Perhaps an exceptional few almost attained it, but, for all except those very few, it was a cruel, tantalizing sham on which they spent themselves, and of course their money, in vain.’
This time I did get in my protest.
‘But it wasn’t like that. Some of what you say may be true – but that’s all the superficial part. It didn’t feel a bit like the way you put it. I was in it. I
know
.’
She
shook her head reprovingly.
‘There is such a thing as being too close to make a proper evaluation. At a distance we are able to see more clearly. We can perceive it for what it was – a gross and heartless exploitation of the weaker-willed majority. Some women of education and resolution were able to withstand it, of course, but at a cost. There must always be a painful price for resisting majority pressure – even they could not always, altogether escape the feeling that they might be wrong, and that the rat-racers were having the better time of it.
‘You see, the great hopes for the emancipation of women with which the century had started had been outflanked. Purchasing-power had passed into the hands of the ill-educated and highly-suggestible. The desire for Romance is essentially a selfish wish, and when it is encouraged to dominate every other it breaks down all corporate loyalties. The individual woman thus separated from, and yet at the same time thrust into competition with, all other women was almost defenceless; she became the prey of organized suggestion. When it was represented to her that the lack of certain goods or amenities would be fatal to Romance she became alarmed and, thus, eminently exploitable. She could only believe what she was told, and spent a great deal of time worrying about whether she was doing all the right things to encourage Romance. Thus, she became, in a new, a subtler way, more exploited, more dependent, and less creative than she had ever been before.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘this is the most curiously unrecognizable account of my world that I have ever heard – it’s like something copied, but with all the proportions wrong. And as for “less creative” – well, perhaps families were smaller, but women still went on having babies. The population was still increasing.’
The old lady’s eyes dwelt on me a moment.
‘You are undoubtedly a thought-child of your time, in some ways,’ she observed. ‘What makes you think there is anything creative about having babies? Would you call a plant-pot creative
because seeds grow in it? It is a mechanical operation – and, like most mechanical operations, is most easily performed by the least intelligent. Now, bringing up a child, educating, helping her to become a
person
, that
is
creative. But unfortunately, in the time we are speaking of, women had, in the main, been successfully conditioned into bringing up their daughters to be unintelligent consumers, like themselves.’
‘But,’ I said helplessly, ‘I
know
the time. It’s my time. This is all distorted.’
‘The perspective of history must be truer,’ she told me again, unimpressed, and went on: ‘But if what happened
had
to happen, then it chose a fortunate time to happen. A hundred years earlier, even fifty years earlier, it would very likely have meant extinction. Fifty years later might easily have been too late – it might have come upon a world in which
all
women had profitably restricted themselves to domesticity and consumership. Luckily, however, in the middle of the century some women were still entering the professions, and by far the greatest number of professional women was to be found in medicine – which is to say that they were only really numerous in, and skilled in, the very profession which immediately became of vital importance if we were to survive at all.
‘I have no medical knowledge, so I cannot give you any details of the steps they took. All I can tell you is that there was intensive research on lines which will probably be more obvious
This time I did get in my protest.
‘But it wasn’t like that. Some of what you say may be true – but that’s all the superficial part. It didn’t feel a bit like the way you put it. I was in it. I
know
.’
She
shook her head reprovingly.
‘There is such a thing as being too close to make a proper evaluation. At a distance we are able to see more clearly. We can perceive it for what it was – a gross and heartless exploitation of the weaker-willed majority. Some women of education and resolution were able to withstand it, of course, but at a cost. There must always be a painful price for resisting majority pressure – even they could not always, altogether escape the feeling that they might be wrong, and that the rat-racers were having the better time of it.
‘You see, the great hopes for the emancipation of women with which the century had started had been outflanked. Purchasing-power had passed into the hands of the ill-educated and highly-suggestible. The desire for Romance is essentially a selfish wish, and when it is encouraged to dominate every other it breaks down all corporate loyalties. The individual woman thus separated from, and yet at the same time thrust into competition with, all other women was almost defenceless; she became the prey of organized suggestion. When it was represented to her that the lack of certain goods or amenities would be fatal to Romance she became alarmed and, thus, eminently exploitable. She could only believe what she was told, and spent a great deal of time worrying about whether she was doing all the right things to encourage Romance. Thus, she became, in a new, a subtler way, more exploited, more dependent, and less creative than she had ever been before.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘this is the most curiously unrecognizable account of my world that I have ever heard – it’s like something copied, but with all the proportions wrong. And as for “less creative” – well, perhaps families were smaller, but women still went on having babies. The population was still increasing.’
The old lady’s eyes dwelt on me a moment.
‘You are undoubtedly a thought-child of your time, in some ways,’ she observed. ‘What makes you think there is anything creative about having babies? Would you call a plant-pot creative
because seeds grow in it? It is a mechanical operation – and, like most mechanical operations, is most easily performed by the least intelligent. Now, bringing up a child, educating, helping her to become a
person
, that
is
creative. But unfortunately, in the time we are speaking of, women had, in the main, been successfully conditioned into bringing up their daughters to be unintelligent consumers, like themselves.’
‘But,’ I said helplessly, ‘I
know
the time. It’s my time. This is all distorted.’
‘The perspective of history must be truer,’ she told me again, unimpressed, and went on: ‘But if what happened
had
to happen, then it chose a fortunate time to happen. A hundred years earlier, even fifty years earlier, it would very likely have meant extinction. Fifty years later might easily have been too late – it might have come upon a world in which
all
women had profitably restricted themselves to domesticity and consumership. Luckily, however, in the middle of the century some women were still entering the professions, and by far the greatest number of professional women was to be found in medicine – which is to say that they were only really numerous in, and skilled in, the very profession which immediately became of vital importance if we were to survive at all.
‘I have no medical knowledge, so I cannot give you any details of the steps they took. All I can tell you is that there was intensive research on lines which will probably be more obvious
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