Our Androcentric Culture, or The Man Made World

K's-Kuchen, Kinder, Kirche, Kleider. They iterate and reiterate endlessly the discussion of cookery, old and new; of the care of children; of the overwhelming subject of clothing; and

limited feminine interests, their feminine point of view, which must be provid

generally speaking, have been taught to read; still more lately that they have been allowed to write. It is but a little while

een far wider than that, monopolizing this form of art with special favor. It was suited above all others to the dominant impulse of self-expression; and being, a

oks, no men either writing or reading them, that would have surely "feminized" our literature;

d or said was human-and not to be criticized. In no department of life is it easier to contravert this old belief; to show how

r permanent use speech becomes oral tradition-a poor dependence. Literature gives not only an infinite multiplication to the lateral spread of communion but adds the vertical reach. Through it we know the past,

ly on the effect of an exclusively masculine handling of the two fields of history and fiction. In poetry and th

? The story of warfare and conquest. Begin at the very beginning with the car

e land of Kush, and slew of the inhabitants thereof an hundred and forty and two t

the primitive state of most ancient kings, and the Roman triumphs where queens walked in chains, down to our omni present soldier's monuments: the story of war

s biased and unfair. "That was the way peo

ot the way

eader, "Of course not!

development. Society was slowly growing in all those black blind years. The arts, the sciences, the trades and crafts and professions, re

, triumphs over his rival and takes the prize-

e and said and written, have given us not only a social growth scarred and thwarted from the beginning by continu

int of view. Within this last century, "the woman's century," the century of the great awakening, the rising demand for freedom, political, economic, and domestic, we are beginning to write real history,

of all, the most used. Since our very life depends on some communication; and our progress is in proportion to our fullness and freedom of communication; since rea

ture," their range of emotion and understanding; our greatest poets are those who most deeply and widely experience and reveal the feelings of t

al brain activity; the legend constructed instead of remembered. (This stage is with

e; yet it is still restricted, heavi

erred subject ma

om the Romaunt of the Rose to the Purplish Magaz

evenson and Kipling have proved its immense popularity, with the whole brood of detective stories and the tales of

d murdering, catching and punishing, are distinctly and essentially masculine. They do not touch on human pr

re forced into line with one, or both, of these two main branches of fiction;-conflict or love. Unless the story has one of these "int

e that these are the two essential features o

n, we should remember, who are types of human life as well as men, and their major processes are not those of conflict and adventure, their love means more than mating. Even on so poor a line of distinction as the "wo

n is In this line; this is preeminently the major interest of life

Pursuit of Her-and it stops when he gets her! Story after story, age after

viduals and groups, covering all emotions, all processes, all experiences. Out of this vast field of

rotests the reader. "This is personal e

marvels of youth, the long working time of middle life, the slow ripening of age. Here is the human soul, in the human body, Living. Out of this field of p

e dispute this, and say it treats equally of woman's love fo

jest, revealing m

and woo her as he did before marriage; to which he replies,

"love" is to be selected as the most important thing in life to write about, then the mother's love should be the principal subject: This is the main stream. This is the general under

itement about lover-love? Why is the search-light continually focussed upon a two or three years space of life "mid the blank miles round abou

service of the queen; and far beyond that it would spread to the blue glory of the summer sky, the fresh winds, the endless beauty and sweetness of a thousand thousand flowers. It wou

have no subject matter save the feasting

instincts are second to it. To the female, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a passing intere

ling. In Human Parentage even the mother's share begins to pale beside that ev

and intensified, the artist, if great enough, has transcended sex; and in the mightier works of the real masters, we find fiction treati

people, doing all kinds of things. As you recall with pleasure some preferred novel of this general favorite, you find yourself looking nar

ular form in which this world-food is taken. If it were true, it would teach us life easily, swiftly, truly; teach not by preaching but by truly re-presenting; and we should

er, and is given book upon book wherein one set of feelings is continually vocalized and overestimated. He reads forever of love, good l

kes up life as he finds it. But what impression he does receive from fiction is a false one, and

e told to women." There is a certain broad field of literature so grossly androcentric that for very shame men have tried to keep it to themselves. But in a milder form, the spades all named teaspoons, or at the w

der our androcentric culture, has not given any true picture of woman's li

e opening and new laborers are working in them. But it is no swift and easy matter to disabuse the race mind from attitudes and habits inculcated f

slow racial mind: and opposed by the marketers of literature on gr

or women, new to the field, and following masculine canons because all the canons were ma

eroes continually repeating the one-act play, that when a book like David Harum is offered the p

est? Does anyone remember that heart interest? H

opular book-but not beca

ve and married in it they have been forgotten. There was plenty of love in that book, love of family, love of friends, love of master

t was not literature. That opinion w

s discovered to be longer, wider, deeper, richer, than th

business in life: Third the interrelation of women with women-a thing we could never write about before because we never had it before: except in harems and convents: Fourth the inter-action between mothers and children; this not the eternal "mother and child," wherein the child is always a baby, but the long drama of personal relationship; the love an

ow that our one-sided culture has, in this art, most disproportionately overestimated the domin