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Woman and Labour-Part4_Oliver Schreiner(1855-1920)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient field

of labour.



Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult years

were reached. Hers was the training and influence which shaped them. From



the moment when the infant first lay on her breast, till her daughters left

her for marriage and her sons went to take share in man's labour, they were



continually under the mother's influence. Today, so complex have become

even the technical and simpler branches of education, so mighty and



inexorable are the demands which modern civilisation makes for specialised

instruction and training for all individuals who are to survive and retain



their usefulness under modern conditions, that, from the earliest years of

its life, the child is of necessity largely removed from the hands of the



mother, and placed in those of the specialised instructor. Among the

wealthier classes, scarcely is the infant born when it passes into the



hands of the trained nurse, and from hers on into the hands of the

qualified teacher; till, at nine or ten, the son in certain countries often



leaves his home for ever for the public school, to pass on to the college

and university; while the daughter, in the hands of trained instructors and



dependents, owes in the majority of cases hardly more of her education or

formation to maternal toil. While even among our poorer classes, the



infant school, and the public school; and later on the necessity for manual

training, takes the son and often the daughter as completely, and always



increasingly as civilisation advances, from the mother's control. So

marked has this change in woman's ancient field of labour become, that a



woman of almost any class may have borne many children and yet in early

middle age be found sitting alone in an empty house, all her offspring gone



from her to receive training and instruction at the hands of others. The

ancient statement that the training and education of her offspring is



exclusively the duty of the mother, however true it may have been with

regard to a remote past, has become an absolute misstatement; and the woman



who should at the present day insist on entirely educating her own

offspring would, in nine cases out of ten, inflict an irreparable injury on



them, because she is incompetent.

But, if possible, yet more deeply and radically have the changes of modern



civilisation touched our ancient field of labour in another direction--in

that very portion of the field of human labour which is peculiarly and



organically ours, and which can never be wholly taken from us. Here the

shrinkage has been larger than in any other direction, and touches us as



women more vitally.

Time was, and still is, among almost all primitive and savage folk, when



the first and all-important duty of the female to her society was to bear,

to bear much, and to bear unceasingly! On her adequate and persistent



performance of this passive form of labour, and of her successful feeding

of her young from her own breast, and rearing it, depended, not merely the



welfare, but often the very existence, of her tribe or nation. Where, as

is the case among almost all barbarous peoples, the rate of infant



mortality is high; where the unceasing casualties resulting from war, the

chase, and acts of personal violence tend continually to reduce the number



of adult males; where, surgical knowledge being still in its infancy, most

wounds are fatal; where, above all, recurrent pestilence and famine,



unfailing if of irregular recurrence, decimated the people, it has been all

important that woman should employ her creative power to its very uttermost



limits if the race were not at once to dwindle and die out. "May thy

wife's womb never cease from bearing," is still today the highest



expression of goodwill on the part of a native African chief to his

departing guest. For, not only does the prolific woman in the primitive



state contribute to the wealth and strength of her nation as a whole, but

to that of her own male companion and of her family. Where the social



conditions of life are so simple that, in addition to bearing and suckling

the child, it is reared and nourished through childhood almost entirely



through the labour and care of the mother, requiring no expenditure of

tribal or family wealth on its training or education, its value as an adult



enormously outweighs, both to the state and the male, the trouble and

expense of rearing it, which falls almost entirely on the individual woman



who bears it. The man who has twenty children to become warriors and




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