The American Woman by

© Eric Dingwall

(excerpts)









... many domestic and foreign

observers have remarked that the United States seems to

have a surprising number of men who remain adolescent and

of women who play the roles both of doll and of matriarch,

and they have not always realized that this is part of the

American cultural pattern and the result of the domination

of society by women. The conflict in the American soul, is

an economic and a sexual conflict, and the American woman

is, I think, at the heart of that conflict. It is women who

set the stage and largely control the players in important

sections of American life. America is a woman's world, a

world in which, as a Chinese woman, Helena Kuo, remarked,

women have succeeded in everything except in the art of

being truly feminine. In this lies the tragedy and the danger.

It is the purpose of this book to try to see how the American

woman has attained her position and how the whole of

American culture is permeated by her influence. p. 14

... Theodore Dreiser, in his Hey, Rub-a

Dub-Dub!, contributed a stinging indictment of contemporary

America ... As to the American woman, Dreiser

expressed astonishment that the ideas regarding her could

honestly be held by any rational person. But, he stated,

Americans move in a world of illusion. To them woman is

more than human and has become a goddess, a divine

creative principle to whom no vice, error or weakness can be

found. He went on to say that this fantastic delusion caused

sex activity, as it were, to become a criminal offence, since

it was through its expression that the paragon was violated. p. 28

...Woman, who, unless carefully

brought into legal and moral subjection, was of all things most

likely to be used by that Infernal Serpent as he had already

used her in those far-off days ...

Woman was to be watched and guarded against, and the

Puritans were the ones to do it...

It is when we see the Puritan face to face with the problem

of woman that we can see a picture of strong men wrestling

with something so intangible and elusive that it seemed im-

possible ever to obtain a grip firm enough to discover just what

it was against which they were struggling. The problem had

always been the same. The Fathers of the Christian Church,

saints and holy men in all ages and of nearly all faiths, had

had the same riddle to solve and had failed utterly to solve

it. For here was something that defied analysis; so subtle, so

dangerous was it that proof of Satan's power seemed the only

dear fact that emerged from mature consideration.... p. 34

... Sex antagonism is no modern

notion built out of the difficulties and tensions of civilized

life. It lies at the heart of the natural process, and com-

promise only is possible. The aims of the sexes are different

and are incompatible. The ways of man are not those of

woman and the paths destined for feminine footsteps can

never be those trod by men. All attempts to suppress

manifestations of this overwhelming impulse are doomed to

failure... p. 35

... Marriage to the Puritan was an alliance of two persons

joined in love and mutual companionship, help and comfort.

It was, as William Ames again so well put it, an arrangement

whereby existed a "most sociable and intimate affection be-

tween Man and Wife," and anyone who reads the family cor-

respondence in the Winthrop Papers cannot fail to be struck

by the tokens of esteem, respect and affection in the letters ..

in the Puritan family the woman was a responsible individual,

an equal partner with her husband before God, and, as the

bearer and educator of his children (and in spite of the fact

that as a female she was somewhat suspect), began to assume

importance which, as time passed, began to grow and p. 36

change the general pattern of the family unit. This position

of influence and authority grew so rapidly that I do not sup-

pose that there are any competent historians, male or female,

who would deny the importance of so striking a factor in

moulding of the American Republic... p. 37

... many of the colonial

women were soon engaged in tasks apart altogether from those

connected with rearing a family. Except in professions such

as Medicine and the Church, their activity was but slightly

hampered, and they soon began to deal with administrative,

executive[,] and legal matters, while some actually managed

businesses ...

The most important social unit in colonial times was nat-

ally the family, and, as we have said, the woman was the

unchallenged head of the home, although her husband was

nominally the head of the family... p. 38

... How far the Vin-

dication of the Rights of Women was read in colonial America

I am not prepared to say, but it is clear that the life of Mary

Wollstonecraft was not one of which many would have ap-

proved, and that the sentiments expressed in her outspoken

book were hardly those which would have appealed to the

typical New England housewife. Yet it is here that we can,

I think, perceive the germs of those ideas which were later

to work such havoc in the lives of American women... p. 43

... The wife's place

was the home, and her legal position, borrowed as it was

from European enactments, was that of inferiority, although

the conditions of life were clearly undermining the position

of the husband and the ancient patriarchal pattern. The posi-

tion of dominance that the wife maintained in the home

extended not only to the management of the children and

the household generally but to a certain amount of control

over the husband's purse. In his Letters from America, which

were translated in 1924, the writer, who seems to have been

a German officer and who has described his experiences from

1776 to 1779, declares that the stylish display affected by

the women of New England was due to the fact that they

insisted on controlling the domestic finances, and he adds that

mothers on their death-beds ordered their daughters to retain-

the mastery of the house and the control over their father's

purse-strings. It was thus, he concludes, that "petticoat rule"

was spread throughout America. Thus the growing power of

women arose from a natural process which began to operate

very early in the United States and from which the present

almost "matriarchal" pattern has developed.... p. 48

... early American novels ...

As early as 1802 .. signs of a changing attitude

were becoming dimly perceptible. From the daring rake

bent upon carrying off the protesting damsel to his lair,

to prey upon her hidden charms, the beau was beginning

to be considered a somewhat weak and poor specimen...

... But the preferences of

the ladies were clearly in another direction and the Rhett

Butlers of the 1800s were much more popular than the gentle

beau who were likened to syllabub--"all froth and show,

white, sweet and harmless." It was not, however, for the

ladies to say so, for only females of the lower grades de- p. 50

graded themselves thus. "Ladies" had no such feelings, and

thus they were able to rise superior to the other sex, which

was clearly much lower in the animal scale. Man was begin-

ning to take the place assigned to him by the American

woman, for was it not she who was about to take the moral

leadership of the country into her own hands? Freedom for

women offered, so it seemed, boundless opportunities for

female improvement and advancement, but on the other hand

it provided opportunities for libertinism where such was de-

sired. This was the dilemma in which the feminist leaders

were always entangled. Jumping from one horn to the other,

they became enmeshed in a web between the two, and in this

web they are still struggling... p. 51

... The gradually in-

creasing importance of the mother and the supposed inno-

cence of the female child had a profound influence on social

custom and behaviour, since to the power exercised by mater-

nal authority was added the myth that women were super-

ior morally to the other sex, and that it was only through

an inexplicable arrangement of Nature that they had to sub-

mit to what was, after all, something of a degradation. Thus,

as we shall see later, women were being divided into two

sections, the pure and the impure, and since the children of

both sexes were under the influence of the mother, both boys

and girls were early trained to conduct themselves in ways

which were not only unnatural, but which led directly towards

the formation of those neuroses which are so noticeable a

feature of the American scene today.... p. 59

... the problem of woman and the problem of love

are two of the most serious questions that the people of the

United States have to face. It is true, of course, that there

other highly important problems, such as the economic

problem, the problem of the Whites in their relation to the

Negroes, and the problems of the relations of the United States

with the outside world. Unlikely as it may sound, however, all

these questions are linked up with the fundamental disharmony

between the sexes, a disharmony distinct from, but still con-

nected with, the sex antagonism in other countries.... p. 63

... It was the nineteenth century which

saw the gradual emergence of the new American woman

from the early days to the days of organized feminist agitation

and subsequent power. Her dissatisfaction with her lot can be

seen gradually increasing as the dichotomy of the sexes

became wider and more pronounced. But through the whole

of her numerous activities and troubles a single thread runs

from which branch out numerous fibres in all directions. That

thread is her love-life, and it is because her love-life is hope-

lessly awry that the American woman is as she is. She is too

often a woman without love, for love in America is not

what it is in the rest of the world. Woman is the centre of the

moral chaos, the immaturity, the strange fetishes and the

even stranger practices which are to be observed everywhere

in the United States. Yet it is largely through her that the

system which has put her in her present position is per-

petuated.... p. 64

... It must be remembered that, as Nathaniel

P. Willis said, a lady in American society could do no wrong,

for the women of the United States were superior to the men,

physically, intellectually and morally... p. 72

... The American husband, as

Mrs. Houstoun wrote in 1850, was "merely the medium

through which dollars find their way into the milliners' shop

in exchange for caps and bonnets." ... p. 73

In 1869 Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

were still discussing the evils of tight dresses in their The

American Woman's Home, and they joined in the increasing

condemnation of everything masculine, and above all in the

attempt to show the superiority of woman over the mere male.

For example, they declared that it was the brother who was

to do the hardest and most disagreeable work. It was for him

to face the storms and perform the most laborious drudgeries.

As to the family circle, it was for him to give his mother and

sisters precedence in all the conveniences and comforts of p. 75

home life. 15

15 Writing in 1910, an American lady, Katherine G. Busbey, de-

clared that the American boy was subject to the tyranny of his sisters,

and that "an observing Englishman" saw in this fact the beginning

of the so-called slavery of the American man to the American woman

(see Home Life in America, p. 29). p. 76



... Margaret Fuller herself, who

published sections of her Woman in the Nineteenth Century

in the Dial, showed the same tendency to attribute sexual

irregularities to man alone, and declared that many women

looked upon men as wild beasts, although such a supposition

was surely terrifying if they were all alike. Frail was man, in-

deed, she concluded; but how frail! and how impure! ... p. 77

... it was in the nineteenth century that we can see the

beginnings of the theory of male inferiority and female

dominance, not only in the home, but in society in general,

which, as Dickson Wecter points out in The Saga of Amer-

ican Society, women finally dominated completely and occu-

pied a position which the American man has usually accepted

without question. ...

... A. d'Almbert, in his Flanerie Parisienne aux Etats-

Unis, said that the women in the United States realized their

power to such an extent that they abused it like tyrants who

are aware that there is no limit to their despotism. On the

other hand, the men showed a boundless patience and a

deference to the women that could scarcely be imagined.

American husbands, he stated, knew that they were inferior

to their wives, and as they secretly confessed it, their attitude

was explained. The least sign of any gratitude on the part

a woman towards a man was considered superfluous, a

feature which Francis Lieber had noticed twenty years

before.

Similarly Alfred Bunn in his book Old England and New

England declared that if there was one feature more striking

another in the American character, it was the boundless

attention that American men paid to women. She is supreme,

and they are the mere creatures of her will, an opinion voiced

twenty years before, when William Faux in Memorable Days

in America declared that south of the Delaware woman was

"a little divinity, to whom all must bend, give place, and pay

idle homage." Bunn noticed the rudeness of women when

travelling, and observed one case in which a woman turned

a man off his seat and then used both halves of the settee

for herself and her baggage. It was women of this kind to

whom Anthony Trollope doubtless referred when he spoke

of persons who were more odious to him than any other

human beings he had met elsewhere. Although generally

speaking he found American women charming, he noted that p. 84

they had "no perception of that return which chivalry de-

mands of them," illustrating his thesis by an account of what

he himself observed in street cars A similar point of view

was expressed by Count de Soissons, who was interested to

confirm what William Dean Howells had written about the

American women when he had said that it was useless to

quarrel with their decisions because there was no appeal from

them. Soissons mentioned that in America everything was

for the woman. Love played a very small part in her life, for

her husband, whom she dominated, was merely a machine

for making money.... p. 85

... a point of view [was] even more forcibly expressed in the p. 96

Philadelphia Public Ledger and Daily Transcript for July

20, 1848, when it said that one pretty girl was equal to ten

thousand men and a mother was, next to God, all powerful... p. 97

... Mrs. Farnham proceeded to com-

pare the two sexes, to the great disadvantage of the male.

Woman's brain was finer, she wrote, as were all her other

tissues: it was, moreover, more complex, as was her general

build. Through this fineness arose her higher character, her

mom delicate grasp, the more penetrative reach of her

faculties, her swifter power to seize relations, her more re-

ceptive states, which were open to illumination and inspira-

tion, and the more fluent inner life which she enjoyed. As to

her body, the same proofs were there...

... Men, she went on, revel in bestial sensuality and they

dare to speak of "fallen women." "I accept man's language,"

Eliza exclaimed; "it is a fall for my sex when it descends to

meet his at the level of sense," for women abhor sensuality

in their own sex, women, who have been shown to possess

the most perfect, "complex, varied, refined, beautiful and

exquisitely endowed organization, comprising, with its cor-

responding faculties, the most susceptible, sensitive yet en-

during constitution; and also the purest, most aspiring, p. 100

progressive, loving, spiritual nature of any being that inhabits

our earth."

Such was woman according to Eliza Farnham...

... what she had said was not

the reasoned argument of a mature thinker, but the wild and

incoherent ravings of a frustrated, jealous and neurotic

woman, of an American woman of the middle nineteenth

century. She voiced the opinions of many others who ...

felt themselves cheated and trapped, and thus the fight for

quality in the United States was a fight in which sex an-

tagonism played a prominent part. In this connexion Emily

Faithfull quotes an amusing skit on the kind of address de-

livered by an American feminist. "Miss President, feller-

wimmin and male trash generally," the speaker began, "I

believe sexes were created perfectly equal, with the woman a

little more equal than the man ... The only decent thing

about him was a rib, and that went to make something

better."... p. 101

When considering the effect of the motion-picture and the

radio on women in the United States we shall see how the

producers have constantly to bear in mind the tastes and

desires of their feminine and juvenile audiences. For not only

in recreation but also in retail buying the women of twen-

tieth-century America played a highly important part. Sep-

arate as the sexes were in the nineteenth century, the gulf

which divided them was wider still in the twentieth. Women

were still dominant in the social sphere and in the home

where children are concerned. Teachers were still largely

feminine and unmarried, and men still retained a firm but

probably weakening hold on business and politics. It was an

age when the American Woman was coming into her own at

last. She could do all that men could do--almost. It was the

age when the American Man was beginning to wonder what

it was that had hit him. He saw woman in the ascendancy,

and had no idea what was to be done. It was an age when

a Methodist divine (Bishop C. Denny) had to comfort his

male followers by telling them that, come what might, women

at least could not yet "grow a mustache." It was the age

when, as an American woman once told me, the American

Man was simply a doormat-and liked it! ... p. 124

... Instead of calm confidence many a woman exhibited

merely restless frustration: many mothers were more often

than not maternal tyrants: and younger girls became

stereotyped dolls basing their appearance, manners[,] and dress

upon the film stars ... ... hard reality was cast

aside in favour of sensuous phantasy. The American family

itself seemed to be breaking up... p. 125

... the American Woman was becoming more and

more of a problem not only to herself but also to others...

... The more observant foreigners were amazed at

what they found and the way in which so many American

men allowed themselves to be dominated and "pushed around"

by their female relations and friends... p. 126

.. I am inclined to regard the enormous importance of

the sissy concept in American life as due to that feminine

dominance which is everywhere apparent ...

It seems to me likely that the idea stems from an only partly

conscious terror on the part of men that maternal domination

may so influence the son that he may lack at least some of

the masculine characteristics that woman still permits the

American male to exercise...

At the same time, the American mother, while paying lip

service to current beliefs, is not at all anxious to see her sons

exhibit too many of the male characteristics, which may

remind her of her own deficiencies and thus tend to deflate

her assertive personality...

... H. Elfin, in his acute discussion of the aggressive and

erotic tendencies in army life, published in 1946, goes so far

as to say that the profanity and obscenity of the American

soldier is the symbolic rejection of the shackles of that

matriarchy in which he was forced to spend his early years.

He goes on to say that a large proportion of American men p. 130

have never properly developed beyond the early stages of

emotional experience, and that the anxiety and strong reac-

tions they exhibit when required to live by standards expected

of mature adults are proof of the kind of upbringing to which

they have been subjected...

... The fact is that, as

Graham Hutton so well puts it, American men, on account

of their upbringing, retain "an unparalleled devotion" to their

mothers ("Moms"). Their lack of maturity is reflected in

what they are called. They are called "boys," often think of

themselves as such, behave as such and indeed often continue

to be called by this word all their lives... p. 131

... With the rise of the motion-picture the desires and wishes

of the American girl began to change. Her vitality and desire

for happiness began to be centred upon the kind of life

portrayed on the screen. Happiness was to be obtained by

being beautiful, rich and well known. To be content meant

having a body which men would look at twice, a long sleek

car, and one or more long-drawn-out and passionate love

affairs. As might have been expected, these phantasies made

the girls neither happier nor more contented. The main effect

was to standardize their behaviour as it standardized the cut

of their hair and the style of their dress. It did not, however,

make them more feminine. The American girl, remarked

Maurice Dekobra in 1931, is a beautiful little tigress (although

without claws) who feeds on orchids (without perfume),

gramophone records (without needles)[,] and nocturnal tele-

phone calls (without passion). Another French observer,

Christiane Fournier, was even more scathing. Writing a year

after Dekobra, she declared that American girls knew nothing

whatever about real love. All they wanted were husbands who

would both earn a million dollars and also wash the dishes.

What was wrong, she insisted, was that in the United States

the women had the men completely under their thumbs... p. 132

... We have already mentioned some of the effects which may

be thought to follow the education of boys by unmarried

women, although perhaps it is an exaggeration to say, with

John Erskine, that the schools have the best intentions but

that what they are actually doing is making girls out of

boys.29

However, it must, I think, be admitted that one effect is

that boys learn to obey women...

In one of her critical and well-informed columns in the Wash-

ington Post, Mary Haworth declared that she thought that

the manners and customs of American men were woman-

tailored to a far greater extent than in any other modern

society. American men have, she stated, been taught, with

a few exceptions, by mothers and nurses in their cradle era,

and by women school-teachers in the nursery school, kinder-

garten and grade-school phase of education. It has thus been

possible for the American woman to fashion her ideal man...

29 J. Erskine, Influence of Women and Its Cure, p. 70, Cf. C. F.

Ulrich's review, "Off with their Heads" (Sat. Rev. of Lit., Feb. 15,

1936, vol. xiii, p. 13). p. 138



... In the preceding pages it has often been said that the social p. 141

dichotomy between the sexes (concerning which more will be

said later) led to an absorption of men in business, thereby

permitting women to dominate the social scene...

... Miss Dix always

managed to show what Maurice Dekobra called her imper-

turbable good sense. She pointed out how in the United

States no amount of education or sophistication or knowledge

of what happens to other people prevented women from

believing in fairy-tales. They expected to be perpetual brides,

trailing their clouds of glory for over forty years, and when

this did not happen they could not take it without "squawk- p. 142

ing to heaven" that marriage was a failure. Men, she said,

take marriage as it is, while women yearn for it as it isn't.

Or again, a few weeks later she replied to a girl of nineteen

who said she was very miserable because her husband did

not come up to her idea of the dream husband and the

romantic lover whom she thought he would be. Miss Dix

said that if she had waited to marry until she were grown-up

she would have realized that nobody got a fairy prince for

a husband, and it would be far better for her to realise that

she was dreaming of some impossible creation built out of

her imagination... p. 143

... boys were often

in as great a fix as the girls. "What line of conduct do the

girls like?" asked one. Did they "crave a little mauling"? He

went on to tell Miss Dix that when he tried a little petting

the girl refused, but if he did not persist, then she would

not date him again, because he was slow. Similarly, if he

actively insisted, he lost the date, because then he was too

"fast." To these conundrums Miss Dix had a ready answer.

She told him that the mystery of how a woman's mind works

made the riddle offered by the Sphinx look like a puzzle

which any moron could solve without effort... p. 147

... In the United

States, where the growth of the idea of sex equality has been

one of the most important features of the changing social

scene, it could be expected that courtship would reflect this

tendency to a marked degree... The American girl, fed as

she is week in and week out by the phantasies of Hollywood,

still dreams of the Prince Charming who will take her away

to realms of happiness where life will be one long honey-

moon. Since real life is utterly different from that portrayed

in the magazine or on the screen, disillusionment sets in: the

young wife becomes discontented and miserable, and divorce

follows... ... The main obstacle to

female success and adjustment in courtship is psychological.

Since, in the United States, woman has gained what she be-

lieves is almost complete equality with man, the usual female

role in courtship has to be modified in response to these

claims. In other societies man is usually (though not always)

the one who woos: woman is pursued and won: she is not the

pursuer. This pattern of being pursued and being able to

yield to a man equally desired is a source of the keenest

enjoyment to a woman, since, when finally overcome, she is p. 153

able to enjoy the exquisite passivity which is her role. More-

over, man is at a disadvantage when pursued, and he is apt

to take fright and run away...

He does not altogether care for the signs of the times as

suggested by the titles of such books as Get your Man and

Hold Him, Hold your Man!, How to Snare a Male, or Win

your Man and Keep Him and How to Attract Men and

Money."' Neither did he much relish the picture painted by

Disney's Bambi, where the three bold young females soon

had the fawn, the rabbit[,] and the skunk all "titterpated." But

the fact remained that this was a prevailing tendency, and

men had to make the best of it, and run away when the

chase became unbearable.55 Moreover, if he read the mag-

azines intended for feminine consumption, he might not be

altogether edified by what he found there regarding the Amer-

ican husband. In 1938 Uhler and Fishback were asking if

men were "mice" and saying that they were as timid as

amoebae. Nine years later Louise Simpson said that a hus-

band was seldom a mouse, but nevertheless could be "trapped";

while in 1942 Popenoe told the readers of the Ladies' Home

Journal how husbands could be improved "scientifically," and

in 1944 a wife revealed the secret of "How I Maneuver my

Husband," while the man stated how he liked it!

It is true that in the United States the courting woman,

or the woman who desires to be courted, attempts to make

of all those subtle tricks known to the feminine world

everywhere, and her experiences of dating and petting have

made her acquainted with what the male wants and how he

responds to attractive suggestions. But what makes courtship

more difficult for the educated American girl is her incurably

romantic approach, with its tendency to divorce love from

sex ...

55 The Theme of All Women are Wolves (Ed. by A. Silver) is

that it is the girl who is always out to get the boy and that the chief

mission of woman is to pursue the male until capture is effected... p. 154



... Of all periods in the life of the child, the early stages are

often thought to be the most important, for it is during this

period that the course of subsequent development is usually

laid down. From the start of life the girl often behaves dif-

ferently from the boy, yet, in the aim of "equality" for the

sexes, how often--and above all in the United States--are

these differences forgotten, or sometimes even denied. The

ova do not search out the spermatozoa. These swim in search

of them in order to exercise aggression against them and to

penetrate them. The very act of conception implies an act

of male aggression against female passivity. Yet the ovum

does not reject the assault, but welcomes it and enfolds the

vigorous visitor. The very act of love is impossible for the

man without tumescence, while in woman it is always pos-

sible... p. 156

Actresses ...

on the screen are idols and what is offered is the un-

attainable and the impossible. Moreover, it has been pointed p. 188

out that the standards set by the screen characters are likely

be accepted in many cases even if they be contrary to

prevailing mores, Charles C. Peters [1933] giving as an example

the fact that, according to his estimate, 76 per cent. of the pictures

illustrating love-making present the girl as aggressive as op-

to passive in her behaviour.... p. 189

... Cinema husbands are not

like the men who daily return worn out from the office,

described in Life in 1946 as "wrung-out rags." ... p. 190

[footnote] ... The domination of a woman by a power-

ful male is naturally a favourite phantasy in the United States, where

women so often have to play the role of the dominant sex. Many

novels harp on this theme, and scenes are in print, as they are on

the screen, to show some hairy-chested giant as the wild lover...

... Sir Thomas Beecham, ..

.. on returning from the United States in 1946, de-

clared that Hollywood was a universal disaster compared

with which Hitler, Himmler and Mussolini were trivial. The

arts in America, he continued, were a gigantic racket run by

unscrupulous men for unhealthy women.... p. 192

... Perhaps one of the most curious examples of the Holly-

wood portrayal of the American Way was seen in the picture

The Best Years of Our Lives. Here we can see one of the

basic patterns of life in the United States, a life where the

men are childish, nervous and inept, and the women are

strong, dignified and wise. The pictures of the sailor who

has lost both his hands is especially instructive. For here we

have the male who cannot any longer be aggressive. Safe at

last, the woman must be the active partner, as the man's

passivity is forced upon him. 86

In the more recent pictures of the post-war years, it was

not to be expected that Hollywood would forsake the themes

which had so long expanded box-office receipts, namely, sex

and violence. Woman had, as always, to be portrayed in her

triple roles, that of the glorified American showgirl, the

saintly Mother[,] or the devouring Mom.

Female pulchritude was still displayed in ravishing forms ...

86 Cf. the film King's Row, where a male character is legless. It

was Mable Dodge Luhan who acutely observed that women like

to have their men sick in bed, as then their patients cannot escape

the domination that the female can thus impose upon them. p. 193



... Whenever I arrive in my hotel in the United

States I turn on the radio, hoping that one of these so-called

"soap-operas" may be in progress... ... this deluge

of sentimental folly is of profound psychological interest and

importance. For this is what the radio thinks millions of

American women want, and in fact millions do listen to the

activities and sayings of a troop of moronic characters, sob-

bing, drooling, sniggering and sometimes reeking in gore

mixed with gush, until even the most hardened investigator

has to turn the radio knob to silence. Here we find, as Phil

Wylie has pointed out, "mother-love" of the lowest kind, for

those who listen can hardly fail to be stamped with the

matriarchal brand... ... in ...

these daytime serials can be detected certain broad outlines

of what might almost be called policy. ..

... in the core of the story is generally a woman's problem

placed before women: poor, suffering, tender-hearted women,

from whose beautiful eyes stream tears--salty tears, buckets

and buckets of them. Here, in these poignant dramatic

scenes, the women of America can learn how good and

long-suffering they are, how self-sacrificing and self-effacing

--how superior, in fact, to the mere man who always creates

the troubles, and who is weak, miserable and generally inept... p. 195

... These dramas of the air assume the pattern of

straight news. Phantasy becomes reality...

... since they are often written by women--American

women--it is natural that man should be put in the place

reserved for him by the dominant sex in the United States.... p. 196

... In a female-dominated country like the United States

the man must always be trying to escape from the bands--

swaddling bands--which are constantly throttling him. Yet,

since his early years have been controlled by woman, he finds

complete escape impossible. Only in athletics and business

does it seem that the women cannot often follow him; and

even in the latter occupation he is often surrounded by

by painted "cuties" ogling him and titillating him... p. 208

... In baseball, Paul

Gallico maintained, was one excellent escape. Here his "boss-

inhibited psyche" might be freed; and he went on to explain

that the "average American" was a downtrodden and hen-

pecked creature, existing within the framework of a strict

and rigid matriarchal system. He is always being told what

to do and how to do it, and so it is that when he can escape

the women he loves it... ... even

in the female-free world of athletic contests, the American

man is still a victim to that form of delayed maturity imposed

upon him through the influence of the American woman... p. 209

... The two sides of the American

man's character were well described by George Cabot Lodge

in one of his letters to Langdon Mitchell in 1904. The Amer-

ican man was an anomaly, he wrote: and then he went on

to compare his efficiency in the practical affairs of life with

his sentimental idiocy. As regards women, Lodge bluntly

stated that man had been dethroned and a woman ruled

in his stead, while as a husband he was "inept and drivelling"

in everything but making money... ... Nearly

forty years later Dr. M. F. Farnham, writing in Coronet,

stated that the American husband, far from being the once

dominant male was now a "sad imitation." More often than

not, she declared, he was a cringing and timid person, hen-

pecked and even afraid to say what he wanted. She mentioned

cases of men who were not allowed to walk on the living-

room rug except when visitors were present, who could only

smoke cigars in the privacy of the bedroom, or, "believe it or

not," an instance of one husband who was only allowed to

go out alone to play bowls with his friends once every three

months. Finally, she suggested that it might be as well if "our

women" quietly retreated from a few of their indefensible

positions while they can still do so gracefully.

It has been a puzzle for many years how long the American

man is going to tolerate his position, though there is little

doubt that in thousands of cases he has no idea that any other

life is possible, so used to it has he become. Indeed, Gerhard

Venuner in his New York ohne Schmincke hazards the joking

assumption that some mysterious hormones act upon him in

a way which favours his subjection. In a review of his book,

published in a Hamburg journal, Dr. Nettebaum asserted

that men can be seen in the United States kneeling before

women putting on their overshoes, and that it is not unknown p. 211

for a husband to have his ears boxed by his wife in a public

place.16 ...

... Mr. John Fischer, of Harper's Magazine,...

... declares that "never in history has any

country contained such a high proportion of cowed and.

eunuchoid males," for it is in the United States that the Ideal

Male "dedicates his life to the pampering of women."...

... the American Father--"Poor old Pop"- .. is almost

a national figure of jest...

... Graham Hutton explains the remark of the American

who said that the only two depressed classes were Negroes

and white husbands ...

16 See Our Petticoat Government , etc. Cf. the cover of Vogue

(Sept. 15, 1946), which shows the meek man kneeling before the

woman, who is standing on a chair. p. 212



... We have seen above that, from the early days of Ameri-

can extreme feminism, attempts have been made to pretend

that women were "as good" as men and could do all that men

did.... as Viola Klein and Karen Horney have both pointed out,

castration phantasies now and then play some part in the

development of the American girl, and how occasionally there

arises a desire for revenge followed by a symbolic castration

of the opposite sex.

Now, it has often been asserted that women dictate the

purchase of a good deal of male clothing in the United States,

and thus it is possible that the obedient American man is in-

clined to accede to the wishes of his womenfolk more easily

than would be the case elsewhere, especially if the favoured

garments are exhibited and described in an attractive manner.

Towards 1936-8 there began to appear on the American

market a variety of odd articles of male attire ...

... all designed in order, apparently,

to disguise the fact that the wearer was masculine and to

pretend that he was feminine. There were odd snap-pounches

and "concealed no-gap" flies; and in one advertisement the

device was so drawn that not only was all trace of the ob-

jectionable bulge obliterated, but the tight binder was so de-

signed that the role of the wearer was reversed. He had been

turned into a fake woman.19...

19 ... A kind of symbolic castration has been achieved,

just as the threat of actual castration is often used to deter children

from undesirable habits. Indeed, one American mother declared that

all she had to say was "scissors" to have immediate effect ... p. 213

... The increase of knowledge about the sexual life had affected

women for the worse rather than for the better. For the more

she knew, the more she suspected that she was being cheated.

Reality seemed so different from what she had anticipated ...

Many women knew little of the art of love as described by

Marcel Barriere in his Essai sur le Donjuanisme Contem-

porain. The art of love, he says, consists in initiating women

into sensual pleasure, in revealing to them its poetry and secret

mysteries... The man's pleasure is forgotten; what is im-

portant is only the pleasure that he bestows, so that his partner

can say it was to him that she owes her deepest bliss.

It is interesting to observe how the American female before

marriage has to play the part of the romantic doll, and how

after marriage, when the dreams of youth have been shattered

and Prince Charming is seen without the halo, she adopts

role of the dominating Mother ("Mom"), ruling not only

children but her husband also,

How far such a dominating position is desired or enjoyed

is far from clear. It is obvious that, in many cases, the adop-

tion of such a role is compensatory and is, in a sense, forced

upon the woman. Through it she attempts to become appar-

ently independent and not in any way "inferior" to the man

whom she secretly despises for his spineless acceptance of

the position allotted to him in the United States...

... a case printed in "The Worry Clinic" in the New

York Post of January 15, 1943, referred to a young woman, p. 222

aged twenty-two[,] engaged to the type of "fine man" so idealized

in the United States. She declared that sometimes he irritated

her so much that she could scream. "Some day I may scratch

his eyes out, so there!" ended her complaints. Further analysis

showed what was wrong. Her irritation stemmed from the fact

that her "fine man" was, as the psychologist put it, one of

"these long-suffering doormats," and the girl herself finally

declared that she only wished that her fiance would give her a

sound spanking. Summing up the situation, the psychologist

declared that the more men submit to "such petticoat rule,"

the more irritated and angry the women become. He summed

up one of the basic reasons for the frustration and unhappi-

ness that so many American women experience. Yet it is not

often that American women complain and confess their true

feelings, and doubtless they often accept their position and

even glory in it. 28

One way out of the American wife's dilemma is to have

more than one husband to fulfil her demands in various di-

rections. This solution was amusingly put forward in 1925

by Alexander Black, and the relevant sections condensed in

The Reader's Digest for February 1946. One husband would

look after her material needs, another would act as handy-

man about the house, and the third would attend to her during

the night, and when not active would have to be a "noiseless

sleeper," so as not to disturb her ladyship...

... I am of the opinion

that the lack of full sexual satisfaction is at the core of the

discontent manifested by so many American women, and as it

has therefore its repercussions in every department of life ...

28 See Emily Hahn, who stated that Englishwomen and American

men "know their place," that a "female minority" rules the States,

and that American "boys" are scared to death of not loving their

mothers (London Evening Standard, March 16, 1948, p. 6) ...

... Mrs. M. A. Hamilton said, on Feb. 21, 1949, when broadcasting

on American women in the United States, "Mother knows best"

for "Mom rules the home." She even stated that in that "woman's

Paradise" men wear overshoes because women insist, for the

United States is ruled by women and they know it and "everybody

knows it. " ... p .223



... The man, for his part, has to con-

tend with a complex of ideas and ideals which are fundament-

ally hostile to satisfactory relations. Tied to the maternal

image, adolescent in behaviour and outlook, and with a pic-

ture of woman completely out of focus, many an American

man finds that full and satisfactory relations are impossible.

Full virility is not lacking: where he fails is in not using

his powers so as to obtain not only the maximum satisfaction

for himself, but also that for his partner, ... ... the attitude

of dominance and superiority adopted by the American

woman is fatal to her own enjoyment... p. 224

... The American cartoon is frequently valuable as a pointer

towards the more intimate social relations between the sexes.

A subject very commonly portrayed is the spineless male being p. 225

bullied, cajoled or persuaded to wake up and realize what a

woman wants...

... were he to possess the technique of a Casanova

and the virility of a sexual athlete, his work would be in vain p. 226

were he to attempt to court many an American woman. For

if the American man's courtship is a "wash-out," to use

Odette Keun's words, an American woman's bed-manners are a

disaster. This truth came to the British author, R. W. Thomp-

son, when he was in New York. There he saw these superb

American women with their "lovely limbs," their "beautiful

legs," with that amazing background of "breasts, buttocks and

bellies" on the bookstalls, on the boards and even on the

bedposts. Here they were, perfectly turned out, ready made

and patterned, but "not for love."32 For he saw clearly that

he was in the motherland of dominant women who were mak-

ing idols of themselves and demanding tribute. Such women

were to be worshipped at a distance...

32 R. W. Thompson, Black Caribbean, pp. 50-1.



It might be an American axiom, as Varigny averred in 1889, p. 227

that in the United States woman was queen: she might be

"unique," or, as F. Roz expressed it in 1927, "un objet

precieux et rare, infiniment recherche," she might be "envied"

in England and "revered" on the Continent, as the Nearings

maintained in 1912; she might, as Mrs. M. A. Hamilton ex-

pressed it when broadcasting from England in 1949 be "the

Eighth Wonder of the World," but could she be happy when

her men never seemed to grow up ...

It was rarely that she lost her patience with the men who

failed her. To do so would be undignified, and also it would

show that she was at least partially dependent upon men for

her own satisfaction. Occasionally, however, it was too much.

One day the Baltimore Post carried a story of an incident

where three girls offered a man a lift in their automobile.

Driving to a quiet spot, they stopped, proposed a "petting

party," but found the guest unable or unwilling to gratify

them. Stung with contempt and fury, they seized him, stuck

pins into him, and left him in such a condition that he

to be removed to the nearest hospital.37

37 See Americana , 1926, p. 87; and cf. the American Mercury

(March 1926). Another case has recently been reported...



... as Emily Hahn has

put it in Seductio ad absurdum, seduction was really the art p. 228

persuading a person to do what he or she really wanted to do

all the time. The question was, did the American woman

want anything done to her? Did her position as the dominant

sex permit any act of aggression, without some kind of psyche-

logical conflict ensuing? Certainly, aggression with her consent

was difficult. But what about it without her consent?

This question always brings to my mind an incident in a

theatre I once attended. During one of the scenes in the play,

a number of women were together and about to be interviewed

viewed by a mysterious man. Much whispering went on in

the waiting-room, and then one said in a high-pitched voice,

"Do you think he'll rape us all? How wonderful!" The house

broke into applause, and women all round me were clapping

and stamping, their eyes bright with anticipation.

In 1953 the United States Government crime reports show

17,900 cases of rape. How far these were genuine cases of

rape with violence on unwilling and resisting victims I do

not know, and it does not concern us here.38 What is now

of interest to consider is whether or no some American women

cherish phantasies of rape, or perhaps it would be better to

say of violent love-making, thus relieving themselves of the

pretence of dominance, and enjoying what otherwise they

would have resisted as being incompatible with their ideas of

superiority and moral virtue...

38 Cf. J. A. and R. Goldberg, in Girls of City Streets for an analy-

sis of 1,400 cases of alleged rape. Some time ago the Louisville Times

decided to print the names of women who complained of rape in

cases where the defendant was found not guilty. It was apparently

found necessary to do this as a protection for men against the designs

of frustrated and sex-starved women. In 1943 a girl of seventeen com-

plained that she had been raped by twelve men during a cinema per-

formance at the Bronx Opera House, where some time previously a

woman had stated she had been raped twenty-five times! p. 229

... one of the main

reasons for the violent colour prejudice in the South is due

to the fact that the white women are sexually unsatisfied and

jealous of the attention that coloured women get from white

men, while white men are often jealous of coloured men,

since the former labour under the common delusion that peo-

ple of dark skin colour are more virile, sexually competent[,]

and capable of sustained activity than persons of lighter

pigmentation.

These beliefs permeate the South and have created great

trouble, misery and psychological tension. Before the civil

war, Southern society, always very different from that of the

East, was partly centred upon the position, charm[,] and de-

sirability of women, but the presence of the Negro embittered

relations, since the white woman had to be represented as the

antithesis of her coloured sister. Young men consorted with

black women as a matter of course, and indeed it is said that a

Southern jest tells of how men in the South do not know till

they marry that they can embrace a white woman. Thus the

white woman of the South was supposed to have no desires

and no passion. She was a block of ice, a white goddess, pure

as the snow and as cold, and any approach was, in a sense, a

violation of an ideal, almost sacrilegious... p. 233

... The Negro woman was

not only complaisant; she was free from that ever-present

sense of guilt and sin which still permeates all American so-

ciety. Thus she offered a contrast to the white woman of the

South, who was thereupon raised on a pinnacle and presented

to the world as the perfect example of ice-cold chastity,

purity[,] and innocence. The result of this gynaecolatry was (and

is still) catastrophic. For the terrible frustration which the

Southern woman suffered was turned outward and became

aggressive, and her aggression was directed quite simply and

naturally against those whom she believed were partly re-

sponsible. It is thus that we find that the whole question of

colour prejudice in the South revolves around the sexual ques-

tion. The ever-present thought of rapes; the eternal question

as to whether one wants one's daughter to marry a Negro;

the marked sadistic elements in certain lynchings; the grow-

ing jealousies and rivalries which are beginning to spring up--

all these to the student in abnormal psychology are unmis-

takable pointers towards what J. W. Johnson has called 'the

core of the heart of the American race problem.' " ... p. 234

... In the United States female

tranquillity is an impossibility. The failure to find the mate

she needs is finally accepted, and the domination which was

partly the cause of the failure becomes a kind of compensatory

device whereby her own self-respect may be maintained. The

American Mother becomes "Mom," and takes her place in the p. 235

curious matriarchal set-up of American society, where she

reigns supreme ...

... An American girl's bedroom is shown ..

.. On the walls are eleven "pin-ups." No, not of boy-friends or

actors, says the caption, but of famous pin-up girls. Indeed, it

was an all-woman room, and possibly the caption suggests the

"forerunner of an all-woman world." ...

... in the Washington

Post, Mary Haworth is constantly having to deal with the

question of maternal dominance and the adolescent attitude

of the married man. On December 20, 1942 she was advising

a divorced wife who married one of a mother's five spoilt

sons. He proved to be impossible, two of the others died of

alcoholism and another committed suicide. Two days later

another wife told how her husband wanted to go back to his p. 236

mother, and not live with his wife, as he was the "perfect

mama's boy."...

... Dorothy Dix's column told the same story. In 1942 two

sisters (age twenty-eight and twenty-three) and their brother

(twenty-six) wrote asking advice on how two escape "their

mother's tyranny." ... The same year a young woman

wrote asking advice on how to deal with mothers who try

to prevent their sons from having anything to do with her.

She described the maternal barrage of insinuation and abuse,

and then remarked that "of course ... Sonny crawls back

safely to Mamma and I lose out." In October of the same

year Miss Dix had a whole article on the dominating woman.

When a man marries, she said, this kind of woman believes

he belongs to her "just as much as though he were a slave

she had bought in the market-place." As to the children,

every symptom of initiative is ruthlessly crushed. "They must

always hold on to Mother's hand and be guided by her." They

are left in perpetual babyhood even after they have grown

up. The divorce courts are filled with their complaints that

they aren't pampered "as Mother did." Men have their ward-

robes, their stomachs, their eyes, their tastes and their

thoughts taken over by women.

In 1943 a bewildered wife wrote to Miss Dix asking what

was to be done with her mother, who, young, well[,] and strong,

insisted on living with her and being supported by her, and at

the same time tried to persuade her to leave her husband and

child and live with her elsewhere. Finally, in 1943 Miss Dix

said in plain words that "thousands upon thousands" of Amer-

ican mothers were wrecking homes because they could not

bear the thought of their children's independence. This was

what was called "mother love," Miss Dix dryly remarked, but

it would be better for the children if it were hate... p. 237

... I have always been amazed at the quantities of alcohol

that American men consume preparatory to love-making ... p. 244

... It must be difficult for many

an American man to have a normal spontaneous relation

with a woman who has an attitude of cold dominance or of a

goddess requiring worship. Sexual satisfaction, therefore, has

to be either attained in phantasy or with women to whom sex

is a profession and who do not fall within the class of "good"

women to which belong the mother, the sister[,] and the wife... p. 245

... As early as 1862 I. J. Benjamin stated that America worships

two idols .. Mammon and the female sex ... p. 256 (footnote)

... With feminism triumphant she lost her feminin-

ity, and with her femininity her peace of mind.... p. 257

The main difference between the two great blocs of English-

speaking people is, I am convinced, the position of women

in the two societies. In the one case we have a culture

through the development of which feminine influence has

become dominant, and through this dominance a kind of

infantilism and immaturity is spread among considerable

portions of the population. In the other, as among the great

Latin peoples, feminine influence is pronounced, but woman

has never attempted to usurp the position accepted by man,

and thus bring him under her undisputed sway. Such an

empire brings neither happiness nor peace of mind to her

who rules it and nothing but neurotic restlessness to him

who submits. This is one key to the American enigma, and

through an understanding of the American woman's place

and sexual activities in the industrial society of the United

States, the paradoxes and contradictions in American life

may become resolved. p. 258



SOURCE:

Dingwall, Eric John. The American Woman, Signet Books, New York . © 1956, 1957.





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