Review of the Book

Concerning Women

By Suzanne LaFollette

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April 1927]

This is a volume of three hundred odd pages written by Suzanne LaFollette and published by Albert and Charles Boni.

It is with scant patience that the reflecting man or woman regards the general tendency to be interested in what Mr. Soandso writes about women. It ought to be a matter of no importance at all what some individual male has to say of the opposite sex, yet this literature has grown until it now assumes bulky proportions. It is curious to reflect that we are almost totally without a literature that will tell us what Women Think of Men, studies of the male sex written in the same self sufficient manner of these masculine and a few feminine lucubrations, until we wonder if there are two species rather than two sexes.

This tendency to place woman under the microscope and pronounce magisterially upon her habits as if she were a recently discovered natural phenomenon, and not a part of the human race influenced by the vices and virtues that naturally react upon men and women alike, arises from that concept of superiority which men assume toward women, and partly, too, from the subordinate economic position into which she even more than man is placed. It is for these reasons that we are without "Studies of Men" from female writers to be added to this already portentous and, for the most part, worthless literature.

When we saw the title "Concerning Women" we feared that we were opening another volume from [one of the many schools of "Feminists," which is the name given to these philosophers who discuss the "Woman Question" as if it were a thing apart from the human question. We were happily undeceived. Miss LaFollette sees no way of tearing apart the two groups of humanity and considering them as isolated phenomena. That kind of fatuous speculation is not for this clearsighted young woman who writes intelligently, spiritedly, even profoundly, with a mastery of a prose style remarkable for its clean hitting, vigorous and decisive strokes.

Here for example on page 117:

"The ultimate emancipation of women, then, will depend not upon the abolition of the restrictions which have subjected her to man that is but a step, though a necessary one but upon the abolition of all those restrictions of natural human rights that subject the mass of humanity to a privileged class."

And on page 178 where she speaks of those laws relating to women workers, so many of which have inured to her disadvantage, though imposed for her protection:

"There is in all this bungling effort to ameliorate the ills of working women and to safeguard through them the future of the race, a tacit recognition of economic injustice and a strange incuriousness about its causes."

And on page 190:

"Under a monopolistic economic system the opportunity to earn a living by one's labor comes to be regarded as a privilege instead of a natural right. Women are simply held to be less entitled to this privilege than men."

And on page 195 where we shall accord ourselves the privilege of a more lengthy citation:

"Here, then, is the tacit assumption that marriage is the special concern of woman, and one whose claims must take precedence over her other interests, whatever they may be; that marriage and mother hood constitute her normal life, and her other interests something extra normal which must somehow be made to fit in if possible. I have heard of no institute intended to find a way to reconcile the normal life of marriage and fatherhood with a life of intellectual activity, professional or otherwise; although when one considers how many educated men of today are obliged to compromise with their consciences in order to secure themselves in positions which will enable them to provide for their families, one is persuaded that some such institute might at least be equally appropriate and equally helpful with that which Smith College has established."

br> And on page 207 where she summarizes in a paragraph the burden of the work:

"In the foregoing chapters I have intimated that every phase of the question of freedom for women is bound up with the larger question of human freedom. If it is freedom that women want, they cannot be content to be legally equal with men; but having gained this equality they must carry on their struggle against the oppressions which privilege exercises upon humanity at large by virtue of an usurped economic power. All human beings, presumably, would gain by freedom; but women particularly stand to gain by it, for as I have shown, they are the victims of special prepossessions which mere legal equality with men may hardly be expected to affect."

It will not be out of place in a review of this character to comment upon another review of the same book which appeared in The New Republic of January 12. We cannot expect this organ of the dilettante to be anything but flippant and supercilious. Without any fundamental principles to guide its policy, The New Republic is a perfectly harmless and superficially clever exponent of patchwork think ing on social and economic reforms. It knows nothing and cares less for the profounder currents that affect our industrial life; of those laws that determine the economic developments of peoples it does not dare to breathe even in whispers. Its editors and contributors are content to be clever but never candid. Mindful always of the sources of its financial support it picks its steps with careful premeditation, though with a show of brave words that cannot possibly offend. It is a perfectly ineffectual journal and if that seems a harsh criticism it will not appear so to the editors of the paper for that is all that it is intended to be.

Listen to the reviewer:

On almost every page its author displays a warning that she has something to convey that is not inevitably associated with feminist doctrine.

This in face of the author's contention and of the argument sustained throughout that until freedom of access to natural opportunities is secured there can be no freedom for the race. This may not be inevitably associated with the "feminist doctrine" whatever that is but it is inevitably associated with the economic position of woman in society, and that is what Miss LaFollette is considering.

And when The New Republic reviewer comes to the author's suggestion of what would result from the freeing of natural opportunities, she says:

"Utopia, in short. And unfortunately, a reader's mental muscles tend to become lax at the first mention of a Utopian programme. Miss LaFollette is admirable as long as she remains realistic; but beyond this point she is no more stimulating than any other fond deviser of an earthly Paradise."

Laxity of one's mental muscles fits in nicely with the whole policy of The New Republic, so why should the reviewer worry? If the self sufficient critic were able to realize by a feat of the imagination of which she is apparently quite incapable, that the economic position of woman is due to restrictions, she might be able to understand what the removal of all artificial restrictions would accomplish. One is rightfully impatient of this stupid kind of dogmatism which characterizes every solution that goes to the root of the matter as "Utopian."

Here is a work on which more honest and earnest thought has gone than is expended in the making of many books. We say to The New Republic that no work on the subject has appeared in recent years more worthy of analysis page by page. Yet it is received with levity and unseemly flippancy by a journal whose pretentiousness is equalled only by its labored cleverness, its avoidance of fundamentals and its milk and water socialism.