WOMAN IN POLITICAL
EVOLUTION
BY
JOSEPH McCABE
LONDON:
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1909
CONTENTS
Chap.
I. Is the Subordination of Woman the Price of Empire?
II. Woman Before Civilisation
III. Woman in Ancient Egypt and Assyria
IV. Woman in Ancient Greece
V. Woman in Ancient Rome
VI. The Dark Age of Feminism
VII. Renaissance and Revolution
VIII. The Struggle in the Nineteenth Century
IX. The Moral Base of Enfranchisement
Footnotes
WOMAN IN POLITICAL EVOLUTION
CHAPTER I.
IS THE SUBORDINATION OF WOMAN THE PRICE OF EMPIRE?
THE distinct aim which emboldened the author to add one more essay
to the large class of works that deal with woman's position
throughout the ages was twofold. It seemed, in the first place, that
there was a lack of connecting principle in the series of detached
sketches that usually make up a work of the kind; that a continuous,
panoramic view of human history would reveal such a principle, and
one of very great importance for the proper appreciation of the
present woman-movement. It has been possible to trace the action of
a consistent law through all the historic spasms of feminist
agitation, and to show that that law has reached a stage of final
and irresistible pressure in our time. The underlying principles of
the present movement are too rarely noticed, and a clear enunciation
of them may contribute a little to the proper understanding of the
struggle.
The second aim was to meet a serious concern that is expressed by
thoughtful observers, when they note that the woman-movement is one
of a score of agitations that ruffle the whole surface, and even
stir the depths, of modern life. We have passed through a century of
revolutions, yet we seem as far as ever from the peace that each one
had promised to bring. Nations that had slept undisturbed through
the political storms that shook Europe during three generations are
now waking to revolt; classes that had witnessed the upheavals of
the nineteenth century with dull indifference or shrinking
apprehension now take up the world-cry of change with the energy of
pioneers. The routine of daily life is distracted with the flash of
a dozen new ideals. Placidity has fallen from the rank of virtues.
What is the meaning of it all? What is likely to be the issue?
Those who read history shake their heads in concern. They say that
they are familiar with the symptoms, and can recognise the malady.
Through such spluttering of energy and iridescence of dreams every
great nation passed as it neared the end. Such scenes were
witnessed, and just such cries were heard, in the marble porticoes
of Greece when its glorious life began to sink. The same cries rang
through the _fora_ of Imperial Rome, and were heard again in the
_piasse_ of medieval Italy, when the long-drawn shadows fell on
their exhausted citizens. Do not nations run the cycle of birth and
lusty manhood and decay, like individuals? And is not this
restlessness the familiar token that the heart is slowing down and
the frame failing to control the worn and hypersensitive nerves? Do
not the fevered dreams, the ceaseless irritation, the rebellion of
parts that had served so well in silence, warn us that the
dissolution, of which we have read so often, is setting in? Can we
do other than knit the frame close in its old fabric, repress the
impatient elements, and close our eyes resolutely to the disordered
dreams?
In this light many regard the agitation for a revision of woman's
place in the social order. "The subordination of woman is
invariably one of the prices of Empire," says Dr. Emil Reich, who
has lately set out to correct our _chinoiserie d'idées_ with the
breadth of his historical lore. The British or the German Empire
grew to its height when--if we can forget Elizabeth--woman tended
the cradle and the home, while man wrought its industries, shaped
its policy, and bore its defence. With the same sharing of labour
among their men and women all earlier empires had grown to power,
and it was only in the years of decay that woman impatiently
clamoured for an enlargement of her sphere. This agitation, they
conclude, is the mere play of distempered nerves in an enfeebled
system. It must be cured by a sermon on self-sacrifice, a return to
virility, a stern refusal of the demand in the interest of the race.
They who listen to it cannot have scanned the memorial pages in
which history has written the fate of even greater empires than
ours.
I propose to show that this conservative attitude is inspired by an
entirely false reading of history. True it is that the recent course
of woman's development recalls a drama that has been played on the
planet's stage time after time. In the first act we have the
"womanly woman," absorbed in the cradle and the distaff, clothed
in quiet matronly virtues, content to hear news of the great world
without from her stronger mate. In the second act new and disturbing
types come on, women impatient of child-bearing, women that chafe at
the barriers and cry for freedom and justice, women that would go
out with man into the battle of life. The third act--the act in
which men begin to listen--has so constantly ended in tragedy that
many confidently look for the same issue now, if we dally with the
demands of the women as those others did. It is a plausible anxiety,
yet it arises solely from a superficial and perverse reading of
history.
In the first place, this assumption that nations run through a
life-curve like individuals needs serious qualification. There is no
inner law that nations shall be born and die, like the men and women
who compose them. To the student of science or history a law is but
a description of the way in which things have invariably acted, and
will presumably act again in the same circumstances. But the
circumstances in this case are the same no longer. The conditions of
national existence are radically different from what they were when
the procession of great empires passed over the stage of the world.
Then, almost invariably, the situation was that one virile race
entrenched itself in a strong capital and flung out its frontiers on
every side, while smaller races watched on the bracing hills all
round for the softness of muscle that city-life and parasitic habits
would bring. Nerve and brain mattered far less in those days of
heavy arms and armour. When you shortened your spear and lightened
your shield, the vigorous barbarian knew that his hour had come; the
frontier-walls crumbled under his pressure, and he took over the
heritage of civilisation. That situation has passed away for ever.
There is not one world-power to-day, with a chafing surge of
barbarians beating on its shores, but a dozen great nations, and a
new thing in the world that we call the balance of power. Softness
of muscle is of less account, as a regiment of city clerks can
annihilate an army of barbarians. Victory goes to intelligence and
nerve. A nation may die still, but assuredly there is no inner law
demanding that it must. That impressive march across the stage of
Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Ethiopia, Greece, Rome, and Venice
gives no precedent for our time.
Further, even if a modern nation die, the cry of its women will not
perish with it, as in those older days. I do not for a moment forget
that the balance may be disturbed, and the flood of war devastate a
modern kingdom, at any time; or that, if the lips of our guns were
sealed and the red rain stopped for ever, commercial rivalry might
bring a flagging race to ruin. That is quite possible; but the truth
is that every one of these rival nations has the same agitation in
its midst. No nation whose women have not yet stirred at the cry of
reform has the remotest chance of rising to power. The cry is strong
in Japan to-day, and will be heard in China to-morrow. It has loud
and eloquent utterance in Russia, Italy, and Spain, and it will
assuredly pass on to a renovated Turkey and Persia. Whatever powers
rise or fall, civilisation cannot die again, and it is civilisation
that faces the demand for change to-day. The cry died away on the
lips of the women of Greece and Rome and medieval Italy because
their civilisation perished, and a power rose on its ruins that had
not yet reached the same height of culture. That, assuredly, will
never happen again.
If this is so--and, apart from a few yellow-peril fanatics, I know
of no serious observer who doubts it--the comparison of the modern
woman-movement with those of former times must lead to a very
different conclusion from that of our superficial historical
critics. England, or the greatness of England, may die, but this
agitation is not a symptom, good or bad, of England's life alone.
It is not a special feature of the life of Germany, or the United
States, or any nation. It is a general feature of civilisation, and
civilisation will never again evade the settlement of its moral
problems by dying. Culture will go on, and the demand grows with
culture. We cannot possibly see a third act to the drama as it was
played on the earlier stage of history. There will be no fall of the
curtain now on an unsolved problem.
The fallacy of those, like Dr. Reich, who read the story otherwise
is the familiar historical mistake of regarding things as connected
because they chanced to occur at the same time. We may allow that
men were stronger at the time when women were subject; but it is a
poor fallacy to forget that the men then had a fresh heritage of
strength from barbaric days, as yet untouched by luxury, and to
assign their triumph in any measure to the silence of their women.
We may grant that the rebellion of the women generally came when the
nation was nearing decay; but, again, it is a poor fallacy to erect
this coincidence into a principle. The truth is that the revolt of
the women in earlier civilisations coincided with two things--with a
high state of culture and with a beginning of decay; and an
unprejudiced study of the agitation in any era will show plainly
that it was due to the former, and merely coincided with the latter.
It sprang from the culture, the social conscience, the strength--not
the weakness--of a nation. It was an ironic feature of the older
world that high and general culture and the triumph of justice over
ancient conventions were only reached when death was approaching.
The new order promises a totally different development, because all
nations of power are at the same stage of culture. And in our own
day the movement is due quite unmistakably to the renascence of
culture and the advance of moral principle.
Civilisation has now to face the problem candidly, and settle it.
The agitation is no bubble rising out of the effervescence of the
time, to burst, like a score of others that shone in the sun for a
moment, and give place to new. It is an essential element in the
evolution of culture. No nation ever reached the point of culture
that we have reached but its women rose with a moral challenge of
the justice of their position. Every nation had inherited from its
barbaric ancestry the practice of excluding women from the corporate
life, and there was good ground to demand a reconsideration of the
practice when the sense of social justice developed. To regard the
demand of our women as due to a temporary fit of nerves is to ignore
one of the most salient features of the course of human history.
Wherever civilisation grew out of barbarism the demand arose; it
died away only because a fresh barbarism broke the thread of
civilisation. As that thread will never more be broken, the demand
will increase with our culture, and it can afford to smile at these
fallacious lessons or warnings from a widely different past. When,
in addition, we consider the development of political life itself,
when we see that it concerns itself increasingly with the affairs of
women in a way that it never did before, we are forced to admit that
the demand for a reconsideration of woman's position has a solid
base in the actual evolution of life.
I propose, therefore, to run rapidly over the known phases of human
development, and show how the attitude of women has varied in
proportion to the growth of enlightenment and moral feeling. We will
catch what glimpse we can of the first human pair that wandered over
a strange earth in the faintest dawn of humanity. We will learn,
from races that have lingered in primitive ways for untold ages,
how, as the family grew into the race (or the rough social group
into the clan),[1] the issues of the corporate life were naturally
appropriated by the men. We will see how, as savagery rises to
barbarism, as the social life grows larger and more varied, the
warriors and their chief keep control of it, save where some
exceptional circumstance disposes them to take account of the
woman's will. We shall find the woman still patient and laborious
in the early years of civilisation, and will note how, as the
corporate life begins to look to other things than the mere defence
of the State, as social construction is studied, the woman, awakened
by the light of culture that breaks through the narrow windows of
her home, comes forth to claim her share in the control of that
larger national life, with which she must prosper or suffer no less
than the man. We shall see how the division of labour handed down
from the barbaric ages breaks down, how the law comes to invade
every corner of the little territory in which she had held sway, how
she demands that her knowledge and feeling be consulted in the
framing of such laws, and how she builds up a larger ideal of
womanhood that will add dignity and worth to maternity by a
recognition of her essential humanity.