way to help woman is to deny the fact of limitations. But I think the
great majority of reformers would take a different ground, and would say
that the two sexes are mutually limited by nature. They would doubtless
add that this very fact is an argument for the enfranchisement of woman:
for, if woman is a mere duplicate of man, man can represent her; but if
she has traits of her own, absolutely distinct from his, then he cannot
represent her, and she must have a voice and a vote of her own.
To this last body of believers I belong. I think that all legal or
conventional obstacles should be removed, which debar woman from
determining for herself, as freely as man determines, what the real
limitations of sex are, and what the merely conventional restriction.
But, when all is said and done, there is no doubt that plenty of
limitations will remain on both sides.
That man has his limitations, is clear. No matter how finely organized a
man may be, how sympathetic, how tender, how loving, there is yet a
barrier, never to be passed, that separates the most precious part of
the woman’s kingdom from him. All the wondrous world of motherhood, with
its unspeakable delights, its holy of holies, remains forever unknown by
him; he may gaze, but never enter. That halo of pure devotion, which
makes a Madonna out of so many a poor and ignorant woman, can never
touch his brow. Many a man loves children more than many a woman: but,
after all, it is not he who has borne them; to that peculiar sacredness
of experience he can never arrive. But never mind whether the loss be a
great one or a small one: it is distinctly a limitation; and to every
loving mother it is a limitation so important that she would be unable
to weigh all the privileges and powers of manhood against this peculiar
possession of her child.
Now, if this be true, and if man be thus distinctly limited by the mere
fact of sex, can the woman complain that she also should have some
natural limitations? Grant that she should have no unnecessary
restrictions; and that the course of human progress is constantly
setting aside, as needless, point after point that was once held
essential. Still, if she finds—as she undoubtedly will find—that natural
barriers and hindrances remain at last, and that she can no more do
man’s whole work in the world than he can do hers, why should she
complain? If he can accept his limitations, she must be prepared also to
accept hers.
Some of our physiological reformers declare that a girl will be
perfectly healthy if she can only be sensibly dressed, and can “have
just as much out-door exercise as the boys, and of the same sort, if she
choose it.” But I have observed that matter a good deal, and have
watched the effect of boyish exercise on a good many girls; and I am
satisfied that so far from being safely turned loose, as boys can be,
they need, for physical health, the constant supervision of wise
mothers. Otherwise the very exposure that only hardens the boy may make
the girl an invalid for life. The danger comes from a greater
sensitiveness of structure,—not weakness, properly so called, since it
gives, in certain ways, more power of endurance,—a greater sensitiveness
which runs through all a woman’s career, and is the expensive price she
pays for the divine destiny of motherhood. It is another natural
limitation.
No wise person believes in any “reform against Nature,” or that we can
get beyond the laws of Nature. If I believed the limitations of sex to
be inconsistent with woman suffrage for instance, I should oppose this;
but I do not see why a woman cannot form political opinions by her
baby’s cradle, as well as her husband in his workshop, while her very
love for the child commits her to an interest in good government. Our
duty is to remove all the artificial restrictions we can. That done, it
will not be hard for man or woman to acquiesce in the natural
limitations.
TEMPERAMENT.
Ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς ἡ αὐτὴ ἀρετή.—ANTISTHENES _in Diogenes Laertius_,
vi. 1, 5.
“Virtue in man and woman is the same.”
XI.
THE INVISIBLE LADY.
The Invisible Lady, as advertised in all our cities a good many years
ago, was a mysterious individual who remained unseen, and had apparently
no human organs except a brain and a tongue. You asked questions of her,
and she made intelligent answers; but where she was, you could no more
discover than you could find the man inside the Automaton Chess-Player.
Was she intended as a satire on womankind, or as a sincere
representation of what womankind should be? To many men, doubtless, she
would have seemed the ideal of her sex, could only her brain and tongue
have disappeared like the rest of her faculties. Such men would have
liked her almost as well as that other mysterious personage on the
London sign-board, labelled “The Good Woman,” and represented by a
female figure without a head.
It is not that any considerable portion of mankind actually wishes to
abolish woman from the universe. But the opinion dies hard that she is
best off when least visible. These appeals which still meet us for “the
sacred privacy of woman” are only the Invisible Lady on a larger scale.
In ancient Bœotia, brides were carried home in vehicles whose wheels
were burned at the door in token that they would never again be needed.
In ancient Rome, it was a queen’s epitaph, “She staid at home, and
spun,”—_Domum servavit, lanum fecit_. In Turkey, not even the officers
of justice can enter the apartments of a woman without her lord’s
consent. In Spain and Spanish America, the veil replaces the four walls
of the house, and is a portable seclusion. To be visible is at best a
sign of peasant blood and occupations; to be high-bred is to be
invisible.
In the Azores I found that each peasant family endeavored to secure for
one or more of its daughters the pride and glory of living unseen. The
other sisters, secure in innocence, tended cattle on lonely
mountain-sides, or toiled bare-legged up the steep ascents, their heads
crowned with orange-baskets. The chosen sister was taught to read, to
embroider, and to dwell indoors; if she went out it was only under
escort, and with her face buried in a hood of almost incredible size,
affording only a glimpse of the poor pale cheeks, so unlike the rosy
vigor of the damsels on the mountain-side. The girls, I was told, did
not covet this privilege of seclusion; but let us be genteel, or die.
Now all that is left of the Invisible Lady among ourselves is only the
remnant of this absurd tradition. In the seaside town where I write,
ladies usually go veiled in the streets, and so general is the practice
that little girls often veil their dolls. They all suppose it to be done
for complexion or for ornament; just as people still hang straps on the
backs of their carriages, not knowing that it is a relic of the days
when footmen stood there and held on. But the veil represents a
tradition of seclusion, whether we know it or not; and the dread of
hearing a woman speak in public, or of seeing a woman vote, represents
precisely the same tradition. It is entitled to no less respect, and no
more.
Like all traditions, it finds something in human nature to which to
attach itself. Early girlhood, like early boyhood, needs to be guarded
and sheltered, that it may mature unharmed. It is monstrous to make this
an excuse for keeping a woman, any more than a man, in a condition of
perpetual subordination and seclusion. The young lover wishes to lock up
his angel in a little world of her own, where none may intrude. The
harem and the seraglio are simply the embodiment of this desire. But the
maturer man, and the maturer race, have found that the beloved being
should be something more.
After this discovery is made, the theory of the Invisible Lady
disappears. It is less of a shock to an American to hear a woman speak
in public than it is to an Oriental to see her show her face in public
at all. Once open the door of the harem, and she has the freedom of the
house: the house includes the front door, and the street is but a
prolonged doorstep. With the freedom of the street comes inevitably a
free access to the platform, the tribunal, and the pulpit. You might as
well try to stop the air in its escape from a punctured balloon, as to
try, when woman is once out of the harem, to put her back there. Ceasing
to be an Invisible Lady, she must become a visible force: there is no
middle ground. There is no danger that she will not be anchored to the
cradle, when cradle there is; but it will be by an elastic cable, that
will leave her as free to think and vote as to pray. No woman is less a
mother because she cares for all the concerns of the world into which
her child is born. It was John Quincy Adams who said, defending the
political petitions of the women of Plymouth, that “women are not only
justified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from
the domestic circle, and enter on the concerns of their country, of
humanity, and of their God.”
XII.
SACRED OBSCURITY.
In the preface to that ill-named but delightful book, the “Remains of
the late Mrs. Richard Trench,” there is a singular remark by the editor,
her son. He says that “the adage is certainly true in regard to the
British matron, _Bene vixit quæ bene latuit_,” the meaning of this adage
being, “She has lived well who has kept herself well out of sight.”
Applying this to his beloved mother, he further expresses a regret at
disturbing her “sacred obscurity.” Then he goes on to disturb it pretty
effectually by printing a thick octavo volume of her most private
letters.
It is a great source of strength and advantage to reformers, that there
are always men preserved to be living examples of this good old Oriental
doctrine of “sacred obscurity.” Just as Mr. Darwin needs for the
demonstration of his theory that the lower orders of creation should
still be present in visible form for purposes of comparison, so every
reformer needs to fortify his position by showing examples of the
original attitude from which society has been gradually emerging. If
there had been no Oriental seclusion, many things in the present
position of woman would be inexplicable. But when we point to that; when
we show that even in the more enlightened Eastern countries it is still
held indecorous to allude to the feminine members of a man’s family;
when we see among the Christian nations of Southern Europe many
lingering traits of this same habit of seclusion; and when we find an
archdeacon of the English Church still clinging to the theory, even
while exhibiting his mother’s family letters to the whole world,—we more
easily understand the course of development.
These re-assertions of the Oriental theory are simply reversions, as a
naturalist would say, to the original type. They are instances of
“atavism,” like the occasional appearance of six fingers on one hand in
a family where the great-great-grandfather happened to possess that
ornament. Such instances can always be found, when one takes the pains
to look for them. Thus a critic, discussing in the Atlantic Monthly Mr.
Mahaffy’s book on “Social Life in Greece,” is surprised that this writer
should quote, in proof of the degradation of woman in Athens, the remark
attributed to Pericles, “That woman is best who is least spoken of among
men, whether for good or for evil.” “In our opinion,” adds the reviewer,
“that remark was wise then, and is wise now.” The Oriental theory is not
then, it seems, extinct; and we are spared the pains of proving that it
ever existed.
If this theory be true, how falsely has the admiration of mankind been
given! If the most obscure woman is best, the most conspicuous must
undoubtedly be worst. Tried by this standard, how unworthy must have
been Elizabeth Barrett Browning, how reprehensible must be Dorothea Dix,
what a model of all that is discreditable is Rosa Bonheur, what a
crowning instance of human depravity is Florence Nightingale! Yet how
consoling the thought, that, while these disreputable persons were thus
wasting their substance in the riotous performance of what the world
weakly styled good deeds, there were always women who saw the folly of
such efforts, women who by steady devotion to eating, drinking, and
sleeping continued to keep themselves in sacred obscurity, and to prove
themselves the ornaments of their sex, inasmuch as no human being ever
had occasion to mention their names!
But alas for human inconsistency! As for this inverse-ratio theory,—this
theory of virtue so exalted that it has never been known or felt or
mentioned among men,—it is to be observed that those who hold it are the
first to desert it when stirred by an immediate occasion. Just as a
slaveholder, in the old times, after demonstrating to you that freedom
was a curse to the negro, would instantly turn round, and inflict this
greatest of all curses on some slave who had saved his life; so, I fear,
would one of these philosophers, if he were profoundly impressed with
any great action done by a woman, give the lie to all his theories, and
celebrate her fame. In spite of all his fine principles, if he happened
to be rescued from drowning by Grace Darling, he would put her name in
the newspaper; if he were tended in hospital by Clara Barton, he would
sound her praise; and, if his mother wrote as good letters as did Mrs.
Trench, he would probably print them to the extent of five hundred
pages, as the archdeacon did, and all his gospel of silence would exhale
itself in a single sigh of regret in the preface.
XIII.
“OUR TRIALS.”
A Providence (R.I.) newspaper remarked some time since that Mrs.
Livermore had just delivered in Newport her celebrated lecture, “What
shall we do with our Trials?” It was, I suppose, one of those felicitous
misprints, by which compositors build better than they know. The real
title of the lecture was, “What shall we do with our Girls?” Perhaps it
was the unconscious witticism of some poetic young typesetter, to whom
damsels were as yet only pleasing pains; or of some premature cynic of
the printing-office, who was in the habit of regarding himself as a
Blighted Being.
Yet to how many is this morose phrase “humanly adaptive,” as Mrs.
Browning abstrusely says! Anxious mothers, for instance, will accept it,
the mothers of the thousands of surplus maidens—or whatever the
statistics say—in Massachusetts. Frederica Bremer inserts in one of her
novels an “Extra Leaf on Daughter-full Houses;” an extra that should
have a large circulation in many towns of New England. The most heroic
and unflinching remedy for this class of trials, so far as my knowledge
goes, was that announced by a small relative of my own, aged three, who
sitting on the floor thus soliloquized to her doll: “If I had too many
daughters, I’d take ’em into the woods and lose ’em—I’d take ’em to the
sea and push ’em in: I wouldn’t have too many daughters!” She is now a
happy wife and mother; but Fate, warned in time by such exceeding
plainness of speech, has judiciously endowed her chiefly with sons.
Most of the serious assertion that women are trials comes from masculine
wisdom. One hears a good deal of it in summer, at the seaside, from the
marriageable youth of some of our chief cities. After a languid hour’s
chat upon tailors or boots or the proper appointments of a harness,—or
of the groom, so perfectly costumed that he seems but a part of the
harness,—how often they fall to lamenting the extravagance, the
exactions, the general unmarriageableness, of the young women of the
present day! Some wit once said that the Pilgrim Mothers had much more
to bear than the Pilgrim Fathers, since the Mothers had not only to
endure the cold and the hunger, but to endure the Fathers beside. In
hearing these remarks I have sometimes thought that these young ladies
must be extravagant indeed, if, in addition to their own expenses, they
take to themselves so very costly a luxury as a fashionable husband.
And I think that wiser critics than these youths are sometimes tempted
into treating these lovely and lovable “trials” in too severely hopeless
a way. There is folly enough on the surface, no doubt, and something of
it below the surface: yet who does not remember how, in time of need,
all these follies proved themselves, during our civil war, but
superficial things? The very maidens over whom we had shaken our anxious
heads were suddenly those who with pale cheeks bade their lovers leave
them, or who changed their gorgeous array for the plain garments of the
hospital. So far as I can judge, there is not a young girl within the
range of my knowledge who can confidently be insured against marrying a
poor artist or a poorer army officer to-morrow, should she once fall
thoroughly in love. And, once married, she will very probably develop a
power of self-denial, of economy, and of dressing herself and baby
gracefully out of the cast-off clothes of her genteel relations,—in a
way to put her critics to shame. I think we ought all patiently to
endure “trials” that turn to such blessings in the end.
For one, I can truly say, with charming Mrs. Trench in her letters
written in 1816, “I do believe the girls of the present day have not
lost the power of blushing; and, though I have no grown-up daughters, I
enjoy the friendship of some who might be my daughters, in whom the
greatest delicacy and modesty are united with perfect ease of manner,
and habitual intercourse with the world.” And if this is the case,—and I
think we shall all own it to be so,—we may as well have the
typographical error corrected, after all, and hereafter say—for “trials”
read “girls.”
XIV.
VIRTUES IN COMMON.
A young friend of mine, who was educated at one of the very best schools
for girls in New York City, told me that one day her teacher requested
the older girls to write out a list of virtues suitable to manly
character, which they did. A month or more later, when this occurrence
was well forgotten, the same teacher bade them write out a list of
womanly virtues, she making no reference to the other list. Then she
made each girl compare her lists; and they all found with surprise that
there was no substantial difference between them. The only variation, in
most cases, was, that they had put in a rather vague special virtue of
“manliness” in the one case, and “womanliness” in the other; a sort of
miscellaneous department or “odd drawer,” apparently, in which to group
all traits not easily analyzed.
The moral is, that, as tested by the common-sense of these young people,
duty is duty, and the difference between ethics for men and ethics for
women lies simply in practical applications, not in principles.
Who can deny that the philosopher Antisthenes was right when he said,
“The virtues of the man and the woman are the same”? Not the Christian,
certainly; for he accepts as his highest standard the being who in all
history best united the highest qualities of both sexes. Not the
metaphysician; for his analysis deals with the human mind as such, not
with the mind of either sex. Not the evolutionist; for he is accustomed
to trace back qualities to their source, and cannot deny that there is
in each sex at least a “survival” of every good and every bad trait. We
may say that these qualities are, or may be, or ought to be, distributed
unequally between the sexes; but we cannot reasonably deny that each sex
possesses a share of every quality, and that what is good in one sex is
also good in the other. Man may be the braver, and yet courage in a
woman may be nobler than cowardice. Woman may be the purer, and yet
purity may be noble in a man.
So clear is this, that some of the very coarsest writers in all
literature, and those who have been severest upon women, have yet been
obliged to acknowledge it. Take, for instance, Dean Swift, who writes:—
“I am ignorant of any one quality that is amiable in a woman, which
is not equally so in a man. I do not except even modesty and
gentleness of nature; nor do I know one vice or folly which is not
equally detestable in both.”
Mrs. Jameson, in her delightful “Commonplace Book,” illustrates this
admirably by one or two test cases. She takes, for instance, from one of
Humboldt’s letters a much-admired passage on manly character:—
“Masculine independence of mind I hold to be in reality the first
requisite for the formation of a character of real manly worth. The
man who allows himself to be deceived and carried away by his own
weakness, may be a very amiable person in other respects, but cannot
be called a good man: such beings should not find favor in the eyes
of a woman, for a truly beautiful and purely feminine nature should
be attracted only by what is highest and noblest in the character of
man.”
“Take now this same bit of moral philosophy,” she says, “and apply it to
the feminine character, and it reads quite as well:—
“‘Feminine independence of mind I hold to be in reality the first
requisite for the formation of a character of real feminine worth.
The woman who allows herself to be deceived and carried away by her
own weakness, may be a very amiable person in other respects, but
cannot be called a good woman; such beings should not find favor in
the eyes of a man, for a truly beautiful and purely manly nature
should be attracted only by what is highest and noblest in the
character of woman.’”
I have never been able to perceive that there was a quality or grace of
character which really belonged exclusively to either sex, or which
failed to win honor when wisely exercised by either. It is not thought
necessary to have separate editions of books on ethical science, the one
for man, the other for woman, like almanacs calculated for different
latitudes. The books that vary are not the scientific works, but little
manuals of practical application,—“Duties of Men,” “Duties of Women.”
These vary with times and places: where women do not know how to read,
no advice on reading will be found in the women’s manuals; where it is
held wrong for women to uncover the face, it will be laid down in these
manuals as a sin. But ethics are ethics: the great principles of morals,
as proclaimed either by science or by religion, do not fluctuate for
sex; their basis is in the very foundations of right itself.
This grows clearer when we remember that it is equally true in mental
science. There is not one logic for men, and another for women; a
separate syllogism, a separate induction: the moment we begin to state
intellectual principles, that moment we go beyond sex. We deal then with
absolute truth. If an observation is wrong, if a process of reasoning is
bad, it makes no difference who brings it forward. Any list of mental
processes, any inventory of the contents of the mind, would be
identical, so far as sex goes, whether compiled by a woman or a man.
These things, like the circulation of the blood or the digestion of
food, belong clearly to the ground held in common. The London Spectator
well said lately,—
“After all, knowledge is knowledge; and there is no more a
specifically feminine way of describing correctly the origin of the
Lollard movement, or the character of Spenser’s poetry, than there
is a specifically feminine way of solving a quadratic equation, or
of proving the forty-seventh problem of Euclid’s first book.”
All we can say in modification of this is, that there is, after all, a
foundation for the rather vague item of “manliness” and “womanliness” in
these schoolgirl lists of duties. There is a difference, after all is
said and done; but it is something that eludes analysis, like the
differing perfume of two flowers of the same genus and even of the same
species. The method of thought must be essentially the same in both
sexes; and yet an average woman will put more flavor of something we
call instinct into her mental action, and the average man something more
of what we call logic into his. Whipple tells us that not a man guessed
the plot of Dickens’s “Great Expectations,” while many women did; and
this certainly indicates some average difference of quality or method.
So the average opinions of a hundred women, on some question of ethics,
might very probably differ from the average of a hundred men, while yet
it remains true that “the virtues of the man and the woman are the
same.”
XV.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES.