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Woman and Labour-Part16_Oliver Schreiner(1855-1920)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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excludes us from them. We are yet equally determined to enter those in



which sex difference does play its part, because it is here that woman, the

bearer of the race, must stand side by side with man, the begetter; if a



completed human wisdom, an insight that misses no aspect of human life, and

an activity that is in harmony with the entire knowledge and the entire



instinct of the entire human race, is to exist. It is here that the man

cannot act for the woman nor the woman for the man; but both must interact.



It is here that each sexual half of the race, so closely and

indistinguishably blended elsewhere, has its own distinctcontribution to



make to the sum total of human knowledge and human wisdom. Neither is the

woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, the completed human



intelligence.

Therefore;--We claim, today, all labour for our province! Those large



fields in which it would appear sex plays no part, and equally those

smaller in which it plays a part.



Chapter VI. Certain Objections.

It has been stated sometimes, though more often implicitly than in any



direct or logical form, (this statement being one it is not easy to make

definitely without its reducing itself to nullity!) that woman should seek



no fields of labour in the new world of social conditions that is arising

about us, as she has still her function as child-bearer: a labour which,



by her own showing, is arduous and dangerous, though she may love it as a

soldier loves his battlefield; and that woman should perform her sex



functions only, allowing man or the state to support her, even when she is

only potentially a child-bearer and bears no children. (Such a scheme, as



has before been stated, was actually put forward by a literary man in

England some years ago: but he had the sense to state that it should apply



only to women of the upper classes, the mass of labouring women, who form

the vast bulk of the English women of the present day, being left to their



ill-paid drudgery and their child-bearing as well!

There is some difficulty in replying to a theorist so wholly delusive. Not



only is he to be met by all the arguments against parasitism of class or

race; but, at the present day, when probably much more than half the



world's most laborious and ill-paid labour is still performed by women,

from tea pickers and cocoa tenders in India and the islands, to the



washerwomen, cooks, and drudging labouring men's wives, who in addition to

the sternest and most unending toil, throw in their child-bearing as a



little addition; and when, in some civilised countries women exceed the

males in numbers by one million, so that there would still be one million



females for whom there was no legitimatesexualoutlet, though each male in

the nation supported a female, it is somewhat difficult to reply with



gravity to the assertion, "Let Woman be content to be the 'Divine Child-

bearer,' and ask no more."



Were it worth replying gravely to so idle a theorist, we might answer:--

Through all the ages of the past, when, with heavy womb and hard labour-



worn hands, we physically toiled beside man, bearing up by the labour of

our bodies the world about us, it was never suggested to us, "You, the



child-bearers of the race, have in that one function a labour that equals

all others combined; therefore, toil no more in other directions, we pray



of you; neither plant, nor build, nor bend over the grindstone; nor far

into the night, while we sleep, sit weaving the clothing we and our



children are to wear! Leave it to us, to plant, to reap, to weave, to

work, to toil for you, O sacred child-bearer! Work no more; every man of



the race will work for you!" This cry in all the grim ages of our past

toil we never heard.



And today, when the lofty theorist, who tonight stands before the drawing-

room fire in spotless shirtfront and perfectlyfitting clothes, and



declaims upon the amplitude of woman's work in life as child-bearer, and

the mighty value of that labour which exceeds all other, making it



unnecessary for her to share man's grosser and lower toils: is it certain

he always in practical life remembers his theory? When waking tomorrow



morning, he finds that the elderly house drudge, who rises at dawn while he




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