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at a prolific rate over the last year. She has produced 'Hidden from History'. •Women, Resistance and Revolution" well as this one, the only one so far published at a price most people can afford. This is fortunate, because it is a valuable contribution to the current debate in the women's movement and one of the few comprchensive attempts at a Marxist analysis of the position of women in capitalist society today. Thus, it is a book that should be read.
Her central aim is to understand the formation of women's consciousness in a world which is dominated by men, in language, culture, social organisation and production. Despite this overall aim, the division of the book into two separate parts is a product of two different approaches to the problem. In the first part she attempts to understand the formation of women's consciousness primarily in relation to her own experiences during the 1960's, whereas in the second part she takes a much broader perspective and looks at the nature of female production' within capitalism and the part which the sexual division of labour and the family plays in maintaining commodity production.
This division tends to blur the important and correct point which she makes as as a Marxist, in the introduction - that the formation of women's consciousness cannot be seen or understood as a simple inversion of the masculine world, nor as an entity in itself, but only as a response to the contradictions which capitalism has developed between "family and industry. private and public, personal and impersonal. As I will attempt to show, her method of approach in the first section does not correspond to this position and has important consequences in relation to the pressing problems of organisation which the essentially correct second section poses.
In attempting to adopt a framework which examines the way society communicates to the individual' with her own experiences as the subject matter, it is impossible to encompass the wider context of capitalist social relations of which they are a part. While trying to describe the main factors which blocked the emerence of a revolutionary feminism she adopts the concept of male cultural hegemony". This is seen as one of the major brakes on the political development of women; their ability to perceive their own oppression and to actually manage to translate this into speech, since , as wbotham sex rather than class. even language and its meaning has been created by men. Neither is the revolutionary left immune to this hegemony. It has practised a stilted marxism which saw the women's question as diversionary: and this overt sexism drove many women away from the Left and into the women's liberation movement. The main problem is not that her observations are untrue but that male cultural hegemony' assumes an importance almost in itself without enough examination of its connection to capitalist social relations. This raises the dangerous possibility of the essential divi division emerging on the basis of The second section, however, firmly situates the analysis of women's position in society within capitalist social relations, and it is precisely the contradictory nature of this which she sees as having created the possibility of women's consciousness breaking through.
To put it briefly she argues that the sexual division of labour in capitalism is based for a woman on "female production', in the home, of immediate use values and, for the man commodity production, AS a result the relationship of men and women to production is different. Production in the family is subordinate to the production of commodities, and as such the family cannot initiate change but is dependent on changes in the social relations of society as a whole. However, this balance in the division of labour is undermined, both by the needs of capitalism to involve women in commodity 15 * labour is an alternative to investment in machinery), and the increasing penetration off commodities into the home. This means that on the one hand capitalism needs the labour of women in industry, and on the other it requires them to carry out the traditional role of housewife. Meanwhile this increasing penetration of commodities into the home undermines her role as the producer of use value.
These contradictory developments have resulted in women moving towards a new female consciousness, and more im portantly in terms of strategy, working-class women are at the apex of all these contradictions and their movement into action is seen as key to the emergence of socialist feminism. Their position compels them to develop both sisterhood and solidarity or be crushed. They need each other, they need the support of male workers, and their fight at work connects immediately to their situation at home. Their organization and militancy is vital not only for women's liberation but for the whole socialist and working-class mov vement. (p.124).
The question of organization is therefore posed very sharply. What orientation should be taken towards working-class women? How is the support of male workers to be gained and what is the relationship to the revolutionary left? Unfortunately the book ends on the horns of a dilemma: the necessary movement towards the working-class and the revolutionary left is combined with a reaction to their male domination. This is a hangover from the fist part of the book which tends to see the over-riding divisions in society in terms of sex rather than class. This is not to say that there is no problem of male chauvinism in revolutionary organizations. As she has pointed out, it is partly their failure to recognis the connection between women's oppression and the class nature of society, which has held back the development of a marxist analysis. However to expect the left to be free of male
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chauvinism is to disregard its material roots in capitalist society. If capitalism is to be overthrown in its entirety, not just at the economic level, it is essential that we wage a continuous struggle within the left to recognise the importance of thewomen's struggle to carry out this task. We will never achieve this if we insist on the autonomy of the women's movement from the class struggle.
The importance of Woman's Consciousness, Man's World' is precisely that it has raised the level of deabte to that of organization. LIZ HARDY This album is dedicated to the sisters who died in pain and sorrow, and those who are now in prisons and in mental hospitals for being unable to survive in the male society In the cover-notes, she interprets and echoes the title: the space between people, the space all around her, which keeps her apart from others. We live in a society, a whole culture, where others are automatically strangers, different from and alien to ourselves. But despite this, Yoko Ono can still see the world in terms of there being some overall pattern to life and to human interaction, and she therefore retains an immense faith in human beings, and in their power to change the world. This also explains her reference, at the end of the covernotes, to a belief in some kind of immortality.
There are twelve songs on the album, all written produced and sung by Yoko. Her voice is very westernised now, and in tune' by our standards, and she has written some very lyrical songs, as well as more obvious rock and roll numbers.
Broadly speaking, the songs fall inot three main spheres of reference, and then end up with a joke' song - a parody. Since I have not the space to talk about all the songs, I will look at those which 1 feel are the most signifIcant.
The first group are those songs which seem the most "personal", dealing with her own pain, and intensity of experience, trying to survive in society.
FEEL FIC ONU BAND The second group deal with the experiences of other women, of women in general. There is a simplicity and innocence' in the way Yoko talks about the way Yoko writes about more general ideas, which can sometimes verge on the naive, though I don't use this word as any kind of insult. The simplicity of her ideas is consistent with her belief in pacifism, in humanity, in love, as forces in the world. "Yellow girl' is about a girl who bastains from life, and lets external pressures control her destiny. "Angry young woman", though it doesn't sound very angry, is the sory of a woman who has left her husband and children. Yoko seems to feel that she will now find fulfillment, but for me the image of this woman is a lot more desolate. I do not share Yoko's faith in the 'new world' to which this woman is walking.
The third group of songs is more overtly political/cultural, though the ideas presented are more impressionistic than theorised. "Growing pain", the first track on the album, is lovely to listen to, and its accent is on immortality and the continuous nature of life. This includes a lot of pain. but that too is part of the whole. "Straight talk' is about how people say one thing and mean another. However, I see this problem as being a lot more complex, than it is posed in the song. It is true that honesty with yourself is a progressive move, but because G THE SPACE ETHING DIETYRENT get Pyraritas, Cairo, Perpo eniotional reaction is so riddled with contradictions in our society it is not enough just to tell people to say what they think or feel. Often they don't know.
Woman power" is the most overtly political song on the album. It should be seen in the context of Yoko's belief that only people can change the world. She sees women in the vanguard of people, and of the new humanity. What we need is the power of trust," she says she says, and this will come about through women and men who want to join them. The kind of revolution she anticipates is a nonviolent one of the mind. This implies a certain political naivety, though consistent with her general political beliefs. However, she does recognise the profound need to change society very radically, and she also has a very acute understanding of women's oppression.
On the whole, 1 liked the album. Its overall flavour is that of women coming into their own now, and not being passive, or accepting male domination or male values. It asks questions, poses problems and gets people thinking. Let's hope they'll be more albums like this, and not just from Yoko Ono. CARRIE SALZEDO N.B. Cdes should also look at Yoko Ono's Approximately infinite universe, a double L.P. I am not sure which of the two comes first chronologically, but both are available on Apple.
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•Down among the women. What a place to be!" So starts this movel, and in it we explore the 'down' aspect of women's condition: The places to which their lives are relegated - the kitchen, the bedroom, the nursery, the park - and the level of experience at which they are supposed to exist - the home, the children, their relationship with men.
For, in the contest of our society, women have to see themselves, and their fulfillment as human beings, in terms of men. Their identity is in how they relate to a man. And yet they are separate, autonomouspe people, even if they do not acknowledge this. Thus there is a cichotomy, in the internal emotional life, between external pressures and "personal" feelings, which creates a whole atmosphere of contradictions. This atmosphere permeates things "down among the women'.
Down here they are struggling, though not always consciously, and never collectively. They have to struggle against various economic and social pressures - they have to sruvive. And yet, any changes that occur are uneven. Oe individual changes when another seems to be standing still, and so no teal understanding is achieved between them. And in the end, they all aim to make it with men, so how could they turn to each other for any understanding? Yheir lives take place in the same areas as other women's lives, they spend most of their lives with other women, and yet they remian isolated from each other; men's presence, as symbol and instrument of their oppression, is always felt, coming between them, keeping them apart. We are definately "down among the women'. It is 1950. Scarlet lives with her mother Wanda, an ex-Communist Party member, who long ago gave uptrying to be what society expected of a woman, but never had a chance to carry it through. She will always remain "down", though her spirit is not broken. What difference do your ideas make when faced with the realityof poverty? Wanda had to bring up her daughter, without depending on a man The sacrifice entailed in making that choice has shaped her life.
Now her daughter, Scarlet, is 20, unmarried, pregnant. *Scarlet... has a blank where a future ought to be. The birth of her baby is a wall she hesitates to look over. She does not believe that because she is having a baby. she is going to go on having a baby. That it will presently get up and walk away, and look back and jeer, having turned into another person, lias not occurred to her.' But life goes on: she has the baby;
### FAY WELDON
DOWN AMONG THE WOMEN she calls her Byzantia; she lives in poverty and constant worry. Wanda had the same concerns years and years ago. They bore her now. She looks at her spotty and apathetic daughter, and laments the waste of her own youth, spent nurturing a child who has grown up no better than she"
The story also follows the lives of Scarlet's friends from University: Sylvia, Jocelyn, Helen and Audrey. They are more or less friendly throughout the novel. They all go through ups and downs and, except for Helen, they rise again. And yet, in eventually settling "happily" with a man, there is a hint of acknowledged frustration and emptiness in their lives. rator sees some gieling young eins.
• sees some giggling young girls in the park. One is going to be married soon. Jocelyn remarks to herself: "The tower block where I live is full of women who were once girls like this, now off to Bingo, desperate, with their children left locked up; pale, worried and aging badly.
The happiness" and "fulfillment" which they sought was an illusion. They have achieved a kind of security; they are dependent economically on their men; they are "looked after", The effect of this on any possible spirit of independence: is obvious. But their choice in life is made and they live through it. They keep the same values, even when partially recognising the limitations these values impose on every one concerned. For Scar- er could see it in terms of their own let's generation, you've done all right with men, or you haven't done all right.
Helen was destroyed by these values. She had been involved in a triangle with a married couple. It had dragged on a long time. Then the wife killed herself and her baby. Now she sometimes haunts her old friends, in their moments of weakness, when the contradictions seem to have the upper hand. Only Byzantia has the chance of breaking out of the old attitudes, of seeing herself differently. And yet the hope for her is abstract. Each generation hopes theg the next one will make up for its failures. How much freedom of choice does Byzantia have? More than her mother, but still she too is constrained. No one can be liberated in an unfree world. She says to Scarlet at the end of the book, when she is now 20, *You amaze me...Fancy seeing success in terms of men. How trivial with the world in the state it's in'. She is determinted not to catch this "disease" And so we are left to make up our own story for Byzantia, and for ourselves. Finally the novel steps outside of the limits of "women's place" into more unknown territory. Up until the end, it has been narrated by Jocelyn, sitting on a park bench, in the afternoon, watching her children play. When she moves beyond the confines of the park, and speaks more generally, a whole new attitude towards women and their place' is suggested. The potentiality for no where and everywhere to be a woman's place is released, and at this point the novel becomes not just a story of women, but of huma nity in an area of human experience often neglected, ignored, dismissed. Herein lies its strength as a work of literature - its portrayal of the warmth of human feeling, even in degredation, poverty and oppression. And its portrayal of these with a spontancous humour, which enhances the sence of reality of the people it describes. There are no illusions about the characters - they don't represent "womanhood'. or symbolise anything. They're people. with strengths and weaknesses like everyone else.
And though Fay Weldon is not trying to convey any overt "message" - political, cultural, social, or whatever - nor trying to justify, explain or excuse, her novel is an affirmation both of life, and of the need to change, to question, to struggle, on an individual level, and, form there, on a general level. The end of the novel is open; each readvision of liberation, and of the best way of achieving this. I think this was the author's intention.. It is enough that she has posed some of the important ques. tions, concerning women's oppression, and how people survive in spite of, and in terms of it. It is a very human work.
CARRIE SALZEDO