Commonplace 223 George & Experts on Women.
Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth. Simone de Beauvoir.
George consulted many male thinkers about the thorny issue of how to win the hearts and minds of women. One of the many things he seemed most convinced of was that he could add to this debate. This, in the face of some spectacular failures in the cases of his first two wives. And despite his pronouncement that the average woman was about as clever as a male idiot. And he was the man who wrote to his sister. February 3rd 1883 (when she was 15 and he was 25): You girls nowadays have astonishing advantages over your mothers and grandmothers; it is only to be hoped you will make use of it for the only real end of education - improvement of character. If you only could know how much of the wretchedness of humanity is occasioned by the folly, pig-headedness, ignorance, incapacity of women you would rejoice to think of all these new opportunities for mental & moral training.
Knowledge of human psychology was not one of George's specialisms, and he didn't develop much of a sympathy for human beings in general. In the absence of experienced peers to consult - remember, in his early twenties, the closest confidant with whom he could discuss these things was man-wife Eduard Bertz, a man with very limited knowledge of the subject - George turned to published authors who claimed to be experts. Dipping into some of these works proves these men were no such thing.
Henry Thomas Buckle (see previous Commonplace) was far from alone when he argued that the Greeks and Romans tended to regard women as chattels, and so using the Classics to provide any sort of understanding about how to treat women would be ill advised (click for free download). George's love of all things Roman and Greek must have fed into his attitudes to females. Add to this the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer, and things do not look good for any woman who came into his orbit. On this topic, Schopenhauer makes the Romans and Greeks look like emancipated liberals.
I have covered the dire influence of Schopenhauer in previous posts - see Commonplace 4 for exactly what that odious little imp - a man made bitter by his lack of success with the ladies, especially one thirty years his junior - had to say on the complementary gender. On the plus side, he liked dogs.
In Commonplaces 116 and 117, we looked at what John Ruskin had to say on the subject of women. When George was in the States, he met a charlatan called Heinzen (see Commonplaces 133 and 134) who aimed to spout on the subject of suffrage. But, there were two other influences George soaked up. First, Charles Darwin.
Popular understanding says that Darwin had some pretty bad things to say about women: that it was preferable to have a wife than a dog for company, being one of them. He tended to think adult females were perennially more like the infant of its species, and so a woman's brain would always be biologically underdeveloped and undevelopable. However, what Darwin said in his public utterances and the beliefs he held in private, were contradictory, and... evolved over time. Here, explored in this Cambridge University Research video click. But, George would not be privy to the secret thoughts of Charles Darwin, and so what he understood about the biology of women's brains, and their potential for any sort of development, would depend on what he thought Darwin had gleaned from his studies. See Commonplace 101 for George's studies of female brain size, and how wrong he was on this topic.
Another influential voice in how to create a world better suited to sharing it in equality, men with women, George delved into when he was in the throes of wooing Gabrielle Fleury, was the work of an influential French historian. In December 1898, George reads Jules Michelet's 'L'Amour'. Michelet wrote on a range of more sociological subjects. 'L'Amour' was followed the next year by 'La Femme' (can you spot a trend?).
These two Michelet works were derided by his fellow-French readers, but maybe George was reading all things contemporary French so as to have something to say to Ms Fleury, and to prove he was in touch with his feelings for what makes women happy. We know Gabrielle had strong reservations about 'marrying'George, and he has to make a determined effort to allay her anxieties by bluntly (and dishonestly, deceitfully) denying what he is famed for having said about women. He blames the excesses of his misogyny on some sort of creative fictive, a million miles from what he really believed. Tosh, of course, said to persuade Gabrielle into risking herself to his care. He kept from her his track record, defaming his wife, Edith, whilst air brushing out his first wife from the record - much as he did when he was making abid for Miss Collet's sympathy.
Michelet's work was well-known even in England, so George was probably familiar with his work, and possibly agreed that (in Michelet's opinion) women were perpetual invalids, victims of their bodily functions particularly menstruation, which was, to the deluded Frenchman, a state of eternal malady. He went so far as to suggest it is this weakness that makes women suited to domestic chores and home-making, and that women are really only happy when we are keeping house, because any other sphere would distract us from dealing with our physical disadvantages. He is building on the work of Paracelsus (1493-1541) here, who thought a woman's womb as a house within her, and so this makes her very home-centric click.
His next book was about witches click and so it's clear Michelet had met some very interesting girls in his time - or fantasized about meeting them! 'La Sorcerie' the Witch of the Middle Ages' of 1863 set out to explain that women's close experience of illness and infirmity has equipped us with special powers to heal and treat the sick - hence the association between the healing wise woman and the spell-casting witch. Michelet sees witchcraft as a positive thing, and an exemplification of the way women are persecuted for our vulnerabilities by men who abuse their power.
What did George take away from his studies on this topic? Returning to Schopenhauer, he will have been familiar with that philosopher's 'Will to Life' theory, that says we must look for complements in prospective partners in order to balance our innate faults, because if we don't, our children might manifest inherited intensified versions of our faults. So, if a man is of an intellectual bent, he needs to find a woman who is not, in order to have well-rounded children. Might this belief in Schopenhauer be part of the reason George went looking for a woman as unlike him as Edith? We know he delved into the new pseudoscience of eugenics, but science never held sway with George the way philosophy did - especially German philosophy. Take a look at this click to see a whitewashed view of the old Teutonic misogynist and see how deeply George absorbed his ideas.
Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth. Simone de Beauvoir.
 |
| The Caress by Fernand Khnopff 1896 |
Knowledge of human psychology was not one of George's specialisms, and he didn't develop much of a sympathy for human beings in general. In the absence of experienced peers to consult - remember, in his early twenties, the closest confidant with whom he could discuss these things was man-wife Eduard Bertz, a man with very limited knowledge of the subject - George turned to published authors who claimed to be experts. Dipping into some of these works proves these men were no such thing.
 |
| I Lock My door Upon Myself by Fernand Khnopff 1891 |
I have covered the dire influence of Schopenhauer in previous posts - see Commonplace 4 for exactly what that odious little imp - a man made bitter by his lack of success with the ladies, especially one thirty years his junior - had to say on the complementary gender. On the plus side, he liked dogs.
In Commonplaces 116 and 117, we looked at what John Ruskin had to say on the subject of women. When George was in the States, he met a charlatan called Heinzen (see Commonplaces 133 and 134) who aimed to spout on the subject of suffrage. But, there were two other influences George soaked up. First, Charles Darwin.
 |
| The English Woman by Fernand Khnopff 1898 |
Another influential voice in how to create a world better suited to sharing it in equality, men with women, George delved into when he was in the throes of wooing Gabrielle Fleury, was the work of an influential French historian. In December 1898, George reads Jules Michelet's 'L'Amour'. Michelet wrote on a range of more sociological subjects. 'L'Amour' was followed the next year by 'La Femme' (can you spot a trend?).
These two Michelet works were derided by his fellow-French readers, but maybe George was reading all things contemporary French so as to have something to say to Ms Fleury, and to prove he was in touch with his feelings for what makes women happy. We know Gabrielle had strong reservations about 'marrying'George, and he has to make a determined effort to allay her anxieties by bluntly (and dishonestly, deceitfully) denying what he is famed for having said about women. He blames the excesses of his misogyny on some sort of creative fictive, a million miles from what he really believed. Tosh, of course, said to persuade Gabrielle into risking herself to his care. He kept from her his track record, defaming his wife, Edith, whilst air brushing out his first wife from the record - much as he did when he was making abid for Miss Collet's sympathy.
Michelet's work was well-known even in England, so George was probably familiar with his work, and possibly agreed that (in Michelet's opinion) women were perpetual invalids, victims of their bodily functions particularly menstruation, which was, to the deluded Frenchman, a state of eternal malady. He went so far as to suggest it is this weakness that makes women suited to domestic chores and home-making, and that women are really only happy when we are keeping house, because any other sphere would distract us from dealing with our physical disadvantages. He is building on the work of Paracelsus (1493-1541) here, who thought a woman's womb as a house within her, and so this makes her very home-centric click.
 |
| Incense by Fernand Khnopff 1898 |
What did George take away from his studies on this topic? Returning to Schopenhauer, he will have been familiar with that philosopher's 'Will to Life' theory, that says we must look for complements in prospective partners in order to balance our innate faults, because if we don't, our children might manifest inherited intensified versions of our faults. So, if a man is of an intellectual bent, he needs to find a woman who is not, in order to have well-rounded children. Might this belief in Schopenhauer be part of the reason George went looking for a woman as unlike him as Edith? We know he delved into the new pseudoscience of eugenics, but science never held sway with George the way philosophy did - especially German philosophy. Take a look at this click to see a whitewashed view of the old Teutonic misogynist and see how deeply George absorbed his ideas.
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