important part in the evolution of society. At the present time the
advantages of this artificial control no longer appear so obvious
(even when the evidence of the law courts is put aside); they will
vanish altogether when women have attained complete economic
independence. With the disappearance of the artificial barriers in the
way of friendship between the sexes and of the economic motive to
sexual relationships--perhaps the two chief forces which now tend to
produce promiscuous sexual intercourse, whether dignified or not with
the name of marriage--men and women will be free to engage,
unhampered, in the search, so complicated in a highly civilized
condition of society, for a fitting mate.[49]
It is probable that this inevitable change will be brought about partly
by the voluntary action of individuals, and in greater measure by the
gradual and awkward method of shifting and ever freer divorce laws. The
slow disintegration of State-regulated marriage from the latter cause
may be observed now throughout the United States, where there is, on the
whole, a developing tendency to frequency and facility of divorce. It
is clear, however, that on this line marriage will not cease to be a
concern to the State, and it may be as well to point out at once the
important distinction between State-_regulated_ and State-_registered_
marriage. Sexual relationships, so long as they do not result in the
production of children, are matters in which the community has, as a
community, little or no concern, but as soon as a sexual relationship
results in the pregnancy of the woman the community is at once
interested. At this point it is clearly the duty of the State to
register the relationship.[50]
It is necessary to remember that the kind of equality of the sexes
towards which this change of status is leading, is social equality--that
is, equality of freedom. It is not an intellectual equality, still less
is it likeness. Men and women can only be alike mentally when they are
alike in physical configuration and physiological function. Even
complete economic equality is not attainable. Among animals which live
in herds under the guidance of a leader, this leader is nearly always a
male; there are few exceptions.[51] In woman, the long period of
pregnancy and lactation, and the prolonged helplessness of her child,
render her for a considerable period of her life economically dependent.
On whom shall she be dependent? This is a question of considerable
moment. According to the old conception of the family, all the members
were slaves producing for the benefit of the owner, and it was natural
that the wife should be supported by the husband when she is producing
slaves for his service. But this conception is, as we have seen, no
longer possible. It is clearly unfair also to compel the mother to
depend on her own previous exertions. The reproduction of the race is a
social function, and we are compelled to conclude that it is the duty of
the community, as a community, to provide for the child-bearer when in
the exercise of her social function she is unable to provide for
herself. The woman engaged in producing a new member, who may be a
source of incalculable profit or danger to the whole community, cannot
fail to be a source of the liveliest solicitude to everyone in the
community, and it was a sane and beautiful instinct that found
expression of old in the permission accorded to a pregnant woman to
enter gardens and orchards, and freely help herself. Whether this
instinct will ever again be embodied in a new form, and the reproduction
of the race be recognized as truly a social function, is a question
which even yet lacks actuality. The care of the child-bearer and her
child will at present continue to be a matter for individual
arrangement. That it will be arranged much better than at present we
may reasonably hope. On the one hand, the reckless multiplication of
children will probably be checked; on the other hand, a large body of
women will no longer be shut out from maternity. That the state should
undertake the regulation of the birth-rate we can scarcely either desire
or anticipate. Undoubtedly the community has an abstract right to limit
the number of its members. It may be pointed out, however, that under
rational conditions of life the process would probably be
self-regulating; in the human races, and also among animals generally,
fertility diminishes as the organism becomes highly developed. And,
without falling back on any natural law, it may be said that the
extravagant procreation of children, leading to suffering both to
parents and offspring, carried on under existing social conditions, is
largely the result of ignorance, largely of religious or other
superstition. A more developed social state would not be possible at all
unless the social instincts were strong enough to check the reckless
multiplication of offspring. Richardson and others appear to advocate
the special cultivation of a class of non-childbearing women. Certainly
no woman who freely chose should be debarred from belonging to such a
class. But reproduction is the end and aim of all life everywhere, and
in order to live a humanly complete life, every healthy woman should
have, not sexual relationships only, but the exercise at least once in
her life of the supreme function of maternity, and the possession of
those experiences which only maternity can give. That unquestionably is
the claim of natural and reasonable living in the social state towards
which we are moving.
To deal with the social organization of the future would be to pass
beyond the limits that I have here set myself, and to touch on matters
of which it is impossible to speak with certainty. The new culture of
women, in the light and the open air, will doubtless solve many matters
which now are dark to us. Morgan supposed that it was in some measure
the failure of the Greeks and Romans to develop their womanhood which
brought the speedy downfall of classic civilization. The women of the
future will help to renew art and science as well as life. They will do
more even than this, for the destiny of the race rests with women. "I
have sometimes thought," Whitman wrote in his _Democratic Vistas_, "that
the sole avenue and means to a reconstructed society depended primarily
on a new birth, elevation, expansion, invigoration of women." That
intuition is not without a sound basis, and if a great historical
movement called for justification here would be enough.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] This chapter was written so long ago as 1888, and published in the
_Westminster Review_ in the following year. I have pleasure in here
including it exactly as it was originally written, not only because it
has its proper place in the present volume, but because it may be
regarded as a programme which I have since elaborated in numerous
volumes. The original first section has, however, been omitted, as it
embodied a statement of the matriarchal theory which, in view of the
difficulty of the subject and the wide differences of opinion about it,
I now consider necessary to express more guardedly (see, for a more
recent statement, Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_,
Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. X). With this exception,
and the deletion of two insignificant footnotes, no changes have been
made. After the lapse of a quarter of a century I find nothing that I
seriously wish to withdraw and much that I now wish to emphasize.
[46] The following passage summarizes this _Appeal_: "The simple and
modest request is, that they may be permitted equal enjoyments with men,
_provided they can, by the free and equal development and exercise of
their faculties, procure for themselves such enjoyments_. They ask the
same means that men possess of acquiring every species of knowledge, of
unfolding every one of their faculties of mind and body that can be made
tributary to their happiness. They ask every facility of access to every
art, occupation, profession, from the highest to the lowest, without one
exception, to which their inclinations and talents may direct and may
fit them to occupy. They ask the removal of _all_ restraints and
exclusions not applicable to men of equal capacities. They ask for
perfectly equal political, civil, and domestic rights. They ask for
equal obligations and equal punishments from the law with men in case of
infraction of the same law by either party. They ask for an equal system
of morals, founded on utility instead of caprice and unreasoning
despotism, in which the same action, attended with the same
consequences, whether done by man or woman, should be attended with the
same portion of approbation or disapprobation; in which every pleasure,
accompanied or followed by no preponderant evil, should be equally
permitted to women and to men; in which every pleasure accompanied or
followed by preponderant evil should be equally censured in women and in
men."
[47] A period of transition not the less necessary although it is
certainly disastrous and tends to produce an unwholesome tension between
the sexes so long as men and women do not receive equal payment for
equal work. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," as a working man in
Blackburn lately put it, "but when the thing of beauty takes to doing
the work for 16s. a week that you have been paid 22s. for, you do not
feel as if you cannot live without possessing that thing of beauty all
to yourself, or that you are willing to lay your life and your fortune
(when you have one) at its feet." On the other hand, the working girl in
the same town often complains that a man will not look at a girl unless
she is a "four-loom weaver," earning, that is, perhaps, 20s. or 25s. a
week.
[48] See the very interesting work of Alfred Espinas, _Des Sociétés
Animales_, which contains many fruitful suggestions for the student of
human sociology.
[49] The subtle and complex character of the sexual relationships in a
high civilization, and the unhappy results of their State regulation,
was well expressed by Wilhehm von Humboldt in his _Ideen zu einen
Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen_, so long
ago as 1792: "A union so closely allied with the very nature of the
respective individuals must be attended with the most hurtful
consequences when the State attempts to regulate it by law, or, through
the force of its institutions, to make it repose on anything save simple
inclination. When we remember, moreover, that the State can only
contemplate the final results of such regulations on the race, we shall
be still more ready to admit the justice of this conclusion. It may
reasonably be argued that a solicitude for the race only conducts to the
same results as the highest solicitude for the most beautiful
development of the inner man. For after careful observation it has been
found that the uninterrupted union of one man with one woman is most
beneficial to the race, and it is likewise undeniable that no other
union springs from true, natural, harmonious love. And further, it may
be observed that such love leads to the same results as those very
relations which law and custom tend to establish. The radical error
seems to be that the law commands; whereas such a relation cannot mould
itself according to external arrangements, but depends wholly on
inclination; and wherever coercion or guidance comes into collision with
inclination, they divert it still farther from the proper path.
Wherefore it appears to me that the State should not only loosen the
bonds in this instance, and leave ampler freedom to the citizen, but
that it should entirely withdraw its active solicitude from the
institution of marriage, and both generally and in its particular
modifications, should rather leave it wholly to the free choice of the
individuals, and the various contracts they may enter into with respect
to it. I should not be deterred from the adoption of this principle by
the fear that all family relations might be disturbed, for although such
a fear might be justified by considerations of particular circumstances
and localities, it could not fairly be entertained in an inquiry into
the nature of men and States in general. For experience frequently
convinces us that just where law has imposed no fetters, morality most
surely binds; the idea of external coercion is one entirely foreign to
an institution which, like marriage, reposes only on inclination and an
inward sense of duty; and the results of such coercive institutions do
not at all correspond to the intentions in which they originate."
[50] Such register should, as Bertillon rightly insisted, be of the most
complete description--setting forth all the anthropological traits of
the contracting parties--so that the characteristics of a human group at
any time and place may be studied and compared. Registration of this
kind would, beside its more obvious convenience, form an almost
indispensable guide to the higher evolution of the race. I may here add
that I have assumed, perhaps too rashly, that the natural tendency among
civilized men and women is towards a monogamic and more or less
permanent union; preceded, it may be in most individuals, by a more
restless period of experiment. Undoubtedly, many variations will arise
in the future, leading to more complex relationships. Such variations
cannot be foreseen, and when they arise they will still have to prove
their stability and their advantage to the race.
[51] As among geese, and, occasionally, it is said, among elephants.
III
THE NEW ASPECT OF THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT
Eighteenth-Century France--Pioneers of the Woman's Movement--The
Growth of the Woman's Suffrage Movement--The Militant Activities of
the Suffragettes--Their Services and Disservices to the
Cause--Advantages of Women's Suffrage--Sex Questions in
Germany--Bebel--The Woman's Rights Movement in Germany--The
Development of Sexual Science in Germany--the Movement for the
Protection of Motherhood--Ellen Key--The Question of
Illegitimacy--Eugenics--Women as Law-makers in the Home.
I
The modern conception of the political equality of women with men, we
have seen, arose in France in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Its way was prepared by the philosophic thinkers of the _Encyclopédie_,
and the idea was definitely formulated by some of the finest minds of
the age, notably by Condorcet,[52] as part of the great new programme of
social and political reform which was to some small degree realized in
the upheaval of the Revolution. The political emancipation of women
constituted no part of the Revolution. It has indeed been maintained,
and perhaps with reason, that the normal development of the
revolutionary spirit would probably have ended in vanquishing the claim
of masculine predominance if war had not diverted the movement of
revolution by transforming it into the Terror. Even as it was, the
rights of women were not without their champions even at this period. We
ought specially to remember Olympe de Gouges, whose name is sometimes
dismissed too contemptuously. With all her defects of character and
education and literary style, Olympe de Gouges, as is now becoming
recognized, was, in her biographer's words, "one of the loftiest and
most generous souls of the epoch," in some respects superior to Madame
Roland. She was the first woman to demand of the Revolution that it
should be logical by proclaiming the rights of woman side by side with
those of her equal, man, and in so doing she became the great pioneer of
the feminist movement of to-day.[53] She owes the position more
especially to her little pamphlet, issued in 1791, entitled _Déclaration
des Droits de la Femme_. It is this _Déclaration_ which contains the
oft-quoted (or misquoted) saying: "Women have the right to ascend the
scaffold; they must also have the right to ascend the tribune." Two
years later she had herself ascended the scaffold, but the other right
she claimed is only now beginning to be granted to women. At that time
there were too many more pressing matters to be dealt with, and the only
women who had been taught to demand the rights of their sex were
precisely those whom the Revolution was guillotining or exiling. Even
had it been otherwise, we may be quite sure that Napoleon, the heir of
the Revolution and the final arbiter of what was to be permanent in its
achievements, would have sternly repressed any political freedom
accorded to women. The only freedom he cared to grant to women was the
freedom to produce food for cannon, and so far as lay in his power he
sought to crush the political activities of women even in literature, as
we see in his treatment of Mme de Staël.[54]
An Englishwoman of genius was in Paris at the time of the Revolution,
with as broad a conception of the place of woman side by side with man
as Olympe de Gouges, while for the most part she was Olympe's superior.
In 1792, a year after the _Déclaration des Droits de la Femme_, Mary
Wollstonecraft--it is possible to some extent inspired by the brief
_Déclaration_--published her _Vindication of the Rights of Women_. It
was not a shrill outcry, nor an attack on men--in that indeed
resembling the _Déclaration_--but just the book of a woman, a wise and
sensible woman, who discusses many women's questions from a woman's
point of view, and desires civil and political rights, not as a panacea
for all evils, but simply because, as she argues, humanity cannot
progress as a whole while one half of it is semi-educated and only half
free. There can be little doubt that if the later advocates of woman's
suffrage could have preserved more of Mary Wollstonecraft's sanity,
moderation, and breadth of outlook, they would have diminished the
difficulties that beset the task of convincing the community generally.
Mary Wollstonecraft was, however, the inspired pioneer of a great
movement which slowly gained force and volume.[55] During the long
Victorian period the practical aims of this movement went chiefly into
the direction of improving the education of girls so as to make it, so
far as possible, like that of boys. In this matter an immense revolution
was slowly accomplished, involving the entrance of women into various
professions and employments hitherto reserved to men. That was a very
necessary preliminary to the extension of the franchise to women. The
suffrage propaganda could not, moreover, fail to benefit by the better
education of women and their increased activity in public life. It was
their activity, indeed, far more than the skill of the women who fought
for the franchise, which made the political emancipation of women
inevitable, and the noble and brilliant women who through the middle of
the nineteenth century recreated the educational system for women, and
so prepared them to play their proper part in life, were the best women
workers the cause of women's enfranchisement ever had. There was,
however, one distinguished friend of the emancipation of women whose
advocacy of the cause at this period was of immense value. It is now
nearly half a century since John Stuart Mill--inspired, like Thompson,
by a woman--wrote his _Subjection of Women_, and it may undoubtedly be
said that since that date no book on this subject published in any
country--with the single exception of Bebel's _Woman_--has been so
widely read or so influential. The support of this distinguished and
authoritative thinker gave to the woman's movement a stamp of
aristocratic intellectuality very valuable in a land where even the
finest minds are apt to be afflicted by the disease of timidity, and was
doubtless a leading cause of the cordial reception which in England the
idea of women's political emancipation has long received among
politicians. Bebel's book, speedily translated into English, furnished
the plebeian complement to Mill's.
The movement for the education of women and their introduction into
careers previously monopolized by men inevitably encouraged the movement
for extending the franchise to women. This political reform was
remarkably successful in winning over the politicians, and not those of
one party only. In England, since Mill published his _Subjection of
Women_ in 1869, there have always been eminent statesmen convinced of
the desirability of granting the franchise to women, and among the rank
and file of Members of Parliament, irrespective of party, a very large
proportion have pledged themselves to the same cause. The difficulty,
therefore, in introducing woman's suffrage into England has not been
primarily in Parliament. The one point, at which political party feeling
has caused obstruction--and it is certainly a difficult and important
point--is the method by which woman's suffrage should be introduced.
Each party--Conservative, Liberal, Labour--naturally enough desires that
this great new voting force should first be applied at a point which
would not be likely to injure its own party interests. It is probable
that in each party the majority of the leaders are of opinion that the
admission of female voters is inevitable and perhaps desirable; the
dispute is as to the extent to which the floodgates should in the first
place be opened. In accordance with English tradition, some kind of
compromise, however illogical, suggests itself as the safest first step,
but the dispute remains as to the exact class of women who should be
first admitted and the exact extent to which entrance should be granted
to them.
The dispute of the gate-keepers would, however, be easily overcome if
the pressure behind the gate were sufficiently strong. But it is not.
However large a proportion of the voters in Great Britain may be in
favour of women's franchise, it is certain that only a very minute
percentage regard this as a question having precedency over all other
questions. And the reason why men have only taken a very temperate
interest in woman's suffrage is that women themselves, in the mass, have
taken an equally temperate interest in the matter when they have not
been actually hostile to the movement. It may indeed be said, even at
the present time, that whenever an impartial poll is taken of a large
miscellaneous group of women, only a minority are found to be in favour
of woman's suffrage.[56] No significant event has occurred to stimulate
general interest in the matter, and no supremely eloquent or influential
voice has artificially stirred it. There has been no woman of Mary
Wollstonecraft's genius and breadth of mind who has devoted herself to
the cause, and since Mill the men who have made up their minds on this
side have been content to leave the matter to the women's associations
formed for securing the success of the cause. These associations have,
however, been led by women of a past generation, who, while of
unquestionable intellectual power and high moral character, have viewed
the woman question in a somewhat narrow, old-fashioned spirit, and have
not possessed the gift of inspiring enthusiasm. Thus the growth of the
movement, however steady it may have been, has been slow. John Stuart
Mill's remark, in a letter to Bain in 1869, remains true to-day: "The
most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women
themselves."
In the meanwhile in some other countries where, except in the United
States, it was of much more recent growth, the woman's suffrage movement
has achieved success, with no great expenditure of energy. It has been
introduced into several American States and Territories. It is
established throughout Australasia. It is also established in Norway. In
Finland women may not only vote, but also sit in Parliament.