The Female Eunuch (38 page)
Yet—the average girl and young woman thinks this is mass hyp- nosis to the average man. She runs away with the idea she is sex personified, lusted after by every male in sight. Indispensable to his peace of mind and body. The law of most lands pets and pampers the female from the age of thirteen to the point she is protected from every leer and lascivious look, every bottom-pinch or thigh-tweak that is undesired or unasked for.
Consequently, the female grows up with a Virgin-Mary-Complex, convinced she is untouchable—until she gives the word ‘go’.
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One is not surprised to find the author of this extraordinary mix- ture of yearning and loathing spending a
disproportionate amount of time praising frilly underwear, and chafing against the imagined dominance of women in sexual matters.
Woman will always have the upper hand because she
gives
whereas the man takes.
So she will always spurn the exhibitionist, pretend no interest in the man’s sexual charms, disclaim his right to dress well and attract- ively, on top
and
underneath.
For she thinks that sex-appeal and charm, mysticism and glamour are the prerogative of her sex alone.
His parting shot is meant to be a killer. ‘But a man’s body wears
better than a woman’s if he takes care of it. And he is virile and ef- fective long after she has given up the sexual ghost.’
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Most men fall in love with a pretty face but find themselves bound for life to a hateful stranger, alternating
endlessly between a workshop and a witch’s kitchen.
Schopenhauer
Pretty women are never unaware that they are aging, even if the process has hardly begun: a decayed beauty is possibly more tormen- ted than any other female stereotype, but even for women who never made any claims on male admiration there are abusive stereo- types which take over her claim to individuality. The studious, plain girl is characterized as a characterless, sexless swot: the housewife is depicted by a head full of curlers and nothing else, aproned, fussing, nagging, unreliable in the kitchen, with the budget, in her choice of clothes and with the family car. As she gets older the im- agery becomes more repellent; she becomes obese, her breasts grow huge and sagging, the curlers are never out of her hair, her voice is louder and more insistent; finally she is transmuted into the most hated female image of all, the wife’s mother, the ubiquitous mother- in-law. Eventually even a child—wife must grow up, and stop murmuring
and snivelling about, and male mockery dates from the moment in which she abandons her filial, adoring station and begins to run her household. ‘The pretty girl then blindfolded her man so he would
not see that she was turning from a butterfly into a caterpillar.’
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Philip Wylie lashed himself into a rhetorical frenzy which so ac- curately caught the frequency of woman-hatred in America that the absurdity of his actual argument did not prevent a spurious phenom- enon, ‘Momism’, from coming into being. Many an intelligent man abandoned his understanding in order to join, like Jimmy Porter, in the luxury of unbridled vilification of women. For example, Wylie actually states that female suffrage is responsible for political corrup- tion in America.
Mom’s first gracious presence at the ballot-box was roughly concom- itant with the start towards a new all-time low in political scurviness, hoodlumism, gangsterism, labour strife, monopolistic thuggery, moral degeneration, civic corruption, smuggling, bribery, theft, murder, homosexuality, drunkenness, financial depression, chaos
and war. Note that.
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Of course, he can’t be serious. True enough. Such things can only be said in jest, but they are serious none the less. The most telling playground for feelings of rejection about women is the joke depart- ment:
A strange sight greeted the young wife as she came home. There was her mother standing on a chair with her feet in a bucket of water. She had one finger plugged into the light socket, and two wires connected to each side of her head. Hubby was poised by the electri- city meter with his hand on the switch.
‘Ah, you’re just in time to see Henry cure my rheumatism!’ cried the happy mother.
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The fact that there are no such storehouses of jokes against father is not because women have no sense of humour, although it might most commonly be explained that way. How they could survive the endless gibing at
their expense without a sense of humour is difficult to explain. An- other kind of humorous insult that women take in good part is the drag artists’ grotesque guying of female foibles. Some of the trans- vestite acts are loving celebrations of the sexless trappings of femin- inity, and should be chiefly of value in pointing out how little fem- ininity has to do with actual sex and how much with fakery and glamour-binding. Many more of them are maliciously conceived caricatures of female types ogling and apeing women’s blandish- ments and hypocrisy while vying with feminine charms. Women are spectators at both kinds of entertainment, laughing and applaud- ing whenever required.
Any woman can continue this investigation of the abuse of wo- menfolk for herself, but there would not be much point in exciting female paranoia if there were no alternatives. As an essential condi- tion of the diminution of the common practice of belittling women, women themselves must stop panhandling. In their clothes and mannerisms women caricature themselves, putting themselves across with silly names and deliberate flightiness, exaggerating their inde- cisiveness and helplessness, faking all kinds of pretty tricks that they will one day have to give up. They ought to take advantage of the genuine praise of women which is appearing, though fitfully, in contemporary culture. When the Troggs sang their praises of their
Wild Thing
, or Family celebrated their
Second Generation Woman
:
Last thing you gotta do
Is talk her into loving you No need to
She knows when the time is right Comes to you without a fight
She wants to
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they opened up new possibilites in the imagery of womanhood, not now circumscribed by hearts and flowers or jewels.
Long Tall Sally
and
Motorcycle Irene
are individuals, not stereotypes, and although they are still out- numbered by Girls from the North Country and other impersonal female deities at least they have arrived. It is time we went to meet them.
Anguish is easier to bear than misery. The woman who is married to a brute, a drunk or a pervert has the world’s sympathy as well as masochistic satisfaction. The self-publicizing misery of the aban- doned woman justifying her dependence on drugs, drink or sex with strangers by the crime which society has committed against her is not so deeply pitiable as the day-to-day blank misery borne by wo- men who have nothing to complain about. The evidence of this dreary suffering can be found on any aging female face: the wrinkles which disfigure women are lines of strain and repression, lines of worry, not concern. Relaxed, their drawn features are easy to read, but as soon as they realize that they are being observed they guiltily clear their eyes, raise their chins and affect a serenity they do not feel. The prejudice against revolt or complaint by married women is very strong: public airing of boredom or discontent is deep disloy- alty, ingratitude and immorality. It is admitted that marriage is a hard job requiring constant adjustment, ‘give and take’, but it is not so often admitted that the husband—provider is the constant and the woman the variable.
‘Daytimes are all right: I’m busy. But the evenings from eight till midnight, along with my knitting or TV, make me feel like a prisoner. ‘Because my husband works at the local, if I go out it’s with my sister or to evening classes. Surely one hour of a man’s company at night is not enough? I feel like a modern Cinderella, and can’t stand another twelve years of it. There’s a shortage of baby sitters and it’s hard to organize a service here because there are very few mothers
in my situation close by.’
Let’s face one fact: your husband isn’t going to change after twelve years. He can’t see any harm in his behaviour, and the more you complain, the more ready will he be to run away from your re- proaches to the peace of his bar.
You can, though,
change yourself
. First consider your man’s many virtues: then make sure the time spent with him is so delightful he’s loath to leave.
Finally, reorganize your social life. If you had friends in to cards or a simple meal twice weekly, they wouldn’t be your husband, but they’d take your mind off him. And remember—if he were, say, a sailor, he’d be away for years. Come to terms with an absentee husband: and if he begins to realize you are not noticing his absence
so much he may be more ready to stay at home.
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A wife’s only worthwhile achievement is to make her husband happy—it is understood that he may have other more important things to do than make her happy. When her discontent begins to incommode him, he realizes that perhaps he ought to talk to her more, take her out more often, buy her roses and chocolates, or pay her the occasional compliment. It doesn’t take much after all. If she has already lapsed into the apathy and irritability of the housewives’ syndrome she is not really capable of a conversation, too tired to go out, feels bribed and mocked by flowers.
I am admired because I do things well. I cook, sew, knit, talk, work and make love very well. So I am a valuable item. Without me he would suffer. With him I am alone. I am as solitary as eternity and sometimes as stupid as clotted cream. Ha ha ha! Don’t think! Act as if all the bills are paid.
Christine Billson, ‘You Can Touch Me’, 1961, p. 9
Nagging, overweight and premature aging are the outward signs of misery, and they are so diffuse among women in our society that they do not excite remark. Women feel guilty about all of them: they are the capital sins of ‘letting yourself go’. They invent excuses for
them explaining irritability and tiredness by illnesses, claiming pains that do not exist until they make them exist; the insidious headache, backache, loss of appetite, rheumatism. The housewives who suffer from the actual housewives’ blight, the ‘great, bleeding blisters that break out on their hands and arms’ which Betty Friedan noticed are fewer in number than the women who have no such welcome out-
ward sign of their malaise.
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The statistics about the numbers of
women who have surgery for abdominal complaints without organic causes are horrifying. We could guess at some real statistics if we had the market research findings for firms who market ‘zest’, ‘zip’, ‘energy’, ‘vitality’, ‘fitness’, ‘happiness’, ‘inner glow’, which will ‘help you to enjoy life’, ‘buck you up no end’, make you ‘relaxed, confident—eager to get on with things’, ‘help you to become your real self again’. The products that can advertise in this way are free from habit-forming drugs for the most part, although the subtle way in which painkillers are presented to women as form of psychother- apy, combating depression and irritability as well as pain, is full of hazards. There are no statistics for aspirin and codeine addiction in this country because they are both sold over the counter. There is
no public campaign to warn women of the danger of salicylates.
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Occasionally a typical housewives’ syndrome appears in the profes- sional advice sections of women’s papers: Evelyn Home was called upon to deal with this:
Maybe mine’s more a problem for you, Dr Meredith, but I’m always bone-tired and therefore bone-idle. And with five children (three at school) you’ll guess there’s plenty for me to do.
I feel so tired when I wake, I can’t think how to cope, let alone start work. I do the minimum of housework, sometimes I don’t even get the youngest dressed until just before my husband gets home in the evenings, and only then because he blows his top.
He calls me tired-itis.
How I envy the women who can get up at six and do everything and feel on top of the world. I wish I could do half
that they do; now I’m really down and don’t feel like trying at all. Recently my thoughts have frightened me; all that stopped me from carrying them out was the thought of the children, whom, though I don’t show it, I do love.
It’s all there; the guilt, because women’s literature is full of the trumpeting of female Stakhanovists crying ‘Look how well I do the impossible: everybody love me!’, the feeling of incompetence which is turning into illness and debility as she formulates it, the odd rela- tionship with her husband who is her critic, and her uncertain feel- ings about the children, which are not dispelled by a policy statement which ought to read ‘I do love them (but I don’t feel it).’
Evelyn Home’s response is typical, and no GP would thank her for making it, even though it is difficult to think of any workable alternative.
You’re quite right; it’s a doctor’s case, I’m sure of it. Get down to your doctor, explain everything, the weariness, depression, lassitude; he can help.
And cheer up. Many women with far less to cope with than five children and a quick-tongued husband feel worse than you and do less. You’re all right, except that you’re ill (!). Tackle your health first
and the other troubles will all fall into place.
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Well, it all rather depends on the doctor. Suppose she is as strong as an ox, no iron deficiency? Suppose he does treat her with tonics and vitamins? Suppose he tells her to stop moaning and get on with it, a feat of which GPs are not altogether incapable? Suppose he suggests a holiday which they cannot afford, or which turns into a fiasco with even harder and more unwilling work than before? No miracles will happen. Perhaps she can try a glass or two of tonic wine? More likely her GP will, if badgered sufficiently, prescribe a happiness pill, an amphetamine, an anti-depressant, a stimulant. English papers periodically boom with vague reports of increasing addiction to stimulants and barbiturates among housewives.
A recent TV programme estimated that over a million women in Britain today are addicted to tranquillizers. To those who have never taken them it sounds alarming, but those of us who are actually hooked on them know just how awful it really is. For over a year, I have been on a brand of pill, described as an anti-depressant and relaxant.