her family nor a burden on her husband.

Hervé Bazin was asked: to what dangers is the emancipated woman exposed? He said:

She is freer than her grandmother, but her hours of leisure are few and afford her no opportunity to stray far into wrongdoing. Even so, the emancipated woman is liable to collide with the old traditions, for she has grown used to acting according to her own will, and her will collides with the will of her family, or of her husband, or of her fiancé; hence the multiplication of family problems and of cases of divorce, which has today become easier than in the past, because woman is better able to earn her living and do without a husband. But every change brings problems and difficulties in its train, whose solution is left to time.

— And what effect has working life had on her personality besides what you have mentioned? Has she changed in her essence?

— I do not think so, Hervé Bazin answers. Woman is still what she was, in her virtues and in her shortcomings. She has skill in handwork, patience and long endurance, a sense of responsibility, and competence in bearing the burdens of a profession; but she remains, as of old, poor in invention and imagination. She meets with success in the professions that call for talk: journalism, literature, teaching, the law; and in the callings of social relief that suit her temperament: nursing, medicine, and social service; and in mechanical work, in offices, stores, and factories, where she gives proof of precision and thoroughness — while you will rarely find her in other callings, such as soldiering or the police and other work of men.

And she is still, like her grandmother, sentimental in her amusements. She has exchanged the arts of luxury, such as painting and music, for practical occupations like knitting wool and reading the news journals.

Q — And what is the emancipated woman's attitude toward marriage?

A — Woman still counts marriage her first profession. While the number of working girls has grown until it is six times what it was in France some years ago, we find that the number of married working women has no more than doubled. Nevertheless, woman sees no alternative to arming herself with a profession that protects her against emergencies, secures her economic independence, and brings her money at need.

Q — And what is your view of this phenomenon now spreading in Western Europe, the phenomenon of free marriage and illegitimate children? Is woman's freedom to be held responsible for it?

A — To some extent. Free marriage means that the couple are bound by no contract, so that parting becomes easy when one of them tires of the other, or when parting is necessary. Among the factors that encourage it are the decline in the number of men in the wake of the wars, and the working woman's ability to feed her children without a husband's help, especially when she obtains a government allowance. It is encouraged, too, by the weakening hold of tradition over Western minds and the individual's independence of opinion; and then by the views of Freud and the theories of psychoanalysis, which enjoy a great vogue, and whose upshot is that motherhood is necessary to woman's physiological life, and that her greatness lies not in celibacy but in motherhood. Nevertheless, it is observed that the number of illegitimate children is on the decline, and free marriage may prove an abnormal, temporary condition created by the circumstances of war and by the measures of governments eager to multiply the population.

Q — Do you prefer the woman of today to the woman of yesterday?

A — Without a doubt, François Mauriac answers. The modern woman is better than the old. She is broader in culture and more energetic. Today she is her children's companion, not their servant; her husband's comrade, not his slave. She does not disown the love match, but she does not make love alone the object of her trust; she brings practical considerations into it as well.

She is less given to coquetry and pampering, less attached to gowns and jewels, firmer of soul, and further removed from excess of softness and delicacy.

In the old days some women of the upper class were forced into virtue — into the life of the convent, or the life of captivity within closed palaces — so that their virtue was artificial; while the daughters of the common people were forced into prostitution to satisfy the appetites of the sons of the privileged. Today there is no compulsion toward virtue, nor toward prostitution. Today's virtue is worth more than yesterday's, because it is freely chosen; and today's marriage is better than yesterday's, because woman accepts it by her own choice, not from the pressure of necessity.

As for the conclusion I wish to reach, it is this:

First, that woman's evolution among us moves along the track of the evolution the women of the West have traversed, but more slowly and with greater reserve; and that the circumstances which drove them, there, toward freedom and work are the very ones now driving our women along this road.

Second, that the pivot of the Western woman's liberties is her economic freedom — that is, her ability to earn her own living — and this freedom rests on two things: first, her taking up work; second, her equality with man in inheritance. Woman's freedom among us will become an accomplished fact on the day when every woman arms herself with a profession that gives her the sense of her independence and gives her the right of equality with man — not in inheritance alone, but in all rights, the political included.