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Here is a typical masculine attitude, that of Mr. George Moore, in A Modern Lover. Mr. George Moore, who seems to know a great deal about females but less about women, causes in this book Harding, the novelist, who generally expresses him, to criticize George Sand, George Eliot, and Rosa Bonheur: “If they have created anything new, how is it that their art is exactly like our own? I defy any one to say that George Eliot’s novels are a woman’s writing, or that The Horse Fair was not painted by a man. I defy you to show me a trace of feminality in anything they ever did; that is the point I raise. I say that women as yet have not been able to transfuse into art a trace of their sex; in other words, unable to assume a point of view of their own, they have adopted ours.”

This is cool! I have read a great deal of Mr. George Moore’s art criticism: when it deals with the work of a man he never seeks the masculine touch. He judges a man’s work as art; he will not judge a woman’s work as art. He starts from the assumption that man’s art is art, while woman’s art is–well, woman’s art. That is the sort of thing which has discouraged woman; that is the atmosphere of tolerance and good-conduct prizes which she has breathed, and that is the stifling stupidity through which she is breaking. She will break through, for I believe that she loves the arts better than does man. She is better ground for the development of a great artist, for she approaches art with sympathy, while the great bulk of men approach it with fear and dislike, shrinking from the idea that it may disturb their self-complacency. The prejudice goes so far that, while women are attracted to artists as lovers, men are generally afraid of women who practice the arts, or they dislike them. It is not a question of sex; it is a question of art. All that is part of sexual heredity, of which I must say a few words.

But, before doing so, let me waste a few lines on the male conception of love, which has influenced woman because love is still her chief business. To this day, though it dies slowly, the male attitude is still the attitude to a toy. It is the attitude of Nietzsche when saying, “Man is for war, woman for the recreation of the warrior.” This idea is so prevalent that Great Britain, in its alleged struggle against Nietzschean ideas, is making abundant use of the Nietzschean point of view. No wonder, for the idea runs not only through men but through Englishmen: “woman is the reward of war,”–that is a prevalent idea, notably among men who make war in the neighborhood of waste-paper baskets. It has been exemplified by the British war propaganda in every newspaper and in every music hall, begging women to refuse to be seen with a man unless he is in khaki. It has had government recognition in the shape of recruiting posters, asking women “whether their best boy is in khaki.” It has been popularly formulated on picture postcards touchingly inscribed, “No gun, no girl.”

All that–woman as the prize (a theory repudiated in the case of Belgian atrocities)–is an idea deeply rooted in man. In the eighteen-sixties the customary proposal was, “Will you be mine?” Very faintly signs are showing that men will yet say, “May I be yours?” It will take time, for the possessive, the dominating instinct in man, is still strong; and long may it live, for that is the vigor of the race. Only we do not want that instinct to carry man away, any more than we want a well-bred horse to clench its teeth upon the bit and bolt.