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Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible, and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

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Your first association with the name Dorothy Sayers will be, naturally, as the creator of the urbane, noble sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey. If you've read the Peter Wimsey novels in order, you may have noticed that Sayers invested more and more humanity and depth in him as the series progressed.

Since she revealed so much depth as a mystery novelist, I decided to try her out as an essayist. "Are Women Human?" is a slight pamphlet with an introduction and two essays which can be read in one sitting. As you finish the last page you will find yourself wondering why so little has changed in the last sixty years!

Sayers applied intelligence and humor (excuse me, humour) to her seemingly rhetorical question "Are Women Human?". Her answer, like most wise answers, is simple. Beyond the obvious "of course", Sayers posits that "male" and "female" are only adjectives modifying the noun human. Therefore, humanity is the common denominator, and each human should be judged on the person's individual merits -- creative, lethargic, witty or plodding. Whatever the case may be.

This is a book that should be required reading for every high school student -- young people who are in the process of sorting out all kinds of identity issues. It may not be too late for most adults to benefit from this little gem, either!<P

Are women human? That's the stark question the British writer Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) posed in two short essays written in 1938, and originally published in 1947 in a collection of her essays called Unpopular Opinions. She had more than an academic interest in the question. When she finished Somerville College, Oxford, with first class honors in modern languages in 1915, they didn't yet grant degrees to women.

The gist of Sayers' argument is captured in a quote she takes from DH Lawrence: "Man is willing to accept woman as an equal, as a man in skirts, as an angel, a devil, a baby-face, an instrument, a bosom, a womb, a pair of legs, a servant, an encyclopedia, an ideal or an obscenity; the one thing he won't accept her as is a human being, a real human being of the feminine sex." Such was her radically simple argument, that women be acknowledged as human beings, and only subsequently labeled as a subset of human beings qualified by biology, culture, ethnicity, age, economics, nationality, and so on.

Sayers also made an observation about the Gospels. Women, she noted, were "the first at the Cradle and the last at the Cross." The many women who appear in the gospels, says Sayers, "had never known a man like Jesus--there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as 'The women, God help us!' or 'The ladies, God bless them!'; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything 'funny' about women's nature."

You can read this tiny volume in one sitting, and if you do you will be greatly rewarded. My Eerdmans edition has a short introduction by Mary McDermott Shideler.

Containing Two Essays excerpted from Unpopular Opinions, Dorothy L. Sayers

Introduction by Mary McDermott Shideler
"Are Women Human?"
"The Human-Not-Quite-Human"

Dorothy Sayers, perhaps most famous for her detective novels, possessed a delightful wit and piercing discernment. This booklet contains a mere 47 pages, but the content inspires many moments of introspection afterwards.

I have seen her points from these essays excerpted most often in a feminist context, and this is unfortunate. As her reflections are primarily on the essence of humanity, and a defense of woman as belonging to that unique group, men would benefit as well as women in digesting her insights.

Sayers speaks to the dangers of "classing" women, whether in the historical repressive context, or the aggressive feminist movements. She talks about the importance and necessity of work, as it pertains to both the male and female. She gives lucid background on the myth of "women's work," while chastising the modern church for propagating an unfounded role distinction, and much more.

Despite the original copyright on the work being 1947, Sayers' essays are extremely relevant today, and more needed than ever. It is my desire to see a reprint that makes this work more accessible, but in the meantime, it is well worth the market price.

--The Medieval Chick

Sayers is one of my heroes. She is able to integrate a Biblical world view with the dilemmas of life, and bring a sense of humor to it all.

It is a pity that Dorothy Sayers is known best for her mystery writing, in a way. She tired of Peter Wimsey (like Conan-Doyle tired of Holmes) before she stopped writing him, and I think she wanted to be remembered instead for her scholarly and theological works. Like C.S. Lewis, she cuts to the very heart of the issues she addresses, and she finds a way to neither over-simplify nor over-complicate. I agree with the other reviewer -- this book should be required reading for high school students, and many adults could benefit as well.

I first came to this book after reading a stirring review of it in philosopher Susan Haack's book Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture. Haack, like Sayers, is a believer that equality of the sexes means that the sexes are to be treated the same when justified and differently when justified (the former being more justified than the latter). In other words, Sayers is a breath of fresh air, particularly in this ironic age where feminism leads as often to "women's ways of knowing" as to any equalitarian sentiment.

In the lead-off title essay, Sayers starts by telling us that she does not wish to be defined as a modern feminist (writing in the '60's) and that she believes modern feminism often does more damage than good. Why? Becuase feminists both play identity politics and the imitation game. Feminists play identity politics when they talk about women's rights, women's points of view, etc., instead of human rights, human points of view, etc. How do women play the immitation game? By dressing like and acting like men FOR NO OTHER REASON than a misguided sense that equality can only mean "to be the same as," when it can also mean "to have the same value as." (Sayers sees nothing wrong with dressing like, or acting like, men so long as it is done out of desire to dress or act that way rather than a desire to immitate in order to achieve equality.)

Sayers's greatest point in this essay deserves a good paraphrase: Sayers is confused when people ask her why a woman would want to study Aristotle. What could they hope to gain. Sayer's reply is simple: not many women want to study Aristotle just as not many men do. The point is not that women should study Aristotle but that women should have the same opportunity as men to study Aristotle or not study him. This is similar to Sayer's reply when she is asked what women's point of view is on issue x. She sarcastically tells us to ask A WOMAN for HER point of view if we want to know it (and reminds us that no one asks what mens' point of view is on issue x).

In other words, women do not need x rights because they are women, but because they are human. Since men and women are human first and sexes after, any question about why we should treat women equally is probably better phrased, "why should we treat humans equally."

The second of these essays says much of the same thing as the first, but one never gets tired of hearing it in all the new and creative ways Sayers has of saying it. Her paragraphs of satire depicting what it would be like for men to be in women's shoes (reading articles questioning their ability to do work outside the factory and reading advice about how their most important role is to maintain their wives' affections) is hilarioius and biting at the same time.

On a personal note, I read Sayers book becuase I am growing rather sick of hearing phrases like "women's ways of knowing," and "feminist political theory," (I heard the word "womanist" the other day used to describe someone's views). In my view, Sayers and those like her need to be heard now more than ever to remind us that phrases like these do more harm than good in their very shallow differentiation from women to men (don't women think like men do? don't they and men experience politics as people first and women later?). Sayers's more common-sensical approach which seems women as people and political/social equiry as a human, rather than a sex-driven, issue, will hopefully serve as the antidote to current feminist (or womanist?) excesses.

Although Dorothy Sayers broke with tradition by being one of the first woman to graduate from Oxford, she did not self identify as a feminist. She claimed, "...the time for "feminism," in the old fashioned sense of the word had gone past," adding, "an aggressive feminism might do more harm than good."(21) Instead of waving placards and shouting slogans, she simply expressed a worldview that held women as human beings, and lived a life that was true, not to her gender, but to humanity. Miss Sayer believed that God created both men and women with gifts and talents suitable to specific work and it is the role of the individual to find the work that matches their makeup.
Sayers outlines her views on `women as human' in a manner that makes her reader smile and even laugh out loud. By cleverly reversing the stereotypical view of males and females, Miss Sayers uses her wit to point out the silliness of such stereotypes by making us laugh at the picture of man forced to view himself in terms of his maleness:
"...if everything he wore, said or did had to be justified by reference to female approval; if he were compelled to regard himself...not as a member of society, but merely as a virile member of society. If the center of his dress consciousness were the cod-piece, his education directed to making him a spirited lover and meek paterfamilias; his interests to be held natural only in so far as they were sexual. If from school and lecture room, Press and pulpit, he heard the persistent outpouring of a shrill and scolding voice, bidding him remember his biological function. If he were vexed by continual advice how to add a rough male touch to his typing, how to be learned without losing his masculine appeal, how to combine chemical research with seduction...If, instead of allowing with a smile that `women prefer cavemen,' he felt the
unrelenting pressure of a whole social structure forcing him to order all his goings in conformity with that pronouncement." (56-57)

Miss Sayers is not only witty, but erudite, pointing out that men have taken away all the interesting jobs women once had as the manager of a household:
"It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry,...the dying industry...the weaving industry...the whole catering industry and -- which would not please Lady Astor, perhaps - the whole of the nations brewing and distilling...And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together on war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates. Here are the woman's jobs - and what has become of them? They are all being handled by men. It is very well that a women's pl

To make such simple statements and be so profound. This is Dorothy Sayer. She speaks to the equality of all people and the dignity they deserve. An original feminist, not a liberal. Read it!

This little essay (two really) was worth reading. I especially like the fact that the author absolutely refused to blame any failure on gender. Sayers seemed to have believed that women had the grit and good sense to do what they were good at.

Even though written in 1938 her thoughts remain pertinent.

She concerned her remarks, especially to those women who are schlorly, which of course, since the address was to a graduating class in a woman's college makes sense. She made it clear that those who are good at homemaking, beer brewing or aging cheese make equally valuable contributions.

Please forgive this non-substantive review but this is the first time I've downloaded a free sample that stopped just after the table of contents. Not one word written by Sayers was included - except the titles of the essays. Remove or expand! cmw