How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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- Publication/creation
- London : George Routledge, 1932.
- Physical description
- xiv, 374 pages ; 22 cm
- Contributors
- Wolfe, W. Béran 1900-1935.
- Notes
-
This edition was reprinted in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948.
Copy 1 Note: 1937 reprint. X158203
- Attribution and usage
-
Wellcome Collection
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The image contains the following text:
greater detail than is possible in these paragraphs. For
our purpose it is enough to indicate that the history of
mankind includes an early epoch in which women were
the dominant sex, followed by transition to masculine
dominance. The present age, while chiefly characterized
by masculine dominance, is again an age of transition.
Some writers believe that an era of matriarchy is in
the offing, but it is more probable that the next age will
be an age of sexual cooperation, not of sexual competition.
After centuries of oppression by exponents of the
prevailing patriarchal culture, women are now in a process
of emancipation. The two greatest emancipators of
women have been the microscope and the machine. The
microscope proved conclusively that the r6le which the
female plays in the reproduction of the species is one of
biological equivalence with the male. The machine has
carried on the work of the scientist by levelling the
economic differences between the sexes. The more
complicated the machine, the more easily women become
the equals of men in its use. The present transition
period from the outworn philosophy of the Hebrew
fathers, from the horrors of witch-hunting, and from
the fallacious belief that women are second-rate men, is
characterized by tremendous sexual conflicts.
The embattled males who cling to the alleged
superiority of their sex attempt with might and main to
maintain the status quo. These men (and many women are
on their side for lack of courage to participate in the
emancipation of their sex) are frantically upholding the
old traditions and prejudices. Against them are arrayed
the forces of emancipated womanhood who refuse to take
the old shibboleths for granted. With every day the
battle lines of womankind are extended farther into the
terrain which but a few decades ago was considered the
sole privilege of men. A great body of laws and traditions
still blocks the path to the complete emancipation of
women, and not the least of these blockades is the
residuum of outworn emotional attitudes in parents and
teachers.