Falls Convention set forth a few demands for their right to equal
education with men, and access to the various professions, trades,
etc. What wonderful accomplishment, what wonderful triumphs! Who
but the most ignorant dare speak of woman as a mere domestic drudge?
Who dare suggest that this or that profession should not be open to
her? For over sixty years she has molded a new atmosphere and a new
life for herself. She has become a world power in every domain of
human thought and activity. And all that without suffrage, without
the right to make laws, without the "privilege" of becoming a judge,
a jailer, or an executioner.
Yes, I may be considered an enemy of woman; but if I can help her see
the light, I shall not complain.
The misfortune of woman is not that she is unable to do the work of
man, but that she is wasting her life force to outdo him, with a
tradition of centuries which has left her physically incapable of
keeping pace with him. Oh, I know some have succeeded, but at what
cost, at what terrific cost! The import is not the kind of work
woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She
can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive
anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development,
her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself.
First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex
commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by
refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a
servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc.; by
making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying
to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities,
by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public
condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free,
will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real
love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life giving;
a creator of free men and women.
[1] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. Dr. Helen Sumner.
[2] EQUAL SUFFRAGE.
[3] Dr. Helen A. Sumner.
[4] Mr. Shackleton was a labor leader. It is therefore self-evident
that he should introduce a bill excluding his own constituents. The
English Parliament is full of such Judases.
[5] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. Dr. Helen A. Sumner.
THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN'S EMANCIPATION
I begin with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic
theories, treating of the fundamental differences between various
groups within the human race, regardless of class and race
distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between
woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where
these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.
With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general
social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life
today, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory
interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our
social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall
have become a reality.
Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not
necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor
does it call for the elimination of individual traits and
peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the
nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in
oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still
retain one's own characteristic qualities. This seems to me to be
the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat
and the true individuality, man and woman, can meet without
antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive one
another; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of
Madame de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive
everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor
of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow-being conveys the idea
of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow-being
suffices. The admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of
my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire
sex.
Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the
truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and
activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers
should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of
every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.
This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation.
But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed
her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential
to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an
artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French
arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels,
and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the
expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown
plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially
in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.
Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these
words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest
and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his light and glory
was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to
direct her own destiny--an aim certainly worthy of the great
enthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless effort of the
tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything
against a world of prejudice and ignorance.
My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that the
emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied today,
has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with
the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she
really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is,
nevertheless, only too true.
What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal suffrage in a
few States. Has that purified our political life, as many
well-meaning advocates predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally, it
is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease
to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone.
Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the
laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is
altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business
and industrial world, the mottos of which are: "To take is more
blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand
washes the other." There is no hope even that woman, with her right
to vote, will ever purify politics.
Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is,
she can choose her own profession and trade; but as her past and
present physical training has not equipped her with the necessary
strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all
her energy, use up her vitality, and strain every nerve in order to
reach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that
women teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers are
neither met with the same confidence as their male colleagues, nor
receive equal remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing
equality, generally do so at the expense of their physical and
psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls and
women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of
freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of
freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In
addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a
"home, sweet home"--cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting--after a
day's hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder that hundreds of
girls are willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and
tired of their "independence" behind the counter, at the sewing or
typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of the
middle class, who long to throw off the yoke of parental supremacy.
A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest
subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal, that one could expect
woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised
independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and
stifling woman's nature, her love instinct, and her mother instinct.
Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far more natural
and human than that of her seemingly more fortunate sister in the
more cultured professional walks of life--teachers, physicians,
lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, proper
appearance, while the inner life is growing empty and dead.
The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence and
emancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her social
equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and
independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only
hinder her in the full exercise of her profession--all these together
make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom
life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing
joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul.
Emancipation, as understood by the majority of its adherents and
exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless love and
ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart,
mother, in freedom.
The tragedy of the self-supporting or economically free woman does
not lie in too many but in too few experiences. True, she surpasses
her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human
nature; it is just because of this that she feels deeply the lack of
life's essence, which alone can enrich the human soul, and without
which the majority of women have become mere professional automatons.
That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by those
who realized that, in the domain of ethics, there still remained many
decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man;
ruins that are still considered useful. And, what is more important,
a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along without
them. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existing
institutions and the replacement thereof with something more
advanced, more perfect, has followers who in theory stand for the
most radical ideas, but who, nevertheless, in their every-day
practice, are like the average Philistine, feigning respectability
and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are,
for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea
that property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe
them the value of a half-dozen pins.
The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman's
emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk-and-water litterateurs
have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of
the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every
member of the woman's rights movement was pictured as a George Sand
in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her.
She had no respect for the ideal relation between man and woman. In
short, emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin;
regardless of society, religion, and morality. The exponents of
woman's rights were highly indignant at such representation, and,
lacking humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they were
not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of
course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be good
and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove
how good she could be and that her influence would have a purifying
effect on all institutions in society. True, the movement for
woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also forged
new ones. The great movement of TRUE emancipation has not met with a
great race of women who could look liberty in the face. Their
narrow, Puritanical vision banished man, as a disturber and doubtful
character, out of their emotional life. Man was not to be tolerated
at any price, except perhaps as the father of a child, since a child
could not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately, the
most rigid Puritans never will be strong enough to kill the innate
craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied with
man's freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to
overlook the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and
devotion of each human being about him, man as well as woman.
Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of human relations that
has brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern man and
woman.
About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant
Norwegian, Laura Marholm, called WOMAN, A CHARACTER STUDY. She was
one of the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrowness of
the existing conception of woman's emancipation, and its tragic
effect upon the inner life of woman. In her work Laura Marholm
speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: the
genius, Eleonora Duse; the great mathematician and writer, Sonya
Kovalevskaia; the artist and poet-nature, Marie Bashkirtzeff, who
died so young. Through each description of the lives of these women
of such extraordinary mentality runs a marked trail of unsatisfied
craving for a full, rounded, complete, and beautiful life, and the
unrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through these
masterly psychological sketches, one cannot help but see that the
higher the mental development of woman, the less possible it is for
her to meet a congenial mate who will see in her, not only sex, but
also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong
individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her
character.
The average man with his self-sufficiency, his ridiculously superior
airs of patronage towards the female sex, is an impossibility for
woman as depicted in the CHARACTER STUDY by Laura Marholm. Equally
impossible for her is the man who can see in her nothing more than
her mentality and her genius, and who fails to awaken her woman
nature.
A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered necessary
attributes of a deep and beautiful personality. In the case of the
modern woman, these attributes serve as a hindrance to the complete
assertion of her being. For over a hundred years the old form of
marriage, based on the Bible, "till death doth part," has been
denounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the
man over the woman, of her complete submission to his whims and
commands, and absolute dependence on his name and support. Time and
again it has been conclusively proved that the old matrimonial
relation restricted woman to the function of a man's servant and the
bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women who
prefer marriage, with all its deficiencies, to the narrowness of an
unmarried life; narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral
and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature.
The explanation of such inconsistency on the part of many advanced
women is to be found in the fact that they never truly understood the
meaning of emancipation. They thought that all that was needed was
independence from external tyrannies; the internal tyrants, far more
harmful to life and growth--ethical and social conventions--were left
to take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves.
They seem to get along as beautifully in the heads and hearts of the
most active exponents of woman's emancipation, as in the heads and
hearts of our grandmothers.
These internal tyrants, whether they be in the form of public opinion
or what will mother say, or brother, father, aunt, or relative of any
sort; what will Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer, the Board of
Education say? All these busybodies, moral detectives, jailers of
the human spirit, what will they say? Until woman has learned to
defy them all, to stand firmly on her own ground and to insist upon
her own unrestricted freedom, to listen to the voice of her nature,
whether it call for life's greatest treasure, love for a man, or her
most glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child, she
cannot call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women are
brave enough to acknowledge that the voice of love is calling, wildly
beating against their breasts, demanding to be heard, to be
satisfied.
The French writer, Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, NEW BEAUTY,
attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful, emancipated woman. This
ideal is embodied in a young girl, a physician. She talks very
cleverly and wisely of how to feed infants; she is kind, and
administers medicines free to poor mothers. She converses with a
young man of her acquaintance about the sanitary conditions of the
future, and how various bacilli and germs shall be exterminated by
the use of stone walls and floors, and by the doing away with rugs
and hangings. She is, of course, very plainly and practically
dressed, mostly in black. The young man, who, at their first
meeting, was overawed by the wisdom of his emancipated friend,
gradually learns to understand her, and recognizes one fine day that
he loves her. They are young, and she is kind and beautiful, and
though always in rigid attire, her appearance is softened by a
spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One would expect that he
would tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic
absurdities. Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing
faces before the pure beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of
his nature, and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, always
rational, always well behaved. I fear if they had formed a union,
the young man would have risked freezing to death. I must confess
that I can see nothing beautiful in this new beauty, who is as cold
as the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the
love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather
an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the
father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors,
than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love does
not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love,
but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a
minus.
The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day lies
in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities, which
produce an emptiness in woman's soul that will not let her drink from
the fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be a
deeper relationship between the old-fashioned mother and hostess,
ever on the alert for the happiness of her little ones and the
comfort of those she loved, and the truly new woman, than between
the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of
emancipation pure and simple declared me a heathen, fit only for the
stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison
between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number
of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and
wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness,
and simplicity, than the majority of our emancipated professional
women who fill the colleges, halls of learning, and various offices.
This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemn
woman to her old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery.
Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and
clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old
traditions and habits. The movement for woman's emancipation has so
far made but the first step in that direction. It is to be hoped
that it will gather strength to make another. The right to vote, or
equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins
neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul.
History tells us that every oppressed class gained true liberation
from its masters through its own efforts. It is necessary that woman
learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as
far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is, therefore,
far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration, to
cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs.
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and
fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and
be loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to become a complete
and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the
ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is
synonymous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away
with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and
woman represent two antagonistic worlds.
Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let
us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles
confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will
not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great
thing: to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self
richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and
transform the tragedy of woman's emancipation into joy, limitless
joy.
MARRIAGE AND LOVE
The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are
synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the
same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on
actual facts, but on superstition.
Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as
the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some
marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love
could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few
people can completely outgrow a convention. There are today large
numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but
who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while
it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is
equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I
maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of
it.
On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from
marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a
married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close
examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the
inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away
from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without
which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman
and the man.
Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It
differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is
more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small
compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one
pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue
payments. If, however, woman's premium is her husband, she pays for
it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life,
"until death doth part." Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns
her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness,
individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his
sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He
feels his chains more in an economic sense.
Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage.
"Ye who enter here leave all hope behind."
That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. One
has but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how
bitter a failure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped
Philistine argument that the laxity of divorce laws and the growing
looseness of woman account for the fact that: first, every twelfth
marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have
increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third,
that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8
per cent.; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent.