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Title: Woman free
Author: Ethelmer, Ellis
Language: English
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WOMAN FREE
BY
ELLIS ETHELMER
1893
PUBLISHED BY THE
WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION UNION
_Hon. Sec._:—MRS. WOLSTENHOLME ELMY
BUXTON HOUSE, CONGLETON
[_PRICE FIVE SHILLINGS, POST FREE_]
WYMAN AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND REDHILL.
“Le philosophe, en étudiant les lois de la Nature, acquiert chaque
jour la conviction que de leur violation seule naissent tous les maux
dont gémit l’humanité.”
“The philosopher, in studying the laws of Nature, acquires more deeply
every day the conviction that from their abuse alone spring all the
evils from which humanity is groaning.”
DR. MENVILLE DE PONSAN
(Histoire de la Femme; Vol. III., p. 3).
WOMAN FREE.
I.
Source of the Light that cheers this later day,
Science calm moves to spread her sovereign sway;
Research and Reason, ranged on either hand,
Proclaim her message to each waiting land;
In truths whose import stands but part revealed,
Till man befit himself those truths to wield;
Since to high Knowledge duties high belong,
As to the poet’s power the task of worthy song.
II.
And man, from every stage of slow degree,
Amendment for his previous rule may see;
His keener conscience in our fuller time
Perceives the whilom careless act a crime,
Or finds some fancied fault to progress tend,—
By wiser vision traced to truer end;
Till, growing shrewder in the growing light,
We know no lack of good but our own lack of sight.
III.
Thus, sad at first, we mark each evil deed,
Of ignorance or will, bear fatal seed
Of suffering to others in its train,—
The guileless share its penalty of pain,—
And man’s worst misery ofttimes is brought
By trespass he himself nor did nor thought;
Austere the fiat, yet therefrom we learn
A purer life to frame, lest myriads mourn in turn.
IV.
Deep though the teaching that this truth reveals
Of fellowship of man with all that feels,
Remains the riddle that, though inmost ken
Of humblest creatures and of rudest men
Has sense of freedom as an instinct strong,—
Resenting injury as act of wrong,—
Man listed not this monitor’s still voice,
But gave his wanton wish the guilty force of choice.
V.
Dark looms the record of his earlier years,—
A troubled tale of infamy and tears;
For, of the ill by man primeval wrought,
Shows forth predominant with anguish fraught,
And long disaster to the ensuant race,
The direful course of degradation base,
Where freedom, justice, right,—at one fell blow,—
In woman’s life of slave were outraged and laid low.
VI.
The inklings gleaned of prehistoric hour
Speak woman thrall to man’s unbridled power;
Than brute more gifted, he, with heinous skill,
Subdued her being to his sensual will;
Binding her fast with ties of cunning weight,
By mother’s burden forced to slavish fate;
Thus woman was, and such her man-made doom,
Ere yet the dawn of love illumed the soulless gloom.
VII.
Ere Evolution, in unhasting speed,
Trained man’s regard to larger life and need;
By Art his feelings waked to functions higher,
Disclosed within his clay the veins of fire,
Taught him his pleasures of the flesh to find
But presage of the mightier joys of mind;
Evoked the soul from fume of mortal dust,
The vestal flame of love from lower flush of lust.
VIII.
The eye that once could note but food or foe
Grew wise to watch the landscape’s varied glow;
To gaze beyond our earthly temporal bars,
And track the orbit of the wandering stars:
The voice erst roused by hunger or by rage
Now tells the nobler passions of the age,
Till with love’s language is uplifted love
To high and selfless thought all sensuous aim above.
IX.
But not at once such life and love to know,
For progress strives through many an ebb and flow;
Man’s kindling sense, though stirred by call of Art,
Still missed the motive of her deepest heart;
’Twas in her gracious embassy to give
A fairer faith and fate to all that live,
Neglecting none,—yet man, ’twixt lust and pride,
Due portion in the boon to woman still denied.
X.
Æons of wrong ere history was born,
With added ages passed in slight and scorn,
Maintained the chains of primal womanhood,
And clogged in turn man’s power of greater good;
Egypt or Greece in vain sought heavenly light
While woman’s soul was held from equal flight,—
Her path confined by man to sordid end,
As subjugated wife, or hireling transient friend.
XI.
Marriage—which might have been a mateship sweet,
Where equal souls in hallowed converse meet,
Each aiding each the higher truths to find,
And raising body to the plane of mind,—
Man’s baser will restrained to lower grade,
And woman’s share a brainless bondage made;
Her only hope of thought or learning wide,
Some freer lot to seek than yoke forlorn of bride.
XII.
Yet, as hetaira,—comrade, chambermate,—
(The ambiguous word bespoke her dubious state),
She, craving mental food, might but be guest
By paying with her body for the quest;
Conceding that, might lead a learned life,—
A licence vetoed to the legal wife,—
Might win great wealth, or build a lasting fame,
Not due to her the guilt that left the tinge of shame.
XIII.
What guilt was there, apportion it aright
To him who fixed the gages of the fight;
Blame man, who, reckless of the woman’s fate,
In greed for meaner pleasure lost the great;
Blame him, the vaunted sage, who knew her mind
Peer to his own in skill and wit refined,
Yet left the after-ages to bemoan
The waste of woman worth that dawned and die unknown.
XIV.
And deep the shame on man’s insensate heart
For later woman doomed to hideous part;
Poor lostling, bowed with worse than brutal woes,—
To her not even dealt the brute’s repose;
Her sweetness sullied, and her frame disgraced,
Soul scarce might light her temple fair defaced,—
Its chastest sanctities coerced to give
For painful bread to eat, for piteous chance to live.
XV.
While such her fate in lands of cultured creed,
Judge woman’s griefs with man of barbarous breed;
Slave to his lust, and tiller of his soil,
Crippled and crushed by cruelty and toil;
Yet still her heart a gentle mien essayed,
By deeper passion, holier impulse, swayed;
Care for her wretched offspring rarely swerved,
And mother-love alone the infant oft preserved.
XVI.
Thus woman’s life, in low or high estate,
Man fettered with a more than natural weight
Of sexual function,—disproportioned theme
And single basis in his female scheme;
He strove to quench her flash of quicker fire,
That crossed his lordship or his low desire;
Her one permitted end to serve his race,
Her individual soul forbidden breathing place.
XVII.
Scarce other seemed that soul than sentient tomb
Of human energy debarred to bloom;
Her spirit, pining in its durance drear,
Leaves legacy of many a burning tear
For aspirations crushed, and aims denied,
And instincts thwarted by man’s purblind pride;
Her every wish made subject to the nod
Of him whose mad conceit proclaimed himself her God.
XVIII.
So stood at halt, through years of sterile change,
His narrowed brain and her restricted range;
And man intelligent and woman free,
Was union which the world had yet to see;
For time to come reserved the golden sight
Of glorious harvest from the natural right,
To her as amply as to him assigned
To compass power unknown in body and in mind.
XIX.
Happy the epoch destined to show
What force of good from that free fate shall flow;
The artificial limits to efface
Of laws and forms that womanhood debase;
Even our own imperfect hour may prove
The ecstasy of earnest souls that move
In dual union of unselfish strife
To reach by mutual love to true and equal life.
XX.
Yet slow, so slowly, gleams the gathering light,
And lingers still the hovering shade of night;
Though part undone the wrong that we confess,
Repentance cannot instant bring redress;
Nor woman, tortured by her thraldom long,
At once stand forth emancipate and strong;
Her pain persistent, though she calm suppress
Her rancour for the past, with sweet forgivingness.
XXI.
For carnal servitude left cruel stain,
And galls that fester from the fleshly chain;
Unhealed the scars of man’s distempered greed,
The wounds of blind injustice still they bleed;
Recurrent suffering lets her not forget
The aimless payments of a dismal debt,—
Survival from dim age of man’s abuse
Of functions immature, profaned by savage use.
XXII.
Her girlhood’s helpless years through cycles long
Had been a martyrdom of sexual wrong,
For little strength or choice might child oppose
To shield herself from force of sensual foes;
Impending motherhood might win no rest
Or refuge sacred from the satyr quest;
Unripe maternity, untimely birth,
The woman’s constant dole in those dark days of earth.
XXIII.
Action repeated tends to rhythmic course,
And thus the mischief, due at first to force,
Brought cumulative sequence to the race,
Till habit bred hereditary trace;
On woman falls that heritage of woe,
And e’en the virgin feels its dastard blow,—
For, long ere fit to wield maternal cares,
Abnormal fruits of birth her guiltless body bears.
XXIV.
Misread by man, this sign of his misdeed
Was held as symptom of her nubile need,
And on through history’s length her tender age
Has still been victim to his adult rage;
He, by his text, with irony serene,
Banned her resultant “manner” as “unclean”;
The censure base upon himself recoils,
Yet leaves the woman wan and cumbered in his toils.
XXV.
Vicarious punishment for manhood’s crime
Takes grievous toll of all her active prime;
The hap, in educated woman’s fate,
Is instinct with antipathy and hate;
Reason confirming tells, no honest claim
Could ever cause such gust of inward shame,
Nor act of normal wont might man blaspheme
To make of Nature’s need a vile opprobrious theme.
XXVI.
Thoughts like to these are breathings of the truth
To whoso ponders deep the tale of ruth;
The futile mannish pleas that would explain
The purport of her periodic pain,
All bear unconscious witness to the wrong
In blindness born, in error fostered long,—
The spurious function growing with the years,
Till almost natural use the morbid mode appears.
XXVII.
Grievous the hurt to woman, which to right
Is instant duty of our stronger sight;
From off her weary shoulders, bruised and worn,
To lift the cross in longtime misery borne;
Until, reintegrate in frame and mind,
A speedy restitution she shall find,
From every trammel of man’s mastery freed,
Nor held by his behest from fullest life and deed.
XXVIII.
And soon may pass her suffering, for the ill
By man begot lies subject to our skill;
All human malady may be allayed
With human forethought, human action’s aid;
Ours then the fault, since, given in our hand
Is power the evil hazard to command;
For Nature, kindly wise our woes to shape,
In very pang of pain both prompts and points escape.
XXIX.
So woman shall her own redemption gain,
Instructed by the sting of bootless pain;
With Nature ever helpful to retrieve
The injury we heedlessly achieve,
From seed of act, by recent woman sown,
Already guerdon rich in hope is shown;—
Such faculty her new-found presence decks,
The sage physician, she, and saviour of her sex.
XXX.
With purer phase of life proves woman less
The burden of the wasting weariness;
And thus, in rank refined or rude have grown
Maidens in whom the weakness was not known;
Hale woman and true mother have they been,
Yet never have the noisome habit seen:
Not to neglectful man to greatly care
How such immunity all womanhood might share.
XXXI.
Her intellect alert the harm shall heal,
And ways of wholesomeness and strength reveal;
The saving truth she wins with studious thought
More swiftly to her daughter shall be taught,—
How body still is supple unto mind,
By dint of soul is fleshly form inclined,
And woman’s will shall work of man atone,
The deed his darkness wrought be by her light undone.
XXXII.
No longer drilled deformity to nurse,
And woo, when slow to appear, the absent curse,
Her counter-effort, helped by Nature’s grace,
Shall quell the “custom’s” last abhorrent trace;
Its morbid usurpation shall refute,—
Not more to woman natural than to brute;—
A needless noyance with a baseless claim,
The lingering mark of man’s unthinking guilt and shame.
XXXIII.
Her body, saved from enervating drain,
Shall lend a newer vigour to the brain;
Wide shall she roam in realms of untold thought,
Which ages since her shackled instinct sought;
For oft her prison had the yearnings heard,
In murmurings scarce rendered into word;—
Promptings which man suspicious strove to choke,
Lest that her soul should rise and break his timeworn yoke.
XXXIV.
For autocrats of old, with treacherous guile,
Had bribed the villain’s soul by sensual wile;
To meanest man a lower drudge assigned,—
With gift of female thrall cajoled the hind;
The stolid churl his servitude forgave
Whilst he in turn was master to a slave;
Through every rank the sexual serfdom ran,
And woman’s life was bound in vassalage to man.
XXXV.
Then, fearing that the slave herself might guess
The knavery of her forced enchainedness,
A subtle fiction mannish brain designed
To dominate her conscience and her mind,—
Inhuman dogmas did his genius frame,
Investing them with sanctimonious name
Of “woman’s duty”; and the fetish base
E’en to this reasoned day uplifts its impious face.
XXXVI.
By cant condoned, man fashioned woman’s “sphere,”
And mapped out “natural” bounds to her career;
His sapience—should she dare any deed
In contravention of his code—decreed
On soul or body penalties condign,
In part dubbed civil law, and part divine:
Misguided man,—confused in self-deceit
His unisexual wit and pious pretext meet.
XXXVII.
Obeisance yet his caste of sex demands;—
In legislative script the verbiage stands
How lowest boor is lordly “baron” styled,
And highest bride as common “feme” reviled;
The tardier fear that grants the clown a share
In his own governance, denies it her;
And British matrons are, by man-made rules,
In solemn statute ranked with infants, felons, fools.
XXXVIII.
The crass injustice early man displayed,
His own crude infancy of brain betrayed;
His riper judgment scorns the childish use,
And cries to all his bygone freaks a truce;
Enactments that long blemished legal page
Shall fade as figments of a foolish age,
Till saner years have every bond erased
Which selfish law of man on life of woman placed.
XXXIX.
Till like with him in human right she stands,
Her will an equal power of rule commands;
Her voice, in council and in senate heard,
To stern debate brings harmonising word;
In mutual stress each sex the other cheers,
Since one are made their hopes and one their fears;
“Self-reverent each, and reverencing each,”—
The theme that truer man and freer woman teach.
XL.
For but a slave himself must ever be,
Till she to shape her own career be free;—
Free from all uninvited touch of man,
Free mistress of her person’s sacred plan;
Free human soul; the brood that she shall bear,
The first—the truly free, to breathe our air;
From woman slave can come but menial race,
The mother free confers her freedom and her grace.
XLI.
By her the progress of our future kind,
Their stalwart body and their spacious mind;
For, folded in her form each human mite
Has its first home, its sustenance and light;
Hers the live warmth that fans its spirit flame,
Her generous sap supplies its fleshly frame,
And e’en the juice,—the fullborn infant’s food,
Is yet a blanched form of woman’s living blood.
XLII.
Strange wisdom by her unkenned craft is taught
While yet the embryo in her womb is wrought;
For, long ere entering on our tumult rife,
It learns from her the needful art of life;
Unconscious teacher, she, yet all she knows
Of dark experience to her infant flows,
And brands him, ere he rest upon her knee,
Offshoot of slavish race, not scion of the free.
XLIII.
To either sex the bondage and the pain,
They seek to live a freeman’s life in vain;
For man or woman can but act the part,
When ’tis not freeborn blood that fills the heart:
Strive as he may, the modern man, at best,
Is tyrant, differing somewhat from the rest;
Nor woman thraldom-bred can surely know
Where lies her richest gift, or how its wealth to show.
XLIV.
Thus learn we that in woman rendered free
Is raised the rank of all humanity;
The despot is the fullfruit of the slave;—
To form the freeman, equable and brave,
Habit of freedom must spontaneous come
As life itself, and from the selfsame womb;
Life, liberty, and love,—lien undefiled,—
The freeborn mother’s heirloom to her freeborn child.
XLV.
So shall her noble issue, maid or boy,
With equal freedom equal fate enjoy;
Together reared in purity and truth,
Through plastic childhood and retentive youth;
Their mutual sports of sinew and of brain
In strength alike the sturdy comrades train;
Of differing sex no thought inept intrudes,
Their purpose calmly sure all errant aim excludes.
XLVI.
For soul, not sex, shall to each life assign
What destiny to fill, or what decline;
Through years mature impartial range shall reach,
And wider wisdom, juster ethics, teach;
Conformed to claims of intellect and need,
The tempered numbers of their high-born breed;
Not overworn with childward pain and care,
The mother—and the race—robuster health shall share.
XLVII.
Nor blankly epicene, as scoffers say,
The necessary sequence of that day;
For not by vapid imitation low,
Or aping falser sex shall truer grow;
Nor modish mind may fathom Nature’s range,
Or fix the fleeting scope of human change;
Can singer blind the rainbow’s tints compare?—
The brain enslaved from birth the freeman’s powers declare?
XLVIII.
Work we in faith, secure that precious seed
Shall bear due fruit for man’s extremest need;
Not greatly timorous, as those fruits we see,
What changed existence from such food may be;
For well we wot shall come forth worthy soul,
Or male or female, with impartial dole
Of all that life can grant of good or great,—
Happy what each may bring to help the common fate.
XLIX.
By mutual aid perfecting complex man,
Their twofold vision human life may scan
From differing standpoints, grasping from the two
A clearer concept and a bolder view;
And thus diverse humanity shall learn
A wisdom which not single sex might earn;
Each on the problem casting needful light,
Not fully known of one without the other’s sight.
L.
How should he write what she alone may tell?—
The movements of her psychic ebb and swell;
The latent springs of life that in her gush,
When motherhood’s first throb awakes her flush,
And swift the signal flashes to her soul,
Of future being claiming her control;
Seeking from her its mind and body’s food;
Drawing, to make its own, her evil and her good.
LI.
Within herself the drama’s scene is laid,
The Birth and Growth of Soul the mystery played;
She, in her part, is but an agent mute,
Her brain untutored, nor her tact acute,
Her nerve-strung body slow as senseless soil
To watch the working of the seedling’s toil;
In vain before her inmost vision spread
The hidden streams from whence the vital founts are fed.
LII.
The mother’s blindness was blind man’s decree,
And to himself reverts the misery;
Through hapless years his ordinance has run,
And harsh reward of ignorance has won;
His pride of maledom, dull to recognise
The deeper depth accessive to her eyes,
Forbade to teach her brain to understand
The facts that, deftly sought, lay ready to her hand.
LIII.
Less wisely he, his curious search to serve,
In helpless creature teased the quivering nerve,
And strove to probe the covert ways of life
By living butchery with learned knife,
And cruel anodyne that chained the will,
Yet left the shuddering victim conscious still:
But Nature shrinks from foul and fierce attack,
Nor yields her holiest truths on such a murderer’s rack.
LIV.
True science finds its own by kindlier quest,
Nor lowers itself to torture’s loathsome test;
Multiplies not the sentient being’s pain,
But makes a keener lens of man’s own brain;
Seeks not by outrage dire a soul to grasp,
Or dimly trace its agonising gasp;
But surer learns what fire that soul may move,
Not wrung with deathly pang, but thrilled by breath of love.
LV.
To touch of love alone will Nature pour
The choicest treasures of her occult store;
Into the ear of love alone repeat
The secret of the song our pulses beat;
To eye of love alone, with joyance bright,
Shows she her form suffused in living light;
To heart that loves her, Nature gives to know
How from Love’s might alone all thoughts of Wisdom grow.
LVI.
So opes a vaster knowledge to the view,
Love points the way and woman holds the clue;
Nature on her the trustful office laid,
And arbiter of human fortune made;
With woman honoured, rises man to height,
With her degraded, sinks again in night;
Yet still the wayward race has sluggish been
To learn the fealty due to Earth’s advancing queen.
LVII.
For long, in jealousy for corporal power,
Had man contemned his sister’s worthier dower;
What time his ruder feelings held the sway,
With little hope or hint of truer way;
Till on a wistful world has dawned benign
The prescience of a potency divine
Sleeping, unrecked of, deep in woman’s heart,
Waiting some kiss superne, into full life to start.
LVIII.
Woman’s own soul must seek and find that fay,
And wake it into light of quickening day;
Man’s counsel helpful in that track shall be
For all his learning rich return and fee;
His philosophic and chirurgic lore,
To her imparted, swell her innate store;
Till, clothed with majesty of mind she stand,
Regent of Nature’s will, in heart, and head, and hand.
LIX.
Each sequent life shall feel her finer care,
Each heir of life a wealthier bounty share;
Those lives allied in equal union chaste
A sweeter purpose, purer rapture, taste;
Both parents vindicate the duteous name,
The troth and kinship of their linked claim;
The only rivalry that moves their mind,
How for their lineage fair still larger fate to find.
LX.
Their task ineffable yields wondrous gain,
Their energies celestial force attain;
Their intermingled souls, with passion dight,
In aspiration soar past earthly height;
Nor fades their prospect into void again,—
Woman has gift the vision to retain,
And mould their dreams of love, with conscious skill,
To human living types supreme of form and will.
LXI.
The psychic and the physical at one
In fervid vigour through their frame shall run;
Their science leaps the bounds of straiter space,
Whose crude dimensions curbed their growing grace;
Whose inefficiencies allowed not verge
For rich research their lofty souls would urge;
To them the keys of life and love are given,—
The love that lifts the life from rank of earth to heaven.
LXII.
And “winged words on which the soul would pierce
Into the height of love’s rare Universe”
Shall native flow from them as mother tongue
In softest strain to listening infant sung;
Till, the sad memories of unmeant wrong
Solving in music of conciliant song,
Man’s destiny with woman’s blended be
In one sublime progression,—full, and strong, and free.
LXIII.
=L’Envoi.=
The bard of yore, the stately Florentine,—
The seer of the dream men named Divine,—
Through whose grave tones one strenuous passion rolled,
While to slow ears the voice fell stern or cold,—
In his last verse proclaimed his crowning faith,
By words whose echoes pass the bar of death;—
As breathed his soul with Beatrice afar—
“The love that moves the sun and every circling star.”
WOMAN FREE.
NOTES, &c.
I.
2.—“_Science calm moves_ ...”
“Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter
to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake,
and must keep the conscience alive.”—George Eliot (“Middlemarch,” Chap.
LXXIII.)
3.—“_Research and reason_ ...”
As indicated by Professor Oliver T. Lodge, “It is but a platitude to say
that our clear and conscious aim should always be truth, and that no
lower or meaner standard should ever be allowed to obtrude itself before
us. Our ancestors fought hard and suffered much for the privilege of
free and open inquiry, for the right of conducting investigation
untrammelled by prejudice and foregone conclusions, and they were ready
to examine into any phenomenon which presented itself.... Fear of
avowing interest or of examining into unorthodox facts is, I venture to
say, not in accordance with the highest traditions of the scientific
attitude.”—(Address as President of the Mathematical and Physical
Section of the British Association, 1891.)
See also the words of Richard Jefferies:—“Research proceeds upon the
same old lines and runs in the ancient grooves.... But there should be
no limit placed on the mind.... Most injurious of all is the continuous
circling on the same path, and it is from this that I wish to free my
mind.”—(“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. X.)
5.—“... _part revealed_.”
“We are still the early settlers in a beautiful world, whose
capabilities, imperfectly known as yet, wait until higher developments
of man can understand them fully, and apply the result to the general
good.”—Professor T. Rupert Jones (Address as President of the Geological
Section of the British Association, 1891).
II.
3.—“... _keener conscience_ ...”
“C’est l’incarnation de l’idée qui se dresse tout à coup en face des
vieilles traditions obstinées et insuffisantes et elle vient ... poser
sa revendication personelle et nécessaire contre les lois jadis
excellentes, mais qui, les mœurs s’étant modifiées, apparaissent
subitement comme des injustices et des barbaries.”—A. Dumas fils (“Les
Femmes qui Tuent et les Femmes qui Votent,” p. 25).
IV.
7.—“... _monitor’s still voice_.”—_Conf._ Wordsworth;
“Taught both by what she” (Nature) “shows, and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”
(“Hart-Leap Well.”)
VI.
1.—“... _prehistoric hour_.”
“The preface of general history must be compiled from the materials
presented by barbarism. Happily, if we may say so, these materials are
abundant. So unequally has the species been developed, that almost every
conceivable phase of progress may be studied, as somewhere observed and
recorded. And thus the philosopher, fenced from mistake as to the order
of development, by the inter-connection of the stages and their shadings
into one another by gentle gradations, may draw a clear and decided
outline of the course of human progress in times long antecedent to
those to which even philology can make reference.”—M’Lennan (“Primitive
Marriage,” p. 9)....
_Id._... “I will confine myself to these examples, gleaned from all
parts, and which it would be easy to multiply. They amply suffice to
establish that, in primitive societies, woman, being held in very low
esteem, is absolutely reduced to the level of chattels and of domestic
animals; that she represents a booty like any other; that her master can
use and abuse her without fear. But in these bestial practices there is
nothing which approaches even distantly to marriage, and we are not in
the least warranted to call these brutal rapes marriages.”—Letourneau
(“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. VI.).
2.—“... _woman thrall_ ...”
“Woman was the first human being that tasted bondage. Woman was a slave
before the slave existed.”—August Bebel (“Woman,” Chap. I.).
_Id._... “From the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman
(owing to the value attached to her by man, combined with her
inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to
some man.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Woman,” Chap. I.).
_Id._... “In every country, and in every time, woman, organically weaker
than man, has been more or less enslaved by him.”—Letourneau (“The
Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. XI.).
_Id._...
“It raised up the humble and fallen, gave spirit and strength to the
poor,
And is freeing from slavery Woman, the slave of all ages gone by.”
—C. G. Leland (“The Return of the Gods”).
3.—“... _heinous skill_.”
“It is pitiful to reflect that man’s vaunted superiority over the brute,
the greater activity of his brain, and the subtler cunning of his hand,
have for so long lent themselves to the oppression that has resulted in
such pernicious consequences, and in the still existent slavery, social
and physical, of the female of his own species.”—Ben Elmy (“Studies in
Materialism,” Chap. III.).
8.—“... _soulless gloom_.”
Compare the following picture of the somewhat parallel condition of a
lower race at the present time:—
“Natives may well call the monkey sire Maharaja, for he is the very
type and incarnation of savage and sensual despotism. They are right,
too, in making their Hanuman red, for the old male’s face is of the
dusky red you see in some elderly, overfed human faces. Like human
Maharajas, they have their tragedies and mayhap their romances. One
morning there came a monkey chieftain, weak and limping, having
evidently been worsted in a severe fight with another of his own kind.
One hand hung powerless, his face and eyes bore terrible traces of
battle, and he hirpled slowly along with a pathetic air of suffering,
supporting himself on the shoulder of a female, a wife, the only
member of his clan who had remained faithful to him after his defeat.
We threw them bread and raisins, and the wounded warrior carefully
stowed the greater part away in his cheek pouch. The faithful wife,
seeing her opportunity, sprang on him, holding fast his one sound
hand, and, opening his mouth, she deftly scooped out the store of
raisins. Then she sat and ate them very calmly at a safe distance,
while he mowed and chattered in impotent rage. He knew that without
her help he could not reach home, and was fain to wait with what
patience he might till the raisins were finished. It was a sad sight,
but, like more sad sights, touched with the light of comedy. This was
probably her first chance of disobedience or of self-assertion in her
whole life, and I am afraid she thoroughly enjoyed it. Then she led
him away.”—J. Lockwood Kipling (“Beast and Man in India”).
VII.
1.—“... _Evolution_ ...”
“We now know that Nature, as an anthropomorphic being, does not exist;
that the great forces called natural are unconscious; that their blind
action results, however, in the world of life, in a choice, a
selection, a progressive evolution, or, to sum up, in the survival of
the individuals best adapted to the conditions of their
existence.”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. I., Part
II.).
_Id._... “Robert Chambers’s common-sense view of evolution as a process
of continued growing.”—Professor Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson
(“The Evolution of Sex,” p. 302).
3.—“_By Art_ ...”
“Other implements of Palæolithic age are formed of bone and horn. Among
these are harpoon-heads, barbed on one or both sides, awls, pins, and
needles with well-formed eyes. But by far the most noteworthy objects of
this class are the fragments of bone, horn, ivory, and stone, which
exhibit outlined and even shaded sketches of various animals. These
engravings have been made with a sharp-pointed implement, and are often
wonderfully characteristic representations of the creatures they
pourtray. The figures are sometimes single, in other cases they are
drawn in groups. We find representations of a fish, a seal, an ibex, the
red-deer, the great Irish elk or deer, the bison, the horse, the
cave-bear, the reindeer, and the mammoth or woolly elephant. Besides
engravings, we meet also with sculptures.... It is impossible to say to
what use all these objects were put. Some of them may have been handles
for knives, while others are mere fragments, and only vague guesses can
be made as to the nature of the original implements. It is highly
probable, however, that many of these works of art may have been
designed simply as such, for the pleasure and amusement of the
draughtsman and his fellows.”—James Geikie (“Prehistoric Europe,” Chap.
II.).
_Id._... The culture or appreciation of Art is of itself evidence of a
higher nature in man; “a soul, a psyche, a something which aspires,” as
Richard Jefferies calls it. For though the professional pursuit of Art
may be occasionally not unmingled with mercenary motives, or with the
pourtrayal of incentives to lower desire, yet the ultimate appeal of
every truly beautiful picture or object of Art is, at any rate, not to
man’s mercenary or meaner nature. As Jefferies again says, “The ascetics
are the only persons who are impure. The soul is the higher even by
gazing on beauty.”—(“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. VII.)
7.—“... _the soul_ ...”
“The mind of man is infinite. Beyond this, man has a soul. I do not use
this word in the common-sense which circumstances have given to it. I
use it as the only term to express that inner consciousness which
aspires.”—Richard Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. IX.).
8.—“... _from lower flush of lust_.”
“The fact to be insisted upon is this, that the vague sexual attraction
of the lowest organisms has been evolved into a definite reproductive
impulse, into a desire often predominating over even that of
self-preservation; that this, again, enhanced by more and more subtle
additions, passes by a gentle gradient into the love of the highest
animals, and of the average human individual.”—Geddes and Thomson
(“Evolution of Sex,” p. 267).
VIII.
5, 6.—“_The voice erst roused by hunger or by rage,
Now tells the nobler passions of the age._”
“The impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when, with his varied tones
and cadences, he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little
suspects that he uses the same means by which, at an extremely remote
period, his half-human ancestors aroused each other’s ardent passions
during their mutual courtship and rivalry.”—Darwin (“The Descent of
Man,” Chap. XIX.).
7.—“... _with love’s language is uplifted love_.”
Language is thought, we are told; so also is love. And thus the
reciprocal and cumulative action of love, thought, and language stands a
corollary to Max Müller’s words:—“Language and thought are inseparable.
Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are
nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word
is the thought incarnate.”—(“Science of Language,” Lect. IX.)
_Id._... “Even the rude Australian girl (aborigine) sings in a strain of
romantic affliction:
‘I shall never see my darling again.’”
—Westermarck (“History of Human Marriage,” p. 503).
_Id._... “And again, another benefit accrues to the race from marriages
of affection. Do not your ancient epics which sing of love sing also of
noble deeds and acts of heroism on the part both of men and women,
actuated by a pure affection for each other? Alike in your dramas and in
those of Shakespeare, and of all great writers, love is the great motive
power which impels to deeds of prowess, the spring of noble actions, of
unselfish devotion, of words and thoughts which have enriched all later
generations, the one sentiment which elevates marriage amongst mankind
to something infinitely higher and purer than the gratification of a
mere animal instinct.”—Dr. Edith Pechey Phipson (Address to the Hindoos
of Bombay on Child Marriage, 1891, p. 14).
8.—“... _selfless thought_.”
“Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.”
—Tennyson (“Locksley Hall”).
IX.
7.—“... _Neglecting none_ ...”
“We are entering into an order of things in which justice will be the
primary virtue, grounded on equal, but also on sympathetic association;
having its roots no longer in the instinct of equals for
self-protection, but in a cultivated sympathy between them; and no one
being now left out, but an equal measure being extended to all.”—J. S.
Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 80).
X.
4.—“... _clogged_ ... _man’s power_ ...”
“He has reaped the usual reward of selfishness, the gratification of
immediate low desires has frustrated the future attainment of higher
aspirations.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (Address to Hindoos).
5, 6.—“_Egypt or Greece in vain sought heavenly light,
While woman’s soul was held from equal flight._”
In Egypt “the art (of literature) was practised only by the priests, as
the painted history plainly declares.... No female is depicted in the
act of reading.... The Greek world was composed of municipal
aristocracies, societies of gentlemen living in towns, with their farms
in the neighbourhood, and having all their work done for them by slaves.
They themselves had nothing to do but to cultivate their bodies by
exercise in the gymnasium, and their minds by conversation in the
market-place. They lived out of doors, whilst their wives remained shut
up at home. In Greece a lady could only enter society by adopting a mode
of life which in England usually facilitates her exit.”—Winwood Reade
(“The Martyrdom of Man,” pp. 35, 71).
8.—“... _subjugated wife_ ...”
At Athens “the free citizen women lived in strict and almost Oriental
recluseness, as well after being married as when single. Everything
which concerned their lives, their happiness, or their rights, was
determined or managed for them by their male relatives; and they seem to
have been destitute of all mental culture and accomplishments.”—Grote
(“History of Greece,” Vol. VI., p. 133).
XI.
1.—“_Marriage which might have been a mateship sweet._”
“In vain Plato urged that young men and women should be more frequently
permitted to meet one another, so that there should be less enmity and
indifference in the married life.” (“Nomoi,” Book VI.)—Westermarck
(“History of Human Marriage,” p. 361).
2.—“... _equal souls_ ...”
“The feeling which makes husband and wife true companions for better and
worse, can grow up only in societies where the altruistic sentiments of
man are strong enough to make him recognise woman as his equal, and
where she is not shut up as an exotic plant in a greenhouse, but is
allowed to associate freely with men. In this direction European
civilisation has been advancing for centuries.”—Westermarck (_loc.
cit._). (See also Note XIX., 6.)
7, 8.—“_Her only hope of thought or learning wide,
Some freer lot to seek than yoke forlorn of bride_.”
In Greece “the modest women were confined to their own apartments, and
were visited only by their husbands and nearest relations.... The
courtesans of Athens, by living in public, and conversing freely with
all ranks of people, upon all manner of subjects, acquired, by degrees,
a knowledge of history, of philosophy, of policy, and a taste in the
whole circle of the arts. Their ideas were more extensive and various,
and their conversation was more sprightly and entertaining than anything
that was to be found among the virtuous part of the sex. Hence their
houses became the schools of elegance; that of Aspasia was the resort of
Socrates and Pericles, and, as Greece was governed by eloquent men, over
whom the courtesans had an influence, the latter also influenced public
affairs.”—Alexander Walker (“Woman, as to Mind,” &c., p. 334).
XII.
3.—“... _craving mental food_ ...”
That the quest of knowledge and intellectual power was literally the
incentive to many a woman who accepted the life of _hetaira_ is
indisputable. Westermarck says:—“It seems to me much more reasonable to
suppose that if, in Athens and India, courtesans were respected and
sought after by the principal men, it was because they were the only
educated women.”—(“History of Marriage,” p. 81.)
And Letourneau remarks:—“Religious prostitution, which was widely spread
in Greek antiquity, has been also found in India, where every temple of
renown had its bayadères, the only women in India to whom, until quite
recently, any instruction was given.”—(“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap.
III.)
5, 6.—“_Conceding that, might lead a learned life—
A license vetoed to the legal wife_.”
“_Hetairai_, famous at once for their beauty and intellect such as
Phryne, Laïs of Corinth, Gnathæna, and Aspasia, were objects of
universal admiration among the most distinguished Greeks. They were
admitted to their assemblies and banquets, while the ‘honest’ women of
Greece were, without exception, confined to the house.... A considerable
number of women preferred the greater freedom which they enjoyed _as
Hetairai_ to marriage, and carried on the trade of prostitution as a
means of livelihood. In unrestrained intercourse with men, the more
intelligent of the _Hetairai_, who were doubtless often of good birth,
acquired a far greater degree of versatility and culture than that
possessed by the majority of married women, living in a state of
enforced ignorance and bondage. This invested the _Hetairai_ with a
greater charm for the men, in addition to the arts which they employed
in the special exercise of their profession. This explains the fact that
many of them enjoyed the esteem of some of the most distinguished and
eminent men of Greece, to whom they stood in a relationship of
influential intimacy, a position held by no legitimate wife. The names
of these _Hetairai_ are famous to the present day, while one enquires in
vain after the names of the legitimate wives.”—August Bebel (“Woman,”
Chap. I.).
7.—“... _wealth, or ... fame_.”
_E.g._, Phryne, who offered to rebuild the wall of Thebes; and Laïs,
commemorated in the adage, “_Non cuivis hominum contingit adire
Corinthum_.” And as to even modern “fame,” a writer so merciless
concerning her own sex as Mrs. Lynn Linton can yet say, “Agnes Sorel,
like Aspasia, was one of the rare instances in history where failure in
chastity did not include moral degradation nor unpatriotic
self-consideration.”—(_Nineteenth Century_, July, 1891, p. 84.)
8.—“... _the tinge of shame_.”
Why indeed should shame have attached specially to those women, more
highly cultured and better treated than wives; and whose sole
impeachment could be that they rejected the still lower serfdom of
wedded bondage?
XIII.
2.—“_To him who fixed the gages of the fight_.”
“If we could imagine a Bossuet or a Fénélon figuring among the followers
of Ninon de Lenclos, and publicly giving her counsel on the subject of
her professional duties, and the means of securing adorers, this would
be hardly less strange than the relation which really existed between
Socrates and the courtesan Theodota.”—Lecky (“History of European
Morals,” Vol. II., p. 280).
8.—“_The waste of woman worth_ ...”
Since these words were written, a letter from Mrs. Mona Caird has been
published by the “Women’s Emancipation Union,” in which is said:—“So far
from giving safety and balance to the ‘natural forces,’ these
time-honoured restrictions, springing from a narrow theory which took
its rise in a pre-scientific age, are fraught with the gravest dangers,
creating a perpetual struggle and unrest, filling society with the
perturbations and morbid developments of powers that ought to be
spending themselves freely and healthfully on their natural objects.
Anyone who has looked a little below the surface of women’s lives can
testify to the general unrest and nervous exhaustion or _malaise_ among
them, although each would probably refer her suffering to some cause
peculiar to herself and her circumstances, never dreaming that she was
the victim of an evil that gnaws at the very heart of society, making of
almost every woman the heroine of a silent tragedy. I think few keen
observers will deny that it is almost always the women of placid
temperament, with very little sensibility, who are happy and contented;
those of more highly wrought nervous systems and imaginative faculty,
who are nevertheless capable of far greater joy than their calmer
sisters, in nine cases out of ten are secretly intensely miserable. And
the cause of this is not eternal and unalterable. The nervously
organised being is _not_ created to be miserable; but when intense vital
energy is thwarted and misdirected—so long as the energy lasts—there
must be intense suffering.... It is only when resignation sets in, when
the ruling order convinces at last and tires out the rebel nerves and
the keen intelligence, that we know that the living forces are defeated,
and that death has come to quiet the suffering. All this is waste of
human force, and far worse than waste.”
_Id._... Alexandre Dumas fils says:—“Celles-là voient, de jour en jour,
en sondant l’horizon toujours le même, s’effeuiller dans l’isolement,
dans l’inaction, dans l’impuissance, les facultés divines qui leur
avaient d’abord fait faire de si beaux rêves et dont il leur semble que
l’expansion eût pu être matériellement et moralement si profitable aux
autres et à elles-memes.”—(“Les Femmes qui Tuent et les Femmes qui
Votent,” p. 107).
_Id._... And Lady Florence Dixie has written:—“Nature gives strength and
beauty to man, and Nature gives strength and beauty to woman. In this
latter instance man flies in the face of Nature, and declares that she
must be artificially restrained. Woman must not be allowed to grow up
strong like man, because if she did the fact would establish her
equality with him, and this cannot be tolerated. So the boy and man are
allowed freedom of body, and are trained up to become muscular and
strong, while the woman, by artificial, not natural, laws, is bidden to
remain inactive and passive, and, in consequence, weak and undeveloped.
Mentally it is the same. Nature has unmistakably given to woman a
greater amount of brain power. This is at once perceivable in childhood.
For instance, on the stage, girls are always employed in preference to
boys, for they are considered brighter and sharper in intellect and
brain power. Yet man deliberately sets himself to stunt that early
evidence of mental capacity by laying down the law that woman’s
education shall be on a lower level than that of man’s; that natural
truths, which all women should early learn, should be hidden from her;
and that while men may be taught everything, women must only acquire a
narrow and imperfect knowledge both of life and of Nature’s laws. I
maintain that this procedure is arbitrary and cruel, and false to
Nature. I characterise it by the strong word of infamous. It has been
the means of sending to their graves, unknown, unknelled, and unnamed,
thousands of women whose high intellects have been wasted, and whose
powers for good have been paralysed and undeveloped.”—(“Gloriana: or,
the Revolution of 1900,” p. 130.)
_Id._... Buckle gives numerous instances which support the foregoing
assertions, saying himself on the point:—“That women are more deductive
than men, because they think quicker than men, is a proposition which
some persons will not relish, and yet it may be proved in a variety of
ways. Indeed, nothing could prevent its being universally admitted
except the fact that the remarkable rapidity with which women think is
obscured by that miserable, that contemptible, that preposterous system
called their education, in which valuable things are carefully kept from
them, and trifling things carefully taught to them, until their fine and
nimble minds are irreparably injured.”—(“Miscellaneous Works,” Vol. I.,
p. 8, “On the influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge.”)
_Id._... As a man of straightforward common-sense, Sydney Smith has left
a name unsurpassed in our literary history. Here is something of what he
says on this question of woman’s intellect and its waste:—“As the matter
stands at present, half the talent in the universe runs to waste, and is
totally unprofitable. It would have been almost as well for the world,
hitherto, that women, instead of possessing the capacities they do at
present, should have been born wholly destitute of wit, genius, and
every other attribute of mind of which men make so eminent a use; and
the ideas of use and possession are so united together that, because it
has been the custom in almost all countries to give to women a different
and worse education than to men, the notion has obtained that they do
not possess faculties which they do not cultivate.”—(“Essay on Female
Education.”)
_Id._... Hear also John Ruskin on the relative intellect or capacity of
women:—“Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some clear and
harmonious idea (and it must be harmonious if it is true) of what
womanly mind and virtue are in power and office, with respect to man’s;
and how their relations, rightly accepted, aid and increase the vigour,
and honour, and authority of both.... Let us see whether the greatest,
the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in anywise on this
point.... And first let us take Shakespeare; ... there is hardly a play
that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope and
errorless purpose.... Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare’s testimony
to the position and character of women in human life. He represents them
as infallibly faithful and wise counsellors, incorruptibly just and pure
examples, strong always to sanctify, even when they cannot save.... I
ask you next to receive the witness of Walter Scott.... So that, in all
cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches over,
teaches, and guides the youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who
watches over or educates his mistress.
“Now I could multiply witness upon witness of this kind upon you, if I
had time. Nay, I could go back into the mythical teaching of the most
ancient times, and show you how the great people, how that great
Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom
the form of a woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver’s
shuttle; and how the name and form of that spirit adopted, believed, and
obeyed by the Greeks, became that Athena of the olive-helm and cloudy
shield, to whose faith you owe, down to this date, whatever you hold
most precious in art, in literature, or in types of national virtue.
“But I will not wander into this distant and mythical element; I will
only ask you to give the legitimate value to the testimony of these
great poets and men of the world, consistent as you see it is on this
head. I will ask you whether it can be supposed that these men, in the
main work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious and
idle view of the relations between man and woman; nay, worse than
fictitious or idle, for a thing may be imaginary yet desirable, if it
were possible; but this, their ideal of women, is, according to our
common idea of the marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we
say, is not to guide nor even to think for herself. The man is always to
be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior in
knowledge and discretion, as in power. Is it not somewhat important to
make up our minds on this matter? Are Shakespeare and Æschylus, Dante
and Homer merely dressing dolls for us; or, worse than dolls, unnatural
visions, the realisation of which, were it possible, would bring anarchy
into all households, and ruin into all affections? Are all these great
men mistaken, or, are we?”—(“Sesame and Lilies,” p. 125, _et seq._)
Truly, in the face of these things, Tennyson had reason concerning his
fellow men, when he wrote:—
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers....”
(“Locksley Hall.”)
XIV.
3.—“... _lostling_ ...”
Between the most cultured _hetairai_ and the poor outcast as here shown,
were many intervening or coalescing grades. Instance, as one of the
phases, the following sketch of an Indian courtesan:—“Lalun is a member
of the most ancient profession in the world. Lilith was her
very-great-grandmama, and that was before the days of Eve, as everyone
knows. In the West, people say rude things about Lalun’s profession, and
write lectures about it, and distribute the lectures to young people, in
order that morality may be preserved. In the East, where the profession
is hereditary, descending from mother to daughter, nobody writes
lectures or takes any notice.”—Rudyard Kipling (“On the City Wall”).
_Id._—“... _worse than brutal woes_ ...”
Dumas fils, who knew well whereof he wrote, tells of “Les femmes du
peuple et de la campagne, suant du matin au soir pour gagner le pain
quotidien, le dos courbé, domptées par la misère:” of whom some of the
daughters “sortent du groupe par le chemin tentant et facile de la
prostitution, mais où le labeur est encore plus rude.”—(“Les Femmes qui
Tuent et les Femmes qui Votent,” p. 101.) As historical instance of
depth of wretched degradation, _conf._ mediæval privilege of “_scortum
ante mortem_,” conceded to some of even the vilest and lowest of
criminals condemned to capital punishment. Though such a condition is
barely more than parallel to the pitch of infamy of modern times, as
instanced in a quotation reproduced by John Ruskin, in “Sesame and
Lilies,” p. 91, first ed.:—
“The salons of Mme. C., who did the honours with clever imitative
grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and
counts, in fact, with the same _male_ company as one meets at the
parties of the Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some
English peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to
enjoy the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor
the supper-tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That
your readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian
_demi-monde_, I copy the _menu_ of the supper which was served to all
the guests (about 200) seated, at four o’clock. Choice Yquem,
Johannisberg, Lafitte, Tokay, and Champagne of the finest vintages
were served most lavishly throughout the morning. After supper dancing
was resumed with increased animation, and the ball terminated with a
_chaine diabolique_ and a _cancan d’enfer_ at seven in the
morning.”—(_Morning Post_, March 10th, 1865.)
To which perhaps the most fitting comment is certain words of
Letourneau’s:—“It is important to make a distinction. The resemblance
between the moral coarseness of the savage and the depravation of the
civilised man is quite superficial.... The brutality of the savage has
nothing in common with the moral retrogression of the civilised man,
struck with decay.... The posterity of the savage may, with the aid of
time and culture, attain to great moral elevation, for there are vital
forces within him which are fresh and intact. The primitive man is still
young, and he possesses many latent energies susceptible of development.
In short, the savage is a child, while the civilised man, whose moral
nature is corrupt, presents to us rather the picture of decrepit old
age.”—(“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. V.)
If M. Letourneau will apply his strictures as to senility and decay to
so-called “Society” and its system, rather than to the individual, he
will find many thinkers, both of his own and other nationalities, agree
with his conclusion. Yet not death, but reform, is the righter event to
indicate. And by what means that reform may be ensured is, at least in
part, clearly set forth in the following passage from a paper recently
published by the Women’s Printing Society:—
“My positive belief is that women, and women alone, will be able to
reverse the world’s verdict, but they must change their method of
reform in two important matters.
“First and foremost, every mother must teach her daughters the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the relations of the
sexes, the condition of social opinion, the historical, physiological,
ethical aspects of the question. She must train herself so as to be
able to teach the young minds these solemn, serious aspects of life,
in such a way that the world may learn that the innocence of ignorance
is inferior to the purity of right-minded, fearless knowledge. She
must strengthen the minds and form the judgment of her daughters, so
that they may demand reciprocal purity in those whom they would
espouse.
“I fully understand the difficulty of teaching our pure-minded,
delicately-nurtured daughters the terrible lessons of this seamy side
of life. I am a mother of daughters myself, and I know the cost at
which the courage has to be obtained, but in this matter each mother
must help another. What a mighty force is influence! What help is
conveyed by pressure of opinion! How often do I remember with
gratitude the words which I once read as quoted of Mrs. John Stuart
Mill, who taught her little daughter to have the courage to hear what
other little girls had to bear. How gladly I acknowledge the stimulus
of that example to myself, and therefore I would urge all women to
SPEAK OUT. Do not be afraid. You will not lose your womanliness. You
will not lose your purity. You will not have your sensibilities
blunted by such rough use. No, “To the pure all things are pure.” We
must reach the mass through the unit, it is the individual who helps
to move the world.
“We must teach and train the mind of every woman with whom we come in
contact, for we have mighty work to do. A no less deed than to reverse
the judgment of the whole world on the subject of purity. I do not
believe it is possible for men to accomplish any radical reform in
this matter. It belongs to women—I was going to say exclusively—but I
will modify my assertion; and if women do not speak out more
courageously in the future than they have done in the past, I believe
there is but slight chance of any further amelioration in the
condition of society than those which are such an inadequate return at
the present time, for all the love and money expended on them.”
And the same writer says, on a still more recent occasion: “I find no
words strong enough to denounce the sin of silence amongst women on
these social evils; and I have come to feel that the best proof of the
subjection and degradation of my sex lies in the opinions often
expressed by so-called Christian and pure women _about other women_. If
their judgments were not perverted, if their wills were not broken, if
their consciences were not asleep, and if their souls were not enslaved,
they would not, they could not, hold their peace and let the havoc go on
with women and children as it does.”—Mrs. Laura E. Morgan-Browne
(“_Woman’s Herald_”, 27th Feb., 1892).
Mrs. Morgan-Browne is, perhaps, not more than needfully severe on the
almost criminal reticence of women; yet man must certainly take the
greater share of blame for the social “double morality” which condemns
irrevocably a woman, and leaves practically unscathed a man, for the
same act. It is male-made laws and rules that have resulted in the
perverted judgments, broken wills, sleeping consciences, and enslaved
souls, which both sexes may deplore. Charles Kingsley pointed a cogent
truth when he said that “Women will never obtain moral equity until they
have civil equality.” (See also Note XXXV., 6.)
XV.
2.—“... _woman’s griefs with man of barbarous breed_.”
“In all barbarous societies the subjection of woman is more or less
severe; customs or coarse laws have regulated the savagery of the first
anarchic ages; they have doubtless set up a barrier against primitive
ferocity, they have interdicted certain absolutely terrible abuses of
force, but they have only replaced these by a servitude which is still
very heavy, is often iniquitous, and no longer permits to
legally-possessed women those escapes, or capriciously accorded
liberties, which were tolerated in savage life.”—Letourneau (“Evolution
of Marriage,” Chap. XIV.).
4.—“_Crippled and crushed by cruelty and toil_.”
Some of this crippling has been of set purpose, as well as the simple
result of brutal male recklessness. Instance the distortion of the feet
of high-born female children in China, the tradition concerning which is
that the practice was initiated and enjoined by an emperor of old, one
of whose wives had (literally) “run away” from him. A somewhat similar
precaution would seem to be indicated as a very probable source of the
persistent and almost universal incommodity and incumbrance of the dress
of woman as compared with that of man.
Dr. Thomas Inman, in his “Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names,”
Vol. I., p. 53, seems to indicate a different, yet closely allied,
origin and motive for the impeding form of woman’s clothing, the
subordinate status of woman being always the purpose in view.
_Id._... “Even supposing a woman to give no encouragement to her
admirers, many plots are always laid to carry her off. In the encounters
which result from these, she is almost certain to receive some violent
injury, for each of the combatants orders her to follow him, and, in the
event of her refusing, throws a spear at her. The early life of a young
woman at all celebrated for beauty is generally one continued series of
captivities to different masters, of ghastly wounds, of wandering in
strange families, of rapid flights, of bad treatment from other females
amongst whom she is brought, a stranger, by her captor; and rarely do
you see a form of unusual grace and elegance but it is marked and
scarred by the furrows of old wounds; and many a female thus wanders
several hundred miles from the home of her infancy, being carried off
successively to distant and more distant points.”—Sir George Grey
(“Travels in North-Western Australia,” 1841, Vol. II., p. 249; quoted in
M’Lennan on “Primitive Marriage,” p. 75).
5.—“... _her heart a gentle mien essayed_.”
“Woman seems to differ from man in mental disposition, chiefly in
greater tenderness and less selfishness, and this holds good even with
savages, as shown by a well-known passage in “Mungo Park’s Travels,” and
by statements made by other travellers. Woman, owing to her maternal
instincts, displays these qualities towards her infants in an eminent
degree; therefore it is likely that she should often extend them towards
her fellow creatures.”... “Mungo Park heard the negro women teaching
their young children to love the truth.”—Darwin (“The Descent of Man,”
Chaps. IX., III.).
6.—“_By deeper passion, holier impulse, swayed_.”
Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham well says:—“Woman has accepted her subordinate
lot, and lived in it with comparatively little moral harm, as the only
truly superior and noble being could have done. The masculine spirit,
enslaved and imprisoned, becomes diabolic or broken; the feminine, only
warped, weakened, or distorted, is ready, whenever the pressure upon it
is removed, to assume its true attitude.”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Part
IV.)
_Id._... Perhaps as appositely here, as elsewhere, may be recorded the
following:—“An American writer says: ‘While I lived among the Choctaw
Indians, I held a consultation with one of their chiefs respecting the
successive stages of their progress in the arts of civilised life, and,
among other things, he informed me that at their start they made a great
mistake, they only sent boys to school. Their boys came home intelligent
men, but they married uneducated and uncivilised wives, and the uniform
result was that the children were all like their mothers. The father
soon lost all his interest both in wife and children. And now,’ said he,
‘if we could educate but one class of our children, we should choose the
girls, for, when they become mothers, they educate their sons.’ This is
the point, and it is true.”—(_Manchester Examiner and Times_, Sept.,
1870.)
8.—“... _mother-love alone the infant oft preserved_.”
In Polynesia, “if a child was born, the husband was free to kill the
infant, which was done by applying a piece of wet stuff to the mouth and
nose, or to let it live; but, in the latter case, he generally kept the
wife for the whole of her life. If the union was sterile, or the
children put to death, the man had always the right to abandon the woman
when and how it seemed good to him.”—Letourneau (“Evolution of
Marriage,” p. 113).
_Id._... An Arab legend tells of a chief of Tamin, who became a constant
practitioner of infanticide in consequence of a wound given to his
pride ... and from that moment he interred alive all his daughters,
according to the ancient custom. But one day, during his absence, a
daughter was born to him, whom the mother secretly sent to a relative to
save her, and then declared to her husband that she had been delivered
of a still-born child.—(R. Smith, on “Kinship,” p. 282; quoted by
Letourneau, “Evolution of Marriage,” p. 83.)
_Id._... Charles Darwin writes of Tierra del Fuego:—“The husband is to
the wife a brutal master to a laborious slave. Was a more horrid deed
ever perpetrated than that witnessed on the west coast by Byron, who saw
a wretched mother pick up her bleeding, dying infant-boy, whom her
husband had mercilessly dashed on the stones for dropping a basket of
sea-eggs!”—(“Voyage of the _Beagle_,” Chap. X.)
_Id._... Mrs. Reichardt tells of a certain Moslem, of high standing in
the society of Damascus, who “married a young girl of ten, and, after
she had born him two sons, he drove her almost mad with such cruelty and
unkindness that she escaped, and went back to her father. Her husband
sent for her to return, and, as she was hidden out of his sight, he
wrung the necks of both his sons, and sent their bodies to his wife to
show her what he had in store for her. The young mother, not yet twenty,
died in a few days.”—(See _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1891.)
_Id._... It will not be forgotten that, in more than one of the older
civilisations, the father had the power of life and death over the
members of the family, even past adult age.
And, to come to quite recent times, and this our England, Mrs.
Wolstenholme Elmy, to whose unflagging energy, during some fifteen years
of labour, was mainly attributable (as the Parliamentary sponsors of the
measures know) the amelioration in the English law concerning wives and
mothers, embodied in the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882,
together with the later and beneficent Guardianship of Infants Act,
1886, relates, in her record of the history of this latter Act:—
“It will be remembered that so recently as 1883, a young lady
petitioned that she might be allowed to spend her summer holidays with
her own mother, from whom she was separated for no fault of her own or
of her mother’s, but in virtue of the supreme legal rights of her
father. The Court refused her petition, natural and proper as it seems
to everyone of human feelings; and the words of the Master of the
Rolls in giving judgment, on the 24th of July, 1883, are more
significant and instructive as to the actual state of the law than the
words of any non-professional writer can be:—‘The law of England
_recognises the rights of the father_, not as the guardian, but
_because he is the father of his children_.... _The rights of the
father are recognised because he is the father_; his duties as a
father are recognised because they are natural duties. The natural
duties of a father are to treat his children with the utmost
affection, and with infinite tenderness.... The law recognises these
duties, from which if a father breaks he breaks from everything which
nature calls upon him to do; and, although the law may not be able to
insist upon their performance, it is because the law recognises them,
and knows that in almost every case the natural feelings of a father
will prevail. The law trusts that the father will perform his natural
duties, and does not, and, indeed, cannot, inquire how they have been
performed.... I am not prepared to say whether _when the child is a
ward of Court, and the conduct of the father is such as to exhaust all
patience—such, for instance, as cruelty, or pitiless spitefulness
carried to a great extent—the Court might not interfere. But such
interference will be exercised_ ONLY IN THE UTMOST NEED, AND IN MOST
EXTREME CASES. It is impossible to lay down the rule of the Court more
clearly than has been done by Vice-Chancellor Bacon in the recent case
of “_Re._ Plowley” (47 “L.T.,” N.S., 283). In saying that this Court,
“whatever be its authority or jurisdiction, _has no authority to
interfere with the sacred right of a father over his own children_,”
the learned Vice-Chancellor has summed up all that I intended to say.
_The rights of a father are sacred rights, because his duties are
sacred._...’
“These sacred rights of the father were, it will be observed, in the
eyes of the law so _exclusive_ and paramount as to justify and demand
the refusal to a young girl, at the most critical period of early
womanhood, of the solace of a few weeks’ intercourse with a blameless
and beloved mother; and this although the gratification of the
daughter’s wish would have involved no denial to the father of the
solace of his daughter’s company, since she was not actually, but only
_legally_, in his custody, not having seen him for more than a year.
“It will be seen from this that the father alone has the absolute
legal right to deal with his child or children, to the extent of
separating them, at his own sole pleasure, from their mother, and of
giving them into the care and custody of any person whom he may think
fit. The mother has, as such, no legal status, no choice, voice, lot,
or part in the matter.”—Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy (“The Infants’ Act,
1886,” p. 2).
It is consolatory to learn that a palliation of some part of the above
unjust conditions has been achieved; yet how often has our presumedly
happy land witnessed scenes of child misery and helpless mother-love, to
which was denied even the poor consolation, so pathetically depicted by
Mrs. Browning, in a scene which, as Moir truly says, “weighs on the
heart like a nightmare”;—
“Do you hear the children weeping, oh! my brothers!
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And _that_ cannot stop their tears.”
XVI.
4.—“... _single basis_ ...”
First written “disproportioned basis,” but altered, with good reason, in
the face of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s arrogant male thesis:—“Only that
mental energy is normally feminine which can co-exist with the
production and nursing of the due (!) number of healthy
children.”—(“Study of Sociology,” Chap. XV., note 5.)
But Professor Huxley speaks, more humanly, of “... such a peasant woman
as one sees in the Alps, striding ever upward, heavily burdened, and
with mind bent only on her home; but yet, without effort and without
thought, knitting for her children. Now stockings are good and
comfortable things, and the children will undoubtedly be much the better
for them, but surely it would be short-sighted, to say the least of it,
to depreciate this toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine—a mere
provider of physical comforts.”—(“On Improving Natural Knowledge.”)
Yet, if it be—as truly it is—a senseless and disgraceful depreciation of
woman to look upon her as “a mere machine for the making of stockings,”
is it not equally unworthy and unwise to consider her as—primarily and
essentially—a mere machine for the making of a “due” number of
stocking-wearers?
5.—“... _quicker fire_.”
In even so sedate and usually dispassionate a physiologist and
philosopher as Charles Darwin, the masculine sex-bias is so ingrained
and so ingenuous that he strives to disparage and contemn the notorious
mental quickness or intuition of woman by saying:—“It is generally
admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception,
and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but
some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower
races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation.”—(“The
Descent of Man,” Chap. XIX.).
His unconscious sex-bias apparently overlooked the pregnant and very
pertinent caution which he had himself uttered in a previous
work:—“Useful organs, however little they may be developed, unless we
have reason to suppose that they were formerly more highly developed,
ought not to be considered as rudimentary. They may be in a nascent
condition, and in progress towards further development. Rudimentary
organs, on the other hand, are either quite useless, such as teeth which
never cut through the gums, or, almost useless, such as the wings of an
ostrich, which serve merely as sails.... It is, however, often difficult
to distinguish between rudimentary and nascent organs, for we can judge
only by analogy whether a part is capable of further development, in
which case alone it deserves to be called nascent.”—(“Origin of
Species,” Chap. XIV.).
But surely Darwin would admit that experiment in capacity of education
and development was as worthy evidence as “analogy,” and would further
acknowledge how little effort in this direction had ever been made with
woman. Buckle would seem to be far nearer the truth in ascribing to
woman an unconscious deductive form of reasoning, as against the slow
and studied inductive process to which man is so generally trained to be
a slave.—(See Buckle’s Essay on the “Influence of Women on the Progress
of Knowledge,” as quoted from in Note XIII., 8.)
7.—“... _one permitted end_ ...”
“The function of child-bearing has been exaggerated to an utterly
disproportionate degree in her life; it has been made her almost sole
claim to existence. Yet it is not the true purpose of any intellectual
organism to live solely to give birth to succeeding organisms; its duty
is also to live for its own happiness and well-being.”—Ben Elmy
(“Studies in Materialism,” Chap. III.).
_Id._ ... “... not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.”
—Tennyson (“In Memoriam,” LIV.).
XVII.
5.—“... _aspirations crushed_ ...”
“I have found life a series of hopes unfulfilled and wishes
ungratified.”—(Dying words of a talented woman.)
6.—“... _purblind pride_ ...”
“Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.”
—Pope.
7.—“_Her every wish made subject_ ...”
For a somewhat modern exemplification may be taken the instance of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in Paris with her husband, in 1852. She
writes of Georges Sand:—“She received us in a room with a bed in it, the
only room she has to occupy, I suppose, during her short stay in
Paris.... Ah, but I didn’t see her smoke; I was unfortunate. I could
only go with Robert three times to her house, and once she was out. He
was really very good and kind to let me go at all after he found the
sort of society rampant around her. He didn’t like it extremely, but,
being the prince of husbands, he was lenient to my desires, and yielded
the point.”—(“Life of Robert Browning,” by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, 1891.)
8.—“... _her God_.”
_Conf._ Milton (“Paradise Lost,” Book IV., 299):—
“He for God only, she for God in him.”
See Note XXXV., 5. Compare also the Code of Manu, v. 154, as quoted by
Letourneau:—“Although the conduct of her husband may be blameworthy, and
he may give himself up to other amours, and be devoid of good qualities,
a virtuous woman ought constantly to revere him as a God.”—(“Evolution
of Marriage,” Chap. XIII.)
_Id._... Here may fittingly be appended some masculine concepts of
feminine duty in other races.
The STATUS OF WOMAN, according to the CHINESE Classics:—
In a periodical published in Shanghai, Dr. Faber, a well-known scholar,
writes (1891) a paper on the status of women in China. He refers
especially to the theoretical position assigned to women by the Chinese
Classics. These lay down the different dogmas on the subject:
“1.—Women are as different in nature from man as earth is from heaven.
“2.—Dualism, not only in body form, but in the very essence of nature,
is indicated and proclaimed by Chinese moralists of all times
and creed. The male belongs to _yang_, the female to _yin_.
“3.—Death and all other evils have their origin in the _yin_, or
female principle; life and prosperity come from its subjection
to the _yang_ or male principle; and it is therefore regarded as
a law of nature that women should be kept under the control of
men, and not be allowed any will of their own.
“4.—Women, indeed, are human beings, (!) but they are of a lower state
than men, and can never attain to full equality with them.
“5.—The aim of female education, therefore, is perfect submission, not
cultivation and development of mind.
“6.—Women cannot have any happiness of their own; they have to live
and work for men.
“7.—Only as the mother of a son, as the continuator of the direct line
of a family, can a woman escape from her degradation and become
to a certain degree her husband’s equal; but then only in
household affairs, especially the female department, and in the
ancestral hall.
“8.—In the other world, woman’s condition remains exactly the same,
for the same laws of existence apply. She is not the equal of
her husband; she belongs to him, and is dependent for her
happiness on the sacrifice offered by her descendants.
“These are the doctrines taught by Confucius, Mencius, and the ancient
sages, whose memory has been revered in China for thousands of years.”
And now, what wonder that Chinese civilisation and progress is, and
remains, fossilised, inert, dead?
JAPAN.
“There is one supreme maxim upon which the conduct of a well-bred woman
is made to turn, and this is ‘obedience.’ Life, the Japanese girl is
taught, divides itself into three stages of obedience. In youth she is
to obey her father; in marriage her husband; in widowhood her eldest
son. Hence her preparation for life is always preparation for service.
The marriage of the Japanese girl usually takes place when she is about
seventeen. It is contrary to all custom that she should have any voice
in it. Once married, she passes from her father’s household into the
household of her husband, and her period of self-abnegation begins. Her
own family is to be as nothing to her. Her duty is to charm the
existence of her husband, and to please his relations. Custom demands
that she shall always smile upon him, and that she shall carefully hide
from him any signs of bad humour, jealousy, or physical pain.”—Tinseau
(quoted in _Review of Reviews_, Vol. IV., p. 282.)
Note well the last two words of the above quotation; they have a bearing
on much that will have to be said presently. Meanwhile, we read from
another writer: “The expression, _res angusta domi_, might have been
invented for Japan, so narrow of necessity is the wife’s home life. The
husband mixes with the world, the wife does not; the husband has been
somewhat inspired, and his thoughts widened by his intercourse with
foreigners, the wife has not met them. The husband has more or less
acquaintance with western learning; the wife has none. Affection between
the two, within the limits which unequal intellectuality ruthlessly
prescribes, there well may be, but the love which comes of a perfect
intimacy, of mutual knowledge and common aspiration, there can rarely
be. The very vocabulary of romantic love does not exist in Japanese; _a
fortiori_, there is little of the fact.” Yet, under the influence of
western civilisation, these things are changing rapidly, and Mr. Norman,
the commissioner of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, further relates that “The
generation that is now growing up will be very different. Not only will
the men of it be more western, but the women also. As girls they will
have been to schools like our schools at home, and they will have
learned English, and history, and geography, and science, and foreign
music; perhaps, even, something of politics and political economy. They
will know something of ‘society,’ as we now use the term, and will both
seek it and make it. The old home life will become unbearable to the
woman, and she will demand the right of choosing her husband just as
much as he chooses her. Then the rest will be easy.”
The harsh and restrained position, both of Japanese and Chinese women,
is frequently attributed to Confucianism; yet the matter does not seem
to be of any one creed, but rather of every religious creed. Thus Mrs.
Reichardt tells us, concerning Mahommedan women and Mahommedan married
life, that—
“A Mahommedan girl is brought up with the idea that she has nothing to
do with love. It is _ayib_ (shame) for her to love her husband. She dare
not do it if she would. What he asks and expects of her is to tremble
before him, and yield him unquestioning obedience. I have _seen_ a
husband look pleased and complacent when his wife looked afraid to lift
up her eyes, even when visitors were present.”—(_Nineteenth Century_,
June, 1891.)
Nor is Confucius alone, or the simple contagion of his teaching, rightly
to be blamed for the following condition of things in our own dependency
of
INDIA.
The _Bombay Guardian_ calls attention to an extraordinary book which is
being circulated (early in 1891) broadcast, as a prize-book in the
Government Girls’ School in the Bombay Presidency. The following
quotations are given as specimens of the teachings set forth in the
book:—
“If the husband of a virtuous woman be ugly, of good or bad disposition,
diseased, fiendish, irascible, or a drunkard, old, stupid, dumb, blind,
deaf, hot-tempered, poor, extremely covetous, a slanderer, cowardly,
perfidious, and immoral, nevertheless she ought to worship him as God,
with mind, speech, and person.
“The wife who gives an angry answer to her husband will become a village
pariah dog; she will also become a jackal, and live in an uninhabited
desert.
“The woman who eats sweetmeats without sharing them with her husband
will become a hen-owl, living in a hollow tree.—(Conf. Note VI., 8.)
“The woman who walks alone without her husband will become a
filth-eating village sow.
“The woman who speaks disrespectfully to her husband will be dumb in the
next incarnation.
“The woman who hates her husband’s relations will become from birth to
birth a musk-rat, living in filth.
“She who is always jealous of her husband’s concubine will be childless
in the next incarnation.”
To illustrate the blessed result of a wife’s subserviency, a story is
told of “the great reward that came to the wife of an ill-tempered,
diseased, and wicked Brahmin, who served her husband with a slavish
obedience, and even went the length of carrying him on her own shoulders
to visit his mistress.”
So quotes the _Woman’s Journal_ of Boston, Mass., and says in comment
thereon:—“The British Government in India has bound itself not to
interfere with the religion of the natives, but it certainly ought not
to inculcate in Government schools the worst doctrines of heathenism.”
Yet, again, are these Hindoo, or Japanese, or Chinese doctrines simply
the precepts of “heathenism” alone? Buckle quotes for us the following
passage from the Nonconformist “Fergusson on the Epistles,” 1656, p.
242:—“There is not any husband to whom this honour of submission is not
due. No personal infirmity, frowardness of nature, no, not even on the
point of religion, doth deprive him of it.”
Much the same teaching is continued a century later in the noted Dr.
Gregory’s “A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters”; and again, hideously
true is the picture which Mill has to draw, in 1869:—“Above all, a
female slave has (in Christian countries) an admitted right, and is
considered under a moral obligation to refuse to her master the last
familiarity. Not so the wife; however brutal a tyrant she may
unfortunately be chained to, though she may know that he hates her,
though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may
feel it impossible not to loathe him, he can claim from her and enforce
the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the
instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations.... No
amount of ill-usage, without adultery superadded, will in England free a
wife from her tormentor.”—(“The Subjection of Women,” pp. 57, 59.)
As to how far public feeling, if not law, has amended some of these
conditions, see Note XXXVI., 6. Meanwhile, as an evidence of what is the
“orthodox” opinion and sentiment at this present day, it may be noted
that Cardinal Manning wrote in the _Dublin Review_, July, 1891:—“A woman
enters for life into a sacred contract with a man before God at the
altar to fulfil to him the duties of wife, mother, and head of his home.
Is it lawful for her, even with his consent, to make afterwards a second
contract for so many shillings a week with a millowner whereby she
becomes unable to provide her husband’s food, train up her children, or
do the duties of her home? It is no question of the lawfulness of
gaining a few more shillings for the expenses of a family, but of the
lawfulness of breaking a prior contract, the most solemn between man and
woman. No arguments of expediency can be admitted. It is an obligation
of conscience to which all things must give way. The duties of home must
first be done” (by the woman) “then other questions may be entertained.”
Are not these English injunctions to womanly and wifely slavery as
trenchant and merciless as any ascribed to so-called “heathenism”? And
is it not the fuller truth that the spirit of the male teaching against
woman is the same all the world over, and no mere matter of creed—which
is nevertheless made the convenient vehicle for such teaching; and that,
in brief, the precepts of womanly and wifely servitude are blind,
brutal, and universal?
See also Note XXXIV., 8.
XVIII.
8.—“_To compass power unknown in body and in mind_.”
“We need a new ethic of the sexes, and this not merely, or even mainly,
as an intellectual construction, but as a discipline of life, and we
need more. We need an increasing education and civism of women.”—P.
Geddes and J. A. Thomson (“The Evolution of Sex,” p. 297).
Newnham and Girton, Vassar and Zurich, are already rendering account of
woman’s scope of mental power; while the circus, the gymnasium, swimming
and mountaineering are showing what she might do corporeally, apart from
her hideous and literally impeding style of clothing. As for some other
forms of utilitarian occupation, read the following concerning certain
of the Lancashire women:—
“Mr. Edgar L. Wakeman, an observant American author, is at present on a
visit to this country, and is giving his countrymen the benefit of his
impressions of English life and social conditions.
“The ‘pit-brow’ lasses of the Wigan district will not need to complain,
for he writes of them not only in a kindly spirit, but even with
enthusiasm for their healthy looks, graceful figures, and good conduct.
We need not follow his description of the processes in which the women
of the colliery are employed, but we may say in passing that Mr. Wakeman
was astonished by the ‘wonderful quickness of eye and movement’ shown by
the ‘screeners,’ and by the ‘superb physical development’ and agility of
the ‘fillers.’ He had expected to find them ‘the most forlorn creatures
bearing the image of women,’ and he found them strong, healthy,
good-natured, and thoroughly respectable. ‘English roses glow from
English cheeks. You cannot find plumper figures, prettier forms, more
shapely necks, or daintier feet, despite the ugly clogs, in all of
dreamful Andalusia. The “broo gear” is laid aside on the return home
from work, and then the “pit-brow” lass is arrayed as becomingly as any
of her class in England, and in the village street, or at church of a
Sunday, you could not pick her out from among her companions, unless for
her fine colour, form, and a positively classic poise and grace of
carriage possessed by no other working women of England. Altogether,’ he
says, ‘I should seriously regard the pit-brow lasses as the handsomest,
healthiest, happiest, and most respectable working women in
England.’—(_Manchester Guardian_, Aug. 28, 1891.)
_Id._... Concerning the question of male and female dress, evidence as
to how far woman has been hindered and “handicapped” by her conventional
attire, and not by her want of physical strength or courage, is reported
from time to time in the public prints, as witness the following,
published generally in the English newspapers of 14th Oct., 1891:—
“Not long since a well-known European courier, having grown grey in
his occupation, fell ill, and like others similarly afflicted, was
compelled to call in a doctor. This gentleman was completely taken by
surprise on discovering that his patient was a female. Then the sick
woman—who had piloted numerous English and American families through
the land of the Latin, the Turk, and others, and led timid tourists
safely through many imaginary dangers—confessed that she had worn
men’s clothes for forty years. She stated that her reasons for this
masquerade were that having, at the age of thirteen, been left a
friendless orphan, she had become convinced, after futile struggling
for employment, that many of the obstacles in her path could be swept
away by discarding her proper garments and assuming the _rôle_ and
attire of masculine youth. This she did. She closely cut her hair,
bought boy’s clothes, put them on, and sallied forth in the world to
seek her fortune. With the change of dress seems to have come a change
of luck, for she quickly found employment, and being an apt scholar,
and facile at learning languages, was enabled after a time to obtain a
position as courier, and, but for her unfortunate illness, it is
tolerably certain that the truth would never have been revealed during
her lifetime.”
In the early days of April, 1892, the Vienna correspondent of the
_Standard_ reported that—
“On the 30th ult., there died in Hungary, at about the same hour, two
ladies who served in 1848 in the Revolutionary Army, and fought in
several of the fiercest battles, dressed in military uniform. One of
them was several times promoted, and, under the name of Karl, attained
the rank of First Lieutenant of Hussars. At this point, however, an
artillery major stopped her military career by marrying her. The other
fought under the name of Josef, and was decorated for valour in the
field. She married long after the campaign. A Hungarian paper,
referring to the two cases, says that about a dozen women fought in
1848 in the insurrectionary ranks.”
Somewhat more detailed particulars concerning “Lieutenant Karl” were
afterwards given by the _Manchester Guardian_ (June 6, 1892), as
follows:—
“The Austrian _Volkszeitung_ announces the death of Frau Marie Hoche,
who has had a most singular and romantic career. Her maiden name was
Lepstuk. In the momentous year of 1848 Marie Lepstuk, who was then
eighteen years of age, joined the German legion at Vienna; then,
returning home, she adopted the name of Karl and joined the Tyroler
Jager Regiment of the revolutionary army. She showed great bravery in
the battlefield, received the medallion, and was raised to the rank of
lieutenant. A wound compelled her to go into hospital, but after her
recovery she joined the Hussars. As a reward for exceeding bravery she
was next made oberlieutenant on the field. Soon after this her sex was
discovered, but a major fell in love with her, and they were married.
At Vilagos both were taken prisoners, and while in the fortress she
gave birth to her first child. After the major’s death she was
remarried to Oberlieutenant Hoche. For the past few years Frau Hoche
has been in needy circumstances, but an appeal from Jokai brought
relief.”
All of which goes far to discredit M. Michelet’s theory that women are
“born invalids,” an assertion which Dr. Julia Mitchell “stigmatises
naturally enough as ‘all nonsense,’” and is thus approved—with a strange
magnanimity—by the _British Medical Journal_.—(See _Pall Mall Gazette_,
April 29, 1892.)
The “incapacity of women for military service” has been of late days
continually quoted as a bar to their right of citizenship, as far as the
Parliamentary Franchise is concerned. In the face of the foregoing
cases, and of the fact that every mother risks her life in becoming a
mother, while very few men, indeed, risk theirs on the battlefield, it
might be thought that the fallacious argument would have perished from
shame and inanition long ago. But the inconsistencies of
partly-cultivated, masculine, one-sexed intellect are as stubborn as
blind.
See also Note XLV., 6.
XIX.
6.—“_The ecstasy of earnest souls_ ...”
“Without recognising the possibilities of individual and of racial
evolution, we are shut up to the conventional view that the poet and his
heroine alike are exceptional creations, hopelessly beyond the everyday
average of the race. Whereas, admitting the theory of evolution, we are
not only entitled to the hope, but logically compelled to the assurance
that these rare fruits of an apparently more than earthly paradise of
love, which only the forerunners of the race have been privileged to
gather, or, it may be, to see from distant heights, are yet the
realities of a daily life towards which we and ours may journey.”—Geddes
and Thomson (“Evolution of Sex,” p. 267).
_Id._... “What marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated
faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists
that best kind of equality, similarity of powers, and capacities with
reciprocal superiority in them—so that each can enjoy the pleasure of
looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of
leading and of being led in the path of development—I will not attempt
to describe. To those who can conceive it there is no need; to those who
cannot, it would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But I maintain, with
the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only, is the ideal of
marriage; and that all opinions, customs, and institutions which favour
any other notion of it, or turn the conceptions and aspirations
connected with it into any other direction, by whatever pretences they
may be coloured, are relics of primitive barbarism. The moral
regeneration of mankind will only really commence when the most
fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal
justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest
sympathy with an equal in rights and cultivation.”—J. S. Mill (“The
Subjection of Women,” p. 177).
XX.
2.—“_And lingers still the hovering shade of night_.”
George Eliot had yet to say, “Heaven was very cruel when it made women”;
and Georges Sand, “Fille on nous supprime, femme on nous opprime.”
XXI.
1.—“... _carnal servitude_...”
It may be objected by some that details in the verse or in these notes
are of too intimate a character for general narration. The notes have,
however, all been taken either from widely read public prints of
indisputable singleness of purpose, or works of writers of undoubted
integrity. One is not much troubled as to those who would criticise
further. To them may be offered the incident and words of the late Dr.
Magee, who, as Bishop of Peterborough, and a member of a legislative
committee on the question of child-life insurance, said:—“In this matter
we have to count with two things: first, almost all our facts are
secrets of the bedchamber; and, secondly, we are opposed by great vested
interests. This thing is not to be done without a good deal of
pain.”—(_Review of Reviews_, Vol. IV., p. 37).
And thus are verified, in a transcendental sense also, the words of
Schiller:—
“Und _in feurigem Bewegen_
Werden alle Kräfte kund.”
(“Die Glocke.”)
7.—“_Survival from dim age_ ...”
See Note XXIII., 1.
XXII.
1.—“... _girlhood’s helpless years_ ...”
Somewhat as to these ancient conditions may be gathered from the
position in India at the present day. Read the following:—“The practice
of early marriages by Hindoos I was, of course, informed of by reading
before coming to India, but its mention in books was always coupled with
the assertion that in India girls reach puberty at a much earlier age
than in cold climates. Judge, therefore, of my surprise to find that so
far from Hindoo girls being precocious in physical development, they are
much behind in this respect; that a Hindoo girl of fifteen is about the
equal of an English child of eleven, instead of the reverse, and that
the statements made to the contrary by Englishmen who have no
opportunity of becoming acquainted with Hindoo family life, were totally
misleading. In the first place they were under the impression that
marriage never takes place before puberty, and, secondly, they accepted
the Hindoo view as to what constitutes puberty. You know that,
unfortunately, they were misled as regards the first point. I hope to
show you that in the second place the idea which they accepted as
correct is a totally mistaken one.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (Address
to the Hindoos of Bombay on the subject of child-marriage; delivered at
the Hall of the Prarthana Somaj, Bombay, on the 11th Oct., 1890).
2.—“... _sexual wrong_.”
“As regards the marriage of girls before even what is called puberty, I
can hardly trust myself to speak, so strongly are my feelings those of
all Western—may I not say of all civilised?—people in looking upon it as
actually criminal. Ah! gentlemen, those of you who are conversant with
such cases as I have seen, cases like those of Phulmoni Dossee, which
has just now stirred your hearts to insist upon some change in the
existing law, and others where a life-long decrepitude has followed, to
which death itself were far preferable, do you not feel with me that
penal servitude is not too hard a punishment for such brutality? I am
glad to think that a very large section of Hindoo men think with me. I
have been repeatedly spoken to on the subject, and members even of those
castes which are most guilty in this matter, have expressed to me a wish
that Government would interfere and put a stop to the practice.”—Mrs.
Pechey Phipson, M.D., _op. cit._
A terrible evidence to the evil is borne by the following document:—
[FROM “THE TIMES OF INDIA,” NOVEMBER 8TH, 1890.]
_To his Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India._
May it please Your Excellency.—The undersigned ladies, practising
medicine in India, respectfully crave your Excellency’s attention to
the following facts and considerations:—
1. Your Excellency is aware that the present state of the Indian law
permits marriages to be consummated not only before the wife is
physically qualified for the duties of maternity, but before she is
able to perform the duties of the conjugal relation, thus giving rise
to numerous and great evils.
2. This marriage practice has become the cause of gross immoralities
and cruelties, which, owing to existing legislation, come practically
under the protection of the law. In some cases the law has permitted
homicide, and protected men, who, under other circumstances, would
have been criminally punished.
3. The institution of child-marriage rests upon public sentiment,
vitiated by degenerate religious customs and misinterpretation of
religious books. There are thousands among the better educated classes
who would rejoice if Government would take the initiative, and make
such a law as your memorialists plead for, and in the end the masses
would be grateful for their deliverance from the galling yoke that has
bound them to poverty, superstition, and the slavery of custom for
centuries.
4. The present system of child-marriage, in addition to the physical
and moral effects which the Indian Governments have deplored, produces
sterility, and consequently becomes an excuse for the introduction of
other child-wives into the family, thus becoming a justification for
_polygamy_.
5. This system panders to sensuality, lowers the standard of health
and morals, degrades the race, and tends to perpetuate itself and all
its attendant evils to future generations.
6. The lamentable case of the child-wife, Phulmani Dassi, of Calcutta,
which has excited the sympathy and the righteous indignation of the
Indian public, is only one of thousands of cases that are continually
happening, the final results being quite as horrible, but sometimes
less immediate. The following instances have come under the personal
observation of one or another of your Excellency’s petitioners:—
A. Aged 9. Day after marriage. Left _femur_ dislocated, _pelvis_
crushed out of shape, flesh hanging in shreds.
B. Aged 10. Unable to stand, bleeding profusely, flesh much lacerated.
C. Aged 9. So completely ravished as to be almost beyond surgical
repair. Her husband had two other living wives, and spoke very fine
English.
D. Aged 10. A very small child, and entirely undeveloped physically.
This child was bleeding to death from the _rectum_. Her husband was
a man of about 40 years of age, weighing not less than 11 stone. He
had accomplished his desire in an unnatural way.
E. Aged about 9. Lower limbs completely paralysed.
F. Aged about 12. Laceration of the _perineum_ extending through the
_sphincter ani_.
G. Aged about 10. Very weak from loss of blood. Stated that great
violence had been done her in an unnatural way.
H. Aged about 12. Pregnant, delivered by _craniotomy_ with great
difficulty, on account of the immature state of the _pelvis_ and
maternal passage.
I. Aged about 7. Living with husband. Died in great agony after three
days.
K. Aged about 10. Condition most pitiable. After one day in hospital
was demanded by her husband for his “lawful” use, he said.
L. Aged 11. From great violence done her person will be a cripple for
life. No use of her lower extremities.
M. Aged about 10. Crawled to hospital on her hands and knees. Has
never been able to stand erect since her marriage.
N. Aged 9. Dislocation of _pubic arch_, and unable to stand, or to put
one foot before the other.
In view of the above facts, the undersigned lady doctors and medical
practitioners appeal to your Excellency’s compassion to enact or
introduce a measure by which the consummation of marriage will not be
permitted before the wife has attained the full age of fourteen (14)
years. The undersigned venture to trust that the terrible urgency of the
matter will be accepted as an excuse for this interruption of your
Excellency’s time and attention.
(Signed by 55 lady-physicians.)
The memorial as above was initiated by Mrs. Monelle Mansell, M.A., M.D.,
who has been in practice in India for seventeen years, and it received
the signature of every other lady doctor there. The cases of abuse above
specified are “only a few out of many hundreds—of cruel wrongs, deaths,
and maimings for life received by helpless child-wives at the hands of
brutal husbands, which have come under Dr. Monelle Mansell’s personal
observation, or that of her associates.”
With regard to case K, and “lawful” use, compare what is said by Dr.
Emma B. Ryder, who is also in medical practice in India, concerning the
“Little Wives of India”:—“If I could take my readers with me on my round
of visits for one week, and let them behold the condition of the little
wives ... if you could see the suffering faces of the little girls, who
are drawn nearly double with contractions caused by the brutality of
their husbands, and who will never be able to stand erect; if you could
see the paralysed limbs that will not again move in obedience to the
will; if you could hear the plaintive wail of the little sufferers as,
with their tiny hands clasped, they beg you ‘to make them die,’ and then
turn and listen to the brutal remarks of the legal owner with regard to
the condition of his property. If you could stand with me by the side of
the little deformed dead body, and, turning from the sickening sight,
could be shown the new victim to whom the brute was already betrothed,
do you think it would require long arguments to convince you that there
was a deadly wrong somewhere, and that someone was responsible for it?
After one such scene a Hindoo husband said to me, ‘You look like feel
bad’ (meaning sad); ‘doctors ought not to care what see. I don’t care
what see, nothing trouble me, only when self sick; I not like to have
pain self.’... A man may be a vile and loathsome creature, he may be
blind, a lunatic, an idiot, a leper, or diseased in a worse form; he may
be fifty, seventy, or a hundred years old, and may be married to a baby
or a girl of five or ten, who positively loathes his presence, but if he
claims her she must go, and the English law for the ‘Restitution of
Conjugal Rights’ compels her to remain in his power, or imprisons her if
she refuses. There is no other form of slavery on the face of the earth
that begins with the slavery as enforced upon these little girls of
India.”—(“The Home-Maker,” New York, June, 1891, quoted in the _Review
of Reviews_, Vol. IV., p. 38.)
And the _Times_ of 11th November, 1889, reported from its Calcutta
correspondent:—“Two shocking cases of wife-killing lately came before
the courts—in both cases the result of child-marriage. In one a child
aged ten was strangled by her husband. In the second case a child of ten
years was ripped open with a wooden peg. Brutal sexual exasperation was
the sole apparent reason in both instances. Compared with the terrible
evils of child-marriage, widow cremation is of infinitely inferior
magnitude. The public conscience is continually being affronted with
these horrible atrocities, but, unfortunately, native public opinion
generally seems to accept these revelations with complete apathy.”
For what slight legislative amendment has recently been effected in the
grievances mentioned by Dr. Ryder, see Note XXIV., 4. The “Restitution
of Conjugal Rights,” so justly condemned by her, does, indeed, appear to
have had—by some inadvertence—a recognition in the Indian Courts which
was not its lawful due. But for some fuller particulars on this matter,
both as concerns India and England, see Note XXXVI., 6.
XXIII.
1.—“_Action repeated tends to rhythmic course_.”
“Other and wider muscular actions, partly internal and partly external,
also take place in a rhythmical manner in relation with systemic
conditions. The motions of the diaphragm and of the thoracic and
abdominal walls, in connection with respiration, belong to this
category. These movements, though in the main independent of will, are
capable of being very considerably modified thereby, and while they are
most frequently unheeded, they have a very recognisable accompaniment of
feeling when attention is distinctly turned to them.... The contraction
of oviducts or of the womb, as well as the movements concerned in
respiration, also had their beginnings in forms of life whose advent is
now buried in the immeasurable past.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as
an Organ of Mind,” p. 220).
4.—“_Till habit bred hereditary trace_.”
“Let it be granted that the more frequently psychical states occur in a
certain order, the stronger becomes their tendency to cohere in that
order, until they at last become inseparable; let it be granted that
this tendency is, in however slight a degree, inherited, so that if the
experiences remain the same, each successive generation bequeaths a
somewhat increased tendency, and it follows that, in cases like the one
described, there must eventually result an automatic connection of
nervous actions, corresponding to the external relations perpetually
experienced. Similarly, if from some change in the environment of any
species its members are frequently brought in contact with a relation
having terms a little more involved; if the organisation of the species
is so far developed as to be impressible by these terms in close
succession, then an inner relation corresponding to this new outer
relation will gradually be formed, and will, in the end, become organic.
And so on in subsequent stages of progress.”—Herbert Spencer
(“Principles of Psychology,” Vol. I., p. 439).
_Id._... “I have described the manner in which the hereditary tendencies
and instincts arise from habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a
sufficient repetition of the same acts.”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of
Marriage,” Chap. I.).
_Id._... “Ainsi l’évacuation menstruelle une fois introduite dans
l’espèce, se sera communiquée par une filiation non interrompue; de
sorte qu’on peut dire qu’une femme a maintenant des règles, par la seule
raison que sa mère les a eues, comme elle aurait été phthisique peut
être, si sa mère l’eût été; il y a plus, elle peut être sujette au flux
menstruel, même quoique la cause primitive qui introduisit ce besoin ne
subsiste plus en elle.”—Roussel (“Système de la Femme,” p. 134).
_Id._... “Il y a eu des auteurs qui ne voulaient pas considérer la
menstruation comme une fonction inhérente à la nature de la femme, mais
comme une fonction acquise, continuant par l’habitude.”—Raciborski
(“Traité de la Menstruation,” p. 17).
_Id._... “The ‘set’ of mind, as Professor Tyndall well calls it,
whether, as he says, ‘impressed upon the molecules of the brain,’ or
conveyed in any other way, is quite as much a human as an animal
phenomenon. Perhaps the greater part of those qualities which we call
the characteristics of race are nothing else but the ‘set’ of the minds
of men transmitted from generation to generation, stronger and more
marked when the deeds are repeated, weaker and fainter as they fall into
disuse.... Tyndall says: ‘No mother can wash or suckle her baby without
having a “set” towards washing and suckling impressed upon the molecules
of her brain, and this set, according to the laws of hereditary
transmission, is passed on to her daughter. Not only, therefore, does
the woman at the present day suffer deflection from intellectual
pursuits through her proper motherly instincts, but inherited
proclivities act upon her mind like a multiplying galvanometer, to
augment indefinitely the amount of the deflection. _Tendency_ is
immanent even in spinsters, to warp them from intellect to baby-love.’
(Essay: “Odds and Ends of Alpine Life.”) Thus, if we could, by preaching
our pet ideal, or in any other way induce one generation of women to
turn to a new pursuit, we should have accomplished a step towards
bending all future womanhood in the same direction.”—Frances Power Cobbe
(Essay: “The Final Cause of Woman”).
See also Note XXVI., 7.
6.—“... _e’en the virgin_ ...”
An experienced gynæcologist writes:—“For want of proper information in
this matter, many a frightened girl has resorted to every conceivable
device to check what she supposed to be an unnatural and dangerous
hæmorrhage, and thereby inaugurated menstrual derangements which have
prematurely terminated her life, or enfeebled her womanhood. I have been
consulted by women of all ages, who frankly attributed their physical
infirmities to the fact of their having applied ice, or made other cold
applications locally, in their frantic endeavours to arrest the first
menstrual flow.”
What general practitioner has not met with analogous instances in the
circle of his own patients?
7.—“... _ere fit_ ...”
“The physician, whose duty is not only to heal the sick, but also to
prevent disease and to improve the race, and hence who must be a teacher
of men and women, should teach sound doctrine in regard to the injurious
results of precocious marriage. Mothers especially ought to be taught,
though some have learned the lesson by their own sad experience, that
puberty and nubility are not equivalent terms, but stand for periods of
life usually separated by some years; the one indicates capability, the
other fitness, for reproduction.”—Parvin (“Obstetrics,” p. 91).
_Id._... “_The general maturity of the whole frame_ is the true
indication that the individual, whether male or female, has reached a
fit age to reproduce the species. It is not one small and unimportant
symptom by which this question must be judged. Many things go to make up
virility in man; the beard, the male voice, the change in figure, and
the change in disposition; and in girls there is a long period of
development in the bust, in the hips, in bone and muscle, changes which
take years for their proper accomplishment before the girl can be said
to have grown into a woman. All this is not as a rule completed before
the age of twenty. Woman’s form is not well developed before she is
twenty years old; her pelvis, which has been called the laboratory of
generation, has not its perfect shape until then; hence an earlier
maternity is not desirable. If the demand is made on the system before
that, the process of development is necessarily interfered with, and
both mother and offspring suffer. Even in countries where the age of
marriage is between twenty and twenty-five, where, therefore, the mother
has not been weakened by early maternity, it is remarked that the
strongest children are born to parents of middle age, _i.e._, from
thirty-five to forty; this, the prime of life to the parent, is the
happiest moment for the advent of her progeny.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson,
M.D. (Address to the Hindoos).
See also end of Note XXIV., 1.
8.—“_Abnormal fruits of birth_ ...”
Dr. John Thorburn, in his “Lecture introductory to the Summer Course on
Obstetric Medicine,” Victoria University, Manchester, 1884, says:—“Let
me briefly remind you of what occurs at each menstrual period. During
nearly one week out of every four there occurs the characteristic
phenomenon of menstruation, which in itself has some temporary
_impoverishing effect_, though, in health, nature speedily provides the
means of recuperation. Along with this we have a marked disturbance in
the circulation of the pelvis, leading to alterations in the weight,
conformation, and position of the _uterus_. We have also tissue changes
occurring, _not perhaps yet thoroughly understood_, but leading to
ruptures in the ovary, and to exfoliation of the uterine lining
membrane, _a kind of modified abortion, in fact_. These changes in most
instances are accompanied by signs of pain and discomfort, which, if
they were not periodic and physiological, would be considered as
symptoms of disease.”
(The italics are not in the original.) Here is certainly cogent evidence
of “abnormal fruit of birth,” and the learned doctor seems to be on the
verge of making the involuntary discovery. But he follows the usual
professional attempt (see Note XXX., 4) to class menstruation as a
physiological and not a pathological fact; as a natural, painful
incident, and not an acquired painful consequence. His half-declared
argument, that, because an epoch of pain is periodic it is therefore not
symptomatic of disease, is a theory as unsatisfactory as novel.
_Id._... Some of the facts connected with parthenogenesis, alternate
generation, the impregnation of insects, &c., passed on through more
than one generation, would show by analogy this class of phenomena not
extranatural or unprecedented, but abnormal and capable of rectification
or reduction to pristine normality or non-existence. The fact of
occasional instances of absence of menstruation, yet with a perfect
potentiality of child-bearing, indicates this latter possibility. That
the male being did not correspondingly suffer in personal physiological
sequence is explicable on the ground that the masculine bodily function
of parentage cannot be subjected to equal forced sexual abuse; though in
the male sex also there is indication that excess may leave hereditary
functional trace. And that, again, a somewhat analogous physical
abnormality may be induced by man in other animals, compare the
intelligent words of George Eliot in her poem, “A Minor Prophet”:—
“... milkmaids who drew milk from cows,
With udders kept abnormal for that end.”
In confirmation of which see “Report of the Committee, consisting of Mr.
E. Bidwell, Professor Boyd Dawkins, and others, appointed for the
purpose of preparing a Report on the Herds of Wild Cattle in Chartley
Park, and other parks in Great Britain.” The Committee state, concerning
a herd of wild cattle at Somerford Park, near Congleton, of which herd
“the cows are all regularly milked,” that “The udders of the cows here
are as large as in ordinary domestic cows, which is not the case in the
herds which are not milked.”—(“Report of the British Association,” 1887,
p. 141.)
XXIV.
1.—“_Misread by man_ ...”
“You say ‘We marry our girls when they reach puberty,’ and you take as
indication of that stage one only, and that the least certain, of the
many changes which go to make up maturity. It is the least certain
because the most variable, and dependent more upon climate and
conditions of life than upon any true physical development. No one would
deny that a strong country girl of thirteen was more mature physically
than a girl of eleven brought up in the close, unwholesome atmosphere of
a crowded city, yet you say the latter has attained to puberty, and that
the former has not. Into such discrepancies has this physiological error
led you. Without going into the domain of physiology for proof of
assertion, let me draw your attention to the very practical proof of its
truth, which you have in the fact well-known to you all, that girls
married at this so-called period of puberty do not, as a rule, bear
children till some years later, _i.e._, till they really approach
maturity. I allow that you share this error with all but modern
physiologists. Even if marriage is delayed till fourteen, where
conception takes place immediately, sterility follows after; but where
the girl is strong and healthy there is a lapse of three or four years
before child-bearing begins, a proof that puberty had not been reached
till then, although menstruation had been all the time existent. Of
course there are exceptional cases, but does not the consensus of
experience point to these as general truths?”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D.
(Address to Hindoos).
_Id._ “... _sign of his misdeed_.”
See Note XXVI., 6.
4.—“... _victim to his adult rage_.”
Of this, as existent to the present age, abundant direct and collateral
evidence is given by a _brochure_ entitled “A Practical View of the Age
of Consent Act, for the benefit of the Mahomedan community in general,
by the Committee of the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta,”
published by that Society, in June, 1891, as “an accurate exposition of
the object and scope of the new law, in the clearest possible language,
for the benefit of the Mahomedans, particularly the ignorant classes,
and circulated widely in the vernacular languages for that purpose.”
The following are extracts from the pamphlet:—
Par. 1. “Now that the Age of Consent Act has been passed by his
Excellency the Viceroy, in Council, and as there is every likelihood
of its provisions not being sufficiently well understood by the
Mahomedan community in general, and by the ignorant Mahomedans in
particular, owing to the use of technical legal phraseology in the
drafting of the Act, it seems to the Committee of Management of the
Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta, to be highly desirable that
the object and intention of the Government in passing this Act, as
well as its scope and the manner in which it is to be administered by
the Criminal Authorities, should be laid down on paper in the clearest
and easiest language possible, for the information and instruction of
the Mahomedan population, and particularly of such of them as are not
conversant with legal technicalities.”
Par. 2. “The Committee are of opinion that such a course will be
highly beneficial to members of their community, inasmuch as it will
show to them distinctly what action on the part of a Mahomedan husband
towards his young wife has been made, by the recent legislation, a
heinous criminal offence of no less enormity than the offence of
_rape_, and punishable with the same heavy punishment.”
Par. 3. “It is hoped that they will thereby be put on their guard
against committing, or allowing the commission of an act which _they
have hitherto been accustomed to think lawful and innocent_, but which
has now been made into a heinous offence....”
Par. 9. “... There has already been a provision in the Indian Penal
Code, passed more than thirty years ago, that a man having sexual
intercourse with his own wife, with or without her consent, she _being
under the age of ten years_, shall be considered guilty of the offence
of _rape_, and shall be liable to transportation for life, or to
rigorous or simple imprisonment for ten years.”
Par. 10. “From this it follows that, under the Penal Code a man having
sexual intercourse with his own wife, with or without her consent, if
she is _above ten_ years of age, shall not be considered to have
committed the offence of _rape_. But the Act that has just been
passed, in amendment of the above provision in the Penal Code,
_raises_ the age of consent from _ten_ to _twelve_ years, and provides
that a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, even with her
consent, shall be considered to be guilty of the offence of rape, if
the wife be of any age under _twelve completed years_. This is all the
change that has been made in the law.”
Par. 11. “It having been ascertained, from various sources, that in
some parts of the country husbands cohabit with their wives before
they have attained to the age of _twelve_ years, and even before they
have arrived at _puberty_, the result of such intercourse being in
many cases to cause injury to the health, and even danger to the life
of the girls, and to generate internal maladies which make them
miserable throughout their lives, and such a state of things having
come to the notice of Government, they have considered it their duty
to put a stop to it, and this is the object of the present
legislation.”
Par. 12. “The law does not interfere with the age at which a girl may
be married, but simply prohibits sexual intercourse with her by her
husband before she is _twelve_ years of age.”
Par. 13. “It is therefore _incumbent_ upon all husbands and their
guardians (if they are very young and inexperienced lads) to be very
careful that sexual intercourse does not take place until the
girl-wife has _passed_ the age of _twelve_ years. It will also be the
duty of the guardians of the girl-wife not to allow her husband to
cohabit with her until she has attained that age.”
Par. 17. “... The Mahomedan law (_i.e._, religious law) distinctly
sanctions consummation of marriage _only_ when the wife has reached
puberty, and has besides attained such physical development as renders
her fit for sexual intercourse, and it is _not imperative_ upon a
Mahomedan husband to consummate marriage with his wife when she is
_under_ the age of _twelve_ years. Even in those rare cases in which
the wife attains to puberty and the necessary physical development
before the age of _twelve_, a Mahomedan husband _may_, without
infringing any canon of the Mahommedan Ecclesiastical Law, _abstain_
from consummating his marriage with her _until_ she attains that age.
Par. 18. “The above will clearly show that the Act recently passed by
the Legislature does not, in any way, interfere with the Mahomedan
religion, and _no_ Mahomedan husband will be considered to have
committed a sin if he abstains from consummating marriage with his
wife _before_ she is _twelve_ years of age.”
(The pamphlet is published, as aforesaid, by the Mahomedan Literary
Society of Calcutta, of which the patron is the Hon. Sir Charles A.
Elliott, K.C.S.I., C.I.E., and the president Prince Mirza Jahan Kadar
Bahadur (of the Oudh family), and is signed by the secretary, Nawab
Abdool Luteef Bahadur, C.I.E.; Calcutta, 16 Taltollah, 22nd June, 1891.)
The italics, as above, exist in the original (with the exception of
those in Par. 3), and serve, singularly enough, to point for us a moral
very much deeper than that intended. It is a happy fact that British
feeling, supported by the growing sentiment of the more intelligent and
educated of the native population, has effected even so slight an
amelioration of law and custom, and we may hope for and press forward to
further improvement. Though the utterance quoted above is only that of
the Mahomedan section, it is, of course, understood that the law does
not apply or point to them alone, but to all the peoples and sects of
India; and that the approval of this legislation is also general among
the enlightened of those other creeds. (See end of Note XVII., 8.)
Singular confirmatory evidence as to the distressing prevalence of this
child-marriage is incidentally given in the following paragraph from the
_Times_ of 31st March, 1892:—
“A correspondent of the _Times of India_ mentions some odd instances
of minor difficulties which have occurred in the working of the
amended Factory Act, which came into force in India at the
commencement of the present year. The limit of age for ‘full-timers’
in factories is fixed at fourteen years, and as very few native
operatives know their children’s ages, or even their own, the medical
officer has, in passing lads and girls for work, to judge the age as
best he can—generally, as in the case of horses, by examining their
teeth. If he concludes that they are under fourteen, he reduces them
to ‘half-timers.’ In one Bombay mill recently a number of girls were
thus sent back as under age who were actually mothers, and several
boys who were fathers were also reduced; and one of the latter was the
father, it is said, of three children. The case of these lads is
particularly hard, for, with a wife and child, or perhaps children, to
support, life, on the pay of a ‘half-timer,’ must be a terrible
struggle.”
Lest it should be objected that such abuses—with their consequences—as
have been instanced in India, are peculiar to that country or
civilisation, and that their discussion has therefore no bearing on our
practices in England, and the physical consequences ensuant here, it
will be salutary to recall what has been our own national conduct in
this matter of enforcement of immature physical relations on girl
children or “wives” within times of by no means distant date. Blackstone
tells in his “Commentaries,” Book II., Chap. VIII., that “The wife must
be above nine years old at her husband’s death, otherwise she shall not
be endowed, though in Bracton’s time the age was indefinite, and dower
was then only due ‘si uxor possit dotem promereri, _et virum
sustinere_.’” Whereupon Ed. Christian makes the following note, worthy
of the most careful meditation:—“Lord Coke informs us that ‘if the wife
be past the age of nine years at the time of her husband’s death, she
shall be endowed, of what age soever her husband be, albeit he were but
_four_ years old. Quia junior non potest dotem promereri, _et virum
sustinere_.’ (Coke on Litt., 33.) This we are told by that grave and
reverend judge without any remark of surprise or reprobation. But it
confirms the observation of Montesquieu in the ‘Spirit of Laws,’ Book
XXVI., Chap. III. ‘There has been,’ says he, ‘much talk of a law in
England which permitted girls seven years old to choose a husband. This
law was shocking two ways; it had no regard to the time when Nature
gives maturity to the understanding, nor to the time when she gives
maturity to the body.’ It is abundantly clear, both from our law and
history, that formerly such early marriages were contracted as in the
present times are neither attempted nor thought of.
“This was probably owing to the right which the lord possessed of
putting up to sale the marriage of his infant tenant. He no doubt took
the first opportunity of prostituting (_i.e._, selling in marriage) the
infant to his own interest, without any regard to age or inclinations.
And thus what was so frequently practised and permitted by the law would
cease even in other instances to be considered with abhorrence. _If the
marriage of a female was delayed till she was sixteen, this benefit was
entirely lost to the lord her guardian._
“Even the 18 Eliz., cap. 7, which makes it a capital crime to abuse a
consenting female child under the age of ten years, seems to leave an
exception for these marriages by declaring only the _carnal and
unlawful_ knowledge of such woman-child to be a felony. Hence the
abolition of the feudal wardships and marriage at the Restoration may
perhaps have contributed not less to the improvement of the morals than
of the liberty of the people.”—(Blackstone’s Comm., Christian’s Edition,
1830, Vol. II., p. 131.)
6.—“... _manner_ ...”
“Manner,” or “custom” is the early Biblical definition for this habit
(_vide_ Gen. xviii. 11, and xxxi. 35). It may be noticed that the word
is not rendered or translated as “nature.” It is also called “sickness”
(Lev. xx. 18); and “pollution” (Ezek. xxii. 10). See also Note XXV. 8.
The authorised version of the Bible is here referred to. The euphemisms
attempted in the recent revised version as amendments of some of these
passages are equally consonant with the argument of this note.
XXV.
1.—“_Vicarious punishment_ ...”
Revolting was the shock to the writer, coming, some years ago, with
unprejudiced and ingenuous mind, to the study of the so-called “Diseases
of Women,” on finding that nearly the whole of these special “diseases,”
including menstruation, were due, directly or collaterally, to one form
or other of _masculine_ excess or abuse. Here is a nearly coincident
opinion, afterwards met with:—“The diseases peculiar to women are so
many, of so frequent occurrence, and of such severity, that half the
time of the medical profession is devoted to their care, and more than
half its revenues depend upon them. We have libraries of books upon
them, special professorships in our medical colleges, and hosts of
doctors who give them their exclusive attention.... The books and
professors are all at fault. They have no knowledge of the causes or
nature of these diseases” (or at least they do not publish it, or act on
it), “and no idea of their proper treatment. Women are everywhere
outraged and abused. When the full chapter of woman’s wrongs and
sufferings is written, the world will be horrified at the hideous
spectacle....”—T. L. Nichols, M.D. (“Esoteric Anthropology,” p. 198).
So, again, in speaking of menorrhagia:—“The causes of this disease,
whatever they are, must be removed. Thousands of women are consigned to
premature graves; some by the morbid excesses of their own passions, but
far more by the sensual and selfish indulgences of those who claim the
legal right to murder them in this manner, whom no law of homicide can
reach, and upon whose victims no coroner holds an inquest.”—(_Op. cit._,
p. 301.)
2.—“... _grievous toll_ ...”
And this in every grade of society, even to the pecuniary loss, as well
as discomfort, of the labouring classes of women.
“Statistics of sickness in the Post Office show that women” (these are
unmarried women) “are away from their work more days than men.”—(Sidney
Webb, at British Association, 1891.)
5.—“... _no honest claim_.”
The _Times_ of Aug. 3, 1892, reports a paper by Professor Lombroso, of
Turin (at the International Congress of Psychology, London), in which
occurs the following:—“It must be observed that woman was exposed to
more pains than man, because man imposed submission and often even
slavery upon her. As a girl, she had to undergo the tyranny of her
brothers, and the cruel preferences accorded by parents to their male
children. Woman was the slave of her husband, and still more of social
prejudices.... Let them not forget the physical disadvantage under which
she had to labour. She might justly call herself the pariah of the human
family.”
The word is apt and corroborative, for it was no honest act—it was not
Nature, but human cruelty and injustice that formed a pariah.
8.—“... _opprobrious theme_.”
_Conf._ ancient and mediæval superstitions and accusations on the
subject. Raciborski notes these aspersions (Traité, p. 13):—“Pline
prétendait que les femmes étant au moment des règles pouvaient dessécher
les arbres par de simples attouchements, faire périr des fruits, &c.,
&c.” And a further writer says more fully:—“Pliny informs us that the
presence of a menstrual woman turns wine sour, causes trees to shed
their fruit, parches up their young fruit, and makes them for ever
barren, dims the splendour of mirrors and the polish of ivory, turns the
edge of sharpened iron, converts brass into rust, and is the cause of
canine rabies. In Isaiah xxx. 22, the writer speaks of the defilement of
graven images, which shall be cast away as a menstruous cloth; and in
Ezekiel xviii. 6, and xxxvi. 17, allusions of the same import are made.”
Unless we accept the antiquated notion of a “special curse” on women,
how reconcile the idea of an “ordinance of Nature” being so repulsively
and opprobriously alluded to? Well may it be said:—“Ingratitude is a
hateful vice. Not only the defects, but even the illnesses which have
their source in the excessive” (man-caused) “susceptibility of woman,
are often made by men an endless subject of false accusations and
pitiless reproaches.”—(M. le Docteur Cerise, in his Introduction to
Roussel, p. 34.)
XXVI.
1.—“_Thoughts like to these are breathings of the truth_.”
“I submit that there is a spiritual, a poetic, and, for aught we know, a
spontaneous and uncaused element in the human mind, which ever and anon
suddenly, and without warning, gives us a glimpse and a forecast of the
future, and urges us to seize truth, as it were, by anticipation. In
attacking the fortress we may sometimes storm the citadel without
stopping to sap the outworks. That great discoveries have been made in
this way the history of our knowledge decisively proves.”—H. T. Buckle
(“Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”).
_Id._... “Then there is the inner consciousness—the psyche—that has
never yet been brought to bear upon life and its questions. Besides
which, there is a supersensuous reason. Observation is perhaps more
powerful an organon than either experiment or empiricism. If the eye is
always watching, and the mind on the alert, ultimately chance supplies
the solution.”—Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. X.).
_Id._... “Women only want hints, finger-boards, and finding these, will
follow them to Nature. The quick-glancing intellect will gather up, as
it moves over the ground, the almost invisible ends and threads of
thought, so that a single volume may convey to the mind of woman truths
which man would require to have elaborated in four or six.”—Eliza W.
Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 420).
3.—“... _futile mannish pleas_ ...”
Roussel details fully some nine of these main theories or explanations
of the habitude. (“Système,” Note A.)
6.—“_In blindness born_ ...”
“Tous ces faits nous induisent fortement à conjecturer qu’il a dû
exister un temps ou les femmes n’étaient point assujettiés à ce tribut
incommode; que le flux menstruel bien loin d’être une institution
naturelle, est au contraire un besoin factice contracté dans l’état
sociale.”—Roussel (_Op. cit._, Chap. II.).
Note that menstruation (scriptural “sickness”) remains a pathological
incident, not, as child-birth, an indubitably natural and normal
physical function.
See also Note XXX., 4.
_Id._—“... _in error fostered_ ...”
Not only the habit itself, but its causes. And this by medical, _i.e._,
assumedly curative, practitioners. As to which “fostering,” medical and
clinical manuals afford abundant spontaneous and ingenuous testimony,
and also of other professional practices of instigation, or condonation,
or complicity, at which a future age will look aghast. _Conf._ the
following from Whitehead, “On the Causes and Treatment of Abortion and
Sterility” (Churchill, 1847):—
“In a case under my care of pregnancy in a woman, with _extreme
deformity of the pelvis_, wherein it was considered advisable to
_procure abortion_ in the fifth month of the process, the ergot alone
was employed, and, at first, with the desired effect.” [The italics
are not in the doctor’s book; he remarks nothing wrong or immoral,
and—in an unprofessional person—illegal, and open to severest penalty;
he is simply detailing the effects of a specified medicament.] “It was
given in _three successive_ pregnancies, and in each instance labour
pains came on after eight or ten doses had been administered, and
expulsion was effected by the end of the third day. It was
perseveringly tried in a fourth pregnancy in the same individual, and
failed completely” (p. 254).
There is an ominous silence as to whether the patient’s health or life
also “failed completely.”
See further a case noted on p. 264, _op. cit._:—
1st child, still-born, in eighth month, April 1832.
2nd child, abortion at end of 6th month.
3rd child, abortion at end of 6th month.
4th child, abortion at end of 5th month.
5th child, abortion soon after quickening, Summer, 1838.
6th child, still-born, 7th October, 1839.
7th child, no clear record given.
Also other somewhat parallel cases given, the constant incidental
accompaniment being painful physical suffering and grave inconvenience,
frequently with fatal results. Medical records are full of similar
histories. To the unsophisticated mind, two questions sternly suggest
themselves: Firstly, Is it meet or right for an honourable profession,
or any individual member of it, to be _particeps criminis_ in such
proceedings as the above? and, secondly, is the indicated connubial
morality on any higher level, or likely to be attended with any better
consequences, than the prior ignorant or savage abuses which are
responsible for woman’s present physical condition?
The advocacy of cardinal reform in this direction—in the wrong done both
to the individual and the race—is urgent part of the duty of our
newly-taught medical women. Nor are their eyes closed nor their mouths
dumb in the matter. Dr. Caroline B. Winslow is quoted by the _Woman’s
Journal_ of Boston, U.S., 16th Jan., 1892, as saying in an article on
“The Right to be Well Born”: “What higher motive can a man have in life
than to labour steadily to prepare the way for the coming of a higher,
better humanity?... Dense ignorance prevails in our profession, and is
reflected by laymen. All their scientific studies and years of medical
practice have failed to convict men of the wrongs and outrages done to
women; wrongs that no divine laws sanction, and no legal enactments can
avert....
“The physician is a witness of the modern death-struggles and horrors of
maternity; he sees lives pass out of his sight; he makes vain attempts
to restore broken constitutions, broken by violating divine laws that
govern organic matter: laws that are obeyed by all animal instinct; yet
all this knowledge, observation, and experience have failed to reveal to
the benighted intellect and obtuse moral sense of the ordinary
practitioner this great wrong. He makes no note of the unhallowed abuse
that only man dares; neither will he mark the disastrous and
deteriorating effect of this waste of vital force on his own offspring.
The mental, moral, and physical imperfections of the rising generation
are largely the result of outraged motherhood.”
7.—“_The spurious function growing_ ...”
Mr. Francis Darwin, in a paper on “Growth Curvatures in Plants,” says of
the biologist, Sachs, who had made researches in the same phenomena: “He
speaks, too, of _custom_ or _use_, _building up_ the specialised
‘instinct’ for certain curvatures. (Sachs’ ‘Arbeiten,’ 1879.) These are
expressions consistent with our present views.”—(Presidential Address to
the Biological Section of the British Association, 1891.)
In the same section was also read a paper by Francis Darwin and Dorothea
F. N. Pertz, “On the _Artificial_ Production of Rhythm in Plants,” in
which were detailed results very apposite to this “growing of a spurious
function.”
8.—“... _almost natural use the morbid mode appears_.”
“So true is it that unnatural generally only means uncustomary, and that
everything which is usual appears natural.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection
of Women,” p. 22).
XXVII.
1.—“_Grievous the hurt_ ...”
Buckle notes one of the many incidental evil results in his “Common
Place Book,” Art. 2133:—
“It has been remarked that in our climate women are more frequently
affected with insanity than men, and it has been considered very
unfavourable to recovery if they should be worse at the time of
menstruation, or have their catamenia in very small or immoderate
quantities.” (Paris and Fonblanque’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” Vol. I.,
p. 327).
5.—“... _reintegrate in frame and mind_.”
“Thus then you have first to mould her physical frame, and then, as the
strength she gains will permit you, to fill and temper her mind with all
knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of
justice, and refine its natural tact of love.”—John Ruskin (“Of Queens’
Gardens,” p. 154).
XXVIII.
5, 6.—“... _given in our hand,
Is power the evil hazard to command_.”
“That which is thoughtlessly credited to a non-existent intelligence
should really be claimed and exercised by the human race. It is
ourselves who should direct our affairs, protecting ourselves from pain,
assisting ourselves, succouring and rendering our lives happy. We must
do for ourselves what superstition has hitherto supposed an intelligence
to do for us.... These things speak with a voice of thunder. From every
human being whose body has been racked with pain; from every human being
who has suffered from accident or disease; from every human being
drowned, burned, or slain by negligence, there goes up a continually
increasing cry louder than the thunder. An awe-inspiring cry dread to
listen to, against which ears are stopped by the wax of superstition and
the wax of criminal selfishness. These miseries are your doing, because
you have mind and thought and could have prevented them. You can prevent
them in the future. You do not even try.”—R. Jefferies (“The Story of My
Heart,” pp. 149 _et seq._).
_Id._... “From one philosophical point of view, that of Du Prel, the
experiments are already regarded as proving that the soul is an
organising as well as a thinking power.... Bernheim saw an apoplectic
paralysis rapidly improved by suggestion.... The more easily an idea can
be established in the subject, the quicker a therapeutic result can be
induced.... I think that hardly any of the newest discoveries are so
important to the art of healing, apart from surgery, as the study of
suggestion.... Now that it has been proved that even organic changes can
be caused by suggestion, we are obliged to ascribe a much greater
importance to mental influences than we have hitherto done.”—Dr. Albert
Moll (“Hypnotism,” pp. 122, 318, 320, 325, 327).
_Id._... “It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one who, standing
where I now stand, in what was then a thickly-peopled and fashionable
part of London, should have broached to our ancestors the doctrine which
I now propound to you—that all their hypotheses were alike wrong; that
the plague was no more, in their sense, Divine judgment, than the fire
was the work of any political, or of any religious, sect; but that they
were themselves the authors of both plague and fire, and that they must
look to themselves to prevent the recurrence of calamities, to all
appearance so peculiarly beyond the reach of human control.... We, in
later times, have learned somewhat of Nature, and partly obey her.
Because of this partial improvement of our natural knowledge and of that
fractional obedience, we have no plague; because that knowledge is still
very imperfect and that obedience yet incomplete, typhus is our
companion and cholera our visitor. But it is not presumptuous to express
the belief that, when our knowledge is more complete and our obedience
the expression of our knowledge, London will count her centuries of
freedom from typhus and cholera as she now gratefully reckons her two
hundred years of ignorance of that plague which swooped upon her thrice
in the first half of the seventeenth century.”—T. H. Huxley (“On
Improving Natural Knowledge”).
And the pestilent malady from which woman specially still suffers is as
definitely the result of man’s ignorant or thoughtless misdoing, and is
as indubitably amenable to rectification, as the plague of the bye-gone
ages, or the typhus and cholera of the present.
8.—“... _pain both prompts and points escape_.”
“All evil is associated more or less closely with pain ... and pain of
every kind is so repugnant to the human organism, that it is no sooner
felt than an effort is made to escape from it.... Alongside of the
evolution of evil there has ever been a tendency towards the
_elimination_ of evil.... The highest intellectual powers of the
greatest men have for their ultimate object the mitigation of evil, and
the final elimination of it from the earth.”—Richard Bithell (“The Creed
of a Modern Agnostic,” p. 103).
XXIX.
1.—“... _woman shall her own redemption gain_.”
In the greatest depth of their meaning remain true the words of Olive
Schreiner: “He who stands by the side of woman cannot help her; she must
help herself.”
_Id._... “Nothing is clearer than that woman must lead her own
revolution; not alone because it is hers, and that no other being can
therefore have her interest in its achievement, but because it is for a
life whose highest needs and rights—those to be redressed in its
success—lie above the level of man’s experiences or comprehension. Only
woman is sufficient to state woman’s claims and vindicate them.”—Eliza
W. Farnham (“Woman,” Vol. I., p. 308).
(See also Notes to XLVI. 7 and LVIII. 1.)
2.—“_Instructed by the sting of bootless pain_.”
“Toutes les fonctions du corps humain, sauf l’enfantement, sont autant
de plaisirs. Dès que la douleur surgit, la nature est violée. La douleur
est d’origine humaine. Un corps malade ou a violé les lois de la nature,
ou bien souffre de la violation de la loi d’un de ses semblables. La
douleur par elle-même est donc le meilleur diagnostic pour le
médecin.... Entre la loi de la nature et la violation de cette loi, il
n’y a que désordres, douleurs et ruines.... La maladie ne vient pas de
la nature, elle n’y est même pas. Elle n’est que la violation d’une des
lois de la nature. Dès qu’une de ces lois est violée, la douleur arrive
et vous dit qu’une loi vient d’être enfreinte. S’il est temps encore, le
mal peut être amoindri, expulsé, chassé.... La maladie n’est donc que le
résultat de la violation d’une loi naturelle.... La science et la
mécanique du corps humain, c’est l’art de vivre d’après les lois de la
nature, c’est la certitude que pas un médecin ne possède contre la
violation d’une de ces lois un remède autre que d’y rentrer le plus tôt
possible.... Chaque fois que l’homme s’efforcera de suivre la loi de la
nature, il chassera devant soi une centaine de maladies.”—Dr. Alexandre
Weill (“Lois et Mystères de l’Amour,” pp. 41, 91, 24, 85, 83).
3, 4.—“_With Nature ever helpful to retrieve
The injury we heedlessly achieve._”
“Thus, if we could, by preaching our pet ideal, or in any other way
induce one generation of women to turn to a new pursuit, we should have
accomplished a step towards bending all future womanhood in the same
direction.”—Frances Power Cobbe (Essay: “The Final Cause of Woman”).
See also Note XXIII., 4.
6.—“_Already guerdon rich in hope is shown_.”
“He (Mr. Frederic Harrison) says—‘All women, with few exceptions, are
subject to functional interruption absolutely incompatible with the
highest forms of continuous pressure.’ This assertion I venture most
emphatically to deny. The actual period of child-birth apart, the
ordinarily healthy woman is as fit for work every day of her life as the
ordinarily healthy man. Fresh air, exercise, suitable clothing and
nourishing food, added to the habitual temperance of women in eating and
drinking, have brought about a marvellously good result in improving
their average health.”—Mrs. Fawcett (_Fortnightly Review_, Nov. 1891).
(See also Note LX., 8.)
8.—“_The sage physician, she_ ...”
Not only “sage” physician, but “brave” physician; for brave indeed has
been the part she has had to bear against male professional prejudice
and jealousy, opposition from masculine vested interests, virulent abuse
and even personal violence. So recently as 1888, Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake
has to report concerning the medical education of women, that:—
“The first difficulty lies in some remaining jealousy and ill-will
towards medical women on the part of a section (constantly
diminishing, as I believe) of the medical profession itself. Some
twenty years ago the professional prejudice was so deep and so widely
spread that it constituted a very formidable obstacle, but it has been
steadily melting away before the logic of facts; and now is, with a
few exceptions, rarely to be found among the leaders of the
profession, nor indeed among the great majority of the rank and file,
as far as can be judged by the personal experience of medical women
themselves. Unfortunately, it seems strongest just where it has least
justification, viz., among the practitioners who devote themselves
chiefly to midwifery, and to the special diseases of women. The
Obstetrical Society is, so far as I know, still of the same mind as
when, in 1874, they excluded Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, a
distinguished M.D. of Paris, from their membership; and the Soho
Square Hospital for Women has never revoked its curt refusal to allow
me to enter its doors, when, in 1878, I proposed to take advantage of
the invitation issued in its report to all practitioners who were
specially interested in the cases for which the hospital is reserved.
Sometimes this jealousy takes a sufficiently comic form. For instance,
I received for two successive years a lithographed circular inviting
me by name to send to the _Lancet_ the reports of interesting cases
that might occur in my dispensary practice, but when I wrote in
response to this supposed offer of professional fellowship, I received
by next post a hurried assurance from the editor that it was all a
mistake, and that, in fact, the _Lancet_ could not stoop to record
medical experiences, however interesting, if they occurred in the
practice of the inferior sex! Probably it will not require many more
years to make this sort of thing ridiculous, even in the eyes of those
who are now capable of such puerilities.
“The second obstacle lies in the continued exclusion of women from the
majority of our Universities, and from the English Colleges of
Physicians and Surgeons. Here also the matter may be left to the
growth of public opinion as regards those existing bodies which do not
depend upon the public purse; but it is time that Parliament should
refuse supplies to those bodies whose sense of justice cannot be
otherwise awakened, and it is certainly the duty of Government to see
that no new charter is granted without absolute security for equal
justice to students of both sexes.”—Sophia Jex-Blake, M.D.
(_Nineteenth Century_, Nov., 1887).
See also Note LVII., 1, and LVIII, 1.
_Id._... Progress is indeed being made, surely, yet slowly, for Mrs.
Fawcett has still necessity to reiterate, four years afterwards:—
“Make her a doctor, put her through the mental discipline and the
physical toil of the profession; charge her, as doctors are so often
charged, with the health of mind and body of scores of patients, she
remains womanly to her finger tips, and a good doctor in proportion as
the truly womanly qualities in her are strongly developed. Poor women
are very quick to find this out as patients. Not only from the immediate
neighbourhood of the New Hospital for Women, where all the staff are
women doctors, but also from the far East of London do they come,
because ‘the ladies,’ as they call them, are ladies, and show their poor
patients womanly sympathy, gentleness, and patience, womanly insight and
thoughtfulness in little things, and consideration for their home
troubles and necessities. It is not too much to say that a woman can
never hope to be a good doctor unless she is truly and really a womanly
woman. And much the same thing may be said with regard to fields of
activity not yet open to women.”—Mrs. Fawcett (_Fortnightly Review_,
Nov., 1891).
_Id._—“... _saviour of her sex_.”
Bebel says:—“Women doctors would be the greatest blessing to their own
sex. The fact that women must place themselves in the hands of men in
cases of illness or of the physical disturbances connected with their
sexual functions frequently prevents their seeking medical help in time.
This gives rise to numerous evils, not only for women, but also for men.
Every doctor complains of this reserve on the part of women, which
sometimes becomes almost criminal, and of their dislike to speak freely
of their ailments, even after they have made up their minds to consult a
doctor. This is perfectly natural, the only irrational thing about it is
the refusal of men, and especially of doctors, to recognise how
legitimate the study of medicine is for women.” (“Woman,” Walther’s
translation, p. 131.)
_Id._... “As I am alluding to my own experience in this matter, I may
perhaps be allowed to say how often in the same place I have been struck
with the _contingent_ advantages attendant on the medical care by women
of women; how often I have seen cases connected with stories of shame or
sorrow to which a woman’s hand could far more fittingly minister, and
where sisterly help and counsel could give far more appropriate succour
than could be expected from the average young medical man, however good
his intentions. Perhaps we shall find the solution of some of our
saddest social problems, when educated and pure-minded women are brought
more constantly in contact with their sinning and suffering sisters, in
other relations as well as those of missionary effort.”—Dr. Sophia
Jex-Blake (Essay: “Medicine as a Profession for Women”).
XXX.
1.—“_With purer phase_ ...”
A noted specialist in this matter, Dr. Tilt, “basing his conclusions on
his own unpublished observations, and on those already made public by M.
Brierre de Boismont and Dr. Rawn,” has declared what is indeed a
generally accepted proposition, that “luxurious living and habits render
menstruation precarious, while this function is retarded by out-door
labour and less sophisticated habits.” (“Proceedings of British
Association,” 1850, p. 135; “On the Causes which Advance or Retard the
Appearance of First Menstruation in Women,” by E. J. Tilt, M.D., &c.,
&c.)
4.—“... _weakness_ ...”
It is to be carefully kept in mind that this “weakness” (Scriptural,
“sickness,” Lev. xx., 18) is strictly a pathological incident; while
maternity is truly a physiological one; the male false physicists seem
in their mental and clinical attitude to have aimed to precisely reverse
this definition. (See also Note XXIII., 8, and XXVI., 6.)
5, 6.—To the fact related in these two lines there is testimony in
nearly every book connected with the subject; and doubtless numerous
instances never come to light, owing to the very natural reticence
pointed out in Note XXIX., 8. The improved condition reported by Mrs.
Fawcett (Note XXIX., 6) is hence more readily verified by women
practitioners; and the writer has had detailed personal experiences of
perfect health and maternity being co-existent with little or no
appearance of the menses in the case of women whose names, if published,
would be indubitable guarantee for their accuracy and veracity.
7.—“_Not to neglectful man to greatly care_ ...”
The Report of the British Association for 1850, in summarising the paper
above referred to (Note 1), says of Dr. Tilt that, “in discussing what
he calls the intrinsic causes which have been supposed to influence
menstruation, his observations are rather of a suggestive character, for
he considers such causes highly problematical and requiring further
investigation.” Dr. Tilt rightly emphasises the question as “a matter
equally interesting to the physician, the philosopher, and the
statesman; and it behoves them to know that this epoch (of menstruation)
varies under the influence of causes which for the most part have been
insufficiently studied.” But the negligence or carelessness reprobated
in the verse has again supervened.
Buckle says, concerning this same paper of Dr. Tilt’s: “We take shame to
ourselves for not having sooner noticed this very interesting and in
some respects very important work; the author unknown,” (?) “and yet the
book has gone through two editions, though written on a subject
ignorantly supposed to be going on well. That women can be satisfied
with their state shows their deterioration. That they can be satisfied
with knowing nothing, &c.” (_sic._) (“Miscellaneous and Posthumous
Works,” Vol. I., p. 381.)
The whole passage seems somewhat incoherent, and is unfinished as above,
as if left by Mr. Buckle for further consideration. The last two remarks
as to women are certainly not written with his usual justice; when we
remember how assiduously men have striven to prevent woman’s pursuit of
physiological knowledge, especially as applied to her own person, it is
manifest that the blame for woman’s ignorance, or her presumed
“satisfaction” therewith, is more fittingly to be reproached to man than
to her.
XXXI.
1.—“_Her intellect alert_ ...”
“_Intellectus prelucit voluntati._”—“Intellect carries the light before
the will.”—Cardinal Manning (_Review of Reviews_, Vol. V., p. 135).
5, 6.—“... _body still is supple unto mind,
By dint of soul is fleshly form inclined_.”
Reflecting Plato’s teaching, our second worthy Elizabethan poet has
said:—
“Every spirit as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in.
For of the Soul the Body form doth take:
For Soul is form, and doth the Body make.”
And in our own day, Charles Kingsley says, in serious sportiveness: “The
one true doctrine of this wonderful fairy tale is, that your soul makes
your body, just as a snail makes its shell.” And again: “You must know
and believe that people’s souls make their bodies just as a snail makes
its shell.... I am not joking, my little man; I am in serious, solemn
earnest.”—(“The Water Babies,” Chaps. III. and IV.)
And Elizabeth Barrett Browning (“Aurora Leigh,” Book III.)—
“... the soul
Which grows within a child makes the child grow.”
The physiologists and psychologists, as is not unusual, tardily follow
in the wake of the poets. At the International Congress of Experimental
Psychology, London, 1892, “Professor Delbœuf said that at all times the
mind of man had been capable of influencing the body, but it was only in
recent times that this action had been scientifically put in
evidence.”—(_Times_, August 3rd, 1892.)
And Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin, had written the year previously,
that—“When the practical importance of mental influences becomes more
generally recognised, physicians will be obliged to acknowledge that
psychology is as important as physiology. Psychology and psychical
therapeutics will be the basis of a rational treatment of neuroses. The
other methods must group themselves around this; it will be the centre,
and no longer a sort of Cinderella of science, which now admits only the
influence of the body on the mind, and not that of the mind on the
body.”—(“Hypnotism,” p. 328.) See also Note XXVIII., 5.
XXXII.
2.—“... _woo the absent curse_.”
Even Raciborski condemns this common error of treatment:—“... quand les
jeunes filles de cette catégorie paraissent souffrantes, quel que soit
le caractère des souffrances, on est disposé à les attribuer au défaut
du flux menstruel, on le regrette, on l’invoque, et l’on tente tout pour
le provoquer. Ces idées sont aujourd’hui encore très profondément
enracinées dans le public, et sont souvent la cause des entraves au
traitement rationnel proposé par les médecins.”—(Traité, &c., ed. 1868,
p. 377.)
And Mrs. E. B. Duffey very sensibly says:—
“Nature ... is very easily perverted: and the girl who begins by
imagining she is ill or ought to be at such times will end by being
really so.” (“No Sex in Education,” Philadelphia, 1874, p. 79.)
3.—“... _counter-effort_ ...”
“Forel and many others mention that there are certain popular methods of
slightly retarding menstruation. In one town many of the young women tie
something round their little finger if they wish to delay menstruation
for a few days in order to go to a ball, &c. The method is generally
effectual, but when faith ceases, the effect also ceases.”—Dr. Albert
Moll (“Hypnotism,” p. 226).
Before quitting this special subject it may be well to remark that
little more than the fringe is here indicated of an enormous mass of
evidence which affords more than presumptive confirmation and support
for the position here taken in the whole question of this “abnormal
habit.”
4.—“... _custom_ ...”—See Note XXIV., 6.
XXXIII.
2.—“... _newer vigour to the brain_.”
“It is well-known that every organ of the body and, therefore, also the
brain, requires for its full development and, consequently, for the
development of its complete capability of performance, exercise and
persistent effort. That this is and has been the case for thousands of
years in a far less degree in woman than in man, in consequence of her
defective training and education, will be denied by no one.” So says the
learned biologist Büchner.—(“Man,” Dallas’s translation, p. 206.)
And Bebel also declares:—“The brain must be regularly used and
correspondingly nourished, like any other organ, if its faculties are to
be fully developed.”—(“Woman,” Walther’s translation, p. 124.)
Dr. Emanuel Bonavia, in the course of an able reply to a somewhat
shallow recent disquisition by Sir James Crichton Browne, says:—
“From various sources we have learnt that the brain tissue, like every
other tissue, will _grow_ by exercise, and diminish, or degenerate and
atrophy by disuse. Keep your right arm tied up in a sling for a month,
and you will then be convinced how much it has lost by disuse. Then
anatomists might perhaps be able to say—Lo! and behold! the muscles of
your right arm have a less specific gravity than those of your left arm;
that the nerves and blood-vessels going to those muscles are smaller,
and that, _therefore_, the right arm cannot be the equal of the left,
and must have a different function!
“Any medical student knows that if you tie the main trunk of an artery,
a branch of it will in due course acquire the _calibre_ of the main
trunk. If, for some reason, it cannot do so, the tissues, which the main
trunk originally supplied, _must_ suffer, and be weakened, from want of
a sufficient supply of blood.... Man, and especially British man, has
evolved into what he is by endless trouble and struggle through past
ages. He has had to develop his present brain from very small
beginnings. It would, therefore, now be the height of folly to allow the
thinking lobes of the mothers of the race to revert, intellectually, by
disuse step by step again to that of the lower animals, from which we
all come. That of course many may not believe, but it may be asked, how
can he or she believe these things with such weakened lobes, as he or
she may have inherited from his or her mother? How indeed! If there is
anything in nature that is true, it is this—That if you don’t use your
limbs they will atrophy; if you don’t use your eyes they will atrophy;
if you don’t use your brain it will atrophy. They all follow the same
inexorable law. Use increases and sharpens; disuse decreases and dulls.
Diminished size of the frontal lobes and of the arteries that feed them
mean nothing if they do not mean that woman’s main thinking organ, that
of the intellect, is, as Sir James would hint, degenerating by _disuse_
and neglect.”—(“Woman’s Frontal Lobes,” _Provincial Medical Journal_,
July, 1892.)
These facts suggest strongly that the waste at present induced in the
female body by the menstrual habit might well be absorbed in increase of
brain power; and indeed, that this evolved habit has hitherto
persistently sequestrated and carried off from woman’s organism the
blood force that should have gone to form brain power. This explanation
would dispose of the awkwardly imagined “plethora” theory, as well as
one or two others, of sundry gynæcologists.
And the converse—that the increased appropriation of the blood in
forming brain power induces a state of bodily well-being, free from the
present waste and weariness,—would certainly seem to be borne out by
such evidence as that of the Hon. John W. Mitchell, the president of the
Southern California College of Law, who said in a recent lecture:—
“Not only in this, but in other countries, there are successful women
practitioners (of Law), and in France, where the preparatory course is
most arduous, and the term of study longest, a woman recently took the
highest rank over 500 men in her graduating examinations, and during the
whole six years of class study she only lost one day from her work.”
(See Note LVII., 1.)
A few words may here be said as to the dubitable question of the
relative size of the brain in man and woman, though the matter may not
be of great import, from more than one reason. For, as Bebel observes:
“Altogether the investigations on the subject are too recent and too few
in number to allow of any definite conclusions” (p. 123). A. Dumas fils
says (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” p. 196)—“Les philosophes vous démontreront
que, si la force musculaire de l’homme est plus grande que celle de la
femme, la force nerveuse de la femme est plus grande que celle de
l’homme; que, si l’intelligence tient, comme on l’affirme aujourd’hui,
au développement et au poids de la matière cérébrale, l’intelligence de
la femme pourrait être déclarée supérieure à celle de l’homme, le plus
grand cerveau et le plus lourd comme poids, étant un cerveau de femme
lequel pesait 2,200 grammes, c’est a dire 400 grammes de plus que celui
de Cuvier. On ne dit pas, il est vrai, que cette femme ait écrit
l’équivalent du livre de Cuvier sur les fossiles.”
To which last remark may be replied, again in the words of
Bebel,—“Darwin is perfectly right in saying that a list of the most
distinguished women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, science, and
philosophy, will bear no comparison with a similar list of the most
distinguished men. But surely this need not surprise us. It would be
surprising if it were not so. Dr. Dodel-Port (in “Die neuere
Schöpfungsgeschichte”) answers to the point, when he maintains that the
relative achievements would be very different after men and women had
received the same education and the same training in art and science
during a certain number of generations.”—(“Woman,” p. 125.)
“It is of small value to say—yes, but look how _many_ men excel and how
few women do so. True, but see how much repression men have exercised to
_prevent_ women from even equalling them, and how much shallowness of
mind they have encouraged. All manner of obstructions, coupled with
ridicule, have been put in their way, and until women succeed in
emancipating themselves, most men will probably continue to do so,
simply because they have the power to do it. When women become
emancipated, that is, are placed on social equality with men, this
senseless, mischievous opposition will die a natural death.”—E. Bonavia,
M.D. (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).
To revert to the question of brain weight, one of the first of English
specialists says:—
“Data might, therefore, be considered to show, in the strongest manner,
how comparatively unimportant is mere bulk or weight of brain in
reference to the degree of intelligence of its owner, when considered as
it often is, apart from the much more important question of the relative
amount of its grey matter, as well as of the amount and perfection of
the minute internal development of the organ either actual or
possible.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 375.)
The American physiologist Helen H. Gardener states:—“The differences (in
brain) between individuals of the same sex—in adults at least, are known
to be much more marked than any that are known to exist between the
sexes. Take the brains of the two poets Byron and Dante. Byron’s weighed
1,807 grammes, while Dante’s weighed only 1,320 grammes, a difference of
487 grammes. Or take two statesmen, Cromwell and Gambetta. Cromwell’s
brain weighed 2,210 grammes, which, by the way, is the greatest healthy
brain on record; although Cuvier’s is usually quoted as the largest, a
part of the weight of his was due to disease, and if a diseased or
abnormal brain is to be taken as the standard, then the greatest on
record is that of a negro criminal idiot; while Gambetta’s was only
1,241 grammes, a difference of 969 grammes. Surely it will not be held
because of this that Gambetta and Dante should have been denied the
educational and other advantages which were the natural right of Byron
and Cromwell. Yet it is upon this very ground, by this very system of
reasoning, that it is proposed to deny women equal advantages and
opportunities, although the difference in brain weight between man and
woman is said to be only 100 grammes, and even this does not allow for
difference in body weight, and is based upon a system of averages, which
is neither complete nor accurate.”—(Report of the International Council
of Women, Washington, 1888, p. 378.)
Concerning an assertion that “the specific gravity of both the white and
grey matter of the brain is greater in man than in woman,” Helen H.
Gardener says:—“Of this point this is what the leading brain anatomist
in America (Dr. E. C. Spitzka) wrote: ‘The only article recognised by
the profession as important and of recent date, which takes this theory
as a working basis, is by Morselli, and he is compelled to make the
sinister admission, while asserting that the specific gravity is less in
the female, that with old age and with insanity the specific gravity
increases.’ If this is the case I do not know that women need sigh over
their shortcoming in the item of specific gravity. There appear to be
two very simple methods open to them by which they may emulate their
brothers in the matter of specific gravity, if they so desire. One of
these is certain, if they live long enough; and the other—well, there is
no protective tariff on insanity.”—(_Loc. cit._, p. 379.)
Helen Gardener further appositely observes:—“The brain of no remarkable
woman has ever been examined. Woman is ticketed to fit the hospital
subjects and tramps, the unfortunates whose brains fall into the hands
of the profession as it were by mere accident, while man is represented
by the brains of the Cromwells, Cuviers, Byrons, and Spurzheims. By this
method the average of men’s brains is carried to its highest level in
the matter of weight and texture; while that of women is kept at its
lowest, and even then there is only claimed 100 grammes’
difference!”—(_Loc. cit._, p. 380.)
And she concludes her exhaustive paper with the closing paragraph of a
letter to herself from Dr. E. C. Spitzka, the celebrated New York brain
specialist:—“You may hold me responsible for the following declaration:
That any statement to the effect that an observer can tell by looking at
a brain, or examining it microscopically, whether it belonged to a
female or a male subject, is not founded on carefully-observed facts....
No such difference has ever been demonstrated, nor do I think it will be
by more elaborate methods than we now possess. Numerous female brains
exceed numerous male brains in absolute weight, in complexity of
convolutions, and in what brain anatomists would call the nobler
proportions. So that he who takes these as his criteria of the male
brain may be grievously mistaken in attempting to assert the sex of a
brain dogmatically. If I had one hundred female brains and one hundred
male brains together, I should select the one hundred containing the
largest and best-developed brains as probably containing fewer female
brains than the remaining one hundred. More than this no cautious
experienced brain anatomist would venture to declare.”—(_Loc. cit._, p.
381.)
Charles Darwin has clearly summarised this question of comparison of
brain:—“No one, I presume, doubts that the large size of the brain in
man, relatively to his body, in comparison with that of the gorilla or
orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers.... On the
other hand, no one supposes that the intellect of any two animals or of
any two men can be accurately gauged by the cubic contents of their
skulls. It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity
with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter; thus the
wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants
are generally known, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the
quarter of a small pin’s head. Under this latter point of view the brain
of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world,
perhaps more marvellous than the brain of man.”—(“The Descent of Man,”
Chap. IV.)
3.—“_Wide shall she roam_ ...”
John Ruskin says, of training a girl:—“Let her loose in the library, I
say, as you do a fawn in a field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times
better than you, and the good ones too; and will eat some bitter and
prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest thought were
good.”—(“Sesame and Lilies,” p. 167.)
6.—“... _murmurings_ ...”
“Man thinks that his wife belongs to him like his domesticated animals,
and he keeps her therefore in slavery. There are few, however, who wear
their shackles without feeling their weight, and not a few who resent
it. Madame Roland says: ‘Quand vous parlez en maître, vous faites penser
aussitôt qu’on peut vous résister, et faire plus peut être, tel fort que
vous soyez. L’invulnerable Achille ne l’était pas partout.’”—Alexander
Walker, M.D. (“Woman as to Mind, &c.,” p. 353).
“Why do women not discover, when ‘in the noon of beauty’s power,’ that
they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect, till
they are led to resign, or not assume, their natural prerogatives?
Confined then in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do
but to plume themselves and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch.
It is true they are provided with food and raiment, for which they
neither toil nor spin, but health liberty, and virtue are given in
exchange.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (“Vindication of the Rights of Woman,”
Chap. IV.). See also Note XL., 5.
“What have they (men) hitherto offered us in marriage, with a great show
of generosity and a flourish of trumpets, but the dregs of a life, and
the leavings of a dozen other women? Experience has at last taught us
what to expect and how to meet them.”—Lady Violet Greville (_National
Review_, May, 1892).
See also Note XX., 2.
8.—“_Lest that her soul should rise_ ...”
“Laboulaye distinctly advises his readers to keep women in a state of
moderate ignorance, for ‘notre empire est détruit, si l’homme est
reconnu’ (Our empire is at an end when man is found out).”—(Note to
Bebel, Walther’s translation, p. 73.)
_Id._—“... _break his timeworn yoke_.”
As already shown, the subjugation of woman has not been an incident of
Western “civilisation” alone. Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham relates that “When a
Chinese Mandarin in California was told that the women of America were
nearly all taught to read and write, and that a majority of them were
able to keep books for their husbands, if they chose to do so, he shook
his head thoughtfully, and, with a foreboding sigh, replied, ‘If he
readee, writee, by’n-by he lickee all the men.’ Was that a barbarian
sentiment, or rather, perhaps, a presentiment of the higher sovereignty
coming?”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 41.)
XXXIV.
5.—“... _his servitude_ ...”
“Villeins were not protected by Magna Charta. “_Nullus liber homo
capiatur vel imprisonetur_,” &c., was cautiously expressed to exclude
the poor villein, for, as Lord Coke tells us, the lord may beat his
villein, and, if it be without cause, he cannot have any remedy. What a
degraded condition for a being endued with reason!”—Edward Christian
(“Note to Blackstone’s Commentaries,” Book II., Chap. VI.)
Mr. Christian’s exclamation of concern is doubtless meant to apply to
the serf, yet was not the lord’s position equally despicable?
6.—“... _in turn was master to a slave_.”
This was, in fact, simply extending the spirit of the feudal system
(with its serfdom as just pictured), a little further. Buckle
exemplifies in ancient French society the servility descending from
one grade to another in man:—“By virtue of which each class exercising
great power over the one below it, the subordination and subserviency
of the whole were completely maintained.... This, indeed, is but part
of the old scheme to create distinctions for which Nature has given no
warrant, to substitute a superiority which is conventional for that
which is real, and thus try to raise little minds above the level of
great ones. The utter failure, and, as society advances, the eventual
cessation of all such attempts is certain.” But, meanwhile, evil
accompaniments are apparent, as Buckle further instances by saying:
“Le Vassor, who wrote late in the reign of Louis XIV., bitterly says:
‘Les Français accoutumés à l’esclavage, ne sentent plus la pesanteur
de leurs chaînes.’”—(“History of Civilisation in England,” Vol. II,
Chaps III., IV.)
That the foregoing habits or foibles are human rather than simply
masculine, or that the imitation of them very naturally spreads to the
other sex, would seem to be shown by such evidence as Letourneau gives:—
“In primitive countries the married woman—that is to say, the woman
belonging to a man—has herself the conscience of being a thing, a
property (it is proved to her often and severely enough), but she does
not think of retaliating, especially in what concerns the conjugal
relations. Moreover, as her condition is oftenest that of a slave
overburdened with work, not only does she not resent the introduction of
other women in the house of the master, but she desires it, for the work
will be so much the less for herself. Thus among the Zulus the wife
first purchased strives and works with ardour in the hope of furnishing
her husband with means to acquire a second wife, a companion in misery
over whom, by right of seniority, she will have the upper hand.”—(“The
Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. VIII.)
Yet, in point of fact, this is not woman seeking to establish her own
dominion, but rather to secure somewhat more of freedom for herself. As
Alexandre Dumas fils tells us, concerning the Mormon women:—
“Non seulement elles donnent leur consentement à leurs maris, quand ils
le leur demandent pour un nouveau mariage, mais elles sont quelquefois
les premières à leur proposer une nouvelle femme qui a, disent-elles,
des qualités nécessaires à la communauté, en réalité pour augmenter un
peu la possession d’elles-mêmes, c’est-à-dire leur liberté.”—(“Les
Femmes qui Tuent,” &c., p. 169.)
8.—“... _vassalage to man_.”
The Laureate Rowe makes his heroine bitterly but with reason exclaim:—
“How hard is the condition of our sex,
Through every state of life the slaves of man!
In all the dear delightful days of youth,
A rigid father dictates to our wills,
And deals out pleasure with a scanty hand:
To his, the tyrant husband’s reign succeeds;
Proud with opinions of superior reason,
He holds domestic business and devotion
All we are capable to know, and shuts us,
Like cloistered idiots, from the world’s acquaintance
And all the joys of freedom. Wherefore are we
Born with high souls, but to assert ourselves,
Shake off this vile obedience they exact,
And claim an equal empire o’er the world?”
—(“The Fair Penitent,” Act III. sc. i.)
Letourneau shows the state of feminine tutelage carried still further:
“We shall find that in many civilisations relatively advanced, widowhood
even does not gratify the woman with a liberty of which she is never
thought worthy.” And later on he quotes from the code of Manu, Book
V.:—“A little girl, a young woman, and an old woman ought never to do
anything of their own will, even in their own house.... During her
childhood a woman depends on her father; during her youth on her
husband; her husband being dead, on her sons; if she has no sons, on the
near relatives of her husband; or in default of them, on those of her
father; if she has no paternal relatives, on the Sovereign. A woman
ought never to have her own way.”—(“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chaps.
VII., XII.)
Can a man be esteemed a human or even a rational being, who would accept
or tolerate such terms for the life of his sister woman—the mother of
the generations to come?
See also Note XVII., 8.
XXXV.
1, 2.—“... _fearing that the slave herself might guess
The knavery of her forced enchainedness_.”
“Here I believe is the clue to the feeling of those men who have a real
antipathy to the equal freedom of women. I believe they are afraid, not
lest women should be unwilling to marry ... but lest they should insist
that marriage should be on equal conditions; but all women of spirit and
capacity should prefer doing almost anything else, not in their own eyes
degrading, rather than marry, when marrying is giving themselves a
master, and a master too of all their earthly possessions. And truly, if
this consequence were necessarily incident to marriage, I think that the
apprehension would be very well founded.”—J S. Mill (“The Subjection of
Women,” p. 51).
See also Note XL., 4.
5.—“... _dogmas_ ...”
These dogmas which, under the guise of religion, were imposed on the
acceptance of womanhood, may be aptly summarised and epitomised in the
following lines from one of the hierarchs of the system:—
“To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorn’d:
‘My author and disposer, what thou bidd’st
Unargued I obey: so God ordains;
God is thy law, thou mine; to know no more
Is woman’s happiest knowledge, and her praise.’”
—(“Paradise Lost,” Book IV., 634.)
Concerning which words of Milton well may Mary Wollstonecraft observe,
with a quiet sarcasm:—“If it be allowed that women were destined by
Providence to acquire human virtues, and, by the exercise of their
understandings, that stability of character which is the firmest ground
to rest our future hopes upon, they must be permitted to turn to the
fountain of light, and not forced to shape their course by the twinkling
of a satellite.”—(“Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” Chap. II.)
Milton also discoursed learnedly, but self-interestedly, concerning
divorce, claiming for the husband a privilege and option which he
utterly denied to the wife:—“... the power and arbitrement of divorce
from the master of the family, into whose hands God and the law of all
nations had put it ... that right which God from the beginning had
entrusted to the husband.”—(“The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.”)
It was this same mediæval moralist who trained his daughters in the
pronunciation of various languages, that they might minister to his
comfort by reading to him in those tongues; while he carefully withheld
from them any knowledge of the meaning of the words they were uttering.
Could a greater insult or a more degrading office be inflicted on a
cultured human intellect? Small wonder that his daughters were
sufficiently “undutiful and unkind”—as Milton styled it—to leave him
some years before his death. That the possessor of the same virile
intellect which penned the “Areopagitica,” with its brave freedom, could
tolerate and promulgate the servitude and degradation of one half of
humanity indicates in him a mental darkness as gross and as pitiable as
his physical blindness.
6, 7.—“... _sanctimonious name
Of ‘woman’s duty’_ ...”
“Hitherto the world has been governed by brute force only, which means
that the stronger animal, man, has kept the weaker in subjection,
allowing her to live only in so far as she ministered to his comforts;
that he has not unnaturally made laws and fixed customs to suit his own
pleasure and convenience, always at the expense of the woman; and, what
is worse, that he has in all countries given a religious sanction to his
vices, in order to bend the woman to his wishes.... I might also add
that all cruel customs relating to woman have been imposed upon her
under the guise of religion, and hence, though so injurious and baneful
to herself, she is even slower to change them than the man. There is
hardly any cruel wrong which has been inflicted in the course of ages by
man upon his fellow-man that has not been justified by an appeal to
religion.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (“Address to the Hindoos of
Bombay”).
_Id._... “There is nothing which men so easily learn as this
self-worship: all privileged persons, and all privileged classes, have
had it.... Philosophy and religion, instead of keeping it in check, are
generally suborned to defend it.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,”
p. 77).
_Id._... A. Dumas fils speaks of “les femmes, ces éternelles mineures
des religions et des codes;” and of “les arguments à l’aide desquels
l’Eglise veut mettre les femmes de son côté”; and shows as the effect
that “Il y a des femmes honnêtes, esclaves du devoir, pieuses. Leur
religion leur a enseigné le sacrifice. Non seulement elles ne se
plaignent pas des épreuves à traverser mais elles les appellent pour
mériter encore plus la récompense promise, et elles les bénissent quand
elles viennent. Tout arrive, pour elles, par la volonté de Dieu, et tout
est comme il doit être dans cette vallée des larmes, chemin de
l’éternité bienheureuse.... D’ailleurs elles ne lisent ni les journaux,
ni les livres où il est question de ces choses-là; cette lecture leur
est interdite. Si, par hasard, elles avaient connaissance de pareilles
idées, ... elles en rougiraient, elles en souffriraient pour leur sexe,
et elles prieraient pour celles qui se laissent aller à propager de si
dangereuses erreurs et à donner de si déplorables exemples.... Mais, pas
plus que le bonheur, la ruse, l’ignorance, la misère et la servitude, la
foi aveugle, l’extase, et l’immobilité volontaire de l’esprit ne sont
des arguments sans réplique.”—(“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” &c., pp. 10, 91,
103.)
The evil which Dumas points out is common to all religions, of whatever
race or make; the hall-mark of every creed, from Confucianism to
Comtism, has been the subjection of woman, under the affectation of
advocating her highest interests. The pious compound has usually been
altered to meet the growing intellectual requirements of common-sense
and justice and humanity, and hence the precepts of religion as to
feminine conduct have by no means always lain in such lines as the
multitude in our modern Western civilisation still enjoins on women. No
more than the whole and universal attitude of religion, ancient or
modern, as regards woman, is exposed or expressed in the following
recapitulation of present or historic facts:—“It is not the chastity of
women, as we understand it, but her subjection, that Japanese morality
requires. The woman is a thing possessed, and her immorality consists
simply in disposing freely of herself.
“As regards prostitution, Brahmanic India is scarcely more scrupulous
than Japan, and there again we find religious prostitution practised in
the temples, analogous to that which in ancient Greece was practised at
Cyprus, Corinth, Miletus, Tenedos, Lesbos, Abydos, &c. (Lecky, ‘History
of European Morals,’ Vol. I., p. 103). According to the legend, the
Buddha himself, Sakyamouni, when visiting the famous Indian town of
Vasali, was received there by the great mistress of the courtesans.
(Mrs. Spier, ‘Life in Ancient India,’ p. 28).”—Letourneau (“The
Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. X.).
The enforcement, or commendation, or acceptance of the practice of
prostitution, with its profanation of the dignity and individuality of
woman, and its utter carelessness and disregard for either her physical
or intellectual well-being, is indubitable evidence of the man-made
(_i.e._, male) origin of such a scheme of religion or ethics or
economics. For, as Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham truly remarks:—“If a doubt yet
remains on the mind of any reader that I have stated truly the part of
the masculine as cause in this terrible phenomenon, let it be considered
how man has always introduced prostitution in every country that he has
visited, and every island of the sea. Does anyone believe, for example,
that if the voyages of discovery and trade had been made by women
instead of men, to the islands of the Pacific, this scourge would have
been left as the testimony of their visit, so that, in a few
generations, the populations native there would have fallen a literal
sacrifice to their sensuality, as they are actually falling to man’s at
this day? There is no comment needed on the illustration, I am sure. The
common sense of every reader will furnish the best comment and answer
the question correctly.”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 299.)
_Id._... Lastly, but most convincingly, as to the wilful and intentional
degradation and subjugation of woman by the teaching and rites of
religion, let it be noted that, among the Jews, the very fact of being a
woman is made a disgrace; and woman, the mother of the human race, is
insulted accordingly. In the morning synagogue service of prayer,
directly after unitedly blessing “Adonai,” for bestowing on the
barn-door fowl the power to distinguish between night and day, and for
not having created the worshippers present heathens or slaves, each
member of the male portion of the congregation thanks the same Adonai
“that Thou hast not fashioned me as a woman,” while each member of the
segregated female portion of the company is instructed to submissively
give thanks “that Thou hast fashioned me after Thine own pleasure.” The
male thanks for not being heathens seem, under the circumstances,
conspicuously premature.—(See “Ohel Jakob,” _i.e._, “Jacob’s Temple,”
the “Daily Prayer of the Israelites,” Fraenkel’s ed., Berlin.)
That the spirit of this Mosaic or Hebrew sexual teaching, with its
incongruous assertions and inferences, has communicated itself deeply to
Christianity, may be observed from such passages as 1 Tim. ii. 13, 14; 1
Cor. vii., 9; Eph. v. 24; Col. iii. 18; 1 Pet. iii. 1, 5; and many
others.
_Id._... Buckle quotes from “Fergusson on the Epistles,” 1656, p.
242:—“The great and main duty which a wife, as a wife, ought to learn,
and so learn as to practice it, is to be subject to her own husband.”
(See also Note XVII., 8.) And Buckle further cites, from “Fox’s
Journal,” “After the middle of the seventeenth century the Quakers set
up ‘women’s’ meetings, to the disgust of many, and (query, because) in
the teeth of St. Paul’s opinion.”—(“Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works,”
Vol. I., pp. 375, 384.)
_Id._... As already said, the “sanctimonious” claim of “woman’s duty”
runs through all religions. Here, for instance, is what is reported in a
leader of the _Manchester Guardian_ of August 15th, 1892:—
“In this country no one would place suicide in the ranks of the
virtues. Here it is a crime, but in China under certain circumstances
it is regarded as an act of heroism and devotion worthy of sympathy
and of national recognition. Thus the Governor of Shansi forwarded to
the Emperor of China a memorial setting forth the virtues as daughter
and wife of a lady in that province. She was of good family, both her
father and grandfather having been officials in the district. At the
age of ten she showed her love for her mother in a peculiarly Chinese
fashion. One of the Celestial beliefs is that medicine acquires
efficacy by having mingled with it some human flesh, and the little
girl cut some from her own body to be used for the purpose of curing
an illness which threatened her mother’s life. In 1890 she was married
to an ‘expectant magistrate,’ whose expectations were realised by his
appointment last autumn to a judicial post. What she had, as a good
daughter, done for her mother, she, as a good wife, did also for her
husband, who fell ill; but her remedy was inefficacious, and he died.
She was now in a position which, according to the Chinese code of
ethics, has no responsibilities for a woman. Without parents, husband,
or children to demand her affectionate care, she decided to commit
suicide, and apparently not only communicated her intentions to those
around her, but had their sympathy and support in her decision. We are
told that, “only waiting till she had completed the arrangements for
her husband’s interment, she swallowed gold and powder of lead. She
handed her _trousseau_ to her relations to defray her funeral
expenses, and made presents to the younger members of the family and
the servants, after which, draped in her state robes, she sat waiting
her end. The poison began to work, and soon all was over.” The story
of a distracted wife seeking refuge in death from the sorrows of
widowhood might doubtless be told of any country in Europe, but the
sequel is possible only in China. The Governor of Shansi, struck with
the courage of the lady in what he evidently regards as a very proper
though somewhat unusual exhibition of conjugal affection, asks in his
memorial that the virtuous life and death of the lady may be duly
commemorated. The prayer of the memorial has been granted by the
Emperor and a memorial arch is to be erected in honour of the
suicide.”
8.—“... _this reasoned day_ ...”
See Note XVII., 8.
XXXVI.
1.—“_By cant condoned_ ...”
“Much has been said by Guizot on the influence of women in developing
European civilisation. It is at least certain that several of the
fathers did everything they could to diminish that influence. Tertullian
bitterly complains of the insolence of women who venture to teach and to
baptise. He allows that in case of necessity baptism may be administered
by a layman, but never by a woman. Again, among the other crimes of the
heretics he particularly enumerates the insolence of their women, who
ventured to teach, to dispute, &c., &c. In ‘De Cult. Faem,’ lib. I. Cap.
I., he says: ‘Let women remember that they are of the sex of Eve, who
ruined mankind, and let them therefore repair this ignominy by living
rather in dust than in splendour.’”—Buckle (“Common-Place Book,” Note
1870).
_Id._—“... _man fashioned woman’s ‘sphere_.’”
“We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another
portion, or any individual for another individual, what is, and what is
not, ‘their proper sphere.’ The proper sphere for all human beings is
the largest and highest which they are able to attain to. What this is,
cannot be ascertained without complete liberty of choice.”—Mrs. Harriet
Mill (“Enfranchisement of Women,” _Westminster Review_, July 1851).
6.—“... _civil law_ ...”
For example of this let us look at the law of our own country in even
recent times. Blackstone says:—“The husband (by the old law) might give
his wife moderate correction.... But this power of correction was
confined within reasonable bounds, and the husband was prohibited from
using any violence to his wife, _aliter quam ad virum ex causa regiminis
et castigationis uxoris suæ licite et rationabiliter pertinet_ (_i.e._,
otherwise than to a man for the ruling and punishment of his wife,
lawfully and reasonably pertains). The civil law gave the husband the
same or a larger authority over his wife, allowing him for some
misdemeanours, _flagellis et fustibus acriter verberare uxorem_ (_i.e._,
to severely beat his wife with whips and cudgels), for others, only
_modicam castigationem adhibere_ (to administer a moderate
chastisement). But with us, in the politer reign of Charles the Second,
this power of correction began to be doubted, and a wife may now
(_circ._ 1750) have security of peace against her husband; or in return,
a husband against his wife. Yet the lower rank of people, who were
always fond of the old common law,” (query, were the women fond of it?)
“still claim and exert their ancient privilege: and the courts of law
will still permit a husband to restrain a wife of her liberty in case of
any gross misbehaviour.” (“Commentaries,” Edward Christian’s Ed., Book
I., Chap. XV.)
Such was undoubtedly the generally accepted and not infrequently acted
upon assumption; and it is certain that the Courts of Law would, in the
event of a wife absenting herself from her husband, order her return to
his custody; and would, and did imprison her in default of her
compliance. And this state of things continued until—as Mrs.
Wolstenholme Elmy records in her history of the celebrated “Clitheroe
case”—
“At length, in the year 1891, and, as in the case of the negro
Somerset, upon the return to a writ of _habeas corpus_, there have
been found judges bold enough and just enough to set aside the ancient
saws and maxims, resting mainly upon _obiter dicta_ and loose phrases
of previous judges used in reference to hypothetical cases never
actually before the Courts, and to declare plainly and straightly that
the personal slavery of the wife is no part of the law of England. The
actual words of the Lord Chancellor in dealing with the return to the
writ are, as reported by the _Times_, March 20th, 1891, as follows:—
“After stating the circumstances of the marriage, the decree, and the
refusal of the wife to cohabit, it states: ‘I therefore took my wife,
and have since detained her in my house, using no more force or
restraint than necessary to take her and keep her.’ That is the return
which seeks to justify an admitted imprisonment of this lady. I do not
know that I am able to express in sufficiently precise language the
difference between ‘confinement’ and ‘imprisonment,’ but if there is
any distinction, I can only say that upon these facts I should find an
imprisonment, and looking at the return it is put as a broad
proposition that the right of the husband, where there has been a
wilful absenting of herself by the wife from her husband’s house—that
it is his right to seize possession of his wife by force, and detain
her in his house until she renders him conjugal rights. That is the
proposition of law involved in the return, and I am not prepared to
assent to it. The Legislature has expressly deprived the Matrimonial
Court of the power of imprisoning the wife for refusal to comply with
a decree for restitution of conjugal rights, and the result of such a
system of law, if the husband had the power, would be that whereas the
Court had no power to hand the wife over into her husband’s hands, but
only to punish her for contempt by imprisonment under the control of
the Court, and without any circumstances of injury or insult, and even
that power was taken away, the husband might himself of his own motion
seize and imprison her until she consented to the restitution of
conjugal rights. That is the proposition I am called upon to establish
by holding this return to be good. _I am of opinion that no such right
or power exists in law. I am of opinion that no such right ever did
exist in our law._ Whatever authorities may be quoted for any such
proposition, it has always been subject to this condition: that where
she has a complaint of, or is apprehensive of, ill-usage, the Court
will never interfere to compel her to return to her husband’s custody.
Now this brings me to the particular circumstances of this
transaction. I am prepared to say that no English subject has a right
to imprison another English subject (who is _sui juris_, and entitled
to a judgment of his or her own) without any lawful authority, but if
there were any qualification of that proposition I should be of
opinion that on the facts of this case it would afford an ample
justification to any Court for refusing to allow the husband in this
case to retain the custody of his wife.
“On these and other grounds the Lord Chancellor declared that the
return of the writ was bad, and ordered that the lady be restored to
her liberty, the other judges concurring.”—(“The Decision in the
Clitheroe Case and its Consequences,” pp. 3, 4.)
Lord Esher was one of the two other Judges, both concurring, who formed
the Court of Appeal which granted the writ, and a few days subsequently
he gave from his place in the House of Lords the following further
statement of his judgment and views:—
“As I was a party to the judgment, which seems to have been more
misunderstood than any judgment I recollect, I, perhaps, may be
excused from making an observation. It was urged before the Court of
Appeal that by the law of England a husband may beat his wife with a
stick if she refuses to obey him, and that if a wife refused her
husband conjugal rights, whatever that phrase may mean, which I have
never been able to make out, he may imprison her until she restores
him conjugal rights, or satisfies him that she will. All that the
Court of Appeal decided was that a husband cannot by the law of
England, if the wife objects, lawfully do either of those things.
Those intelligent people who have declared that the judgment is wrong
must be prepared to maintain the converse—namely, that if a wife
disobeys her husband he may lawfully beat her; and if she refuses him
a restitution of conjugal rights he may imprison her, it was urged, in
the cellar, or in the cupboard, or, if the house is large, in the
house, by locking her in it and blocking the windows. I thought, and
still think, that the law does not allow these things....”—(The
_Times_, 17th April, 1891.)
Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy further tells us that:—
“To Lord Selborne the married women of this country owe a further debt
of gratitude for his introduction in 1884 of the Matrimonial Causes
Act of that session, which put an end to the punishment by
imprisonment of the husband or wife who refused to obey the decree of
the Court for restitution of conjugal rights. The arguments of Mr.
Lankester and Mr. Finlay in the Clitheroe case, based upon this
abolition of the power of the Court to imprison for disobedience, are
known to everyone. It would be destructive not only to personal
freedom, but a gross infraction of justice and common-sense, were a
husband to be permitted to exercise on his own behalf and at his own
pleasure a prerogative of punishment which had been withdrawn from the
Court.
“That this power of imprisonment was not a mere _brutum fulmen_, but a
terrible reality in former days, may be learned from a Suffolk case,
early in the present century. A wife in contempt of court, a lady of
good family in Suffolk, was imprisoned in Ipswich goal for disobeying
a decree requiring her to render conjugal rights to her husband. At
the end of a year and ten months she became in want of the common
necessaries of life, and was reduced to the gaol allowance of bread
and water; she suffered from rheumatism and other maladies, which were
aggravated by the miseries of her imprisonment; and after many years
of such suffering died in prison—for she never went back to her
husband.”—(“The Decision in the Clitheroe Case and its Consequences,”
p. 9.)
But while the law has thus been needfully amended in England, a further
evil effect has meantime supervened in our dependency of India; for this
faculty of imprisonment by the Courts for non-compliance with their
order in the event specified, which has been abolished in England, seems
to be still existent and appealed to in our Indian Courts. (See Note
XXII., 2.) The strange thing is that the suit for the restitution of
conjugal rights is not a matter of native law, but an inadvertent and
apparently entirely unintentional introduction from our English system;
the very judges who administer the Indian Law being at a loss to account
for its appearance in their practice. One authority, in seeking the
solution of the problem, declares that—“Mr. —— ‘could not find any
enactment directly establishing suits for the restitution of conjugal
rights, and believed there were none; but that they had been recognised
in a Stamp Act, and again in the Limitation of Suits Act passed in
1871.’ The material point is that Indian lawgivers have not consciously
given this remedy to those who did not possess it before; but that it
has slipped into our law without design. Mr. —— thinks ‘That this class
of suits was known in the old Supreme Courts, in the Presidency towns,
and as between Europeans; and it was not an improper subject of
legislation as regards Stamp Duty or Limitation by Time: but being
spoken of without qualification was held by the High Courts to be
available for all classes of the Indian communities.’ If this theory be
true, it accounts in an easy way for a change effected without any
intention of the Rulers at all. It is worth enquiry into under this
aspect.” Yes, enquiry and rectification hand in hand!
_Id._—“... _and part divine_.”
The fact has been that male lawgivers, in whatever land, have generally
asserted for their code of feminine ethics or conduct a divine origin,
and have announced the punishment for breach thereof as a divine
injunction. In very few instances, indeed, was there any attempt to
decree an equal punishment to the male who was partner with the female
in a mutual breach of this morality, and very frequently no punishment
of the male attached at all; and even in the few cases where such a
punishment was nominally threatened, the man’s share in the offence was
most generally connived at, and passed unpunished. This double code of
morality has a flagrant exemplification in the English Law of Divorce,
by which, while a man can procure a Decree of Divorce on the simple
ground of the adultery of his wife, a woman cannot obtain a like decree
for her husband’s adultery unless that offence be accompanied by such
treatment of herself as the Court will recognise as “cruelty,” or with
“desertion.” The double scheme of sexual morality, so revoltingly
tolerated, in so far as man is concerned, by “society” in the present
day is too patent to need further words here. And the repulsive cant is
still that, while the man is allowed to go free, the punishment of the
woman is due and commendable as in accordance with “divine law.” (See
Note XIV., 3.)
XXXVII.
3, 4.—“... _lowest boor is lordly ‘baron’ styled,
And highest bride as common ‘feme’ reviled_.”
“... husband and wife; or, as most of our elder law books call them,
‘baron’ and ‘feme.’”—(Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” Bk. I. Chap. 15.)
But the context of the words “baron” and “feme” involved something more
than a mere _façon de parler_ of the law books. Edward Christian says,
in Note 23 to the Chapter in “Blackstone” above quoted:—“Husband and
wife, in the language of the law, are styled _baron_ and _feme_; the
word baron, or lord, attributes to the husband not a very courteous
superiority. But we might be inclined to think this merely an unmeaning
technical phrase, if we did not recollect, that if the baron kills his
feme it is the same as if he had killed a stranger or any other person;
but if the feme kills her baron it is regarded by the laws as a much
more atrocious crime, as she not only breaks through the restraints of
humanity and conjugal affection, but throws off all subjection to the
authority of her husband. And, therefore, the law denominates her crime
a species of treason, and condemns her to the same punishment as if she
had killed the king. And for every species of treason (though in petit
treason the punishment of men was only to be drawn and hanged), till the
30 Geo. III., Chap. 48, the sentence of woman was to be drawn and burnt
alive.”
And Mr. Courtney Kenny says, on the same point, that the English Law of
Marriage in the twelfth century had “clothed the humblest husband with
more than the authority of a feudal lord, and merged his wife’s legal
existence altogether in his own.”—(“History of the Law of Married
Women’s Property,” p. 8.)
And he exemplifies the position of the “feme” as being accurately
depicted in the words of Petruchio:—
“I will be master of what is mine own,
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.”
—(“The Taming of the Shrew,” Act III., scene 2.)
The picture of the past masculine proprietorship and “bullyism” is
scarcely overdrawn. Ere a distant day Englishmen will shudder in
reflecting on the male creatures who were their progenitors.
5, 6.—“_The tardier fear that grants the clown a share
In his own governance, denies it her._”
By a leading article on Woman Suffrage, in the _Times_ of 29th April,
1892, a clear light is thrown on the causes which largely influenced the
extension of the Parliamentary franchise to the poorer class of male
citizens,—“a share of political power which they are not particularly
well fitted to use,” says the _Times_;—and which denied the same right
of franchise to women of whatever class. The intellect of the _Times_
enounces that—
“Without desiring to disparage the sex in any way, we must venture to
maintain that in both camps a large female contingent would be a
mischievous element. The female Conservative politician would be an
obstacle to all rational reform; the female Liberal politician would
be the advocate of every crude and febrile innovation. No doubt we
have put plausible arguments in the mouths of mere logic-choppers by
treating the franchise as a right rather than as a privilege and a
trust. Men can demand a share of _political power which they are not
particularly well fitted to use_, because they possess _de facto_ a
share of the physical force upon which all political arrangements
ultimately repose. Women do not possess such physical force, and,
therefore, can prefer no such claim.”
Passing over, as unworthy of serious refutation, the wild assertions due
to sex-bias in the first part of the above extract, it may be noted how
instantly the lauded masculine weapon of logic is discarded and
contemned as soon as it points in the direction of equal justice for
woman. The “physical force” question is further dealt with in Note XLV.,
6. But considering the words we have italicised, does not the whole of
the _Times_ exposition as above justify the appellation of cowardly
“fear”? (See also p. 78.)
_Id._... Yet an even more unworthy thing than denial of the suffrage has
taken place, in that English women have been really robbed of their
earlier franchises. A lady Poor Law Guardian of the Tewkesbury Union has
written:—
“... the present position of women in regard to the various franchises
is anomalous and contradictory, unworthy of that great growth of
freedom which the nineteenth century has given to men, and degenerate
as regards the position which women held in the days of the
Plantagenets and the Tudors. Freedom for women has not broadened down
‘from precedent to precedent.’ Rather has it suffered by unnecessary
legislative interference. Every woman, except the Queen, is,
politically, non-existent. It was not always so. Restrictions unknown
to our ancient constitution have crept in.... Chief Justice Lee is
reported to have cited a case (in a manuscript collection of
Hakewell’s), Catherine _v._ Surrey, in which it was expressly decided,
that a _feme sole_, if she has a freehold, may vote for members of
Parliament; and a further one (from the same collection), Holt _v._
Lyle, in which it was decided, that a _feme sole_ householder may
claim a voice for Parliament men; but, if married, her husband must
vote for her; whilst Justice Page declared, ‘I see no disability in a
woman from voting for a Parliament man.’ So closely, in the minds of
our Judges, were the local and Parliamentary franchises bound up, that
a question as to the rights of women in local voting seemed to involve
considerations as to their right to vote for Parliament men.
“Yet, even in the matter of these local franchises, women have
suffered, and do suffer, from legislative tinkering and sex-biassed
decisions in our law courts.
“Down to 1835, women, possessing the qualifications which entitled men
to vote, voted freely in municipal elections, and in some important
cities, such as London and Edinburgh, the civic rights even of married
women, possessing a separate qualification from the husband, were well
established. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, however (passed
by the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne), was framed upon the
evil precedent of the Reform Act of 1832, and by the use of the words
‘male persons,’ in treating of the franchises under it, disfranchised
every woman in the boroughs to which it applied, and this
disfranchisement lasted for thirty-four years.
“Nevertheless, in non-corporate districts, women continued to vote as
freely as before, and thus secured the ultimate restitution of the
rights of their disfranchised sisters in incorporated districts; for,
when in 1869, on the consideration of the Municipal Franchise Bill of
that year, these peculiar facts were brought to the notice of the
House of Commons, and it was shown that the incorporation of any
district involved the summary disfranchisement of the women
ratepayers, the House, without a dissentient word, or any shadow of
opposition, adopted the proposal to omit the word ‘male’ before the
word ‘person’ in Section 1 of the Bill, and thus restored the rights
of the women ratepayers, of whom many thousands voted, as a
consequence of the passing of the Act, in the municipal elections of
the following November.”—Mrs. Harriett McIlquham (“The Enfranchisement
of Women: An Ancient Right, a Modern Need,” pp. 5, 12, 13.)
8.—“... _infants, felons, fools_ ...”
This legal courteousness has afforded Miss Frances Power Cobbe the text
for an instructive paper: “Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors: Is the
Classification Sound?” (_Fraser’s Magazine_, December, 1868.)
A recent instance of the official collocation is to be found in the Act
5 and 6 Vict., Cap. 35, Sec. 41:—
“And be it enacted, that the trustee, guardian, tutor, curator, or
committee of any person, being an infant, or married woman, lunatic,
idiot, or insane, and having the direction, control, or management of
the property or concern of such infant, married woman, lunatic, idiot,
or insane person, whether such infant, married woman, lunatic, idiot, or
insane person shall reside in the United Kingdom or not,” etc., etc.
XXXVIII.
7.—“... _every bond erased_ ...”
“In the struggle of the races, keeping in view the teachings of
evolutionists, the most reasonable and sensible thing, in addition to
its _justness_, appears to be this:
“First, to place women on an equal footing with men, socially, and _in
the eyes of the law_. Before _that_ is done, it is useless to talk about
women’s superiority or equality. It is all breath and words, or paper
and ink. In the eyes of the law she is man’s inferior. That is not all.
In the eyes of the law the most cultured woman is inferior to the most
uncultured man; she is, in fact, pretty much on a level with a baby, or
a boy or girl under age. Moreover, the most cultured woman in the United
Kingdom is considered inferior, politically, to the American negro!
“Second, let the two sexes settle matters among themselves, as far as
intellect is concerned, as men now settle matters among themselves,
without imposing on each other any disability. Those of both sexes who
are weak will soon find their intellectual level; and those of both
sexes who are strong will soon come to the front.”—Emanuel Bonavia, M.D.
(“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).
XXXIX.
2.—“... _equal power of rule_ ...”
“Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the
men,
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the
men; ...
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
Where the city of the best bodied mothers stands,
There the great city stands.”
—Walt Whitman (“Song of the Broad Axe”).
3.—“_Her voice in council and in senate_ ...”
“Is there so great a superfluity of men fit for high duties, that
society can afford to reject the service of any competent person? Are we
so certain of always finding a man made to our hands for any duty or
function of social importance which falls vacant, that we lose nothing
by putting a ban on one half of mankind and refusing beforehand to make
their faculties available, however distinguished they may be? And even
if we could do without them, would it be consistent with justice to
refuse to them their fair share of honour and distinction, or to deny to
them the equal right of all human beings to choose their occupation
(short of injury to others) according to their own preferences, at their
own risk? Nor is the injustice confined to them, it is shared by those
who are in a position to benefit by their services. To ordain that any
kind of persons shall not be physicians, or shall not be advocates, or
shall not be members of parliament, is to injure not them only, but all
who employ physicians, or advocates, or elect members of parliament.”—J.
S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 94).
4.—“... _harmonising word_ ...”
“... the main reason why so many thoughtful women now claim direct
Parliamentary representation is an unselfish one. They desire to take
their full share in the service of the race; to help to solve those
grave social problems now so urgently pressing, and which demand for
their solution the combined resources of the wisdom, experience, and
heart of both halves of humanity. They know that the time is fast
coming—if, indeed, it be not already come—which will need for its
direction and control something more than diplomatic cleverness or
political manœuvring, which will demand the clearer conscience and the
more sensitive perception of justice born of imaginative sympathy. It is
because they hope and believe that in virtue of their faculty of
motherhood they can contribute somewhat of these elements to the world’s
well-being, and can thus speed its progress towards a nobler future,
that they claim full right and power to follow and fulfil their highest
conceptions of duty.”—Elizabeth C. Wolstenholme Elmy (“The Decision in
the Clitheroe Case and its Consequences,” p. 17).
7.—“_Self-reverent each and reverencing each_.”
—A line from Part VII. of Tennyson’s “Princess.”
_Id._... “The exigencies of the new life are no more exclusive of the
virtues of generosity than those of the old, but it no longer entirely
depends on them. The main foundations of the moral life of modern times
must be justice and prudence; the respect of each for the rights of
every other, and the ability of each to take care of himself.”—J. S.
Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 159).
XL.
1.—“... _but a slave himself_ ...”
“The domination of either sex over the other paralyses the dominion of
either.”—Ellen Sarah, Lady Bowyer (Letter to _Daily News_, 24th October,
1891).
_Id._...
“Can man be free if woman be a slave?
Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air
To the corruption of a closed grave!
Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear
Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare
To trample their oppressors?”
—Shelley (“The Revolt of Islam,” Canto 2, s. xliii.).
2.—“... _she to shape her own career be free_ ...”
“Not less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong—is the idea that woman
is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a
thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her
weakness by the pre-eminence of his fortitude. This, I say, is the most
foolish of all errors, respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of
man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a
slave.”—John Ruskin (“Of Queens’ Gardens,” p. 125).
4.—“_Free mistress of her person’s sacred plan_.”
Eliza W. Farnham (in “Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 92) clearly
enunciates the depth of degradation and slavery from which woman’s
person must be freed:—“When this mastery is established, and ownership
of her becomes a fixed fact, she who was worshipped, vowed to as an
idol, deferred to as a mistress, required to conform herself to nothing
except the very pleasant requirement that she should take her own way in
everything; to come and go, to accept or reject, to do or not, at her
own supreme pleasure—this being may find herself awaking in a state of
subjection which deprives her of the most sacred right to her own
person—makes her the slave of an exacting demand that ignores the
conditions, emotions, susceptibilities, pains, and pleasures of her
life, as tyrannically and systematically as if she were indeed an
insensate chattel.”
Happily, as far as England is concerned, our law no longer lends its
power to enforce such a position.
5.—“_Free human soul_ ...”
Woman’s deep and wholesome impulse and yearning for individual freedom
and selfdom is well-spoken in the following lines, by an anonymous
writer; touchingly shown also is the unsufficingness to her soul of even
the most honeyed of unequal positions:—
“Oh, to be alone!
To escape from the work, the play,
The talking every day;
To escape from all I have done,
And all that remains to do.
To escape—yes, even from you,
My only love, and be
Alone and free.
Could I only stand
Between gray moor and gray sky,
Where the winds and the plovers cry,
And no man is at hand;
And feel the free wind blow
On my rain-wet face, and know
I am free—not yours, but my own—
Free, and alone!
For the soft firelight
And the home of your heart, my dear,
They hurt, being always here.
I want to stand upright,
And to cool my eyes in the air,
And to see how my back can bear
Burdens—to try, to know,
To learn, to grow!
I am only you!
I am yours, part of you, your wife!
And I have no other life.
I cannot think, cannot do;
I cannot breathe, cannot see;
There is ‘us,’ but there is not ‘me’:—
And worst, at your kiss I grow
Contented so.”
7.—“_From woman slave can come but menial race_,”
“If the result to the family is such as I have described what must be
the effect on the race? A slow but sure degeneration. And has this not
taken place? Is the race now such as you read of it in early times
before the Mogul invasion brought the Zenana and child-marriage in its
train? Where are the Rajputs and the Mahrattas with their manly
exercises and their mental vigour? For centuries you have been children
of children, and there is no surer way of becoming servants of
servants.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (“Address to the Hindoos,” p. 9).
_Id._... “If children are to be educated to understand the true
principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot.”—Mary
Wollstonecraft (Letter to Talleyrand).
8.—“_The mother free confers her freedom and her grace_.”
“The child follows the blood of the mother; the son of a slave or serf
father and a noble woman is noble. ‘It is the womb which dyes the
child,’ they say in their primitive language.... ‘The woman bears the
clan,’ say the Wyandot Indians, just as our ancestors said ‘The womb
dyes the child!’”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Ch. XI.,
XVII.).
XLI.
1.—“_By her the progress of our future kind_.”
“What may man be? Who can tell? But what may woman be
To have power over man from cradle to corruptible grave?”
—William Blake (“Jerusalem”).
_Id._... “The application of the Pfeiffer bequest, ‘for charitable and
educational purposes in favour of women,’ has been delayed by legal
difficulties, but the Attorney General has now submitted to the Court
of Chancery a first list of awards. Details given in the _Journal of
Education_ show that Girton and Newnham Colleges receive £5,000 each,
whilst Bedford College, Somerville Hall, the New Hospital for Women,
the Maria Grey Training College, and a number of other institutions
benefit by slightly smaller sums. The bequests will doubtless be
welcomed by the recipients, for all the institutions included so far
are doing useful work with very inadequate means, and it is to be
hoped that the generous example of the London merchant and his
literary wife will be often followed in the future. Women’s
education—and girls’, too, for that matter—in this country is almost
unendowed, and is yet expected to produce results equal to those
gained in the richly endowed foundations for boys and men. The
interest of the Pfeiffer bequest, however, lies rather in the spirit
that prompted it and in the views of progress held by the donors than
in the generosity of the gift or the precise manner of its
distribution. In a letter explaining his wishes, Mr. Pfeiffer
remarks:—
“I have always had and am adhering to the idea of leaving the bulk of my
property in England for charitable and educational purposes in favour of
women. Theirs is, to my mind, the great influence of the future.
Education and culture and responsibility in more than one direction,
including that of politics, will gradually fit them for the exercise of
every power that could possibly work towards the regeneration of
mankind. It is women who have hitherto had the worst of life, but their
interest, and with their interest that of humanity, is secured, and I
therefore am determined to help them to the best of my ability and
means.”—_Manchester Guardian_, June 7th, 1892.
“Men are what their mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom which
weaves huckaback, why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from
this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber. Ask the digger
in the ditch to explain Newton’s laws; the fine organs of his brain have
been pinched by overwork and squalid poverty from father to son, for a
hundred years. When each comes forth from his mother’s womb, the gate of
gifts closes behind him. Let him value his hands and feet, he has but
one pair. So he has but one future, and that is already predetermined in
his lobes, and described in that little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat
form.”—Emerson (Essay on Fate).
_Id._... “The British _race_ cannot afford to dispense with _all_ the
advantage that may be in embryo in the future female intellect, because
men and some women are found who declare that women are intellectually
inferior.... No amount of prayers and wishes and submitting to God’s
will are of any avail. You must _use_ the organs of the intellect in
order, not only to increase their efficiency, but to prevent their going
from bad to worse. It might here be noted, that because the British
people might choose to be satisfied with atrophy of the intellect lobes
in their mothers, it will not at all follow that other nations will do
so _also_. If such things as nations exist, there will always be rivalry
and competition, and depend upon it those will be first whose mothers
generally possess the most efficient intellect lobes.... Fortunately we
have learnt another great lesson, evolved by Charles Darwin’s frontal
lobes, and that is, that there is no such thing as a _fixed_ and
_unalterable_ tissue or organism anywhere. All organisms and parts of
organisms are _changeable_. Everything—organ and organism—_has_ changed
in the past, _is_ changing in the present, and _will_ change in the
future in accordance with the conditions that surround it. Women’s
frontal lobes and grey matter will certainly be no exception to the
rule. Emancipation, keeping her eyes open, and thinking for herself are
the three main things she has to keep hammering at, until the lords of
creation _see_ that they are the right things to do, to save future
generations from universal imbecility.”—E. Bonavia, M.D. (“Woman’s
Frontal Lobes”).
2.—“_Their stalwart body and their spacious mind_;”
“If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,
How shall men grow?”
—Tennyson (“The Princess,” Canto 7).
XLIII.
8.—“_Where lies her richest gift_, ...”
“As I have already said more than once, I consider it presumption in
anyone to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be
by natural constitution. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as
regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state, that their
nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised, and no one
can safely pronounce that if women’s nature were left to choose its
direction as freely as men’s, and if no artificial bent were attempted
to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human
society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material
difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and
capacities which would unfold themselves.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection
of Women,” p. 104).
XLIV.
4.—“... _the freeman, equable_ ...”
“The freeman assuredly scorns equally to insult and to be
insulted.”—Alexander Walker (“Woman as to Mind,” p. 205).
XLV.
2.—“... _equal freedom, equal fate_ ...”
“As long as boys and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops
together, they are both precisely alike. If you catch up one half of
these creatures and train them to a particular set of actions and
opinions, and the other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course
their understandings will differ, as one or the other sort of
occupations has called this or that talent into action. There is surely
no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning in order to
explain so very simple a phenomenon.”—Sydney Smith (“Female Education”).
_Id._... “Was it Mary Somerville who had to hide her books, and study
her mathematics by stealth after all the family had gone to sleep, for
fear of being scolded and worried because she allowed her intellect full
scope? She has now a bust in the Royal Institution!... Whatever view of
the case theoretical considerations may suggest, there is one fact
beyond cavil, and it is this: that the female frontal lobes are not only
capable of equalling in power the male lobes, but can surpass them _when
allowed_ free scope. This has been recently proved in one of the
universities, where a woman surpassed the senior wrangler in
mathematics—an essentially intellectual work.”—Dr. Emanuel Bonavia
(“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).
The “girl graduate” last referred to is Miss Philippa Fawcett at the
University Examinations, Cambridge, in June, 1890.
3.—“_Together reared_ ...”
“We find a good example in the United States, where, to the horror of
learned and unlearned pedants of both sexes, numerous colleges exist in
which large numbers of young men and women are educated together. And
with what results? President White, of the University of Michigan,
expresses himself thus: ‘For some years past a young woman has been the
best scholar of the Greek language among 1,300 students; the best
student in mathematics in one of the classes of our institution is a
young woman, and many of the best scholars in natural and general
science are also young women.’ Dr. Fairchild, President of Oberlin
College in Ohio, in which over 1,000 students of both sexes study in
mixed classes, says: ‘During an experience of eight years as Professor
of the ancient languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and in the branches
of ethics and philosophy, and during an experience of eleven years in
theoretical and applied mathematics, the only difference which I have
observed between the sexes was in the manner of their rhetoric.’ Edward
H. Machill, President of Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, tells us
that an experience of four years has forced him to the conclusion that
the education of both sexes in common leads to the best moral results.
This may be mentioned in passing as a reply to those who imagine such an
education must endanger morality.”—Bebel (“Women,” Walther’s
Translation, p. 131). (See also Notes to line 7, forward.)
It is of good omen that the precedent thus set in America is finding a
following in our own isle also. All honour to the University of St.
Andrews, concerning which sundry newspapers of 15th March, 1892, relate
that: “The Senatus Academicus of the University of St. Andrews has
agreed to open its classes in arts, science, and theology to women, who
will be taught along with men. The University will receive next year a
sum of over £30,000 to be spent on bursaries, one half of the sum to be
devoted to women exclusively. Steps are being taken to secure a hall of
residence in which the women students may live while attending the
University classes.”
_Id._—“... _in purity and truth,
Through plastic childhood and retentive youth_.”
“Je voudrais que ce petit volume apportât au lecteur un peu de la
jouissance que j’ai goûtée en le composant. Il complète mes _Souvenirs_,
et mes souvenirs sont une partie essentielle de mon œuvre. Qu’ils
augmentent ou qu’ils diminuent mon autorité philosophique, ils
expliquent, ils montrent l’origine de mes jugements, vrais ou faux. Ma
mère, avec laquelle j’ai été si pauvre, à côté de laquelle j’ai
travaillé des heures, n’interrompant mon travail que pour lui dire:
‘Maman, êtes-vous contente de moi?’ mes petites amies d’enfance qui
m’enchantaient par leur gentillesse discrète, ma sœur Henriette, si
haute, si pure, qui, à vingt ans, m’entraîna dans la voie de la raison
et me tendit la main pour franchir un passage difficile, ont embaumé le
commencement de ma vie d’un arôme qui durera jusqu’à la mort.”—Ernest
Renan (“Souvenirs d’Enfance.”).
5.—“_Their mutual sports of sinew and of brain._”
“No boy nor girl should leave school without possessing a grasp of the
general character of science, and without having been disciplined more
or less in the methods of all sciences; so that when turned into the
world to make their own way, they shall be prepared to face scientific
problems, not by knowing at once the conditions of every problem, or by
being able at once to solve it, but by being familiar with the general
current of scientific thought, and by being able to apply the methods of
science in the proper way, when they have acquainted themselves with the
conditions of the special problem.”—T. H. Huxley (“Essay on Scientific
Education”).
And the same learned professor tells us, on another occasion:—“A liberal
education is an artificial education which has not only prepared a man
to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has
trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards which Nature
scatters with as free a hand as her penalties. That man, I think,”
(shall we not include “woman” also, on his own showing as above?) “has
had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body
is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all
the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a
clear, cold logic engine, with all its parts in equal strength and in
smooth working order, ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to every
kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the
mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental
truths of Nature, and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted
ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to
come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who
has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all
vileness, and to respect others as himself.
“Such an one, and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education, for
he is as completely as a man can be in harmony with Nature. He will make
the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she
as his ever beneficent mother, he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self,
her minister, and interpreter.”—_Id._ (“Essay on a Liberal Education.”)
6.—“_In strength alike the sturdy comrades train_; ...”
How largely strength is simply a matter of training may be instanced by
a case or two:—
“The results of practice and training from childhood on the bodily
development can be seen in female acrobats and circus riders, who could
compete with any man in courage, daring, dexterity, and strength, and
whose performances are frequently astonishing.”—Bebel (“Woman,” p. 126).
“I am a medical man. I have spent several years in Africa, and have seen
human nature among tribes whose habits are utterly unlike those of
Europe. I had been accustomed to believe that the _muscular_ system of
women is necessarily feebler than that of men, and perhaps I might have
dogmatised to that effect; but, to my astonishment, I found the African
women to be as strong as our men.... Not only did I see the proof of it
in their work and in the weights which they lifted, but on examining
their arms I found them large and hard beyond all my previous
experience. On the contrary, I saw the men of these tribes to be weak,
their muscles small and flabby. Both facts are accounted for by the
habits of the people. The men are lazy in the extreme; all the hard work
is done by the women.”—(_Westminster Review_, Oct., 1865, p. 355.)
“Les femmes Sphakiotes ne le cèdent en rien aux hommes pour la vigueur
et l’énergie. J’ai vu un jour une femme ayant un enfant dans les bras et
un sac de farine sur la tête, gravir, malgré ce double fardeau, la pente
escarpée qui conduit à Selia.”—Jules Ballot (“Histoire de l’Insurrection
Crétoise,” Paris, 1868, p. 251).
_Id._... In this context it is pleasant to find in the newspapers such a
note as the following:—
“The frost continued throughout West Cheshire yesterday, and skating
on rather rough ice was largely enjoyed. At Eaton, where the Duke of
Westminster is entertaining a party, the guests had a hockey match on
the frozen fish-pond in front of the hall. The players, who kept the
game up with spirit for over an hour, included the Duchess of
Westminster, the Marquis and Marchioness of Ormonde, Lady Beatrice and
Lady Constance Buller, Lord Arthur Grosvenor, Lord Gerald Grosvenor,
Lady Margaret and Lady Mary Grosvenor, Captain and Mrs. Cawley, Hon.
Mrs. Norman Grosvenor, Hon. Mrs. Thomas Grosvenor, General Julian
Hall, and party.”—(_Manchester Courier_, 12th Jan., 1892.)
Later on in the year we read in the journal _Woman_:—
“At the Marlow Regatta an extremely pretty girl in navy serge, built
Eton fashion, was a Miss ——, who wore as an under-bodice a full vest
of shaded yellow Indian silk. Her prowess with the oar is the cause of
daily admiration to the Marlowites.”
Again, on August 15th, 1892, the _Manchester Evening Mail_ has the
following:—
“An ailing ‘navvy,’ who has been engaged in some works near
Versailles, was a few days ago admitted to a hospital in that town.
Before the sick person had long been in the institution it was
discovered that the apparent ‘navvy’ was a woman. The superintendent
of the hospital was not in the least surprised on hearing of the
transformation scene, for it appears that he is accustomed to deal
with many woman patients who enter the hospital in male attire. It is
common in the district (says a Paris correspondent) for robust women
to don men’s garb in order to obtain remunerative employment as
navvies, porters, farm labourers, road menders, or assistants to
bricklayers, masons, and builders. It has long been established that
the average Frenchwoman of town or country has as great a capacity for
work either in counting-houses, shops, fields, or farms as her lord
and master has for laziness and lolling in the cafés, playing
dominoes, and smoking cigarettes.”
On the preceding day, August 14th, 1892, the St. Petersburg journals
reported that:—
“Ces jours-ci sera érigé à Sébastopol le monument élevé en l’honneur
des Femmes de cette ville qui, en 1854, ont construit seules une
batterie contre les troupes alliées. C’est une pyramide taillée en
granit d’une hauteur de cinquante pieds. Sur un côté est écrit en
lettres d’or: ‘C’est ici que se trouvait la batterie des Femmes’; sur
l’autre face les mots suivants sont gravés: ‘A cet endroit, en 1854,
les Femmes de Sébastopol ont construit une batterie.’ Le jour de
l’inauguration de ce monument n’est pas encore fixé. L’impératrice se
fera représenter à l’inauguration par un grand-duc.”
And, in October, 1892, the “sporting” newspapers recorded that:—
“Women are gradually coming to the fore as bicycle riders. Miss
Dudley, a well-known rider, has just accomplished a feat which would
have seemed wonderful for any rider not long ago. She has ridden from
a spot near Hitchin to Lincoln, a distance of 100 miles, in little
more than seven hours, or at the average speed of about fourteen miles
an hour. Mr. and Mrs. Smith are well-known as tandem riders, and they
have won many races together; but this is, perhaps, the first recorded
instance of a woman cyclist holding her own so well, unaided, in a
long road ride.”
See also “The Lancashire pit-brow women,” Note XVIII., 8.
7.—“_Of differing sex no thought inept intrudes_,”
“I have conversed, as man with man, with medical men on anatomical
subjects, and compared the proportions of the human body with
artists—yet such modesty did I meet with that I was never reminded by
word or look of my sex, and the absurd rules which make modesty a
pharisaical cloak of weakness.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (“The Rights of
Woman,” p. 278).
“As a careful observer remarks, true modesty lies in the entire absence
of thought upon the subject. Among medical students and artists the nude
causes no extraordinary emotion; indeed, Flaxman asserted that the
students in entering the Academy seemed to hang up their passions along
with their hats.”—Westermarck (“History of Human Marriage,” p. 194).
_Id._... “This is strikingly exemplified in the curious conversation
recorded in Lylie’s ‘Euphues’ and his ‘England,’ edit. 1605, 4to,
signature X—Z 2, where young unmarried people of both sexes meet
together and discuss without reserve the ticklish metaphysics of love.
But though treading on such slippery ground, it is remarkable that they
never, even by allusion, fall into grossness. Their delicate propriety
is not improbably the effect of their liberty.”—Buckle (“Common-place
Book,” No. 856).
8.—“_Their purpose calmly sure all errant aim excludes_.”
“We point to a present remedy for undergraduate excesses, which, resting
on the soundest theory, has also the demonstration of unquestioned fact.
It is co-education. Cease to separate human beings because of sex. They
are conjoined in the family, in the primary and grammar schools, in
society, and, after the degree rewards four years of monastic student
existence, in the whole career of life.
“Throw open the doors of Harvard to women on equal terms, absorb the
annexe into the college proper, and as the night follows the day,
scholarship will rise, and dissipation fall by the law of gravitation.
The moral atmosphere will find immediate purification, and the daily
association of brothers and sisters in intellectual pursuits impart a
breadth of view which is an education in itself. The professors may then
be left safely to their themes, John Harvard’s statue may cease to dread
defilement, the regent will find his censorial duties fully as
perfunctory as he seems to have made them in the past, and character
will crowd out profligacy.”—William Lloyd Garrison (in _Woman’s
Journal_, Boston, U.S., 6th February, 1892).
“Whatsoever is ultimately decided by the wisdom of ages to be the best
possible form of culture for one human nature, must be so for another,
for one common humanity lies deeper in all and is more essential in each
than any difference.”—Sophia Jex-Blake, M.D.
XLVI.
3.—“... _impartial range_ ...”
Preparation in this direction is going steadily forward, not only in the
Western hemisphere, but in the Eastern. It is announced (in August,
1892) that
“Lady students at the five Universities in Switzerland number 224.
Berne is the most popular, with 78 female undergraduates; Zurich has
70; Geneva 70; the new University of Lausanne has five; and Basle one.
The medical faculty is in most favour with the female students, and
counts 157 of the whole number; the philosophical faculty follows with
62; five prefer the faculty of jurisprudence; the theological faculty
has not yet been invaded by the sex. More than half of the female
students, 116, are Russians, 21 Germans, 21 Swiss, 11 Americans, nine
Austrians, seven Bulgarians, four English, three Roumanians, and three
from the Turkish Empire, all of whom are young Armenian ladies.”
4.—“... _wider wisdom_ ...”
Such wider wisdom—without the preliminary suffering—as the poet had
attained to, when he wrote:—
“I have climbed to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past,
Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire;
But I hear no yelps of the beast, and the man is quiet at last,
As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height
that is higher.”
—Tennyson (“By an Evolutionist”).
_Id._—“... _juster ethics, teach_; ...”
“For we see that it is possible to interpret the ideals of ethical
progress, through love and sociality, co-operation and sacrifice, not as
mere utopias contradicted by experience, but as the highest expressions
of the central evolutionary process of the natural world.... The older
biologists have been primarily anatomists, analysing and comparing the
form of the organism, separate and dead; however incompletely, we have
sought rather to be physiologists, studying and interpreting the highest
and intensest activity of things living.... It is much for our pure
natural history to recognise that ‘creation’s final law’ is not
struggle, but love.”—Geddes and Thomson (“The Evolution of Sex,” pp.
312, 313).
5; 6.—“_Conformed to claims of intellect and need,
The tempered numbers of their high-born breed_;”
“There is a problem creeping gradually forward upon us, a problem that
will have to be solved in time, and that is the steady increase of
population.... I believe that with the emancipation of women we shall
solve this problem now. Fewer children will be born, and those that are
born will be of a higher and better physique than the present order of
men. The ghastly abortions, which in many parts pass muster nowadays,
owing to the unnatural physical conditions of society, as men, women,
and children, will make room for a nobler and higher order of beings,
who will come to look upon the production of mankind in a diseased or
degraded state as a wickedness and unpardonable crime, against which all
men and women should fight and strive.”—Lady Florence Dixie (“Gloriana,”
p. 137).
_Id._... And Mrs. Mona Caird says:—“If the new movement had no other
effect than to rouse women to rebellion against the madness of large
families, it would confer a priceless benefit on humanity.”—(_Nineteenth
Century_, May, 1892.)
_Id._... “To bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of
being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and
training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate
offspring and against society.... The fact itself of causing the
existence of a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in
the range of human life. To undertake this responsibility—to bestow a
life which may be either a curse or a blessing—unless the being on whom
it is bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable
existence, is a crime against that being. And in a country either
over-peopled, or threatened with being so, to produce children, beyond a
very small number, with the effect of reducing the reward of labour by
their competition, is a serious offence against all who live by the
remuneration of their labour.”—J. S. Mill (“Liberty,” Chap. V.).
_Id._... A. Dumas fils draws a true and piteous picture in which this
element of the unintelligent overproduction of human beings has the
largest share:—
“Il y a, et c’est la masse, les femmes du peuple et de la campagne suant
du matin au soir pour gagner le pain quotidien, faisant ainsi ce que
faisaient leurs mères, et mettant au monde, sans savoir pourquoi ni
comment, des filles qui, à leur tour, feront comme elles, à moins que,
plus jolies, et par conséquent plus insoumises, elles ne sortent du
groupe par le chemin tentant et facile de la prostitution, mais où le
labeur est encore plus rude. Le dos courbé sous le travail du jour,
regardant la terre quand elles marchent, domptées par la misère,
vaincues par l’habitude, asservies aux besoins des autres, ces créatures
à forme de femme ne supposent que leur condition puisse être modifiée
jamais. Elles n’ont pas le temps, elles n’ont jamais eu la faculté de
penser et de réfléchir; à peine un souhait vague et bientôt refoulé de
quelque chose de mieux! Quand la charge est trop lourde elles tombent,
elles geignent comme des animaux terrassés, elles versent de grosses
larmes à l’idée de laisser leurs petits sans ressources, ou elles
remercient instinctivement la mort, c’est-à-dire le repos dont elles ont
tant besoin.” (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” etc., p. 101.)
_Id._... And again, the advanced biological writers say:—
“The statistician will doubtless long continue his fashion of
confidently estimating the importance and predicting the survival of
populations from their quantity and rate of reproduction alone; but at
all this, as naturalists, we can only scoff. Even the most conventional
exponent of the struggle for existence among us knows, with the
barbarian conquerors of old, that ‘the thicker the grass, the easier it
is mown,’ that ‘the wolf cares not how many the sheep may be.’ It is the
most individuated type that prevails in spite, nay, in another sense,
positively because of its slower increase; in a word, the survival of a
species or family depends not primarily upon quantity, but upon quality.
The future is not to the most numerous population, but to the most
individuated....
“Apart from the pressure of population, it is time to be learning (1)
That the annual child-bearing still so common, is cruelly exhaustive to
the maternal life, and this often in actual duration as well as quality;
(2) That it is similarly injurious to the standard of offspring; and
hence, (3) That an interval of two clear years between births (some
gynæcologists even go as far as three) is due alike to mother and
offspring.” (It is to be noted that this period of three years is
postulated as a necessity for the well-being of the offspring; it is by
no means a recommendation to even a triennial maternity on the part of
the mother, who is indeed to be, in all fulness, “free mistress of her
person’s sacred plan,” with a duty to herself, as well as to her child).
“It is time, therefore, as we heard a brave parson tell his flock
lately, ‘to have done with that blasphemous whining which constantly
tries to look at a motherless’ (ay, or sometimes even fatherless) ‘crowd
of puny infants as a dispensation of mysterious providence.’ Let us
frankly face the biological facts, and admit that such cases usually
illustrate only the extreme organic nemesis of intemperance and
improvidence, and these of a kind far more reprehensible than those
actions to which common custom applies the names, since they are
species-regarding vices, and not merely self-regarding ones, as the
others at least primarily are....
“It seems to us, however, essential to recognise that the ideal to be
sought after is not merely a controlled rate of increase, but regulated
married lives.... We would urge, in fact, the necessity of an ethical
rather than of a mechanical ‘prudence after marriage,’ of a temperance
recognised to be as binding on husband and wife as chastity on the
unmarried.... Just as we would protest against the dictum of false
physicians who preach indulgence rather than restraint, so we must
protest against regarding artificial means of preventing fertilisation
as adequate solutions of sexual responsibility. After all, the solution
is primarily one of temperance. It is no new nor unattainable ideal to
retain, throughout married life, a large measure of that self-control
which must always form the organic basis of the enthusiasm and idealism
of lovers.”—Geddes and Thomson (“The Evolution of Sex,” Chap. XX.).
As a fitting exemplification of the words of the “parson” above
narrated, compare the following verbatim extract from a conversation
in this year of grace 1892. The —— referred to is a man about 35,
middle-class, and of “good ‘education’” (!) The same description would
also apply to the speaker, who said, “Poor —— is a brave fellow, and
keeps up his head in the worst of luck. He has a lot of home troubles;
he has lost three children, and his wife always has a bad time at the
birth of each baby.”
No word of sympathy for the wife and mother, or even of recognition
that it was really _she_ who bore the pain at each “bad time.” As the
children left alive still numbered two at the time of the speech, the
whole incident can but imply—on the part of both actor and speaker—the
hideous, even if unconscious, inhumanity so widely prevalent. Never
will “high-born breed” be attained till such action of low-bred
intellect is reprobated and amended; in accordance with the enunciated
truth, that:—
“Especially in higher organisms, a distinction must obviously be drawn
between the period at which it is possible for males and females to
unite in fertile sexual union, and the period at which such union will
naturally occur or will result in the fittest offspring.”—Geddes and
Thomson (_op. cit._, p. 243).
7, 8.—“_Not overworn with childward pain and care,
The mother—and the race—robuster health shall share_.”
“It is not the true purpose of any intellectual organism to live solely
to give birth to succeeding organisms; its duty is also to live for its
own happiness and well-being. Indeed, in so doing, it will be acting in
one of the most certain ways to ensure that faculty and possession of
happiness that it aims to secure for its progeny.”—Ben Elmy (“Studies in
Materialism,” Chap. III.).
_Id._... Even the placid and precisian American poet bears strong, if
involuntary, testimony to the evil and wrong of the non-cultured and
untempered begetting of children:—
“She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door;
But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain
Left their traces on heart and brain.”
—Whittier (“Maud Müller”).
_Id._... Mr. Andrew Lang also promises us “a world that is glad and
clean, and not overthronged and not overdriven.”—(Introduction to
“Elizabethan Songs.”)
_Id._... “_Justice never loses sight of self._... The language of
Justice is ‘to Me and to You; or to You and to Me.’ ... We have to
learn, for the action and spirit worthy of the coming time, that woman
is never to sacrifice herself to a man, but, when needful, to the
_Manhood_ she hopes or desires to develop in him. In this she will also
attain her own development. But after the hour when her faith in the
hope of worthy results fails her (reason instructing her nobler
affections by holding candidly in view all the premises, past, present,
and future), she is bound by all her higher obligations to bring that
career, whether it be of the daughter, sister, mother, wife, or friend,
to a close. For the inferior cannot possibly be worth the sacrifice of
the superior. True self-sacrifice, which necessarily involves the
temporary descent of the nobler to the less noble—the higher to the
lower—is made only when the lower is elevated, improved, carried forward
in its career, thereby.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol.
II., p. 149).
_Id._... “I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do not
think the sexes mutually needed by one another; but because in woman
this fact has led to an excessive devotion which has cooled love,
degraded marriage, and prevented either sex from being what it should be
to itself or the other.... Woman, self-controlled, would never be
absorbed by any relations; it would be only an experience to her as to
man. It is a vulgar error that love, a love to woman, is her whole
existence; she is also born for truth and love in their universal
energy.”—Margaret Fuller Ossoli (“The Woman of the Nineteenth Century”).
_Id._... Professor Alfred Russell Wallace has written an article,
concerning part of which Mr. W. T. Stead rightly says: “It is a
scientific reinforcement of the cause of the emancipation of women, and
shows that progress of the cause of female enfranchisement is identified
with the progress of humanity.”—(_Review of Reviews_, Vol. V., p. 177.)
Professor Wallace says:—
“When such social changes have been effected that no woman will be
compelled, either by hunger, isolation, or social compulsion, to sell
herself, whether in or out of wedlock, and when all women alike shall
feel the refining influence of a true humanising education, of beautiful
and elevating surroundings, and of a public opinion which shall be
founded on the highest aspirations of their age and country, the result
will be a form of human selection which will bring about a continuous
advance in the average status of the race. Under such conditions, all
who are deformed either in body or mind, though they may be able to lead
happy and contented lives, will, as a rule, leave no children to inherit
their deformity. Even now we find many women who never marry because
they have never found the man of their ideal. When no woman will be
compelled to marry for a bare living or for a comfortable home, those
who remain unmarried from their own free choice will certainly increase,
while many others, having no inducement to an early marriage, will wait
till they meet with a partner who is really congenial to them.
“In such a reformed society the vicious man, the man of degraded taste
or feeble intellect, will have little chance of finding a wife, and his
bad qualities will die out with himself. The most perfect and beautiful
in body and mind will, on the other hand, be most sought, and,
therefore, be most likely to marry early, the less highly endowed later,
and the least gifted in any way the latest of all, and this will be the
case with both sexes.
“From this varying age of marriage, as Mr. Galton has shown, there will
result a more rapid increase of the former than of the latter, and this
cause continuing at work for successive generations will, at length,
bring the average man to be the equal of those who are now among the
more advanced of the race.”—“Human Progress, Past and Present” (_Arena_,
Jan., 1892).
XLVII.
1.—“_Nor blankly epicene_ ...”
“Bring up a boy and girl side by side, and educate them both for the
same profession under the same masters, and a novelist who depicts
character could yet weave a story out of the mental and emotional
differences between them, which will cause them to look at life from
totally opposite points of view.”—Mabel Collins (“On Woman’s Relation to
the State”).
2.-“... _sequence of that day_.”
“We have seen that a deep difference in constitution expresses itself in
the distinctions between male and female, whether these be physical or
mental. The differences may be exaggerated or lessened, but to
obliterate them it would be necessary to have all the evolution over
again on a new basis. What was decided among the Prehistoric Protozoa
cannot be annulled by Act of Parliament.”—Geddes and Thomson (“Evolution
of Sex,” p. 267).
3, 4.—“... _not ... by aping falser sex shall truer grow_.”
“While man and woman still are incomplete
I prize that soul where man and woman meet,
Which types all Nature’s male and female plan,
But, friend, man-woman is not woman-man.”
—Tennyson (“On One who Affected an Effeminate Manner”).
XLVIII.
8.—“_Happy what each may bring to help the common fate_.”
“I would submit to a severe discipline, and to go without many things
cheerfully, for the good and happiness of the human race in the future.
Each one of us should do something, however small, towards that great
end.... How pleasant it would be each day to think, to-day I have done
something that will tend to render future generations more happy. The
very thought would make this hour sweeter. It is absolutely necessary
that something of this kind should be discovered.... It should be the
sacred and sworn duty of everyone, once at least during lifetime, to do
something in person towards this end. It would be a delight and a
pleasure to me to do some thing every day, were it ever so minute. To
reflect that another human being, if at a distance of ten thousand years
from the year 1883, would enjoy one hour’s more life, in the sense of
fulness of life, in consequence of anything I had done in my little
span, would be to me a peace of soul.”—Richard Jefferies (“The Story of
My Heart,” pp. 129, 131, 160).
XLIX.
1.—“_By mutual aid perfecting complex man_.”
Kant says: “Man and woman constitute, when united, the whole and entire
being, one sex completes the other.”—Bebel (“Woman,” Walther’s
Translation, p. 44).
2, 3.—“_Their twofold vision human life may scan
From differing standpoints_ ...”
See Note XLVII., 1.
LI.
4.—“_Her brain untutored_ ...”
“The soldier is exercised in the use of his weapons, the artisan in the
use of his tools. Every profession demands a special education, even the
monk has his novitiate. Women alone are not prepared for their important
maternal duties.”—Irma von Troll-Borostyani (“Die Mission unseres
Jahrhunderts.” A Study on the Woman Question).
LIII.
2.—“... _the quivering nerve_ ...”
M. Chauveau states that his object was ‘To ascertain the excitability of
the spinal marrow, and the convulsions and pain produced by that
excitability.’ His studies were made chiefly on horses and asses, who,
he says, ‘lend themselves marvellously thereto by the large volume of
their spinal marrow.’ M. Chauveau accordingly ‘consecrated eighty
subjects to his purpose.’ ‘The animal,’ he says, ‘is fixed upon a table.
An incision is made on its back about fourteen inches long; the vertebræ
are opened with the help of a chisel, mallet, and pincers, and the
spinal marrow is exposed.’ (No mention is made of anæsthetics, which of
course would nullify the experimenter’s object of studying “the
excitability of the spinal marrow, and the convulsions _and pain_
produced by that excitability.”) “M. Chauveau gives a large number of
his cases.... Case 7: ‘A vigorous mule. When one pricks the marrow near
the line of emergence of the sensitive nerves, the animal manifests the
most violent pain.’ Case 20: ‘An old white horse, lying on the litter,
unable to rise, but nevertheless very sensitive. At whatever points I
scratch the posterior cord I provoke signs of the most violent
suffering.’”—(_Journal de Physiologie_, du Dr. Brown-Séquard. Tome
Quatrième. No. XIII.)
4.—“... _living butchery with learned knife_.”
“We are told what Professor Brücke says with reference to section of the
trigeminus:—‘The first sign that the trigeminus is divided is a loud
piercing cry from the animal. Rabbits we know,’ he adds, ‘are not very
sensitive; all sorts of things may be done to them without making them
utter a cry; but in this operation, if it succeeds, they invariably send
forth a prolonged shriek.’”—“Lectures on Physiology,” Vol. II., p. 76.
5.—“... _cruel anodyne that chained the will_ ...”
It is dubious whether curare be even an anodyne, _i.e._ a deadener of
pain. M. Claude Bernard, himself a vivisector, says:—“Curare acting on
the nervous system only suppresses the action of the motor nerves,
leaving sensation intact. Curare is not an anæsthetic.” (_Revue
Scientifique_, 1871–2, p. 892.)
6.—“... _the shuddering victim conscious still_.”
“Everyone has heard of the dog, suffering under vivisection, who licked
the hand of the operator; this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must
have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.”—Darwin (“The Descent of
Man,” Part I., Chap. II.).
8.—“_Nor yields her holiest truths on such a murderer’s rack_.”
“It is fit to say here, once for all, that laws which govern the animal
kingdom below the human, can no more be accepted as final and
determining to man, in physiological, than in intellectual and moral,
action.... For neither the knife of the anatomist, nor the lens of the
microscopist, are infallible interpreters of function. We do not possess
ourselves of all of Nature’s secrets by cutting up her tissues and
fabrics, neither by the keenest inspection of their ultimate atoms,
whether fluid or solid. There are some truths withheld from the
investigator, however brave, patient, and nice his methods and means,
which are given up, in due time, to the truth-seer, without any method
or means, save the intuitive faculty and its unambitious, guileless
surrender to the service offered it. Such, it is at least possible, we
may find has been Nature’s dealing in this occult department.”—Eliza W.
Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. I., pp. 47, 50).
LIV.
1.—“_True science finds its own by kindlier quest_.”
“Science is of the utmost importance to mankind, but the last degree of
importance cannot be said to attach to all its minute discoveries, and
where, as in physiology, the investigation becomes inhuman, there it
ought to stop. It ought to stop for our own sakes if from no other
motive, for the torturing of animals on the chance that it may suggest
the means of alleviating some of our own pains helps to blunt those
sensibilities which afford us some of our purest pleasures. Animals are
not our equals in all things, but they seem to be at any rate our equals
in the sense of pain. The want of imagination may deprive it in their
case of some of its poignancy, but on the other hand they have none of
the supports which we derive from reason and sympathy, from the
tenderness of friendship and the consolations of religion. With them it
is pure, unmitigated, unsolaced suffering. Our duties to them form a
neglected chapter in the code of ethics, but we ought not to torture
them, and there are many who will maintain that the obligation is
absolute. Life is no doubt valuable, but it is not everything. It is
more than meat, as the body is more than raiment, but it is not more
than humanity. There are occasions on which it has to be risked, and
there are terms on which men of honour and patriotism would hold it
worthless. The doctrine that we may subject the lower animals to
incredible suffering on the possibility that it may save ourselves from
an additional pang is of a selfish and degrading tendency. It helps to
lower the ‘moral ideal’ and to weaken the springs of heroism in human
character. We owe it to ourselves to keep clear of this peril. Nature
surrounds us with limitations. Here is one which all that is best and
noblest in us sets up, and it is more sacred than those over which we
have no control. We refuse to torture other sentient creatures in order
that we may live.”—Dr. Henry Dunckley (_Manchester Guardian_, August
9th, 1892).
The above noble pronouncement, with its conclusion, is instinct with the
spirit of _true_ science (which repudiates with disdain and horror the
hypocritical pseudo-science of a ghastly and demoralising study and
pursuit of cruelty),—the _true_ science which is one with love, because
it refuses the acceptance of life itself on terms of outrage to love.
See Note LXI., 3.
4.—“... _a keener lens of man’s own brain_.”
“Observation is perhaps more powerful an organon than either experiment
or empiricism.”—Richard Jefferies (“Story of My Heart,” p. 162).
_Id._... It is well that some English physicists of the fullest
scientific impulse and effort are revolted at the inhuman and bootless
cruelty of the foreign medical schools which masquerades as scientific
research. Is it not possibly something more than a coincidence that
vivisectionists in general exhibit an aversion to the equality of woman,
and that vivisection flourishes more unrestrainedly where her position
and influence are less recognised; _i.e._, in plain words,—in a lower
civilisation?
Mr. Lawson Tait says, with the indignation of a truly scientific mind at
these methods of “science falsely so called”:—
“For one, as intimately and widely concerned in the application of
human knowledge for the saving of human life and the relief of human
suffering as anyone can be, or as anyone has ever been, I say I am
grateful for the restrictive legislation. Let me give one brief
illustration of my most recent experience in this matter as one of
hundreds which confirm me in my determination persistently to oppose
the introduction into England of what passes for science in Germany.
Some few years ago I began to deal with one of the most dreadful
calamities to which humanity is subject by means of an operation which
had been scientifically proposed nearly two hundred years ago. I mean
ectopic gestation. The _rationale_ of the proposed operation was fully
explained about fifty years ago, but the whole physiology of the
normal process and the pathology of the perverted one were obscured
and misrepresented by a French physiologist’s experiments on rabbits
and dogs. Nothing was done, and at least ninety-five per cent. of the
victims of this catastrophe were allowed to die.
“I went outside the experimentalists’ conclusions, went back to the
true science of the old pathologist and of the surgeon of 1701, and
performed the operation in scores of cases with almost uniform
success. My example was immediately followed throughout the world, and
during the last five or six years hundreds if not thousands of women’s
lives have been saved, whilst for nearly forty years the simple road
to this gigantic success was closed by the folly of a vivisector....
“Views such as mine are those of a minority of my professional
brethren, and are generally sneered at as those of a crank. But my
reply to this is that they form the new belief, that of the coming
generation, and that not one in fifty of the bulk of my present
brethren have ever seriously gone into the question, and probably have
never seen a single experiment on a living animal.
“My address as the Surgical Orator of 1890, when the British Medical
Association met in this town, was mainly directed to the mischievous
system of so-called scientific training, of purely German origin and
thoroughly repugnant to our English tastes and our English
common-sense.
“It is therefore a satisfactory matter to know that the Council of
Mason’s College would have none of it, and that the governing body of
the new University College of Nottingham has recently decided
similarly. The Medical School of Queen’s College is now united
entirely with the Science School of Mason’s College; but we, of
Mason’s College, have had the direction of the science teaching of the
Medical School for several years, we have had no German scientific
methods, and our success has not diminished thereby one atom—on the
contrary.”—Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S., _President of Mason’s Science
College, Birmingham_ (“The Discussion on Vivisection at the Church
Congress, October, 1892”).
At the Congress, as above, Professor Horsley made aspersions on Miss
Frances Power Cobbe, as to statements concerning Vivisection in her
work, “The Nine Circles.” The professor declared some of the reported
cruel experiments to have been painless, owing to the victims being
under the influence of anæsthetics. In reply to the attack, the
following preliminary letter from Miss Cobbe was then published:—
“TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘TIMES.’
“SIR,—Professor Horsley’s criticism on the above work—planned and
compiled by my direction—demands from me a careful reply, which I
shall endeavour to give as soon as may be possible at this distance
from the books whence the impugned passages are derived. I shall be
much surprised if the hocus pocus of the sham anæsthetic _curare_ with
ineffective applications of genuine chloroform do not once more
illustrate ‘the curse of vivisectible animals,’ and if the results of
the experiments in question, whatever were their worth, would not, in
most cases, have been vitiated had real and absolute anæsthesia been
produced in the victims. Should a small number of the experiments
cited in the ‘Nine Circles’ prove, however, to have been performed on
animals in an entirely painless state, I shall, while withdrawing them
with apologies from a forthcoming new edition of the book, take care
at the same time to call attention to the multitude of other
experiments, home and foreign, therein recorded—e.g., baking to death,
poisoning, starving, creating all manner of diseases, inoculating in
the eyes, dissecting out and irritating the exposed nerves, causing
the brain of cats ‘to run like cream,’ etc., about which no room for
doubt as to the unassuaged agony of the animal can possibly exist.”
Miss Cobbe concludes by a sharp, but just, criticism on her critic, and
with an acute diagnosis of the learned vivisectionist’s own condition:—
“The tone of Dr. Horsley’s remarks against me personally will probably
inspire those who know me and the history of my connexion with the
anti-vivisection cause with an amused sense of the difficulty wherein
the Professor must have found himself when, instead of argument in
defence of vivisection, he thus turned to ‘abuse the plaintiffs’
attorney.’ For myself I gladly accept such abuse (or mere bluster) as
evidence that the consciences even of eminent vivisectors are, like
their victims’ nerves, imperfectly under the influence of the
scientific anæsthesia, and remain still sensitive to the
heart-pricking charge which I bring against them, of cowardly cruelty
to defenceless creatures.
“I am, Sir, yours,
FRANCES POWER COBBE.
Hengwrt, Dolgelly, Oct. 8th, 1892.”
⁂ A further newspaper correspondence concerning “The Nine Circles,” a
work from which some of the foregoing notes on vivisection are copied,
has gone on while “Woman Free” is passing through the press; the
vivisectors saying that certain of the incidents transcribed in “The
Nine Circles” are without the announcement that in some cases an
anæsthetic had been administered prior to the act of living anatomy,
otherwise admittedly true in every detail. The vivisectors lay what
stress they can on the omissions; indeed, their principal advocate has
made use of a grossness of imputation and a coarseness of invective that
augurs ill for any gentleness of treatment or purpose being existent in
the organism of such an operator.
Yet, in truth, it is not a matter of surpassing import whether the
assertion of the operation (alone) being conducted under an anæsthetic
be indubitable, since the after-consequences of pain or incommodity had
to be endured by the victim without anæsthetics. What initial
chloroforming could ward off the constant after-suffering attendant on
the incubation of the disease for the creation of which the “operation”
had been performed, a period acknowledgedly often lasting for weeks, and
terminated only by death’s mercy? Or what medicament could anæsthetise
the impotent yearning—to feed her starving puppy—of a poor mother dog
whose mammary glands had been excised, even if the “operation” had been
carried out “under chloroform”? Mr. Edward Berdoe, M.R.C.S., reproduces
and reprobates the incident with horror in the _Times_ of Oct. 27,
1892:—
“Professor Goltz amputated the breast of the mother of a puppy nursing
her young ... who ‘unceasingly licked the living puppy with the same
tenderness as an uninjured dog might do.’”
Most gladly may we turn to the words and ways of worthier seekers after
truth. Professor Lawson Tait is reported by the _Standard_, 28th Oct.,
1892, as saying at a meeting the previous day:—
“Vivisection was a survival from mediæval times. It could not be
justified by any results that it had produced. In days when they could
tell the composition of the atmosphere of Orion by means of the
spectroscope, it was a disgrace that men should resort to vivisection,
instead of perfecting other and more humane means of research.”
There speaks true science. And, on a later occasion, Mr. Lawson Tait
quotes the celebrated anatomist, Sir Charles Bell (who had been falsely
claimed as an advocate of vivisection), as saying, “on page 217 of the
second volume of his great work on the Nervous System, published in
1839”:—
“... a survey of what has been attempted of late years in physiology
will prove that the opening of living animals has done more to
perpetuate error than to confirm the just views taken from the study
of anatomy and natural motions.... For my own part I cannot believe
that Providence should intend that the secrets of nature are to be
discovered by means of cruelty, and I am sure that those who are
guilty of protracted cruelties do not possess minds capable of
appreciating the laws of nature.”—(The _Times_, Nov. 8th, 1892, p. 3.)
The views of Charles Bell and Lawson Tait are in striking and
encouraging coincidence with verses LIII., LIV., and LV.
To women peculiarly it belongs to oppose the doctrines and methods of
vivisectionists, for to the practitioners of that school were due the
arguments or assumptions which sufficed to introduce for a while into
our country the vile system of according a licence to male dissoluteness
and female subjection—under a pretext of public morality and
“scientific” sanction—known on the continent as the “police des mœurs,”
and in sundry Naval and Military stations of England and Ireland as the
“Contagious Diseases Acts.”
LV.
8.—“... _from Love’s might alone all thoughts of Wisdom grow_.”
“Hast thou considered how the beginning of all thought worthy the name
is love; and the wise head never yet was, without first the generous
heart?”—Carlyle (“French Revolution,” Vol. III., p. 375).
LVI.
5.—“_With woman honoured, rises man to height_.”
“If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically
governed; if order is preserved without oppression, if cultivation is
extended, and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that
principality is under a woman’s rule. This fact, to me an entirely
unexpected one, I have collected from a long official knowledge of
Hindoo Governments.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 100
note).
6.—“_With her degraded, sinks again in night_.”
“And you who have departed from the common tradition, how have you fared
in the race of life? Are your men as brave and fearlessly truthful, are
your women as courageous and honest as in the old days of ‘the maiden’s
choice’? Are the little worn-out child-wives of to-day likely to have
descendants like those of the damsels of your ancient epics? Where are
the deeds of high emprise, of daring valour, and of patient persistence
of the youths who were fired by the pure love of a woman? Ah! gentlemen,
with love life departs; there is no vitality in married life without
affection, and when love, the great incentive to action, disappears from
the family, leaving dry the streams of affection which should flow
between the children and parents, what must come of the race?”—Mrs.
Pechey Phipson, M.D. (“Address to the Hindoos”).
_Id._... “From all we know of the laws of life and its development it
would appear one of the foolishest things on earth for men to fancy that
they can debase the intellect lobes of women, and at the same time exalt
their own. No breeder of cattle or horses would think of debasing the
qualities, in the females, which he would desire to possess in the
males.
“No race in the future can either rule the world or even continue in
existence without improving the intellect of that race, and this
certainly cannot be done by depauperising the intellects of more than
half of the _progenitors_ of that race.”—Dr. E. Bonavia (“Woman’s
Frontal Lobes”).
8.—“.... _Earth’s advancing queen_.”
“Will man den ganzen Menschen studiren, so darf man nur auf das
weibliche Geschlecht seine Augen richten: denn wo die Kraft schwacher
ist, da ist das Werkzeug um so künstlicher. Daher hat die Natur in das
weibliche Geschlecht eine natürliche Anlage zur Kunst gelegt. _Der Mann
ist geschaffen, ueber die Natur zu gebieten, das Weib aber, den Mann zu
regieren._ Zum Ersten gehört viel Kraft, zum Andern viel
Geschicklichkeit.”—Immanuel Kant.
LVII.
1.—“... _in jealousy_ ...”
The male conceit and jealousy of sex, existent among the majority of
meaner men, has been perceived and censured or satirised by higher
masculine minds both in ancient and modern literature. To take a few
scattered instances from the latter, Shakespeare says:—
“... however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and infirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won
Than women’s are.”
—(“Twelfth Night,” Act II., Sc. 4.)
Goethe says pungently (in “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship”): “People
ridicule learned women and dislike even women who are well informed,
probably because it is considered impolite to put so many ignorant men
to shame.”
As our own plain-spoken Sydney Smith has said, in his essay on Female
Education:—“It is natural that men who are ignorant themselves, should
view, with some degree of jealousy and alarm, any proposal for improving
the education of women.”
A ludicrously pitiful modern-day instance of the jealous ignorance or
ignorant jealousy to which Goethe and Sydney Smith make reference, is
afforded by a seriously-written leading article in No. 545 of the
_Christian Commonwealth_, a London weekly newspaper, under date of 24th
March, 1892:—
“The Woman question will not down. She is asserting herself in every
direction, and generally with considerable force. In America she is
positively alarming the lords of creation by her rapid progress in
educational matters. She is actually outrunning the men in the race
for intellectual attainments. And this fact is becoming so evident,
and so prominent, that a new problem is being evolved from it. This
is, how are the finely educated young women of America to find
congenial husbands? It is assumed by some writers that already there
is a great disparity between the culture of the young men and young
women, and that every year the chasm between them is becoming deeper
and wider. This is a truly lamentable state of things, but the woman
movement in this country is likely to take a more practical course.
The agitation of the question of Woman Suffrage may bring about a
reaction against her excessive culture. If woman is permitted to enter
the cesspool of politics, it is probable she will not be very long
distressed with an overplus of those qualities which are just now
endangering her conjugal felicity in the United States....”
It is refreshing and consolatory to revert from such verbiage to what
Sir Humphrey Davy said (“Lectures, 1810 and 1811”): “It has been too
much the custom to endeavour to attach ridicule to the literary and
scientific acquisitions of women. Let _them_ make it disgraceful for men
to be ignorant, and ignorance will perish.”
To Shakespeare and Goethe may be added the corroboration of French
intellect:—
“N’est-il pas évident que Molière, dans ses _Femmes Savantes_ n’a pas
attaqué l’instruction, l’étude, mais le pédantisme, comme, dans son
_Tartuffe_, il avait attaqué non la vraie dévotion, mais l’hypocrisie?
N’est-ce pas Molière lui-même qui a écrit ce beau vers: “Et je veux
qu’une femme ait des clartés _de tout_?”—Monseigneur Dupanloup, Evêque
d’Orléans (“Femmes Savantes et Femmes Studieuses,” 1868, p. 8).
“C’est à Condorcet et non pas à Jean Jacques, comme on le croit
généralement, qu’appartient l’initiative des réformes proposées dans
l’éducation et la condition des femmes.”—Daniel Stern (“Hist. de la
Révolution de 1848,” Vol. II, p. 185).
“Quand la loi française”—(shall we not say also every other?)—“déclare
la femme inférieure à l’homme ce n’est jamais pour libérer la femme d’un
devoir vis-à-vis de l’homme ou de la société, c’est pour armer l’homme
ou la société d’un droit de plus contre elle. Il n’est jamais venu à
l’idée de la loi de tenir compte de la faiblesse de la femme dans les
différents délits qu’elle peut commettre; au contraire, la loi en
abuse.”—A. Dumas fils (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” etc., p. 204).
Mill says:—“There is nothing which men so easily learn as this
self-worship; all privileged persons, and all privileged classes have
had it.” And he also speaks of a time—“when satires on women were in
vogue, and men thought it a clever thing to insult women for being what
men made them.”—(“Subjection of Women,” pp. 76, 77).
We have seen (Note XLV., 5) how Professor Huxley postulates scientific
training equally for girls and boys; he has also said:—“Emancipate
girls. Recognise the fact that they share the senses, perceptions,
feelings, reasoning powers, emotions of boys, and that the mind of the
average girl is less different from that of the average boy, than the
mind of one boy is from that of another; so that whatever argument
justifies a given education for all boys, justifies its application to
girls as well.”—(“Emancipation, _Black and White_.”)
Balzac asserted: “A woman who has received a masculine education
possesses the most brilliant and fertile qualities, with which to secure
the happiness of her husband and herself.”—(“Physiologie du Mariage,”
Méditation XI.).
But the instances are innumerable where the intellect of higher men
expressly or unconsciously rebukes the jealous sexual conceit of their
less intelligent brethren. Dr. Bonavia says, very tersely:—“The fact is,
many men don’t like the idea of being surpassed or even equalled by
women. They stupidly feel their dignity wounded. This jealousy, however,
is not only extremely contemptible and unjust, but disastrous to the
true interests of the race, for men have mothers _as well as women_, and
imbecility—the result of atrophied frontal lobes—is just as likely to be
transmitted to the one sex as to the other, as far as we yet know. Just
see the injustice of men’s jealousy in matters of intellect. Only
recently the talent of Miss Ormerod—an entomologist who can hold her own
_anywhere_ on earth—was kept under by the Royal Agricultural Society.
_She_ did the entomological work, and made the discoveries, while _they_
took the credit. In their reports they did not even mention _her_ name
in connection with her own work!—A more contemptible proceeding, it
would appear, has never been brought to light, in the struggle of the
sexes, if that case has been correctly reported.”—(“Woman’s Frontal
Lobes.”)
Bebel treats this jealousy with a fine irony in his exposition of “the
motives which induce most medical professors, and indeed the professors
of every faculty, to oppose women students:”—“They regard the admission
of women as synonymous with the degradation of science (!) which could
not but lose its prestige in the eyes of the enlightened (!) multitude
if it appeared that the female brain was capable of grasping problems
which had hitherto only been revealed to the elect of the opposite
sex.”—(_Op. cit._, p. 132.)
Had Bebel recorded masculine mercenary considerations, rather than sham
misgivings as to the interests of science, his sarcasm would have been
very grim truth. Indeed, what is sometimes called the “loaves and
fishes” argument is at the root of most of this masculine jealousy which
cloaks itself under a pretension of tender consideration for woman’s
delicacy. To cite Bebel again: “Another objection is that it is unseemly
to admit women to medical lectures, to operations, and deliveries, side
by side with male students. If men see nothing indecent in studying and
examining female patients in the presence of nurses and other female
patients, it is difficult to understand why it should become so through
the presence of female students.”—(_Op. cit._, p. 132.) And as to the
actual fitness of women for exercising the profession of medicine or
surgery:—
“‘Women always improve when the men begin to show signs of failing,’
were the words of a distinguished physician and surgeon, who had seen
years of service on a remote wintry station of the army. ‘I have had
fellows brought to me to have the leg amputated—perhaps both—close to
the body, and never anywhere in Paris, London, or New York, saw I better
surgeon’s assistants than some of our women made, especially the Sisters
of Charity, of whom we had a few at the post, for three or four years.
Heads as clear as a silver bell; hands steady and unshrinking as a
granite rock, yet with a touch as light as a spring leaf; foot quick and
indefatigable, whether the time was noonday or midnight; memory perfect;
tenderness for the sufferer unfailing. Talk about love, courage,
fortitude, and endurance in your sex! I tell you,’ he added, with a
needless affirmation at this point, ‘they seem to be nothing else, when
these are most wanted, and the man who doubts them is an ass.’”—Eliza W.
Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 157). See also Note XXIX., 8.
_Id._ ... Here may fittingly follow the report of a trained masculine
judgment as to woman’s ability in yet a further profession—that of the
law:—
At the recent opening of the Southern California College of Law, at Los
Angeles, John W. Mitchell, the president, in his lecture upon “The Study
of the Law,” spoke of the utility of women studying law, in the
following language:—
“This part of this discourse it is believed would be radically
incomplete without calling attention to one other and particular class
of persons who need an insight into the rudiments of law—which class,
it seems, has also been neglected by those occupying a like position
to my own—I mean the women. He is, indeed, blind to the signs of the
times who does not recognise the expanding field of women’s work, and
their increased influence in the professions as well as in the fine
arts. That women are entering the lists with men, in behalf of
themselves and womankind, is well; for they must make up their minds
to take up the task of urging the reforms they need, and must solve
the woman problem in all its bearings. Women are doing this. They are
becoming competitors with men in the pursuits of life, it is true; but
it is as much from necessity as choice. But it is not only the women
who have to labour and earn their own living who need legal knowledge
to aid them. It is more needful to the woman of property, be her
possessions but an humble home or a colossal fortune; whether she be
married or single. Women want this experience to make them cautious of
jeopardising their rights, and less confiding in business matters. The
courts are full of cases showing how women have been wrongly stripped
of their belongings. And, perhaps, if one woman had known the legal
effect of some of her acts, one of the largest fortunes ever amassed
in this State of Crœsus-like wealth would not have been carried to
distant States, and there scandalously distributed amongst scheming
adventurers and lawyers, making a little Massachusetts county-seat the
theatre of one of the most remarkable contests for a fortune in the
whole annals of probate court law.
“As to the professions: women were for a long time barred from them,
but now the barriers to all of them have been removed, and there is
not a profession in which women are not distinguished. They have
graduated in the sciences from most universities with the highest
honours, and have stood the same tests as the men. The law was about
the last to admit them within its precincts, and there they are
meeting with an unexpected measure of success. Not only in this, but
in other countries, there are successful women practitioners. And in
France, where the preparatory course is most arduous, and the term of
study longest, a woman recently took the highest rank over 500 men in
her graduating examinations, and during the whole six years of class
study she only lost one day from her work—an example that is commended
to you students. Undoubtedly, the weight of the argument is in favour
of women studying law.”—(_Women’s Journal_, Boston, U.S., 6th
February, 1892.)
_Id._... Even the vaunted politeness and gallantry of the Frenchman is
not proof against the far more deeply-bedded masculine jealousy. M. de
Blowitz, the erudite correspondent at Paris of the _Times_, reports
that—
“The law students yesterday hooted down Mdlle. Jeanne Chauvin, 28
years of age, who was to have argued a thesis for a legal degree. She
had chosen as her theme, ‘The Professions accessible to Women and the
Historical Evolution of the Economic Position of Woman in Society.’
The uproar was such that the examiner postponed the ceremony _sine
die_. Mdlle. Chauvin is the first Frenchwoman who has sought a legal
degree, but two years ago a Roumanian lady went through the ordeal
without obstruction.”—(The _Times_, July 4, 1892.)
To revert to the “loaves and fishes” argument, an incident now to be
given will show that medicine and the law are not the only professions
in which the objections to the equal status of the sexes are largely
prompted by a “jalousie de métier” of a selfish and mercenary
character:—
“The following letters have been received at Auckland from the
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in relation to the
memorial lately sent from New Zealand in favour of the opening of
degrees to women:—
“‘DEAR PROFESSOR ALDIS,
“‘Your very interesting memorial reached me yesterday. I still await
the explanatory letter and analysis. After receiving I will write
again.
“‘Yours etc.,
JOHN PEILE,
Vice-Chancellor.
Christ’s College Lodge,
‘Cambridge, Nov. 2nd, 1891.’
“‘MY DEAR PROFESSOR ALDIS,
“‘The petition of the memorial received by me from Miss Lilian Edger
and yourself, respecting degrees for women at the University of
Cambridge, and the analysis of the signatures to that memorial, have
been printed by me in the _University Reporter_, the official organ of
communication of any kind of business to the members of the Senate.
The memorial itself will be preserved in the Registry of the
University. Immediate action on this question by the Council of the
Senate—the body, with which, as you are aware, all legislation in the
University must begin—is not probable. The question was raised about
three years ago; and it became at once plain that, if persevered in,
it would produce a very serious division in the ranks of those members
of the University who had all shown themselves, in the past, friends
to the highest education of women. Many of those who had earnestly
supported the admission of women to Tripos examinations, _would not
support their admission to the B.A. degree_. Into their—mostly
practical—reasons I cannot fully enter: One was the belief that
admission to B.A. must lead, in the end (in spite of any provisions
which might be introduced), to admission to M.A., and consequently to
_a share in the management of the University_; it was also apprehended
that difficulties would arise in the several colleges _with respect to
fellowships_, _etc._ I do not mention these difficulties as
insuperable. But they are felt by so many that there is, I am
persuaded, no prospect of successful action in this matter at the
present time. I shall, therefore, not myself propose anything in the
Council, nor so far has any other of the friends of women’s education,
of whom there are many on the Council, given notice of any motion. At
any future time, when such a motion is made, your most influential
memorial will certainly have its due weight with the members of the
Council, and if they decide to take action, I hope also, with members
of the Senate.
“‘I am, etc.,
JOHN PEILE,
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.
Christ’s College Lodge,
Cambridge, Nov. 20th, 1891.’”
—(_New Zealand Herald_, 5th Jan., 1892.)
6.—“... _potency_ ...”
“The Brain is different from all other organs of the body. It is often a
mass of structural potentialities rather than of fully-developed nerve
tissues. Some of its elements, viz., those concerned with
best-established instinctive operations, naturally go on to their full
development without the aid of extrinsic stimuli; others, however, and
large tracts of these, seem to progress to such developments only under
the influence of suitable stimuli. Hence natural aptitudes and potencies
of the most subtle order may never be manifested by multitudes of
persons, for want of the proper stimuli and practice capable of
perfecting the development and functional activity of those regions of
the brain whose action is inseparably related to the mental phenomena in
question.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 374).
LVIII.
1.—“_Woman’s own soul must seek and find_ ...”
On women of medical education especially is the duty incumbent to
investigate the world of biological experience in woman. They may not
sit quietly down and assume that in learning all that man has to teach,
they rest his equals, and that the last word has been said on the
matter. They have a field of exploration, with opportunities, with
implements, and with capacities, which man cannot have. His research on
such a question as the recognisedly most vital one of human embryology
with all its issues, can get but rare and uncertain light from
accidental occasions, and is, moreover, simply as it were a dead
anatomising; nor can he by any means reach the psychic or introspective
phase of enquiry; but woman has the live subject, body and soul, in her
own organism, to study at her leisure. Does she not yet see how to grasp
such further living knowledge? But that is the very quest here
indicated. The askidian also had no strength of vision, yet we can now
tell and test the light and the components of distant spheres.
There are, undoubtedly, what may be termed intelligent operations
carried on in the body unconsciously to oneself, or at any rate beyond
the present ken of one’s actively perceptive and volitional faculties.
Observation and recognition of these is to be striven for, and even
guidance or command of them may be ours in a worthy future. The _Times_
of 27th January, 1892, reported a lecture at the Royal Institution on
the previous day by Professor Victor Horsley, in the course of which the
lecturer—
“... pointed out the pineal gland, which Descartes thought to be the
seat of the soul, but which was now known to be an invertebrate eye.
He also explained the functions of certain small masses of grey
matter, which are two, viz.—sight and equilibration. The optic nerve
was situated close to the crura, and equilibration was subserved by
the cerebellum. After referring to the basal ganglia, Professor
Horsley admitted that as science advanced we seem to know less and
less about the specific functions of the various masses of grey
matter, and less definite views than formerly prevailed were now held
with respect to the local source of what are termed voluntary
impulses, and that of sensations.... We were still in ignorance as to
the functions of the optic thalamus, and of the corpus striatum. Those
of the cortex had to some extent been ascertained. They might be
divided into three classes, viz.—movement, sensation, and what was
termed mental phenomena. But we were still in the dark as to those
portions of the brain which subserved intellectual operations, memory,
and emotional impulses. A like ignorance prevailed with respect to the
basal ganglia.”
What as yet unrecognised inward eyes watch over the embryo life?
3.—“... _counsel helpful_ ...”
Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham says:—“In this day the most needed science to
humankind is that which will commend women to confidence in themselves
and their sex as the leading force of the coming Era—the Era of
spiritual rule and movement; in which, through them, the race is
destined to rise to a more exalted position than ever before it has
held, and for the first time to form its dominant ties of relationship
to that world of purer action and diviner motion, which lies above the
material one of intellectual struggle and selfish purpose wherein man
has held and exercised his long sovereignty.”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Vol.
I., p. 311).
5.—“... _philosophic lore_ ...”
“The farther our knowledge advances, the greater will be the need of
rising to transcendental views of the physical world.... If the
imagination had been more cultivated, if there had been a closer union
between the spirit of poetry and the spirit of science, natural
philosophy would have made greater progress because natural philosophers
would have taken a higher and more successful aim, and would have
enlisted on their side a wider range of human sympathies.”—Buckle
(“Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”).
_Id._ “... _chirurgic lore_ ...”
“The Lady Dufferin fund had already been the means of opening a
school of medicine for Indian women, who would consequently devote
themselves to the study of anatomy. Anatomy and Asiatic women. That
was the most extraordinary association of ideas one could ever have
imagined.”—Professor Vambéry (Lecture to the Royal Scottish
Geographical Society, Edinburgh, 20th May, 1891). Reported in the
_Times_ of following day.
8.—“_Regent of Nature’s will_, ...”
“Woman will grow into fitness for the sublime work which nature has
given her to do, and man through her help and persuasion will
spontaneously assume the relation of a co-operator in it. Finding that
nature intends his highest good and that of his species, through the
emancipation and development of woman into the fulness of her powers, he
will gratefully seek his own profit and happiness in harmonising himself
with this method; he will honour it as nature’s method, and woman as its
chief executor; and will joyfully find that not only individuals,
families, and communities, but nations, have been wisely dependent on
her, in their more advanced conditions, for the good which can come only
from the most perfect, artistic, and spiritual being who inhabits our
earth.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 423).
LIX.
1.—“_Each sequent life shall feel her finer care_.”
“The one thing constant, the one peak that rises above all clouds, the
one window in which the light for ever burns, the one star that darkness
cannot quench, is _woman’s love_. This one fact justifies the existence
and the perpetuation of the human race. Again I say that women are
better than men; their hearts are more unreservedly given; in the web of
their lives sorrow is inextricably woven with the greatest joys;
self-sacrifice is a part of their nature, and at the behest of love and
maternity they walk willingly and joyously down to the very gates of
death. Is there nothing in this to excite the admiration, the adoration,
of a modern reformer? Are the monk and nun superior to the father and
mother?”—Robert Ingersoll (_North American Review_, Sept., 1890).
2.—“_Each heir of life a wealthier bounty share_;”
Poets and physiologists agree in these prognostications. The keen
observer, Bastian, in his treatise on archebiosis, willingly calls to
his support an equally conscientious ally, in the following passage:—
“We must battle on along the path of knowledge and of duty, trusting in
that natural progress towards a far distant future for the human race,
such as its past history may warrant us in anticipating. For, as Mr.
Wallace points out, those natural influences which have hitherto
promoted man’s progress ‘still acting on his mental organisation, must
ever lead to the more perfect adaptation of man’s higher faculties to
the conditions of surrounding nature and to the exigencies of the social
state,’ so that ‘his mental constitution may continue to advance and
improve, till the world is again inhabited by a single, nearly
homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior to the noblest
specimens of existing humanity.’”—Dr. H. Charlton Bastian (“The
Beginnings of Life,” Vol. II., p. 633).
3.—“_Those lives allied in equal union chaste._”
“The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of
maternity.”
—Walt Whitman (“Children of Adam”).
4.—“_A sweeter purpose, purer rapture, taste_;”
“A wife is no longer the husband’s property; and, according to modern
ideas, marriage is, or should be, a contract on the footing of perfect
equality between the sexes. The history of human marriage is the history
of a relation in which women have been gradually triumphing over the
passions, the prejudices, and the selfish interests of men.”—Edward
Westermarck (Concluding words of “The History of Human Marriage”).
7.—“_The only rivalry_ ...”
“When woman finds her proper place in legislation, it will be found
ultimately that it will be not as man’s rival, but his helpmate.”—Mabel
Collins (“On Woman’s Relation to the State”).
8.—“_How for their lineage fair still larger fate to find_.”
“Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, had the idea of making public principle
and utility predominate over private interests and affections; and on
that idea he ordained that children were not to be the property of their
parents, but of the State, which was to direct their education, and
determine their modes of life. A better idea with the legislators of the
future—_the number of whom will be equal with that of all
wholesomely-developed men and women upon the earth_—will be to take
fullest advantage of all natural instincts. The parents, their hearts
ever yearning with love for their offspring, and the community, careful
of its individual members, co-operating in placing the children under
all good influences towards that development, which, being the best for
their individual lives, will also coincide with what is best for the
general welfare. For this end, the experience of the past, and the
higher wisdom of their own times, will far better qualify them to judge
of fitting means and methods than we can now either surmise or
suggest.”—David Maxwell (“Stepping-stones to Socialism,” p. 15).
LX.
1.—“_Their task ineffable yields wondrous gain_.”
“... I rest not from my great task;
To open the eternal worlds! To open the immortal eyes
Of man inwards; into the worlds of thought: into eternity
Ever expanding the human imagination.”
—William Blake (“Jerusalem”).
2.—“_Their energies celestial force attain_.”
“Les écrivains du dix-huitième siècle ont sans doute rendu d’immenses
services aux Sociétés; mais leur philosophie basée sur le sensualisme,
n’est pas allée plus loin que l’épiderme humain. Ils n’ont considéré que
l’univers extérieur, et, sous ce rapport seulement, ils ont retardé,
pour quelque temps, le développement morale de l’homme.... L’étude des
mystères de la pensée, la découverte des organes de l’AME humaine, la
géométrie de ses forces, les phénomènes de sa puissance, l’appréciation
de la faculté qu’elle nous semble posséder de se mouvoir indépendamment
du corps, de se transporter où elle veut et de voir sans le secours des
organes corporels, enfin les lois de sa dynamique et celles de son
influence physique, constitueront la glorieuse part du siècle suivant
dans le trésor des sciences humaines. Et nous ne sommes occupés peut
être, en ce moment, qu’à extraire les blocs énormes qui serviront plus
tard à quelque puissant génie pour bâtir quelque glorieux
édifice.”—Balzac (“Physiologie du Mariage,” Méditation XXVI.).
3, 4.—“_Their intermingled souls, with passion dight,
In aspiration soar past earthly height_.”
“As yet we are in the infancy of our knowledge. What we have done is but
a speck compared to what remains to be done. For what is there that we
really know? We are too apt to speak as if we had penetrated into the
sanctuary of truth and raised the veil of the goddess, when, in fact, we
are still standing, coward-like, trembling before the vestibule, and not
daring, from very fear, to cross the threshold of the temple. The
highest of our so-called laws of nature are as yet purely empirical.
“... They who discourse to you of the laws of nature as if those laws
were binding upon nature, or as if they formed a part of nature, deceive
both you and themselves. The (so-called) laws of nature have their sole
seat, origin, and function in the human mind. They are simply the
conditions under which the regularity of nature is recognised. They
explain the external world, but they reside in the internal. As yet we
know scarcely anything of the laws of mind, and, therefore, we scarcely
know anything of the laws of nature. We talk of the law of gravitation,
and yet we know not what gravitation is; we talk of the conservation of
force and distribution of forces, and we know not what forces are; we
talk with complacent ignorance of the atomic arrangements of matter, and
we neither know what atoms are nor what matter is; we do not even know
if matter, in the ordinary sense of the word, can be said to exist; we
have as yet only broken the first ground, we have but touched the crust
and surface of things. Before us and around us there is an immense and
untrodden field, whose limits the eye vainly strives to define; so
completely are they lost in the dim and shadowy outline of the future.
In that field, which we and our posterity have yet to traverse, I firmly
believe that the imagination will effect quite as much as the
understanding. Our poetry will have to reinforce our logic, and we must
feel as much as we argue. Let us then hope, that the imaginative and
emotional minds of one sex will continue to accelerate the great
progress, by acting upon and improving the colder and harder minds of
the other sex.”—Buckle (“Influence of Women on the Progress of
Knowledge”).
6.—“... _the vision to retain_,”
As with Wordsworth’s nature-nurtured maiden:—
“... beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face ...
And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height ...
The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend,
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden’s form
By silent sympathy.”
—(“Poems of the Imagination”).
_Id._... “My hope becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by
every leaf, sung on every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower.
There is so much for us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and
enjoyed. Not for you or me, now, but for our race, who will ultimately
use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough
to give them the life of the fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm
and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer,
the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into
man’s existence. He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their
glory.... He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal
life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind.”—R.
Jefferies (“The Pageant of Summer”).
7, 8.—“... _mould their dreams of love, with conscious skill
To human living types_ ...”
“Her Brain enlabyrinths the whole heaven of her bosom and loins
To put in act what her Heart wills.”
—William Blake (“Jerusalem”).
“These states belong so purely to the inner nature; are so deeply hidden
beneath the strata of what we call the inner life, even, that only
women, and of these, only such as have become self-acquainted, through
seeing the depths within the depths of their own consciousness, can
fully comprehend all that is meant in the words a ‘Purposed Maternity.’
I use them in their highest sense, meaning not the mere purpose of
satisfying the maternal instincts, which the quadruped feels and acts
from, as well as the human being, but the intelligent, artistic purpose
(to which the maternal instinct is a fundamental motive), to act in
harmony with Nature in producing the most perfect being which the powers
and resources employed, can bring forth.... It is probable that we
shall, ere long, arrive at truer views of maternity everywhere; and when
we do, I think it will be seen that the office has a sacredness in
Nature’s eyes above all other offices, and that she reserves for it the
finest of her vital forces, powers, susceptibilities, and means of every
sort.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 385; Vol. I.,
p. 93).
[It has been an intense delight to come upon these and the other words
and thoughts of Eliza W. Farnham; “blazes” or axe-marks of this previous
pioneer in the same exploration. It is only since completing the whole
of the verses that the writer has found the passages quoted from Mrs.
Farnham’s work, and deduces a not unnatural confirmation of the mutually
shared views, from the singular concord and unanimity of their
expression.]
8.—“... _supreme of form and will_.”
“The changes that have come over us in our social life during the past
two decades are, in many respects, remarkable, but in no particular are
they so remarkable as in the physical training and education of
women....
“The results of this social change have been on the whole beneficial
beyond expectation. The health of women generally is improving under the
change; there is amongst women generally less bloodlessness, less of
what the old fiction-writers called swooning; less of lassitude, less of
nervousness, less of hysteria, and much less of that general debility to
which, for want of a better term, the words ‘_malaise_’ and ‘languor’
have been applied. Woman, in a word, is stronger than she was in olden
time. With this increase of strength woman has gained in development of
body and of limb. She has become less distortioned. The curved back, the
pigeon-shaped chest, the disproportioned limb, the narrow feeble trunk,
the small and often distorted eyeball, the myopic eye, and puny
ill-shaped external ear—all these parts are becoming of better and more
natural _contour_. The muscles are also becoming more equally and more
fully developed, and with these improvements, there are growing up
amongst women models who may, in due time, vie with the best models that
old Greek culture has left for us to study in its undying art.”—Dr.
Richardson (“The Young Woman,” Oct., 1892).
_Id._—“... prophetic scenes,
Spiritual projections ...
In one, the sacred parturition scene,
A happy, painless mother births a perfect child.”
—Walt Whitman (“Autumn Rivulets”).
_Id._... “I am so rapt in the beauty of the human form, and so
earnestly, so inexpressibly prayerful to see that form perfect, that
my full thought is not to be written.... It is absolutely
incontrovertible that the ideal shape of the human being is attainable
to the exclusion of deformities.... When the ambition of the multitude
is fixed on the ideal form and beauty, then that ideal will become
immediately possible, and a marked advance towards it could be made in
three generations.”—Richard Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” pp.
32, 151, 131).
_Id._...
“‘The Gods?’ In yourselves will ye see them, when Venus shall favour
your love,
And man, fitly mated with woman, believes that his love is divine:
When passion shall elevate woman to something so holy and grand
That she—the ideal enraptured—shall ne’er be a check upon Man,
Then the children they bear will be holy, and beauty shall make them her
own,
And man in the eyes of his neighbour will gaze on the reflex divine
Of the God he inclines to in spirit—or trace in each feature and limb
The lines which the body inherits from souls which are noble and true.
Would thou couldst feel in deep earnest, how beautiful God will be then,
When we see Him as Jove or Apollo in men who inspire us with love,
As Juno and Venus the holy, in women who know not the mean,
And feel not the influence cruel of hardness and self-love and scorn.
Would thou couldst once know how real the presence of God will become,
How earnest and ever more earnest thy faith when thyself shall be great,
And from the true worship of others thoult learn what is holy in them,
And rise to the infinite fountain of glory which flows in us all.”
—C. G. Leland (“The Return of the Gods”).
LXI.
3.—“_Their science_ ...”
“Science then
Shall be a precious visitant; and then
And only then, be worthy of her name:
For then her heart shall kindle; her dull eye,
Dull and inanimate, no more shall hang
Chained to its object in brute slavery;
But taught with patient industry to watch
The processes of things, and serve the cause
Of order and distinctness, not for this
Shall it forget that its most noble use,
Its most illustrious province, must be found
In furnishing clear guidance, a support
Not treacherous, to the mind’s _excursive_ power.”
—Wordsworth (“The Excursion,” Book IV.).
4.—“... _crude dimensions_ ...”
“In these material things, too, I think that we require another circle
of ideas, and I believe that such ideas are possible, and, in a manner
of speaking, exist. Let me exhort everyone to do their utmost to think
outside and beyond our present circle of ideas. For every idea gained is
a hundred years of slavery remitted. Even with the idea of organisation,
which promises most, I am not satisfied, but endeavour to get beyond and
outside it, so that the time now necessary may be shortened.”—Richard
Jefferies (“Story of My Heart,” p. 180).
8.—“_The love that lifts the life from rank of earth to heaven._”
“... utter knowledge is but utter love—
Æonian Evolution, swift and slow,
Thro’ all the spheres—an ever opening height,
An ever lessening earth.”
—Tennyson (“The Ring”).
_Id._...
“The light of love
Not failing, perseverance from their steps
Departing not, they shall at length obtain
The glorious habit by which sense is made
Subservient still to moral purposes,
Auxiliar to divine. That change shall clothe
The naked spirit, ceasing to deplore
The burthen of existence....
——So build we up the Being that we are;
Thus deeply drinking-in the soul of things,
We shall be wise perforce; and, while inspired
By choice, and conscious that the Will is free,
Unswerving shall we move as if impelled
By strict necessity, along the path
Of order and of good. Whate’er we see,
Whate’er we feel, by agency direct
Or indirect, shall tend to feed and nurse
Our faculties, shall fix in calmer seats
Of moral strength, and raise to loftier heights
Of love divine, our intellectual soul.”
—Wordsworth (“The Excursion,” Book IV.).
LXII.
1, 2.—“... _winged words on which the soul would pierce
Into the height of love’s rare Universe_.”
The two lines are Shelley’s, in his “Epipsychidion.”
7.—“_Man’s destiny with woman’s blended be_.”
“... in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man.”
—Tennyson (“The Princess,” Part VII.).
_Id._—“Dans ma manière de sentir, je suis femme aux trois quarts.”
—Ernest Renan (“Souvenirs d’Enfance”).
_Id._...
“Das Ewigweibliche
Zieht uns hinan.”
—Goethe (concluding two lines of “Faust”).
8.—“... _progression_, ...”
“Unfolded out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded, and is
always to come unfolded;
Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth, is to come the
superbest man of the earth;
Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man;
Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be form’d of
perfect body;
Unfolded only out of the inimitable poem of the woman, can come the
poems of man ...
Unfolded out of the folds of the woman’s brain come all the folds of the
man’s brain, duly obedient;
Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded;
Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy;
A man is a great thing upon the earth, and through eternity—but every
jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman,
First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.”
—Walt Whitman (“Leaves of Grass”).
LXIII.
2.—“... _the dream men named Divine_,—”
“Divine” was the title of honour conferred on the “Commedia,” by the
repentant citizens of Florence, after the death of Dante.
8.—“_The love that moves the sun and every circling star_.”
The last line of the “Divina Commedia” is—
“Lo amor che move il sole e le altre stelle.”
EPILOGUE.
What, then, is the result of these investigations?
Briefly this:
That woman is not incapable of equal mental and physical power with man:
That where any inferiority on her part at present exists, it is but as
the inherited result of long ages of misuse of her functions, and of
want of training of her faculties:
That an intelligent education in both directions can repair these
wrongs, and establish her due individuality, and her equal share in
human right and happiness:
“That the principle which regulates the existing social relations
between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is
wrong in itself and now one of the chief hindrances to human
improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect
equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor
disability on the other”—(JOHN STUART MILL, “The Subjection of Women,”
Ch. I.):
And that, as the result of woman’s amended position, the whole human
race will benefit physically and psychically.
Thus much, at least, may be fairly concluded from the “Notes” here
presented; in the gathering together of which scattered rays—thoughts
and experiences from many an observant mind—into one focus, to offer
light and warmth to suffering womanhood and humanity, the main purpose
of this book is accomplished.
_E. E._
_January 1st, 1893._
⁂ _The courtesy of corroborations or elucidations (confidential or
otherwise) of the subject-matter of these Notes is invited by the Author
(care of Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, Buxton House, Congleton), with a view
to a possible fuller edition._
INDICES, &c.
AUTHORITIES OR REFERENCES IN NOTES
Æschylus, 53.
Aldis, Prof. W. S., 202.
Anderson, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett, 113.
Aspasia, 45, 46, 47.
Athena, 52.
Ballot, Jules, 168.
Balzac, H. de, 198, 211.
Bastian, Dr. H. C., 87, 125, 204, 208.
Bebel, August, 38, 46, 115, 124, 130, 165, 167, 183, 199.
Bell, Sir C., 192.
Berdoe, Ed., 191.
Bernard, Dr. Claude, 185.
Bernheim, Dr., 109.
Bidwell, E., 93.
Bithell, Richard, 110.
Blackstone, 98 to 100, 131, 143, 148.
Blake, William, 159, 210, 214.
Blowitz, M. de, 202.
Bonavia, Dr. E., 121, 153, 162, 164, 194, 198.
Bowyer, Lady, 156.
Bracton, 98.
Browning, Eliz. Barrett, 63, 67, 119.
Browning, Robert, 67.
Brown-Séquard, Dr., 184.
Brücke, Prof., 184.
Büchner, Dr. L., 121.
Buckle, H. T., 50, 65, 72, 103, 107, 118, 131, 140, 142, 171, 206, 211.
Buddha, 138.
Byron, Commodore, 61.
Byron, Lord, 125.
Caird, Mona, 48, 174.
Carlyle, Thomas, 193.
Cerise, Dr., 103.
Chambers, Robert, 40.
Chauveau, Dr., 183.
Chauvin, Mdlle., 202.
Christian, Edwd., 98, 131, 143, 149.
Cobbe, Frances Power, 88, 112, 152, 189, 190.
Coke, Chief Justice, 98, 130.
Collins, Mabel, 181, 209.
Comte, Auguste, 138 (_see_ Ethics, _in Index_).
Condorcet, 197.
Confucius, 69, 138.
Cromwell, 126.
Cuvier, 124, 126.
Dante, 53, 125, 126, 221.
Darwin, C., 42, 59, 61, 64, 128, 161, 185.
Darwin, F., 107.
Davy, Sir Humphrey, 196.
Dawkins, Prof. Boyd, 93.
De Boismont, Brierre, 116.
Delbœuf, Prof., 119.
Descartes, 205.
Dixie, Lady Florence, 49, 174.
Dodel-Port, Dr., 124.
Dufferin, Lady, 206.
Duffey, Mrs. E. B., 120.
Dumas, A. fils, 36, 49, 54, 124, 132, 137, 175, 197.
Dunckley, Dr. Henry, 187.
Dupanloup, Mons., 197.
Du Prel, Dr., 109.
Edger, Lilian, 202.
Eliot, George, 35, 79, 93.
Elmy, Ben, 38, 66, 178.
Elmy, Eliz. C. Wolstenholme, 62, 144, 155.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 161.
Esher, Lord, 145.
Faber, Dr., 67.
Fairchild, Prof., 164.
Farnham, Eliza W., 59, 104, 111, 130, 139, 157, 179, 186, 200, 206,
207, 214.
Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, 113, 114, 117.
Fawcett, Philippa, 164.
Fergusson, Robert, 72, 140.
Flaxman, John, 170.
Fonblanque, Dr., _see_ Paris.
Forel, Dr., 120.
Fuller, _see_ Ossoli.
Galton, F., 181.
Gambetta, Léon, 126.
Gardener, Helen H., 125, 126, 127.
Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, Jr., 172.
Geddes and Thomson, 40, 41, 74, 78, 173, 175 to 177, 178, 182.
Geikie, James, 40.
Gnathæna, 46.
Gregory, Dr., 73.
Greville, Lady Violet, 130.
Grey, Sir George, 59.
Grote, George, 44.
Goltz, Prof., 191.
Goethe, 195, 220.
Guizot, 142.
Halsbury, Lord Chancellor, 144.
Harrison, Frederic, 112.
Harvard, John, 171.
Hoche, Frau, 77.
Homer, 53.
Horsley, Prof., 189, 205.
Huxley, Prof., 64, 109, 166, 197.
Ingersoll, Robert, 208.
Inman, Dr. T., 58.
Jefferies, R., 36, 41, 103, 108, 183, 187, 213, 216, 218.
Jex-Blake, Dr. Sophia, 113, 172.
Jones, Prof. T. R., 36.
JOURNALS, &C.
“Arena,” 181.
Bible, 100, 102, 116, 140.
“Bombay Guardian,” 71.
Brit Assoc. Reports, 35, 36, 93, 101, 107, 116, 117.
“British Med. Journal,” 78.
Chinese Classics, 67.
“Christian Commonwealth,” 196.
“Daily News,” 156.
“Dublin Review,” 73.
“Fortnightly Review,” 115.
Fox’s Journal, 140.
“Home-Maker,” N.Y., 86.
Ohel Jakob (Jewish Liturgy), 139.
“Journal of Education,” 160.
“Lancet,” 114.
Mahomedan Lit. Society, 94.
“Manchester Courier,” 169.
“Manchester Evening Mail,” 169.
“Manchester Examiner,” 60.
“Manchester Guardian,” 76, 77, 140, 187.
“Morning Post,” 54.
“National Review,” 130.
“New Zealand Herald,” 203.
“Nineteenth Century,” 47, 61, 71, 114.
“Pall Mall Gazette,” 78.
“Provincial Med. Journal,” _see_ Bonavia, Dr.
Report of International Council of Women, Washington, 1888, 126 to
128.
“Review of Reviews,” 69, 80, 86, 118, 180.
“Standard,” 76, 192.
“Times,” 86, 97, 119, 146, 150, 189, 191, 192, 205, 207.
“Times of India,” 82, 97.
“Westminster Review,” 142, 168.
“Woman,” 169.
“Woman’s Journal,” Boston, U.S., 72, 106, 172, 201.
“Woman’s Herald,” 57.
Kant, Immanuel, 183, 195, (_see_ Ethics, _in Index_).
Karl, Lieutenant, 77.
Kenny, Courtney, 149.
Kingsley, Charles, 57, 119.
Kipling, J. Lockwood, 39.
Kipling, Rudyard, 54.
Laboulaye, E., 130.
Laïs, 46, 47.
Lang, Andrew, 179.
Lecky, W. E. H., 48.
Lee, Chief Justice, 151.
Leland, C. G., 38, 217.
Lepstuk, Marie, 77.
Letourneau, Ch., 37, 38, 39, 46, 55, 58, 61, 67, 88, 132, 133, 138,
159.
Le Vassor, 131.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, 47.
Lodge, Prof., 35.
Lombroso, Prof., 101.
Luteef, Abdool, 97.
Lycurgus, 209.
Lylie, “Euphues,” 171.
Machill, Prof., 164.
Magee, Archbishop, 80.
Manning, Cardinal, 73, 118.
Mansell, Dr. Monelle, 84.
Manu, 67, 133 (_see_ England, _in Index_).
Maxwell, David, 210.
McCarthy, Justin, (_see_ “Military service,” _in Index_).
McIlquham, Harriett, 151, 152.
M’Lennan, John F., 37, 59.
Mencius, 69.
Michelet, J., 77.
Mill, Harriet, 56, 142.
Mill, John Stuart, 38, 43, 73, 79, 107, 134, 137, 154, 156, 162, 175,
193, 197, 222 (_see_ Ethics, _in Index_).
Milton, 67, 135.
Mitchell, Hon. J. W., 123, 200.
Mitchell, Dr. Julia, 77.
Moir, David M., 63.
Molière, 196.
Moll, Dr. A., 109, 119, 121.
Montesquieu, 99.
Morgan-Browne, Laura E., 56, 57.
Morselli, Dr., 126.
Müller, Max, 42.
Nichols, Dr., 101.
Ninon de Lenclos, 48.
Norman, —, 70.
Orr, Mrs. Sutherland, 67.
Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, 180.
Page, Lord Justice, 151.
Paley, (_see_ Ethics, _in Index_).
Paris and Fonblanque, 108.
Park, Mungo, 59.
Parvin, Dr., 90.
Pericles, 45.
Peile, Dr., 202, 203.
Pertz, Dorothea, 107.
Pfeiffer, Edward, 160.
Phipson, Dr. Edith Pechey, 42, 43, 80, 81, 91, 94, 136, 159, 194.
Phryne, 46, 47.
Plato, 44, 118.
Pliny, 102.
Ponsan, Dr. Menville de, i.
Pope, 66.
Raciborski, Dr., 88, 102, 120.
Rawn, Dr., 116.
Reade, Winwood, 44.
Reichardt, Mrs., 61, 71.
Renan, Ernest, 166, 220.
Richardson, Dr. B. W., 215.
Roland, Madame, 129.
Rousseau, 197.
Roussel, Dr., 88, 103, 104.
Rowe, Nicholas, 133.
Ruskin, John, 51, 54, 108, 128, 156.
Ryder, Dr. Emma B., 84.
Sachs, Dr., 107.
Sakyamouni, 138.
Sand, Georges, 67, 79.
Schiller, 80.
Schreiner, Olive, 111.
Scott, 52.
Selborne, Lord, 146.
Shakespeare, 52, 53, 150, 195.
Shelley, 156, 219.
Sidgwick, Prof. H., (_see_ Neo-Malthusianism, _in Index_).
Smith, R., 61.
Smith, Sydney, 51, 163, 195.
Socrates, 45, 48.
Somerville, Mary, 163.
Sorel, Agnes, 47.
Spencer, Herbert, 64, 88, (_see_ Ethics, _in Index_).
Spenser, 119.
Spier, Mrs., 138.
Spitzka, Dr., 126, 127.
Spurzheim, Dr., 127.
Stead, W. T., 180.
Stern, Daniel, 197.
Tait, Lawson, F.R.C.S., 188, 192.
Tennyson, 43, 53, 66, 156, 162, 173, 182, 218, 220.
Tertullian, 142.
Theodota, 48.
Thompson, Wm., (_see_ Equality, _in Index_).
Thomson (_see_ Geddes).
Thorburn, Dr. John, 91.
Tilt, Dr. E. J., 116, 118.
Tinseau, —, 69.
Troll-Borostyani, Irma von, 183.
Tyndall, Prof., 88.
Vambéry, Prof., 207.
Wakeman, Edgar L., 75.
Walker, Dr. A., 46, 129, 163.
Wallace, Prof. A. R., 180, 208.
Webb, Sidney, 101.
Weill, Dr. Alexander, 111, 112.
Westermarck, Edwd., 42, 45, 46, 171, 209.
White, Prof., 164.
Whitehead, Dr., 105.
Whitman, Walt, 154, 209, 216, 220.
Whittier, John G., 178.
Winslow, Dr. Caroline, 106.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 129, 135, 159, 170.
Wordsworth, 36, 213, 217, 219.
INDEX TO NOTES.
Abnormality, 91 to 93, 121.
Affection, 42;
indispensable to true marriage, 194.
Age of nubility and consent, _see_ England, India.
American Indians, education of, 60.
Anatomy, feminine teaching of in India, 207.
Arrogance, masculine, 64, 67, _see_ Sex-bias.
Art, 40, 41, 216.
Asceticism, 41 167, 208.
Athletics, 74, 167, 215, _see_ Strength, Training, Military service.
Australian girl, 42.
Barbarism, 37, 54, 57.
“Baron and feme,” 149.
Bayadères, 46.
Beauty, 41, 49, 75, 213, 216.
Brain, 121 to 128, 203, 205;
developed by exercise, 121, 122, 161;
relative size, weight, and specific gravity of, 125, 126;
of celebrated men, 125;
no hard and fast distinction known, 127;
of ant, 128.
Brahminism, 71, 80, 82, 138.
Buddhism, 72, 138.
Capability, 49 to 53, 162, 164, 169, _see_ Jealousy.
Catholicism, status of wife, 73.
Cattle, wild; lactation, 93.
Chastity, 47, 138, 177, 209.
Childbearing, 78, 208;
excessive, 64, 66, 105, 176, 177;
future painless, 216.
Child-marriage, 81;
_see_ Marriage.
China, 58;
ethics of woman in, 67;
a Mandarin’s foreboding, 130;
a girl’s duty in, 140, _see_ Confucianism.
Christianity, 73, 140, 142.
Civism, 74, 154, 155.
“Clitheroe case,” 144.
Clothing; _see_ Dress.
Coal-pit women, 75.
Co-education; _see_ Education.
Community of effort, 155, 173, 182, 183, 194, 207, 209, 212, 218, 220.
Comtism, 138, _see_ Ethics.
Confucianism; 67, 71, 138.
Conjugal “rights,” in England, 98, 143 to 146;
in India, 85, 86, 95, 147.
Consent, age of, _see_ England, India.
Contagious Diseases Acts, 193.
Courtesanship, 45, 54;
_see_ Hetairai, Prostitution.
Cruelty, to woman, 37, 38, 58, 79, 83, 85, 102, 105;
to children, 61, 62, 83, 85, 86.
Curare (or “ourali”), 185.
Custody of Infants, 62.
Cycling, 170.
Demi-monde, 54.
Development, 36, 37, 41, 87, 88, 120, _see_ Evolution.
Disabilities, legal, 150 to 153.
Distortion of feet, 58.
Diseases, feminine, so-called, 100, 101.
Divorce, 73, 135, 148.
Dogma, 35, 67, _see_ Ethics, Religion.
Dower, old English, 98, 99.
Dress, 58, 75, 76, 169.
Duty, so-called, 67 to 74, 136 to 141;
true, 66, 155, _see_ Religion, “Sphere,” Community of effort.
Education, 50, 51;
political, 74, 160;
liberty of, 128, 142, 162, 164, 166, 197;
co-education, 164, 165, 171;
a liberal, 166.
Egypt, 44, 52.
Enfranchisement, 180, _see_ Franchise.
England, modern guardianship in, 62;
ancient, 99;
age of nubility and consent, 98, 99.
[By the law of England a girl is still marriageable at twelve and a
boy at fourteen years of age; though the “age of consent” to
intercourse not thus sanctioned has been recently raised to sixteen
years in the case of girls. In the above matters, and notably in that
of the marriageable age, England remains barbarously below most modern
legislatures, and is indeed in the disgraceful condition of being not
even on a level with China, in which country—as Mr. Byrant Barrett
points out, in his Introductory Discourse to the “Code Napoléon,” p.
66—“In females, it would appear, consummation is not allowable before
twelve,” while “the age for marriage in males is twenty complete.”
China and England are but slightly in advance of ancient India, where,
according to the precepts of Manu, as Mr. Barrett further shows, (p.
30), “The male of 24 years should marry the girl of 8 years of age;
the male of 30 the female of 12” (Ordinances of Manu, ch. 9, sec. 94).
Is not such conduct as this sufficient to involve as inevitable
consequences “unripe maternity and untimely birth,” together with all
their dire inherited miseries?]
Epicenity, 181, 182.
Equality of sexes, 43, 45, 49, 57, 79, 133, 134, 153, 154, 156, 162,
163, 194.
_See_ also the following:—
“But I hear you indignantly reject the boon of equality with such
creatures as men now are. With you I would equally elevate both sexes.
Really enlightened women, disdaining equally the submissive tricks of
the slave and the caprices of the despot, breathing freely only in the
air of the esteem of equals, and of mutual, unbought, uncommanded,
affection, would find it difficult to meet with associates worthy of
them in men as now formed, full of ignorance and vanity, priding
themselves on a _sexual_ superiority, entirely independent of any
merit, any superior qualities, or pretentions to them, claiming
respect from the strength of their arm, and the lordly faculty of
producing beards attached by nature to their chins! No: unworthy of,
as incapable of appreciating, the delight of the society of such
women, are the great majority of the existing race of men. The
pleasures of mere animal appetite, the pleasures of commanding (the
prettier and more helpless the slave, the greater these pleasures of
the brute), are the only pleasures which the majority of men seek from
women, are the only pleasures which their education and the
hypocritical system of morals, with which they have been necessarily
imbued, permit them to expect.... To wish for the enjoyment of the
higher pleasures of sympathy and communication of knowledge between
the sexes, heightened by that mutual grace and glow, that decorum and
mutual respect, to which the feeling of perfect, unrestrained equality
in the intercourse gives birth, a man must have heard of such
pleasures, must be able to conceive them, and must have an
organisation from nature or education, or both, capable of receiving
delight from them when presented to him. To enjoy these pleasures, to
which their other pleasures, a few excepted, are but the play of
children or brutes, the bulk of men want a sixth sense; they want the
capacity of feeling them, and of believing that such things are in
nature to be found. A mole cannot enjoy the “beauties and glories” of
the visible world; nor can brute men enjoy the intellectual and
sympathetic pleasures of equal intercourse with women, such as some
are, such as all might be. Real and comprehensive knowledge, physical
and moral, equally and impartially given by education, and by all
other means to both sexes, is the key to such higher enjoyments....
“Demand with mild but unshrinking firmness, perfect equality with men:
demand equal civil and criminal laws, an equal system of morals, and,
as indispensable to these, equal political laws, to afford you an
equal chance of happiness with men, from the development and exercise
of your faculties.”
—William Thompson (“Appeal of One Half the Human Race,” 1825, pp. xii,
195).
Ethics, 74, 147, 173, 177, 186.
[The impotent and contradictory schemes of ethics which philosophers
or schoolmen, ancient and modern, have successively evolved, have been
but resultants of “unisexual wit.” With brilliant exceptions in Plato,
Kant, and Mill, vainly may the various codes be searched for any
suggestion of the identity, individuality, and equality, of woman. For
though the philosophy of latter-day ethicists rightly disdains to
reiterate or to countenance the factitious scriptural dogmas and
imprecations declaratory or explanatory of woman’s unequal and
subjugated condition, yet a parallel subjection and inferiority in her
nature is still tacitly assumed, and on occasion traded upon, by these
same ethicists; no counsel or consent of her own intelligence being
asked, or disavowal recked of, in such propositions as, _e.g._, the
“utilitarian” theses concerning her enounced by Archdeacon Paley or
Mr. Jeremy Bentham;—the nominally “goddess,” but virtually “slave,”
status assigned to her by M. Auguste Comte;—or the “due” amount of
child-bearing postulated as prior to all “normally feminine mental
energy” in her, by Mr. Herbert Spencer. As the bane of all theologies
has been the implicated degradation and subserviency of womanhood to
the unjustly favoured male sex, so the vital defect in the plans of
ethics is this irrational disregard for the personality and interests
of “one half the human race,”—this ignoring or negation of woman’s
equal claim with man to consideration, position, and action, in all
that relates to humanity, ethics included. At present the general
masculine sex-bias, or selfishness, refuses to women the wisest and
noblest a faculty in legislation conceded to even the meanest men; and
justice and injustice, pessimism and optimism, struggle together
blindly and helplessly in the dark. The true Ethic still awaits for
its formulation the assistance and the inspiration of the intellect of
woman equal and free: no other way can it be arrived at.]
Evolution, 39, 40, 41, 78, 87, 88, 107, 122, 173, 180, 208, 210, 211,
218, 220, 222;
_see_ Development.
Excess, 82, 100, 101, 105.
Father, legal “rights” and duties of, 62.
Feme; _see_ Baron.
Feudality, 131;
female wards, 98, 99.
Fictility, 86 to 89, 109, 119, 120;
_see_ Evolution.
Franchise, woman’s, 150 to 155.
French law, 197;
women students of, 201, 202.
Future of woman and humanity; forecasts or counsels concerning, by—
Balzac, 210.
Bastian, 208.
Bithell, 110.
Blake, 159, 210, 214.
Bonavia, 162.
Buckle, 103, 211, 212.
Cobbe, 112.
Dixie, 174.
Dodel-Port, 124.
Farnham, 104, 111, 206, 207, 214.
Garrison, 171.
Geddes and Thomson, 74, 78, 173.
Huxley, 110, 166, 167, 197.
Jefferies, 103, 108, 182, 213, 216.
Kant, 194.
Lang, 179.
Leland, 216.
Maxwell, 210.
Mill, 43, 79, 162.
Moll, 119.
Pfeiffer, 160.
Richardson, 216.
Ruskin, 108, 128.
Schreiner, 111.
Spencer, 87.
Tennyson, 173, 220.
Tyndall, 89.
Wallace, 180, 208.
Weill, 112.
Whitman, 154, 216, 220.
Winslow, 106.
Wolstenholme Elmy, 155.
Wordsworth, 217, 219.
Girlhood, 81, 128, 163, 197.
Graduates, women, _see_ University.
Greece, 44 to 47;
culture, 216.
Guardianship, 62;
ancient, 99.
Heredity, 87 to 89, 161, 178;
in man, 92, _see_ Development, Evolution.
Heroines of drama, 52, 78.
Hetairai, 45, 46, 48, 53;
_see_ Courtesanship, Prostitution.
Human selection, 174, 180.
Humanity, _see_ Future.
Husband and wife, _see_ Baron and feme, Clitheroe Case, Married Women’s
property;
inequality of right, _see_ Father, Wife, Conjugal “rights”;
different standard of morality between, _see_ Divorce.
Hypnotism, 109, 119;
suggestion, 109.
Ignorance, 89, 90.
Imagination, cultivation of, 206, 218;
future of, 210, 212.
Immaturity, 81, 82;
_see_ Maturity.
Improvidence, 177.
India, 71;
early marriage in, 80, 81, 93 to 98;
effects of, 82, 194;
age of consent in, 94;
courtesanship, 46, 53, 138;
female teaching, 46, 71, 207;
women’s medical education, 207;
code of Manu, 67, 133;
_see_ England.
Individuality, _see_ Selfdom.
Infant, custody of, 62;
feudal wardship, 99.
Infanticide, 60, 61.
Intellect, woman’s quickness of, 50, 51, 65, 104, _see_ Brain,
Capability, Jealousy.
Intemperance, 105, 106, 176, 177.
Intuition, 65, 103, 104, 186.
Japan, woman in, 69, 138.
Jealousy, masculine, 113, 195 to 203;
rebuked, 198, _see_ Sex-bias.
Judaism, 100, 102, 139.
Justice, 43, 108, 179.
Knowledge, 53, 56, 90, 211, 212;
is love, 218.
Language, 42.
Law, old, 99, 143;
study of by women, 200;
French, 201;
civil, _see_ Franchise, Husband, Wife;
divine, _see_ Religion.
Legal practitioners, female, _see_ Law.
Legalised abortion, 105.
Lieutenant “Karl,” 77.
Limitation of offspring, _see_ Neo-Malthusianism.
Love, 41, 42, 43, 70, 71, 78, 177, 193, 218, 219, 221;
Woman’s, 208;
“creation’s final law,” 173, 221;
origin of all worthy thought, 193.
Lust, 41.
Magna Charta, 130.
Mahomedanism, 61, 71, 94.
Malthusianism, 173 to 178.
Manhood, 167, 179.
Marriage, 37, 43, 44, 45, 78, 90, 134, 180, 209;
early, in England, 98;
in Turkey, 61, _see_ India.
Married Women’s Property, 62, 149.
[The _Married Women’s Property Act_, 1882, in the event of no specific
marriage contract to the contrary between the parties, retains to any
woman married since Dec. 31st, 1882, the possession, control, and
disposal of her own property and earnings, precisely as if she still
remained a single woman (_feme sole_); it further secures to every
wife (whether married before that date or afterwards), the right to
her own earnings, and various other property rights, entirely
independent of her husband’s control.]
Maternity, 59, 64, 91, 106, 183, 208, 209;
artistic or purposed, 214;
painless future, 216.
Maturity, 90, 93, 99, 178.
Medical practitioners, evil methods of some, 101, 105, 106, _see_
Vivisection.
Medical women, 113 to 116;
duty of, 90, 106, 115, 116, 192, 204.
Menstruation, 91;
abnormal and acquired habit, 88, 91, 92, 104;
pathological incident, not physiological, 92, 104, 116;
developed into heredity, not inherent, 88, 104;
not nubility, 93;
fostering of, 104, 120;
ignorance concerning, 89, 91, 117, 118;
reproach of, 102;
Scriptural definitions and opprobrium, 100, 102;
futile explanations of, 104;
“plethora” theory, 123;
some evils of, 91, 92, 100, 101, 108;
remediable, 108, 110, 116, 117, 120;
immunity from, 92, 117;
recent diminution of, 112, 123, 215.
Menorrhagia, 101.
Mental power;
_see_ Capability, Ethics, Intellect, Jealousy.
Military service, 77, 78, 169, _see_ also the following:—
“One of those who fought to the last on the rebels’ side was the
Ranee, or Princess, of Jhansi, whose territory had been one of our
annexations. For months after the fall of Delhi she contrived to
baffle Sir Hugh Rose and the English. She led squadrons in the field.
She fought with her own hand. She was engaged against us in the battle
for the possession of Gwalior. In the uniform of a cavalry officer she
led charge after charge, and she was killed among those who resisted
to the last. Her body was found upon the field, scarred with wounds
enough in the front to have done credit to any hero. Sir Hugh Rose
paid her the well-deserved tribute which a generous conqueror is
always glad to be able to offer. He said, in his general order, that
‘The best man upon the side of the enemy was the woman found dead, the
Ranee of Jhansi.’”—Justin McCarthy (“History of Our Own Times,” chap.
xiii).
And on the 12th December, 1892, the _Manchester Guardian_ reports:—
“The death is announced of Mrs. Eliza E. Cutler, wife of the
doorkeeper of the United States Senate. In February, 1863, her
husband’s regiment was at Fort Donelson and Mrs. Cutler was visiting
him there, stopping at a house just outside the fortification. The
colours of the regiment were also in this house. In the excitement
which followed the first attack on the day of battle, the regiment
went into action without its flag, but just as the fighting became the
hottest, with odds terribly against them, they were cheered by the
appearance of a woman with a sword in one hand, and bearing
triumphantly aloft the regiment’s colours. This was Mrs. Cutler, who
remained on the battlefield until her husband’s regiment was ordered
on board a transport in the Cumberland river. She immediately went to
the upper deck, where, with assistance, she planted the Stars and
Stripes in the face of a galling fire. There she remained, in spite of
all remonstrances, until they passed out of the range of fire.”
Mind, influence on body, _see_ Fictility, Psychical effort.
Modesty, 170, 171, 199.
Monkey, 39.
Morality, double standard of, 57, 67, 68, 71, 73, 148;
connubial, 106, 177, 209.
Mormonism, 132.
Mother-love, 61, 63, 208.
Mutuality, 183, _see_ Community of effort.
Nascent organs, 65.
Nature, 36, 39, 120, 167, 182, 185, 187, 195, 211, 212;
violation of laws of, 106, 110, 111;
relation of man and woman to, 167, 195, 207, 214.
Neo-Malthusianism, 174, 176 to 178, _see_ also the following:—
“A dogmatic conclusion that human life is on the whole more painful
than pleasurable is perhaps rare in England; but it is a widespread
opinion that the average of happiness attained by the masses, even in
civilised communities, is deplorably low, and that the present aim of
philanthropy should be rather to improve the quality of human life
than to increase the quantity.”—Professor Henry Sidgwick (“History of
Ethics,” p. 247).
Nubility, 90, 93, _see_ England, Maturity, Puberty.
Nurses, 200.
Obedience, 69, 73 74.
Observation, 103, 187;
lack of, 118;
power attendant on, 205.
Ourali, _see_ Curare.
Over-population, 173 to 178.
Pain, 110, 111.
Palæolithic art, 40.
Parturition, painless future, 216.
Paternity, 209, _see_ Father.
_Patria potestas_, 62.
Petit treason, 149.
Philosophy, natural, 206.
Physical strength, _see_ Strength.
“Pit-brow” women, 75.
Poetry, spirit of, 206;
future of, 212.
“Police des mœurs,” 193.
Politeness, 201.
Political and legal Position, 197, _see_ Franchise.
Potencies, 108, 110, 203.
Prehistoric times, 37, 40.
Prostitution, 53, 54, 175;
feminine repudiation of, 139;
religious, 46, 138, _see_ Courtesanship, Hetairai.
Prudence after marriage, 176, 177.
Psyche, 41, 103;
_see_ Soul.
Psychical effort, 87, 89, 119, 120.
Psychology, 119.
Puberty, 81;
not nubility, 90, 93.
Puritanism, 72, 135, 140.
Purity, 56, 166, 171, 200.
Quickness of woman’s mind, _see_ Intellect, Intuition.
Reason, 35, 53, 65.
Reasoning, woman’s generally deductive, man’s generally inductive, 50,
65.
Religion, dogmas concerning woman, 73, 74, 82, 102, 135 to 142, 148,
_see_ Brahminism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Christianity, Comtism,
Confucianism, Ethics, Judaism, Mahomedanism, Mormonism, Puritanism.
Reproach, 102, 103, 118, 140, 142.
Research, 35, 36.
Reserve, 56, 80, 115.
Restrictions on woman, 48, 49, 50, 201, _see_ Training.
Reticence, 56, 80, 115.
Revolt of woman, 129, 130, 133, 135.
Rhythmic action, 86, 88.
Rudimentary organs, 65.
Science, 35, 186 to 189, 192, 206, 217;
spirit of, 206.
Scriptural terms, 100, 102.
Self-confidence, 179, 206.
Selfdom, 66, 156, 157, 158, 179, 206.
Self-help, 56, 89, 108, 111, 161, 162.
Selfishness, 43, 85, 206, _see_ Ethics.
Self-respect, 156, 179.
Self-sacrifice, 179.
Serfdom, of man, 130, 131;
of woman, _see_ Slavery.
Sex-bias, masculine, 64, 136, 149, 151;
rebuked, 195;
_see_ Ethics.
Sexual wrong, 64, 106, 177;
in India, 82.
Silence, _see_ Reticence.
Slavery, of woman, 37, 38, 61, 71, 73, 74, 102, 131, 133, 150, 157;
effect on race, 159, 161, 194;
of man, _see_ Serfdom.
Soldiers, female, _see_ Military service.
Soul, 41, 119, 205, 211, 219, _see_ Psyche.
“Sphere” of woman, 142, 162.
Steadfastness of woman, 195.
Strength, physical, 64, 75, 76, 113, 150, 167 to 170, 215;
recent improvement in, 113, 123, 215.
Students, in America, 164;
in Switzerland, 172.
Subjection of woman, _see_ Slavery, China, England, India, Japan,
Religion, Wife.
Suffrage, _see_ Franchise.
Superiority of spirit, 50, 52, 59, 60, 195, 208.
Sympathy, 43, 59, 200, 213;
_see_ Community of effort, Equality.
Talent, relative, _see_ Brain, Capability, Jealousy.
Temperance, 113, 177.
Tendency, 88, 89.
Thought, language, 42;
love, 193.
Training, mental, 108, 128, 160, 161, 163, 166, 183;
physical, 50, 108, 113, 163, 167, 168, 170, 215;
_see_ Capability, Strength.
Tutelage, 133;
feudal, 99.
University teaching, 160, 164, 165, 171, 172, 203.
Vassalage, 99, 130, 131.
Vivisection, 183 to 193;
futility of, 188, 192.
Waste, of woman’s faculties, 48 to 53;
of vital force, 107, 123.
Wife, subjection of, 44, 67 to 74;
ancient chastisement of, 143;
legal status of, 143 to 146, 149, 153, _see_ Baron, Marriage.
Wisdom 52, 172;
correlative with love, 193.
Woman suffrage, _see_ Franchise.
Women doctors, _see_ Medical Women.
Zenana, 159.
Zulu wives, 132.
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