Woman and Labour | Page 2

was a stern and almost majestic attitude of acceptance of the
inevitable; life and the conditions of her race being what they were. It
was this conversation which first forced upon me a truth, which I have
since come to regard as almost axiomatic, that, the women of no race or
class will ever rise in revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary
readjustment of their relation to their society, however intense their
suffering and however clear their perception of it, while the welfare and
persistence of their society requires their submission: that, wherever
there is a general attempt on the part of the women of any society to
readjust their position in it, a close analysis will always show that the

changed or changing conditions of that society have made woman's
acquiescence no longer necessary or desirable.
Another point which it was attempted to deal with in this division of
the book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that
woman's physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain
other directions was the price which woman has been compelled to pay
for the passing of the race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state
to the erect; and which was essential if humanity as we know it was to
exist (this of course was dealt with by a physiological study of woman's
structure); and also, to deal with the highly probable, though unproved
and perhaps unprovable, suggestion, that it was largely the necessity
which woman was under of bearing her helpless young in her arms
while procuring food for them and herself, and of carrying them when
escaping from enemies, that led to the entirely erect position being
forced on developing humanity.
These and many other points throwing an interesting light on the later
development of women (such as the relation between agriculture and
the subjection of women) were gone into in this division of the book
dealing with primitive and semi-barbarous womanhood.
When this division was ended, I had them type-written, and with the
first three chapters bound in one volume about the year 1888; and then
went on to work at the last division, which I had already begun.
This dealt with what is more popularly known as the women's question:
with the causes which in modern European societies are leading women
to attempt readjustment in their relation to their social organism; with
the direction in which such readjustments are taking place; and with the
results which in the future it appears likely such readjustments will
produce.
After eleven years, 1899, these chapters were finished and bound in a
large volume with the first two divisions. There then only remained to
revise the book and write a preface. In addition to the prose argument I
had in each chapter one or more allegories; because while it is easy
clearly to express abstract thoughts in argumentative prose, whatever

emotion those thoughts awaken I have not felt myself able adequately
to express except in the other form. (The allegory "Three Dreams in a
Desert" which I published about nineteen years ago was taken from this
book; and I have felt that perhaps being taken from its context it was
not quite clear to every one.) I had also tried throughout to illustrate the
subject with exactly those particular facts in the animal and human
world, with which I had come into personal contact and which had
helped to form the conclusions which were given; as it has always
seemed to me that in dealing with sociological questions a knowledge
of the exact manner in which any writer has arrived at his view is
necessary in measuring its worth. The work had occupied a large part
of my life, and I had hoped, whatever its deficiencies, that it might at
least stimulate other minds, perhaps more happily situated, to an
enlarged study of the question.
In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was
ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of
two months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was
proclaimed I arrived at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but
Martial Law had already been proclaimed there, and the military
authorities refused to allow my return to my home in Johannesburg and
sent me to the Colony; nor was I allowed to send any communication
through, to any person, who might have extended some care over my
possessions. Some eight months after, when the British troops had
taken and entered Johannesburg; a friend, who, being on the British
side, had been allowed to go up, wrote me that he had visited my house
and found it looted, that all that was of value had been taken or
destroyed; that my desk had been