QUAKERISM AND WOMEN
Watching pilgrims who pass one by one along the mystic way, we see both
women and men. Teresa, Catharine, Elizabeth, Mechthild, no less than
Francis, Tauler, Boehme, stand as high peaks of human achievement in
entering into direct relationship with the transcendental life. But when
we reach the humbler levels of institution and doctrine, the religious
genius of womanhood tends to be pushed, so to say, into an oblique
relationship. Under organized Christianity, and particularly under
Protestantism, has this been so. Amongst the first Christians, it is
true, women preached and prophesied. There is, moreover, in the history
of the early centuries sound evidence of an ordained and invested female
clergy. Taking that history as a whole, however, women have been, and
are still, excluded from the councils of the churches and from the
responsibilities and privileges of priesthood. Devout churchwomen, and,
in particular, devout Protestants, are nourished on literal
interpretation of records, which assure them of an essential inferiority
to their male companions, and enjoin subjection in all things. At
marriage, they sacramentally renounce individuality. Quakerism stands as
the first form of Christian belief, which has, even in reaching its
doctrinized and institutionized levels, escaped regarding woman as
primarily an appendage to be controlled, guided, and managed by man.
This escape was the result, not of any kind of feminism, any sort of
special solicitude for or belief in women as a class. Nor was it the
result of a protest against any definitely recognized existing attitude.
Such unstable and fluctuating emotions could not have carried through
the Quaker reformation of the relations of the sexes. The recognition of
the public ministry of women was an act of faith. It was a step that
followed from a central belief in the universality of the inner light.
It was taken in the face of difficulties. It hampered the Quakers
enormously in relation to the outside world. It was the occasion of
profound disturbance within the body. Heart-searching and hesitation
rose here and there to an opposition so convinced as to form part of the
programme of the first schismatics.[22] Fox had to fight valiantly. His
central belief once clear, he cut clean through the Pauline tangle of
irreconcilable propositions, and forged from the depths of his
conviction phrases that would, were they but known, do yeoman service in
the present agitation for the release of the artificially inhibited
responsibilities of women. He is never tired of reminding those who
cling to the story of the Fall that the restoration of humanity in the
appearance of Christ took the reproach from woman. He rallies men, often
with delicious humour, on their desire to rule over women, and exhorts
those who despise "the spirit of prophecy in the daughters" to be
"ashamed for ever." But although faith won, it is probable that the
majority took the step only under the urgency of deep-seated
consciousness, the surface intelligence still loudly asserting the
necessary pre-eminence of masculine standards. Even amongst the most
determined advocates of the recognition of a woman's spiritual identity,
amongst those who condemned its suppression as blasphemous, we meet the
suggestion that this recognition need not in any way interfere with her
proper subjection to her husband. Nevertheless, Fox succeeded in
equalizing the marriage covenant.
[Footnote 22: The Perrot Schism, 1661.]
The government of the society, therefore, was for many years carried on
by men alone, a women's meeting coming into existence, as we have seen,
only when obviously imperative--in relation to the care of the women and
children suffering under persecution--and persisting only for special
purposes quite apart from the business of the society as a whole. Men
and women, however, occasionally visited each other's meetings, and
joint sittings were sometimes held.
It was the experience coming to the support of dawning theory, of the
superior working of these joint meetings, that finally enfranchised
Quaker womanhood.
It is interesting to note that one of the most striking features of the
technique of Quaker meetings, whether for business or worship, is the
working out of the distinctive characteristics of the sexes. Their
contradiction, and the tendency psychology has roughly summarized of
women, as a class, to control thought by feeling, and of men, as a
class, to allow "reason" the first place, is here at its height.
The two rival and ever-competing definitions of reality both find
expression. Each must tolerate the other. Reaction takes place without
bitterness. Again and again there is revealed the fruitfulness of that
spirit which believes in and seeks goodness, beauty, and truth--these
alone, and these in all. Recent statistics have shown[23] that women,
though always numerically superior in the society, have supplied a
comparatively small number of both officers and ministers, and of clerks
relatively none, and that, moreover, this deficit is gradually
increasing, and is not made good by any sufficiently compensating output
of public work outside the society.
[Footnote 23: _The Friend_, March, 1912: "Woman in the Church."]
It has been suggested that we may presume, in consideration of these
facts, that women Friends have by this time availed themselves of their
opportunity to the full extent of their capacities, and that the result,
as far as government is concerned, is that the conduct of large public
meetings is almost entirely entrusted to men.
In the correspondence that followed the publication of the statistics
certain modifying statements were made. It was suggested that of late
years the increasing membership had brought in women who were without
the Quaker tradition--a fact which would account for the growing deficit
of feminine activities. Attention was also drawn to the unseen mass of
feminine initiative, the result of which is credited to men.
It is, of course, evident that if we begin by assuming that equality of
opportunity shall result in identity of function, if we believe,
moreover, that government is merely a matter of machinery, and ministry
can be estimated by the counting of heads and of syllables, we shall be
led to the conclusion that, while the more obvious results of the Quaker
experiment may do something towards disarming haunting fears as to the
safety of acknowledging the full spiritual and temporal fellowship of
women, it does comparatively little to justify the claims and
expectations of the feminists in general.
But whatever standard we apply, however we may choose to approach the
question of the public ministry of women; however, further, we may
estimate the value of the fact that all the practical business of the
society is talked out in their hearing, that measures are sometimes
initiated, sometimes abolished, invariably commented on, modified and
steered by them, we cannot form any idea of what Quakerism has done for
women or women for Quakerism without some consideration of an aspect of
the matter hitherto almost entirely neglected by historians and
commentators, which yet, in the opinion of the present writer, may be
claimed not only as giving some part of the explanation of the relative
inactivity of women in the more obvious transactions of the society, but
as being a very substantial part of the clue to the rapid development
and the healthy persistence of Quaker culture--and that is the profound
reaction upon women of the changed conditions of home-life; for amongst
the Quakers the particularized home, with its isolated woman cut off
from any responsible share in the life of "the world" and associating
mainly with other equally isolated women, is unknown. A woman born into
a Quaker family inherits the tradition of a faith which is of the heart
rather than of the head, of intuition rather than intellectation, of
life primarily rather than of doctrine; and, therefore, it would seem
particularly suited to the development of her religious consciousness;
and she comes, moreover, into an atmosphere where her natural sense of
direct relationship to life, her instinctive individual aspiration and
sense of responsibility, instead of being either cancelled or left
dormant, or thwarted and trained to run, so to say, indirectly, is
immediately confirmed and fostered.
She is in touch with, has, as we have seen, her stake and her
responsibility in regard to every single activity of the meeting of
which she is a member. Through every meeting and through every home,
moreover, there is the cleansing and ventilating ebb and flow of the
life of the whole society, and this not merely by means of the
circulation of matter relating to the deliberations and the work of the
society, but also in the form of personal contact. Beyond the exchange
of hospitality in connection with monthly and quarterly meetings for
worship and for business, there is a constant flow of itinerating
ministers and others of both sexes between meetings either on special
individual concerns or in the interest of some single branch of the
society's work.
Simple easy intercourse between family and family, meeting and meeting,
is part of the fabric of Quaker home-life. Perhaps for this reason,
perhaps just because amongst the Quakers, in a very true and deep sense,
the world is home and home is the world, because, in other words, the
inner is able without obstruction to flow out and realize itself in the
outer, the sense of family-life, of home, and fireside, is particularly
sweet and strong. The breaking of family ties is rare. The failure that
leads to the divorce court is practically unknown.
We may look with wonder and admiration at the great figures amongst
Quaker women, upon those who built their lives into the first spreadings
of the message; upon those who went, under the urgency of their faith,
alone into strange lands, where means of communication were the
scantiest; upon the persecuted and martyred women, the women of
initiative and organizing genius; upon Anne Knight of Chelmsford
pioneering female suffrage in England, founding the first political
association for women; upon Elizabeth Fry, after a full career as
house-keeper, mother, and social worker, turning, late in life, to the
prisons of England, and transforming them, so to say, with her own
hands. But, perhaps, it is in the daily home-life of the society that
the distinctively feminine side of doctrinized and organized Quakerism
reaches its fairest development.