WEAK WOMAN

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 56, 30 November 1918, Page 5

WEAK WOMAN

HER STRUGGLE FOR A PLACK IN THE SUN. I'lio sex antagonism felt by men for those women who desire power is no emanation of the conservative spirit which seeks to protect social organism against rash change, but simply a dark and vile neurosis (says Rebecca AVest in the. "Daily News"), Jinn has not yet created mi environment in which Jib is at his'ease; ho is constantly barking his shins against the obstinncies of nature and civilisation, and learning that ho is but a poor weak thing. To sustain himself through these humiliations he invents a liction that the other sex is even poorer and weaker, so that he may look upon their sad state and feol relatively strong. This is it silly- trick; it, is like-persuading oneself that one is handsome by going and looking at the mandrill. And it is the father of many crimes against the race. For whenever a woman arises and declares, "I am not weak but strong, and 1 desire to make my strength do service for humanity," the men who are sustaining themselves on this lie set themselves to thwart her and deprive Immunity of the proffered

sift. There is no more exasperating example of this than the treatment of' Dr. JexIjlake in her struggle to win women the right to become, doctors. It was an ambition that hurt nobody. It was an ambition plninly not in the direction of greed and self-indulgence; no woman not netnated by the highest motives wants to spend at 'least five years of hei' youth in the hardest of all University courses and then settle down to the interminable fatigues of the general practitioner. It offered the State service of which it waa greatly in need, l'or England luw novel , had enough doctors; consider (he vast and terrifying implications of the fact that every year nearly a tlioumuKl patients in tho Metropolitan Asylums lioard hospitals, most of whom are really ill and some of whom die shortly after admission, are proved to have been wrongly diagnosed by overworked doctors in general practice. Moreover, it should have been obvious to all but tho markedly idiotic that a full umierfetanilin? of women's diseases could only be gained by women doctors.

But before she could gain permission to study medicine Dr. .Tox-Ulako hud to spend days trudging up and down the wet and windy town of Edinburgh trying , to convince 'professors of the polf-coil-seionsly pious and rugged type, the professional "characters" from which Scotland has .always suffered; she had to sit. far into the nijrht writing controversiivl letters iiiul articles aiming at those who <leserved no argument but And ones she lia<! gained permission she hud to continue this campaigning to prevent the University rescinding Hie permission and leaving her and her companions the poorer for their fees and with nothing to show for it, so that she was too worn out by these fatigues and tlio excitements of being mobbed'by medical students and the humiliations of inferior jcai.-hing in inferior premises ever to do herself justice in her studies. It is the sober truth that no woman who net out to lead a lifo of vice and crime ever encountered a qimrler of the opposition with which the community met Dr. Jex-IMnke's ambition to alleviate human suffering. Hh « slory that should bo read by every person 'who has illusions that man is a reasonable animal. The only fault that can lie found with Dr. Todil's presentation ot it is that she suggests that the. persecution of medical women ended mill Dr. Jox-Blnko's career. The life has other values besides its obvious placo in the history of I lie Woman's Movement. Biography ought to be a magical raising from the doacf; too often it is mere, taxidermy, which makes no attempt at: preserving the inhabiting spirit of the specimen. Hut Dr. Todd has very definitely succeeded in evoking tho spiritual life of her subject. It. really does show what happens to peoplo when they mutilate, themselves Ui, rariiainir In nsn Mm UICiUIS of Sclf-CX-

prpssion which have been evolved by the human soul. .Mr. and Airs, .lex-ISlake were Kvanxelical Anglicans of the strictest pattern, who rejected, with :m apparent humility that was really the harshest pride, art and literature, music, and the theatre. But their human craving for excitement was not to be wholly eliminated. It merely suppressed itself and reappeared in a morbid form as a concern with the spiritual state ot their daughter, Sophia. She was a naughty liltlo girl; and. they sucked a voluptuous pleasure out of the chastisement of their beloved child, a pleasure which was all the more unwholesome and perverse because llrt\v loved her intensely.

Altogether, considering the extent to which, she suffered ill her childhood from her parent's neurosis of religiosity and in her womanhood from men's neurosis of sex antagonism, it is entirely to her credit Hint she struck the world as boing in a permanent attitude of coinbativcuoss. For that reason one wishes that Dr. Todd had omitted thai, occasional apologetic, note which is the only blemish in this vivid and candid biography. The. world should lie taught that it gets the pioneers it deserves.