University of Virginia Library

Needs Will

Women's Lib fundamentally
must not be a movement in the
usual sense; it must have nothing
fundamentally to do with a group.

If it must be a movement, it
must be one of each woman, alone:
it is the doing, truly, of her own
thing.

It must therefore be the product
of a large will and vast
inner-direction. It must be heroic.
And therein lay its glory.

Its models, perhaps, might be
John O'Hara's women, or Mary
McCarthy or Mary Bunting or
Claire Booth - women who are
captivating not because they are
women but because they are
women who are great individuals.

And so if Women's Lib is in
need of things, it has little need of
Gloria Steinem - and none at all of
Norman Mailer - but a lot of the
will to do.

Slowly, it seems, in spite of all
the rubbish, women are developing
this kind of will.

And men, for their part, would
do very well to realize that
Women's Lib is hardly a curse but a
long-overdue blessing. For if it goes
well, more and more women will be
public entitles in their own right:
creatures as interesting and worthy
of knowing as their husbands.

Lib, happily will allow marriage
to be put at arm's length: the
family, the home and all that
horribly ordinary stuff will lose its
present over-importance: with
women wanting and having careers -
if such they want - men themselves
will also be "liberated" from the
need to give time and attention to
the family.

Both men and women will thus
be spared the absurdity of washing
floors, dishes, and children's noses
if they do not want to and if they
want to do something else and can
find a maid to do it better and
more willingly than they.

In time, perhaps, the logically
indefensible - but rather barbaric
and very inconvenient and
inefficient idea of male initiative
may die also.