The Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate …
Frankly, I have more problems with this poem than with any other in this selection. On the one hand, it is a forceful and expressive poem, not to be left out. How many times, in the course of night-long arguments with a woman, one of its lines kept coming painfully back to my mind – “… Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw …”
This poem also makes certain points about female mammalian behavior which arguably were validated by the findings of socio-biology some sixty years later. On the other hand, I feel Kipling really went off the deep end when he concluded (or at least defended the view) that woman should keep to her traditional role – “must command but may not govern”. I especially resent the fact that this widely-known poem was written about the suffragettes – the women activists for women’s voting rights – and the poem certainly supplied “biological” arguments against granting women full voting rights.
Kipling had high regard for women, was devoted to his mother and his wife, and was far from slighting women’s intelligence (In his poem ‘Late Came the God’ he wrote: “… What is God beside Woman? Dust and Derision …” ) In his own profession, next to Shakespeare the author he admired most was probably Jane Austen. He was certainly not an opponent of women’s right to vote, nor did he ever consider that women cannot argue tactfully, or that they are incapable of governing. He was making the point that it is quite understandable if women, when going into civic affairs, get into the mode of behavior that was genetically (and culturally) programmed into them for survival of the species.
Thus I present this poem with a divided mind, so you can make up your own.
The Female of the Species
When the Himalayan peasant meets the she-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail (1) For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man, He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can. But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws, They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws. 'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say, For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away; But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other's tale - The female of the species is more deadly than the male. Man, a bear in most relations - worm and savage otherwise, - Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise. Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act. Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low, To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe. Mirth obscene diverts his anger - Doubt and Pity oft perplex Him in dealing with an issue - to the scandal of The Sex! (2) But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same; And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, The female of the species must be deadlier than the male. She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast May not deal in doubt or pity - must not swerve for fact or jest. These be purely male diversions - not in these her honour dwells. She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else. (3) She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate. And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same. (4) She is wedded to convictions - in default of grosser ties; Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! - He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild, Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child. Unprovoked and awful charges - even so the she-bear fights, Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons - even so the cobra bites, Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw And the victim writhes in anguish - like the Jesuit with the squaw! So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands To some God of Abstract Justice - which no woman understands. And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him Must command but may not govern - shall enthral but not enslave him. And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail, That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
Notes
[1] ‘Rends’ – tears apart.
[2] i.e. women are scandalized to see how soft men may be on their adversaries: Mrs. Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir or Mrs. Bandaranaike could not have been accused of such weakness…
[3] i.e. The Law of Nature, which puts preservation of the species above all else.
[4] In legal English, “baron” means “man” as opposed to “femme” – woman. Thus she would claim both the rights pertaining to any person, and the special rights which apply to her as a woman. This verse and the following four refer to the suffragist movement.