Women and Politics, Articles by José Carlos Mariátegui
The Sanctification of Joan of Arc and the Frenchwoman
An essay on the newly-sanctified Joan of Arc as a point of comparison to the New Woman.1
Two new women's names have been inscribed on the pages of the Christian Year, the ranking of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Churches. Four days ago Margaret [Mary] Alacoque was sanctified. Joan of Arc was sanctified yesterday. The ceremony has been the same in both canonizations, also the same, approximately, have been the crowd of pilgrims and tourists who have witnessed them. The same is the march played by the silver trumpets of the papal gendarmes when the Pope entered St. Peter's Basilica, on the shoulders of his pages, blessing the people from the gestatory chair. The same silent public assembly of the people is now greeting him with their handkerchiefs, now receiving his blessing on their knees.
The same is the Mass celebrated at the papal altar, at the illustrious altar of the four bronze columns by [Gian Lorenzo] Bernini. The same low voices of the choirs of the Sistine Chapel. The same solemnity and the same magnificence.
But, although the liturgy has not restricted one canonization from the other, it has been almost exclusively one of them that has resonated in the world: that of Joan of Arc. It could be said that both canonizations have been the same within St. Peter's. Outside of St. Peter’s, the sweet figure of Margaret [Mary] Alacoque has barely shone. Neither has fully shone but the figure of Joan of Arc. The French government has officially associated itself with the feast of Joan of Arc. An embassy chaired by [Gabriel] Hanataux has represented it.
It happens that at the same time as the personal glory of Joan of Arc, the political atmosphere of the moment has done its work. The war has uplifted military values. While Margaret [Mary] Alacoque is of nothing more than a mystical value, Joan of Arc, besides being of a mystical value, is of a military and political value. France has just emerged victorious from the greatest of its battles. The victory has exalted their militaristic and warlike feelings. All this favors in that town and even outside of it the apotheosis of the heroine. Celebrating Joan of Arc is a way of celebrating victory.
There is no shortage of people, by the way, who say that the canonization of Joan of Arc would have been postponed for some time if the results of the war had been different. In other words, political considerations have influenced the timeliness of the choice. But the writers of the Church protest against this suspicion. They assure that the Church sees in Joan of Arc the Saint, nothing more than the saint. They deny that Joan of Arc is today the symbol of that extreme nationalist spirit, so little in keeping with human fraternity that the war has fanned into victorious actions.
No matter. The sanctification of Joan of Arc has served for the reconciliation of the Vatican with the French government. The Church has paid tribute to the great Catholic Saint. The French government has paid tribute to the great French patriot. The Church and the French government have traveled various paths to get to the altar of Joan of Arc. But before that altar they have bowed down with the same devotion.
Among the aspects of the sanctification of Joan of Arc, I like most one that is not highlighted by chroniclers who are too attracted, as good chroniclers, by the political edges of the event. My aspect is a common aspect of the two satisfactions: what it represents as an exaltation and as an acclaim of the frenchwoman. But Joan of Arc is the one who inspires all the commentaries and who, consequently, also inspires mine.
It is well known that frenchwomen are often spoken of with injustice and heartbreak. The frenchwoman has given us and gives us daily proofs of her superiority.
The most deservedly famous women of letters are French. From Madame Stael to George Sand and from La Rachilde to the Countess [Anna] de Noailles, the frenchwoman of letters shows a greater personality, greater prominence, greater content.
There are abundant in French literature, as there are abundant in other literatures, manifestations of that feminine dilettantism that, favored by the privileges of sex, goes wild at will in the magazine and even in the book. But, on the other hand, more genuinely literary female cases are found in French literature than in the other literatures. More genuinely and authentically literary. And the plurality of "pur sang" women writers makes us forget more easily in this than in any literature the plurality of dilettante genres.
And just as eminent as the intellectual type is in the frenchwoman, there are the sentimental type and the mystical type. We also find in her, and precisely in Joan of Arc, the type that we could call thaumaturgical. Because this strange maiden, enlightened and sibylline, is one of the most extraordinary women in the world. To look for a woman of such high and pure attributes you have to get out of history. You have to look for her in the pages of the Bible. Or in the pages of the fable. Which woman in history has the greatest heroic prominence? One of the most conspicuous women in history, as a lady of peoples and multitudes, Cleopatra was a vulgar hetaira who did not feel the pride of the Egyptian race and civilization, who slavishly knelt before Roman civilization. And that she won her best laurels in the clandestine nights of the Roman lupanares.
Joan of Arc was a seer, she was a saint, she was a caudillo [warlord], she was a captain, she was a martyr. A woman like her, a warrior and a fanatic, could be cruel and inquisitive. And very well. It is clear how much sweetness and how much charity always overflowed from her heart. The fire of the prophetess never dried up the tenderness of the virgin. There was nothing missing in the life of Joan of Arc. Only human love was missing. The human love that would, no doubt, have troubled and entangled her visionary soul.
No people, no race can be proud of an equal woman. There have been many excellent specimens of mysticism. But of a generally static and contemplative mysticism. Not from such a dynamic mysticism. Not of a mysticism so powerful, so capable of communicating its motto, its faith, and its hallucination to crowds and armies. The greatest, most singular mystic is, of course, Joan of Arc. She is a frenchwoman.
This, of course, does not prevent people with an austere taste and a stale palate from continuing to think of boulevard dolls or an instrument of pleasure when they think of the frenchwoman, and especially the Parisian woman. And may they continue to talk about frivolity and sin when they talk about a woman who offers us such outstanding proofs of mental and spiritual depth at all times. We are in luck! It can be answered to those people that yes, that even in frivolity the frenchwoman is the first. That in fact, when the frenchwoman is frivolous, she knows how to be frivolous.
She is divinely frivolous; the frivolous ones of the Trianon, the frivolous ones of the eighteenth century, the frivolous ones of [Antoine] Wateau, will be eternally the most delicious, the most admirable. The supremely frivolous.
But this is not the time to make her eulogy, on the occasion of the apotheosis of Joan of Arc...
Marriage and the Economic Notice
On the emergence of the dating market.2
The economic notice, which is often used to find a cook and other times to offer for a housekeeper, the vile economic notice, the insignificant economic notice, is also used today to look for a girlfriend and to offer for her. Daily notices appear in the newspapers such as these: "Forty-eight-year-old widower, childless, affectionate and rich, wishes to marry a lady of thirty, of good family and brown hair." "Captain of artillery, distinguished, elegant, wishes to meet, for the purpose of marriage, a young lady between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five, with a dowry of four hundred thousand francs." "A young, beautiful and very tender widow, an excellent housewife, she wishes to marry a widower or a bachelor of solid economic position. Accompany the detailed letter with a returnable photograph."
The range of marriage notices is widely varied. As the conditions of the bride and groom are widely varied in supply and demand. There are always boyfriends and girlfriends of all kinds in the newspapers. Today the reader's curious gaze is attracted by a rich orphan, just out of a nun's college, whose angelic innocence does not prevent her from impatiently dreaming of marriage. Tomorrow, a skilled widow, skilled and trained for marriage as a "race-horse" for the competition. The day after tomorrow, an old maid passing into her forties and playing her last marriage card on the fourth page of an evening newspaper. This spinster will be absolutely modest in the enumeration of the desired conditions. She will barely hint at a small preference. For the blond mustaches, for example.
Of course, we should not see in this very new application of the economic notice, a fashion or an arbitrary weather vane. Rather, it is to be seen as a consequence of modern life. In these times and in these cities, people have less and less opportunity to deal with each other and get to know each other well. Some men live in such a hurry that they don't have time to stop and choose a girlfriend. And these men, the day they need her, why don't they request her by means of a notice? A notice can place them in front of an immense variety of brides. In front of a complete and assorted sampler.
It will be said that we are witnessing a sentimental devaluation of marriage. Fine. But this devaluation is not recent. It is long before marriage announcements. Until yesterday he had been careful to hide it, to disguise it a little. It was known that marriage was a matter of interest; but this was not said aloud. Whereas now it is. It is now publicly proclaimed that marriage is a business. (A bad deal usually, it should be added).
It simply happens that in the field of marriage, as in everything else, a practical orientation dominates today, against which sentimental people will protest en masse, and with them I; but which rests on the unpleasant truths of life. Like most of the practical guidelines. People are too disenchanted about love. No one believes in the eternity of love anymore. Not even lovers, who are the most purposeful people to believe nonsense. For this reason, it is intended to give marriage a more stable basis, less unstable than love.
A man or a woman who is going to get married worries, above all, that the interests of his girlfriend or her boyfriend are in accordance with their own. They try to ensure the greatest possible solidarity for their marriage. And they do not rely absolutely on the solidarity of love. They know that the solidarity determined by love lasts only as long as the love that, regularly, lasts very little. A marriage is an alliance founded on a wise coordination of interests.
These interests are not just economic interests. They are also social interests, psychological interests and even aesthetic interests. It is believed that conjugal solidarity depends on the harmony, reciprocity, correspondence of all these interests. Let's imagine a woman whose ideal is a husband who has very blue eyes and very long and dreamy eyelashes and who wears a jacket on Sundays. And let's imagine that this woman marries a man, very appreciable under his other aspects, but without blue eyes, without long eyelashes and finally, without a jacket. Is it not true that the peace of this marriage, the digestion of this husband and the honesty of this woman will be eternally threatened by all the men with jackets and blue eyes, even the most despicable ones? Love can momentarily divert a person from their aesthetic interest; but nothing more than momentarily.
It is therefore a question, in these times, of conforming, agreeing, coordinating marriage as far as it is possible, with the condition, psychology, convenience, ideality, taste and seasoning of the contracting parties. It is therefore a question of removing them from the arbitrary and mischievous influence of love that so capriciously diverts people from their interests. On the other hand, it is a question of putting it into focus and reforming it, guarding it against the revolutionary sentiments that threaten it.
It is most likely, of course, that modernizing marriage, scientifically orienting it and saturating it with positivism will lead to ruin. Love is vegetative and all-powerful. Its revenge will be terrible and diabolical. It will consist in the domination of love, with all its miseries and all its joys, over the rubble of the holy, old and respectable institution of marriage. But for now this is not being thought about. For now, the only thought is to harmonize marriage with the practical spirit of the present. May marriage be a good "affair" for each and every one.
And within this trend, nothing is more natural than the use of economic notice. Since marriage is modernizing in itself, it must also be modernized in its means. Are sentimental people outraged? Do they say that the economic notice is not, that the economic notice is the height of prosaism? These poor and good people do not have reason. We must make them understand, without delay, two things. First, that no one, not even poets, talk about prosaism anymore. And secondly, for the peace of mind of souls who are too susceptible, one can also find a sentimental side and a lyrical aspect to the marital use of the economic notice, by searching for it.
According to an illustrious myth, man and woman are the halves of a single perfect and harmonious being. They are two halves who are groping for each other, without meeting, without recognizing each other. Every day, different halves come together and repel each other. They come back together and repel each other again. (A myth, as you can see, that explains, on the other hand, the impossibility of marital peace and the transience of love). Now then. Wouldn't those two halves who come forward, blind and hapless, be more likely to find themselves with the help of a notice in the newspaper than without any help at all? If an economic notice can help us to recover a lost fox-terrier, can it not also help us to recover our unknown and mysterious half? As a journalist, I feel it is my duty to answer in the affirmative. And I feel, above all, the duty to assume the defense of the notice, even if it is the economic notice.
Woman and Politics
On the rise of a new collective political subject.3
One of the substantive events of the twentieth century is the acquisition by women of the political rights of men. Gradually we have arrived at the political and legal equality of both sexes. Women have entered politics, parliament and government. Their participation in public affairs has ceased to be exceptional and extraordinary. In Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Ministry, one of the portfolios has been assigned to a woman, Miss. Margaret Bondfield, who ascends to the government after a laborious political career: she has represented England at the International Labor Conferences in Washington and Geneva. And Russia has entrusted its diplomatic representation in Norway to Alexandra Kollontai, former People's Commissar in the Soviet government.
Miss Bondfield and Madame Kollontay are, for this reason, two very current figures on the world stage. The figure of Alexandra Kollontai, above all, has not only the contingent interest that she is given today. She is a figure that has been attracting European attention and curiosity for some years. And while Margaret Bondfield is not the first woman to hold a Ministry of State, Alexandra Kollontai is the first woman to hold the head of a legation.
Alexandra Kollontai is a protagonist of the Russian Revolution. When the Soviet regime was inaugurated, she already had a first-rank position in Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks almost immediately promoted her to a People's Commissariat, the Hygiene Commissariat, and once gave her a political mission abroad. Captain Jacques Sadoul, in his memoirs of Russia, an exciting chronicle of the historic days from 1917 to 1918, calls her the Red Virgin of the Revolution.
In fact, the history of the achievements of feminism is closely connected to the history of the Russian Revolution. The constitution of the Soviets accords women the same rights as men. Women in Russia are electors and eligibles. According to the Constitution, all workers, without distinction of sex, nationality or religion, enjoy equal rights. The communist state does not distinguish or differentiate between sexes or nationalities; it divides society into two classes: bourgeois and proletarian. And, within the dictatorship of her class, the proletarian woman can exercise any public function. There are countless women in Russia who work in the national and communal administrations. Women are also frequently called to serve on the courts of justice. Several women, [Nadezhda] Krupskaya and [Natalia] Menchinskaya, for example, collaborate in [Anatoly] Lunacharsky's educational work. Others conspicuously intervene in the activity of the Communist Party and the Third International, Angelica Balabanoff, for example.
The Soviets greatly value and encourage female contribution. The reasons for this feminist policy are obvious. Communism found in women a dangerous resistance. The Russian woman, the peasant woman mainly, was an element spontaneously hostile to the revolution. Through her religious superstitions, she saw in the work of the Soviets nothing but an impious, absurd and heretical work. The Soviets understood, from the first moment, the need for a shrewd work of education and revolutionary adaptation of women. They mobilized, for this purpose, all their adherents and sympathizers, among whom, as we have seen, were some women of high mental category.
And it is not only in Russia that the women's movement appears strongly in solidarity with the revolutionary movement. Feminist demands have found strong support from the left in all countries. In Italy, the socialists have always advocated women's suffrage. Many socialist organizers and agitators come from the ranks of suffragism. Silvia Pankhurst, among others, having won the suffragette battle, has enlisted in the extreme left of the English proletariat.
But the victorious demands of feminism really constitute the fulfillment of a last stage of the bourgeois revolution and of a last chapter of the liberal ideology. In the past, women's relations with politics were morganatic relations. Women, in feudal society, did not influence the progress of the state but exceptionally, irresponsibly and indirectly. But at least women of royal blood could get to the throne. The divine right to reign could be inherited by females and males. The French Revolution, on the other hand, inaugurated a regime of political equality for men; not for women. The Rights of Man could have been called, rather, the Rights of Male. With the bourgeoisie, women were much more eliminated from politics than with the aristocracy. Bourgeois democracy was an exclusively male democracy. Its development had to be, however, intensely favorable to the emancipation of woman. Capitalist civilization gave women the means to increase their ability and improve their position in life. It enabled her, prepared her for the vindication and for the use of the political and civil rights of man. Today, finally, woman acquires these rights. This fact, hastened by the gestation of the proletarian and socialist revolution, is still an echo of the individualist and Jacobin revolution. Political equality, before this fact, was not complete, it was not total. Society was divided not only into classes but into sexes. Sex conferred or denied political rights. Such inequality disappears now that the historical trajectory of democracy is coming to an end.
The first effect of the political equalization of men and women is the entry of some vanguard women into politics and the management of public affairs. But the revolutionary significance of this event has to be much more extensive. Troubadours and lovers of female frivolity have no lack of reason to worry. The type of woman, produced by a century of capitalist refinement, is doomed to decay and go onto. An Italian writer, Pitigrilli, classifies this type of contemporary woman as a type of luxury mammal. And very well, this luxury mammal will be getting worn out little by little. As the collectivist system replaces the individualist system, feminine luxury and elegance will decline. Humanity will lose some luxury mammals; but it will gain many women. The clothes of the woman of the future will be less expensive and sumptuous, but the condition of that woman will be more dignified. And the axis of female life will shift from the individual to the social. Fashion will no longer consist of the imitation of a modern [Madame de] Pompadour dressed by [Jeanne] Paquin. Perhaps it will consist in the imitation of a Madame Kollontai. A woman, in short, will cost less, but she will be worth more.
The literary enemies of feminism fear that the beauty and grace of women will suffer as a result of feminist conquests. They believe that politics, the university, the courts of justice, will turn women into unkind and even unfriendly beings. But this belief is unfounded. The biographers of Madame Kollontay tell us that, in the dramatic days of the Russian Revolution, the illustrious Russian had time and spiritual disposition to fall in love and get married. The honeymoon and the exercise of a People's Commissariat did not seem to her absolutely irreconcilable or antagonistic.
Several sensible advantages are already owing to the new education of women. Poetry, for example, has been greatly enriched. Women's literature these days has a feminine accent that it didn't have before. In the past, women's literature lacked sex. It was not generally masculine or feminine. It represented at most a genre of neutral literature. Today, women are beginning to feel, think and express themselves as women in their literature and art. A specific and essentially feminine literature appears. This literature will reveal unknown rhythms and colors to us. The Countess [Anna de] Noailles, Ada Negri, Juana de Ibarbourou, do they not sometimes speak to us an extraordinary language, do they not reveal to us a new world?
Félix del Valle has the mischievous and original intention of arguing in an essay that women are evicting men from poetry. Just as they have replaced them in various works, they seem close to replacing them also in poetic production. Poetry, in short, is beginning to be a woman's profession.
But this is, in truth, a humorous thesis. It is not true that male poetry is dying out, but that for the first time a poetry that is characteristically feminine is being heard. And that this makes them, temporarily, a very advantageous competition.
The Feminist Demands
On the emergence of feminism in Peru.4
The first feminist disquietudes are throbbing in Peru. There are some cells, some nuclei of feminism. The proponents of extreme nationalism would probably think: here is another exotic idea, another foreign idea that is grafted onto Peruvian metallicity.
Let us calm down these apprehensive people a little. We should not see in feminism an exotic idea, a foreign idea. It is necessary to see, simply, a human idea. A characteristic idea of a civilization, peculiar to an epoch. And, therefore, an idea with the right of citizenship in Peru, as in any other segment of the civilized world.
Feminism has not appeared in Peru artificially or arbitrarily. It has appeared as a consequence of the new forms of women's intellectual and manual labor. The women of real feminist affiliation are the women who work, the women who study. The feminist idea thrives among women of intellectual or manual trades: university professors, workers. It finds an environment conducive to its development in university classrooms, which increasingly attract Peruvian women, and in workers' unions, in which factory women enroll and organize with the same rights and the same duties as men. Apart from this spontaneous and organic feminism, which recruits its adherents from among the various categories of women's work, there exists here, as elsewhere, a dilettante feminism that is a little pedantic and a little mundane. Feminists of this rank turn feminism into a simple literary exercise, into a mere fashionable sport.
No one should be surprised that all women do not come together in a single feminist movement. Feminism necessarily has different colors, different tendencies. One can distinguish in feminism three fundamental tendencies, three substantive colors: bourgeois feminism, petty-bourgeois feminism and proletarian feminism. Each of these feminisms formulates its demands in a different way. The bourgeois woman solidarizes her feminism with the interest of the conservative class. The proletarian woman consubstances her feminism with the faith of the revolutionary multitudes in the future society. The class struggle—a historical fact and not a theoretical assertion—is reflected on the feminist plane. Women, like men, are reactionary, centrist, or revolutionary. They cannot, therefore, fight the same battle together. In the current human landscape, class differentiates individuals more than sex.
But this plurality of feminism does not depend on the theory itself. It depends, rather, on their practical deformations. Feminism, as a pure idea, is essentially revolutionary. The thinking and attitude of women who feel both feminist and conservative at the same time lack, therefore, intimate coherence. Conservatism works to maintain the traditional organization of society. This organization denies women the rights that women want to acquire. Bourgeois feminists accept all the consequences of the current order, except those that oppose the claims of women. They tacitly maintain the absurd thesis that the only reform society needs is feminist reform. The protest of these feminists against the Old order is too exclusive to be valid.
It is true that the historical roots of feminism are in the liberal spirit. The French Revolution contained the first germs of the feminist movement. For the first time, the question of the emancipation of women was raised in precise terms. [François-Noël] Babeuf, the leader of the Conspiracy of Equals, was an assertor of feminist demands. Babeuf harangued his friends like this: “Do not impose silence on this sex that does not deserve to be disdained. Rather enhance the most beautiful portion of yourself. If you don't count the women in your republic at all, you will make little lovers of the monarchy out of them. Their influence will be such that they will restore it. If, on the contrary, you count them for something, you will make Cornelia and Lucretia out of them. They will give you Brutus, Gracchus and Scaevola. Polemicizing with the anti-feminists, Babeuf spoke of "this sex that the tyranny of men has always wanted to annihilate, of this sex that has never been useless in revolutions." But the French Revolution did not want to grant women the equality and freedom advocated by these Jacobin or egalitarian voices. The Rights of Man, as I have once written, could have been called, rather, the Rights of Male. Bourgeois democracy has been an exclusively male democracy.
Born from the liberal matrix, feminism has not been able to be acted upon during the capitalist process. It is now, when the historical trajectory of democracy is coming to an end, that women acquire the political and legal rights of men. And it is the Russian Revolution that has explicitly and categorically granted women the equality and freedom that more than a century ago Babeuf and the egalitarians claimed in vain for the French Revolution.
But if bourgeois democracy has not realized feminism, it has involuntarily created the conditions and the moral and material premises for its realization. It has valued it as a productive element, as an economic factor, by making its work and use more extensive and more intense every day. The work radically changes the feminine mentality and spirit. Woman acquires, by virtue of work, a new notion of herself. In the past, society destined woman for marriage or concubinage. At the moment, it allocates her, first of all, to work. This fact has changed and raised the position of woman in life. Those who challenge feminism and its progress with sentimental or traditionalist arguments pretend that woman should be educated only for the home. But, practically, this means that woman should be educated only for the functions of a female and a mother. The defense of the poetry of the home is, in reality, a defense of the servitude of woman. Instead of ennobling and dignifying the role of women, it diminishes and lowers it. Woman is more than a mother and a female, just as a man is more than a male.
The type of woman that will produce a new civilization must be substantially different from the one that has formed the civilization that is now declining. In an article on women and politics, I have examined some aspects of this topic as follows: "Troubadours and lovers of female frivolity have no lack of reason to worry. The type of woman created by a century of capitalist refinement is doomed to decay and go under. An Italian writer, Pitigrilli, classifies this type of contemporary woman as a type of luxury mammal.
"And very well, this luxury mammal will be getting worn out little by little. As the collectivist system replaces the individualist system, feminine luxury and elegance will decline. Humanity will lose some luxury mammals; but it will gain many women. The clothes of the woman of the future will be less expensive and sumptuous, but the condition of that woman will be more dignified. And the axis of female life will shift from the individual to the social. Fashion will no longer consist of the imitation of a modern [Madame de] Pompadour dressed by [Jeanne] Paquin. Perhaps it will consist in the imitation of a Madame [Alexandra] Kollontai. A woman, in short, will cost less, but she will be worth more.”
The subject is very vast. This short article attempts only to verify the character of the first manifestations of feminism in Peru and to rehearse a very summary and rapid interpretation of the physiognomy and the spirit of the world feminist movement. Men sensitive to the great emotions of the time should not and cannot feel strange or indifferent to this movement. The women's question is a part of the human question. Feminism also seems to me to be a more interesting and historical topic than the wig. While feminism is the category, the wig is the anecdote.
José Carlos Mariátegui, “La sanctificación de Juana de Arco y la mujer francesca,” El Tiempo, August 23, 1920, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol///mariateg/oc/cartas_de_italia/paginas/la%20santificacion%20de%20juana.htm.
José Carlos Mariátegui, “El matrimonio y el aviso económico,” El Tiempo, November 14, 1920, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol///mariateg/oc/cartas_de_italia/paginas/el%20matrimonio%20y%20el%20aviso.htm.
José Carlos Mariátegui, “La mujer y la política,” Variedades, March 15, 1924, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol///mariateg/oc/temas_de_educacion/paginas/la%20mujer%20y%20la%20politica.htm.
José Carlos Mariátegui, “Las reivindicaciones feministas,” Mundial, December 19, 1924, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/1924/dic/19.htm.