BOOK I Being Born
BOOK II Being
BOOK III Becoming
A splendid book in which a soul lives so profoundly human and so purelyfeminine that any words of introduction seem leaden and intrusive. Youfeel as though you were violating the essential delicacy and powerfullife of this soul to comment upon the remarkable revelation of itbetween the very covers that contain the revelation.
Yet, as a modest friend of letters, I should like to express an opinionhere—the author did not ask me for it—and pay homage to the brilliantoriginality of this work. I want to give myself the pleasure of sayinghow important I think it is.
It expresses—and this is a fact of considerable literary and moralimport—what has never been exactly expressed before. It expressesWoman.
The more woman has been spoken about, you might say, the less she hasbeen revealed. She has been hidden under a plethora of words. Thesupreme vision rising up out of these pages is as luminous as a heavenlyrevelation. From the author's tone, so simple and penetrating, youperceive that women feel differently about the things that we men seeand proudly proclaim.
The thought and spirit of Woman will be a surprise and a shock to theold masculine traditions, in which women also acquiesce, probablybecause of their old traditions of slavery. But we know that always andeverywhere the opposition such thought arouses is sublimely lacking intruth.
Here is a woman who cries out with magnificent impressive sincerityagainst the fallacy of the maternal instinct—the "call of theblood"—against the exclusiveness of love; who knows and asserts thatdeath kills only the dead, and not those who are left behind; whorecreates in new forms the law and the creed of the relations betweenman and woman, motherhood, and suffering. And this new expression ofwoman—a new expression, therefore, of the whole of life—this strikinggospel, young and strong, which overcomes artificial, unnatural ideas,resounds at the very time when woman is at last entering humanity and ispreparing to change her rôle of breeder of children and handmaid incommon.
The book is strictly, religiously objective. Everything is perceivedonly through the eyes, the mind, the heart of the "heroine"—the wordusage thrusts upon us for this woman who has no name, who is just trulyherself. Through the commanding will of the author the creative richnessof the book springs altogether from the magnificent oneness of a humanbeing. No outside approach mars this unity. In no other book perhaps somarkedly as in this has the integrity of an individual been morerespected, and never has an imaginary character so consistently wardedoff whatever is not of itself. You don't even seem to feel that this"Woman" talks or tells a story. You simply know what she knows.
And because of this very fact, this intimate association which unites usjealously with this one being of all others, the book is poignant andmoving. A wor