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Title: The Female Ego Author: Eugénie Casteu Date: 1923 Language: en Topics: women, feminism, free love, marriage Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-female-ego-eugenie-casteu/ Notes: Published in La Revue Anarchiste
For a while now I have been meaning, comrade who signs “A Rebel Woman”,
to point out the tendency of your articles to exalt the sacrifice of
women in favour of men. If such is your revolt, I think it is a pretty
dangerous one for our female comrades.
I quote, from n°13 of the Revue:
“The role of the woman, a difficult and magnificent role, is not only to
share, through understanding, the intellectual life of man; but, through
her constant and discreet love, to give him courage, to rekindle, if
necessary, his self-confidence and fertile enthusiasm. When we truly
love, everything becomes easy, the greatest sacrifices are accepted with
joy.”
Thank you very much, we just had some: a Catholic, or Protestant, or
“secular” preacher does not speak differently. In short, women must be
the intellectual servants, the reflections of their men. You tell us
about the “role of the woman”. I don’t know of any other than to be
herself. A “role”, exterior to her individual longings, can only bring
her, like for men, disappointment.
What! You then set as an example “Carlyle’s wife who, still young and
admired, went to bury herself with him in a harsh and hostile retreat,
accepting the hardest work, so that he, in necessary solitude, could
accomplish his writer’s work.”
But such a woman is a monster, in my opinion; a person who abolishes
herself, who renounces to herself, who mutilates herself for someone
else, who is already stronger than she is!
You will object that Carlyle was a brain who… a brain whom… well, a
bloke, socially more useful than his boring and overly devoted partner
maybe. And then what?
Let’s suppose that it happened, happens, the other way round, that a
woman is a fascinating, superior as they say, guy, superior especially
to her man… That is where I wonder: in your opinion, should the man
erase himself like Carlyle’s wife did, devote himself body and soul to
the work of his partner?
If you tell me “no”, the matter is settled: you therefore admit the
sacrifice of ordinary women to superior men, but not that of ordinary
men to superior women; that you are among the supporters of men, the
masculinists.
Or you tell me: “yes, I accept that an ordinary man sacrifices himself
to ensure the cerebral production of his superior partner”, and then,
your case is even worse, my lovely comrade, who call yourself a rebel
and an anarchist… It means you accept that the weaker and poorer person
sacrifices themselves to the person whom nature gave more! That you find
fair the voluntary sacrifice of the weak towards the strong.
And I know nothing as pernicious as such an idea, not in the brain of
the strong (where it doesn’t matter), but in the brains of the weak who
want to give themselves to be eaten alive by the strong they love!
When I find on my way – and I found too many of them – some “Carlyle’s
wife”, I hate them and I denounce them, I tell my younger female
comrades: “look at this goose admiring her swan: do you know anything
more sickening?”
It saddens me and outrages me to see a woman – who was not, obviously,
from the start, a very strong personality – voluntarily resorb herself,
fade away with pleasure in the overbearing, monopolising personality of
so-called genius she “loves”.
This “loved one”, as great as they might seem to you, o dear comrade,
appears to me like a murderer, of the same kind as the car-driver who
runs over, at night or in speed, a pedestrian: he crushed a personality;
maybe she was tiny, but he reduced her to mush.
And you would give those poor women the pride of sacrifice, the pride of
nothingness, the pride of death?
No, no, and no! I shout at them: “Are you not ashamed of kneeling in
front of this great man and his works? Instead of striving to understand
him, try to protect yourself from his rays, to remain yourself; and if
your ambition is to be his living reflection, let me tell you, o you
superior caste of slaves, that I despise you!”
If we favour the absorption of the weak by the strong, by the
regeneration of the old Salomon by his young girls (be it for blood or
intellect), then we are aristocratic, but not anarchists. We do not want
the tyranny of the weak either, of course: we want for each their share
of the sun, without oppressors nor oppressed.
I know it, a strong personality has a tendency to suck energy from the
meek, annex them, and it might be the most poisonous, the best hidden,
the hardest to detect source of authority! But to glorify in words this
sadly natural phenomenon, dangerous to the lives of both individuals and
peoples, no! No deification of individual imperialism!
You tell us that poetry sang of the voluntary sacrifice of women?
Of course, poetry also sang kings, gods, wars… It often sang gestures
accepted as custom, this old cow true to her stable, to the fenced off
pastures, to the common watering hole!
Maybe one day it will sing the beauty of the novel gesture, the gesture
which breaks the chains, which breaks ancestral habits of resignation
and more or less enthusiastic servitude?…
As for me, I prefer, rather than the distinguished “Carlyle’s wives”,
the plebeian women full of instinct, who tell their dear great man to go
to hell and break away from his orbit. “Maybe to go to the cinema?”
you’ll say bitterly.
Maybe; and if this agrees on that night with their nature, in reaction
against the ethereal splendours of the great loved one? Isn’t that a
sweet misery!
I know full well that not every revolt is an ascension; but I prefer a
donkey who rebels than a dog who follows. How smart and how devoted is
the dog, isn’t he? Well, I don’t love the slaves of love, even the very
refined ones.
My dear young comrades, I beg you, be yourselves, don’t immolate
yourselves on the altars of male genius, do not be trusting dogs, or
“Carlyle’s wives”! Let him be free, and remain free yourself!