This, at least, can safely be said: that any woman who has attained to even a small measure of success in literature or art has done so by discarding, consciously or unconsciously, the traditions in which she was reared, by turning her back upon the conventional ideals of dependence that were held up for her admiration in her youth.
In dealing with this problem of the inferior place hitherto occupied by woman in literature and art, let me admit, frankly and at once, that I have none of the qualifications of a critic. Of the technique of any branch of creative art I know practically nothing; nor can I say that I have any great measure of curiosity concerning it. I must confess to being one of that large mass of unenlightened persons who judge of works of art simply and solely by the effect such works of art produce upon themselves, who, where they are stirred to pleasure, to reverence, or to laughter, are content to enjoy, to be reverent, or to laugh, without too close inquiry as to the means whereby their emotions are produced, with still less inquiry as to whether such means be legitimate or the reverse. I speak, therefore, not from the standpoint of the instructed critic, but from that of the public, more or less impressionable, more or less uneducated, upon whom the artist works; and it follows that when I speak of woman’s inferiority to man in creative art I mean, not her inferiority in technique (whereon I am not competent to express opinion), but her incapacity to arouse in the ordinary human being such emotions of wonder, delight, and sorrow as men who have the requisite skill in creative art have power to arouse. I have thought it necessary to explain thus much lest my point of view be misunderstood, and I be credited with an attempt to usurp the functions of the trained critic.
Speaking, then, as one of the common herd—the public—I ask myself why it is that as a rule woman’s art leaves me cold, woman’s literature unconvinced, dissatisfied, and even irritated? And the only answer I can find is that they are artificial; that they are not a representation of life or beauty seen by a woman’s eyes, but an attempt to render life or beauty as man desires that a woman should see and render it. The attempt is unconscious, no doubt; but it is there—thwarting, destroying, and annulling.