She Who Faces Death by Torture

and other lessons from Kipling

I had a post some time back about the difference between my attitude to kitchen cleanliness and that of my wife and daughter, roughly the difference between a chemist and a biologist or priest. My question is “does this surface contain enough bad stuff so that contact with it will make food dangerous?” Theirs is “is this surface polluted.”

It occurred to me that the difference may have been explained by Kipling:

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast (The Female of the Species)

Infants are much more vulnerable than adults so it makes sense for women, who have primary responsibility for the care of infants, to be much more cautious about environmental hazards than men.

Does the poem explain anything else about m/f differences? The political implication

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her

were true in England in 1911 but changed a few years later.

What about the behavioral claim?

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great 
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate. 
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim 
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties; 
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!— 
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild, 
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

It describes the behavior of many partisans; I have not noticed it to be especially common among unmarried female partisans but your experience may differ; Vance’s comment on “childless cat ladies,” later retracted under fire, suggests that his may.

Other Lessons

That is not the only thing in Kipling that might be of interest to moderns. Consider the explanation of the Afghan advantage in “Arithmetic on the Frontier.”

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem.
The troopships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The “captives of our bow and spear”
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.

That lesson might have been useful to the US, before that to the USSR, before that …

Kipling’s argument is a counter to Adam Smith’s, more than a century earlier. Smith argued that the invention of gunpowder was favorable to civilization because it made warfare more capital intensive (his concept but not his terminology). Before that, the barbarians were a threat to the civilized. After, the civilized were a threat to the barbarians.

It will be interesting to see the effect of the introduction of drones to that balance. Do they strengthen high-tech cultures against low tech or reduce the advantage of richer countries by introducing a cheaper weapon, cheaper than tanks at least, to the battlefield? Their use in the Ukraine war seems to be strengthening the rich — Ukraine is not rich but its allies are — against the populous.

The chief effect may be on the balance between populations that are more or less technologically sophisticated; buying weapons is easier than training people to use them. Parkinson, in one of his books, describes the advantage of the British over the Malays. Both had similar artillery. The Malay soldiers in charge of the guns said prayers that they not burst, the British had noncoms who made sure the guns were cleaned. The Russians and the Ukrainians are in that respect peer opponents but if drones had become important in warfare a little earlier they might have changed the balance in Afghanistan.

A Code of Morals, discussed in an earlier post, warned of the dangers of conversing on an open channel — a century before the technologies that made that a live issue.

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[Apology: I normally post every 3 days at noon PST. I am currently attending Pennsic, a historical recreation event, camped out in a medieval pavilion, sleeping on a rope bed out of an early medieval carving, teaching classes on medieval Muslim law, how to make hardened leather armor, how to cook from medieval recipes, … . As a result I have now twice lost track of my posting schedule and put a post out a day late.]