Part 10

By a leading article on Woman Suffrage, in the _Times_ of 29th April, 1892, a clear light is thrown on the causes which largely influenced the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to the poorer class of male citizens,—“a share of political power which they are not particularly well fitted to use,” says the _Times_;—and which denied the same right of franchise to women of whatever class. The intellect of the _Times_ enounces that—

“Without desiring to disparage the sex in any way, we must venture to maintain that in both camps a large female contingent would be a mischievous element. The female Conservative politician would be an obstacle to all rational reform; the female Liberal politician would be the advocate of every crude and febrile innovation. No doubt we have put plausible arguments in the mouths of mere logic-choppers by treating the franchise as a right rather than as a privilege and a trust. Men can demand a share of _political power which they are not particularly well fitted to use_, because they possess _de facto_ a share of the physical force upon which all political arrangements ultimately repose. Women do not possess such physical force, and, therefore, can prefer no such claim.”

Passing over, as unworthy of serious refutation, the wild assertions due to sex-bias in the first part of the above extract, it may be noted how instantly the lauded masculine weapon of logic is discarded and contemned as soon as it points in the direction of equal justice for woman. The “physical force” question is further dealt with in Note XLV., 6. But considering the words we have italicised, does not the whole of the _Times_ exposition as above justify the appellation of cowardly “fear”? (See also p. 78.)

_Id._... Yet an even more unworthy thing than denial of the suffrage has taken place, in that English women have been really robbed of their earlier franchises. A lady Poor Law Guardian of the Tewkesbury Union has written:—

“... the present position of women in regard to the various franchises is anomalous and contradictory, unworthy of that great growth of freedom which the nineteenth century has given to men, and degenerate as regards the position which women held in the days of the Plantagenets and the Tudors. Freedom for women has not broadened down ‘from precedent to precedent.’ Rather has it suffered by unnecessary legislative interference. Every woman, except the Queen, is, politically, non-existent. It was not always so. Restrictions unknown to our ancient constitution have crept in.... Chief Justice Lee is reported to have cited a case (in a manuscript collection of Hakewell’s), Catherine _v._ Surrey, in which it was expressly decided, that a _feme sole_, if she has a freehold, may vote for members of Parliament; and a further one (from the same collection), Holt _v._ Lyle, in which it was decided, that a _feme sole_ householder may claim a voice for Parliament men; but, if married, her husband must vote for her; whilst Justice Page declared, ‘I see no disability in a woman from voting for a Parliament man.’ So closely, in the minds of our Judges, were the local and Parliamentary franchises bound up, that a question as to the rights of women in local voting seemed to involve considerations as to their right to vote for Parliament men.

“Yet, even in the matter of these local franchises, women have suffered, and do suffer, from legislative tinkering and sex-biassed decisions in our law courts.

“Down to 1835, women, possessing the qualifications which entitled men to vote, voted freely in municipal elections, and in some important cities, such as London and Edinburgh, the civic rights even of married women, possessing a separate qualification from the husband, were well established. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, however (passed by the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne), was framed upon the evil precedent of the Reform Act of 1832, and by the use of the words ‘male persons,’ in treating of the franchises under it, disfranchised every woman in the boroughs to which it applied, and this disfranchisement lasted for thirty-four years.

“Nevertheless, in non-corporate districts, women continued to vote as freely as before, and thus secured the ultimate restitution of the rights of their disfranchised sisters in incorporated districts; for, when in 1869, on the consideration of the Municipal Franchise Bill of that year, these peculiar facts were brought to the notice of the House of Commons, and it was shown that the incorporation of any district involved the summary disfranchisement of the women ratepayers, the House, without a dissentient word, or any shadow of opposition, adopted the proposal to omit the word ‘male’ before the word ‘person’ in Section 1 of the Bill, and thus restored the rights of the women ratepayers, of whom many thousands voted, as a consequence of the passing of the Act, in the municipal elections of the following November.”—Mrs. Harriett McIlquham (“The Enfranchisement of Women: An Ancient Right, a Modern Need,” pp. 5, 12, 13.)

8.—“... _infants, felons, fools_ ...”

This legal courteousness has afforded Miss Frances Power Cobbe the text for an instructive paper: “Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors: Is the Classification Sound?” (_Fraser’s Magazine_, December, 1868.)

A recent instance of the official collocation is to be found in the Act 5 and 6 Vict., Cap. 35, Sec. 41:—

“And be it enacted, that the trustee, guardian, tutor, curator, or committee of any person, being an infant, or married woman, lunatic, idiot, or insane, and having the direction, control, or management of the property or concern of such infant, married woman, lunatic, idiot, or insane person, whether such infant, married woman, lunatic, idiot, or insane person shall reside in the United Kingdom or not,” etc., etc.

XXXVIII.

7.—“... _every bond erased_ ...”

“In the struggle of the races, keeping in view the teachings of evolutionists, the most reasonable and sensible thing, in addition to its _justness_, appears to be this:

“First, to place women on an equal footing with men, socially, and _in the eyes of the law_. Before _that_ is done, it is useless to talk about women’s superiority or equality. It is all breath and words, or paper and ink. In the eyes of the law she is man’s inferior. That is not all. In the eyes of the law the most cultured woman is inferior to the most uncultured man; she is, in fact, pretty much on a level with a baby, or a boy or girl under age. Moreover, the most cultured woman in the United Kingdom is considered inferior, politically, to the American negro!

“Second, let the two sexes settle matters among themselves, as far as intellect is concerned, as men now settle matters among themselves, without imposing on each other any disability. Those of both sexes who are weak will soon find their intellectual level; and those of both sexes who are strong will soon come to the front.”—Emanuel Bonavia, M.D. (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).

XXXIX.

2.—“... _equal power of rule_ ...”

“Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men, Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men; ... Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands, Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands, Where the city of the best bodied mothers stands, There the great city stands.” —Walt Whitman (“Song of the Broad Axe”).

3.—“_Her voice in council and in senate_ ...”

“Is there so great a superfluity of men fit for high duties, that society can afford to reject the service of any competent person? Are we so certain of always finding a man made to our hands for any duty or function of social importance which falls vacant, that we lose nothing by putting a ban on one half of mankind and refusing beforehand to make their faculties available, however distinguished they may be? And even if we could do without them, would it be consistent with justice to refuse to them their fair share of honour and distinction, or to deny to them the equal right of all human beings to choose their occupation (short of injury to others) according to their own preferences, at their own risk? Nor is the injustice confined to them, it is shared by those who are in a position to benefit by their services. To ordain that any kind of persons shall not be physicians, or shall not be advocates, or shall not be members of parliament, is to injure not them only, but all who employ physicians, or advocates, or elect members of parliament.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 94).

4.—“... _harmonising word_ ...”

“... the main reason why so many thoughtful women now claim direct Parliamentary representation is an unselfish one. They desire to take their full share in the service of the race; to help to solve those grave social problems now so urgently pressing, and which demand for their solution the combined resources of the wisdom, experience, and heart of both halves of humanity. They know that the time is fast coming—if, indeed, it be not already come—which will need for its direction and control something more than diplomatic cleverness or political manœuvring, which will demand the clearer conscience and the more sensitive perception of justice born of imaginative sympathy. It is because they hope and believe that in virtue of their faculty of motherhood they can contribute somewhat of these elements to the world’s well-being, and can thus speed its progress towards a nobler future, that they claim full right and power to follow and fulfil their highest conceptions of duty.”—Elizabeth C. Wolstenholme Elmy (“The Decision in the Clitheroe Case and its Consequences,” p. 17).

7.—“_Self-reverent each and reverencing each_.” —A line from Part VII. of Tennyson’s “Princess.”

_Id._... “The exigencies of the new life are no more exclusive of the virtues of generosity than those of the old, but it no longer entirely depends on them. The main foundations of the moral life of modern times must be justice and prudence; the respect of each for the rights of every other, and the ability of each to take care of himself.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 159).

XL.

1.—“... _but a slave himself_ ...”

“The domination of either sex over the other paralyses the dominion of either.”—Ellen Sarah, Lady Bowyer (Letter to _Daily News_, 24th October, 1891).

_Id._...

“Can man be free if woman be a slave? Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air To the corruption of a closed grave! Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare To trample their oppressors?” —Shelley (“The Revolt of Islam,” Canto 2, s. xliii.).

2.—“... _she to shape her own career be free_ ...”

“Not less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong—is the idea that woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her weakness by the pre-eminence of his fortitude. This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors, respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave.”—John Ruskin (“Of Queens’ Gardens,” p. 125).

4.—“_Free mistress of her person’s sacred plan_.”

Eliza W. Farnham (in “Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 92) clearly enunciates the depth of degradation and slavery from which woman’s person must be freed:—“When this mastery is established, and ownership of her becomes a fixed fact, she who was worshipped, vowed to as an idol, deferred to as a mistress, required to conform herself to nothing except the very pleasant requirement that she should take her own way in everything; to come and go, to accept or reject, to do or not, at her own supreme pleasure—this being may find herself awaking in a state of subjection which deprives her of the most sacred right to her own person—makes her the slave of an exacting demand that ignores the conditions, emotions, susceptibilities, pains, and pleasures of her life, as tyrannically and systematically as if she were indeed an insensate chattel.”

Happily, as far as England is concerned, our law no longer lends its power to enforce such a position.

5.—“_Free human soul_ ...”

Woman’s deep and wholesome impulse and yearning for individual freedom and selfdom is well-spoken in the following lines, by an anonymous writer; touchingly shown also is the unsufficingness to her soul of even the most honeyed of unequal positions:—

“Oh, to be alone! To escape from the work, the play, The talking every day; To escape from all I have done, And all that remains to do. To escape—yes, even from you, My only love, and be Alone and free.

Could I only stand Between gray moor and gray sky, Where the winds and the plovers cry, And no man is at hand; And feel the free wind blow On my rain-wet face, and know I am free—not yours, but my own— Free, and alone!

For the soft firelight And the home of your heart, my dear, They hurt, being always here. I want to stand upright, And to cool my eyes in the air, And to see how my back can bear Burdens—to try, to know, To learn, to grow!

I am only you! I am yours, part of you, your wife! And I have no other life. I cannot think, cannot do; I cannot breathe, cannot see; There is ‘us,’ but there is not ‘me’:— And worst, at your kiss I grow Contented so.”

7.—“_From woman slave can come but menial race_,”

“If the result to the family is such as I have described what must be the effect on the race? A slow but sure degeneration. And has this not taken place? Is the race now such as you read of it in early times before the Mogul invasion brought the Zenana and child-marriage in its train? Where are the Rajputs and the Mahrattas with their manly exercises and their mental vigour? For centuries you have been children of children, and there is no surer way of becoming servants of servants.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (“Address to the Hindoos,” p. 9).

_Id._... “If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (Letter to Talleyrand).

8.—“_The mother free confers her freedom and her grace_.”

“The child follows the blood of the mother; the son of a slave or serf father and a noble woman is noble. ‘It is the womb which dyes the child,’ they say in their primitive language.... ‘The woman bears the clan,’ say the Wyandot Indians, just as our ancestors said ‘The womb dyes the child!’”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Ch. XI., XVII.).

XLI.

1.—“_By her the progress of our future kind_.”

“What may man be? Who can tell? But what may woman be To have power over man from cradle to corruptible grave?” —William Blake (“Jerusalem”).

_Id._... “The application of the Pfeiffer bequest, ‘for charitable and educational purposes in favour of women,’ has been delayed by legal difficulties, but the Attorney General has now submitted to the Court of Chancery a first list of awards. Details given in the _Journal of Education_ show that Girton and Newnham Colleges receive £5,000 each, whilst Bedford College, Somerville Hall, the New Hospital for Women, the Maria Grey Training College, and a number of other institutions benefit by slightly smaller sums. The bequests will doubtless be welcomed by the recipients, for all the institutions included so far are doing useful work with very inadequate means, and it is to be hoped that the generous example of the London merchant and his literary wife will be often followed in the future. Women’s education—and girls’, too, for that matter—in this country is almost unendowed, and is yet expected to produce results equal to those gained in the richly endowed foundations for boys and men. The interest of the Pfeiffer bequest, however, lies rather in the spirit that prompted it and in the views of progress held by the donors than in the generosity of the gift or the precise manner of its distribution. In a letter explaining his wishes, Mr. Pfeiffer remarks:—

“I have always had and am adhering to the idea of leaving the bulk of my property in England for charitable and educational purposes in favour of women. Theirs is, to my mind, the great influence of the future. Education and culture and responsibility in more than one direction, including that of politics, will gradually fit them for the exercise of every power that could possibly work towards the regeneration of mankind. It is women who have hitherto had the worst of life, but their interest, and with their interest that of humanity, is secured, and I therefore am determined to help them to the best of my ability and means.”—_Manchester Guardian_, June 7th, 1892.

“Men are what their mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom which weaves huckaback, why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber. Ask the digger in the ditch to explain Newton’s laws; the fine organs of his brain have been pinched by overwork and squalid poverty from father to son, for a hundred years. When each comes forth from his mother’s womb, the gate of gifts closes behind him. Let him value his hands and feet, he has but one pair. So he has but one future, and that is already predetermined in his lobes, and described in that little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat form.”—Emerson (Essay on Fate).

_Id._... “The British _race_ cannot afford to dispense with _all_ the advantage that may be in embryo in the future female intellect, because men and some women are found who declare that women are intellectually inferior.... No amount of prayers and wishes and submitting to God’s will are of any avail. You must _use_ the organs of the intellect in order, not only to increase their efficiency, but to prevent their going from bad to worse. It might here be noted, that because the British people might choose to be satisfied with atrophy of the intellect lobes in their mothers, it will not at all follow that other nations will do so _also_. If such things as nations exist, there will always be rivalry and competition, and depend upon it those will be first whose mothers generally possess the most efficient intellect lobes.... Fortunately we have learnt another great lesson, evolved by Charles Darwin’s frontal lobes, and that is, that there is no such thing as a _fixed_ and _unalterable_ tissue or organism anywhere. All organisms and parts of organisms are _changeable_. Everything—organ and organism—_has_ changed in the past, _is_ changing in the present, and _will_ change in the future in accordance with the conditions that surround it. Women’s frontal lobes and grey matter will certainly be no exception to the rule. Emancipation, keeping her eyes open, and thinking for herself are the three main things she has to keep hammering at, until the lords of creation _see_ that they are the right things to do, to save future generations from universal imbecility.”—E. Bonavia, M.D. (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).

2.—“_Their stalwart body and their spacious mind_;”

“If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, How shall men grow?” —Tennyson (“The Princess,” Canto 7).

XLIII.

8.—“_Where lies her richest gift_, ...”

“As I have already said more than once, I consider it presumption in anyone to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be by natural constitution. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state, that their nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised, and no one can safely pronounce that if women’s nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men’s, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 104).

XLIV.

4.—“... _the freeman, equable_ ...”

“The freeman assuredly scorns equally to insult and to be insulted.”—Alexander Walker (“Woman as to Mind,” p. 205).

XLV.

2.—“... _equal freedom, equal fate_ ...”

“As long as boys and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both precisely alike. If you catch up one half of these creatures and train them to a particular set of actions and opinions, and the other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understandings will differ, as one or the other sort of occupations has called this or that talent into action. There is surely no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning in order to explain so very simple a phenomenon.”—Sydney Smith (“Female Education”).

_Id._... “Was it Mary Somerville who had to hide her books, and study her mathematics by stealth after all the family had gone to sleep, for fear of being scolded and worried because she allowed her intellect full scope? She has now a bust in the Royal Institution!... Whatever view of the case theoretical considerations may suggest, there is one fact beyond cavil, and it is this: that the female frontal lobes are not only capable of equalling in power the male lobes, but can surpass them _when allowed_ free scope. This has been recently proved in one of the universities, where a woman surpassed the senior wrangler in mathematics—an essentially intellectual work.”—Dr. Emanuel Bonavia (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).

The “girl graduate” last referred to is Miss Philippa Fawcett at the University Examinations, Cambridge, in June, 1890.

3.—“_Together reared_ ...”

“We find a good example in the United States, where, to the horror of learned and unlearned pedants of both sexes, numerous colleges exist in which large numbers of young men and women are educated together. And with what results? President White, of the University of Michigan, expresses himself thus: ‘For some years past a young woman has been the best scholar of the Greek language among 1,300 students; the best student in mathematics in one of the classes of our institution is a young woman, and many of the best scholars in natural and general science are also young women.’ Dr. Fairchild, President of Oberlin College in Ohio, in which over 1,000 students of both sexes study in mixed classes, says: ‘During an experience of eight years as Professor of the ancient languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and in the branches of ethics and philosophy, and during an experience of eleven years in theoretical and applied mathematics, the only difference which I have observed between the sexes was in the manner of their rhetoric.’ Edward H. Machill, President of Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, tells us that an experience of four years has forced him to the conclusion that the education of both sexes in common leads to the best moral results. This may be mentioned in passing as a reply to those who imagine such an education must endanger morality.”—Bebel (“Women,” Walther’s Translation, p. 131). (See also Notes to line 7, forward.)