Miss Rose Macaulay, lecturing on ╥Women as news╙ at the meeting of the Six-Point Group this evening, said that in this aspect women were becoming a great and increasing nuisance. People were always discussing such subjects as: Do women understand art? Have women any sense of honour? or Should clever women marry?
I am always being rung up or written to by some newspaper and asked what my opinion is, but I do not believe men novelists are ever asked ╥Should clever men marry?╙ An enormous number of books were written about ╥women,╙ and as for the press, she thought sometimes that if a future chronicler were to study the files of our newspapers he would get the impression that there had appeared at this time a strange new creature called woman who was receiving great attention from the public. If a speaker made an unimportant reference to women that small part of his speech had special prominence. If a scientist in a lecture remarked that women were not as strong as men one might suppose that the obvious truth would pass unnoticed, but the newspapers would jump at it and discuss it eagerly. As a topic woman was a hardy annual or, it might be said, a hardy daily.
Men insisted on generalising about women. Instead of regarding them as so many millions of individuals with separate temperaments and outlooks, all they saw was an odd, conglomerate being which they called women. ╥How will the women vote!╙ they ask before elections. The implication was that sex formed some kind of bond in the women╒s political world, and that neither temperament, nor education, nor economic conditions counted for anything. Generalisations should be made more guardedly. ╥Of course you can generalise to a certain extent,╙ said Miss Macaulay. ╥I should say that women have on the whole less brain power than men, less initiative and courage, and more highly strung nervous development and weaker sex emotions. That is fairly obvious, but as you realise the many exceptions all you can safely say is that most women on the whole have certain qualities in a rather greater or rather less degree than men.╙
Not Fair to Men.
It was not fair to men that so much attention should be devoted to women ╤ men should be investigated as thoroughly, and they were quite as well worth study. ╥I have never met the woman who is written about with a capital W,╙ said Miss Macaulay. ╥I dislike her intensely, and I am afraid that if too much is written about her she may come to life like Frankenstein╒s monster. That would be a most deplorable happening.╙
Miss Macaulay amused her audience very much by reading from some magazine an article about women in which the writer described the qualities that pleased or displeased men. She had altered this slightly and read it as if all the inane hints applied to men. Mr. Stephen Gwynn, who presided, was captivated with this ingenious idea. ╥Let us give woman a rest,╙ said Miss Macaulay, ╥and write articles on men, their temperament, qualities and habits.╙
