The Weekly Machen
The following article is the fourth in a series by Arthur Machen for The Daily Express. For more information, see Little Sights of London.
Dishevelled Children
Mere Man’s Opinion of Women
by
Arthur Machen
September 28, 1918
There are a good many things in “Women” that remind one of a certain parable of corked wine told by Mr. Mallock. The argument was against Socialism, the speaker was a wealthy man.
“You are foolish,” he said, in effect, to his Socialist antagonist, “to demand all these things, thinking that they will do you any good or that you will enjoy them. We rich people have had all these things for a long time, and we don’t enjoy them, and they haven’t done us any good. I assure you the wine is corked.”
So the author of “Women”—he is no doubt wise to remain anonymous—describes women as straining to possess all manner of things which they do not really want and will not like when they get them. Women, says the author, have demanded education.
“They do not want education for its own sake, for the love of knowledge; they want it because its glitter has caught their eye. ‘If only I had education,’ they say, ‘shouldn’t I be fine!,’ as though education is a costume in which they will be decked to admiration!”
He is really a refreshing fellow, this author—again, wise man to remain anonymous. He has no doubts, no reservations.
“Upon the consideration in which they [women] are held rests the whole of their happiness in work. Remove that, and they are dishevelled children, weak and vicious and despondent . . . . At heart they will remain for ever a sex without power to create . . . . Triumph, for women, would end in sterility in all the acts and enterprises of the modern world.”
Perhaps the cruellest cut of all is on the last page of the book: “Nature will be too strong for women, and they will strive to be what they believe the men to wish.”
For the third time one congratulates the author on his prudent anonymity; but if he be really wise he will make haste and take the robe of the Buddhist monk in some remote abbey of Tibet, in some abbey on a far peak where no women can penetrate.
Previous: A Real Roly-Poly Pudding
Next: London’s Tree Tyrant
darklybrightpress.com 
The Wikipedia article,”Representation of the People Act 1918″, notes “The very final vote on 6 February 1918 in the House of Commons that led to royal assent of the bill was passed with 224 Ayes to 114 Noes” and that the Royal Assent – and immediate Commencement – of the Act followed the same day. And states further that it enfranchised “women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications. The enfranchisement of this latter group was accepted as recognition of the contribution made by women defence workers.”
The article, “1918 United Kingdom general election”, says it “was called immediately after the Armistice with Germany which ended the First World War” – which I take to mean on or soon after 11 November, some 44 days after Machen’s article appeared – “and was held on Saturday, 14 December 1918.”
Machen quotes, “Upon the consideration in which they [women] are held rests the whole of their happiness in work.” I expect he would have a – nuanced – opinion as to how that did, or did not, apply to the anonymous publications of Miss Austen or the Misses Brontë.
LikeLike
Sloppy! – I should have distinguished “the pseudonymous ones of the Misses Brontë”!
LikeLike