H. Wells - The World Set Free

Humanity is not only naturally over-specialised in these matters,

but all its institutions, its customs, everything, exaggerate,

intensify this difference. I want to unspecialise women. No new

idea. Plato wanted exactly that. I do not want to go on as we go

now, emphasising this natural difference; I do not deny it, but I

want to reduce it and overcome it.'

'And-we remain women,' said Rachel Borken. 'Need you remain

thinkingof yourselvesas women?'

'It is forced upon us,' said Edith Haydon.

'I do not thinka woman becomes less of a woman because she

dresses and works like a man,' said Edwards. 'You women here, I

mean you scientific women, wear white clothing like the men,

twist up your hair in the simplest fashion, go about your work as

though there was only one sex in the world. You are just as much

women, even if you are not so feminine, as the fine ladies down

below there in the plains who dress for excitement and display,

whose only thoughtsare of lovers, who exaggerate every

difference… Indeed we love you more.'

'But we go about our work,' said Edith Haydon.

'So does it matter?' asked Rachel.

'If you go about your work and if the men go about their work

then for Heaven's sake be as much woman as you wish,' said

Karenin. 'When I ask you to unspecialise, I am thinkingnot of

the abolition of sex, but the abolition of the irksome,

restricting, obstructive obsession with sex. It may be truethat

sex made society, that the first society was the sex-cemented

family, the first statea confederacy of blood relations, the

first laws sexual taboos. Until a few years ago morality meant

proper sexual behaviour. Up to within a few years of us the

chief interest and motive of an ordinary man was to keep and rule

a woman and her children and the chief concern of a woman was to

get a man to do that. That was the drama, that was life. And the

jealousyof these demands was the master motive in the world. You

said, Kahn, a little while ago that sexual love was the key that

let one out from the solitude of self, but I tell you that so far

it has only done so in order to lock us all up again in a

solitude of two… All that may have been necessary but it is

necessary no longer. All that has changed and changes still very

swiftly. Your future, Rachel, AS WOMEN, is a diminishing future.'

'Karenin?' asked Rachel, 'do you mean that women are to become

men?'

'Men and women have to become human beings.'

'You would abolish women? But, Karenin, listen! There is more

than sex in this. Apart from sex we are different from you. We

take up life differently. Forget we are-females, Karenin, and

still we are a different sort of human beingwith a different

use. In some things we are amazingly secondary. Here am I in

this place because of my trick of management, and Edith is here

because of her patient, subtle hands. That does not alter the

fact that nearly the whole body of science is man made; that does

not alter the fact that men do so predominatingly make history,

that you could nearly write a complete history of the world

without mentioning a woman's name. And on the other hand we have

a gift of devotion, of inspiration, a distinctive power for truly

loving beautiful things, a care for life and a peculiar keen

close eye for behaviour. You knowmen are blind beside us in

these last matters. You knowthey are restless-and fitful. We

have a steadfastness. We may never draw the broad outlines nor

discover the new paths, but in the future isn't there a

confirming and sustaining and supplying role for us? As

important, perhaps, as yours? Equally important. We hold the

world up, Karenin, though you may have raised it.'

'You knowvery well, Rachel, that I believe as you believe. I am

not thinkingof the abolition of woman. But I do want to

abolish-the heroine, the sexual heroine. I want to abolish the

woman whose support is jealousyand whose gift possession. I

want to abolish the woman who can be won as a prize or locked up

as a delicious treasure. And away down there the heroine flares

like a divinity.'

'In America,' said Edwards, 'men are fighting duels over the

praises of women and holding tournaments before Queens of

Beauty.'

'I sawa beautiful girl in Lahore,' said Kahn, 'she sat under a

golden canopy like a goddess, and three fine men, armed and

dressed like the ancient paintings, sat on steps below her to

show their devotion. And they wanted only her permission to fight

for her.'

'That is the men's doing,' said Edith Haydon.

'I SAID,' cried Edwards, 'that man's imagination was more

specialised for sex than the whole beingof woman. What woman

would do a thing like that? Women do but submit to it or take

advantage of it.'

'There is no evil between men and women that is not a common

evil,' said Karenin. 'It is you poets, Kahn, with your love

songs which turn the sweet fellowship of comrades into this

woman-centred excitement. But there is something in women, in

many women, which respondsto these provocations; they succumb to

a peculiarly self-cultivating egotism. They become the subjects

of their own artistry. They develop and elaborate themselvesas

scarcely any man would ever do. They LOOK for golden canopies.

And even when they seem to react against that, they may do it

still. I have been reading in the old papers of the movements to

emancipate women that were going on before the discovery of

atomic force. These things which began with a desireto escape

from the limitations and servitude of sex, ended in an inflamed

assertion of sex, and women more heroines than ever. Helen of

Holloway was at last as big a nuisance in her way as Helen of

Troy, and so long as you thinkof yourselvesas women'-he held

out a finger at Rachel and smiled gently-'instead of thinkingof

yourselvesas intelligent beings, you will be in danger

of-Helenism. To thinkof yourselvesas women is to thinkof

yourselvesin relationto men. You can't escape that

consequence. You have to learn to thinkof yourselves-for our

sakes and your own sakes-in relationto the sun and stars. You

have to ceaseto be our adventure, Rachel, and come with us upon

our adventures…' He waved his hand towards the dark sky above

the mountain crests.

Section 8

'These questions are the next questions to which research will

bring us answers,' said Karenin. 'While we sit here and talk

idly and inexactly of what is needed and what may be, there are

hundreds of keen-witted men and women who are working these

things out, dispassionatelyand certainly, for the love of

knowledge. The next sciences to yield great harvests now will be

psychology and neural physiology. These perplexities of the

situation between man and woman and the trouble with the

obstinacy of egotism, these are temporary troubles, the issue of

our own times. Suddenly all these differences that seem so fixed

will dissolve, all these incompatibles will run together, and we

shall go on to mould our bodies and our bodily feelingsand

personal reactions as boldly as we begin now to carve mountains

and set the seas in their places and change the currents of the

wind.'

'It is the next wave,' said Fowler, who had come out upon the

terrace and seated himselfsilently behind Karenin's chair.

'Of course, in the old days,' said Edwards, 'men were tied to

their city or their country, tied to the homes they owned or the