Accounting Information Systems The Processes Controls 2nd Edition Turner Solutions Manual

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Chapter 7 Solutions Auditing Information Technology-Based Processes
Turner/Accounting Information Systems, 2e
Solutions Manual
Chapter 7
Concept Check
1. b
2. b
3. d
4. c
5. b
6. a
7. c
8. b
9. d
10.a
11.a
12.c
13.c
14.d
15.c
16.a
17.c
18.a
19.a
20.c
21.d
Discussion Questions
22.(SO 1) What are assurance services? What value do assurance services provide?
Assurance services are accounting services that improve the quality of information.
Many services performed by accountants are valued because they lend credibility to
financial information.
23.(SO 2) Differentiate between a compliance audit and an operational audit. A
compliance audit is a form of assurance service that involves accumulating and
analyzing information to determine whether a company has complied with
regulations and policies established by contractual agreements, governmental
agencies, company management, or other high authority. Operational audits assess
operating policies and procedures for efficiency and effectiveness.

24.(SO 2) Which type of audit is most likely to be performed by government auditors?
Which type of audit is most likely to be performed by internal auditors?
Governmental auditors are most likely to perform compliance audits, and internal
auditors are most likely to perform operational audits.
25.(SO 2) Identify the three areas of an auditor’s work that are significantly impacted by
the presence of IT accounting systems. The IT environment plays a key role in how
auditors conduct their work in the following areas:
• consideration of risk
• determination of audit procedures to be used to obtain knowledge of the
accounting and internal control systems
• design and performance of audit tests.
26.(SO 3) Describe the three causes of information risk. Information risk is caused by:
• Remote information; for instance, when the source of information is removed
from the decision maker, it stands a greater chance of being misstated.
• Large volumes of information or complex information.
• Variations in viewpoints or incentives of the preparer.
27.(SO 3) Explain how an audit trail might get “lost” within a computerized system.
Loss of an audit trail occurs when there is a lack of physical evidence to view in
support of a transaction. This may occur when the details of accounting transactions
are entered directly into the computer system, with no supporting paper documents.
If there is a system failure, database destruction, unauthorized access, or
environmental damage, the information processed under such a system may be lost
or altered.
28.(SO 3) Explain how the presence of IT processes can improve the quality of
information that management uses for decision making. IT processes tend to
provide information in a timely and efficient manner. This enhances management’s
ability to make effective decisions, which is the essence of quality of information.
29.(SO 4) Distinguish among the focuses of the GAAS standards of fieldwork and
standards of reporting. The standards of fieldwork provide general guidelines for
performing the audit. They address the importance of planning and supervision,
understanding internal controls, and evidence accumulation. The standards of
reporting address the auditor’s requirements for communicating the audit results in
writing, including the reference to GAAP, consistency, adequate disclosures, and the
expression of an overall opinion on the fairness of financial statements.
30.(SO 4) Which professional standard-setting organization provides guidance on the
conduct of an IT audit? The Information Systems Audit and Control Association
(ISACA) is responsible for issuing Information Systems Auditing Standards (ISASs),
which provide guidelines for conducting an IT audit.
31.(SO 5) If management is responsible for its own financial statements, why are
auditors important? Auditors are important because they are responsible for
analyzing financial statements to decide whether they are fairly stated and presented
in accordance with GAAP. Since the financial statements are prepared by managers
of the company, the role of auditors is to reduce information risk associated with
those financial statements. To accomplish this, auditors design tests to analyze
information supporting the financial statements in order to determine whether
management’s assertions are valid.

32.(SO 6) List the techniques used for gathering evidence. The techniques used for
gathering evidence include the following:
• physically examining or inspecting assets or supporting documentation
• obtaining written confirmation from an independent source
• rechecking or recalculating information
• observing activities
• making inquiries of company personnel
• analyzing financial relationships and making comparisons to determine
reasonableness
33.(SO 6) During which phase of an audit would an auditor consider risk assessment
and materiality? Risk assessment and materiality are considered during the
planning phase of an audit.
34.(SO 7) Distinguish between auditing through the computer and auditing with the
computer. When are auditors required to audit through the computer as opposed to
auditing around the computer? Auditing through the computer involves directly
testing internal controls within the IT system, which requires the auditors to
understand the computer system logic. Auditing through the computer is necessary
when the auditor wants to test computer controls as a basis for evaluating risk and
reducing the amount of audit testing required, and when supporting documents are
available only in electronic form. Auditing with the computer involves auditors using
their own systems, software, and computer-assisted audit techniques to help
conduct an audit.
35.(SO 8) Explain why it is customary to complete the testing of general controls before
testing application controls. Since general controls are the automated controls that
affect all computer applications, the reliability of general controls must be
established before application controls are tested. The effectiveness of general
controls is considered the foundation for the IT control environment. If there are
problems with the effectiveness of general controls, auditors will not devote attention
to the testing of application controls; rather, they will reevaluate the audit approach
with reduced reliance on controls.
36.(SO 8) Identify four important aspects of administrative control in an IT environment.
Four important aspects of administrative control include:
• personal accountability and segregation of incompatible responsibilities
• job descriptions and clear lines of authority
• computer security and virus protection
• IT systems documentation
37.(SO 8) Explain why Benford’s Law is useful to auditors in the detection of fraud.
Benford’s Law recognizes nonuniform patterns in the frequency of numbers
occurring in a list, so it is useful to auditors in the identification of fabricated data
within account balances such as sales, accounts receivable, accounts payable, cash
disbursements, income taxes, etc. If fraudulent data are presented, they would not
likely follow the natural distribution that Benford’s Law sets forth.
38.(SO 8) Think about a place you have worked where computers were present. What
are some physical and environmental controls that you have observed in the
workplace? Provide at least two examples of each from your personal experience.
Student’s responses are likely to vary greatly. Examples of physical controls may

include card keys and configuration tables, as well as other physical security
features such as locked doors, etc. Environmental controls may include temperature
and humidity controls, fire, flood, earthquake controls, or measures to ensure a
consistent power supply.
39.(SO 8) Batch totals and hash totals are common input controls. Considering the fact
that hash totals can be used with batch processing, differentiate between these two
types of controls. Both batch totals and hash totals are mathematical sums of data
that can be used to determine whether there may be missing data. However, batch
totals are meaningful because they provide summations of dollar amounts or item
counts for a journal entry used in the financial accounting system, whereas hash
totals are not relevant to the financial accounting system (i.e., the hash totals are
used only for their control purpose and have no other numerical significance).
40.(SO 8) The test data method and an integrated test facility are similar in that they are
both tests of applications controls and they both rely on the use of test data. Explain
the difference between these two audit techniques. The test data method tests the
processing accuracy of software applications by using the company’s own computer
system to process fictitious information developed by the auditors. The results of the
test must be compared with predicted results. An integrated test facility also tests
processing applications, but can accomplish this without disrupting the company’s
operations. An integrated test facility inputs fictitious data along with the company’s
actual data, and tests it using the client’s own computer system. The testing occurs
simultaneously with the company’s actual transaction processing.
41.(SO 9) Explain the necessity for performing substantive testing even for audit clients
with strong internal controls and sophisticated IT systems. Since substantive testing
determines whether financial information is accurate, it is necessary for all financial
statement audits. Control testing establishes whether the system promotes
accuracy, while substantive testing verifies the monetary amounts of transactions
and account balances. Even if controls are found to be effective, there still needs to
be some testing to make sure that the amounts of transactions and account
balances have actually been recorded fairly.
42.(SO 9) What kinds of audit tools are used to perform routine tests on electronic data
files taken from databases? List the types of tests that can be performed with these
tools. CPA firms use generalized audit software (GAS) or data analysis software
(DAS) to perform audit tests on electronic data files taken from commonly used
database systems. These tools help auditors perform routine testing in an efficient
manner. The types of tests that can be performed using GAS or DAS include:
• mathematical and statistical calculations
• data queries
• identification of missing items in a sequence
• stratification and comparison of data items
• selection of items of interest from the data files
• summarization of testing results into a useful format for decision making
43.(SO 10) Which of the four types of audit reports is the most favorable for an audit
client? Which is the least favorable? An unqualified audit report is the most
favorable because it expresses reasonable assurance that the underlying financial
statements are fairly stated in all material respects. On the other hand, an adverse

opinion is the least favorable report because it indicates the presence of material
misstatements in the underlying financial statements.
44.(SO 10) Why is it so important to obtain a letter of representations from an audit
client? The letter of representations is so important because it is management’s
acknowledgement of its primary responsibility for the fair presentation of the financial
statements. In this letter, management must declare that it has provided complete
and accurate information to its auditors during all phases of the audit. This serves as
a significant piece of audit evidence.
45.(SO 11) How can auditors evaluate internal controls when their clients use IT
outsourcing? When a company uses IT outsourcing, auditors must still evaluate
internal controls. This may be accomplished by relying upon a third-party report from
the independent auditor of the outsourcing center, or it can audit around the
computer, or it can test controls at the outsourcing center.
46.(SO 12) An auditor’s characteristic of professional skepticism is most closely
associated with which ethical principle of the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct?
Professional skepticism is most closely associated with the principle of Objectivity
and Independence. Professional skepticism means that auditors should have a
questioning mind and a persistent approach for evaluating financial information for
the possibility of misstatements. This is closely related to the notion of objectivity and
independence in its requirements for being free of conflicts of interest.
Brief Exercises
47.(SO 2) Why is it necessary for a CPA to be prohibited from having financial or
personal connections with a client? Provide an example of how a financial
connection to a company would impair an auditor’s objectivity. Provide an example
of how a personal relationship might impair an auditor’s objectivity. An auditor
should not have any financial or personal connections with a client company
because they could impair his/her objectivity. It would be difficult for an auditor to be
free of bias if he/she were to have a financial or personal relationship with the
company or one of its associates. For example, if an auditor owned stock in a client
company, the auditor would stand to benefit financially if the company’s financial
statements included and unqualified audit report, as this favorable opinion could lead
to favorable results for the company such as paying a dividend, obtaining financing,
etc. Additionally, if an auditor had a family member or other close personal
relationship with someone who works for the company, the auditor’s independence
may be impaired due to the knowledge that the family member or other person may
be financially dependent upon the company or may have played a significant role in
the preparation of the financial statements.
48.(SO 3) From an internal control perspective, discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of using IT-based accounting systems. The advantages of using IT-
based accounting systems are the improvements in internal control due to the
reduction of human error and increase in speed. The disadvantages include the loss
of audit trail visibility, increased likelihood of lost or altered data, lack of segregation
of duties, and fewer opportunities for authorization and review of transactions.

49.(SO 4) Explain why standards of fieldwork for GAAS are not particularly helpful to an
auditor who is trying to determine the types of testing to be used on an audit
engagement. GAAS provides a general framework that is not specific enough to
provide specific guidance in the actual performance of an audit. For detailed
guidance, auditors rely upon standards issued by the PCAOB, the ASB, the IAPC,
and ISACA.
50.(SO 5) Ping and Pong are assigned to perform the audit of Paddle Company. During
the audit, it was discovered that the amount of sales reported on Paddle’s income
statement was understated because one week’s sales transactions were not
recorded due to a computer glitch. Ping claims that this problem represents a
violation of the management assertion regarding existence, because the reported
account balance was not real. Pong argues that the completeness assertion was
violated, because relevant data was omitted from the records. Which auditor is
correct? Explain your answer. The completeness assertion is concerned with
possible omissions from the accounting records and the related understatements of
financial information; in other words, it asserts that all valid transactions have been
recorded. Accordingly, Pong’s argument is correct. Ping’s argument is not correct
because the existence assertion is concerned with the possibility of fictitious
transactions and the related overstatements of financial information.
51.(SO 6) One of the most important tasks of the planning phase is for the auditor to
gain an understanding of internal controls. How does this differ from the tasks
performed during the tests of controls phase? During the planning phase of an audit,
auditors must gain an understanding of internal controls in order to determine
whether the controls can be relied upon as a basis for reducing the extent of
substantive testing to be performed. Understanding of internal controls is the basis
for the fundamental decision regarding the strategy of the audit. It also impacts the
auditor’s risk assessment and establishment of materiality. During the tests of
controls phase, the auditor goes beyond the understanding of the internal controls
and actually evaluates the effectiveness of those controls.
52.(SO 8) How is it possible that a review of computer logs can be used to test for both
internal access controls and external access controls? Other than reviewing the
computer logs, identify and describe two types of audit procedures performed to test
internal access controls, and two types of audit procedures performed to test
external access controls. Internal access controls can be evaluated by reviewing
computer logs for the existence of login failures or unusual activity, and to gauge
access times for reasonableness in light of the types of tasks performed. Internal
access controls can also be tested by reviewing the company’s policies regarding
segregation of IT duties and other IT controls, and can test those controls to
determine whether access is being limited in accordance with the company’s
policies. In addition, auditors may perform authenticity testing to evaluate the
authority tables and determine whether only authorized employees are provided
access to IT systems.
Computer logs can also be reviewed to evaluate external access controls, as the
logs may identify unauthorized users and failed access attempts. External access
controls may also be tested through authenticity tests, penetrations tests, and
vulnerability assessments. Authenticity tests, as described above, determine

whether access has been limited to those included in the company’s authority tables.
Penetration tests involve the auditor trying to gain unauthorized access to the client’s
system, by attempting to penetrate its firewall. Vulnerability assessments are tests
aimed at identifying weak points in the company’s IT systems where unauthorized
access may occur, such as through a firewall or due to problems in the encryption
techniques.
53.(SO 9) Explain why continuous auditing is growing in popularity. Identify and
describe a computer-assisted audit technique useful for continuous auditing.
Continuous auditing has increased in popularity due to the increase in e-commerce.
Real-time financial reporting has created the need for continuous auditing, whereby
auditors continuously analyze evidence and provide assurance on the related
financial information as soon as it occurs or shortly thereafter. The embedded audit
module is a computer-assisted audit technique that accomplishes continuous
auditing. The embedded audit module approach involves placing special audit
testing programs within a company’s operating system. These test modules search
the data and analyze transactions or account balances that meet specified
conditions of interest to the auditor.
54.(SO 11) Distinguish between the various service organization controls (SOC)
reporting options available to auditors who evaluate cloud computing service
providers. The SOC 1 report addresses internal controls over financial reporting. A
SOC 1Type I report contains management’s assessment and the auditor’s opinion
on the operating design of internal controls over financial reporting. A SOC 1 Type II
report is an extension of the Type I report in that it also evaluates the operating
effectiveness of those internal controls. A SOC 2 report considers controls over
compliance and operations, including the Trust Services Principles. Similar to SOC 1
reports, SOC 2 reporting options also allow for a Type I or Type II conclusion
depending upon whether the auditor consider suitability of design or operating
effectiveness of those controls, respectively. Finally, a SOC 3 report is an unaudited
report that is available to the general public containing a CPA firm’s conclusion on
the elements of the Trust Services Principles.
Problems
55.(SO 4) Given is a list of standard-setting bodies and a description of their purpose.
Match each standard-setting body with its purpose.
I. c.
II. a.
III. d.
IV. b.
56.(SO 8) Identify whether audit tests are used to evaluate internal access controls (I),
external access controls (E), or both (B).
• Authenticity tests (B)
• Penetration tests (E)
• Vulnerability assessments (E)

• Review of access logs (B)
• Review of policies concerning the issuance of passwords and security tokens (I)
57.(SO 9) Refer to the notes payable audit program excerpt presented in Exhibit 7-3. If
an auditor had a copy of his client’s data file for its notes receivable, how could a
general audit software or data analysis software package be used to assist with
these audit tests? GAS and DAS could assist auditors in testing notes payable by
performing mathematical calculations of interest amounts, stratification of amounts
into current and long-term categories according to maturity dates, and performing
ratio calculations as may be needed to assess compliance with restrictions.
58.(SO 11) In order to preserve auditor independence, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
restricts the types of nonaudit services that auditors can perform for their public-
company audit clients. The list includes nine types of services that are prohibited
because they are deemed to impair an auditor’s independence. Included in the list
are the following:
• financial information systems design and implementation
• internal audit outsourcing
Describe how an auditor’s independence could be impaired if she performed IT
design and implementation functions for her audit client. Likewise, how could an
auditor’s involvement with internal audit outsourcing impair her independence with
respect to auditing the same company? Both of these scenarios would place the
auditor in a position of auditing his/her own work. Auditors could not maintain
independence if they are involved in both the IT design and implementation as well
as the financial statement audit. To the extent that the IT system impacts financial
reporting, an auditor could not possibly be unbiased with respect to a system that
he/she had designed and implemented. Likewise, auditors are not likely to be
unbiased with respect to performing a financial statement audit for the same
company as he/she performed internal audit work. Any evaluations performed during
the internal audit engagement are likely to have a bearing on the auditor’s
professional attitude while performing the financial statement audit.
59.(SO 2) Visit the AICPA website at www.aicpa.org and select the tab for Career
Paths. Click on “This Way to CPA” to locate information on audit careers. The
AICPA website presents information on various career paths, including public
accounting (audit, taxation, financial planning, etc.), business and industry,
governmental accounting, not-for-profit accounting, education, and
entrepreneurship. Some specialty areas include forensic accounting, environmental
accounting, and showbiz accounting.
60.(SO 4, 9) Visit the ISACA website at www.isaca.org and click on the Knowledge
Center tab, then select ITAF (Information Technology Assurance Framework) and
click on the IT Audit Basics tab to find articles covering topics concerning the audit
process. Locate an article on each of the following topics and answer the related
question:

a. Identify and briefly describe the four categories of CAATs used to support
IT auditing. The four categories include1:
• data analysis software, including GAS and DAS
• Network security evaluation software/utilities
• OS and DBMS security evaluation software/utilities
• Software and code testing tools
b. List three possible procedures to be performed by auditors who are
evaluating controls pertaining to the backup and recovery of a client’s
data. The three procedures include2:
• Review or observe backup procedures
• Review documentation of a successful restore within the period
• Personally verify restoration when risk is high or when restoration is an
audit objective.
61. (SO 8) Locate the stock tables for the two major stock exchanges in any issue of
the Wall Street Journal. Beginning from any point within the table, prepare a list of
the first digits of the daily volume for 100 stocks. Determine whether the listed
numbers conform to Benford’s Law. Student responses will vary depending upon the
timing of carrying out this requirement and the starting point used. However,
students should determine whether the number 1 is represented as the first digit of
the volume figures for approximately 33% of the items within the list. If so, then the
data conform to Benford’s Law.
62.(SO 12) Perform an Internet search to determine the nature of Xerox Corporation’s
management fraud scheme and to find out what happened to the company after the
problems were discovered. Xerox’s fraud involved earnings management or
manipulation of the financial statements in order to boost earnings. This occurred at
Xerox to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and involved various accounting
tricks to hide the company’s true financial performance so that it would meet or beat
Wall Street expectations. The most significant trick was the premature recording of
revenues. Upon discovery of the fraud, the SEC filed a $10 million civil suit against
Xerox, the largest fine in SEC history. In addition, Xerox had to restate its earnings
from 1997 through 2001.
Cases
63. Internal Controls and CAATs for a Wholesale client.
a. What tests of controls would be effective in helping Draker determine whether
Palitt’s vendor database was susceptible to fraud? The following tests of
controls could be used:
• Verify that the database is physically secure and that programs and
data files are password protected to prevent unauthorized access.
1 “Using CAATs to Support IS Audit” by S. Anantha Sayana for Information Systems Control Journal, Vol.
1, 2003.
2 “What Every IT Auditor Should Know About Backup and Recovery” by Tommie W. Singleton for ISACA
Journal, Vol, 6, 2011.

Since this situation involves an internal breach of authority, access
logs should be reviewed for activity at unusual times (non-business
hours).
• Make sure that system programmers do not have access to database
operations so that there is no opportunity to alter source code and the
related operational data.
• Ascertain that database inputs are being compared with system-
generated outputs.
• Determine whether run-to-run totals are being generated and reviewed
to evaluate the possibility of lost or altered data.
• Ascertain that computer-generated reports are regularly reviewed by
management.
• Determine whether the client’s field checks, validity checks, and
reasonableness checks are all working effectively.
b. What computer-assisted audit technique would be effective in helping Draker
determine whether Palitt’s vendor database had actually been falsified?
Draker could use GAS or DAS to perform audit testing on electronic data files
taken from Lea’s database system. Several types of audit tests commonly
performed by GAS or DAS systems could be used in this case, including data
queries, stratification and comparison of data items, and selection of items of
interest. In addition, the following tests can be performed to test the propriety
of inputs to the system:
• Financial control totals can be used to determine whether total dollar
amounts or item counts are consistent with journal entry amounts.
This can detect whether additions have been made during processing.
• Validation checks can be performed to scan entries for bogus
information. Depending on the type of IT system, a validity check of the
vendor number field may prevent the entry of fictitious vendors.
• Field checks can be performed to identify unrecognized data.
If the bogus transactions are being entered during processing, the auditor
may use program tracing to evaluate program logic for possible points of
entering fraudulent information. Run-to-run totals may also be used to
determine whether data have been altered during processing. In addition,
output controls such as reasonableness tests could be performed to review
the output against authorized inputs, and/or audit trail tests could be
performed to trace transactions through the system to determine if changes
occurred along the way.
64. Issues with the client representation letter.
a. Would it be appropriate for Pannor to reopen the audit testing phases in
order to expand procedures, in light of the lack of representative evidence
from management? Why or why not? No, Pannor should not expand
testing procedures. The purpose of the client’s representations letter is for
management to acknowledge its primary responsibility for the fair
presentation of the financial statements and the accuracy of evidence
provided to the auditors. It is considered the most significant piece of audit

evidence. Obtaining additional evidence would not compensate for a
failure to secure a letter of representations; in fact, it is likely that
additional testing would be meaningless unless management represents
that the evidence it supplies is accurate.
b. Will Pannor’s firm still be able to issue an unqualified audit report if it does
not receive the representations letter? Research the standard wording to
be included in an unqualified audit report, as well as the typical wording
included in a client representations letter. Base your answer on your
findings. No, an unqualified report is no longer possible due to the failure
to obtain written representations from management. This constitutes a
limitation in the scope of the audit. Pannor’s firm may either withdraw from
the engagement or issue a disclaimer. The standard wording for a client
representations letter can be found in AU section 333. The standard
wording for an unqualified audit report can be found in AU section 508.

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courteously requested to skip to the end of the chapter. It would be
lost labour on my part to seek to disturb his deep-rooted conviction
that all women who earn decent incomes in intelligent and
interesting ways are too facially unpleasant to be placed at the head
of a dinner-table. I shall not attempt to disturb that conviction; I
make it a rule never to attempt the impossible.) This new-born
attitude of open indifference and contempt, while perhaps appearing
strained and unnatural, is, it seems to me, a natural one enough for
women whose daily lives have falsified every tradition in which they
were born and bred.
For the tradition handed down from generations to those girl
children who now are women grown was, with exceptions few and
far between, the one tradition of marriage—marriage as inevitable as
lessons and far more inevitable than death. Ordering dinner and
keeping house: that we knew well, and from our babyhood was all
the future had to give to us. For the boys there would be other
things; wherefore our small hearts bore a secret grudge against
Almighty God that He had not made us boys—since their long
thoughts were our long thoughts, and together we wallowed in
cannibals and waxed clamorous over engines. For them, being boys,
there might be cannibals and engines in the world beyond; but for
us—oh, the flat sameness of it!—was nothing but a husband,
ordering dinner and keeping house. Therefore we dreamed of a
settler for a husband, and of assisting him to shoot savages with a
double-barrelled gun. So might the round of household duties be
varied and most pleasantly enlivened.
Perhaps it was the stolid companionship of the doll, perhaps the
constant repetition of the formula “when you have children of your
own” that precluded any idea of shirking the husband and tackling
the savage off our own bat. For I cannot remember that we ever
shirked him. We selected his profession with an eye to our own
interests; he was at various times a missionary, a sailor and a circus-
rider; but from the first we recognized that he was unavoidable. We
planned our lives and knew that he was lurking vaguely in the

background to upset our best-laid calculations. We were still very
young, I think, when we realized that his shadowy personality was
an actual, active factor in our lives; that it was because of him and
his surmised desires that our turbulent inclinations were thwarted
and compressed into narrow channels, and that we were tamed and
curbed as the boys were never tamed and curbed. When that which
the boys might do with impunity was forbidden to us as a sin of the
first water, we knew that it was because he would not like it. The
thought was not so consciously expressed, perhaps; but it was there
and lived with us. So we grew up under his influence, presuming his
wishes, and we learned, because of him, to say, “I can’t,” where our
brothers said, “I can,” and to believe, as we had been taught, that
all things, save a very few (such as ordering dinner and keeping
house) were not for us because we were not men. (Yet we had our
long, long thoughts—we had them, too!) That was one thing that he
desired we should believe; and another was that only through him
could we attain to satisfaction and achievement; that our every
desire that was not centred upon him and upon his children would
be barren and bitter as Dead Sea ashes in the mouth. We believed
that for a long time....
And he was certain to come: the only question was, when? When he
came we should fall in love with him, of course—and he would kiss
us—and there would be a wedding....
Some of us—and those not a few—started life equipped for it after
this fashion; creatures of circumstance who waited to be fallen in
love with. That was indeed all; we stood and waited—on approval.
And then came life itself and rent our mother’s theories to tatters.
For we discovered—those of us, that is, who were driven out to work
that we might eat—we discovered very swiftly that what we had
been told was the impossible was the thing we had to do. That and
no other. So we accomplished it, in fear and trembling, only because
we had to; and with that first achievement of the impossible the
horizon widened with a rush, and the implanted, hampering faith in
our own poor parasitic uselessness began to wither at the root and

die. We had learned to say, “I can.” And as we went on, at first with
fear and then with joy, from impossibility to impossibility, we looked
upon the world with new eyes.
To no man, I think, can the world be quite as wonderful as it is to
the woman now alive who has fought free. Those who come after
her will enter by right of birth upon what she attains by right of
conquest; therefore, neither to them will it be the same. The things
that to her brother are common and handed down, to her are new
possessions, treasured because she herself has won them and no
other for her. It may well be that she attaches undue importance to
these; it could scarcely be otherwise. Her traditions have fallen away
from her, her standard of values is gone. The old gods have passed
away from her, and as yet the new gods have spoken with no very
certain voice. The world to her is in the experimental stage. She
grew to womanhood weighed down by the conviction that life held
only one thing for her; and she stretches out her hands to find that
it holds many. She grew to womanhood weighed down by the
conviction that her place in the scheme of things was the place of a
parasite; and she knows (for necessity has taught her) that she has
feet which need no support. She is young in the enjoyment of her
new powers and has a pleasure that is childish in the use of them.
By force of circumstances her faith has been wrested from her and
the articles of her new creed have yet to be tested by experience—
her own. Her sphere—whatever it may prove to be—no one but
herself can define for her. Authority to her is a broken reed. Has she
not heard and read solemn disquisitions by men of science on the
essential limitations of woman’s nature and the consequent
impossibility of activity in this or that direction?—knowing, all the
while, that what they swear to her she cannot do she does, is doing
day by day!
Some day, no doubt, the pendulum will adjust itself and swing true;
a generation brought up to a wider horizon as a matter of course will
look around it with undazzled eyes and set to work to reconstruct
the fundamental from the ruins of what was once esteemed so. But

in the meantime the new is—new; the independence that was to be
as Dead Sea ashes in our mouth tastes very sweet indeed; and the
unsheltered life that we were taught to shrink from means the
fighting of a good fight....
Selfishness, perhaps—all selfishness—this pleasure in ourselves and
in the late growth of that which our training had denied us. But
then, from our point of view, the sin and crime of woman in the past
has been a selflessness which was ignoble because involuntary. Our
creed may be vague as yet, but one article thereof is fixed: there is
no merit in a sacrifice which is compulsory, no virtue in a gift which
is not a gift but a tribute.
III
I have insisted so strongly upon what I believe to be the attitude
towards life of the independent woman mainly with the object of
proving my assertion that there are other faculties in our nature
besides those which have hitherto been forced under a hothouse
system of cultivation—sex and motherhood. It is quite possible that
a woman thinking, feeling and living in a manner I have described
may be dubbed unsexed; but even if she be what is technically
termed unsexed, it does not follow therefore that she is either
unnatural or unwomanly. Sex is only one of the ingredients of the
natural woman—an ingredient which has assumed undue and
exaggerated proportions in her life owing to the fact that it has for
many generations furnished her with the means of livelihood.
In sexual matters it would appear that the whole trend and tendency
of man’s relations to woman has been to make refusal impossible
and to cut off every avenue of escape from the gratification of his
desire. His motive in concentrating all her energy upon the trade of

marriage was to deny it any other outlet. The original motive was
doubtless strengthened, as time went on, by an objection to
allowing her to come into economic competition with him; but this
was probably a secondary or derivative cause of his persistent
refusal to allow her new spheres of activity, having its primary root
in the consciousness that economic independence would bring with
it the power of refusal.
The uncompromising and rather brutal attitude which man has
consistently adopted towards the spinster is, to my mind, a
confirmation of this theory. (The corresponding attitude of the
married woman towards her unmarried sister I take to be merely
servile and imitative.) It was not only that the creature was chaste
and therefore inhuman. That would have justified neglect and
contempt on his part, but not the active dislike he always appears to
have entertained for her. That active and somewhat savage dislike
must have had its origin in the consciousness that the perpetual
virgin was a witness, however reluctantly, to the unpalatable fact
that sexual intercourse was not for every woman an absolute
necessity; and this uneasy consciousness on his part accounts for
the systematic manner in which he placed the spinster outside the
pale of a chivalry, upon which, from her unprotected position, one
would have expected her to have an especial claim.
If it be granted that marriage is, as I have called it, essentially a
trade on the part of woman—the exchange of her person for the
means of subsistence—it is legitimate to inquire into the manner in
which that trade is carried on, and to compare the position of the
worker in the matrimonial with the position of the worker in any
other market. Which brings us at once to the fact—arising from the
compulsory nature of the profession—that it is carried on under
disadvantages unknown and unfelt by those who earn their living by
other methods. For the regulations governing compulsory service—
the institution of slavery and the like—are always framed, not in the
interests of the worker, but in the interests of those who impose his
work upon him. The regulations governing exchange and barter in

the marriage market, therefore, are necessarily framed in the
interests of the employer—the male.
The position is this. Marriage, with its accompaniments and
consequences—the ordering of a man’s house, the bearing and
rearing of his children—has, by the long consent of ages, been
established as practically the only means whereby woman, with
honesty and honour, shall earn her daily bread. Her every attempt to
enter any other profession has been greeted at first with scorn and
opposition; her sole outlook was to be dependence upon man. Yet
the one trade to which she is destined, the one means of earning
her bread to which she is confined, she may not openly profess. No
other worker stands on the same footing. The man who has his
bread to earn, with hands, or brains, or tools, goes out to seek for
the work to which he is trained; his livelihood depending on it, he
offers his skill and services without shame or thought of reproach.
But with woman it is not so; she is expected to express
unwillingness for the very work for which she has been taught and
trained. She has been brought up in the belief that her profession is
marriage and motherhood; yet though poverty may be pressing
upon her—though she may be faced with actual lack of the
necessities of life—she must not openly express her desire to enter
that profession, and earn her bread in the only way for which she is
fitted. She must stand aside and wait—indefinitely; and attain to her
destined livelihood by appearing to despise it.
That, of course, is the outcome of something more than a
convention imposed on her by man; nature, from the beginning, has
made her more fastidious and reluctant than the male. But with this
natural fastidiousness and reluctance the commercialism imposed
upon her by her economic needs is constantly at clash and at
conflict, urging her to get her bread as best she can in the only
market open to her. Theoretically—since by her wares she lives—she
has a perfect right to cry those wares and seek to push them to the
best advantage. That is to say, she has a perfect right to seek, with

frankness and with openness, the man who, in her judgment, can
most fittingly provide her with the means of support.
This freedom of bargaining to the best advantage, permitted as a
matter of course to every other worker, is denied to her. It is, of
course, claimed and exercised by the prostitute class—a class which
has pushed to its logical conclusion the principle that woman exists
by virtue of a wage paid her in return for the possession of her
person; but it is interesting to note that the “unfortunate” enters the
open market with the hand of the law extended threateningly above
her head. The fact is curious if inquired into: since the theory that
woman should live by physical attraction of the opposite sex has
never been seriously denied, but rather insisted upon, by men, upon
what principle is solicitation, or open offer of such attraction, made a
legal offence? (Not because the woman is a danger to the
community, since the male sensualist is an equal source of danger.)
Only, apparently, because the advance comes from the wrong side. I
speak under correction, but cannot, unaided, light upon any other
explanation; and mine seems to be borne out by the fact that, in
other ranks of life, custom, like the above-mentioned law,
strenuously represses any open advance on the part of the woman.
So emphatic, indeed, is this unwritten law, that one cannot help
suspecting that it was needful it should be emphatic, lest woman,
adapting herself to her economic position, should take the initiative
in a matter on which her livelihood depended, and deprive her
employer not only of the pleasure of the chase, but of the illusion
that their common bargain was as much a matter of romance and
volition on her part as on his.
As a matter of fact, that law that the first advances must come from
the side of the man is, as was only to be expected, broken and
broken every day; sometimes directly, but far more often indirectly.
The woman bent on matrimony is constantly on the alert to evade
its workings, conscious that in her attempt to do so she can nearly
always count on the ready, if unspoken, co-operation of her sisters.
This statement is, I know, in flat contravention of the firmly-rooted

masculine belief that one woman regards another as an enemy to be
depreciated consistently in masculine eyes, and that women spend
their lives in one long struggle to gratify an uncontrollable desire for
admiration at each other’s expense. (I have myself been told by a
man that he would never be so foolishly discourteous as to praise
one woman in another’s hearing. I, on my part, desirous also of
being wisely courteous, did not attempt to shake the magnificent
belief in his own importance to me which the statement betrayed.)
Admiration is a very real passion in some women, as it is a very real
passion in some men; but what, in women, is often mistaken for it is
ambition, a desire to get on and achieve success in life in the only
way in which it is open to a woman to achieve it—through the favour
of man. Which is only another way of saying what I have insisted on
before—that a good many feminine actions which are commonly and
superficially attributed to sexual impulse have their root in the
commercial instinct.
It is because women, consciously or unconsciously, recognize the
commercial nature of the undertaking that they interest themselves
so strongly in the business of match-making, other than their own.
Men have admitted that interest, of course—the thing is too self-
evident to be denied—and, as their manner is, attributed it to an
exuberant sexuality which overflows on to its surroundings;
steadfastly declining to take into account the “professional” element
in its composition, since that would necessarily imply the existence
of an esprit de corps amongst women.
I myself cannot doubt that there does exist a spirit of practical, if
largely unconscious, trade unionism in a class engaged in extracting,
under many difficulties and by devious ways, its livelihood from the
employer, man. (I need scarcely point out that man, like every other
wage-payer, has done his level best and utmost to suppress the
spirit of combination, and encourage distrust and division, amongst
the wage-earners in the matrimonial market; and that the trade of
marriage, owing to the isolation of the workers, has offered
unexampled opportunities for such suppression of unity and

encouragement of distrust and division.) But, in spite of this, women
in general recognize the economic necessity of marriage for each
other, and in a spirit of instinctive comradeship seek to forward it by
every means in their power. There must be something extraordinarily
and unnaturally contemptible about a woman who, her own bargain
made and means of livelihood secured, will not help another to
secure hers; and it is that motive, and not a rapturous content in
their own unclouded destiny, not an unhesitating conviction that
their lot has fallen in a fair ground, which makes of so many married
women industrious and confirmed match-makers. What has been
termed the “huge conspiracy of married women” is, in fact, nothing
but a huge trade union whose members recognize the right of others
to their bread. To my mind, one of the best proofs of the reality of
this spirit of unconscious trade unionism among women is the
existence of that other feminine conspiracy of silence which
surrounds the man at whom a woman, for purely mercenary
reasons, is making a “dead set.” In such a case, the only women
who will interfere and warn the intended victim will be his own
relatives—a mother or a sister; others, while under no delusions as
to the interested nature of the motives by which the pursuer is
actuated, will hold their tongues, and even go so far as to offer
facilities for the chase. They realize that their fellow has a right to
her chance—that she must follow her trade as best she can, and
would no more dream of giving her away than the average decent
workman would dream of going to an employer and informing him
that one of his mates was not up to his job and should, therefore, be
discharged. In these emergencies a man must look to a man for
help; the sympathies of the practical and unromantic sex will be on
the other side.
I shall not deny, of course, that there is active and bitter competition
amongst women for the favour not only of particular men, but of
men in general; but, from what I have said already, it will be
gathered that I consider that competition to be largely economic and
artificial. Where it is economic, it is produced by the same cause
which produces active and bitter competition in other branches of

industry—the overcrowding of the labour market. Where it is
artificial, as distinct from purely economic, it is produced by the
compulsory concentration of energy on one particular object, and
the lack of facilities for dispersing that energy in other directions. It
is not the woman with an interest in life who spends her whole time
in competing with her otherwise unoccupied sisters for the smiles of
a man.

IV
Marriage being to them not only a trade, but a necessity, it must
follow as the night the day that the acquirement of certain
characteristics—the characteristics required by an average man in an
average wife—has been rendered inevitable for women in general.
There have, of course, always been certain exceptional men who
have admired and desired certain exceptional and eccentric qualities
in their wives; but in estimating a girl’s chances of pleasing—on
which depended her chances of success or a comfortable livelihood
—these exceptions naturally, were taken into but small account, and
no specialization in their tastes and desires was allowed for in her
training. The aim and object of that training was to make her
approximate to the standard of womanhood set up by the largest
number of men; since the more widely she was admired the better
were her chances of striking a satisfactory bargain. The taste and
requirements of the average man of her class having been definitely
ascertained, her training and education was carried on on the
principle of cultivating those qualities which he was likely to admire,
and repressing with an iron hand those qualities to which he was
likely to take objection; in short, she was fitted for her trade by the
discouragement of individuality and eccentricity and the persistent
moulding of her whole nature into the form which the ordinary
husband would desire it to take. Her education, unlike her brothers’,
was not directed towards self-development and the bringing out of
natural capabilities, but towards pleasing some one else—was not
for her own benefit, but for that of another person.
No one has better expressed the essential difference between the
education of men and women than Mr. John Burns in a speech
delivered to the “Children of the State” at the North Surrey District
School on February 13, 1909. Addressing the boys the President of
the Local Government Board said, “I want you to be happy

craftsmen, because you are trained to be healthy men.” Addressing
the girls he is reported to have used the following words—
“To keep house, cook, nurse and delight in making others happy is
your mission, duty and livelihood.”
The boys are to be happy themselves; the girls are to make others
happy. No doubt Mr. Burns spoke sincerely; but is he not one of the
“others”? And it is well to note that the “making of others happy” is
not put before the girls as an ideal, but as a duty and means of
livelihood. They are to be self-sacrificing as a matter of business—a
commercial necessity. It is because man realizes that self-sacrifice in
woman is not a matter of free-will, but of necessity, that he gives
her so little thanks for it. Her duty and means of livelihood is to
make others happy—in other words, to please him.
Whether she was trained to be useful or useless that was the object
of her up-bringing. Men in one class of society would be likely to
require wives able to do rough house or field work; so to do rough
house or field work she was trained. Men in another class of society
would be likely to require of their wives an appearance of helpless
fragility; and girls in that particular class were educated to be
incapable of sustained bodily effort.
It is this fact—that their training was a training not in their own, but
in some one else’s requirements—which, to my thinking, makes
women so infinitely more interesting to watch and to analyze than
men. Interesting, I mean, in the sense of exciting. Practically every
woman I know has two distinct natures: a real and an acquired; that
which she has by right of birth and heritage, and that which she has
been taught she ought to have—and often thinks that she has
attained to. And it is quite impossible even for another woman,
conscious of the same division of forces in herself, to forecast which
of these two conflicting temperaments will come uppermost at a
given moment.

The average man is a straightforward and simple-minded creature
compared to the average woman, merely because he has been
allowed to develop much more on his own natural lines. He has only
one centre of gravity; the woman has two. To put it in plain English,
he usually knows what he wants; she, much more often than not,
does not know anything of the kind. She is under the impression
that she wants certain things which she has been told from her
earliest childhood, and is being told all the time, are the things she
ought to want. That is as far as she can go with certainty. This also
can be said with certainty: that her first requirement, whether she
knows it or not, is the liberty to discover what she really does
require.
Once a man’s character is known and understood it can usually be
predicted with a fair degree of accuracy how he will act in any
particular crisis or emergency—say, under stress of strong emotion
or temptation. With his sister on the other hand you can never
foresee at what point artificiality will break down and nature take
command; which makes it infinitely more difficult, however well you
know her, to predict her course of action under the same
circumstances. The woman whose whole existence, from early dawn
to dewy eve, is regulated by a standard of manners imposed upon
her from without, by a standard of morals imposed upon her from
without, whose ideals are purely artificial and equally reflected, will
suddenly, and at an unexpected moment, reveal another and
fundamental side of her nature of which she herself has probably
lived in entire ignorance. And on the other hand—so ingrained in us
all has artificiality become—a woman of the independent type, with
a moral standard and ideals of her own setting up, may, when the
current of her life is swept out of its ordinary course by emergency
or strong emotion, take refuge, just as suddenly and unexpectedly,
in words and actions that are palpably unnatural to her and inspired
by an instilled idea of what, under the circumstances, a properly
constituted woman ought to say or do. Faced with a difficulty
through which her own experience does not serve to guide her, she
falls back on convention and expresses the thoughts of others in the

stilted language that convention has put into her mouth. I have
known this happen more than once, and seen a real human being of
flesh and blood suddenly and unconsciously transformed into one of
those curious creatures, invented by male writers and called women
for lack of any other name, whose sins and whose virtues alike are
the sins and virtues considered by male writers to be suitable and
becoming to the opposite sex.
For generation after generation the lives of women of even the
slightest intelligence and individuality must have been one long and
constant struggle between the forces of nature endeavouring to
induce in them that variety which is another word for progress and
their own enforced strivings to approximate to a single monotonous
type—the type of the standard and ideal set up for them by man,
which was the standard and ideal of his own comfort and
enjoyment. However squarely uncompromising the characteristics of
any given woman, the only vacant space for her occupation was
round, and into the round hole she had to go. Were her soul the soul
of a pirate, it had to be encased in a body which pursued the
peaceful avocation of a cook. Even when she kicked over the traces
and gave respectability the go-by, she could only do so after one
particular and foregone fashion—a fashion encouraged if not openly
approved by man. The male sinner might go to the devil in any way
he chose; for her there was only one road to the nethermost hell,
and, dependent even in this, she needed a man to set her feet upon
the path. Her vices, like her virtues, were forced and stereotyped.
They sprang from the same root; vice, with her, was simply an
excess of virtue. Vicious or virtuous, matron or outcast, she was
made and not born.
There must be many attributes and characteristics of the general run
of women which are not really the attributes and characteristics of
their sex, but of their class—a class persistently set apart for the
duties of sexual attraction, house-ordering and the bearing of
children. And the particular qualities that, in the eyes of man, fitted
them for the fulfilment of these particular duties, generation after

generation of women, whatever their natural temperament and
inclination, have sought to acquire—or if not the actual qualities
themselves, at least an outward semblance of them. Without some
semblance of those qualities life would be barred to them.
There are very few women in whom one cannot, now and again,
trace the line of cleavage between real and acquired, natural and
class, characteristics. The same thing, of course, holds good of men,
but in a far less degree since, many vocations being open to them,
they tend naturally and on the whole to fall into the class for which
temperament and inclinations fit them. A man with a taste for an
open air life does not as a rule become a chartered accountant, a
student does not take up deep-sea fishing as a suitable profession.
But with women the endeavour to approximate to a single type has
always been compulsory. It is ridiculous to suppose that nature, who
never makes two blades of grass alike, desired to turn out indefinite
millions of women all cut to the regulation pattern of wifehood: that
is to say, all home-loving, charming, submissive, industrious,
unintelligent, tidy, possessed with a desire to please, well-dressed,
jealous of their own sex, self-sacrificing, cowardly, filled with a
burning desire for maternity, endowed with a talent for cooking,
narrowly uninterested in the world outside their own gates, and
capable of sinking their own identity and interests in the interests
and identity of a husband. I imagine that very few women naturally
unite in their single persons these characteristics of the class wife;
but, having been relegated from birth upwards to the class wife,
they had to set to work, with or against the grain, to acquire some
semblance of those that they knew were lacking.
There being no question of a line of least resistance for woman, it is
fairly obvious that the necessity (in many instances) of making a silk
purse out of a sow’s ear and instilling the qualities of tidiness, love of
home, cowardice, unintelligence, etc., etc., into persons who were
born with quite other capacities and defects must have resulted in a
pitiable waste of good material, sacrificed upon the altar of a
domesticity arranged in the interests of the husband. But infinitely

worse in its effect upon womanhood in general was the insincerity
which, in many cases, was the prime lesson and result of a girl’s
education and upbringing. I do not mean, of course, that the
generality of girls were consciously, of set purpose, and in so many
words taught to be insincere; but it seems fairly certain to me that
generations of mothers have tacitly instructed their daughters to
assume virtues (or the reverse) which they had not.
It could not be otherwise. Success in the marriage-market
demanded certain qualifications; and, as a matter of economic and
social necessity, if those qualifications were lacking, their counterfeit
presentment was assumed. When helplessness and fragility were the
fashion amongst wives, the girl child who was naturally as plucky as
her brothers was schooled into an affected and false timidity. Men
were understood to admire and reverence the maternal instinct in
women; so the girl who had no especial interest in children affected
a mechanical delight in, petted, fondled and made much of them. (I
myself have seen this done on more than one occasion; of course in
the presence of men.) And—worst and most treacherous insincerity
of all—since men were understood to dislike clever women, the girl
who had brains, capacity, intellect, sought to conceal, denied
possession of them, so that her future husband might enjoy,
unchallenged, the pleasurable conviction of her mental inferiority to
himself.
Of all the wrongs that have been inflicted upon woman there has
been none like unto this—the enforced arrest of her mental growth—
and none which bears more bitter and eloquent testimony to the
complete and essential servility of her position. For her the eleventh
commandment was an insult—“Thou shalt not think”; and the most
iniquitous condition of her marriage bargain this—that her husband,
from the height of his self-satisfaction, should be permitted to
esteem her a fool.
It was not only that, from one generation to another, woman was
without encouragement to use her higher mental qualities—that her
life was lacking in the stimulus of emulation so far as they were

concerned, that her own particular trade made very few demands
upon them. As if these things in themselves were not
discouragement enough, she was directly forbidden to cultivate the
small share of intellect she was understood to possess. Science was
closed to her and art degraded to a series of “parlor tricks.” It was
not enough that she should be debarred from material possessions;
from possessions that were not material, from the things of the
spirit, she must be debarred as well. Nothing more plainly illustrates
the fact that man has always regarded her as existing not for herself
and for her own benefit, but for his use and pleasure solely. His use
for her was the gratification of his own desire, the menial services
she rendered without payment; his pleasure was in her flesh, not in
her spirit; therefore the things of the spirit were not for her.
One wonders what it has meant for the race—this persistent desire
of the man to despise his wife, this economic need of countless
women to arrest their mental growth? It has amounted to this—that
one of the principal qualifications for motherhood has been a low
standard of intelligence. We hear a very great deal about the beauty
and sanctity of motherhood; we might, for a change, hear
something about the degradation thereof—which has been very real.
To stunt one’s brain in order that one may bear a son does not seem
to me a process essentially sacred or noble in itself; yet millions of
mothers have instructed their daughters in foolishness so that they,
in their turn, might please, marry and bear children. Most of those
daughters, no doubt—humanity being in the main slothful and
indifferent—endured the process with equanimity; but there must
always have been some, and those not the least worthy, who
suffered piteously under the systematic thwarting of definite instincts
and vague ambitions. In every generation there must have been
women who desired life at first hand, and in whom the crushing of
initiative and inquiry and the substitution of servile for independent
qualities, must have caused infinite misery. In every generation there
must have been women who had something to give to those who
lived outside the narrowing walls of their home; and who were not

permitted to give it. They soured and stifled; but they were not
permitted to give it.
But, after all, the suffering of individual women under the law of
imposed stupidity is a very small thing compared with the effect of
that law upon humanity as a whole. The sex which reserved to itself
the luxury of thinking appears to have been somewhat neglectful of
its advantages in that respect, since it failed to draw the obvious
conclusion that sons were the sons of their mothers as well as of
their fathers. Yet it is a commonplace that exceptional men are born
of exceptional women—that is to say, of women in whom the natural
instinct towards self-expansion and self-expression is too strong to
be crushed and thwarted out of existence by the law of imposed
stupidity.
That law has reacted inevitably upon those who framed and imposed
it; since it is truth and not a jest that the mission in life of many
women has been to suckle fools—of both sexes. Women have been
trained to be unintelligent breeding-machines until they have
become unintelligent breeding-machines—how unintelligent witness
the infant death-rate from improper feeding. Judging by that and
other things, the process of transforming the natural woman into
flesh without informing spirit would appear, in a good many instance,
to have been attended by a fair amount of success. In some classes
she still breeds brainlessly. That is what she is there for, not to think
of the consequences. Has she not been expressly forbidden to think?
If she is a failure as a wife and mother, it is because she is nothing
else. And those of us who are now alive might be better men and
women, seeing more light where now we strive and slip in darkness,
if our fathers had not insisted so strongly and so steadfastly upon
their right to despise the women they made their wives—who were
our mothers.
I have said that this condemnation to intellectual barrenness is the
strongest proof of the essential servility of woman’s position in the
eyes of man, and I repeat that statement. It cannot be repeated too
often. So long as you deprive a human being of the right to make

use of its own mental property, so long do you keep that human
being in a state of serfdom. You may disguise the fact even from
yourself by an outward show of deference and respect, the lifting of
a hat or the ceding of a pathway; but the fact remains. Wherever
and whenever man has desired to degrade his fellow and tread him
under foot, he has denied him, first of all, the right to think, the
means of education and inquiry. Every despotism since the world
began has recognized that it can only work in secret—that its ways
must not be known. No material tyranny can hope to establish itself
firmly and for long unless it has at its disposal the means to
establish also a tyranny that is spiritual and intellectual. When you
hold a man’s mind in thrall you can do what you will with his body;
you possess it and not he. Always those who desired power over
their fellows have found it a sheer necessity to possess their bodies
through their souls; and for this reason, when you have stripped a
man of everything except his soul, you have to go on and strip him
of that too, lest, having it left to him, he ask questions, ponder the
answers and revolt. In all ages the aim of despotism, small or great,
material or intellectual, has been to keep its subjects in ignorance
and darkness; since, in all ages, discontent and rebellion have come
with the spread of knowledge, light and understanding. So soon as a
human being is intelligent enough to doubt, and frame the question,
“Why is this?” he can no longer be satisfied with the answer,
“Because I wish it.” That is an answer which inevitably provokes the
rejoinder, “But I do not”—which is the essence and foundation of
heresy and high treason.
Those in high places—that is to say, those who desired power over
others—have, as a condition of their existence in high places, fought
steadfastly against the spread of the means of enlightenment. No
right has been more bitterly denied than the right of a man to think
honestly and to communicate his thoughts to his fellows. Persons
who claimed that right have been at various times (and for the
edification of other persons who might be tempted to go and do
likewise) stoned, devoured by wild beasts, excommunicated, shut up
in dungeons, burned at the stake and hanged, drawn, and

quartered. In spite, however, of these drastic penalties—and other
lesser ones too numerous to mention—there has always been a
section of humanity which has stubbornly persisted, even at the risk
of roasting or dismemberment, in thinking its own thoughts on some
particular subject and saying what they were. To persons of this
frame of mind it probably did not much matter how soon they had
done with an existence which they had to look at through other
people’s eyes and talk about in suitable phrases arranged for them
by other people. So they risked the penalty and said what they
wanted to. The history of the world has been a succession of
demands, more or less spasmodic, more or less insistent, on the part
of subjected classes, nations and sects, to be allowed to see things
in their own way and with an eye to their own interests, spiritual or
material. Which is why a free press and a free pulpit have often
seemed worth dying for.
Wherever civilization exists various classes, sects and nations of men
have, one by one, claimed the right to that examination of things for
themselves which is called education. They have never attained to it
without opposition; and one of the most frequent and specious
forms of that opposition is embodied in the argument that education
would not only be useless to them, but would unfit them for their
duties. No doubt this argument was often put forward in all honesty
as the outcome of a conviction that was none the less sincere
because it was prompted by self-interest. That conviction had its
roots in the common and widespread inability to realize the actual
human identity of other persons—in the habit of summing them up
and estimating them in the light only of the salient (and often
superficial) characteristics which affect ourselves. I can best explain
what I mean by saying that to many of us the word “clerk” does not
summon up the mental representation of an actual man who spends
some of his time writing, but of something in the shape of a man
that is continuously occupied in driving a pen. In other words, we
lose sight of the man himself in one of his attributes; and the same
with a miner, a sailor, etc. Thus to the persons in high places who
opposed the education of the agricultural labourer, the agricultural

labourer was not an actual man, but a hoe or a harrow in human
shape; and they were quite honestly and logically unable to see
what this animated implement of agricultural toil could want with the
inside of a book. Practically, however, they were denying humanity to
the labourer and sinking his identity in one particular quality—the
physical capacity for field-work.
This, as I have explained elsewhere, is the manner in which woman,
as a rule, is still regarded—not as a human being with certain
physical and mental qualities which enable her to bring children into
the world and cook a dinner, but as a breeding-machine and the
necessary adjunct to a frying-pan. So regarded, independence of
thought and anything beyond a very limited degree of mental
cultivation are unnecessary to her, even harmful, since they might
possibly result in the acquirement of other attributes quite out of
place in the adjunct to a frying-pan.

V
With the advance of civilization one subject class after another has
risen in revolt, more or less violent, more or less peaceful, and
asserted its right to inquire, to think in its own way—that is to say, it
has asserted its humanity. But it is a proof of my statement that
woman has never been regarded as fully human, that the successive
classes of men who have, in turn, asserted their own humanity have
totally forgotten to assert hers, have left her, whatever her rank, in a
class apart, and continued to treat her as a domestic animal whose
needs were only the needs of a domestic animal.
The aristocratic instinct is by no means confined to those born in the
purple. (Some of the most startlingly aristocratic sentiments I have
ever heard came from the lips of persons believed by themselves to
entertain ultra-democratic ideas.) The sense of power over others is
just as attractive to the many as it is to the few; and thus it has
happened that men, in every class, have taken a pleasure in the
dependence and subjection of their womenfolk, and, lest their power
over them should be undermined, have refused to their womenfolk
the right to think for themselves. The essential cruelty of that refusal
they disguised from themselves by explaining that women could not
think even if they tried. We have all heard the definition of woman—
episcopal, I think—as a creature who cannot reason and pokes the
fire from the top.
This disbelief in the existence of reasoning powers in woman is still,
it seems to me, a very real thing—at least, I have run up against it a
good many times in the course of my life, and I do not suppose that
I am an exception in that respect. And the really interesting thing
about this contemptuous attitude of mind is that it has led to the
adoption, by those who maintain it, of a very curious subterfuge. It
is, of course, quite impossible to deny that a woman’s mind does go

through certain processes which control and inspire her actions and
conclusions— sometimes very swiftly and effectively; but to these
mental processes, which in men are called reason, they give, in
woman, the title of intuition.
Now the word “intuition,” when used in connection with woman,
conveys to the average male mind a meaning closely akin to that of
the word instinct—as opposed to reason. (In this insistence on the
instinctive character of our mental processes the average man is, of
course, quite consistent; since he imagines that we exist only for the
gratification of two instincts, the sexual and the maternal, it does not
seem unreasonable on his part to conclude that we also think by
instinct.) I am certain that I am right as to this masculine habit of
confusing intuition with instinct; since on every occasion on which I
have been more or less politely—but always firmly—informed that I
had no intellect, but could console myself for the deficiency by the
reflection that I possessed the usual feminine quality of intuition, I
have made a point of bringing the person who made the remark to
book by insisting upon an exact definition of the term. In every
single case within my own experience the exact definition—as I have
been careful to point out—has been not insight, but instinct. Our
mental processes, in short, are supposed to be on the same level as
the mental process which starts the newly-hatched gosling on its
waddle to the nearest pond. We are supposed to know what we
want without knowing why we want it—just like the gosling, which
does not make a bee-line for the water because it has carefully
examined its feet, discovered that they are webbed, and drawn the
inference that webbed feet are suitable for progress in water.
This question of the intuitive or instinctive powers of woman is one
that has always interested me extremely; and as soon as I realized
that my mind was supposed to work in a different way from a man’s
mind, and that I was supposed to arrive at conclusions by a series of
disconnected and frog-like jumps, I promptly set to work to discover
if that was really the case by the simple expedient of examining the
manner in which I did arrive at conclusions. I believe that (on certain

subjects, at any rate) I think more rapidly than most people—which
does not mean, of course, that I think more correctly. It does mean,
however, that I very often have to explain to other people the
process by which I have arrived at my conclusions (which might
otherwise appear intuitive); therefore I may be called a good subject
for investigation. I can honestly say that I have never been at a loss
for such an explanation. I can trace the progress of my thought,
step by step, just as a man can trace his. I may reason wrongly, but
I do not reason in hops. And I have yet to meet the woman who
does. I have met many women who were in the habit of coming to
conclusions that were altogether ridiculous and illogical; but they
were conclusions—drawn from insufficient data—and not guesses.
No sane human being regulates—or does not regulate—its life, as
we are supposed to do, by a series of vague and uncontrolled
guesses.
I imagine that the idea that women do so control their lives must
have had its origin in the fact that men and women usually turn their
mental energy into entirely different channels. On subjects that are
familiar to us we think quickly, and acquire a mental dexterity akin to
the manual dexterity of a skilled artisan. But the subjects upon
which women exercise this mental dexterity are not, as a rule, the
same as those upon which men exercise theirs; the latter have
usually left narrow social and domestic matters alone, and it is in
narrow social and domestic matters that we are accustomed to think
quickly. We are swifter than they are, of course, at drawing the small
inferences from which we judge what a man will like or dislike; but
then, for generations the business of our lives has been to find out
what a man will like or dislike, and it would be rather extraordinary if
we had not, in the course of ages, acquired in it a measure of that
rapid skill which in any other business would be called mechanical,
but in ours is called intuitive.
This theory of intuition or instinct, then, I take, as I have already
said, to be in the nature of a subterfuge on the part of the male—a
sop to his conscience, and a plausible excuse for assuming that we

have not the intelligence which (if it were once admitted that we
possessed it) we should have the right to cultivate by independent
thinking. But to admit the right of a human being to independent
thinking is also to admit something else far more important and
unpleasant—his right to sit in judgment upon you. That right every
despotism that ever existed has steadily denied to its subjects;
therefore, there is nothing extraordinary in the fact that man has
steadily denied it to woman. He has always preferred that she
should be too ignorant to sit in judgment upon him, punishing her
with ostracism if she was rash enough to attempt to dispel her own
ignorance. One of her highest virtues, in his eyes, was a childish and
undeveloped quality about which he threw a halo of romance when
he called it by the name of innocence. So far has this insistence on
ignorance or innocence in a wife been carried, that even in these
days many women who marry young have but a very vague idea of
what they are doing; while certain risks attaching to the estate of
marriage are, in some ranks of life at any rate, sedulously concealed
from them as things which it is unfit for them to know.
It is a subject that is both difficult and unpleasant to touch upon;
but while it will always be unpleasant, it ought not to be difficult,
and I should be false to my beliefs if I apologized for touching upon
it. Women, like men, when they enter upon a calling, have a perfect
right to know exactly what are the dangers and drawbacks attached
to their calling; you do not, when you turn a man into a pottery or a
dynamite factory, sedulously conceal from him the fact that there are
such things as lead-poisoning or combustion. On the contrary, you
warn him—as women are seldom warned. I have been astonished at
the number of women I have met who seem to have hardly more
than a vague inkling—and some not even that—of the tangible,
physical consequence of loose living.
I have not the faintest intention of inditing a sermon on masculine
morals. If the average man chooses to dispense with morals as we
understand them, that is his affair and a matter for his own
conscience; if he is so constituted physically that he cannot live as

we do, and has practically no choice in the matter, that is his
misfortune. But I do say this: that the average woman has a perfect
right to know what are the results of loose living in so far as those
results may affect her and her children. If marriage is a trade we
ought to know its risks—concerning which there exists a conspiracy
of silence. Is the cause to which I have alluded ever mentioned,
except in technical publications, in connection with the infant death-
rate?
Those of us who have discovered that there are risks attaching to
the profession of marriage other than the natural ones of childbirth,
have very often made the discovery by accident—which ought not to
be. I made the discovery in that way myself while I was still very
young—by the idle opening of a book which, because it was a book,
was a thing to be opened and looked into. I was puzzled at first, and
then the thing stared me in the face—a simple matter of bald
statement and statistics. I remember the thought which flashed into
my mind—we are told we have got to be married, but we are never
told that! It was my first conscious revolt against the compulsory
nature of the trade of marriage.

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