_April, 1892._
A century has passed since Mary Wollstonecraft published her
“Vindication of the Rights of Women,” and Maria Edgeworth, with greater
tact and knowledge of the world, pleaded for the higher education of
women in her “Letters to Literary Ladies.” Whatever views we may hold
as to the change, there can be no doubt that the modes of thought and
of life of women in all classes have altered considerably, for good
or for evil, in the last hundred years. It is, however, possible to
exaggerate the change, and to be mistaken both as to its causes and its
resulting tendencies; and now that there are signs of a new departure,
it may be as well to take stock and consider how we stand at present.
First and foremost the question presents itself, How do women stand
now with regard to that all-absorbing occupation obtained through
marriage? Their position in industry is so vitally affected by their
attitude towards marriage, and by the attitude of those around them,
they are so constantly called upon to balance an industrial gain with
social loss, that before all things it is necessary to see on what the
expectation of marriage is grounded and the effect produced by it on
efficiency and wages. After marriage we should estimate not so much the
effect of marriage on industrial position, but rather the effect of
industry on domestic life.
In calculating the possibilities of marriage on a statistical basis,
the method is frequently adopted of subtracting all the widows from
the population and pointing out that in the remainder (the widowers
not being subtracted) there is a slight surplus of men; the moral is
drawn that every woman can get married if she will only make herself
agreeable, and not be too particular. Putting aside the practical
objection that all men are not able to support a wife, and the
sentimental one that numerical equality does not guarantee mutual
attraction, this method of calculation ignores several important facts.
One of these is the preference that men feel for women younger than
themselves as wives and that women feel for men older than themselves
as husbands. Granted an equal number of males and females between the
ages of eighteen and thirty, we have not therefore in English society
an equal number of marriageable men and women. Wherever rather late
marriage is the rule with men--that is, wherever there is a high
standard of comfort--the disproportion is correspondingly great. In a
district where boy-and-girl marriages are very common, everybody can
be married and be more or less miserable ever after; but in the upper
middle class equality in numbers at certain ages implies a surplus
of marriageable women over marriageable men. Nor do equal numbers at
the same age imply equal numbers in the same locality. Women’s work
and men’s work cannot always be found in equal proportions in the
same district; and class habits may affect the stream of migration
differently. The daughters of working-men go out to service or
emigrate, while the daughters of well-to-do people stay at home; while,
on the other hand, the percentage of sons of professional men who go to
the colonies or to India is probably much greater than the percentage
of sons of working-men. There is a probability, therefore, that the
sexes will be distributed unequally in different districts and also in
different classes of society.