ARE FEMALES FEMININE?
MUHLEN, NORBERT
WRITERS and WRITING THE NEW LEADER LITERARY SECTION Are Females Feminine? Reviewed by NORBERT MUHLEN THE FEMININE CHARACTER. History of an Ideology. By Viola Klein, Ph.D. (London); with a...
...and the alliance' of democratic Socialism and a progressive America is the best guaranty for the success of Western policy and purpose...
...ALL -THIS...
...Biddle urges a realistic and farsighted outlook, divested of outworn shibboleths and obsolete stereotypes...
...OCCASIONALLY THE SYMPATHETIC OBSERVER of the American scene is tempted to despair of this country's ability to produce the sort of leadership that could replace the all-to-frequent manifestations of naivete, stupidity, and nearsightedness in government with a firm and progressive leadership that knows the world around it and is conscious of its own place and purpose...
...And botli psychodynamic approaches can add new ' facets of insight to the equally biased and atomized findings of other workers in the common field, such as biologists, experimental and social psychologists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists...
...Das tries hard and in many pages to tell us about modern American women, what has been said more succinctly and understandingly by Miss Stevie Smith, a contemporary American poetess,— "Girls, although I am a woman, "I always try hard to seem human," Little new information or insight can be found in Dr...
...In a splendid study which is original in its method and stimulating in its "story," Viola Klein attempts to collect the representative scientific opinions on the difference between "masculinity" and "femininity...
...To support his point, the author contrasts the intrinsic humanistic and democratic content of Socialism with the dogmatism and terror of the police leviathan...
...and only too often, the seriousness of an "approaching crisis "has been realized when it was ^overripe...
...With considerable charm the author recalls the illusions of pre-war isolationism, the wishful thinking of the war years, and then the gradual awakening, in and out of Washington, to both the difficult problems within this country and the genuine nature of Soviet intentions...
...Biddle ably and angrily shows, are advocating a scheme whose "glib impertinence j^jfi]£qualled only by its thoughtless surpTdity...
...Klein points out how within every theory the personal, social, scientific and cultural bias of its author necessarily colors his research: by this method, very diverse theories are reduced to a common critical frame of reference rather than offered at face value...
...As a matter of fact, he has few if any novel concepts to pass on to his readers...
...Francis Biddle, Attorney-General under President Roosevelt and U.S...
...New York: International Universities Press...
...f?ently to her history of ideas on femininity...
...I can well imagine how surprised and disgusted the venerable Sorbonne professor must have been in 1934 when Mile...
...175 pp...
...The other protagonists present a kind of historical fashion show of recent social research, as well as a pageant of all those "basic" traits ascribed to Woman, from "modesty in dress" to "lack of social conscience" and "mother-love...
...This has been due in large ^measure to the prolonged "state of adolescence in which the possession of power did not seem to involve responsibility...
...Biddle goes beyond his advocacy of an American-Socialist coalition to ask for a serious effort to streamline American outlook and institutions...
...On the other, he advances a much-needed program for bringing government, and above all Congress, up to date...
...THE AMERICAN WOMAN IN MODERN Marriage," a very exciting and rather unexplored subject, has found less than inadequate treatment in the French Ph.D...
...Biddle's suggestions range From the cessation of the "lottery" system of seniority rule in Congressional committees, .to some form of interpellation and ministeri.il responsibility, and various constitutional amendments that would make for a more representative, more efficient, and more intelligent government, so as to eliminate "the delays, the provicialism and the timorous caution and prejudices so often displayed by Congress...
...America must grow up fast if it is to do its job in world affairs not merely as a brute force but as a conscious, progressive power allied with the Socialists and liberals in Europe, and committed to a program of security in the United States...
...in short, mother-love is a quaint habit of limited and passing prevalence to some observers, an innate, eternal, unalterable constitutional trait to others...
...Allen Dan* writes often for The A'ew Leader and other periodicals...
...Das' writings on American marriages where "the children have perfect freedom and wife (sic> enjoys with her "husband equality and partnership in all family affairs and property rights...
...The tentative conclusion cannot be avoided that there is hardly such a thing as feminine' character per se: but...
...THE AMERICAN WOMAN IN MODERN MARRIAGE...
...The author aptly debunks the theories of the assorted Hayeks and Hazlitts and the verbiage of the Stassens and Woolcotts, to whom Socialism and Communism are but "two peas out of the same pod...
...And the same goes for most of the countless other "typically feminine" traits...
...and if there is one, is it an innate, perennial difference, or is it a difference caused only by special conditions and traditions, which alters when it alteration finds...
...185 pages...
...Biddle traces the development of American social thinking since the days of Hamilton and Madison, and demonstrates convincingly how, in spite of the deep-seated folklore of "free enterprise," America has accepted ideas and programs which only yesterday were attacked and abused as "socialistic...
...BUT NOW THAT THIS UNIOUE responsibility has been thrust upon the United States, Mr...
...IN DR...
...On the one hand, he decries the recent circus performances of tho Un-American Activities Committee and the hysterical abuses of loyalty investigations...
...Sometimes it appears as if science had made only very few discoveries in addition to the legendary "Vive la petite difference...
...In the footsteps of Professor Karl Mannheim, whose "sociology of knowledge" .she applies productively and intelh...
...3.50...
...The University of Chicago Press, 1949...
...Mr, Biddle can take some credit for making this function clear to his fellow-Americans...
...The author —and with him, the American people —is implicitly an advocate of the welfare state, In which government plays an extensive and positive'role...
...With considerable finesse, Mr...
...The Alternate Way Reviewed by ALLAN DANE THE WORLD'S BEST HOPE...
...Klein has, as Professor Mannheim remarks in Ins thought-provoking introduction, done remarkable exploratory work...
...probably in every age and civilization, some traits characteristic there ani then of the feminine part of society develop in new directions...
...Price $3.75...
...Here is his point of contact with the democratic Socialist: he correctly stresses the fact that in the last analysis the difference between the Social Democrat and the non-Socialist progressive Is one of deg'ree, and not of basic outlook...
...While flippant, short-lived, parochial opinions with the claim to world-wide and lasting validity seem rather the rule when fundamental differences between human groups are investigated, the most dogmatic—and futile—allegations seem to be made (by laymen and scholars in many fields alike) on the difference between men and women...
...HOWEVER, IS not enough...
...Hence the fundamental thesis of his book: under the present circumstance, "the alternative to Communism in Europe is not capitalism but some form of Socialism...
...In his chapter on th# nature of the Soviet regime, New Leader readers will find references to such familiar writers as William Henry Chamberlin, Arthur Koestler, David J. Dnltin, Victor Kravchenko...
...By Francis Biddle...
...Mr Biddle has no panaceas-to offer, and thank goodness for that...
...with a foreword by Karl Mannheim...
...Das presented him with her discovery of such very strange habits among les Americaines...
...KLEIN'S EXPOSITION of theories on femininity, period pieces of social research alternate with the latest fashion, both equipped with diverse definitions and explanations which become highly doubtful to the next generation...
...And yet, The World's Best Hope comes close to synthesizing the present-day outlook of the truly liberal, socially and internationally conscious American...
...AS A WISECRACK submits, the proper study of man is woman, the findings in this field of study seem rather inconclusive...
...It is comforting and refreshing to reassure oneself that there are such men as Mr...
...Price $3.75...
...Removing the individual theories from their self-contented scientific shells, cleaning away the dust and the petrification of bias, trying to form a synthesis of the remainders...
...In presentday America, in which women seem to gain continually in status, prestige, power and importance, Viola Klein's book deserves wide public recognition and discussion...
...but I also realize how bored an American reader must be by a cumulation of commonplaces which the popular wome-ns' magazines have told him ove:and over again, though in bettiv English and with nice little drawir..:(Norbert Muhlen is a frequent contributor to The New Leader, Commentary and other magazines...
...Since she included Otto Weininger in her sample of authors, she seems to have selected it with more concern for their contemporary influence than for their scientific weight which this self-hating rebel certainly lacked...
...228 pages and xiv...
...By Sonya Ruth Das, Ph.D...
...For instance, Freud's dogmatic opinions on femininity which were actually influenced by a man's image of the Viennese Frau Doktor, 1900 vintage, can, contradicting as they might seem, well be related to Karen Hoiney's theory, in which a woman talks back to her teacher, after she observed the world from a Manhattan penthouse thirty years later...
...Those who would 'today impose the mythical and virtually non-existent system of "free enterprise" on Western Europe, Mr...
...There still survives, he correctly stresses, a good deal of "nostalgia for the America we had known" before...
...Is there, beyond and besides the purely biological difference between Man and Woman, a difference in their basic character...
...but the latter, for instance, is by some biochemists explained as dependent on the supply of manganese, by some anthropologists and historical sociologists as a behavior pattern conditioned by some but not all cultures, by Fleud as sublimated inferiority of women, by Horney as sublimated superiority of women, by the Vaertings as the attitude of a socially suppressed sex...
...thesis by Sonya Ruth Das, which, fifteen years after its acceptance by the University of Paris, is published in this country...
...judge at the Nuremberg Trials...
...If today the Unwed States is on the road to justifying the description Jefferson once gave it as "the world's best hope...
...New York: .Philosophical Library...
...and as a competent critic, she tries to discard the untenable parts of these opinions, to salvage the more valuable discoveries which they might contain, and finally to join the total of these salvages into a whole which may well serve as groundwork for new investigations...
Vol. 32 • April 1949 • No. 17
