WOMAN AS A CITIZEN
At last
She rose upon a wind of prophecy
Dilating on the future; everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life.
_The Princess_, TENNYSON.
The simple reason why the Law should be amended to give Woman full
rights of citizenship is best stated in the homely saying that “two
heads are better than one.”
In the dark ages this maxim did not apply, for learned Man doubted
whether Woman had a head in any but a physical sense, and the early
celibate theologians went so far as to deny her a soul, regarding her
with dread as a noxious animal.
Remembering these ancient beliefs a French satirist of the eighteenth
century solemnly proclaimed his “Plan for a Law prohibiting the
Alphabet to Women,” and small wonder that many good simple people took
him quite seriously, which is the nasty way your dull world has of
crabbing the humorist. For until quite modern days we were all Chinese
in our outlook on the Woman question, holding it to be an unanswerable
article of faith that “for men to cultivate virtue is knowledge; for
women to renounce knowledge is virtue.”
But once Woman has eaten of the Tree of Knowledge who can forbid her
the right to use her knowledge for the benefit of the human race? A
woman, like any other human being, may do far more harm by dropping a
letter into a pillar box than by placing a voting paper in a ballot
box. The Frenchman was right. The mistake that the Chinese and the
early Fathers had so clearly warned us against has been made. We should
never have taught Woman the Alphabet. That, in the thoughtful phrase
of modern slang, has “torn it,” and having torn up the old heathen
ideal of womanhood let us by all means put the remnants in the fire of
forgetfulness and have done with them.
An educated woman will naturally expect a better fortune in life than
to “suckle fools and chronicle small beer.” Man in a minority has
always preached to his discontented disciples that the cure-all for
political evils is the vote, and how can he with any self-respect
ask Woman to believe that all the time he has been talking to the
poor and down-trodden with his tongue in his cheek. If we have upheld
the suffrage as a way out of all evil for the slave, the serf, the
conquered nation and the submerged tenth of our own male citizens, it
is pure cant to tell Woman that it will not help her to realize her
ideals.
For my part, though I recognize the elementary right in every citizen
to share in choosing those who make the laws so that he may have some
small voice in preventing unjust and socially injurious laws being
passed, yet I do not think any new and beautiful world is going to be
created even by a new and more beautiful electorate.
It is the inherent justice in Woman’s demand that attracts me, and not
any hope or belief that much immediate reform will come of it.
On the contrary, many of the things I care about would probably receive
scant support from the first generation of women voters. When you
deny rights to any body of citizens they are ardent progressives and
march in the ranks of radicals and reformers, but they are generally
reactionary at heart. The Catholics and the Jews have proved this in
the past, and any old electioneering hand who knows the country will
tell you that there are thirty Welsh constituencies waiting for the
disestablishment of the Welsh Church to vote Conservative.
The philosopher tells us that there must be a new world if there is to
be any world at all, but history does not encourage the belief that
it will be made by the votes or hands or even the brains of the “Six
hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons set to consult about
‘business,’ with twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously
listening to them.” On the contrary, for any real progress we shall
have to look for individual personal improvement in actions and ideals,
upon which the power to vote has very little influence. You cannot
follow the excellent prescription of the Psalmist for the betterment
of the world and renew a right spirit within yourself merely by voting
for the kind of being that wants to get into Parliament.
But this does not belittle the right of Woman to her place in the
sun of citizenship. John Morley used to say that every public reform
went through three stages, neglect, epigram and the guillotine; then
came universal acceptance. I think in our sensible English way the
question of Woman’s citizenship is rapidly approaching the final stage
of universal acceptance which we may hope to achieve without the
guillotine.
Nor ought the supporters of the movement to grumble at the pace at
which it has progressed. At the beginning of last century the idea
of citizenship in relation to Woman was hardly thought of in Western
Europe and was quite unknown in this country.
It was true that a woman might be a churchwarden or a sexton, or even,
I believe, a surveyor of highways, not to mention a reigning Sovereign,
but these offices were not suited to every woman’s taste. The main
avenues of a citizen’s life were closed to Woman by Law.
It was the French Revolution that swept away the cobwebs of custom
which obscured society’s outlook on the world, and encouraged Woman to
demand a citizen’s share in the rule, supremacy and sway which she had
long considered entirely beyond her reach.
For centuries Woman had stood aloof from affairs of government and the
Law, but all this came to an end in the early days of the Revolution,
when starvation stalked through the squalid Paris garrets, and in
Carlyle’s pithy phrase: “On Monday morning maternity awoke to hear
children weeping for bread.”
That was the end of it. The Law which Woman had stared at from afar
with superstitious veneration was a discredited failure. There before
their mother’s eyes were starving children. If laggard Man with all the
resources of the Law could handle the affairs of the world no better
than this the hour had surely struck for Woman to take up the burden.
It is no sooner thought than done. In a flash the idea seizes all the
women of Paris. A young girl catches up a drum and sets forth beating
it with loud deliberation, a universal press of women following her,
until there are some ten thousand Judiths clamouring at the doors of
the Hôtel de Ville and threatening it with fire.
Of a sudden Woman of the Western world had made up her mind to commence
citizen. This was the first act of her insurrection, and the end of the
play will scarcely be reached in our lifetime.
What may be called the Petruchio sculpture of womanhood utterly
perished on that memorable Monday morning in Paris, and all the king’s
horses and all the king’s men were entirely incapable of picking up
the pieces and restoring the idol of their worship to its former
subordinate position.
As long as we live in the world without thinking about it, as most of
us do, whatever is going on around us seems naturally right and proper.
The legal subordination of one sex to the other has not worked so very
badly because man, being in the main a reasonable, well-disposed sort
of animal, has seldom claimed to make full use of his so-called legal
rights.
If this principle of legal subjection were changed to a legal principle
of perfect equality, allowing no power or privilege on the one side,
nor disability on the other, it would probably affect the lives of
most men and women very slightly. Moreover, when we had lived side by
side with such a condition of Law for a few generations, we should be
wondering how our dear old ancestors got along in the barbarous days of
the early twentieth century.
It was only a few years ago that both education and physical exercise
for women were thought to be not only unnecessary, but positively
harmful. The general opinion seems to have been that the care and
solicitude which a mother feels for her children depended directly on
her ignorance of Greek and Latin, and that she would desert an infant
for a quadratic equation.
Who to-day would close our High Schools and Women’s Colleges and shut
the gates of our tennis lawns and golf links against lady members?
Our forefathers were just as absurd and inconsistent as we are, for
rich women were always permitted to ride horses for pleasure and
exercise, and poor women to work in coal-mines, at a time when most
English middle-class girls were decreed to spend their girlhood in a
common round of petty, frivolous, and “lady-like” occupations.
Our fathers and mothers, and more especially our grandmothers, were
always prophesying red ruin if the young person were allowed to read
the literature of the world and walk about without a chaperon. Their
dreams of evil, like all such dreams, sound very foolish in the morning
light of to-day.
Let us bear all this in mind when we are pondering over the troubled
questions that surround us at this present. Any one can sit in an
arm-chair in the club and join in the chorus of middle-aged Jeremiahs
who never tire of chanting their dirges about the evil tendency of
the age. No question was ever settled in that way, and Woman is quite
unlikely nowadays to accept any final Law as to her citizenship from
any gathering of superior persons of ancient and fish-like political
principles. The business has got to be discussed on new lines by newer
and younger people. I fancy the next generation will want to have less
Law and more Liberty.
I have pointed out more than once in these papers that to make
unnecessary laws forbidding people to do things is a great source of
trouble in the world.
I suppose every one will agree that there is no necessity to make laws
to forbid women to do what Nature has rendered it impossible they
should do. Reckless lecturers tell you Woman is incapable of political
understanding. If so, we must admit that no amount of legislation will
make her acquire the faculty, whatever it may be.
But do we really believe that Woman is less capable of sane and honest
political action than the average Man in the Street who goes to the
poll? The fact is that until we experiment in the matter it is folly
to dogmatise on the question whether, if we open the door to women
citizens, they will be found capable or incapable of representing their
own and their country’s interests.
A very little while ago in the history of the world it appeared absurd
in Court circles to suggest that a country could be properly governed
except by a particular breed of royal person dressed in ermine and
wearing a crown and carrying a sceptre.
The idea that it could be equally well done by any old boy in a top hat
and frock coat whose presidential ticket had caught on with the public
fancy would have appeared in mediæval times as an insanity. Charles I
was no fool, but I doubt if any University professor who ever lived
could have explained to his Royal Highness the true inwardness of the
Sovereign power of George Washington.
If, therefore, the principle of the open door in the question of
Woman’s citizenship seems to some of us a strange one, it is probably
only because we have got into a habit of thinking the world around us
is more or less as good as it is possible to be.
In the case of election to public offices should Woman take any part?
Clearly these matters touch her life and her interest, and it would
seem just that she should have a say in them.
Try to imagine meeting a Messenger from Mars and asking him what he
thought about it. “Ah,” he would say, “I see you allow Woman no voice
in choosing her governors. How wise, how sane! To what department,
then, in your government belongs that difficult task of choosing the
Woman’s husband?”
Of course, you explain to Mr. Mars that a woman chooses her own
husband. But how are you to explain to his dense astronomical mind that
it is a wise and sane thing to allow a woman by her sole casting vote
to choose her own Lord and Governor, the father of future citizens,
the ruler of the family, and having given her this monstrous and
terrible power, to deny her the trumpery gratification of voting for
a middle-aged gentleman to be one of many hundred others who exercise
very little practical control of the affairs of the nation?
Now to us there is nothing Gilbertian in allowing a woman to elect her
own husband, yet what an absurd idea it seems if you give it serious
and unbiassed consideration. I suspect we acquiesce in it either
because we have been duly elected to a satisfactory post, or live in
hopes of drawing a prize in the lottery.
But when I hear Jeremiah groaning about the inherent incapacity of
Woman to exercise a vote, I often feel that we shall have to adopt
something like the Martian Marriage Act. For my friend from Mars tells
me that in his planet husbands are assigned to wives by the Board of
Trade Allotment Department, which if it is anything like our Board of
Trade must be very satisfactory to everybody.
There are some worthy enthusiasts who tell you that if you grant the
rights of Citizenship to Woman there will be a tremendous alteration
in her manners and customs. Her passion for dress and things that
are both beautiful and expensive will disappear in her interest in
Blue Books, and mischievous luxury will be subordinated to political
economy. Candidly I believe this as little as I believe the other side
of the matter, that the result will be a campaign of united Woman to
domineer over and displace discredited Man.
The fact is that there is no great evidence in the history of
franchises that they ever had any very serious and certainly no very
sudden moral effect on human character.
If I were enfranchising the beings of my garden I should not expect
that if I gave a vote to a butterfly it would adopt a grey moth-like
demeanour and walk seriously about the gravel paths on its hind legs.
But you say triumphantly, Why give a vote to a butterfly? To which
I reply that in my garden I act on principle--the principle of
equality--and I cannot deny to the butterfly the vote that I have
already given to the slug and the snail.
Ultimately we shall no doubt have a universal suffrage of both sexes,
and I expect Woman will make a peculiarly free and independent voter. I
do not expect she will vote as a class, because I firmly believe with
Gilbert that every little boy or girl is either a little Liberal or
else a little Conservative, and will vote accordingly.
Franchises have never been fruitful of reform, and we need not hope
to make a new world out of a Woman’s vote. The reason for granting
citizenship to Woman is the selfish and sensible one that it is good
business to make use of every human power for improvement that the
State possesses.
Woman is “some” power.
INDEX
Abduction, 107, 108
Adultery, a crime in India, 106
Anderson, Mrs. Garrett, 91
Ankers, Fru Ella, on divorce, 66, 67
Bacon, Lord, on marriage, 29
Bacon, Matthew, on wife beating, 44
Bailey, Sir William, 15
Ballad of John Hobbs, 24
Bentham, Dr. Ethel, on divorce, 59, 60
Blackstone, on wife beating, 44;
on mother’s right to custody of child, 72;
on seduction, 106
Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, her pioneer work in medical profession,
85-91
Branks, Scotch instrument of torture for women, 100
Breach of promise, 37, 38
Bridewell, whipping of women in, 96
Buller, Mr. Justice, his alleged ruling on wife beating, 45
Bumble, on husband’s control of wife, 43, 49
Children, custody of, 69-76
Clandestine marriages, 38
Coke, Lord, on abduction, 107
Confucius, on status of woman, 17
County Court, as divorce tribunal, 57
Cranmer, Thomas, on divorce, 54
Davies, Miss Llewellyn, on divorce, 59
Denman, Lord, on mother’s right to custody of child, 72
_Dodd v. Dodd_, separation orders, 55, 57
Dooms, 20, 21, 26, 27
Ducking-stool, punishment for common scolds, 100-101
Esher, Lord, his judgment on dominion of husband, 48
Ethelbert, Doom of, 21
Exeter, Bishop of, on seduction, 113
Fleet marriages, 35
Fry, Lord Justice, his judgment in Jackson case, 48
Geneva, University of, grants medical degree to Elizabeth Blackwell,
89
Gorell, Lord, on divorce reform, 55-58
_Grinnell v. Wells_, seduction, 111
Hale, Chief Baron, on witchcraft, 99
Halsbury, Lord, his judgment on dominion of husband, 47-49
Hardwicke, Lord, his Act to prevent clandestine marriages, 36
Hardy, Mrs., her hospital work in Serbia, 85
Hardy, Thomas, on wife selling, 22
Holloway, Dr., her hospital work in Serbia, 85
Holt, Chief Justice, on scolds, 100
Husband, right to sell wife, 22-26;
to beat, 44-46
Huxley, Thomas, on woman’s right to enter professions, 93
Illegitimate child, mother’s right to custody of, 74-76
_Jackson v. Jackson_, right of husband to control wife, 46-49
Johnson, Dr., on marriage, 33
Juvenal, on wives, 18
Lansdowne, Lord, on divorce, 57
Littledale, Mr. Justice, on custody of children, 73, 76
Magistrates, women as, 104
Mansfield, Lord, his judgment on slavery, 49
Mantalini, and earnings of wife, 41
Married Women’s Property Acts, 41, 42, 50, 102
Maternity rights, 76-78
Maule, Mr. Justice, on divorce, 54
Milton, John, 16, 17;
on divorce, 54
Montaigne, on freedom of divorce, 65
Morley, John, on stages of reform, 118
New South Wales, Affiliation law, 113
Nightingale, Florence, 91, 92
Norwegian divorce law, 67
Nursing, 92
Parry, John Humffreys, and Institution for Protection of Women, 108
Police, women as, 103, 104
Polygamy, 34
Praed, on wife beating, 46
Protection of Women and Children Bill, 109
_Queen against Foxby, The_, prosecution of common scold, 100, 101
Restell, Madame, a “female physician,” 87
_Rex v. Greenhill_, custody of children, 71-74
Roman Law, as to Woman, 18, 19, 27, 33, 66
Saxon Law, as to Woman, 19, 27, 33, 44
Scold, woman as common scold, 99-101
Scotch law of legitimacy, 75
Seduction, 106-114
Soltau, Dr., her hospital work in Serbia, 85
Steele, on wife beating, 45
Summary Jurisdiction Act (Married Women), 1895, 56
Talfourd, Serjeant, his Infant Custody Bill, 73
Webb, Dr. Helen, on divorce, 59, 61
Welsh Law of wife beating, 45
Westermarck, on marriage and the family, 31
Witchcraft, 99
Woolrych, Serjeant, on wife beating, 46
York, Archbishop of, on divorce, 56, 60
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
Page number references in the index are as published in the original
publication and have not been checked for accuracy.
Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
changes:
Page 106: “English Comman Law in” “English Common Law in”