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Woman and Labour-Part9_Oliver Schreiner(1855-1920)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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possible. Beneath that body of women of the dominant class or race, who

did not labour either mentally or physically" target="_blank" title="ad.按照自然规律">physically, there has always been of



necessity a far more vast body of females who not only performed the crude

physical toil essential to the existence of society before the introduction



of mechanical methods of production, but who were compelled to labour the

more intensely because there was a parasite class above them to be



maintained by their physical toil. The more the femaleparasite flourished

of old, in one class or race, the more certainly all women of other classes



or races were compelled to labour only too excessively; and ultimately

these females and their descendants were apt to supplant the more enervated



class or race. In the absence of machinery and of a vast employment of the

motor-forces of nature, parasitism could only threaten a comparatively



small section of any community, and a minute section of the human race as a

whole. Female parasitism in the past resembled gout--a disease dangerous



only to the over-fed, pampered, and few, never to the population of any

society as a whole.



At the present day, so enormous has been the advance made in the

substitution of mechanical force for crude, physical, human exertion



(mechanical force being employed today even in the shaping of feeding-

bottles and the creation of artificial foods as substitutes for mother's



milk!), that it is now possible not only for a small and wealthy section of

women in each civilised community to be maintained without performing any



of the ancient, crude, physical labours of their sex, and without depending

on the slavery of, or any vast increase in the labour of, other classes of



females; but this condition has already been reached, or is tending to be

reached, by that large mass of women in civilised societies, who form the



intermediate class between poor and rich. During the next fifty years, so

rapid will undoubtedly be the spread of the material conditions of



civilisation, both in the societies at present civilised and in the

societies at present unpermeated by our material civilisation, that the



ancient forms of female, domestic, physical labour of even the women of the

poorest classes will be little required, their place being taken, not by



other females, but by always increasingly perfected labour-saving

machinery.



Thus, female parasitism, which in the past threatened only a minute section

of earth's women, under existing conditions threatens vast masses, and may,



under future conditions, threaten the entire body.

If woman is content to leave to the male all labour in the new and all-



important fields which are rapidly opening before the human race; if, as

the old forms of domestic labour slip from her for ever and evitably, she



does not grasp the new, it is inevitable, that, ultimately, not merely a

class, but the whole bodies of females in civilised societies, must sink



into a state of more or less absolutedependence on their sexualfunctions

alone. (How real is this apparently very remote danger is interestingly



illustrated by a propositiongravely made a few years ago by a man of note

in England. He proposed that a compulsoryprovision should be made for at



least the women of the upper and middle classes, by which they might be

maintained through life entirely without regard to any productive labour



they might perform, not even the passive labour of sexual reproduction

being of necessity required of them. That this proposal was received by



the women striving to reconstruct the relation of the modern woman to life

without acclamation and with scorn, may have surprised its maker; but with



no more reason than that man would have for feeling surprise who, seeing a

number of persons anxious to escape the infection of some contagious



disease, should propose as a cure to inoculate them all with it in its most

virulent form!)



As new forms of natural force are mastered and mechanical appliances

perfected, it will be quite possible for the male half of all civilised






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