VII

The first condition that is required from women is that they shall know themselves. A woman who is ignorant of her own weaknesses cannot help others, for she is incapable of correcting distortions caused by her own fear or anger. The conventional woman hangs conventional ideas between herself and her own nature, thus negating her deepest instincts. She despises and represses part of her own humanity; consequently she has a repressive instead of a fostering effect on other people. Women must therefore be frankly sincere with themselves if they are to be creative, and must make allowances for their own faults in dealing with others. One can only mete out to others the measure one has already meted to oneself.

But though the instrument is imperfect the possibilities are great. The second condition for the exercise of creative love is a boundless faith in the capacity of the human soul for growth. This is where women cannot let the doctrine of original sin stand between them and the individuals with whom they have to deal. The gospel for women is contained in the words, “the kingdom of Heaven is within you,” qualified by the knowledge that Heaven is not a static condition of bliss but a vital harmony of body and spirit. Such a belief demands the fullest scientific knowledge of what promotes or hinders health of body and of mind; and it is the business of the creative woman to get all the information she can.

Religion and morality for women thus resolve themselves into a belief that human life is significant, serving a destiny greater than itself, and the interpretation of that belief into terms of conduct. Because each individual is a unique problem the details of this conduct can never be codified; therefore the morality of women is ultimately spontaneous and individual, depending for guidance upon their creative energies, expressed through love.

The whole world needs creative women, and seems to be unaware of its need. Women themselves do not know how necessary they are. The result is that many waste themselves in trying to be men, and many are content to justify their existence by simple drudgery. There still remain many who feel that a woman should be more to her husband than the keeper of his house, and some of these reserve themselves for men with obvious disabilities, because they think that the average man has no real need of them. But, although the desire is unformulated, nearly all women desire to have a creative influence on their husbands. If it were not so, the “best-sellers” which circulate among women would not resemble each other so strikingly in one respect: the hero is always at odds with the world and is rescued from a gloomy fate by the great love of the heroine. If he is a reputed villain so much the better; the field of action for the heroine is all the clearer. Only a courageous woman looking for really difficult work would marry an ordinary man instead of a villain with a heart of gold.

Women’s creative work is implicitly recognised in many beliefs and customs. The difference between the morality of men and women, for example, is finely illustrated among the Syrian Arabs, where a prisoner on his way to execution is absolved from his sentence if he can lay hold of a woman’s skirts. It is felt, though not understood, by those men of our own country who complain that women have no sense of justice. It is exploited by commercial firms who establish women welfare workers to humanise their business systems, within limits. And the tradition that woman’s place is the home is possibly not entirely determined by the subordinate position of women, but may arise from a sound intuition about the nature of women and their functions. The home is a strategic centre for the creation of human beings. Moreover, a home does not imply a husband: marriage is a desirable but not a necessary condition for women’s creative work. Nor is it bounded by the four walls of a house; whatever affects the people within the home is a woman’s proper business.