Chapter 32 Chapter 21 The Situation and Characteristics of Women-2

We must also incidentally note that she thus restores a masculine myth.For Lawrence, as for many others, the phallus represented both vitality and human transcendence.Therefore, women can see the communication with the spirit of the world in the joy of bed.In the mysterious worship of men, she lost herself due to her extreme complacency, and at the same time found herself again.This contradiction is easily explained by the diversity of people's sexual abilities.Some of them (whose impotence, she knew from everyday life to be accidental), were the basest personifications of man; But women are even able to encourage the merging of the two into one.A teenage girl in love with a man she thought was extraordinary wrote:

"If I were famous, R. would marry me, because his vanity would be satisfied; he'd let me go for walks on his arm." And yet she adored him madly.In a woman's mind, the same person can be miserly, mean, vain, ridiculous, and yet a god; after all, these gods have weaknesses.A man who is free as a man, if he is loved for his humanity, is treated with extreme censorship and exactingness, which is the flip side of true passion; It is entirely possible that she will proudly know how to "manipulate" and "deal with" him; she flatters his "weak side" in every way so that he will not lose his prestige.This proves that she doesn't care about his individual personality as it manifests in his actual activities; she blindly worships her idol with the same general nature.Masculinity is a divine splendor, a given and unchanging value, which can be felt in spite of the insignificance of the man who possesses it; Seeks pleasure by being viciously superior in every way.

This ambiguity of woman's affection for man is to be found also in her general attitude to herself and to the world.Her domain was surrounded by the world of men, yet haunted by vague forces that treated men themselves as playthings; if she united with this magic, it would be her turn to power.Society has made nature a slave, but nature also dominates society. The spirit burns outside of life, but it ceases to burn when life no longer supports the spirit.This ambiguity in woman's defense is a truth to be found more in the garden than in the city, in disease than in thought, in childbirth than in revolution; she strives to rebuild Bachofen's dream The earth ruled, and the mother ruled, so as to become the main again despite the status of the lesser.But while she too is a transcendent being, she can make it valuable only by beautifying the realm that binds her—by giving it a transcendent demension.Men live in a coordinated world, a reality that can be contained in thought.Women grudgingly grapple with a magical reality that defies thought, escaping from it through thoughts that have no real content.Instead of accepting her own existence, she contemplates in nothingness the pure idea of ​​her destiny; to dream.So in fact she is both "natural" and man-made, both real and ethereal.Her life was spent in washing pots and pans, but it was a brilliant novel; she was a man.vassal, yet thinks she is his idol; disgraced in the flesh, yet throws all:

Dedicated to love.Deserving only to know the incidental events of life, she becomes a priestess of fantasy. This ambiguity is also evident in the way women treat their bodies.It is a burden: it is consumed in the service of the species, in the monthly bleeding, in the passive fertility, for her it is not a mere instrument for grasping the world, but opaque nature It exists; instead of being a source of pleasure, it creates unbearable pain; it lurks with danger: the woman feels threatened by her "inside".It is a "hysterical" body because the endocrine fluids are intimately connected with the nervous system controlling the muscles, viscera, and the sympathetic nervous system.A woman refuses to take responsibility for how her body reacts;

It betrayed her by escaping her grasp in sobbing and retching and agitation; it was the truth she knew best, but it was the truth she was always trying to hide.But it was her glorious substitute; she dazzled when she saw it in the mirror; it was the hope of happiness, the work of art, the living statue; she fashioned it, adored it, paraded it.When she smiles at herself in the mirror, she forgets the contingency of her flesh; her image is destroyed in loving embrace, in maternal duty.But when she gawks at herself, she's often surprised that she's both a diva and carnal. Nature likewise bestows on her a double face, which both feeds the pot and stimulates the revelation of mystery.When woman becomes housewife and mother, she gives up freedom to roam fields and woods, preferring to quietly plant her vegetable garden, and put flowers in vases: yet she is still fascinated by moonlight and sunset.Among the animals and plants of the earth she first saw food and ornaments; but she also saw in them a noble and magical life fluid flowing.Life is not only internal and repetitive, it also has a blindingly bright side; it is revealed as beauty in the blooming meadow.As the fertility of the womb is in harmony with nature, woman is also swept by its gentle spring breeze, which is the spirit.She is still somewhat dissatisfied, she has the same sense of unfulfillment and uncertainty as the maiden, and her soul has also become invisible at the end of the infinitely stretching road towards the endless horizon.Though enslaved by her husband, her children, and her family, she was overjoyed to find herself alone and sovereign on that hillside; she was no longer mother, wife, and housekeeper, but alone; and as she gazes at the passive world, she thinks of herself as a fully conscious being, a being with a minimum of liberty; before mysterious flowing waters and undulating peaks, male supremacy fades away.She walked across the moor, dipped her hand in the stream, and lived not for others but for herself.Any woman who has remained independent through all kinds of bondage loves her own freedom in nature.Other women find there only elegant, blissful excuses; at dusk they hover between the danger of catching cold and the ecstasy of the soul.

This dual allegiance to the world of the flesh and to the world of "poetry" limits the metaphysics and wisdom that women insist on more or less outspokenly.She tries to combine life with transcendence, that is to say, she does not accept Cartesian philosophy and its formal logic and all related doctrines.The naturalism she was familiar with was similar to that espoused by the Stoics or the Neoplatonists of the sixteenth century.Not surprisingly, women, typified by Marguerite of Navarre, were about to embrace a philosophy that was both very materialistic and very idealistic.As we have seen, woman, socially embracing the antithesis of good and evil, has an ontologically deep need to be an optimist—she must believe that the nature of things is generally good.The moral code of action is not suitable for her, because she has no possibility of action; she is therefore subject to a given being: and this given being must therefore be good; What is perceived, or, as in Leibniz's goodness, is realized by calculation, cannot concern her.

The good she craved was a living harmony into which she could be placed as long as she lived.The concept of harmony is one of the keys of the feminine world; it signifies a fixed perfection, the direct justification of the existence of each component which depends as much upon passive participation in the whole as it does.Woman thus attains in a harmonious world what man will seek by action: she is at one with the world, she is necessary to it, she cooperates with it in the triumph of the good.In those moments that women see as revelations, they find themselves aligned with a static, self-satisfying reality: that is Virginia Woolf (in "Mrs. Dalloway" and "To the Lighthouse") and Katherine Mansfield (throughout her oeuvre), bestows the heroine's moment of happiness as the crowning reward.The pleasure that exists in the free waves is reserved for men; what women experience is a quiet, pleasurable sense of fulfillment.It is understandable that only a state of tranquility can hold high value in her mind, since a woman usually lives in a tense atmosphere of rejection, resentment, and demanding; she cannot be blamed for enjoying a nice afternoon or a cool evening .But it is delusional to seek the hidden world soul here.The good should not be regarded as a kind of existence: the world is not harmonious, and no individual has a dominant position in it.

There is, however, one way of justifying existence, one of the highest compensations that society has always been accustomed to bestow on women, and that is religion.There must be a religion for women as there must be a religion for common men, and for exactly the same reasons.When a gender or a class is forced into a state of immanence, it must be provided with a mirage of some kind of transcendence.Man has a great advantage in letting God sanction the codes he has written; and since man exercises supreme power over woman, it is a special honor to be granted this power by God.For Judaism.For the followers of Islam and Christianity, among other things, man is the master by divine right; so reverence for the Supreme Being suppresses any impulse of resistance in the downtrodden woman.One can count on her to be gullible.The woman adopts an attitude of respect and trust towards the male world: she feels that the God in the kingdom of heaven is more distant than the cabinet ministers, and the mystery of creation is similar to the mystery of the power station.But if women are very willing to practice religion, it is first of all because it fills a desperate need.

In modern civilization, which even promotes the freedom of women, religion seems less an instrument of repression than of deception.Woman is not so much asked to accept her inferiority in the name of God as to believe that thanks to God she is on an equal footing with the noble male; stop.Woman is no longer denied transcendence because she is to consecrate her immanence to God.The value of souls is measured only in heaven, not by their achievements on earth.In this world, as Dostoyevsky said, there is only a question of different occupations: shoeshine or bridge-building are all empty; above and beyond social discrimination, gender equality is restored.This is why little girls and maidens become more fanatical believers than their brothers; God sees beyond the boy's transcendence, and this disgraces him: he will always be a child under this mighty tutelage; Castration foreshadowed by the presence of the father is more severe circumcision.But if this "child who never grows up" is a woman, she is saved from this gaze and becomes the sister of the angel.This cancels the penis advantage.Sincere faith helps the little girl avoid feelings of inferiority: she is neither male nor female, but a creature of God.

Thus we find many great female saints with a firmness that is entirely masculine: St. Bridget and St. Caterine of Siena, both arrogantly profess world supremacy; Any male authority.Catherine even gave her priest orders sternly; Jean Duc and St. Teresa marched with a fortitude no man could ever hope to match.To this the Church replied that God did not sanction woman from the tutelage of men; Burned at the stake. Although the laws to which woman is subject are made by man according to the will of God himself, she still has powerful protection from God from them.The masculine logic is refuted by the divine mystery; the pride of men is turned into sin, and their incitement to it is absurd and sinful: why remake the world that God himself made?The passivity imposed on women becomes sacrosanct.She prayed by the holy fire, knowing she was closer to heaven than her husband wandering through political rallies.To save her soul, nothing needs to be done but to live obediently.Synthesis of premortal and spiritual completes:

The mother not only begot a body, she begot a soul for God; a work greater than insight into the useless secrets of the atom. With the acquiescence of the Father, a woman can defy a man and boldly claim her feminine glory. In this way, God not only restores the status of woman in general, but every woman can get special support from this holy and indifferent One.She has little influence as a person, but once acting in the name of the Holy Spirit, her wishes are divine.Madame Guillon said that she understood (this was related to a nun's illness) "what to command from the Bible and what to obey from the Bible"; thus the believer disguised her authority with humble obedience.When she raised her children, when she ran a nunnery, when she organized a charity, she was only an instrument in the hands of the supernatural; she could not rebel, could not offend God himself.Undoubtedly men are equally incapable of despising this support; but it is not very reliable in their dealings with other men who would justifiably demand it, so such conflicts can only be resolved by human standards. to be resolved.The woman then prays to God's will, domineeringly for her in others (who already belong to her) A defense of authority in her mind, a defense of her authority in her own mind.If she finds this really useful cooperation between herself and God, it is first of all because she is wholly occupied by her relation to herself—even if it affects other relations; for in this purely inner A separate discussion of God's silence can have legal force. In fact, women use religion as an excuse to satisfy their desires.Is she a frigid, masochist, sadist? She attains holiness by giving up her body, by playing martyrdom, by extinguishing every impulse of life around her.She destroys and annihilates herself in order to gain a certain status as God's elect; when she tortures her husband and children, utterly denying them earthly happiness, she prepares to choose a place for them in heaven.According to devout biographers, Margaret of Cottner abused her offspring because she mistakenly wanted to "punish her own past sins"; she fed herself only when she had fed all the bums child.As we've seen, it's not uncommon to take a hostile attitude toward an unwanted child: it's a godsend (quite literally) opportunity to express legitimate anger toward him.It is easy for her to negotiate things with God for the flirtatious woman; the assurance that her sins will be forgiven tomorrow for the pious woman often helps her overcome the guilt of her conscience today. Whether she chooses abstinence or sensuality, self-respect or humility, concern for self-salvation subjects her to her favorite pleasure, that of self-concern.She listens to the beating of her heart, she heeds the vibrations of her flesh, and her existence is justified by the merciful God who dwells in her, as the existence of a pregnant woman is justified by the fetus.Not only was she constantly looking at herself in ecstasy, but she also reported her situation to the confessor; she had even taken great joy in public confession before.People say of Cottner's Margaret that, to punish herself for a moment of emptiness, she stood on the balcony like a woman giving birth and started shouting, "Come on, Cottner's Come, folks, with candles and lanterns, and come out and hear what this sinner has to say!" She listed her sins and poured out her lamentation to the stars.Through this humble clamor she satisfies the need for exhibitionism so often manifested in narcissistic women.Religion permits a woman to be self-love; it brings her the mentor, the father, whom she has always dreamed of.Lover, divine guardian; it satisfies her daydreams and fills her empty hours.But mostly, it further cements the social order by giving her hope of a better future in a genderless heaven, justifying her resignation to fate.This is why woman remains such a powerful trump card in the hands of the Church to this day; it is also why the Church is especially hostile to all measures which might contribute to the emancipation of women.There must be a religion for women; at the same time there must be women who perpetuate religion, and this is the "real woman." Obviously, the "characteristics" of woman—her beliefs, her values, her intelligence, her morals, her tastes, her behavior—are to be explained by her situation.Denying her transcendence often robs her of the highest human qualities: heroism, defiance, unselfishness, imagination, and creativity; qualities that are not so common even among men.There are many men, like women, who are bound in a sphere of mediation and instrumentality, of secondary means.The worker escapes from this range through political action, expressing his will to revolution; but the so-called "middle" class man deliberately keeps himself in this range.Employees, office workers, and businessmen, condemned like women to repeat the daily chores, identify with ready-made values, respect public opinion, seek worldly, valueless and vague comforts, so they are not superior to the women with whom they accompany .Women show more ingenuity and independence in cooking, washing, housekeeping, and child-rearing than do submissive men.He has long been obedient to his boss all day long, wears white collar clothes, and maintains his social status; she can dress casually, hang out around the apartment, sing, and laugh with neighbors; she does whatever she wants, with very little risk, Always want to achieve certain results smoothly.She does not live in an atmosphere where constant attention to appearance is required, as is the case with her husband. The office world, Kafka wrote, was, among other things, a world of red tape, of absurd gestures and aimless behavior, and that it was largely masculine.A woman knows reality better; when the office clerk draws up a form, or converts a sardine can into money, he grasps nothing but abstractions.A baby fed in a cradle, a clean tablecloth, a barbecue, are always more tangible possessions; yet precisely because she feels theirs (and thus her own) in the pursuit of these ends. Accidentally, a woman often does not identify herself with them, she still has something left to herself.A man's career is both design and evasion: he allows himself to be suffocated by career and "fronts";A woman is against a man's logic and morality, she doesn't fall into these traps, and Stendhal is interested in that.She did not use self-esteem to shield herself to escape her ambiguous status; nor did she use the mask of human dignity to cover herself; she more frankly exposed her loose thoughts, her emotions, and her instinctive reactions.So, as long as she does not speak as her husband's faithful "wife," whatever she says in her own defense will not be as offensive as her husband's.He discusses so-called general ideas—that is, words, formulas he finds in newspaper columns and technical writings, and she reveals limited but concrete experiences. The well-known "feminine sensibility" is something derived from myth, something derived from pretense; but it is also true, for woman is more attentive to herself, and to the world, than man is.Her sex life is in a brutally masculine atmosphere, so she compensates with a penchant for "beautiful things," which can lead to over-the-top affectation, but also genuine grace.Because of her limited scope, the things she couldn't achieve were precious; she didn't see them as closely related to concept or design, she just wanted to demonstrate their grandeur.Her will to escape is expressed in her love of festivities: a bouquet of flowers, a cake, a well-placed table, the useless of which fascinates her; she loves to turn vain leisure into generous offerings.She loved to laugh, to sing, to decorations, to knick-knacks, and she was ready to accept whatever excited her: the sights of the street, the sights of the sky.An invitation, an evening out, would open up new horizons for her.Men often refuse to take part in such pleasures; the happy voice dies when he comes home, and the women do make the dull, modest gestures he expects from them. From the depths of loneliness and isolation, a woman discovers the personal meaning of her life.She feels more deeply than men about the past, about death, about the passage of time; she has a keen interest in the adventures of her heart, her body, and her mind, because she knows that is all she has on earth. .And, based on the fact that she is passive, her experience of the reality that overwhelms her is more passionate and moving than someone who is preoccupied with sub-ambitions and careers; she has leisure and also likes to indulge her emotions and ponder her feelings , to clarify its meaning.When her imagination is no longer haunted by empty dreams, she becomes compassionate: She tries to understand others as individuals, and sees them as identical to herself; with her husband or lover she can bring this identity to the fore: she, in some way he cannot imitate, makes him Her designs and thoughts became her own. Such was her eagerness to watch the whole world; it seemed to her a riddle in which everyone and everything might be the answer; and she asked him and it eagerly.As she grew older, her dashed hopes turned to irony and often bitter cynicism; unwilling to be fooled by the mysteries of men, she saw accidental, The ridiculous, unnecessary side.Her attachments did not allow for detachment, but from the well of forced self-sacrifice she was sometimes able to draw genuine generosity.She selflessly supports her husband, her lover.her child; She no longer thinks of herself, she is a pure gift, a pure tribute.Incapable of fitting into men's society, she often invents her own patterns of behavior on a whim; she cannot find complete satisfaction in ready-made forms and clichés; Her husband's self-righteous assurances were closer to the truth. But she has these advantages over a man only if she refuses to be deceived by him.In the upper classes, women are the enthusiastic accomplices of their masters, as they stand ready to reap a vested interest.We have seen that the women of the upper middle class and of the aristocracy, always defending the interests of their class more obstinately than their husbands, are not hesitant to sacrifice their independence as a person altogether.They repress all thought, all critical judgment, all instinctual impulse; they echo accepted opinion, they echo what others say, they confuse ideals with what is imposed on them by male codes; Sincerity is utterly extinguished in their hearts, even in their faces.At work the housewife regains a certain independence, a limited but concrete experience; but if a woman's work is done by servants, she will have no grasp of the world; she will live in dreams and In abstraction, life is in a vacuum.She doesn't understand the meaning of the ideas she's talking about; the words she uses in the discussion lose their meaning entirely.Financiers and industrial magnates, and sometimes even military leaders, knew hardship and prudence, and they could take risks; they bought privileges through shady deals, but at least they paid the price themselves. Yet their wives gave and did nothing in the bargain, and got all they got; that is why they believed so blindly that their rights were indefeasible.Their foolish arrogance, their utter incapacity, their obstinate ignorance, made them the most useless and worthless characters that man has ever produced. In this light, it is as absurd to speak of "woman" in general as to speak of "eternal" man.We need to know that the stupidity of comparisons to prove women's superiority, inferiority, or equality to men is that their situation is so different. If we compare these situations and not the men in them, we shall see clearly that the situation of men is quite desirable; That is to say, he has more opportunities in the world to use his freedom.The inevitable result is that the achievements of men far outweigh those of women, since women are effectively forbidden from doing anything.And it may be a pointless attempt to compare the use of liberty by men and women within their respective spheres, since what they do is precisely to use liberty freely.In every form, the most serious traps of deceit and deceit—the seduction of insincerity—await both sexes alike; Both have complete spiritual freedom.But simply because in reality woman's freedom remains abstract and empty, she can only use it in rebellion, the only way forward for people who have no chance of doing anything constructive.They must resist the constraints of their situation and work to carve a path for the future.Resignation to fate can only mean retreat and escape. For women, there is no other way but to seek their own liberation. This liberation must be collective, and it must first complete the evolution of women's economic status.However, there have been and are women who seek personal salvation through personal effort.They want to justify their existence within immanence—that is, to achieve transcendence within the confines of immanence.It is this effort by the forbidden woman to finally transform the prison into a glorious paradise that we shall see in the narcissist, the mistress, and the nun.The effort is sometimes laughable, but often pathetic.