The Children's Book

by A. S. Byatt

  The hall was one of those wooden structures with windows too high to see out of. There was a platform, on which the speakers sat, and rows of wooden chairs, of which maybe the first six were taken, the heads of the women sitting there quite invisible under the great dishes and wheels of their hats, their shoulders a mixture of decorous spinsterly dove-colours and brighter greens and purples. There were six men, including Herbert Methley, who was on the platform next to his wife, Frank Mallett and Arthur Dobbin, and Leslie Skinner, who had come to support Etta, who was also speaking. There was one soldier, an explosives expert, who had come with his wife, who was a member of Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Anti-Suffrage League. There was one grocer, who was bookish, and went to the evening classes of Mrs. Marian Oakeshott, who was also on the platform.

  Elsie and Pomona sat down two or three rows behind the last occupied row. From the platform, Herbert Methley smiled down on them, approving their presence. Elsie gave a tight little smile in return. Pomona folded her pale hands in her flowery lap, and turned her face to the light from the dusty window.

  There were five speakers, three before lunch and two afterwards. Miss Dace spoke first. She was precisely eloquent about the injustice to women of being unrepresented in Parliament, unable to vote on matters which concerned their lives, their work, their health. She noted drily that when the words “Woman” or “Women” appeared in the names of laws, these were always laws which made the condition of women less free, more uncomfortable. Voters were householders and taxpayers, but women who were both must pay their taxes without any right to have their views, or needs, consulted or represented. Elsie tried hard to listen carefully. She liked Miss Dace’s dry, ironic, passionate tone. She managed to work out what “suffrage” meant, having always vaguely thought that it was to do with women suffering. It must be like that bit of the Bible “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.” But Miss Dace wanted Parliament to suffer single householders and taxpayers like herself to vote in elections, and a kind of anger welled up in Elsie, for she was not sure how this helped a penniless young woman, camped in a house with a pantry full of beautiful, obscene female jars and vessels, who was full of bodily needs she could not describe, and was certainly suffering. But Miss Dace was a good woman, she put things straight, she was a reasonable woman, as far as she went.

  When Patty Dace had come to her conclusion, the colonel’s wife rose to speak. The country was fighting a terrible war, in a distant country, she said, and the British Empire entailed military responsibility in far-flung places which British housewives could neither imagine nor understand. Let women guard the Home, and the values of the Home, and leave armies and economics to the men whose work they naturally were. Miss Dace replied that those intrepid women who had visited the concentration camps in which the Boer women and children were kept by the British army might be thought to have contributed to the moral well-being of the army and the well-being of the suffering Boers. There was rustling and tapping in the room. Elsie didn’t know what a “concentration” camp was. Miss Dace turned on the colonel’s wife and asked her, would she then remove women from the local government and Poor Law Boards to which they could now be elected and on which they worked efficaciously? No, said the colonel’s wife, she admitted they did competent work.

  It is always so, said Miss Dace. So far, and no further. Your movement would be going against any such employment before it was tried, and now, like King Canute with the tide, you cry, so far, and no further. But the tide will flow in, it will rise, you will see.

  The next speaker was not Herbert, but Phoebe Methley.

  Elsie took a good long look at Herbert Methley’s wife. She had been an attractive woman, Elsie thought, using the past tense a little harshly. She wore a plain dark skirt and a white shirt with a black and green bow at its collar. Her hat was black trimmed with a green ribbon. She looked mild and competent. Her subject was “A Woman’s Place.” She began by saying that she was grateful to the last speaker for having raised the subject of the sacred values of the Home, for it was of the Home she wished to speak. When it was mentioned in this way, she thought, everyone had a pleasant image of a woman in a sunlit house with a garden, and a warm fire in winter, surrounded by plump and smiling children, a baby perhaps in her arms, her mind full of little comforts for her husband on his return from an arduous day in the office or the club. Such a woman’s head would be full of delicious new receipts for cakes and jellies, delightful new covers for cushions and original decorations for hat-brims and corsages. Women in this happy state were in fact few. Rich women did not mind their children, might go days or weeks without seeing them, delegated the care of their health to nursemaids and the care of their minds to governesses, and sent them away, as soon as they could, to schools where they might well be homesick or bullied. And then, such women suffered from boredom. Women could not use minds which had been fed on nothing but sugar flowers and cream soup and hatpins. And the vast majority of working women—and there were thousands and thousands of working women who not only earned the household bread but did what sweeping they could and spread the bread with what grease they could scavenge—they did indeed value the Home and keeping it together, however many adults and children slept in one room—for one step beyond such homes was the Workhouse, which was a mockery both of home and work. The “values of the Home” was an abstract paper phantom.

  And let women not think that their sense of duty, their influence in their proper sphere, in the Home, counted for anything in the face of the law. A woman who shielded her children from an unreasonable or violent father had no chance of taking them with her if she fled from unhappiness. Such a man could claim that outside his Home she was unfit, not only to care for, but even to see or to visit, her children, who had been her life, though her heart might be breaking. Under the sweet sentiments about the domestic sphere of happiness, lip service paid to the wisdom of motherhood, lay cruelty. It was true that a young woman, seduced by a plausible man—an employer, an employer’s son, maybe—if unmarried, was alone responsible in law for the welfare of her unhappy child. But a married mother, separated for whatever reason from her husband, ceased at that moment to have any rights as a mother.

  • • •

  Elsie’s spirit drew back as Mrs. Methley grew more passionate. She was right, of course, but she cared too much, Elsie wanted to stop watching her caring. The Methleys surely had no children.

  Elsie thought of her own mother. She had worked. She had been good at her craft and the air of the kilns had made her ill. She had tried to make a home for them. They had had a geranium in a pot on a window sill. They had had a Minton plate—it was a second—hung on a nail on the wall. They all knew what these things meant. They meant they were respectable. Just respectable. She tried to think she wouldn’t so much mind being trapped in a gilded cage of a comfortable Home—she had done a fair amount of substitute Home-making at Purchase House, not so much out of a desire for homeliness as out of a powerful dislike for mess, and shoddiness, and discomfort, which was unshared by the Purchase women. All this talk about what women did, or should, or might want was unsettling to her. She had wanted shoes and a belt and she had them. She wanted—she wanted—she wanted—to live. But it was beginning to irritate her that she had thought so little. If she had sat up all night reading, who would she be now? She raised her face under her gallant hat, to look at the women on the platform, who got so much out of both thinking and being dissatisfied. She saw that Herbert Methley’s dark look was turned in her direction. A very discreet smile lurked under the fronds of his moustache, and in the corners of his intelligent eyes. Elsie’s face went hot. She looked down, although she would have liked not to. She touched the arrow of the red belt. He could not see her hands from where he sat.

  The third speaker was Mrs. Henrietta Skinner, representing the Fabian Society, and speaking bravely and directly about Women for Sale. She spoke in praise of Josephine Butler, whose courage had brought about the repeal of t
he Contagious Diseases Acts, and of W. T. Stead, whose—perhaps sensational but efficacious—exposure of the Maiden Tribute had exposed the trade in virgin female children, and caused Parliament to raise the age of consent to sixteen. Elsie thought Mrs. Skinner looked like a pie with a frill—her round head, under a plain, “rural” straw hat, was perched on the mound of her Liberty clothing, which hung in bronze-green folds like a tent. Her hands, too, were little, pale, and plump. She used them to make very precise stabbing gestures to illustrate her uncomfortable points. She made no apology, she said, for using words that polite society was more accustomed to conceal behind euphemisms and hints, which were themselves part of the oppression and harm they avoided. She would speak of prostitution, she would speak of venereal diseases, she would speak of the damage done to women’s bodies by unfeeling and unnecessary medical examinations to which they were subjected. She hoped no one would feel they should leave the room when she spoke of such things. Ignorance killed. Men—husbands and fathers—with what they thought of as “natural” urges and needs—went out and contracted diseases from sick women, and passed these diseases on, not only to other so-called “fallen” women and girls—or children—who had been bought, certified as virgins, and sold—but to their own innocent and ignorant wives, and to the generations to come, the infant son in his cradle, the daughter singing to her doll in the nursery. No one had suggested subjecting these men to medical examinations. It was unthinkable that they would submit.

  And who were the “fallen women” who the popular imagination believed led these men, with their natural urges, astray, painting themselves with rouge and henna, showing pretty ankles and covering themselves with exotic perfumes? They were working girls and mothers as often as not, who could not feed their children on what the sweat-shop paid them, whose husbands had had accidents that left them unable to bear burdens or wield picks and shovels. They were young servant-girls, seduced by the master of the house, or his son, and turned out without a character when they were found to be with child. Men must regulate their urges, or be made responsible for the consequences.

  Pomona’s hands were clasped defensively in her lap. She was trembling a little, although her facial expression was one of detached attentiveness, like the child in the schoolroom who is really thinking about something other than the lesson. Elsie stopped listening to her own body and considered Pomona. What had been done to Pomona, what did Pomona know, whose white thighs were curled and spread in modelled china forms? Did she model for them, or did he guess? Elsie didn’t want to know. She didn’t think he guessed. She imagined, briefly, his fingers at work. She remembered families in Burslem where someone’s little brother or sister was generally thought to be really her child by her brother or father. They slept so close there, flesh to flesh. Here she had her own bed, and tossed in it, consumed by undirected desire. Did Elsie care about Pomona? She didn’t want to. She wanted. She wanted. She did not think anyone could ever really have desired Etta Skinner, so what did Etta Skinner know of all this from the inside? She looked at Professor Skinner, handsome in profile in the dusty light, and thought—does he have these urges, does he do anything about it? Does he clasp all that hummock of flesh in his arms? She smoothed her skirt over her hips.

  The members of Miss Dace’s club had prepared a salad luncheon for speakers and audience. Elsie was hungry. She advanced on the table with the plates and teacups, followed by Pomona, who clung to her as though they were connected by magnets, so close that she kept almost falling over Elsie’s feet. Frank Mallett noticed them, and said he was pleased to see them. He asked if they had found the morning helpful, and Pomona said breathlessly “Oh yes, very.” “And you?” said Frank to Elsie. Elsie repeated the word “Helpful,” trying to work out what exactly the speeches were meant to help her with. Frank smiled. He said the world would be a better place if more women took an active interest in these matters.

  Elsie said “It makes me see how ignorant I am. It makes me see I don’t know enough and don’t think enough.” Her tone was resentful.

  Herbert Methley behind her said “Oh, but you will know enough and think enough. I am so glad you took up my suggestion. I am very happy to see you—and looking so well,” he said, smiling in the direction of the belt and shoes. “I am speaking after Mrs. Oakeshott, this afternoon,” he said. “I shall be interested to know what you think.”

  Elsie had been wondering whether to ask Frank Mallett about the pantry—not now, but some time. It weighed on her. But Frank had slid away to greet other women, smiling courteously. Herbert Methley said

  “You will enjoy what Mrs. Oakeshott has to say. You may even be persuaded to come to some of her evening classes on the drama. I’m sure she would be delighted to see you.”

  He was looking directly at the red belt. Elsie was embarrassed, and wanted to slap Pomona for crowding her, for stopping her thinking clearly. She wished Pomona would just go away. Pomona, however, said blandly that she too would be interested in literature classes.

  • • •

  After luncheon, in what is always the dead time for speakers, when digestion takes place, Marian Oakeshott spoke of women’s education. She was handsome and golden: her hat had English meadow flowers on brown linen, her pale coffee-brown linen dress was trimmed with creamy lace. She had a pointed belt not unlike Elsie’s, and a row of little bright silk flowers round the neck of her dress. Her voice was warm and rich. The talk was a series of simple tales, which moved Elsie. The tale of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who with consummate persistence and courtesy became a doctor by attending lectures, and surgical demonstrations, from which everyone sought to exclude her. Two years ago this pertinacious lady had been elected President of the East Anglian branch of that very British Medical Association which at first had debated whether women could pursue rigorous medical studies.

  She spoke of Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the doctor’s sister, and leader of the women’s suffrage movement, who had worked tirelessly, not only for the vote, but for the cause of women’s higher education in Cambridge. Mrs. Fawcett had had the honour and delight of seeing her daughter, Philippa, studying mathematics at Cambridge, placed above the senior Wrangler.

  Elsie did not know what a wrangler was, and could not imagine Cambridge. She was astonished by the resentment this aroused in her. At just that point Mrs. Oakeshott began to tell stories of women—real and imaginary—who, to use the Christian parable Mrs. Methley had so efficaciously quoted, had buried their talents in the ground. It is not easy for a woman to study. If a family cannot send all its children to grammar schools, it will send the sons, and keep back the daughters to wield the mangle, the needle and the poker, to make the Home comfortable for the boys to study. “Duty” is a word that only too often acts like restraining magic, to make a woman deny an important part of herself—and thus, only too often, to deceive and disappoint her husband, by her triviality, her inability to meet his mind. They were not to think that many women were not defeated. Much fashionable nervous illness was, she was convinced, a result of the festering of unused intelligence. Women needed to have the right—and the expectation—to study in groups of like-minded people. For this reason, among others, she had begun her reading group, which would study not only The Mill on the Floss and Jane Eyre but Mr. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House which had been both admired and reviled. She herself had not thought to see in her lifetime so subtle, so terrible, a dramatic representation of those lies of the soul that reduce a grown woman—an intelligent woman—to a puppet and a doll, jerked about by the strings of a failed concept of duty, in a Home that was truly a Doll’s House. She hoped, if there were actors in the vicinity with the courage to do so, to put on a performance of that controversial work.

  Elsie read better than Philip, though she had the same stunted and truncated education. She picked up books at Purchase Hall and tried to make sense of them. She recognised well enough the hunger for something more than housework, of which Marian Oakeshott spoke. She was thinking much faste
r than usual, and reflected sardonically that those hungry-minded women, those frustrated female thinkers, of whom Marian Oakeshott spoke, would always need her, Elsie, or someone like her, to carry coals and chop meat and mend clothing and do laundry, or they wouldn’t keep alive. Someone in the scullery, carrying out the ashes. And if one got out of the scullery, like a disguised princess in a fairytale, there always had to be another, another scullery-maid, to take her place.

  Nevertheless, she would like to get out.

  It was perhaps unfortunate that Herbert Methley was the last speaker.

  Herbert Methley spoke about sexual freedom, freedom of the body, particularly for women. He did not say that this was what he was speaking about. He said he was going to talk about the Woman of the Future by comparing the imperfect, accidental condition of the Woman of the Present with that of women in uncivilised worlds and in earlier and other civilisations. He spoke of undifferentiated protozoa, constantly breeding and transforming, he spoke of herding animals, warm-flanked cattle, intelligent elephants, whose children were cared for in common. He spoke of earlier civilisations which had valued women more, set them higher than men, made goddesses and lawgivers of them. He talked of Mother Right as an organising force of society, and the powerful human loveliness of the naked ceramic goddesses who had been unearthed in Helen’s Troy and Pasiphae’s Crete. He spoke of Roman matrons and vestal virgins and sacred temple dancers.