Woman and Labour / Olive Schreiner
Woman and Labour (1911) is an essay by Olive Schreiner. It is dedicated to Constance Lytton.
Destruction of the original manuscript
The published text of Woman and Labour is the surviving version of a much longer work, which was destroyed when Schreiner's house was vandalised during the Boers war and her papers burned.
- From the introduction
- In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of two months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I arrived at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but Martial Law had already been proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to allow my return to my home in Johannesburg and sent me to the Colony; nor was I allowed to send any communication through, to any person, who might have extended some care over my possessions. Some eight months after, when the British troops had taken and entered Johannesburg; a friend, who, being on the British side, had been allowed to go up, wrote me that he had visited my house and found it looted, that all that was of value had been taken or destroyed; that my desk had been forced open and broken up, and its contents set on fire in the centre of the room, so that the roof was blackened over the pile of burnt papers. He added that there was little in the remnants of paper of which I could make any use, but that he had gathered and stored the fragments till such time as I might be allowed to come and see them. I thus knew my book had been destroyed.
Contents
- Dedication.
- Introduction.
- Chapter I. Parasitism.
- Chapter II. Parasitism (continued).
- Chapter III. Parasitism (continued).
- Chapter IV. Woman and War.
- Chapter V. Sex Differences.
- Chapter VI. Certain Objections.
Racism in Woman and Labour
There are certain racist aspects to this work: Schreiner considers the status of women in relation to their race (which is not always synonymous with "the human race", but corresponds to various ethnicities), and describes some races as "primitive", attributing essential qualities to various groups.
- Quote from Chapter VI
- It is possible, that the human female, like the Jew, the male of that type farthest removed from the dominant male type of the past, may in the future find, that, so far from those qualities which, in an earlier condition, lessened her social value and power of labour, continuing to do so, they will increase it.