THE WOMEN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
At the opening of the nineteenth century, practically unfettered
opportunity extended in all directions before women; but it was
necessary for the century to spend its force before they had fully
availed themselves of the privileges which were objected to only by
those who still descanted on woman's sphere as a purely domestic one.
The "woman question" is very modern, because woman has so lately come
to be seriously regarded as a factor in the work of life. The changed
conditions of the nineteenth century resulted from those forces which
were operating for the larger liberty of the sex. Contributions to the
widening of the scope of their lives came from many sources. Religion
has been the evangel of woman; but even it cannot claim that the
modern woman, with her versatility of touch and her multiform
influence, is its product. Law reluctantly acknowledged the rights
of the sex where it was futile to deny them; but it has sinned too
grievously in the years that are past to receive recognition as a
promoter of the new Renaissance, although it cherishes the rights
which woman has achieved, and is to-day one of her most chivalrous
defenders. Convention is too unadaptive to do more than recognize
adjustments which have been otherwise brought about, but, as
representing the rules of society, it is promotive of the dignity and
the rights of the sex to the extent that these dignities and rights
have been otherwise afforded.
Acknowledgment for the position which woman attained during the last
century is due not to any one of these forces, but to all working
together, although Nature must be chiefly credited with having brought
it about. The great increase in population in England, and the excess
of the female portion, led women to ponder the question of other
spheres for their lives than solely the domestic. At the same time,
the complex nature of modern business offered, to some extent, a
practical solution of the problem. While the question of woman's
sphere was greatly agitated, and was academically and forensically
debated pro and con, women themselves were practically settling the
matter at issue by accepting positions in commercial life, with
little regard to the censure of critics or the praise of friends. The
independence shown by women, their self-assertiveness, indicated that
their failure previously to break into the outer world of affairs was
not due to the force of convention, but to the lack of opportunity.
Their excess in the population of the country afforded them strong
ground for the claim, which they practically made in accepting the
opportunities of business life,--that the sphere of domesticity was
not open to them all. It is not a question as to whether woman is
or is not in her sphere outside of the home or the limited circle of
aesthetic following; for the time of theorizing is already past, and
women have become so identified with industry as to preclude the
possibility of a return to the narrower life. _Vestigia nulla
refrorsum_ is the motto of woman to-day, and has been from the early
part of the nineteenth century. She is in the line of progress, and
following her manifest destiny. The fears of the faint-hearted and the
regrets of the conservative cannot alter the established fact that
the practical status which women achieved in the nineteenth century is
theirs, to be recognized and furthered.
The views prevailing in the nineteenth century with regard to
matrimony were not greatly different from those of the eighteenth: it
was considered just as discreditable to be an old maid, and marriage
was the goal of existence for young women; but there was a portion of
the sex who were willing to brave the aspersions cast upon them and
to remain single--when the opportunity to do otherwise was not
wanting--in order that they might follow careers which offered to them
greater interest or profit. It was inevitable that such choice should
lay them open to the charge of unsexing themselves and of being
recreant to that _esprit de corps_ of womankind which finds its common
interest in the achieving of matrimony. Women would never have
wrought out their independence of action if there had not been a great
widening of life's opportunities. The ease of locomotion, abundant
opportunities for education, and the lightening of domestic labor
by inventions, were the important factors which made it possible
for women to step out into the avenues of active business. The
middle-class women, who were thrust out into the arena of life, were
still the women who best preserved the pure idea of marriage. They
were not subjected to the temptations which assailed those in the
higher and the lower ranks of society, and, being less affected by
tradition, they wrought out for themselves independent ideals. The
marriage of convenience of the higher ranks and the marriage of
necessity of the lower were not the forms which were common to the
middle-class women. Unaffected by either of these influences, they
regarded well the character of the men to whom they were to plight
their troth, and were not disposed to pass over the weaknesses of
suitors. Marriages were no longer contracted at the early ages
of fifteen and sixteen years, which had been commonly the case
heretofore. A bride under twenty-one was thought very youthful.
The entrance of woman into the ranks of labor has not been
uncontested, for she has been charged with taking the bread out of
the mouths of husbands and fathers; and, by working for much less wage
than is given the men, she has been thought dangerously to affect the
standard of payment for men's work. Just what will be the effect of
the innovation of woman in industry cannot at present be stated, as
she has not as yet gotten into normal and recognized relationship to
men as a sharer of their work. One effect, however, of woman's contact
with the other sex in the brusque business world has been to reduce
her claim to special consideration in the way of the amenities which
were accorded her at a time when she was not nearly so sincerely
respected as she has become in recent years. A modern writer has
summed up the matter in the following words: "Not the least among
the changes is that effected by the fuller and freer life led by all
women. A greater companionship and friendship is permitted them with
the other sex; there is a larger sharing of interest, and women are
expected to have a higher standard of education and to conceal their
knowledge and culture with tasteful skill. Their interest in the
political life of the country, and their acknowledged usefulness in
their place in the working out of the political machine, the works,
philanthropical and social, which are admitted by all to be within
their sphere, have broadened and deepened the stream of life which is
common to both sexes, and brought the social life on to a different
level."
This broadening influence brought greater recognition of woman's
activities in social and philanthropic measures and a corresponding
increase of responsibility on her part. There are many women of this
century whose noble deeds will never be forgotten, but one may be
singled out as a splendid example of self-sacrifice and devotion to
others, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry was a Quakeress of gentle birth, though
the mother of a large family, she made the condition of the social
outcasts her constant care. She was, in truth, a worthy successor to
John Howard. The moral and physical degradation and suffering of the
inmates of prisons particularly appealed to her compassionate nature,
and she set herself the task of alleviating their condition. Her
first visit to Newgate Prison was in 1813; alone and unprotected, she
entered the pandemonium where nearly two hundred women were confined,
among them some of the most degraded and desperate of their sex.
Mrs. Fry's sincere compassion, gentleness, and purity conquered
these women. Four years later she organized an association for the
reformation of female prisoners. Though her name is chiefly associated
with the reform of prisons and prisoners, her philanthropy embraced
the promotion of education of the needy, religious movements, the
cause of freedom, and private charity. The influence of this good
woman was widespread, and her labors were not confined to her own
country, but extended to the continent of Europe.
One of the most striking of the phenomena of modern life which came
about in the nineteenth century is the fusion of classes, making it
increasingly difficult to use class definitions. The passage from
one to another has become so easy as to make mobility the principal
characteristic of modern society. Travel, education, art appreciation,
and home decoration are not confined to any section or class. The
degree of luxury of living, and not the distinction between luxury and
lack, is the only way to set aside one circle of society from another.
A result of this wider diffusion of the comforts of life has been the
awakening of the altruistic spirit, which finds expression in many and
varied benevolences--so many, in fact, that the danger of the times
is over-organization. This tendency, if pursued, will react to
the disadvantage of women by depriving them of a sense of personal
responsibility and individual initiative.
The assumption by society, as a whole, of the responsibility of its
members of necessity gives an organized form to all efforts for
its improvement. The nature of problems of this sort requires wide
organization in order to bring into touch with the social need, for
its satisfying, as many persons as possible of means and talent. If
the philanthropist is rich, she employs her money as the expression
of her interest in and recognition of her duty toward society. If not
wealthy, but possessed of time and talent, the woman herself becomes
the instrument of social amelioration, and the money from the coffers
of others is placed in her hands for judicious expenditure. The great
interest in philanthropy which in modern times is evinced by all
classes of society tends to unite the women of to-day in a bond of
common sympathy and purpose. It is not solely because they have more
abundant leisure than men that the burden of philanthropy rests upon
their shoulders, for their wider sympathy and clearer insight lead
them to perceive more readily and to meet more effectively the needs
of mankind.
One of the prominent women of England who gave herself largely to
benevolent labors was the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. The generous and
wise use of her immense fortune has secured her an enduring name; she
built churches, she founded charities; and although London was the
chief field for her philanthropy, her native country of Ireland was
remembered in a way to shrine her name there in grateful memory. She
possessed the spirit of the great ladies of old England, who felt
a responsibility toward the dependent and necessitous classes about
them, and to this spirit she gave the wide expression her fortune and
her exceptional environment made possible. The great variety of her
benevolent sympathies and the personal part she took in the various
charities which enlisted them cause her life to mark an era in the
history of philanthropy. There was nothing beyond the catholicity of
her spirit.
The modern temperance movement, which enlisted largely the interest
of the women of England and America, and which led, in the latter
country, to the organization of the Women's Christian Temperance
Union, found its best representative in England in the person of Lady
Henry Somerset. Lady Somerset's efforts in behalf of temperance
and social reforms in England are too much matters of present-day
knowledge to need more than a notice of them in these pages; they have
enrolled her name in the list of great women of the century, where it
had already been long placed by the affections of a nation. Another
expression of the interest of women in society is found in the
Young Women's Christian Association, Girls' Friendly Society, the
Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, and other
organizations which care for the interests of young women exposed to
imposition or temptation. It is impossible to enumerate even the more
important of the organizations which owe their institution to women
and are conducted by the sex for the benefit of society. Wide as has
been the field in the past, new phases of modern life are constantly
coming under the purview of women's societies, which, although to a
large extent voluntary, are none the less splendidly organized and
disciplined forces, occupying, for the most part, independent fields.
Woman as a nurse is not a new aspect of her nature, but not until the
last quarter of the century was nursing elevated to the dignity of
a profession. There were not wanting women who bore the title of
professional nurse, but these did not have the training to justify the
name. Before the Crimean War there were upward of two thousand five
hundred such nurses in England. Florence Nightingale, whose name will
ever be identified with the founding of schools for nurses, said:
"Sickness is everywhere. Death is everywhere. But hardly anywhere
is the training necessary to relieve sickness, to delay death. We
consider a long education and discipline necessary to train our
medical man; we consider hardly any training at all necessary for our
nurse, although how often does our medical man himself tell us, 'I can
do nothing for you unless your nurse will carry out what I say.'" The
revelation of suffering on the part of uncared-for soldiers which
Miss Nightingale brought back from the Crimea profoundly moved English
society; and a large sum of money was presented to her, with which she
founded the Nurses' Training Institution at St. Thomas's Hospital. At
about the same time, the Anglican sisterhood founded training schools
of a similar kind. From these sources arose the sentiment for trained
service for the sick which has led to the wide respect with which
modern society regards the nurse who has been thoroughly trained for
her profession. This feeling toward nurses is in striking contrast
to the one which prevailed before the days of special training:
that which was once considered a degrading occupation has come to be
thought of as an ennobling ministry. In 1870, the date of the founding
of the Metropolitan and National Nursing Association by the Duke of
Westminster, James Hinton, in a paper in the _Cornhill Magazine_ on
"Nursing as a Profession," called attention to this new activity as a
trained service for women: "It is considered, though an excellent and
most respectable vocation, not one for a lady to follow as a means
of livelihood, unless she is content to sink a little in the social
scale.... Can any one think it is, in its own nature, more menial than
surgery? Could any occupation whatever call more emphatically for the
qualities characteristically termed professional, or better known as
those of the gentleman and the lady?... Here is a profession, truly
a profession, equal to the highest in dignity, open to woman in which
she does not compete with man."
Nursing no longer has to be defended as a suitable occupation for the
sex, for in its ranks can be found women of all grades of society; it
is one of the levelling influences of modern times, as well as one of
the most elevating of callings. No other sphere of public activity
has opened up to woman in which she has not met the opposition of
men. Nursing is a striking instance of the modern trend toward
specialization, which is but another term for professionalism.
Consonant with the whole spirit of the times, the amateur nurse was
relegated to the background by the modern trained nurse.
Society, however, has not taken so kindly to women's departure in
another direction: women as physicians are still regarded as a
novelty and a doubtful expedient. Nursing created a profession, and so
conservative sentiment did not have to be met; but the old faculties
of law, medicine, and theology had been so long intrenched in their
privileged places in relation to society that any attempt to widen
their confines or to enlist their hospitality toward innovations is
met with the resistance which custom and precedent always present to
novelty. Although their progress into the medical profession has been
slow, yet the nineteenth century records the opening of this calling
to women. During the last quarter of the century women were admitted
to the ranks of accredited practitioners. Yet, the vocation is not a
novel one for the sex, for in the remote past they have been looked
upon as possessing knowledge and skill in the treatment of diseases;
but, as we have seen, the woman who followed the art of healing as a
profession was often regarded as in league with the powers of evil.
Down to the nineteenth century, women never held any recognized place
as practitioners, excepting in the capacity of midwives.
In the eighteenth century there were, outside of the recognized
profession, a number of women who practised medicine with considerable
success; but, although skilful, they would be regarded to-day as mere
quacks. Mrs. Joanna Stephens, who proclaimed that she had found
a remarkable cure for a painful disease, appears to have been so
successful in her treatment of cases as to enlist genuine respect for
her attainments. Parliament voted her a grant of five thousand pounds
sterling. Mrs. Mapp, commonly termed "Crazy Sally," who had repute as
a bonesetter, received from the town of Epsom the offer of an
annuity of one hundred pounds sterling if she would remain in that
neighborhood. She was such a popular character that the managers of
Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre sent her a special request to attend
a performance at which they desired to have a large audience. She
complied, and the attendance was satisfactory.
Early in the century there was a renewal of attempts which had
formerly been made to require women who practised obstetrics to come
under some form of registration; but when the matter came before
Parliament, in the form of an enactment prepared by the Society of
Apothecaries, a committee of the House of Commons reported that "It
would not allow any mention of female midwives." Although women were
not received into the regular profession as qualified practitioners
until after the middle of the century, they were under no legal
prohibition to practise medicine; but in 1858 the passage of the
Medical Act, which required a doctor to qualify by passing the
examination of one of the existing medical boards, set up a barrier
to women, as it placed them subject to the discretion of the boards,
which unanimously refused to admit them. The only exceptions to this
rule were made in favor of those persons who had received a medical
degree abroad and had been practising before the passage of the act.
It was in this way that Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell became registered.
Miss Elizabeth Garret, whose studies did not begin till two years
after the compulsory registration law, was also enrolled under
exceptional conditions.
At last matters came to an issue, and a notable struggle occurred
which marked an era in the medical profession of England in its
attitude toward female practitioners. The case of Miss Sophia
Jex-Blake brought on the contest. She applied to the London University
for admission, and was informed that the charter of that institution
had been purposely framed to exclude women who sought medical degrees.
Returning to Edinburgh, she exhausted every legal resource in a combat
with the authorities, and was signally worsted. The plucky fight she
made won the admiration of Sir James Simpson, the dean of the medical
faculty, and others, but Professor Laycock observed to her that he
"could not imagine any decent woman wishing to study medicine; as
for any lady, that was out of the question." Success finally crowned
persistent endeavor, and, the University Court having passed a
resolution that "Women shall be admitted to the study of medicine
in the university," Miss Jex-Blake and four other ladies passed the
preliminary examinations for entrance. Other women soon entered the
open door; but the contest was not yet ended, for, after these ladies
had pursued their studies for three years and paid the fees, they were
informed by the University Court that no arrangement could be effected
by which they could continue their studies with a view to a degree,
instead of which they were offered certificates of proficiency; the
latter, however, would not be recognized by the Medical Act. They then
took legal measures to secure redress, and followed the matter up by
a bill in Parliament, which was lost. In 1876 another bill was
introduced to enable all British examining bodies to extend their
examinations and qualifications to women, and this became a law. A
number of colleges availed themselves of the privilege and opened
their doors to women, until at the present time there are medical
schools for women in a number of the principal cities in England,
Scotland, and Ireland.
The advance of women in the professions was in line with the general
widening of the educational horizon of the sex. Partly as the result
of her broader education, and partly as a cause of it, there was a
juster appreciation of the relative position of the sexes, and into
this there entered as well the new economic measure of value. Society
was no longer regarded as a congeries of individuals, but as an
organism, and an organism whose function was chiefly the creation
of wealth. This broader economic estimate of society could but be
favorable to women, whose valuation as a part of the commonwealth was
largely regulated by their utility. The ideal of political economy is
that everyone shall be employed, and employed at that for which he is
best adapted, under the condition of freedom of self-development. The
prevalence of such truer theories of society aided in dispelling the
mists of error which had surrounded the popular notions as to women.
Buckle observes, in his _Influence of Women on the Progress of
Knowledge_, that women are quicker in thought than men, and he says:
"Nothing could prevent its being universally admitted except the fact
that the remarkable rapidity with which women think is obscured by
that miserable, that contemptible, that preposterous system called
their education, in which valuable things are carefully kept from
them, and trifling things carefully taught to them, until their fine
and nimble minds are too often irretrievably injured."
The close of the nineteenth century witnessed a complete revolution
in the constituents of girls' education. French, dancing,
flower painting, and music no longer comprised a young lady's
accomplishments. The fear of singularity, which was a social bugbear
to the young women of other generations, no longer served to prevent
them from studying classics and mathematics and science. To-day, they
are expected to add their quota to the contribution of the times,
in thought as well as in the graces of deportment. The latter can no
longer atone for the absence of the former. It is no more the case
among the middle classes that only the girl who intends fitting
herself to take the position of governess needs an education above the
rudiments and the embellishments. Not the least of the departures in
the educational scheme for women is the notable change of attitude
which has taken place with regard to the development of their bodies.
It is but recently that physical training has entered into the
curriculum of colleges, but it is even more recently that an opinion
has prevailed favorable to the physical culture of women.
Before the educational revolution occurred, women were making their
mark in intellectual spheres. In 1835 the names of two women, Mary
Somerville and Caroline Herschell, were enrolled as members of the
Astronomical Society. In its report containing the recommendation of
the election of these ladies, the council of the society observed:
"Your Council has no small pleasure in recommending that the names
of two ladies distinguished in astronomy be placed on the list of
honorary members. On the propriety of such a step from an astronomical
point of view, there can be but one voice: and your Council is of
opinion that the time is gone by when either feeling or prejudice,
by whichever name it may be proper to call it, should be allowed to
interfere with the payment of a well-earned tribute of respect. Your
Council has hitherto felt that, whatever might be its own sentiment on
the subject, or however able and willing it might be to defend such a
measure, it had no right to place the name of a lady in a position
the propriety of which might be contested, though upon what it might
consider narrow grounds and false principles. But your Council has no
fear that such a difference could now take place between any men whose
opinion would avail to guide that of society at large, and, abandoning
compliments on the one hand, and false delicacy on the other, submits
that while the tests of astronomical merit should in no case be
applied to the works of a woman less severely than to those of man,
the sex of the former should no longer be an obstacle to her receiving
any acknowledgment which might be held due the latter. And your
Council, therefore, recommends this meeting to add to the list
of honorary members the names of Miss Caroline Herschell and Mrs.
Somerville, of whose astronomical knowledge, and of the utility of the
ends to which it has been applied, it is not necessary to recount the
proofs."
Mrs. Somerville suffered from the educational limitations of her day,
and when she desired to learn Latin, in order that she might study
the _Principia_, she referred to Professor Playfair with regard to the
propriety of her doing so, and was assured by him that there was no
impropriety involved for the purpose she had in mind. At that time
there were many women with the best of education, acquired outside
of university halls, but such were usually brought up by scholarly
parents possessed of well-stocked libraries. To-day, the position of
Ruskin is a commonplace of experience. In his lecture on the _Queen's
Gardens_, he advised that women have free access to books, and
asserted that they would find out for themselves the wholesome and
avoid the pernicious with an instinct as unerring as that which
directs the browsing of sheep in pasture lands. It has been
sufficiently demonstrated that wholesome-minded girls are ever less in
danger of contamination from literature than are their brothers.
The opening of Queen's College in 1848 marked the beginning of an
attempt to give a wider education to women. This college grew out of
the Governesses' Benevolent Institution. It was a training school for
teachers, a normal institute; but, besides this, it was open to all
who cared to enter. The name of that leader in modern educational
movements, Frederick Denison Maurice, was identified with this
departure. In the face of hostile comment, he defended the system
which was adopted by himself and his brother professors, all of whom
had come from King's College. The educational opportunities offered
by this college were exceptional; the fees were low, and many students
hastened to avail themselves of the new privilege.
It was twenty years later, however, before there was fought out the
issue through which women came to be admitted to the universities. In
1856, Miss Jessie Merriton White was applying vainly for admittance
to the matriculation examination of the University of London. In 1869,
Girton College, the building of which cost fourteen thousand seven
hundred pounds sterling, was established largely through the
efforts of women. It was intended to afford training for women along
university lines, and the plan of study was modelled on that of
Cambridge University; the idea in the adoption of this parallel course
was to establish beyond doubt women's fitness for pursuing the same
studies as men. Other colleges of the same nature were founded soon
after.
In the last century, the old theory that women were not capable of
higher education on account of the "moisture of their brains" was not
one of the pleas upon which was based the opposition to the higher
education of women. The more plausible ground was taken that women
ought to avoid certain lines of study which are a part of a university
course. But it is coming to be realized that the proprieties
of knowledge do not reside in the subject or in the sex of the
student--that whatever is important for higher investigation is worthy
of the pursuit of women as well as men, and can be pursued by them
at the point of ripened discretion to which they have arrived when
capable of meeting the requirements for entrance into a university.
The high-school system that has developed in England during the last
quarter of a century has done much for the education of the middle
classes, affording sound instruction and mental discipline for all.
At the present day, poor girls, who, if they were dependent upon
their personal resources, would never acquire an education, have wider
facilities than were enjoyed by the women of the aristocracy a century
earlier.
Of those who promoted the secondary education for girls, perhaps no
name among female educators in England stands higher than that
of Frances Mary Buss. Her splendid powers of organization and
administration raised to such a degree of efficiency the private
school which she had established in the north of London, that, when
the Brewers Company desired to invest a sum of money for the education
of girls, it entered into negotiations with Miss Buss and acquired her
establishment, retaining her as head mistress.
Voluminous as are the works of women in the realm of fiction, it is
nevertheless a field little exploited by them until recent years. In
the eighteenth century the sex had produced few historians, poets,
or essayists who could be compared with the group of romance writers
which included such names as Catherine Macauley, Eliza Haywood,
Elizabeth Carter, Fanny Burney, Mrs. Inchbald, and Mrs. Radcliffe; but
when we pass to the nineteenth century, while women as romanticists
are more prominent than women as authors in any other field, there is
no limit upon the versatility which they exhibit, and all branches
of literature have felt their moulding impress. To take the names of
women out of the list of authors of the nineteenth century would be to
diminish the glory of the literary skies by blotting out the lustre of
some of its brightest constellations.
Beginning with Jane Austin and continuing to Mrs. Humphry Ward, the
line of literary descent in the realm of fiction is a roll of honor
for womankind; but it is a far cry from these to that earliest of
women novelists, Mrs. Aphra Behn, who, at the direction of Charles
II., wrote her novel _Oronooko_, the purpose of which was not
dissimilar to the social end which Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had
in mind in her _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. Thus, the sixteenth century is
brought into touch with the nineteenth, although the connecting links
were few and slight until the middle of the latter. The number of
women novelists indicates that women have found in fiction the line of
literary pursuit which is most agreeable to their tastes and adapted
to their natures. There seems to be absolutely no limit to the range
of subjects which women are capable of working up in romance; whether
in novels of incident or novels of character, treating historical or
social subjects, didactic or imaginative themes, with the plot in any
period of time, among any people or set of conditions, women writers
appear to be equally at home.
While the vast majority of literary women have been writers of
fiction, every branch of literature numbers in its promoters the names
of eminent females. In poetry and in dramatic literature women have
not achieved the fame of men. Lord Byron gave as the reason for
women's apparent lack of imaginative and creative power that they had
not seen and felt enough of life. As translators, editors, compilers,
as writers on social topics and current questions, as well as on
educational subjects, memoirs, travels, literary studies, they have
been prolific and excellent workers. Besides which, they have given to
journalistic and magazine work their special capabilities.
Women no longer fear to write under their own names, and do not resort
to pseudonyms as did Charlotte Bronte, and Mary Ann Evans--George
Eliot. It was at one time thought that the demands of research and
study outside of the range of ordinary feminine acquaintance precluded
the sex from doing many forms of intellectual work which were open to
men. Fiction did not present special difficulties; and as the line of
least resistance, as well as that of especial adaptation, women took
to this form of writing.
At the present day, however, there is no question as to woman's
faithfulness, accuracy, and ability to attend to detail; and so there
are no lines of research or of authorship in which women are not
engaged. This is in part due to the similar lines upon which women and
men are now educated. Their broad acquaintance with the whole range of
intellectual subjects eminently fits the sex for special work in any
department. To distinguish by their method of treatment the writings
of women is no longer possible. Their pens have the same grace
and vigor of style as those of men, while there is no fineness or
daintiness of touch in their writings which does not find counterpart
in those of men.
The fiction of the century reveals woman intrepidly discussing
political, economic, and labor questions with a large degree of
assurance, and others with a great deal of acuteness and insight.
Although there is intense competition in the realm of literature, yet
the complexity of modern society, the universality of education,
the opportunities of leisure for reading, the social demands for
acquaintance with standard and recent works, and the incitement to
reading given through the newspapers, magazines, book reviews, and
lectures of the times, furnish unlimited opportunities for gifted
women to exercise their talents in writing.
It was not until 1861 that women were admitted to all the privileges
and opportunities of art education which centred in the Royal Academy
schools. In that year these were opened to women students. It
is interesting to notice how in almost an accidental manner the
limitations placed upon women were removed. At the annual dinner of
the Academy in 1859, Lord Lyndhurst felicitated those present on the
benefits which were conferred upon all her majesty's subjects by
the Academy schools. Miss Laura Herford, an artist, wrote to Lord
Lyndhurst and pointed out the fact that half of her majesty's subjects
were excluded. This made the discussion of the propriety of admitting
women a kindly one, and a memorial was prepared and signed by
thirty-eight women artists, copies of which were sent to every member
of the Academy, praying the admission of women and pointing out the
benefit it would be to them to study, under qualified teachers, from
the antique and from life. It was regarded as impracticable that
women and men should study life subjects together, and the request was
refused. There was nothing in the constitution of the Academy either
for or against the admission of women. A drawing with the signature
"L. Herford" was then sent in by Miss Herford, and it was admitted
by a letter addressed to "L. Herford, Esq." The question then arose
whether a woman who had been accepted as a man should be allowed to
enter. Miss Herford had her way.
No women had been admitted into the Academy since the days of Angelica
Kaufmann and Mary Moser. The reason for their non-reception, as
assigned by Sanby in his _History of the Royal Academy of Arts_,
and quoted by Georgiana Hill in her _Women in English Life_, is as
follows: "One or two ladies, if elected members, could scarcely be
expected to take part in the government or in the work of the society;
and as the practice even of giving votes by proxy has long since been
abolished, the effect of their election as Royal Academicians would
be, virtually, to reduce the number of those who manage the affairs of
the institution and the schools in proportion as ladies were admitted
to that rank: and as long as the number of Associates is limited,
a difficulty would arise in the fact that the higher rank has to be
recruited from that body." Miss Hill regards this as a grievance,
because it virtually makes the matter of sex a disqualification, and
quotes with endorsement Miss Ellen Clayton, as follows: "The Academy
has studiously ignored the existence of women artists, leaving them to
work in the cold shade of utter neglect. Not even once has a helping
hand been extended, not once has the most trifling reward been
given for highest merit and industry. Accidents made two women
Academicians--the accident of circumstances and the accident of birth.
Accident opened the door to girl students--accident, aided by courage
and talent. In other countries, they have the prize fairly earned
quietly placed in their hands, and can receive it with dignity. In
free, unprejudiced, chivalric England, where the race is given to the
swift, the battle to the strong, without fear or favour, it is only by
slow, laborious degrees that women are winning the right to enter the
list at all, and are then received with half-contemptuous indulgence."
Whether or not women artists have a real grievance against the Royal
Academy, certain it is that the last half of the nineteenth century
has been notable for the progress of women in art. It was in the
galleries of the Society of Lady Artists, which came into existence
in 1859, that Lady Butler first exhibited and pictures by Rosa
Bonheur were displayed. With the multiplicity of art schools and
every facility for obtaining instructions under the most favorable
conditions, women have been brought into prominence as artists.
Landscape, portrait painting, oil, water-colors, pastel--the whole
range of subjects and styles of painting includes pictures of merit by
women.
In many of the lesser branches of art, hundreds of women have found
congenial vocations. They have shown excellent taste and aptitude
in china painting and other forms of decorative work--in book
illustration, as designers of carpet and wall-paper patterns, as
preparers of advertisements, designers of calendars, and a host of
other minor art industries.
Women as musical composers had appeared in the last half of the
eighteenth century. Mrs. Beardman, who made her debut as a singer
at the Gloucester festival in 1790, was equally gifted as composer,
singer, and pianist. Ann Mounsey displayed early talent, and her
precocity brought her into notice when she was but nine years of age.
In her maturity, her compositions gave her high rank among female
composers, and in 1855 her oratorio _The Nativity_ was produced in
London. She was a member of the Philharmonic Society and also of
the Royal Society of Musicians. Another gifted woman, whose talents
brought her early into notice and who was a member of the Royal
Academy of Music, was Kate Fanny Loder. She had been instructed in
piano-forte by Mrs. Lucy Anderson, teacher to Queen Victoria when she
was princess and afterward to the children of her majesty. Miss Loder
was a king's scholar at the Royal Academy, and when but eighteen years
of age was appointed professor of harmony at her _alma mater_. Eliza
Flower--whose sister, Mrs. Adams, wrote the words of the hymn _Nearer,
my God, to Thee_--was another of the gifted composers of the century,
and her name appears as the author of many hymn tunes.
To give the names of all the women composers of hymn tunes would be
to give a history of hymnology in modern times, for there is no sacred
song collection but embraces the compositions of many women gifted
in music. To give the names of those who have figured in opera would
involve a history which includes a great many more foreign artists
than English; but without seeking to do more than mention a few of
those whose names have figured in popular favor as operatic _prima
donnas_, and omitting particular mention of their individual
capabilities, there are some names which suggest themselves to
the patrons of the opera as worthy of first mention in the list of
England's great singers. Catherine Tofts, Anastasia Robinson, Lavinia
Fenton,--afterward Duchess of Bolton,--achieved celebrity in the opera
during the first thirty years of the century. Lavinia Fenton was the
heroine of _The Beggars' Opera_, which took London by storm. The names
of Catherine Hayes and Louisa Pyne are still treasured by those whose
recollections go back to the forties.
The general ill repute under which the stage rested in the seventeenth
century continued to hang about it throughout the eighteenth. There
was still a great deal of license allowed spectators, and it was not
unusual for them to pass on the stage and behind the scenes. The rude
and boisterous conduct of the patrons of the theatre made it extremely
unpleasant for persons of refinement to attend it. The city streets
had not yet become well protected, and the degree of security which is
now afforded to pedestrians was lacking in the eighteenth century.
It was out of the question for any gentlewoman to attend the theatre
unaccompanied by male escort. There were always loiterers about the
streets, and any man of rank whose character was bad enough to permit
him to do so felt at liberty to salute a woman with insults--which,
when they came from such a source, were then styled as gallantries;
and women who adopted the stage as a profession, being looked upon as
having forfeited their claims to gentility, were regarded as fair game
by the rakes of the day. Notwithstanding the attempts of Queen Anne to
reform the manners of theatre-goers by the passage of edicts looking
to that end, the evils which made it so unpleasant to a respectable
person to attend the theatre and which brought the playhouse under
odium continued to be flagrant.
In the nineteenth century came a great uplift of the status of the
stage and workers upon it, and, in contrast to the opinions
which prevailed in the eighteenth century, an actress suffered
no disparagement and had the same opportunity for cherishing her
reputation as any others of the sex. The stage no longer brought its
followers into disrepute, for it rested with the actress herself to
preserve or to tarnish her character. She was no longer, by virtue of
being an actress, regarded as a Bohemian, and it was not considered a
regrettable thing for a girl of character to enter upon a histrionic
career. It was her course and conduct after she had entered the
profession, and the nature of the plays in which she appeared and the
parts which she allowed herself to present, that determined the public
verdict with regard to her. As a result of the changed character of
the theatre,--although it was by no means cleared of all the odium
that had so long attached to it,--a larger number of men and women
attended dramatic performances than ever before.
The introduction of women into commercial life was followed by the
opening up of civil service appointments and a change of sentiment
with regard to women engaging in trade. In 1870, when the government
bought the interests of the telegraph company, the officials were
brought under the existing civil service rules. Some of them happened
to be women, and thus, inadvertently, women were admitted to
civil service appointments under the government. In 1871 the
postmaster-general bore striking testimony to the efficiency of the
women employed in his department. When commenting upon the transfer of
the telegraphs from private control to post office direction, he said:
"There had been no reason to regret the experiment. On the contrary,
it has afforded much ground for believing that, where large numbers
of persons are employed with full work and fair supervision, the
admixture of the sexes involves no risk, but is highly beneficial."
Then, remarking upon the better tone of the male staff by reason of
their association with women as fellow employes, he added: "Further,
it is a matter of experience that the male clerks are more willing to
help the female clerks with their work than to help one another; and
on many occasions pressure of business is met and difficulties are
overcome through this willingness and cordial cooeperation."
The experience of employing women in the post office was duplicated
in other departments of the public service, until it has become a
recognized fact that women can be employed in connection with men
without any of the results which it was apprehended would follow
the departure. In the country districts, postmistresses and female
carriers are not a novelty. It was the post office which first
Opened up to women employment under the government, and its various
departments now utilize them extensively. Although other of the public
services have received women as clerks, their position is still in a
measure tentative, but it can hardly be said that the employment of
them by the government is any longer an experiment. In addition to
the large numbers of young women who have found employment in the
government service, there is no railroad company, insurance company,
or any other large semi-public or private business firm or company,
which has not found women to be of peculiar serviceability. The great
number of women who, during the latter part of the nineteenth century,
fitted themselves for business careers indicates not only a change of
ideal, with a realization of their self-sufficiency, but the increased
adaptability of women to the peculiar conditions of modern society.
It is no longer a curious phenomenon to see the name of a woman upon
a business letterhead, or on the sign over some large commercial
establishment, for frequently, when their husbands die, women
themselves now take in hand the business interests of the deceased
and conduct them with marked success, and with no question from their
business competitors as to the propriety of their so doing. Nor do
such women forfeit the esteem of society. Society as such is no longer
concerned chiefly with matters of pedigree, but more largely with the
question of prosperity. While it would be asserting too much to say
that the nineteenth century witnessed the iconoclastic shattering of
the old aristocratic ideals, nevertheless, while the woman of blood
maintains her rightful place in the select circles of society, the
door stands ajar for women who have no other claim for recognition
than that they have amassed fortunes, or inherited them, or are the
wives of wealthy men. However, they must not have clinging to them
the odor of their humble beginnings, if they rose from lowly walks of
life. The real test applied to them is not the test of breeding, which
relates to the past, but of gentility, which is the measure of the
present life.
Besides the women who managed large business interests in their own
names, the nineteenth century witnessed the advent of the business
woman in numerous lines of small trade. To name the various kinds of
business in which women are found making for themselves a sustenance
would be to give a list of the many lines of retail trade; but the
shopwoman of the earlier part of the nineteenth century is quite a
different person from the tradeswoman of the latter half. Instead of
a small, obscure shop, conducted in a hesitating, apologetic manner,
to-day women are as aggressive advertisers, make as fine displays
in their shops, and sustain the same business relations with the
wholesale dealers, as do the retail dealers of the other sex. Beyond
any peradventure, women have become a part of the business organism
of England, and are competing upon terms of equality with men for the
patronage of the public; and they have before them just as hopeful
prospects of amassing a competence for an easy and independent old
age.
Great as is the army of women who enrolled themselves in the ranks of
commerce and clerkship during the nineteenth century, they are in a
minority as compared with the greater host of industry,--the women who
are found in the factories, working upon the raw materials of human
comforts and luxuries, toiling unremittingly and often under hard
conditions for a mere pittance as compared with the value of their
products. In 1895 there were one hundred thousand women in England
holding membership in the various trade unions, and, besides these, a
far larger number who were without such enrolment, such as fifty-two
thousand shirtmakers and seamstresses and four hundred thousand
dressmakers and milliners; and these were but a mere fraction of
the immense host of women who, outside of the home, found themselves
earning their own bread by their personal labor. With the growth of
manufactures, women were drawn from the rural districts. It became an
uncommon thing, where formerly it was the usual practice, for women to
perform the work of field laborers, or to depend chiefly for support
upon butter and cheese making, or service at the inns or in the shops
of the neighboring towns. It is now only the women of the lowest rank
who devote themselves for a livelihood to berry picking, hop picking,
garden weeding, and like menial outdoor services.
The competition of women with men in manufactures was greeted at first
with the sullen resentment and open opposition with which machinery
was viewed when first introduced; but as women have been drawn into
manufactures, men have absorbed many of the outdoor duties
which formerly fell to woman's lot in the country districts. The
"bakeresses," "brewsters," and the "regrateresses"--retailers of
bread--are now known simply in the history of industry; their names
have become archaic and their offices obsolete. As machinery took the
place of the individual intelligence of the handworker of other days,
leaving only a monotonous series of mechanical manipulations for the
men, aside from the superior skill called into play by the complexity
of the machinery, which demanded expert and intelligent direction,
women found relegated to them the simplest parts of factory work
and those which did not require any large degree of mentality. As a
result, the women of the factories have not developed cooerdinately in
intelligence with their sisters in other lines of active work. This
has unfortunately led them to be looked down upon as inferior to
girls who work in stores or in offices. As the factory laws came to
be framed with regard to greater investigation and regulation of the
conditions of women's work in factories, many of the abuses were to
a degree corrected. It is not now commonly the case that a
self-respecting operative is without redress if subjected to the
coarse insults of brutalized foremen, nor are women now permitted
to work as formerly under conditions so harmful to their peculiar
constitutions. Better sanitation, fewer hours of employment, and
greater regard for their comfort, have done much to brighten what
was in the early part of the nineteenth century the dreariest life to
which any woman could be chained.
Along with the improvements in the condition of women's labor have
gone improvements in the housing of factory people. The industrial
evils that brought out such chivalrous champions of the poor as
the younger Lord Shaftesbury and his associates no longer generally
prevail in factory life. There yet remains much to be done for the
congregated women and girls of the factories. It was inevitable that
by the bringing of them together in great numbers, many from homes
of abject poverty where they had none of the benefits of careful
training, and by the herding of them together in factories where the
nature of their work did not furnish employment for their minds, the
moral tone of the young women of daily toil should have been lower
than that of their sister workers in other lines. But the dictum of
Lord Shaftesbury has been sinking into the social consciousness,
and has borne splendid fruit in the improvement of the conditions of
factory work for women. "In the male," says he, "the moral effects of
the system are very bad; but in the female they are infinitely worse,
not alone upon themselves, but upon their families, upon society, and,
I may add, upon the country itself. It is bad enough if you corrupt
the man; but if you corrupt the woman, you poison the waters of life
at the very fountain." In the first half of the nineteenth century,
the actual number of women employed in factories appears to have been
larger than that of men.
The existence of the factory, drawing out from the homes so many
women and making their home life only a secondary consideration and
an additional burden, presents one of the gravest problems of
modern times--a problem that must be approached harmoniously by the
philanthropists and the legislators if it is to be satisfactorily
solved. Habit begets contentment, so that it is not the employes of
the factory who feel most keenly the unfortunate circumstances of
their existence. It is the social reformer, whose one aim is not
the uplifting of the individual as such, but the betterment of the
individual as the unit of the social fabric, who is most concerned
for the betterment of the town life of England. As to the women
themselves, when they are compensated by extra wage they have no
complaint to make about the long hours; indeed, they sometimes even
prefer the factory and the excitement of their surroundings to the
dreary and forbidding prospect of their desolate tenements. One
unnatural result of women's work in factories is the reversal of the
positions respectively of husband and wife in the home. It is not an
extraordinary occurrence for women to go out to the factories and
earn the bread of the family, while the men remain at home to mind the
babies and care for the house. This begetting of shiftlessness in men,
who are buoyed up to the point of self-supporting labor only by
the dependence of their families upon them, is an incidental but a
significant result of factory life upon women. It is seriously to be
doubted that, in the aggregate earnings of the family, there is any
real compensation for the binding of wives and children to the wheel
of toil. It has been observed by careful students of industrial
conditions that, for one reason or another, the maximum wage of a
family and the degree of comfort in their living are not, ordinarily,
greater than that of the family whose sole wage earner is the husband.
There is not a concurrence of views as to the wisdom of special
legislation with regard to the industrial place of women. Some see
in the various acts passed to regulate the circumstances of their
employment a distinct gain, while others view all such enactments as
a regrettable interference of the state in a matter where it is not
capable of taking cognizance of all the circumstances involved and of
displaying the broadest wisdom in dealing with the subject. Then, too,
it is objected on the part of some that sex legislation is unwise of
itself. The women themselves have not always looked with favor upon
the passage of acts for the regulation of their labor, and often
complain of such as an infringement of their personal privileges as
adults. They complain that the competition of labor is already severe,
and that by imposing upon them the limitations of certain acts the
difficulty of making a subsistence is increased. They complain against
the association of female with child labor, and assert that the
conditions are dissimilar and the abuses to be corrected cannot be
classed under the same legislative conditions. Industrial legislation
was first directed to the correction of offences against women
on account of their sex, but the later enactments, and those most
complained of, were resented because of their making the securing of a
livelihood more precarious. The _Times_ in 1895 pointed out that there
were eight hundred and eighty thousand women affected by the Factories
and Workshops Bill, introduced into Parliament in that year. The
lack of flexibility of the measure, failing to take account of the
different natures and conditions of the various employments affected,
made it obviously unjust to the women employed in certain trades. Some
industries have their seasons of activity and of dulness, while others
fluctuate without regard to periods; and to class all such under
legislation regulating the hours of labor at the same number for them
all could but work injury to the women employed in such trades and
disproportionate advantage to other women employed in industries
pursued evenly throughout the year.
The crux of such contentions lies in the paternal attitude of the
state to the female sex. The expediency of depriving women of the same
amount of liberty to regulate their own affairs as is accorded to men
is a matter of doubt. Women feel that they can decide better for
their own needs than can the legislators who have as their guide only
industrial statistics, the petitions of well-meaning social reformers,
and the views of those who claim expert knowledge from the outside.
Just what will be the outcome of the attempt to resolve woman into a
normal relationship to modern industry without violation of the rights
of self-direction and protection, which she claims as her prerogative,
and at the same time to preserve society from the social blight of the
reduction of considerable numbers of workingwomen to prostitution
and abandoned living, remains to be determined by the wisdom and
experience of the twentieth century.
One of the most curious of the industrial problems at the front in the
nineteenth century was the servant question. While the wheels of work
were set to moving with more or less smoothness in all other ways,
this important wheel in the domestic machinery has never run without
friction, jarring to the nerves of housewives. Such women find a
common bond of sympathy in the incompetence and dereliction of their
domestics; domestics find a common subject of interest in their
grievances against their mistresses. The whole matter is almost
ludicrous, because it is one simply of adjustment. After the sex
has asserted for itself a position in the realm of industry not
inconsistent with the self-respect which it has sought to maintain,
the women who work in the kitchens and the chambers of other women
sullenly resent the imputation of their menial status in so doing.
Just why the modern servants should be looked upon as inferior to
other women workers is a difficult question, for their close relation
to their mistresses would appear to give them an individuality which
the "hands" in a factory do not possess. The line of demarcation
between the domestic employers and employes is not always a clearly
pronounced one, for it not uncommonly occurs that those who themselves
employ a maid send out their own daughters to similar service. The low
regard in which servants are held, and the application to them of
this very term, which carries with it an implication of ignominy,
is responsible for the poor grade of efficiency, intelligence, and
character found among domestics as a class. There is no reason, in
the nature of the case, why a young girl with intelligence and fair
education should not self-respectingly take domestic service, and
rank above factory hands and many of her sister workers in inferior
clerical positions.
In earlier times domestic work fell largely to men. The kitchen work
which now is performed by scullery maids was done by boys and youths;
and before the office of housemaid had been established, that of
chamberlain signified the service of men for the work which maids are
now employed to do. The very titles of those who are connected with
the person of majesty signify the lowly household functions which were
ordinarily performed by those to whom now fall the honors, but none of
the duties, of those offices. In ecclesiastical households there were
no women employed at all in former times, excepting "brewsters." The
personal relationship which used to endear the tie between servant and
mistress no more exists than it does between other working people
and their employers. Instead of the idea of personal attachment,
the monetary consideration is the only one that enters into the
relationship. The maid is but a part of the machinery of the
household, and must deport herself in a deferential and often an
abject manner, assuming a mask of propriety which is thrown off as
soon as she is among her companions, when the pent-up animosity and
resentment find expression. How different the modern condition from
that which obtained in other times, when a lady considered no one
fitting to attend upon her excepting those who were of gentle blood
and between whom and herself were ties of endearment and a measure of
equality! Gentle maidens performed many household duties which to-day
are disdained by young ladies of lesser position. The real "servants"
did only the coarse and rough work of the household. They had no
particular place to sleep, and, even down to the time of Elizabeth, it
was not thought important to provide regular beds for "menials" in the
great houses--"As for servants, if they had any shete above them it
was well, for seldom had they any under their bodies to keep them from
the pricking strawes that ranne off thorow the canvas and raxed their
hardened hides." The servants who were thus treated were, of
course, the antecedents of the present-day servants. It is from the
traditional attitude toward them that much of the present-day spirit
of superiority toward domestics is derived. During the eighteenth
century the condition of domestics improved, and, during the last
quarter, the description of them, their tastes and their manners, is
such as would be quite applicable to-day. Already the scarcity of good
servants had come to be a matter of domestic concern. The lament of
the lady of to-day, that her maid dresses as well as she herself, is
not a new one, for it is met as far back as the seventeenth century,
and in the eighteenth century Defoe remarks upon the same fact. He
says, writing in 1724: "It would be a satire upon the ladies such as
perhaps they would not bear the reading of, should we go about to tell
how hard it is sometimes to know the chamber-maid from her mistress;
or my lady's chief woman from one of my lady's daughters." He adds
that: "From this gaiety of dress must necessarily follow encrease of
wages, for where there is such an expence in habit there must be a
proportion'd supply of money, or it will not do." The same subject
furnished concern for people generally, and a correspondent to the
_Times_ wrote, in 1794: "I think it is the duty of every good master
and mistress to stop as much as possible the present ridiculous and
extravagant mode of dress in their domestics.... Formerly a plaited
cap and a white handkerchief served a young woman three or four
Sundays. Now a mistress is required to give up, by agreement, the
latter end of the week for her maids to prepare their caps, tuckers,
gowns, etc., for Sunday, and I am told there are houses open on
purpose where those servants who do not choose their mistresses shall
see them, carry their dresses in a bundle and put them on, meet again
in the evening for the purpose of disrobing, and where I doubt not
many a poor, deluded creature had been disrobed of her virtue. They
certainly call aloud for some restraint, both as to their dress as
well as insolent manner."
The great majority of domestic servants come from the rural districts,
and upon entering into town life have no one to exercise any personal
concern in their welfare, and, where they do not fall into worse
courses, they acquire an extravagant and reckless habit of life that
uses up their earnings simply in the furthering of their vanity or
pleasure. The servant question, as that of women's position in the
factory system of the country, presents problems which have proved as
yet stubborn to all attempts at their solution.
One of the most curious facts of the last quarter of the nineteenth
century was the evolution of the "new woman." Women, representing all
manner of social pleas, running the gamut of the extremes, sought a
hearing upon the platform, in the pulpit, through the press, and in
literature. It looked as if the Anglo-Saxon race were on the verge
of a great revolution in which the men would, either passively or in
strenuous opposition, be ignominiously relegated to the rear in the
lines of new progress. The new movement grew out of a sense of social
inequality on the part of some women, and this grievance was exploited
in all ways and illustrated from all viewpoints. Some of these
strenuous advocates for the "rights" of the sex gave themselves over
to the question of dress reform, and their diverse views represented
the whole range of the question, from the sensible and sane
declaration for the abolishment of the tyranny of style to the
adoption of male attire. Others discussed the injustice to women from
the physiological viewpoint, and affirmed that motherhood was not an
honorable office, but a type of feudalism to men and a subservience
to their wills that was highly dishonoring to womankind. It looked as
though the household gods were to be tumbled out of the home without
much ado; but while some of the advocates of reform went to absurd
lengths and presented extreme views and sought by all the ingenuity
of sophistry to present the status of woman as a most deplorable one,
there were others, more moderate in their views and expressions, who
felt that there might be a clear gain for women in the affirming
of her rights in the matter of conventions which held over from the
eighteenth century. Whether in deportment or in dress, in intellectual
pursuits or in the province of amusement, women were to exercise their
judgment and common sense and live in the light of their own reason
and not with reference to the mandates of men.
When the "new woman" craze passed away, it left, as its effect, young
women more self-reliant, more independent, a little more pert and
self-assured, with less reverence and greater capability, than before.
On the whole, the English girl of to-day has wrought out of the
complex conditions of modern society the naturalness which was
asserting itself throughout the eighteenth century, but was hampered
by new conventions, rigid customs, and stately formalisms. It is
true that the English girl of to-day would be to her grandmother a
revelation, and perhaps not an agreeable one; but the standards
by which estimates are made are safest and most satisfactory when
contemporary. It would be venturesome to forecast the view of the _fin
de siecle_ girl which may be taken at the close of the new century by
those who shall cast back over the years a historical glance. Certain
it is that, on the whole, she comes approximately up to the best
standards of to-day, although a certain air of flippancy and the
flavor of the independence of judgment, not always balanced by reason,
suggest the possibility of an intellectual and spiritual trend not
consistent with her most fortunate lines of development.
It will be seen that the twentieth century takes woman as a practical
matter of fact, and proposes to bestow upon her no fulsome eulogies,
chivalrous dalliance, to place her in no position of inferiority, or
to exalt her to the transcendent estate of the celestial beings. She
has demanded recognition in the practical affairs of life; she has
claimed the right to determine her own destiny; she has achieved
the freedom of the outer world. Lofty as are the summits of human
ambition, she has climbed up to the very highest peaks and written her
name in letters of immortality on the scroll of the great ones of
the earth, in the arts, in literature, in philanthropy. Does she ever
pause to take a backward look over the steps by which she has come to
her present eminence? Does she ever consider the "pit from which she
was digged"? It is a far cry from the twentieth century to the early
dawn of history, and none but the Eye which runs to and fro throughout
the whole earth can trace the entire course of woman's ascendency from
degradation to exaltation. But it is always well to pause and to
ask of the past years what report they have borne to Heaven; and the
history of woman, studied in the light of fact and with such proper
reflections as historical circumstance suggests, must not only be a
profitable one for the correction of any ill-balanced tendencies which
may appear to close observation of woman in her present position and
spirit, but it must as well be an important section of, and, in a
sense, interpretation of, the social development of England.