SHOULD WOMEN THINK?
A woman, a spaniel, a walnut tree,
The more you beat 'em, the better they be.
--_From "Proverbs of All Nations._"
A woman is not a person in matters of rights and privileges, but she is
a person in matters of pains and penalties.--_From the Common Law of
England_.
No woman, idiot, lunatic, or criminal shall vote.--_From the Election
Act of the Dominion of Canada_.
Mary and Martha were sisters, and one day they had a quarrel, which
goes to show that sisters in Bible times were much the same as now.
Mary and Martha had a different attitude toward life. Martha was a
housekeeper--she reveled in housecleaning--she had a perfect mania for
sweeping and dusting. Mary was a thinker. She looked beyond the work,
and saw something better and more important, something more abiding and
satisfying.
When Jesus came to their home to visit, Mary sat at his feet and
listened. She fed her soul, and in her sheer joy she forgot that there
were dirty dishes in all the world; she forgot that ever people grew
hungry, or floors became dusty; she forgot everything only the joy of
his presence. Martha never forgot. All days were alike to Martha,
only of course Monday was washday. The visit of the Master to Martha
meant another place at the table, and another plate to be washed.
Truly feminine was Martha, much commended in certain circles today.
She looked well to the needs of her family, physical needs, that is,
for she recognized no other. Martha not only liked to work herself,
but she liked to see other people work; so when Mary went and sat at
the Master's feet, while the dishes were yet unwashed, Martha
complained about it.
"Lord, make Mary come and help me!" she said. The story says Martha
was wearied with much serving. Martha had cooked and served an
elaborate meal, and elaborate meals usually do make people cross either
before or after. Christ gently reproved her. "Mary hath chosen the
better part."
Just here let us say something in Mary's favor. Martha by her protest
against Mary's behavior on this particular occasion, exonerates Mary
from the general charge of laziness which is often made against her.
If Mary had been habitually lazy, Martha would have long since ceased
to expect any help from her, but it seems pretty certain that Mary was
generally on the job. Trivial little incident, is it not? Strange
that it should find a place in the sacred record. But if Christ's
mission on earth had any meaning at all, it was to teach this very
lesson that the things which are not seen are greater than the things
which are seen--that the spiritual is greater than the temporal. The
life is more than meat and the body is more than raiment.
Martha has a long line of weary, backaching, footsore successors.
Indeed there is a strain of Martha in all of us; we worry more over a
stain in the carpet than a stain on the soul; we bestow more thought on
the choice of hats than on the choice of friends; we tidy up bureau
drawers, sometimes, when we should be tidying up the inner recesses of
our mind and soul; we clean up the attic and burn up the rubbish which
has accumulated there, every spring, whether it needs it or not. But
when do we appoint a housecleaning day for the soul, when do we destroy
all the worn-out prejudices and beliefs which belong to a day gone by?
Mary did take the better part, for she laid hold on the things which
are spiritual. Mary had learned the great truth that it is not the
house you live in or the food you eat, or the clothes you wear that
make you rich, but it is the thoughts you think. Christ put it well
when he said, "Mary hath chosen the better part." Life is a choice
every day. Every day we choose between the best and the second best,
if we are choosing wisely. It is not generally a choice between good
and bad--that is too easy. The choice in life is more subtle than
that, and not so easily decided. The good is the greatest rival of the
best.
Sometimes we would like to take both the best and the second best, but
that is not according to the rules of the game. You take your choice
and leave the rest. Every gain in life means a corresponding loss;
development in one part means a shrinkage in some other. Wild wheat is
small and hard, quite capable of looking after itself, but its heads
contain only a few small kernels. Cultivated wheat has lost its
hardiness and its self-reliance, but its heads are filled with large
kernels which feed the nation. There has been a great gain in
usefulness, by cultivation, with a corresponding loss in hardiness.
When riches are increased, so also are anxieties and cares. Life is
full of compensation.
So we ask, in all seriousness, and in no spirit of flippancy: "Should
women think?" They gain in power perhaps, but do they not lose in
happiness by thinking? If women must always labor under unjust
economic conditions, receiving less pay for the same work than men, if
women must always submit to the unjust social laws, based on the
barbaric mosaic decree that the woman is to be stoned, and the man
allowed to go free; if women must always see the children they have
brought into the world with infinite pain and weariness, taken away
from them to fight man-made battles over which no woman has any power;
if women must always see their sons degraded by man-made legislation
and man-protected evils--then I ask, Is it not a great mistake for
women to think?
The Martha women, who fill their hands with labor and find their
highest delights in the day's work, are the happiest. That is, if
these things must always be, if we must always beat upon the bars of
the cage--we are foolish to beat; it is hard on the hands! Far better
for us to stop looking out and sit down and say: "Good old cage--I
always did like a cage, anyway!"
But the question of whether or not women should think was settled long
ago. We must think because we were given something to think with, ages
ago, at the time of our creation. If God had not intended us to think,
he would not have given us our intelligence. It would be a shabby
trick, too, to give women brains to think, with no hope of results, for
thinking is just an aggravation if nothing comes of it. It is a law of
life that people will use what they have. That is one theory of what
caused the war. The nations were "so good and ready," they just
naturally fought. Mental activity is just as natural for the woman
peeling potatoes as it is for the man behind the plow, and a little
thinking will not hurt the quality of the work in either case. There
is in western Canada, one woman at least, who combines thinking and
working to great advantage. Her kitchen walls are hung with mottoes
and poems, which she commits to memory as she works, and so while her
hands are busy, she feeds her soul with the bread of life.
The world has never been partial to the thinking woman--the wise ones
have always foreseen danger. Long years ago, when women asked for an
education, the world cried out that it would never do. If women
learned to read it would distract them from the real business of life
which was to make home happy for some good man. If women learned to
read there seemed to be a possibility that some day some good man might
come home and find his wife reading, and the dinner not ready--and
nothing could be imagined more horrible than that! That seems to be
the haunting fear of mankind--that the advancement of women will
sometime, someway, someplace, interfere with some man's comfort. There
are many people who believe that the physical needs of her family are a
woman's only care; and that strict attention to her husband's wardrobe
and meals will insure a happy marriage. Hand-embroidered slippers
warmed and carefully set out have ever been highly recommended as a
potent charm to hold masculine affection. They forget that men and
children are not only food-eating and clothes-wearing animals--they are
human beings with other and even greater needs than food and raiment.
Any person who believes that the average man marries the woman of his
choice just because he wants a housekeeper and a cook, appraises
mankind lower than I do. Intelligence on the wife's part does not
destroy connubial bliss, neither does ignorance nor apathy ever make
for it. Ideas do not break up homes, but lack of ideas. The light and
airy silly fairy may get along beautifully in the days of courtship,
but she palls a bit in the steady wear and tear of married life.
There was a picture in one of the popular woman's papers sometime ago,
which taught a significant lesson. It was a breakfast scene. The
young wife, daintily frilled in pink, sat at her end of the table in
very apparent ill-humor--the young husband, quite unconscious of her,
read the morning paper with evident interest. Below the picture there
was a sharp criticism of the young man's neglect of his pretty wife and
her dainty gown. Personally I sympathize with the young man and
believe it would be a happier home if she were as interested in the
paper as he and were reading the other half of it instead of sitting
around feeling hurt.
But you see it is hard on the woman, just the same. All our
civilization has taught her that pink frills were the thing. When they
fail--she feels the bottom has dropped out of the world--he does not
love her any more and she will go back to mother! You see the woman
suffers every time.
Sometime we will teach our daughters that marriage is a divine
partnership based on mutual love and community of interest, that sex
attraction augmented by pink frills is only one part of it and not the
most important; that the pleasant glowing embers of comradeship and
loving friendship give out a warmer, more lasting, and more comfortable
heat than the leaping flames of passion, and the happiest marriage is
the one where the husband and wife come to regard each other as the
dearest friend, the most congenial companion.
Women must think if they are going to make good in life; and success in
marriage depends not alone on being good, but on making good! Men by
their occupation are brought in contact with the world of ideas and
affairs. They have been encouraged to be intelligent. Women have been
encouraged to be foolish, and later on punished for the same
foolishness, which is hardly fair.
But women are beginning to learn. Women are helping each other to see.
They are coming together in clubs and societies and by this intercourse
they are gaining a philosophy of life, which is helping them over the
rough places of life. Most of us can get along very well on bright
days, and when the going is easy, but we need something to keep us
steady when the pathway is rough, and our wandering feet are in danger
of losing their way. The most deadly uninteresting person, and the one
who has the greatest temptation not to think at all, is the comfortable
and happily married woman--the woman who has a good man between her and
the world, who has not the saving privilege of having to work. A sort
of fatty degeneration of the conscience sets in that is disastrous to
the development of thought.
If women could be made to think, they would not wear immodest clothes,
which suggest evil thoughts and awaken unlawful desires. If women
could be made to think, they would see that it is woman's place to lift
high the standard of morality. If women would only think, they would
not wear aigrets and bird plumage which has caused the death of God's
innocent and beautiful creatures. If women could be made to think,
they would be merciful. If women would only think, they would not
serve liquor to their guests, in the name of hospitality, and thus
contribute to the degradation of mankind, and perhaps start some young
man on the slippery way to ruin. If women would think about it, they
would see that some mother, old and heartbroken, sitting up waiting for
the staggering footsteps of her boy, might in her loneliness and grief
and trouble curse the white hands that gave her lad his first drink.
Women make life hard for other women because they do not think. And
thinking seems to come hardest to the comfortable woman. A woman told
me candidly and honestly not long ago that she was too comfortable to
be interested in other people, and I have admired her for her
truthfulness; she had diagnosed her own case accurately, and she did
not babble of woman's sphere being her own home--she frankly admitted
that she was selfish, and her comfort had caused it. I believe God
intended us all to be happy and comfortable, clothed, fed, and housed,
and there is no sin in comfort, unless we let it atrophy our souls, and
settle down upon us like a stupor. Then it becomes a sin which
destroys us. Let us pray!
From plague, pestilence and famine,
from battle, murder, sudden death,
and all forms of cowlike contentment,
Good Lord, deliver us!