WOMAN AS A WORKER
“Hast thou for cooking a turn, little Lady Clarissa? in with them,
In with your fingers! their beauty it spoils, but your own it
enhances.
For it is beautiful only to do the thing we are meant for.”
_The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_, ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
Woman suffers from laws which forbid. The forbidden fruit always seemed
to me an unfair bunker. No woman could be expected to keep out of it.
At all events, to try to cultivate Woman and Forbidden Apples in the
same garden was rash and hazardous horticulture. Bluebeard understood
the basic sense of that proposition, and it was full in harmony with
the wicked irony of his way with women.
If it is not impious to say so, I have often thought that it is an
unfortunate thing that our earliest statutes begin with the words “Thou
shalt not.” Lawgivers, always searching for precedents, have imagined
that it was an essential part of every law to tell you _not_ to do
things. Nothing has been more detrimental to progress.
To my orthodox mind the sound view should be that the subjects where
forbiddance is necessary are exhausted in the Ten Commandments, and
that it smacks of profanity to continue adding to these unnecessarily.
At all events, for women workers I am satisfied that the only way to
amend the law is to strike out of it all those statutes, clauses,
sections, and considered judgments which forbid a woman from trying her
hand at any sort of work that she has a mind to.
That is the Free Trade solution of Woman’s work, and there is no other
sane one. A free field and no favour. We may trust Woman, after a very
short experience, to discover that the devil takes the hindmost, and if
she can outwit the old gentleman so much the better for every one.
It is easy enough to say that Woman is naturally unfitted for this or
that position; but why argue about it when it is so simple a matter to
test it by experience? I have a strong belief that Man is naturally
incapable of boiling a potato, but I have heard of exceptional men who
could achieve this delicate task, and, except in time of famine, I
would not have a law forbidding them to try their hand at it.
If, for instance, we take the various money-making occupations which
the Law forbids Woman to undertake, we shall find among the precedents
of history many notable cases where individual women have achieved
considerable success in them when they have had the opportunity of
making the attempt.
Surely we may allow that Queen Elizabeth was as able and untrustworthy
as any statesman in modern Europe. In the matter of soldiering and
generalship Joan of Arc made a certain name for herself; and, although
women have small chance of going down to the sea in ships, do not
let us forget that it was Grace Horsley Darling, the daughter of a
lighthouse keeper on the Farne Islands, who started by her deeds of
heroinism the idea of our life-boat system, of which she has remained
the saintly patroness to this day.
Nor must it be forgotten that Shakespeare, in his portrait of Portia,
has convinced all of us who are governed by reason that the task of
stating bad law in eloquent periods to an indifferent judicial tribunal
is one that may safely be left in the hands of Woman.
In the Churches of early days, priestesses were rulers of great
influence, and throughout the history of nearly every ecclesiastical
power women have had responsible positions. In the Salvation Army
of to-day, a most successful organization, Woman has played a most
important official part with notable success.
In voluntary religions the law can lay down no rule, but in a State
Established Church all posts ought clearly to be open to man and woman
alike. There is no duty cast upon an incumbent that could not just as
well be performed by a woman as by a man.
In fact, in many country districts the active work of the parish is
often entirely in the hands of the vicaress, and the vicar contents
himself with his statutory duties and a certain amount of amateur
magistracy and other country pursuits, or crams students, or grows
roses, or becomes the learned antiquary of the district.
The arrangement is usually a sound one, but why should not the Woman
who does the work have the honour of the title and the office? Indeed,
it would be more seemly and honest that this should be so. Mrs. Proudie
was not a figment of Trollope’s imagination. She was the real wife of
a real bishop. To what good purpose is it that the Law refuses the
position of Bishop to a Woman when she can attain all the power of it
by marrying the man in the office?
People, and especially advanced people, speak of woman’s work as though
it was a new thing, but as a matter of history you will find that Woman
has always been the real worker in the human partnership.
If you have read the old sagas and folk tales with affectionate
attention, or if you have acquired the rare habit of loafing slowly
through the museums of the world with your eyes open, you will know
that women were the first millers and weavers and potters and basket
makers, that they tilled the first fields, dressed and tanned the
earliest skins and hides, invented the primitive forms of baskets, and
were the first carriers and transport brigade when the tribes took
the road. In a word, all the peaceful arts necessary to the feeding,
clothing and travelling of early man were originally woman’s work.
As time rolled on these things passed under the domain of man, who has
always recognized that a cunning tendency to exploit the abilities of
others for his own profit is a righteous quality worthy of the highest
temporal reward.
But when in the course of time the old handicrafts pegged out, and
skilled artists nimble in handiwork were no longer essential to human
comfort, Woman--to put it in modern phrase--was “left.” The distaff
gave way to the spinning wheel, the spinning wheel became a spinning
jenny, and the motor power became steam or electricity in place of
Woman. At last--in the Victorian era--which a few of us still hold in
respectful memory--woman’s last glorious art, the art of the needle,
disappeared, and the sewing machine threw out of domestic employment
a vast number of home-keeping women. The word “spinster,” originally
descriptive of an honourable craft, has become almost suggestive
of idleness and reproach. To-day it is scarcely an exaggeration
to say that the housewife’s power in the house depends mainly on
man’s disability to cook his own food and sew on his own buttons. A
satisfactory municipal restaurant supplying meals on the gas and water
system by means of slot machines or otherwise, and a new American
foolproof garment fastener in place of the button and buttonhole, and
woman’s power in the household would be threatened with extinction.
Briefly put, these are the reasons why woman’s position towards the
end of the Victorian era became a new problem. All the domestic work
of the preparation of food supplies from farm and garden, the work of
the laundry, the still room, the bakehouse and the brewhouse passed
into outside machine factory hands, and the wives and mothers and
daughters had little left for their energies but “shopping,” a charming
pursuit when left to the unfettered discretion of idle minds, but not
economical.
What to do with our girls? was a common topic of conversation among
Victorian fathers and mothers, but you cannot expect the fossils of
the older strata to take a very intelligent interest in the living
movements of the alert fauna in the sea of life that washes above
their heads. The fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers
lamented over the unfossilized tendencies of the giddy young swimmers
caught by streams of life that led they knew not where; and the true
history of the evolution of woman’s work is not to be found in the
wisdom of the written words of our forbears, but in the actual lives
of the younger women themselves who refused to sit down at home and do
nothing, and started out into the world in search of a new life and
great adventures.
A book of biography will some day be written showing how, in each great
branch of work where Woman has taken or is taking an honoured part
to-day, the initiative was struck out and pressed home against the
active opposition of professors, priests and parents by the pioneer
heroinism of Woman herself. Such a volume could not be published in
this generation because history cannot be written whilst it is in
the making, but one can set out shortly the story of one woman’s
achievements as typical of the life story of many a similar brave and
honourable career.
To-day the work of women doctors is an acknowledged success. Their
noble achievements in the great war are read with pride by their
countrymen. Let one instance suffice, quoted from a daily paper of May,
1915, containing news from Serbia:--
“One English lady, Mrs. Hardy, who came alone, took charge
single-handed of a surgical hospital of about 500 patients, and with
the help of one woman, a Serbian lady doctor, turned it into a marvel
of good order, and cleanliness without any other assistance. The
Scottish hospital in charge of two lady doctors, Dr. Soltau and Dr.
Holloway, was also a picture of cleanliness and comfort.”
When we read such things we should not rail at our fathers for their
purblind refusal to temper the Law to modern social ideals, but rather
search in our own up-to-date consciences to see if there is anything we
can do to-day to repeal unnecessary laws of denial and give freedom to
Woman to do good in the way that seems to her best.
Think what the medical service of Woman has meant to suffering humanity
and humbly thank Providence for the courage of the pioneer women who
made such deeds possible against the crass opposition of the leaner and
more slippered pantaloons of early Victorian Harley Street.
Every one who is interested in Woman’s work should read the life story
of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first Woman doctor, as told by herself
in her modest honourable and inspiring record, _Pioneer Work in Opening
the Medical Profession to Women_.
It is good to know that she was an Englishwoman, though credit for
the opportunity for her education must go to America. She was born in
Bristol, February 3, 1821, the third daughter of Samuel Blackwell, a
Bristol sugar refiner. Her father and mother and their eight children
emigrated to America and remained for some years in New York, where
they moved in the circle of William Lloyd Garrison and his friends, and
Elizabeth obtained a good education at a New York day school. In 1838
her father moved with his family to Cincinnati, where he died after a
short illness, leaving his widow and nine children entirely unprovided
for.
Elizabeth and her sisters helped to keep things going by scholastic
work and for several years she held different educational positions. At
the age of twenty-five she seems to have been gradually drawn towards
her real life work. The necessity to her of devoting herself to some
absorbing occupation, and the call from sick women for medical help
from one of their own sex, coupled doubtless with an intuition that she
had the capacity within her to reach her goal, moved her to take active
steps to become a doctor.
She now consulted several medical men of her acquaintance as to the
possibility of her becoming a doctor, and the answers she received
were that there was no way of obtaining such an education for a Woman
and that the idea was impossible of execution. Here indeed the matter
might have rested, but that the idea of winning a doctor’s degree
gradually assumed to her the aspect of a great moral struggle. It was
the impossibility of the task that attracted Elizabeth Blackwell.
“This moral aspect of the subject was increased,” she tells us, “by a
circumstance which made a very strong impression on me. There was at
that time a certain Madame Restell flourishing in New York. This person
was a noted abortionist and known all over the country. She was a woman
of great ability and defended her cause in the public papers. She made
a large fortune, drove a fine carriage, had a pew in a fashionable
church, and though often arrested was bailed out by her patrons. She
was known distinctively as a ‘female physician,’ a term exclusively
applied at that time to those women who carried on her vile occupation.
“The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist
filled me with indignation and awakened active antagonism. That the
honourable term ‘female physician’ should be exclusively applied to
these women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror.
It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble
position for women.”
I have set out this passage in her own words because it seems to
me to contain a most interesting lesson for us in the history of
social evolution. Here we have a semi-criminal carrying on a foul
trade, tolerated and permitted by the medical, legal and magisterial
hierarchy, and a clever girl of five and twenty, inspired by
the foulness of the business, setting about without any help or
encouragement from her elders to work a reform. To the sage wisdom
enshrined beneath the Victorian top hat and underneath the professional
frock coat of the period Elizabeth’s intentions and desires were absurd
and impossible. The encouraging part of the story to one who, like
myself, believes with child-like faith in miracles and fairy tales, is
that from the moment she starts on her career, in spite of the enormous
difficulties and opposition she encounters, one has no more doubt that
she is going to win her prize than that Cinderella will marry the
Prince at the end of the story.
There was certainly no broad and easy path to success. The first step
Elizabeth Blackwell took was to return to school-teaching for a few
years to save enough money to follow a college career, and at the same
time to study Greek and such elementary learning as she could. It was
not until 1847 that she began to seek an entrance to a medical school.
One doctor after another told her that in his college or university the
idea of allowing a woman to study medicine would never be permitted,
and a good Quaker doctor, who was not unfriendly to her scheme, said
to her, “Elizabeth, it is no use trying. Thee cannot gain admission to
their schools, thee must go to Paris and don masculine attire to gain
the necessary knowledge.” Later on he told her he had made further
inquiries and that Paris was such a horrible place that she must give
up her wish for a medical education. Upon which Elizabeth tells us,
“I told the doctor that if the path of duty led me to hell I would go
there; and I did not think that by being with devils I should become
a devil myself,” at which the good doctor stared. Indeed it was just
as well that he should stare, for unless Elizabeth could succeed
in opening the eyes of the medical profession to the strength and
earnestness of her intentions there was little chance of overcoming
their opposition.
The great educational institutions of Philadelphia and New York
remaining obdurate, Elizabeth wrote to twelve of the minor county
schools, as they were called, for permission to study medicine. For
many weeks there was no reply, and at length on October 20, 1847, the
Dean of the Faculty of the medical department of the University of
Geneva informed her of the following resolution of the entire medical
class.
“Resolved--That one of the radical principles of a Republican
Government is the universal education of both sexes: that to every
branch of scientific education the door should be open equally to
all, and therefore Elizabeth Blackwell was welcome to the classes and
examinations and degrees of the Geneva University.”
It is interesting to find this example of good sense and right
principle set by the professors and students of this smaller University
to their wealthy exclusive and narrow-minded colleagues in Philadelphia
and New York and thence across the ocean to the old-world school men
of Oxford and Cambridge. The little governess of Philadelphia had won
a great battle for educational freedom in this year 1847. From this
time forward it was only a matter of time how soon or how long it was
before all universities accepted the principle of universal education
of both sexes. It may be that some of the more antiquated institutions
partly out of mere conservatism and partly with a desire to protect
the male students from undesirable competition, will hesitate for some
time yet to fall into line. But gradually it must appear clear to their
governors that a University that shuts its doors to large numbers of
eager and hard-working students will not for very much longer receive
public toleration. There are many signs that our universities will
soon be called upon to put their house in order; for the social and
political wisdom of professors and the capacity and possible activities
of women will be quoted on the world’s exchange at entirely new values
after the war.
It is well to read of Miss Blackwell’s difficulties if only to
appreciate the courage and steadfastness which enabled her to win
through. At the dinner table of her boarding-house a doctor’s wife
refused to notice her, and ladies in the street stopped to stare at her
as at some curious animal. The rougher medical students, after some
small demonstrations, behaved admirably to her, and to them and to her
teachers she testifies her gratitude. On January 23, 1849, there is the
following entry in her journal: “After the degree had been conferred
on the others I was called up to the platform. The President rose as I
came on the stage, and going through the usual formula of a short Latin
address presented me my diploma. I said, ‘Sir, I thank you, it shall be
the effort of my life, with the help of the Most High, to shed honour
on my diploma.’”
How well she was enabled to fulfil her prayer remains on record. We
cannot follow here her career of study in Europe, hindered by the snubs
and boycotting of many doctors, cheered by the kindly encouragement
of a nobler few. The story of her life of sacrifice in the Paris
Maternité which ended in the loss of the sight of an eye from purulent
ophthalmia, destroying all her hopes of practical work in surgery, is a
tragedy worthy to be read in her own brave words.
She went on her mission quietly and bravely without complaint against
the folly and malice of her opponents, calmly reminding them that “a
work of ages cannot be hindered by individual feeling, and a hundred
years hence women will not be what they are now.” Her own success of
achievement was indeed great, but it was in the inspiration of others
and by the example of her career that her name will remain blessed. As
the older friend and adviser of Florence Nightingale and Mrs. Garrett
Anderson and many another woman worker, she did a great work for the
cause she loved. Though the world she lived in took an evil delight in
seeking to make her burden too heavy to be borne, yet I make no doubt
that posterity will canonize her as a saintly type of professional
woman.
Every experience we have had as yet of permitting Woman to undertake
the work she desires to do, unhampered by the Law, has been a
reasonable success, and has certainly not brought about the social
disasters that Mrs. Grundy and her friends have so continuously
prophesied. After all when there has been anything approaching the
regulation of woman’s work on the principles of Free Trade, women
have taken their rightful place with reasonable modesty and without
destroying altogether the occupations and remuneration of the timid man
who craves for the protection of the law.
Marlborough’s armies had no women nurses and no Red Cross Society. It
was a woman, Florence Nightingale, who raised her lamp to light the
women of the world on this path of mercy. Fair play to mere man: when
he understood the proposition he weighed in with cash and organizing
energy to make it a success.
One would have thought that the experience of the enormous improvement
that the nursing profession has made since the days of Sairey Gamp
and Betsey Prig would have convinced mankind that Woman was capable
of dealing with the sick and wounded, not only with enthusiasm and
sympathy, but with an ability and insight that could be encouraged by
suitable education to fit some women for the higher branches of medical
work.
Nursing to-day is as important a branch of doctoring as any other. It
is hard, uncongenial, distasteful work, and not over well paid, so
it is left almost wholly in the hands of women. But there is no law
hindering a man from taking to it if he pleases, and some few do with
success. In the same way there should be no Law preventing Woman from
entering the higher branches of the medical profession if she is able
and willing to do so.
The beauty of the principle of Free Trade is not that it makes a
different world or a better world, but only that it enables the world
to be just as good as the men and women of their day are capable of
making it.
The education of Woman was bound to bring about a demand for forbidden
apples, and the Law of Apples will have to be repealed. You cannot
allow a woman to learn Law and Medicine, and Theology and Engineering,
and go peddling about with her knowledge on some little nine-hole
social course which no self-respecting man would play over.
Only if Woman is to come into the field and contest with Man she must
play under the same rules and drive off the same tees. Where she has
done so, in Literature and Art, for instance, she has done well, but
she has not driven Man into the workhouse, and there is still room in
these fields for men of industry and cunning.
As Thomas Huxley wrote fifty years ago: “Let women if they so please
become merchants, barristers, politicians. Let them have a fair field,
but let them understand as the necessary correlative that they are
to have no favour. Let Nature alone sit high above the lists, ‘rain
influence and judge the prize.’”
I do not understand those who fear that if the Law withdraws its veto
from Woman’s right to work there will be a revolution. There will be
a small enrichment of service in the older professions, but the world
will roll on in much the same old way.
Man will continue to earn the money and Woman to spend it, just as in
primeval times Man hunted and killed the deer and Woman cooked it and
handed round the shares to the family and converted the skin into a
dress-piece. You may pass Laws until the Crack of Doom, but that little
arrangement began at the beginning of things and came to stay.
The Woman is born to rule, and her methods of rule are predestined for
her. Singing at her distaff and rocking her cradle she must for ever
govern her household and the world with her pleasant sway, and good
easy man must content himself with the proverb: “Whoso findeth a wife
findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord.”