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Woman and Labour-Part5_Oliver Schreiner(1855-1920)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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us who are child-bearers are required, in proportion as the class of race

to which we belong stands high in the scale of civilisation, to produce in



most cases a limited number of offspring; so that even for these of us,

child-bearing and suckling, instead of filling the entire circle of female



life from the first appearance of puberty to the end of middle age, becomes

an episodal occupation, employing from three or four to ten or twenty of



the threescore-and-ten-years which are allotted to human life. In such

societies the statement (so profoundly true when made with regard to most



savage societies, and even largely true with regard to those in the

intermediate stages of civilisation) that the main and continuous



occupation of all women from puberty to age is the bearing and suckling of

children, and that this occupation must fully satisfy all her needs for



social labour and activity, becomes an antiquated and unmitigated

misstatement.



Not only are millions of our women precluded from ever bearing a child, but

for those of us who do bear the demand is ever increasingly in civilised



societies coupled with the condition that if we would act socially we must

restrict our powers. (As regards modern civilised nations, we find that



those whose birthrate is the highest per woman are by no means the

happiest, most enlightened, or powerful; nor do we even find that the



population always increases in proportion to the births. France, which in

many respects leads in the van of civilisation, has one of the lowest



birthrates per woman in Europe; and among the free and enlightened

population of Switzerland and Scandinavia the birthrate is often



exceedingly low; while Ireland, one of the most unhappy and weak of

European nations, had long one of the highest birthrates, without any



proportional increase in population or power. With regard to the different

classes in one community, the same effect is observable. The birthrate per



woman is higher among the lowest and most ignorant classes in the back

slums of our great cities, than among the women of the upper and cultured



classes, mainly because the age at which marriages are contracted always

tends to become higher as the culture and intelligence of individuals



rises, but also because of the regulation of the number of births after

marriage. Yet the number of children reared to adult years among the more



intelligent classes probably equals or exceeds those of the lowest, owing

to the high rate of infantmortality where births are excessive.)



Looking round, then, with the uttermost impartiality we can command, on the

entire field of woman's ancient and traditional labours, we find that fully



three-fourths of it have shrunk away for ever, and that the remaining

fourth still tends to shrink.



It is this great fact, so often and so completely overlooked, which lies as

the propelling force behind that vast and restless "Woman's Movement" which



marks our day. It is this fact, whether clearly and intellectually

grasped, or, as is more often the case, vaguely and painfully felt, which



awakes in the hearts of the ablest modern European women their passionate,

and at times it would seem almost incoherent, cry for new forms of labour



and new fields for the exercise of their powers.

Thrown into strictlogical form, our demand is this: We do not ask that



the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life flow

backward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning-wheels be again



resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old

grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake



himself entirely to his ancient province of war and the chase, leaving to

us all domestic and civil labour. We do not even demand that society shall



immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a child-

bearer (deep and over-mastering as lies the hunger for motherhood in every



virile woman's heart!); neither do we demand that the children whom we bear

shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. This, we know,



cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone for ever; no

will of man can recall them; but this is our demand: We demand that, in



that strange new world that is arising alike upon the man and the woman,

where nothing is as it was, and all things are assuming new shapes and






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