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Woman and Labour-Part2_Oliver Schreiner(1855-1920)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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ideal of human nature, in which intellectual power and strength of will are

combined with an infinitetenderness and a wide human sympathy; a



combination which, whether in the person of the man or the woman, is

essential to the existence of the fully rounded and harmonised human



creature; and which an English woman of genius summed in one line when she

cried in her invocation of her great French sister:--



"Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man!"

One word more I should like to add, as I may not again speak or write on



this subject. I should like to say to the men and women of the generations

which will come after us--"You will look back at us with astonishment! You



will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished so little; at the, to

you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did not take; at the



intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we sat down passive; at

the great truths staring us in the face, which we failed to see; at the



truths we grasped at, but could never quite get our fingers round. You

will marvel at the labour that ended in so little--but, what you will never



know is how it was thinking of you and for you, that we struggled as we did

and accomplished the little which we have done; that it was in the thought



of your larger realisation and fuller life, that we found consolation for

the futilities of our own."



"What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me."

O.S.



Chapter I. Parasitism.

In that clamour which has arisen in the modern world, where now this, and



then that, is demanded for and by large bodies of modern women, he who

listens carefully may detect as a keynote, beneath all the clamour, a



demand which may be embodied in such a cry as this: Give us labour and the

training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves alone,



but for the race.

If this demand be logically expanded, it will take such form as this: Give



us labour! For countless ages, for thousands, millions it may be, we have

laboured. When first man wandered, the naked, newly-erected savage, and



hunted and fought, we wandered with him: each step of his was ours.

Within our bodies we bore the race, on our shoulders we carried it; we



sought the roots and plants for its food; and, when man's barbed arrow or

hook brought the game, our hands dressed it. Side by side, the savage man



and the savage woman, we wandered free together and laboured free together.

And we were contented!



Then a change came.

We ceased from our wanderings, and, camping upon one spot of earth, again



the labours of life were divided between us. While man went forth to hunt,

or to battle with the foe who would have dispossessed us of all, we



laboured on the land. We hoed the earth, we reaped the grain, we shaped

the dwellings, we wove the clothing, we modelled the earthen vessels and



drew the lines upon them, which were humanity's first attempt at domestic

art; we studied the properties and uses of plants, and our old women were



the first physicians of the race, as, often, its first priests and

prophets.



We fed the race at our breast, we bore it on our shoulders; through us it

was shaped, fed, and clothed. Labour more toilsome and unending than that



of man was ours; yet did we never cry out that it was too heavy for us.

While savage man lay in the sunshine on his skins, resting, that he might



be fitted for war or the chase, or while he shaped his weapons of death, he

ate and drank that which our hands had provided for him; and while we knelt



over our grindstone, or hoed in the fields, with one child in our womb,

perhaps, and one on our back, toiling till the young body was old before



its time--did we ever cry out that the labour allotted to us was too hard

for us? Did we not know that the woman who threw down her burden was as a



man who cast away his shield in battle--a coward and a traitor to his race?

Man fought--that was his work; we fed and nurtured the race--that was ours.



We knew that upon our labours, even as upon man's, depended the life and

well-being of the people whom we bore. We endured our toil, as man bore



his wounds, silently; and we were content.

Then again a change came.



Ages passed, and time was when it was no longer necessary that all men

should go to the hunt or the field of war; and when only one in five, or



one in ten, or but one in twenty, was needed continually for these labours.




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