Women and Economics · Chapter
VI explained
This chapter examines the economic dimension of the sexuo-economic relation, arguing that the combination of individual sex-relations with increasingly collective economic processes creates social strain.
What happens
This chapter examines the economic dimension of the sexuo-economic relation, arguing that the combination of individual sex-relations with increasingly collective economic processes creates social strain. It traces the evolution from primitive individual competition to social cooperation, and shows how the economic dependence of women perpetuates individualism and sex-competition, corrupting both social economics and personal ethics.
Themes in this chapter
Economic Dependence of Women
The chapter details how women's economic reliance on men perpetuates individual competition and undermines social cooperation.
Sexuo-Economic Relation
Central to the chapter: the fusion of sex and economics distorts both individual development and social progress.
Social Evolution and Progress
The chapter contrasts primitive individual competition with the evolutionary trend toward collective economic organization.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
The narrator analyzes the economic and social consequences of the sexuo-economic relation, using analogies from primitive competition to modern industrial greed.
- Jean Ingelow
Quoted for a poem expressing the ideal of working to support a family, illustrating the link between labor and the sexuo-economic relation.
- Pain
Mentioned in the context of the medieval tournament's brutality, contrasted with modern economic competition.
Key passages
“Our difficulty about wealth is not in getting it out of the earth, but in getting it away from one another.”
The main economic problem is not production but distribution and competition for resources.
Highlights the shift from physical scarcity to social maldistribution.
“The contest in every good man's heart today between the 'ought to' and the 'must,' between his best work and the 'potboiler,' is his personal share of this incessant struggle between social interest and self-interest.”
Men face an inner conflict between doing meaningful work and earning money to support their families.
Illustrates the ethical compromise imposed by the sexuo-economic relation.
“Marriage makes a mouse of a man.”
Marriage makes a man timid and submissive to unjust demands.
Quoted from a novel to show how economic dependence in marriage undermines male integrity.