{"product_id":"2940013198807","title":"WOMAN AND LABOUR","description":"Contents\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     Introduction\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     Chapter I.  Parasitism\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     Chapter II.  Parasitism (continued)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     Chapter III.  Parasitism (continued)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     Chapter IV.  Woman and War\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     Chapter V.  Sex Differences\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     Chapter VI.  Certain Objections\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is necessary to say a few words to explain this book. The original\u003cbr\u003etitle of the book was \"Musings on Woman and Labour.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is, what its name implies, a collection of musings on some of the\u003cbr\u003epoints connected with woman's work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn my early youth I began a book on Woman. I continued the work till\u003cbr\u003eten years ago. It necessarily touched on most matters in which sex has a\u003cbr\u003epart, however incompletely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt began by tracing the differences of sex function to their earliest\u003cbr\u003eappearances in life on the globe; not only as when in the animal world,\u003cbr\u003etwo amoeboid globules coalesce, and the process of sexual generation\u003cbr\u003ealmost unconsciously begins; but to its yet more primitive\u003cbr\u003emanifestations in plant life. In the first three chapters I traced,\u003cbr\u003eas far as I was able, the evolution of sex in different branches of\u003cbr\u003enon-human life. Many large facts surprised me in following this line of\u003cbr\u003ethought by their bearing on the whole modern sex problem. Such facts\u003cbr\u003eas this; that, in the great majority of species on the earth the female\u003cbr\u003eform exceeds the male in size and strength and often in predatory\u003cbr\u003einstinct; and that sex relationships may assume almost any form on earth\u003cbr\u003eas the conditions of life vary; and that, even in their sexual relations\u003cbr\u003etowards offspring, those differences which we, conventionally, are apt\u003cbr\u003eto suppose are inherent in the paternal or the maternal sex form, are\u003cbr\u003enot inherent--as when one studies the lives of certain toads, where the\u003cbr\u003efemale deposits her eggs in cavities on the back of the male, where the\u003cbr\u003eeggs are preserved and hatched; or, of certain sea animals, in which the\u003cbr\u003emale carries the young about with him and rears them in a pouch formed\u003cbr\u003eof his own substance; and countless other such. And above all, this\u003cbr\u003eimportant fact, which had first impressed me when as a child I wandered\u003cbr\u003ealone in the African bush and watched cock-o-veets singing their\u003cbr\u003einter-knit love-songs, and small singing birds building their nests\u003cbr\u003etogether, and caring for and watching over, not only their young, but\u003cbr\u003eeach other, and which has powerfully influenced all I have thought and\u003cbr\u003efelt on sex matters since;--the fact that, along the line of bird\u003cbr\u003elife and among certain of its species sex has attained its highest and\u003cbr\u003eaesthetic, and one might almost say intellectual, development on\u003cbr\u003eearth: a point of development to which no human race as a whole has\u003cbr\u003eyet reached, and which represents the realisation of the highest sexual\u003cbr\u003eideal which haunts humanity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen these three chapters we ended I went on to deal, as far as\u003cbr\u003epossible, with woman's condition in the most primitive, in the savage\u003cbr\u003eand in the semi-savage states. I had always been strangely interested\u003cbr\u003efrom childhood in watching the condition of the native African women\u003cbr\u003ein their primitive society about me. When I was eighteen I had a\u003cbr\u003econversation with a Kafir woman still in her untouched primitive\u003cbr\u003econdition, a conversation which made a more profound impression on my\u003cbr\u003emind than any but one other incident connected with the position of\u003cbr\u003ewoman has ever done. She was a woman whom I cannot think of otherwise\u003cbr\u003ethan as a person of genius. In language more eloquent and intense than\u003cbr\u003eI have ever heard from the lips of any other woman, she painted the\u003cbr\u003econdition of the women of her race; the labour of women, the anguish of\u003cbr\u003ewoman as she grew older, and the limitations of her life closed in about\u003cbr\u003eher, her sufferings under the condition of polygamy and subjection; all\u003cbr\u003ethis she painted with a passion and intensity I have not known equalled;\u003cbr\u003eand yet, and this was the interesting point, when I went on to question\u003cbr\u003eher, combined with a deep and almost fierce bitterness against life\u003cbr\u003eand the unseen powers which had shaped woman and her conditions as they\u003cbr\u003ewere, there was not one word of bitterness against the individual man,\u003cbr\u003enor any will or intention to revolt; rather, there was a stern and\u003cbr\u003ealmost majestic attitude of acceptance of the inevitable; life and the\u003cbr\u003econditions of her race being what they were. It was this conversation\u003cbr\u003ewhich first forced upon me a truth, which I have since come to regard as\u003cbr\u003ealmost axiomatic, that, the women of no race or class will ever rise in\u003cbr\u003erevolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment of their\u003cbr\u003erelation to their society, however intense their suffering and however\u003cbr\u003eclear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of their\u003cbr\u003esociety requires their submission:","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47082347692272,"sku":"2940013198807","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013198807_p0.jpg?v=1763578053","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013198807","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}