CHRISTINA STEAD
271
The following letter by Christina Stead, written in response to a
request to write about the Women's Movement, seems to us interesting
enough to print here.
Dear Sirs:
After having promised to write for you and having got your
questionnaire twice, I have let you down and do not like myself; but all
I can do now is to write you this personal letter, from which of course
you can quote if you wish-but I do not want you
to
pay me for such
unprofessional writing. I kept on travelling round the States (Austral–
ian States), visitor at universities, etc. and am terribly behind in my
work.
Visiting the universities, I do not meet unlucky and housebound
women, or untaught women; and the only place I can meet those
suffering from what is now called "surburban loneliness" is in the
suburb which is my home-base at present, a very populous place of
small homes, nest of the "one-man family" (as Germaine Greer
sensibly puts it); the intensest interest outside the home, apart from
relatives, being in the children, and their football clubs, in their
schoolwork (slightly less); and where all social activities are connected
with the football clubs. There are a number of churches, R.S.L. clubs
(Returned Soldiers' Leagues) which do nothing for the women tied to
the home. The women are active in the children's interests and clubs,
in other words sacrifice willingly their entire adult lives.
Australian women achieved the franchise in 1902 (New Zealand,
1893) and there· it seemed to rest. But now the sudden urgency of the
issue of women's liberation (or emancipation, as they say in Africa,
where the black women face another set-up) and even the showman–
ship of some female leaders have made it possible
to
ask any woman at
all, any suburban or family-limited woman, "What do you think of
women's liberation?" and to get an answer at once; in other words
every woman has thought about it. Probably they always had an
answer, but were suffocated by fear, gentility and convention.
Now they say, "I benefitted from the women's movement at work,
for I had equal pay for work of equal value; and I am sorry I did
nothing for the movement that got it for me" (a retired post office
worker); and "I think women should draw in their horns and they will
find there is enough to do at home" (a happily married woman,
childless, and of great energy); and "I am in favour of it, but I don't
want the tenderness of men towards women to disappear" (a happily
married young working woman, childless as yet); and "I think we
