“Are you prepared to enjoy the sight of a woman’s face?” was Mr.
Lister’s first salutation to me as he entered the parlour where I was
sitting soon after noon. The copy of _The Bitter Cry_ which I was
reading fell from my hands. I looked at him searchingly, thinking that
he must be jesting; but as his face was perfectly serious I concluded
that he must refer to the golden time when the “Strike” should be
peacefully settled, and woman should happily resume her wonted place in
the universe, or a much larger one. I accordingly assured him sincerely
that there was no sight on earth that would give me greater pleasure
than the sight of a woman, and that I should await the result of the
ballot on Monday with feverish impatience.
“But you need not wait the result of the ballot,” said Mr. Lister, “for
the women have given notice that they will pass in procession through
the town to-morrow afternoon.”
“Do you really mean that the women are going to parade?” I asked,
aghast at this unexpected novelty.
“Well,” replied Mr. Lister, “I suppose it might be called a parade,
though that term usually carries the idea of a noisy and sensational
display, and there will be none of this in the women’s passage through
the town. Drums, trumpets, banners, inscriptions, uniforms, speeches,
and all the paraphernalia of customary parades will be conspicuously
absent. Clothed in their ordinary garb, the women will exhibit nothing
but themselves, in simple, critical sincerity. Before the ballots are
cast they deem it to be both just and proper that man should see, in a
simple panorama, exactly the condition of woman as it has been up to
to-day. To-morrow will be Sunday, but as there are no church services
the women think it the most proper time for them to walk quietly
through the town.”
Again it seemed to me that I must be dreaming. Mobs there might have
been in history of women clamouring for bread in some oppressed and
king-ridden city, but the organization of all the women of Free America
into one vast Sisterhood, and their peaceful, speechless procession
through streets lined with homes which they had so lately occupied
with men, and of which they had been the beacon, was a thought
calculated to fill one with speculative awe!
But there were still many things concerning the Strike which I did not
understand, and about which I wished to be fully informed before I
should witness any such public exhibition. Accordingly, as Mr. Lister
was at leisure that afternoon, I gave myself wholly to the task of
learning all that I could about this strange situation of the sexes.
And first I said:
“It is still exceedingly difficult for me to realize that woman could
ever take such a bold step as to practically declare her independence
of man. Although I have always known of a few so-called strong-minded
women, yet these were not only covertly ridiculed by the men, but by
the majority of their own sex as well. It certainly has been generally
supposed, and with much apparent reason, that woman, as a whole did
not possess that strength and earnestness of character that would ever
enable her to carry out any great concerted movement for what she might
suppose to be her emancipation. I confess,” I continued, with a new and
sudden sense of shame, “that now I think of it, I have always regarded
woman myself somewhat as I would a beautiful toy, the sweetest and
most charming accessory to life’s happiness, but still so much devoted
to personal ornament as to be forever incapable of any serious,
persistent contention of a principle. The sight of a gay ribbon or the
prospect of a new bonnet was, it was believed, sufficient to divert
woman from any such vagary as man denominated her ‘rights’ to be.
Moreover, at the time that I last gave any attention to the subject,
woman’s vaulting social ambition was preternaturally active in seeking
and buying, through marriage, the titled coronets of a profligate
and imbecile nobility. How then could there be a transformation of
character so sudden, and a precipitate movement requiring such sheer,
desperate earnestness as this Woman’s strike?”
“All that you say,” replied Mr. Lister, “has been more or less true
of woman’s character in the narrow conditions into which she has been
forced in the past, but you must bear in mind that man as yet has
never seen woman in her deepest and truest character. The warped and
distorted exhibition of woman which has been given up to this day, has
been, in the main, like the acting of fantastically dressed puppets in
a children’s show. It is for the future, dating from this great Woman’s
Strike to show the sublime possibilities of woman’s real character.
And how in Heaven’s name could woman have shown any strength of purpose
in the past? Robbed of all other means of employing her brilliant
faculties, and bowed down to the doctrine that to look pretty was the
chief end of her being, what wonder that her taste for the trappings
and frivolities of life should have become abnormally developed? What
wonder that being denied all distinction but a vain and showy social
distinction, to be obtained only through marriage, she should have
aimed at the tinsel stars in that firmament? If you bring up a child on
bon-bons and charlotte russe to the exclusion of a more natural diet,
you will have a very different kind of being from what you would have
if a less artificial regimen were adopted. But after all it was the
sudden discovery of her hitherto unsuspected power that transformed,
or, rather, gave vent to woman’s true character, as quickly as the
turning of a wheel. So long as she felt, as she had done for centuries,
that she was a beggar, beholden to man’s bounty for everything she
had, she submitted to being cajoled and wheedled by the airy trifles
which he prescribed for her, and which developed only one side of her
character. But when woman realized that she was in very truth a queen,
that she was man’s indispensable complement, and that as such she had
an equal right to the free development of all her faculties, and that
she possessed the means for enforcing that right, the scales fell from
her eyes. She struck so quickly that it was like the sudden stopping of
a clock, but it was the world’s pendulum that ceased to move.”
“But I cannot conceive,” I said, “what woman should want more than
you have told me has already been given her. As I understood you, she
already has every political and economic right that pertains to man.
Does she wish to compel man to do penance for the blackness of his
past sins toward her? Does she wish to make man acknowledge that he is
inferior to woman?”
“By no means,” said Mr. Lister. “The women were very careful in framing
the statement of their grievances, not only to acknowledge but to
distinctly proclaim their belief that man was the true head of woman,
and as such, was, when a true relationship should be established,
entitled to her most loyal recognition. But while she thus nobly
recognised his dynamic character, she none the less declared, as I have
told you, that she was his indispensable complement, that she was not a
whit less essential than he in the great plan of the universe, and that
she was, therefore, clearly entitled to the free development of her
own nature, untrammelled by the heavy burdens which have been heaped
upon her. Woman, who was made to be the glory of man, claims that man
knows nothing whatever of what that glory might be if she existed in an
atmosphere of freedom. She would be like the electric light as compared
with the tallow candle of our forefathers. It would be a glory that
would dazzle mankind.”
“But what is this freedom that woman seeks?” I said. “I beg you to tell
me at once what this great right is that she calls her MAGNA CHARTA.”
“It is,” said Mr. Lister, turning and looking me squarely in the face,
“the right to the perfect ownership of her own person.”
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