In the following story the writer shows us what poverty and dependence
are in their revolting outward aspects, as well as in their crippling
effects on all the tender sentiments of the human soul. Whilst the many
suffer for want of the decencies of life, the few have no knowledge of
such conditions.
They require the poor to keep clean, where water by landlords is
considered a luxury; to keep their garments whole, where they have
naught but rags to stitch together, twice and thrice worn threadbare.
The improvidence of the poor as a valid excuse for ignorance, poverty,
and vice, is as inadequate as is the providence of the rich, for their
virtue, luxury, and power. The artificial conditions of society are
based on false theories of government, religion, and morals, and not
upon the decrees of a God.
In this little volume we have a picture, too, of what the world would
call a happy family, in which a naturally strong, honest woman is
shrivelled into a mere echo of her husband, and the popular sentiment of
the class to which she belongs. The daughter having been educated in a
college with young men, and tasted of the tree of knowledge, and,
like the Gods, knowing good and evil, can no longer square her life by
opinions she has outgrown; hence with her parents there is friction,
struggle, open revolt, though conscientious and respectful withal.
Three girls belonging to different classes in society; each illustrates
the false philosophy on which woman's character is based, and each in a
different way, in the supreme moment of her life, shows the necessity of
self-reliance and self-support.
As the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class
of readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts
of science, I hail with pleasure all such attempts by the young writers
of our day. The slave has had his novelist and poet, the farmer his,
the victims of ignorance and poverty theirs, but up to this time the
refinements of cruelty suffered by intelligent, educated women, have
never been painted in glowing colors, so that the living picture could
be seen and understood. It is easy to rouse attention to the grosser
forms of suffering and injustice, but the humiliations of spirit are not
so easily described and appreciated.
A class of earnest reformers have, for the last fifty years, in the
press, the pulpit, and on the platform, with essays, speeches, and
constitutional arguments before legislative assemblies, demanded the
complete emancipation of women from the political, religious, and social
bondage she now endures; but as yet few see clearly the need of larger
freedom, and the many maintain a stolid indifference to the demand.
I have long waited and watched for some woman to arise to do for her sex
what Mrs. Stowe did for the black race in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a book
that did more to rouse the national conscience than all the glowing
appeals and constitutional arguments that agitated our people during
half a century. If, from an objective point of view, a writer could
thus eloquently portray the sorrows of a subject race, how much more
graphically should some woman describe the degradation of sex.
In Helen Gardener's stories, I see the promise, in the near future,
of such a work of fiction, that shall paint the awful facts of woman's
position in living colors that all must see and feel. The civil and
canon law, state and church alike, make the mothers of the race a
helpless, ostracised class, pariahs of a corrupt civilization. In view
of woman's multiplied wrongs, my heart oft echoes the Russian poet who
said: "God has forgotten where he hid the key to woman's emancipation."
Those who know the sad facts of woman's life, so carefully veiled
from society at large, will not consider the pictures in this story
overdrawn.
The shallow and thoughtless may know nothing of their existence, while
the helpless victims, not being able to trace the causes of their
misery, are in no position to state their wrongs themselves.
Nevertheless all the author describes in this sad story, and worse
still, is realized in everyday life, and the dark shadows dim the
sunshine in every household.
The apathy of the public to the wrongs of woman is clearly seen at this
hour, in propositions now under consideration in the Legislature of New
York. Though two infamous bills have been laid before select committees,
one to legalize prostitution, and one to lower the age of consent, the
people have been alike ignorant and indifferent to these measures. When
it was proposed to take a fragment of Central Park for a race course, a
great public meeting of protest was called at once, and hundreds of men
hastened to Albany to defeat the measure.
But the proposed invasion of the personal rights of woman, and the
wholesale desecration of childhood has scarce created a ripple on the
surface of society. The many do not know what laws their rulers are
making, and the few do not care, so long as they do not feel the iron
teeth of the law in their own flesh. Not one father in the House or
Senate would willingly have his wife, sister, or daughter subject to
these infamous bills proposed for the daughters of the people. Alas! for
the degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away
all that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten
years, you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the
tangled forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England
and America, the leading nations on the globe.
Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our
social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public
disgust. Others say, Why call the attention of the young and the
innocent to the existence of evils they should never know. The majority
of people do not watch legislative proceedings.
To keep our sons and daughters innocent, we must warn them of the
dangers that beset their path on every side.
Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety. Honor protected by
knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance.
A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable,
less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true
womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the
social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in
every relation in life.
Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and
she must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is
the great primal fact of her existence; marriage and maternity, its
incidents.
This story shows that the very traits of character which society (whose
opinions are made and modified by men) considers most important and
charming in woman to ensure her success in social life, are the very
traits that ultimately lead to her failure.
Self-effacement, self-distrust, dependence and desire to please,
compliance, deference to the judgment and will of another, are what make
young women, in the opinion of these believers in sex domination, most
agreeable; but these are the very traits that lead to her ruin.
The danger of such training is well illustrated in the sad end of Ettie
Berton. When the trials and temptations of life come, then each one
must decide for herself, and hold in her own hands the reins of action.
Educated women of the passing generation chafe under the old order of
things, but, like Mrs. Foster in the present volume, are not strong
enough to swim up stream. But girls like Gertrude, who in the college
curriculum have measured their powers and capacities with strong young
men and found themselves their equals, have outgrown this superstition
of divinely ordained sex domination. The divine rights of kings, nobles,
popes, and bishops have long been questioned, and now that of sex is
under consideration and from the signs of the times, with all other
forms of class and caste, it is destined soon to pass away.