THE RENAISSANCE
If the theory that the higher faculties and the moral sense originated
in the female and that these qualities are by her transmitted to
offspring, then the conditions existing in the first half of the
sixteenth century are easily explained; or if, as is clearly proved by
the facts brought out by scientists, woman represents the constructive
and combining element in human society without which organized society
would have been impossible, the degeneracy observed after thirteen
hundred years during which time women were wholly without influence
and power is exactly what might be expected. Indeed it is not singular
that with the disintegrating or destructive forces in command over the
conserving or constructive elements that war and religion should have
become the business of the world and that a state of society should
have prevailed which was in strict accord with these conditions.
However, that the constructive element was not dead is shown by the
mental and moral unrest which began to manifest itself in the latter
half of the sixteenth century. Women began to learn the alphabet and
in a weak way to demand concessions hitherto denied them. Many men of
genius who like the jurisconsults of Rome had not been submerged by
the degeneracy of their time defied their persecutors and secretly
promulgated the scientific theories which were to revolutionize human
thought.
The demand for freedom of conscience and for the release of the
intellect and reason from the domination of bigotry and superstition
constituted one of the first steps toward reform. Galileo, Bruno,
Copernicus, and Harvey are notable examples of the revolt against the
intellectual tyranny which prevailed.
It is not a little singular that at this time the throne of England
was occupied by a woman and that her reign should have been the most
brilliant that that country has ever enjoyed. It has frequently been
said that the success of Elizabeth’s reign was due not to her greatness
but to that of the statesmen whom she called about her. But even were
this true, which it is not, it would not detract from her greatness.
The innate qualities developed within Queen Elizabeth, namely genius
and intuition, can alone explain the brilliancy of her reign.
It is to be doubted if the progressive principle has ever been wholly
dead. That even during the darkest period of the Middle Ages the
constructive element was still alive in Europe is shown in the fact
that as early as the year 1215 the idea of individual human liberty had
already been formulated. In the Magna Charta wrested from King John at
Runnymede appears the following:
No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or
banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him or upon him
send except by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the
land. To no one will we sell; to no one will we deny or delay right or
justice.
Although a few attempts were made during the sixteenth century
to better the conditions of the masses of the people, as all the
institutions for the perpetuation of the slavery of the masses were
firmly established, little was accomplished in this direction. That
reforms move slowly is shown in the fact that as late as the beginning
of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, the greater portion
of the human race was in a state of bondage. Slavery existed in every
quarter of the globe. In Russia, in 1855, there were forty-eight
millions of serfs, and in Austria and Prussia the peasantry were nearly
all slaves. In Hungary nine millions of human beings belonged to a
subject class.
Although no slaves were owned in England, slavery still existed in her
colonies. In the West Indies the whip was freely used, and prior to the
year 1820 no voice had been raised against the flogging of women on
the plantations. In Scotland, down to the last year of the eighteenth
century, colliers and salters were slaves and bound to their service
for life, being bought and sold with the works at which they laboured.
Although America had put down the slave-trade, she still owned slaves,
and continued to traffic in them until the year 1863.
The history of legislation during the historic period shows that
it has ever been in the interest of the rich against the poor, the
strong against the weak. In France, at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, liberty was extinct. “The rich man could purchase for money
the power to destroy those whom he hated.”[264]
[264] Robert Mackenzie, _The Nineteenth Century_, p. 9.
The lawmakers of the age which we are considering were gentlemen
landowners, and as such were able to exercise their cupidity in a
degree which precluded all idea of justice to the poorer classes. The
abuses of government, the corn-laws, the enormous tax on salt and on
the various necessities of life, show somewhat of the extent to which
the poor were systematically robbed by the rich.
The law passed in 1350, at Bannockburn, regulating the movements of the
British workingmen, and which prohibited combinations among them, was
in force until 1824. The evident object of this law was to repress the
labourer and deprive him of his just earnings. Although this enactment
was known to be oppressive, the working-classes were not possessed of
sufficient influence to cause its repeal.
In England, women with their children worked in coal pits, and in the
darkness, on hands and feet, dragged about wagons fastened to their
waists by chains. Of this Mr. Mackenzie says:
Children of six were habitually employed. Their hours of labour were
fourteen to sixteen daily. The horrors among which they lived induced
disease and early death. Law did not seem to reach to the depths
of a coal-pit, and the hapless children were often mutilated and
occasionally killed with perfect impunity by the brutalized miners
among whom they laboured. There was no machinery to drag the coals to
the surface, and women climbed long wooden stairs with baskets of coal
upon their backs.
In the factories, also, as late as 1832 children of six years of age
worked from thirteen to fifteen hours daily. If they fell asleep they
were flogged. Sometimes through exhaustion they fell upon the machinery
and were injured—possibly crushed,—an occurrence which caused little
concern to any except the mothers, who had learned to bear their pangs
in silence. These children, who were stunted in size and disposed to
various acute diseases, were also scrofulous and consumptive. In 1832
the recruiting surgeon could find no men to suit his purpose in the
manufacturing districts.
Throughout Europe, the prevailing idea concerning the management of
criminals seems to have been vengeance. One would scarcely believe,
except on trustworthy authority, that at the beginning of the
nineteenth century the English criminal law recognized 223 capital
offences. Indeed, so strong was the feeling in favour of severity that
Edmund Burke said he could obtain the assent of the House of Commons
to any law imposing the penalty of death. If one shot a rabbit he was
hanged; if he injured Westminster Bridge he was hanged; if he appeared
disguised on a public road he was hanged, and so on. The hanging of
small groups was a common occurrence—children of ten years being
sometimes among the condemned.[265]
[265] Robert Mackenzie, _The Nineteenth Century_, p. 77.
A visit to the Five-Sided Tower in Nuremberg, in which are still
preserved various instruments of human torture, will give an idea of
the extreme cruelty practised upon political offenders and heretics a
century ago.
The “Holy Alliance” of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, which was formed
ostensibly to insure peace and establish justice, but which in reality
was entered into to suppress free speech, check the growing liberties
of the people, and strengthen the belief in the “divine right of
kings,” shows the obstacles which had to be overcome before any
principle of justice and humanity could take root.
The history of industrial and economic conditions since the beginning
of the eighteenth century is largely the history of the common people.
The change from the Feudal system to that of the wage-earning régime
may not, as far as the working class is concerned, be regarded as
an unmixed blessing. Under Feudalism the “lord of the soil” was
responsible for the maintenance and well-being of his vassals, while
under the wage system the “captains of industry” assume no such
responsibility. If the labourer chooses to accept the terms offered
well and good, if he refuses he may starve; it is a matter of no
concern to the employer, for, are there not plenty of labourers who
stand ready to take his place?
That the labourer was no less a slave under the wage-earning system
than he had been under Feudalism is shown in the fact that under the
first named as well as under the latter he had not the right of free
contract. He must take what was offered him or starve.
As is well known the repression of the mental activities and the
low physical condition which for more than thirteen centuries had
prevailed, prevented the seed sown in the sixteenth century from
taking root among the masses of the people. Their instincts were
those of the slave and two centuries were required to waken them from
their lethargy. Finally, however, even among the class mentioned the
constructive forces began to assert themselves. Free thought and to
a certain extent free speech were established. With the further
development of liberal ideas a belief in the Divine Right of Kings and
in the principles underlying monarchial institutions became somewhat
weakened. A few attempts were even made to establish republics. Because
of the glimmering light of scientific truth put forth in the sixteenth
century, ecclesiastical authority was no longer supreme.
Although many important steps had been taken to free men from the
thraldom of the past, so firmly had the idea of woman’s inferiority
been established that no thought of including her in the new régime was
ever entertained.
Justice, equality, and liberty are subjects upon which man descants
loudly and long. He talks glibly of his free institutions and even
designates a number of his one-sided governments as republics, and this
too notwithstanding the fact that women are still denied representation
in the governments to which they owe allegiance, and that a large
proportion of men are still within the grasp of economic slavery; all
of which shows the extent to which the moral sense and the judgment
have been dwarfed by prejudice and selfishness. Democracy is still a
meaningless term—an ideal yet to be realized.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century such were the conditions
surrounding women that an attempt on their part to extricate themselves
from their legal and social bondage would have proved utterly futile.
At that time women had practically no legal rights; even the right
to control their own bodies was denied them. As woman was dependent
upon man for support her sex-functions were controlled by him and the
children which she bore belonged exclusively to him. He constituted the
family—wife and children did not count. To a considerable extent these
conditions still prevail.
Masculine law, masculine religion, and masculine ideas concerning the
duties and uses of the female sex had made of woman a nondescript—a
creature neither male nor female. Her mental constitution had become
atrophied, the diluted reflections of men’s opinions having been
substituted for the natural feminine instincts and ideas. Among the
great mass of women the original feminine type had disappeared.
In process of time, however, women began slowly to awaken from the
hideous nightmare which threatened to destroy the last remaining
vestige of the instincts and ideas peculiar to the female constitution.
In the beginning of the nineteenth century some of the educational
advantages enjoyed by men began to be appropriated by women. Thus began
the unrest which now extends over the entire earth.
About seventy years ago a movement was started by women to secure for
themselves the right to self-government. Immediately all the prejudice
which characterizes a sex-aristocracy was aroused. Ridicule, calumny,
and even personal abuse were directed against all those who were
intelligent enough or fearless enough to stem the tide of popular
indignation.
For forty years, little or no progress was made toward securing the
right of self-government for women. As late as 1870 a woman who
openly avowed herself a suffragist was regarded not only as “bold and
unwomanly” but as a dangerous person. The most strenuous opposition
to the movement came from the clergy and the flocks over which they
presided. Whenever church women were asked to consider the question of
the equality of the sexes their unvarying reply was: “My bible forbids
it.” Now that the history of Pauline Christianity is better understood
its attitude toward the freedom of women needs no further explanation.
When the then existing mental conditions are recalled and especially
when the religious prejudices of the time are considered the attitude
manifested toward the proposed enfranchisement of women is not perhaps
remarkable.
Although forty years ago biological science was in its infancy enough
facts had at that time been discovered clearly to indicate the position
which Nature intended woman to occupy. By the scientists of that time,
however, the logical and unavoidable inferences to be drawn from
these facts were wholly ignored. During the ages of man’s undisputed
supremacy so deeply rooted had the idea of woman’s inferiority become
that these newly discovered facts concerning her development could not
be accepted—the old prejudices could not at once be uprooted.
We have already observed that whenever and wherever Mr. Darwin and
other scientists of his time felt called upon to compare the relative
importance of men and women such comparison has invariably been to the
disadvantage of the latter and this too notwithstanding the fact that
the evidence which they themselves have elaborated warrants no such
conclusions.
Forty years ago the doctrine that woman has no independent existence,
but that she is simply an appendage to man, was everywhere accepted and
taught not only by ecclesiastics but by scientists as well. Woman was
only a “rib” taken from the side of man.
None of the doctrines elaborated for the guidance of women was so
explicit as those relating to the duties of wives. The cause for this
is obvious. Earlier in this work the fact has been noted that our
present form of marriage originated in force—that no other principle
was involved in it than coercion on the one side and unwilling
submission on the other.
So long as the original idea underlying marriage is retained, or so
long as woman is recognized as the property of her husband and subject
to his control, no matter what may be achieved by individual women, the
belief in the inferiority of women as a class will continue. In other
words so long as women remain economic slaves dependent upon their
husband for support so long will their status remain unchanged.
“She is my goods, my chattels, my household stuff.”
There are in this country at the present time more than nine millions
of women engaged in earning their own livelihood. Many of these women
have families dependent upon them for support. The disadvantages under
which they labour are realized when we remember that their competitors
are their political and economic superiors and are therefore able to a
considerable extent to dictate the conditions under which these women
work; yet notwithstanding these unfavourable conditions this change in
woman’s environment represents an important step in the evolutionary
processes. By it women are learning that only through independence is
self-respect possible.
We have already seen that whenever during the historic period, women
have had an opportunity to rise they have never failed to rebel
against the conditions imposed upon them. The women of Athens during
the Periclean age, the Spartan women under Lycurgus, and the women of
Rome during the time of the Antonine Cæsars are notable examples of
this fact. Even the Chinese women are claiming the right to govern
themselves. In these later years they are unbinding their feet and in
other ways are defying the forces which in the past have prevented
them from asserting their independence. The various examples of revolt
among women have hitherto been carried on by single nations or by
countries widely separated from one another. At the present time,
however, the women of the entire world have risen to demand the freedom
of their sex. However much those who favour the subjection of women may
deplore this movement even the most stupid among them will surely not
fail to recognize its importance.
The history of human society during the last four hundred years has
for the most part been a struggle between the constructive elements
developed in human society and the destructive or disintegrating forces
which are the result of the unchecked egoism or selfishness developed
in man during the ages in which woman has been subject to his will.