On the other point which is involved in the just equality of women,
their admissibility to all the functions and occupations hitherto
retained as the monopoly of the stronger sex, I should anticipate no
difficulty in convincing any one who has gone with me on the subject
of the equality of women in the family. I believe that their
disabilities elsewhere are only clung to in order to maintain their
subordination in domestic life; because the generality of the male
sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal. Were it not
for that, I think that almost every one, in the existing state of
opinion in politics and political economy, would admit the injustice
of excluding half the human race from the greater number of lucrative
occupations, and from almost all high social functions; ordaining
from their birth either that they are not, and cannot by any
possibility become, fit for employments which are legally open to the
stupidest and basest of the other sex, or else that however fit they
may be, those employments shall be interdicted to them, in order to
be preserved for the exclusive benefit of males. In the last two
centuries, when (which was seldom the case) any reason beyond the
mere existence of the fact was thought to be required to justify the
disabilities of women, people seldom assigned as a reason their
inferior mental capacity; which, in times when there was a real trial
of personal faculties (from which all women were not excluded) in the
struggles of public life, no one really believed in. The reason given
in those days was not women's unfitness, but the interest of society,
by which was meant the interest of men: just as the _raison d'etat_,
meaning the convenience of the government, and the support of
existing authority, was deemed a sufficient explanation and excuse
for the most flagitious crimes. In the present day, power holds a
smoother language, and whomsoever it oppresses, always pretends to do
so for their own good: accordingly, when anything is forbidden to
women, it is thought necessary to say, and desirable to believe, that
they are incapable of doing it, and that they depart from their real
path of success and happiness when they aspire to it. But to make
this reason plausible (I do not say valid), those by whom it is urged
must be prepared to carry it to a much greater length than any one
ventures to do in the face of present experience. It is not
sufficient to maintain that women on the average are less gifted than
men on the average, with certain of the higher mental faculties, or
that a smaller number of women than of men are fit for occupations
and functions of the highest intellectual character. It is necessary
to maintain that no women at all are fit for them, and that the most
eminent women are inferior in mental faculties to the most mediocre
of the men on whom those functions at present devolve. For if the
performance of the function is decided either by competition, or by
any mode of choice which secures regard to the public interest, there
needs be no apprehension that any important employments will fall
into the hands of women inferior to average men, or to the average of
their male competitors. The only result would be that there would be
fewer women than men in such employments; a result certain to happen
in any ease, if only from the preference always likely to be felt by
the majority of women for the one vocation in which there is nobody
to compete with them. Now, the most determined depreciator of women
will not venture to deny, that when we add the experience of recent
times to that of ages past, women, and not a few merely, but many
women, have proved themselves capable of everything, perhaps without
a single exception, which is done by men, and of doing it
successfully and creditably. The utmost that can be said is, that
there are many things which none of them have succeeded in doing as
well as they have been done by some men--many in which they have not
reached the very highest rank. But there are extremely few, dependent
only on mental faculties, in which they have not attained the rank
next to the highest. Is not this enough, and much more than enough,
to make it a tyranny to them, and a detriment to society, that they
should not be allowed to compete with men for the exercise of these
functions? Is it not a mere truism to say, that such functions are
often filled by men far less fit for them than numbers of women, and
who would be beaten by women in any fair field of competition? What
difference does it make that there may be men somewhere, fully
employed about other things, who may be still better qualified for
the things in question than these women? Does not this take place in
all competitions? 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 upon 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
moral 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, and who are deprived of the stimulating effect
of greater competition on the exertions of the competitors, as well
as restricted to a narrower range of individual choice.
It will perhaps be sufficient if I confine myself, in the details of
my argument, to functions of a public nature: since, if I am
successful as to those, it probably will be readily granted that
women should be admissible to all other occupations to which it is at
all material whether they are admitted or not. And here let me begin
by marking out one function, broadly distinguished from all others,
their right to which is entirely independent of any question which
can be raised concerning their faculties. I mean the suffrage, both
parliamentary and municipal. The right to share in the choice of
those who are to exercise a public trust, is altogether a distinct
thing from that of competing for the trust itself. If no one could
vote for a member of parliament who was not fit to be a candidate,
the government would be a narrow oligarchy indeed. To have a voice in
choosing those by whom one is to be governed, is a means of
self-protection due to every one, though he were to remain for ever
excluded from the function of governing: and that women are
considered fit to have such a choice, may be presumed from the fact,
that the law already gives it to women in the most important of all
cases to themselves: for the choice of the man who is to govern a
woman to the end of life, is always supposed to be voluntarily made
by herself. In the case of election to public trusts, it is the
business of constitutional law to surround the right of suffrage with
all needful securities and limitations; but whatever securities are
sufficient in the case of the male sex, no others need be required in
the case of women. Under whatever conditions, and within whatever
limits, men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of
justification for not admitting women under the same. The majority of
the women of any class are not likely to differ in political opinion
from the majority of the men of the same class, unless the question
be one in which the interests of women, as such, are in some way
involved; and if they are so, women require the suffrage, as their
guarantee of just and equal consideration. This ought to be obvious
even to those who coincide in no other of the doctrines for which I
contend. Even if every woman were a wife, and if every wife ought to
be a slave, all the more would these slaves stand in need of legal
protection: and we know what legal protection the slaves have, where
the laws are made by their masters.
With regard to the fitness of women, not only to participate in
elections, but themselves to hold offices or practise professions
involving important public responsibilities; I have already observed
that this consideration is not essential to the practical question in
dispute: since any woman, who succeeds in an open profession, proves
by that very fact that she is qualified for it. And in the case of
public offices, if the political system of the country is such as to
exclude unfit men, it will equally exclude unfit women: while if it
is not, there is no additional evil in the fact that the unfit
persons whom it admits may be either women or men. As long therefore
as it is acknowledged that even a few women may be fit for these
duties, the laws which shut the door on those exceptions cannot be
justified by any opinion which can be held respecting the capacities
of women in general. But, though this last consideration is not
essential, it is far from being irrelevant. An unprejudiced view of
it gives additional strength to the arguments against the
disabilities of women, and reinforces them by high considerations of
practical utility.
Let us at first make entire abstraction of all psychological
considerations tending to show, that any of the mental differences
supposed to exist between women and men are but the natural effect of
the differences in their education and circumstances, and indicate no
radical difference, far less radical inferiority, of nature. Let us
consider women only as they already are, or as they are known to have
been; and the capacities which they have already practically shown.
What they have done, that at least, if nothing else, it is proved
that they can do. When we consider how sedulously they are all
trained away from, instead of being trained towards, any of the
occupations or objects reserved for men, it is evident that I am
taking a very humble ground for them, when I rest their case on what
they have actually achieved. For, in this case, negative evidence is
worth little, while any positive evidence is conclusive. It cannot be
inferred to be impossible that a woman should be a Homer, or an
Aristotle, or a Michael Angelo, or a Beethoven, because no woman has
yet actually produced works comparable to theirs in any of those
lines of excellence. This negative fact at most leaves the question
uncertain, and open to psychological discussion. But it is quite
certain that a woman can be a Queen Elizabeth, or a Deborah, or a
Joan of Arc, since this is not inference, but fact. Now it is a
curious consideration, that the only things which the existing law
excludes women from doing, are the things which they have proved that
they are able to do. There is no law to prevent a woman from having
written all the plays of Shakspeare, or composed all the operas of
Mozart. But Queen Elizabeth or Queen Victoria, had they not inherited
the throne, could not have been intrusted with the smallest of the
political duties, of which the former showed herself equal to the
greatest.
If anything conclusive could be inferred from experience, without
psychological analysis, it would be that the things which women are
not allowed to do are the very ones for which they are peculiarly
qualified; since their vocation for government has made its way, and
become conspicuous, through the very few opportunities which have
been given; while in the lines of distinction which apparently were
freely open to them, they have by no means so eminently distinguished
themselves. We know how small a number of reigning queens history
presents, in comparison with that of kings. Of this smaller number a
far larger proportion have shown talents for rule; though many of
them have occupied the throne in difficult periods. It is remarkable,
too, that they have, in a great number of instances, been
distinguished by merits the most opposite to the imaginary and
conventional character of women: they have been as much remarked for
the firmness and vigour of their rule, as for its intelligence. When,
to queens and empresses, we add regents, and viceroys of provinces,
the list of women who have been eminent rulers of mankind swells to a
great length.[1] This fact is so undeniable, that some one, long ago,
tried to retort the argument, and turned the admitted truth into an
additional insult, by saying that queens are better than kings,
because under kings women govern, but under queens, men.
It may seem a waste of reasoning to argue against a bad joke; but
such things do affect people's minds; and I have heard men quote this
saying, with an air as if they thought that there was something in
it. At any rate, it will serve as well as anything else for a
starting point in discussion. I say, then, that it is not true that
under kings, women govern. Such cases are entirely exceptional: and
weak kings have quite as often governed ill through the influence of
male favourites, as of female. When a king is governed by a woman
merely through his amatory propensities, good government is not
probable, though even then there are exceptions. But French history
counts two kings who have voluntarily given the direction of affairs
during many years, the one to his mother, the other to his sister:
one of them, Charles VIII., was a mere boy, but in doing so he
followed the intentions of his father Louis XI., the ablest monarch
of his age. The other, Saint Louis, was the best, and one of the most
vigorous rulers, since the time of Charlemagne. Both these princesses
ruled in a manner hardly equalled by any prince among their
contemporaries. The emperor Charles the Fifth, the most politic
prince of his time, who had as great a number of able men in his
service as a ruler ever had, and was one of the least likely of all
sovereigns to sacrifice his interest to personal feelings, made two
princesses of his family successively Governors of the Netherlands,
and kept one or other of them in that post during his whole life,
(they were afterwards succeeded by a third). Both ruled very
successfully, and one of them, Margaret of Austria, was one of the
ablest politicians of the age. So much for one side of the question.
Now as to the other. When it is said that under queens men govern, is
the same meaning to be understood as when kings are said to be
governed by women? Is it meant that queens choose as their
instruments of government, the associates of their personal
pleasures? The case is rare even with those who are as unscrupulous
on the latter point as Catherine II.: and it is not in these cases
that the good government, alleged to arise from male influence, is to
be found. If it be true, then, that the administration is in the
hands of better men under a queen than under an average king, it must
be that queens have a superior capacity for choosing them; and women
must be better qualified than men both for the position of sovereign,
and for that of chief minister; for the principal business of a prime
minister is not to govern in person, but to find the fittest persons
to conduct every department of public affairs. The more rapid insight
into character, which is one of the admitted points of superiority in
women over men, must certainly make them, with anything like parity
of qualifications in other respects, more apt than men in that choice
of instruments, which is nearly the most important business of every
one who has to do with governing mankind. Even the unprincipled
Catherine de' Medici could feel the value of a Chancellor de
l'Hopital. But it is also true that most great queens have been great
by their own talents for government, and have been well served
precisely for that reason. They retained the supreme direction of
affairs in their own hands: and if they listened to good advisers,
they gave by that fact the strongest proof that their judgment fitted
them for dealing with the great questions of government.
Is it reasonable to think that those who are fit for the greater
functions of politics, are incapable of qualifying themselves for the
less? Is there any reason in the nature of things, that the wives and
sisters of princes should, whenever called on, be found as competent
as the princes themselves to _their_ business, but that the wives and
sisters of statesmen, and administrators, and directors of companies,
and managers of public institutions, should be unable to do what is
done by their brothers and husbands? The real reason is plain enough;
it is that princesses, being more raised above the generality of men
by their rank than placed below them by their sex, have never been
taught that it was improper for them to concern themselves with
politics; but have been allowed to feel the liberal interest natural
to any cultivated human being, in the great transactions which took
place around them, and in which they might be called on to take a
part. The ladies of reigning families are the only women who are
allowed the same range of interests and freedom of development as
men; and it is precisely in their case that there is not found to be
any inferiority. Exactly where and in proportion as women's
capacities for government have been tried, in that proportion have
they been found adequate.
This fact is in accordance with the best general conclusions which
the world's imperfect experience seems as yet to suggest, concerning
the peculiar tendencies and aptitudes characteristic of women, as
women have hitherto been. I do not say, as they will continue to be;
for, as I have already said more than once, I consider it presumption
in any one 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. I
shall presently show, that even the least contestable of the
differences which now exist, are such as may very well have been
produced merely by circumstances, without any difference of natural
capacity. But, looking at women as they are known in experience, it
may be said of them, with more truth than belongs to most other
generalizations on the subject, that the general bent of their
talents is towards the practical. This statement is conformable to
all the public history of women, in the present and the past. It is
no less borne out by common and daily experience. Let us consider the
special nature of the mental capacities most characteristic of a
woman of talent. They are all of a kind which fits them for practice,
and makes them tend towards it. What is meant by a woman's capacity
of intuitive perception? It means, a rapid and correct insight into
present fact. It has nothing to do with general principles. Nobody
ever perceived a scientific law of nature by intuition, nor arrived
at a general rule of duty or prudence by it. These are results of
slow and careful collection and comparison of experience; and neither
the men nor the women of intuition usually shine in this department,
unless, indeed, the experience necessary is such as they can acquire
by themselves. For what is called their intuitive sagacity makes them
peculiarly apt in gathering such general truths as can be collected
from their individual means of observation. When, consequently, they
chance to be as well provided as men are with the results of other
people's experience, by reading and education, (I use the word chance
advisedly, for, in respect to the knowledge that tends to fit them
for the greater concerns of life, the only educated women are the
self-educated) they are better furnished than men in general with the
essential requisites of skilful and successful practice. Men who have
been much taught, are apt to be deficient in the sense of present
fact; they do not see, in the facts which they are called upon to
deal with, what is really there, but what they have been taught to
expect. This is seldom the case with women of any ability. Their
capacity of "intuition" preserves them from it. With equality of
experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more
than a man of what is immediately before her. Now this sensibility to
the present, is the main quality on which the capacity for practice,
as distinguished from theory, depends. To discover general
principles, belongs to the speculative faculty: to discern and
discriminate the particular cases in which they are and are not
applicable, constitutes practical talent: and for this, women as they
now are have a peculiar aptitude. I admit that there can be no good
practice without principles, and that the predominant place which
quickness of observation holds among a woman's faculties, makes her
particularly apt to build over-hasty generalizations upon her own
observation; though at the same time no less ready in rectifying
those generalizations, as her observation takes a wider range. But
the corrective to this defect, is access to the experience of the
human race; general knowledge--exactly the thing which education can
best supply. A woman's mistakes are specifically those of a clever
self-educated man, who often sees what men trained in routine do not
see, but falls into errors for want of knowing things which have long
been known. Of course he has acquired much of the pre-existing
knowledge, or he could not have got on at all; but what he knows of
it he has picked up in fragments and at random, as women do.
But this gravitation of women's minds to the present, to the real, to
actual fact, while in its exclusiveness it is a source of errors, is
also a most useful counteractive of the contrary error. The principal
and most characteristic aberration of speculative minds as such,
consists precisely in the deficiency of this lively perception and
ever-present sense of objective fact. For want of this, they often
not only overlook the contradiction which outward facts oppose to
their theories, but lose sight of the legitimate purpose of
speculation altogether, and let their speculative faculties go astray
into regions not peopled with real beings, animate or inanimate, even
idealized, but with personified shadows created by the illusions of
metaphysics or by the mere entanglement of words, and think these
shadows the proper objects of the highest, the most transcendant,
philosophy. Hardly anything can be of greater value to a man of
theory and speculation who employs himself not in collecting
materials of knowledge by observation, but in working them up by
processes of thought into comprehensive truths of science and laws of
conduct, than to carry on his speculations in the companionship, and
under the criticism, of a really superior woman. There is nothing
comparable to it for keeping his thoughts within the limits of real
things, and the actual facts of nature. A woman seldom runs wild
after an abstraction. The habitual direction of her mind to dealing
with things as individuals rather than in groups, and (what is
closely connected with it) her more lively interest in the present
feelings of persons, which makes her consider first of all, in
anything which claims to be applied to practice, in what manner
persons will be affected by it--these two things make her extremely
unlikely to put faith in any speculation which loses sight of
individuals, and deals with things as if they existed for the benefit
of some imaginary entity, some mere creation of the mind, not
resolvable into the feelings of living beings. Women's thoughts are
thus as useful in giving reality to those of thinking men, as men's
thoughts in giving width and largeness to those of women. In depth,
as distinguished from breadth, I greatly doubt if even now, women,
compared with men, are at any disadvantage.
If the existing mental characteristics of women are thus valuable
even in aid of speculation, they are still more important, when
speculation has done its work, for carrying out the results of
speculation into practice. For the reasons already given, women are
comparatively unlikely to fall into the common error of men, that of
sticking to their rules in a case whose specialities either take it
out of the class to which the rules are applicable, or require a
special adaptation of them. Let us now consider another of the
admitted superiorities of clever women, greater quickness of
apprehension. Is not this pre-eminently a quality which fits a person
for practice? In action, everything continually depends upon deciding
promptly. In speculation, nothing does. A mere thinker can wait, can
take time to consider, can collect additional evidence; he is not
obliged to complete his philosophy at once, lest the opportunity
should go by. The power of drawing the best conclusion possible from
insufficient data is not indeed useless in philosophy; the
construction of a provisional hypothesis consistent with all known
facts is often the needful basis for further inquiry. But this
faculty is rather serviceable in philosophy, than the main
qualification for it: and, for the auxiliary as well as for the main
operation, the philosopher can allow himself any time he pleases. He
is in no need of the capacity of doing rapidly what he does; what he
rather needs is patience, to work on slowly until imperfect lights
have become perfect, and a conjecture has ripened into a theorem. For
those, on the contrary, whose business is with the fugitive and
perishable--with individual facts, not kinds of facts--rapidity of
thought is a qualification next only in importance to the power of
thought itself. He who has not his faculties under immediate command,
in the contingencies of action, might as well not have them at all.
He may be fit to criticize, but he is not fit to act. Now it is in
this that women, and the men who are most like women, confessedly
excel. The other sort of man, however pre-eminent may be his
faculties, arrives slowly at complete command of them: rapidity of
judgment and promptitude of judicious action, even in the things he
knows best, are the gradual and late result of strenuous effort grown
into habit.
It will be said, perhaps, that the greater nervous susceptibility of
women is a disqualification for practice, in anything but domestic
life, by rendering them mobile, changeable, too vehemently under the
influence of the moment, incapable of dogged perseverance, unequal
and uncertain in the power of using their faculties. I think that
these phrases sum up the greater part of the objections commonly made
to the fitness of women for the higher class of serious business.
Much of all this is the mere overflow of nervous energy run to waste,
and would cease when the energy was directed to a definite end. Much
is also the result of conscious or unconscious cultivation; as we see
by the almost total disappearance of "hysterics" and fainting fits,
since they have gone out of fashion. Moreover, when people are
brought up, like many women of the higher classes (though less so in
our own country than in any other) a kind of hot-house plants,
shielded from the wholesome vicissitudes of air and temperature, and
untrained in any of the occupations and exercises which give stimulus
and development to the circulatory and muscular system, while their
nervous system, especially in its emotional department, is kept in
unnaturally active play; it is no wonder if those of them who do not
die of consumption, grow up with constitutions liable to derangement
from slight causes, both internal and external, and without stamina
to support any task, physical or mental, requiring continuity of
effort. But women brought up to work for their livelihood show none
of these morbid characteristics, unless indeed they are chained to an
excess of sedentary work in confined and unhealthy rooms. Women who
in their early years have shared in the healthful physical education
and bodily freedom of their brothers, and who obtain a sufficiency of
pure air and exercise in after-life, very rarely have any excessive
susceptibility of nerves which can disqualify them for active
pursuits. There is indeed a certain proportion of persons, in both
sexes, in whom an unusual degree of nervous sensibility is
constitutional, and of so marked a character as to be the feature of
their organization which exercises the greatest influence over the
whole character of the vital phenomena. This constitution, like other
physical conformations, is hereditary, and is transmitted to sons as
well as daughters; but it is possible, and probable, that the nervous
temperament (as it is called) is inherited by a greater number of
women than of men. We will assume this as a fact: and let me then
ask, are men of nervous temperament found to be unfit for the duties
and pursuits usually followed by men? If not, why should women of the
same temperament be unfit for them? The peculiarities of the
temperament are, no doubt, within certain limits, an obstacle to
success in some employments, though an aid to it in others. But when
the occupation is suitable to the temperament, and sometimes even
when it is unsuitable, the most brilliant examples of success are
continually given by the men of high nervous sensibility. They are
distinguished in their practical manifestations chiefly by this, that
being susceptible of a higher degree of excitement than those of
another physical constitution, their powers when excited differ more
than in the case of other people, from those shown in their ordinary
state: they are raised, as it were, above themselves, and do things
with ease which they are wholly incapable of at other times. But this
lofty excitement is not, except in weak bodily constitutions, a mere
flash, which passes away immediately, leaving no permanent traces,
and incompatible with persistent and steady pursuit of an object. It
is the character of the nervous temperament to be capable of
_sustained_ excitement, holding out through long continued efforts.
It is what is meant by _spirit_. It is what makes the high-bred
racehorse run without slackening speed till he drops down dead. It is
what has enabled so many delicate women to maintain the most sublime
constancy not only at the stake, but through a long preliminary
succession of mental and bodily tortures. It is evident that people
of this temperament are particularly apt for what may be called the
executive department of the leadership of mankind. They are the
material of great orators, great preachers, impressive diffusers of
moral influences. Their constitution might be deemed less favourable
to the qualities required from a statesman in the cabinet, or from a
judge. It would be so, if the consequence necessarily followed that
because people are excitable they must always be in a state of
excitement. But this is wholly a question of training. Strong feeling
is the instrument and element of strong self-control: but it requires
to be cultivated in that direction. When it is, it forms not the
heroes of impulse only, but those also of self-conquest. History and
experience prove that the most passionate characters are the most
fanatically rigid in their feelings of duty, when their passion has
been trained to act in that direction. The judge who gives a just
decision in a case where his feelings are intensely interested on the
other side, derives from that same strength of feeling the determined
sense of the obligation of justice, which enables him to achieve this
victory over himself. The capability of that lofty enthusiasm which
takes the human being out of his every-day character, reacts upon the
daily character itself. His aspirations and powers when he is in this
exceptional state, become the type with which he compares, and by
which he estimates, his sentiments and proceedings at other times:
and his habitual purposes assume a character moulded by and
assimilated to the moments of lofty excitement, although those, from
the physical nature of a human being, can only be transient.
Experience of races, as well as of individuals, does not show those
of excitable temperament to be less fit, on the average, either for
speculation or practice, than the more unexcitable. The French, and
the Italians, are undoubtedly by nature more nervously excitable than
the Teutonic races, and, compared at least with the English, they
have a much greater habitual and daily emotional life: but have they
been less great in science, in public business, in legal and judicial
eminence, or in war? There is abundant evidence that the Greeks were
of old, as their descendants and successors still are, one of the
most excitable of the races of mankind. It is superfluous to ask,
what among the achievements of men they did not excel in. The Romans,
probably, as an equally southern people, had the same original
temperament: but the stern character of their national discipline,
like that of the Spartans, made them an example of the opposite type
of national character; the greater strength of their natural feelings
being chiefly apparent in the intensity which the same original
temperament made it possible to give to the artificial. If these
cases exemplify what a naturally excitable people may be made, the
Irish Celts afford one of the aptest examples of what they are when
left to themselves; (if those can be said to be left to themselves
who have been for centuries under the indirect influence of bad
government, and the direct training of a Catholic hierarchy and of a
sincere belief in the Catholic religion.) The Irish character must be
considered, therefore, as an unfavourable case: yet, whenever the
circumstances of the individual have been at all favourable, what
people have shown greater capacity for the most varied and
multifarious individual eminence? Like the French compared with the
English, the Irish with the Swiss, the Greeks or Italians compared
with the German races, so women compared with men may be found, on
the average, to do the same things with some variety in the
particular kind of excellence. But, that they would do them fully as
well on the whole, if their education and cultivation were adapted to
correcting instead of aggravating the infirmities incident to their
temperament, I see not the smallest reason to doubt.
Supposing it, however, to be true that women's minds are by nature
more mobile than those of men, less capable of persisting long in the
same continuous effort, more fitted for dividing their faculties
among many things than for travelling in any one path to the highest
point which can be reached by it: this may be true of women as they
now are (though not without great and numerous exceptions), and may
account for their having remained behind the highest order of men in
precisely the things in which this absorption of the whole mind in
one set of ideas and occupations may seem to be most requisite.
Still, this difference is one which can only affect the kind of
excellence, not the excellence itself, or its practical worth: and it
remains to be shown whether this exclusive working of a part of the
mind, this absorption of the whole thinking faculty in a single
subject, and concentration of it on a single work, is the normal and
healthful condition of the human faculties, even for speculative
uses. I believe that what is gained in special development by this
concentration, is lost in the capacity of the mind for the other
purposes of life; and even in abstract thought, it is my decided
opinion that the mind does more by frequently returning to a
difficult problem, than by sticking to it without interruption. For
the purposes, at all events, of practice, from its highest to its
humblest departments, the capacity of passing promptly from one
subject of consideration to another, without letting the active
spring of the intellect run down between the two, is a power far more
valuable; and this power women pre-eminently possess, by virtue of
the very mobility of which they are accused. They perhaps have it
from nature, but they certainly have it by training and education;
for nearly the whole of the occupations of women consist in the
management of small but multitudinous details, on each of which the
mind cannot dwell even for a minute, but must pass on to other
things, and if anything requires longer thought, must steal time at
odd moments for thinking of it. The capacity indeed which women show
for doing their thinking in circumstances and at times which almost
any man would make an excuse to himself for not attempting it, has
often been noticed: and a woman's mind, though it may be occupied
only with small things, can hardly ever permit itself to be vacant,
as a man's so often is when not engaged in what he chooses to
consider the business of his life. The business of a woman's ordinary
life is things in general, and can as little cease to go on as the
world to go round.
But (it is said) there is anatomical evidence of the superior mental
capacity of men compared with women: they have a larger brain. I
reply, that in the first place the fact itself is doubtful. It is by
no means established that the brain of a woman is smaller than that
of a man. If it is inferred merely because a woman's bodily frame
generally is of less dimensions than a man's, this criterion would
lead to strange consequences. A tall and large-boned man must on this
showing be wonderfully superior in intelligence to a small man, and
an elephant or a whale must prodigiously excel mankind. The size of
the brain in human beings, anatomists say, varies much less than the
size of the body, or even of the head, and the one cannot be at all
inferred from the other. It is certain that some women have as large
a brain as any man. It is within my knowledge that a man who had
weighed many human brains, said that the heaviest he knew of, heavier
even than Cuvier's (the heaviest previously recorded,) was that of a
woman. Next, I must observe that the precise relation which exists
between the brain and the intellectual powers is not yet well
understood, but is a subject of great dispute. That there is a very
close relation we cannot doubt. The brain is certainly the material
organ of thought and feeling: and (making abstraction of the great
unsettled controversy respecting the appropriation of different parts
of the brain to different mental faculties) I admit that it would be
an anomaly, and an exception to all we know of the general laws of
life and organization, if the size of the organ were wholly
indifferent to the function; if no accession of power were derived
from the greater magnitude of the instrument. But the exception and
the anomaly would be fully as great if the organ exercised influence
by its magnitude _only_. In all the more delicate operations of
nature--of which those of the animated creation are the most
delicate, and those of the nervous system by far the most delicate of
these--differences in the effect depend as much on differences of
quality in the physical agents, as on their quantity: and if the
quality of an instrument is to be tested by the nicety and delicacy
of the work it can do, the indications point to a greater average
fineness of quality in the brain and nervous system of women than of
men. Dismissing abstract difference of quality, a thing difficult to
verify, the efficiency of an organ is known to depend not solely on
its size but on its activity: and of this we have an approximate
measure in the energy with which the blood circulates through it,
both the stimulus and the reparative force being mainly dependent on
the circulation. It would not be surprising--it is indeed an
hypothesis which accords well with the differences actually observed
between the mental operations of the two sexes--if men on the average
should have the advantage in the size of the brain, and women in
activity of cerebral circulation. The results which conjecture,
founded on analogy, would lead us to expect from this difference of
organization, would correspond to some of those which we most
commonly see. In the first place, the mental operations of men might
be expected to be slower. They would neither be so prompt as women in
thinking, nor so quick to feel. Large bodies take more time to get
into full action. On the other hand, when once got thoroughly into
play, men's brain would bear more work. It would be more persistent
in the line first taken; it would have more difficulty in changing
from one mode of action to another, but, in the one thing it was
doing, it could go on longer without loss of power or sense of
fatigue. And do we not find that the things in which men most excel
women are those which require most plodding and long hammering at a
single thought, while women do best what must be done rapidly? A
woman's brain is sooner fatigued, sooner exhausted; but given the
degree of exhaustion, we should expect to find that it would recover
itself sooner. I repeat that this speculation is entirely
hypothetical; it pretends to no more than to suggest a line of
enquiry. I have before repudiated the notion of its being yet
certainly known that there is any natural difference at all in the
average strength or direction of the mental capacities of the two
sexes, much less what that difference is. Nor is it possible that
this should be known, so long as the psychological laws of the
formation of character have been so little studied, even in a general
way, and in the particular case never scientifically applied at all;
so long as the most obvious external causes of difference of
character are habitually disregarded--left unnoticed by the observer,
and looked down upon with a kind of supercilious contempt by the
prevalent schools both of natural history and of mental philosophy:
who, whether they look for the source of what mainly distinguishes
human beings from one another, in the world of matter or in that of
spirit, agree in running down those who prefer to explain these
differences by the different relations of human beings to society and
life.
To so ridiculous an extent are the notions formed of the nature of
women, mere empirical generalizations, framed, without philosophy or
analysis, upon the first instances which present themselves, that the
popular idea of it is different in different countries, according as
the opinions and social circumstances of the country have given to
the women living in it any speciality of development or
non-development. An Oriental thinks that women are by nature
peculiarly voluptuous; see the violent abuse of them on this ground
in Hindoo writings. An Englishman usually thinks that they are by
nature cold. The sayings about women's fickleness are mostly of
French origin; from the famous distich of Francis the First, upward
and downward. In England it is a common remark, how much more
constant women are than men. Inconstancy has been longer reckoned
discreditable to a woman, in England than in France; and Englishwomen
are besides, in their inmost nature, much more subdued to opinion. It
may be remarked by the way, that Englishmen are in peculiarly
unfavourable circumstances for attempting to judge what is or is not
natural, not merely to women, but to men, or to human beings
altogether, at least if they have only English experience to go upon:
because there is no place where human nature shows so little of its
original lineaments. Both in a good and a bad sense, the English are
farther from a state of nature than any other modern people. They
are, more than any other people, a product of civilization and
discipline. England is the country in which social discipline has
most succeeded, not so much in conquering, as in suppressing,
whatever is liable to conflict with it. The English, more than any
other people, not only act but feel according to rule. In other
countries, the taught opinion, or the requirement of society, may be
the stronger power, but the promptings of the individual nature are
always visible under it, and often resisting it: rule may be stronger
than nature, but nature is still there. In England, rule has to a
great degree substituted itself for nature. The greater part of life
is carried on, not by following inclination under the control of
rule, but by having no inclination but that of following a rule. Now
this has its good side doubtless, though it has also a wretchedly bad
one; but it must render an Englishman peculiarly ill-qualified to
pass a judgment on the original tendencies of human nature from his
own experience. The errors to which observers elsewhere are liable on
the subject, are of a different character. An Englishman is ignorant
respecting human nature, a Frenchman is prejudiced. An Englishman's
errors are negative, a Frenchman's positive. An Englishman fancies
that things do not exist, because he never sees them; a Frenchman
thinks they must always and necessarily exist, because he does see
them. An Englishman does not know nature, because he has had no
opportunity of observing it; a Frenchman generally knows a great deal
of it, but often mistakes it, because he has only seen it
sophisticated and distorted. For the artificial state superinduced by
society disguises the natural tendencies of the thing which is the
subject of observation, in two different ways: by extinguishing the
nature, or by transforming it. In the one case there is but a starved
residuum of nature remaining to be studied; in the other case there
is much, but it may have expanded in any direction rather than that
in which it would spontaneously grow.
I have said that it cannot now be known how much of the existing
mental differences between men and women is natural, and how much
artificial; whether there are any natural differences at all; or,
supposing all artificial causes of difference to be withdrawn, what
natural character would be revealed. I am not about to attempt what I
have pronounced impossible: but doubt does not forbid conjecture, and
where certainty is unattainable, there may yet be the means of
arriving at some degree of probability. The first point, the origin
of the differences actually observed, is the one most accessible to
speculation; and I shall attempt to approach it, by the only path by
which it can be reached; by tracing the mental consequences of
external influences. We cannot isolate a human being from the
circumstances of his condition, so as to ascertain experimentally
what he would have been by nature; but we can consider what he is,
and what his circumstances have been, and whether the one would have
been capable of producing the other.
Let us take, then, the only marked case which observation affords, of
apparent inferiority of women to men, if we except the merely
physical one of bodily strength. No production in philosophy,
science, or art, entitled to the first rank, has been the work of a
woman. Is there any mode of accounting for this, without supposing
that women are naturally incapable of producing them?
In the first place, we may fairly question whether experience has
afforded sufficient grounds for an induction. It is scarcely three
generations since women, saving very rare exceptions, have begun to
try their capacity in philosophy, science, or art. It is only in the
present generation that their attempts have been at all numerous; and
they are even now extremely few, everywhere but in England and
France. It is a relevant question, whether a mind possessing the
requisites of first-rate eminence in speculation or creative art
could have been expected, on the mere calculation of chances, to turn
up during that lapse of time, among the women whose tastes and
personal position admitted of their devoting themselves to these
pursuits. In all things which there has yet been time for--in all but
the very highest grades in the scale of excellence, especially in the
department in which they have been longest engaged, literature (both
prose and poetry)--women have done quite as much, have obtained fully
as high prizes and as many of them, as could be expected from the
length of time and the number of competitors. If we go back to the
earlier period when very few women made the attempt, yet some of
those few made it with distinguished success. The Greeks always
accounted Sappho among their great poets; and we may well suppose
that Myrtis, said to have been the teacher of Pindar, and Corinna,
who five times bore away from him the prize of poetry, must at least
have had sufficient merit to admit of being compared with that great
name. Aspasia did not leave any philosophical writings; but it is an
admitted fact that Socrates resorted to her for instruction, and
avowed himself to have obtained it.
If we consider the works of women in modern times, and contrast them
with those of men, either in the literary or the artistic department,
such inferiority as may be observed resolves itself essentially into
one thing: but that is a most material one; deficiency of
originality. Not total deficiency; for every production of mind which
is of any substantive value, has an originality of its own--is a
conception of the mind itself, not a copy of something else. Thoughts
original, in the sense of being unborrowed--of being derived from the
thinker's own observations or intellectual processes--are abundant in
the writings of women. But they have not yet produced any of those
great and luminous new ideas which form an era in thought, nor those
fundamentally new conceptions in art, which open a vista of possible
effects not before thought of, and found a new school. Their
compositions are mostly grounded on the existing fund of thought, and
their creations do not deviate widely from existing types. This is
the sort of inferiority which their works manifest: for in point of
execution, in the detailed application of thought, and the perfection
of style, there is no inferiority. Our best novelists in point of
composition, and of the management of detail, have mostly been women;
and there is not in all modern literature a more eloquent vehicle of
thought than the style of Madame de Stael, nor, as a specimen of
purely artistic excellence, anything superior to the prose of Madame
Sand, whose style acts upon the nervous system like a symphony of
Haydn or Mozart. High originality of conception is, as I have said,
what is chiefly wanting. And now to examine if there is any manner in
which this deficiency can be accounted for.
Let us remember, then, so far as regards mere thought, that during
all that period in the world's existence, and in the progress of
cultivation, in which great and fruitful new truths could be arrived
at by mere force of genius, with little previous study and
accumulation of knowledge--during all that time women did not concern
themselves with speculation at all. From the days of Hypatia to those
of the Reformation, the illustrious Heloisa is almost the only woman
to whom any such achievement might have been possible; and we know
not how great a capacity of speculation in her may have been lost to
mankind by the misfortunes of her life. Never since any considerable
number of women have begun to cultivate serious thought, has
originality been possible on easy terms. Nearly all the thoughts
which can be reached by mere strength of original faculties, have
long since been arrived at; and originality, in any high sense of the
word, is now scarcely ever attained but by minds which have undergone
elaborate discipline, and are deeply versed in the results of
previous thinking. It is Mr. Maurice, I think, who has remarked on
the present age, that its most original thinkers are those who have
known most thoroughly what had been thought by their predecessors:
and this will always henceforth be the case. Every fresh stone in the
edifice has now to be placed on the top of so many others, that a
long process of climbing, and of carrying up materials, has to be
gone through by whoever aspires to take a share in the present stage
of the work. How many women are there who have gone through any such
process? Mrs. Somerville, alone perhaps of women, knows as much of
mathematics as is now needful for making any considerable
mathematical discovery: is it any proof of inferiority in women, that
she has not happened to be one of the two or three persons who in her
lifetime have associated their names with some striking advancement
of the science? Two women, since political economy has been made a
science, have known enough of it to write usefully on the subject: of
how many of the innumerable men who have written on it during the
same time, is it possible with truth to say more? If no woman has
hitherto been a great historian, what woman has had the necessary
erudition? If no woman is a great philologist, what woman has studied
Sanscrit and Slavonic, the Gothic of Ulphila and the Persic of the
Zendavesta? Even in practical matters we all know what is the value
of the originality of untaught geniuses. It means, inventing over
again in its rudimentary form something already invented and improved
upon by many successive inventors. When women have had the
preparation which all men now require to be eminently original, it
will be time enough to begin judging by experience of their capacity
for originality.
It no doubt often happens that a person, who has not widely and
accurately studied the thoughts of others on a subject, has by
natural sagacity a happy intuition, which he can suggest, but cannot
prove, which yet when matured may be an important addition to
knowledge: but even then, no justice can be done to it until some
other person, who does possess the previous acquirements, takes it in
hand, tests it, gives it a scientific or practical form, and fits it
into its place among the existing truths of philosophy or science. Is
it supposed that such felicitous thoughts do not occur to women? They
occur by hundreds to every woman of intellect. But they are mostly
lost, for want of a husband or friend who has the other knowledge
which can enable him to estimate them properly and bring them before
the world: and even when they are brought before it, they generally
appear as his ideas, not their real author's. Who can tell how many
of the most original thoughts put forth by male writers, belong to a
woman by suggestion, to themselves only by verifying and working out?
If I may judge by my own case, a very large proportion indeed.
If we turn from pure speculation to literature in the narrow sense of
the term, and the fine arts, there is a very obvious reason why
women's literature is, in its general conception and in its main
features, an imitation of men's. Why is the Roman literature, as
critics proclaim to satiety, not original, but an imitation of the
Greek? Simply because the Greeks came first. If women lived in a
different country from men, and had never read any of their writings,
they would have had a literature of their own. As it is, they have
not created one, because they found a highly advanced literature
already created. If there had been no suspension of the knowledge of
antiquity, or if the Renaissance had occurred before the Gothic
cathedrals were built, they never would have been built. We see that,
in France and Italy, imitation of the ancient literature stopped the
original development even after it had commenced. All women who write
are pupils of the great male writers. A painter's early pictures,
even if he be a Raffaelle, are undistinguishable in style from those
of his master. Even a Mozart does not display his powerful
originality in his earliest pieces. What years are to a gifted
individual, generations are to a mass. If women's literature is
destined to have a different collective character from that of men,
depending on any difference of natural tendencies, much longer time
is necessary than has yet elapsed, before it can emancipate itself
from the influence of accepted models, and guide itself by its own
impulses. But if, as I believe, there will not prove to be any
natural tendencies common to women, and distinguishing their genius
from that of men, yet every individual writer among them has her
individual tendencies, which at present are still subdued by the
influence of precedent and example: and it will require generations
more, before their individuality is sufficiently developed to make
head against that influence.
It is in the fine arts, properly so called, that the _prima facie_
evidence of inferior original powers in women at first sight appears
the strongest: since opinion (it may be said) does not exclude them
from these, but rather encourages them, and their education, instead
of passing over this department, is in the affluent classes mainly
composed of it. Yet in this line of exertion they have fallen still
more short than in many others, of the highest eminence attained by
men. This shortcoming, however, needs no other explanation than the
familiar fact, more universally true in the fine arts than in
anything else; the vast superiority of professional persons over
amateurs. Women in the educated classes are almost universally taught
more or less of some branch or other of the fine arts, but not that
they may gain their living or their social consequence by it. Women
artists are all amateurs. The exceptions are only of the kind which
confirm the general truth. Women are taught music, but not for the
purpose of composing, only of executing it: and accordingly it is
only as composers, that men, in music, are superior to women. The
only one of the fine arts which women do follow, to any extent, as a
profession, and an occupation for life, is the histrionic; and in
that they are confessedly equal, if not superior, to men. To make the
comparison fair, it should be made between the productions of women
in any branch of art, and those of men not following it as a
profession. In musical composition, for example, women surely have
produced fully as good things as have ever been produced by male
amateurs. There are now a few women, a very few, who practise
painting as a profession, and these are already beginning to show
quite as much talent as could be expected. Even male painters (_pace_
Mr. Ruskin) have not made any very remarkable figure these last
centuries, and it will be long before they do so. The reason why the
old painters were so greatly superior to the modern, is that a
greatly superior class of men applied themselves to the art. In the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Italian painters were the most
accomplished men of their age. The greatest of them were men of
encyclopaedical acquirements and powers, like the great men of Greece.
But in their times fine art was, to men's feelings and conceptions,
among the grandest things in which a human being could excel; and by
it men were made, what only political or military distinction now
makes them, the companions of sovereigns, and the equals of the
highest nobility. In the present age, men of anything like similar
calibre find something more important to do, for their own fame and
the uses of the modern world, than painting: and it is only now and
then that a Reynolds or a Turner (of whose relative rank among
eminent men I do not pretend to an opinion) applies himself to that
art. Music belongs to a different order of things; it does not
require the same general powers of mind, but seems more dependant on
a natural gift: and it may be thought surprising that no one of the
great musical composers has been a woman. But even this natural gift,
to be made available for great creations, requires study, and
professional devotion to the pursuit. The only countries which have
produced first-rate composers, even of the male sex, are Germany and
Italy--countries in which, both in point of special and of general
cultivation, women have remained far behind France and England, being
generally (it may be said without exaggeration) very little educated,
and having scarcely cultivated at all any of the higher faculties of
mind. And in those countries the men who are acquainted with the
principles of musical composition must be counted by hundreds, or
more probably by thousands, the women barely by scores: so that here
again, on the doctrine of averages, we cannot reasonably expect to
see more than one eminent woman to fifty eminent men; and the last
three centuries have not produced fifty eminent male composers either
in Germany or in Italy.
There are other reasons, besides those which we have now given, that
help to explain why women remain behind men, even in the pursuits
which are open to both. For one thing, very few women have time for
them. This may seem a paradox; it is an undoubted social fact. The
time and thoughts of every woman have to satisfy great previous
demands on them for things practical. There is, first, the
superintendence of the family and the domestic expenditure, which
occupies at least one woman in every family, generally the one of
mature years and acquired experience; unless the family is so rich as
to admit of delegating that task to hired agency, and submitting to
all the waste and malversation inseparable from that mode of
conducting it. The superintendence of a household, even when not in
other respects laborious, is extremely onerous to the thoughts; it
requires incessant vigilance, an eye which no detail escapes, and
presents questions for consideration and solution, foreseen and
unforeseen, at every hour of the day, from which the person
responsible for them can hardly ever shake herself free. If a woman
is of a rank and circumstances which relieve her in a measure from
these cares, she has still devolving on her the management for the
whole family of its intercourse with others--of what is called
society, and the less the call made on her by the former duty, the
greater is always the development of the latter: the dinner parties,
concerts, evening parties, morning visits, letter writing, and all
that goes with them. All this is over and above the engrossing duty
which society imposes exclusively on women, of making themselves
charming. A clever woman of the higher ranks finds nearly a
sufficient employment of her talents in cultivating the graces of
manner and the arts of conversation. To look only at the outward side
of the subject: the great and continual exercise of thought which all
women who attach any value to dressing well (I do not mean
expensively, but with taste, and perception of natural and of
artificial _convenance_) must bestow upon their own dress, perhaps
also upon that of their daughters, would alone go a great way towards
achieving respectable results in art, or science, or literature, and
does actually exhaust much of the time and mental power they might
have to spare for either.[2] If it were possible that all this number
of little practical interests (which are made great to them) should
leave them either much leisure, or much energy and freedom of mind,
to be devoted to art or speculation, they must have a much greater
original supply of active faculty than the vast majority of men. But
this is not all. Independently of the regular offices of life which
devolve upon a woman, she is expected to have her time and faculties
always at the disposal of everybody. If a man has not a profession to
exempt him from such demands, still, if he has a pursuit, he offends
nobody by devoting his time to it; occupation is received as a valid
excuse for his not answering to every casual demand which may be made
on him. Are a woman's occupations, especially her chosen and
voluntary ones, ever regarded as excusing her from any of what are
termed the calls of society? Scarcely are her most necessary and
recognised duties allowed as an exemption. It requires an illness in
the family, or something else out of the common way, to entitle her
to give her own business the precedence over other people's
amusement. She must always be at the beck and call of somebody,
generally of everybody. If she has a study or a pursuit, she must
snatch any short interval which accidentally occurs to be employed in
it. A celebrated woman, in a work which I hope will some day be
published, remarks truly that everything a woman does is done at odd
times. Is it wonderful, then, if she does not attain the highest
eminence in things which require consecutive attention, and the
concentration on them of the chief interest of life? Such is
philosophy, and such, above all, is art, in which, besides the
devotion of the thoughts and feelings, the hand also must be kept in
constant exercise to attain high skill.
There is another consideration to be added to all these. In the
various arts and intellectual occupations, there is a degree of
proficiency sufficient for living by it, and there is a higher degree
on which depend the great productions which immortalize a name. To
the attainment of the former, there are adequate motives in the case
of all who follow the pursuit professionally: the other is hardly
ever attained where there is not, or where there has not been at some
period of life, an ardent desire of celebrity. Nothing less is
commonly a sufficient stimulus to undergo the long and patient
drudgery, which, in the case even of the greatest natural gifts, is
absolutely required for great eminence in pursuits in which we
already possess so many splendid memorials of the highest genius.
Now, whether the cause be natural or artificial, women seldom have
this eagerness for fame. Their ambition is generally confined within
narrower bounds. The influence they seek is over those who
immediately surround them. Their desire is to be liked, loved, or
admired, by those whom they see with their eyes: and the proficiency
in knowledge, arts, and accomplishments, which is sufficient for
that, almost always contents them. This is a trait of character which
cannot be left out of the account in judging of women as they are. I
do not at all believe that it is inherent in women. It is only the
natural result of their circumstances. The love of fame in men is
encouraged by education and opinion: to "scorn delights and live
laborious days" for its sake, is accounted the part of "noble minds,"
even if spoken of as their "last infirmity," and is stimulated by the
access which fame gives to all objects of ambition, including even
the favour of women; while to women themselves all these objects are
closed, and the desire of fame itself considered daring and
unfeminine. Besides, how could it be that a woman's interests should
not be all concentrated upon the impressions made on those who come
into her daily life, when society has ordained that all her duties
should be to them, and has contrived that all her comforts should
depend on them? The natural desire of consideration from our fellow
creatures is as strong in a woman as in a man; but society has so
ordered things that public consideration is, in all ordinary cases,
only attainable by her through the consideration of her husband or of
her male relations, while her private consideration is forfeited by
making herself individually prominent, or appearing in any other
character than that of an appendage to men. Whoever is in the least
capable of estimating the influence on the mind of the entire
domestic and social position and the whole habit of a life, must
easily recognise in that influence a complete explanation of nearly
all the apparent differences between women and men, including the
whole of those which imply any inferiority.
As for moral differences, considered as distinguished from
intellectual, the distinction commonly drawn is to the advantage of
women. They are declared to be better than men; an empty compliment,
which must provoke a bitter smile from every woman of spirit, since
there is no other situation in life in which it is the established
order, and considered quite natural and suitable, that the better
should obey the worse. If this piece of idle talk is good for
anything, it is only as an admission by men, of the corrupting
influence of power; for that is certainly the only truth which the
fact, if it be a fact, either proves or illustrates. And it _is_ true
that servitude, except when it actually brutalizes, though corrupting
to both, is less so to the slaves than to the slave-masters. It is
wholesomer for the moral nature to be restrained, even by arbitrary
power, than to be allowed to exercise arbitrary power without
restraint. Women, it is said, seldomer fall under the penal
law--contribute a much smaller number of offenders to the criminal
calendar, than men. I doubt not that the same thing may be said, with
the same truth, of negro slaves. Those who are under the control of
others cannot often commit crimes, unless at the command and for the
purposes of their masters. I do not know a more signal instance of
the blindness with which the world, including the herd of studious
men, ignore and pass over all the influences of social circumstances,
than their silly depreciation of the intellectual, and silly
panegyrics on the moral, nature of women.
The complimentary dictum about women's superior moral goodness may be
allowed to pair off with the disparaging one respecting their greater
liability to moral bias. Women, we are told, are not capable of
resisting their personal partialities: their judgment in grave
affairs is warped by their sympathies and antipathies. Assuming it to
be so, it is still to be proved that women are oftener misled by
their personal feelings than men by their personal interests. The
chief difference would seem in that case to be, that men are led from
the course of duty and the public interest by their regard for
themselves, women (not being allowed to have private interests of
their own) by their regard for somebody else. It is also to be
considered, that all the education which women receive from society
inculcates on them the feeling that the individuals connected with
them are the only ones to whom they owe any duty--the only ones whose
interest they are called upon to care for; while, as far as education
is concerned, they are left strangers even to the elementary ideas
which are presupposed in any intelligent regard for larger interests
or higher moral objects. The complaint against them resolves itself
merely into this, that they fulfil only too faithfully the sole duty
which they are taught, and almost the only one which they are
permitted to practise.
The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom
brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged
to extort them, that any arguments against the prerogative of sex are
likely to be little attended to by the generality, as long as they
are able to say to themselves that women do not complain of it. That
fact certainly enables men to retain the unjust privilege some time
longer; but does not render it less unjust. Exactly the same thing
may be said of the women in the harem of an Oriental: they do not
complain of not being allowed the freedom of European women. They
think our women insufferably bold and unfeminine. How rarely it is
that even men complain of the general order of society; and how much
rarer still would such complaint be, if they did not know of any
different order existing anywhere else. Women do not complain of the
general lot of women; or rather they do, for plaintive elegies on it
are very common in the writings of women, and were still more so as
long as the lamentations could not be suspected of having any
practical object. Their complaints are like the complaints which men
make of the general unsatisfactoriness of human life; they are not
meant to imply blame, or to plead for any change. But though women do
not complain of the power of husbands, each complains of her own
husband, or of the husbands of her friends. It is the same in all
other cases of servitude, at least in the commencement of the
emancipatory movement. The serfs did not at first complain of the
power of their lords, but only of their tyranny. The Commons began by
claiming a few municipal privileges; they next asked an exemption for
themselves from being taxed without their own consent; but they would
at that time have thought it a great presumption to claim any share
in the king's sovereign authority. The case of women is now the only
case in which to rebel against established rules is still looked upon
with the same eyes as was formerly a subject's claim to the right of
rebelling against his king. A woman who joins in any movement which
her husband disapproves, makes herself a martyr, without even being
able to be an apostle, for the husband can legally put a stop to her
apostleship. Women cannot be expected to devote themselves to the
emancipation of women, until men in considerable number are prepared
to join with them in the undertaking.
[Footnote 1: Especially is this true if we take into consideration
Asia as well as Europe. If a Hindoo principality is strongly,
vigilantly, and economically governed; if order is preserved without
oppression; if cultivation is extending, 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. There are many such
instances: for though, by Hindoo institutions, a woman cannot reign,
she is the legal regent of a kingdom during the minority of the heir;
and minorities are frequent, the lives of the male rulers being so
often prematurely terminated through the effect of inactivity and
sensual excesses. When we consider that these princesses have never
been seen in public, have never conversed with any man not of their
own family except from behind a curtain, that they do not read, and
if they did, there is no book in their languages which can give them
the smallest instruction on political affairs; the example they
afford of the natural capacity of women for government is very
striking.]
[Footnote 2: "It appears to be the same right turn of mind which
enables a man to acquire the _truth_, or the just idea of what is
right, in the ornaments, as in the more stable principles of art. It
has still the same centre of perfection, though it is the centre of a
smaller circle.--To illustrate this by the fashion of dress, in which
there is allowed to be a good or bad taste. The component parts of
dress are continually changing from great to little, from short to
long; but the general form still remains: it is still the same
general dress which is comparatively fixed, though on a very slender
foundation; but it is on this which fashion must rest. He who invents
with the most success, or dresses in the best taste, would probably,
from the same sagacity employed to greater purposes, have discovered
equal skill, or have formed the same correct taste, in the highest
labours of art."--_Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses_, Disc. vii.]