Man & woman : a study of human secondary sexual characters.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Man & woman : a study of human secondary sexual characters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stone slab. Here she appears clearly as. the primitive miller. Or, perchance, she lays her seeds in a flat tray, and by the help of the wind or a hot stone removes the chaff. Here begins her first lesson in threshing. . . . Perhaps with a stick, hardened and pointed in the fire, she digs the roots from the earth, or cleans or tears away troublesome weeds from useful plants, or digs a hole and drops the seeds of pumpkins, gourds, or maize therein. While we watch her working we are looking at the first gardener, farmer, and nurseryman. It may be that on some lonely plain or alluvial river-bank there is no cave to shelter her and her babes. How long will it take this aforetime basket-maker and leather-worker to devise a shelter of grass or skin, and become the architect primeval? . . . The primeval woman was not a potter. It was not until near the polished stone age that she became the pristine plastic artist. This is true, however, that every form, decoration, and function of pottery were invented by women. ... In the struggle for existence and exalta¬ tion which takes place among many occupations, as among individuals and species, militancy no longer de¬ mands all man’s waking movements. The arts devised by woman are in the ascendancy, and the man militant has glorified them by his co-operation. Her very ancient digging-stick is now a plough; her rude carrying strap over her aching forehead is now the railroad train; her woman’s boat, the ocean steamer; her stone hand-mill, the costly roller-mill; her simple scraper for softening hides, the ^reat tanneries and shoe-factories; her distaff and weft-stick, the power-loom; her clay and smooth pebble, the potter’s wheel; her sharpened stick and bundle of hairs are all the apparatus of the plastic and pictorial arts. ... In the early history of art, language, social life, and religion, women were the industrial, elaborative, conservative half of society. All the peaceful arts of to-day were once woman’s peculiar province. Along the lines of industrialism she was pioneer, inventor, author, originator. ” As a more special detailed example of the primitive sexual division of labour we may take the Central Eskimo as described by Dr. Boas (F. Boas, “ The Central Eskimo,” Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology, 1884-85, PP- 579* 580). “The principal part of the man’s work is to provide for his family by hunting, i.e., for his wife and children and for his relatives who have no provider. He must drive the sledge in travelling, feed the dogs, build the house, and make and keep in order his hunting implements, the boat-cover and seal-floats excepted. The