THE REASON FIRM, THE TEMPERATE WILL

It is a part of the necessary theory of republican government, that every
class and race shall be judged by its highest types, not its lowest. The
proposition of the French revolutionary statesman, to begin the work of
purifying the world by arresting all the cowards and knaves, is liable to
the objection that it would find victims in every circle. Republican
government begins at the other end, and assumes that the community
generally has good intentions at least, and some common sense, however
it may be with individuals. Take the very quality which the newspapers so
often deny to women,--the quality of steadiness. "In fact, men's great
objection to the entrance of the female mind into politics is drawn from a
suspicion of its unsteadiness on matters in which the feelings could by
any possibility be enlisted." Thus says the New York "Nation." Let us
consider this implied charge against women, and consider it not by
generalizing from a single instance,--"just like a woman," as the editors
would doubtless say, if a woman had done it,--but by observing whole
classes of that sex, taken together.

These classes need some care in selection, for the plain reason that there
are comparatively few circles in which women have yet been allowed enough
freedom of scope, or have acted sufficiently on the same plane with men, to
furnish a fair estimate of their probable action, were they enfranchised.
Still there occur to me three such classes,--the anti-slavery women, the
Quaker women, and the women who conduct philanthropic operations in our
large cities. If the alleged unsteadiness of women is to be felt in public
affairs, it would have been felt in these organizations. Has it been so
felt?

Of the anti-slavery movement I can personally testify--and I have heard the
same point fully recognized among my elders, such as Garrison, Phillips,
and Quincy--that the women contributed their full share, if not more than
their share, to the steadiness of that movement, even in times when the
feelings were most excited, as, for instance, in fugitive-slave cases. Who
that has seen mobs practically put down, and mayors cowed into decency, by
the silent dignity of those rows of women who sat, with their knitting,
more imperturbable than the men, can read without a smile these doubts of
the "steadiness" of that sex? Again, among Quaker women, I have asked the
opinion of prominent Friends, as of John G. Whittier, whether it has been
the experience of that body that women were more flighty and unsteady
than men in their official action; and have been uniformly answered in the
negative. And finally, as to benevolent organizations, a good test is given
in the fact,--first pointed out, I believe, by that eminently practical
philanthropist, Rev. Augustus Woodbury of Providence,--that the whole
tendency has been, during the last twenty years, to put the management,
even the financial control, of our benevolent societies, more and more into
the hands of women, and that there has never been the slightest reason to
reverse this policy. Ask the secretaries of the various boards of State
Charities, or the officers of the Social Science Associations, if they have
found reason to complain of the want of steadfast qualities in the "weaker
sex." Why is it that the legislation of Massachusetts has assigned the
class requiring the steadiest of all supervision--the imprisoned
convicts--to "five commissioners of prisons, two of whom shall be women"?
These are the points which it would be worthy of our journals to consider,
instead of hastily generalizing from single instances. Let us appeal from
the typical woman of the editorial picture,--fickle, unsteady,
foolish,--to the nobler conception of womanhood which the poet Wordsworth
found fulfilled in his own household:--

  "A being breathing thoughtful breath,
  A traveller betwixt life and death;
  _The reason firm, the temperate will;
  Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;_
  A perfect woman, nobly planned
  To warn, to comfort, to command,
  And yet a spirit still, and bright
  With something of an angel light."

ALLURES TO BRIGHTER WORLDS, AND LEADS THE WAY

When a certain legislature had "School Suffrage" under consideration, the
other day, the suggestion was made by one of the pithiest and quaintest of
the speakers, that men were always better for the society of women, and
therefore ought to vote in their company. "If all of us," he said, "would
stay away from all places where we cannot take our wives and daughters with
us, we should keep better company than we now do." This expresses a feeling
which grows more and more common among the better class of men, and which
is the key to much progress in the condition of women. There can be no
doubt that the increased association of the sexes in society, in school, in
literature, tends to purify these several spheres of action. Yet, when we
come to philosophize on this, there occur some perplexities on the way.

For instance, the exclusion of woman from all these spheres was in ancient
Greece almost complete; yet the leading Greek poets, as Homer and the
tragedians, are exceedingly chaste in tone, and in this respect beyond most
of the great poets of modern nations. Again, no European nation has quite
so far sequestered and subordinated women as has Spain; and yet the whole
tone of Spanish literature is conspicuously grave and decorous. This
plainly indicates that race has much to do with the matter, and that the
mere admission or exclusion of women is but one among several factors. In
short, it is easy to make out a case by a rhetorical use of the facts on
one side; but, if we look at all the facts, the matter presents greater
difficulties.

Again, it is to be noted that in several countries the first women who have
taken prominent part in literature have been as bad as the men; as, for
instance, Marguerite of Navarre and Mrs. Aphra Behn. This might indeed be
explained by supposing that they had to gain entrance into literature by
accepting the dissolute standards which they found prevailing. But it would
probably be more correct to say that these standards themselves were
variable, and that their variation affected, at certain periods, women as
well as men. Marguerite of Navarre wrote religious books as well as merry
stories; and we know from Lockhart's Life of Scott, that ladies of high
character in Edinburgh used to read Mrs. Behn's tales and plays aloud, at
one time, with delight,--although one of the same ladies found, in her old
age, that she could not read them to herself without blushing. Shakespeare
puts coarse repartees into the mouths of women of stainless virtue. George
Sand is not considered an unexceptionable writer; but she tells us in her
autobiography that she found among her grandmother's papers poems and
satires so indecent that she could not read them through, and yet they bore
the names of _abbés_ and gentlemen whom she remembered in her childhood as
models of dignity and honor. Voltaire inscribes to ladies of high rank, who
doubtless regarded it as a great compliment, verses such as not even a poet
of the English "fleshly school" would now print at all. In "Poems by
Eminent Ladies,"--published in 1755 and reprinted in 1774,--there are one
or two poems as gross and disgusting as anything in Swift; yet their
authors were thought reputable women. Allan Ramsay's "Tea-Table
Miscellany"--a collection of English and Scottish songs--was first
published in 1724; and in his preface to the sixteenth edition the editor
attributes its great success, especially among the ladies, to the fact that
he has carefully excluded all grossness, "that the modest voice and ear of
the fair singer might meet with no affront;" and adds, "the chief bent of
all my studies being to attain their good graces." There is no doubt of the
great popularity enjoyed by the book in all circles; yet it contains a few
songs which the most licentious newspaper would not now publish. The
inference is irresistible, from this and many other similar facts, that the
whole tone of manners and decency has very greatly improved among the
European races within a century and a half.

I suspect the truth to be, that, besides the visible influence of race and
religion, there has been an insensible and almost unconscious improvement
in each sex, with respect to these matters, as time has passed on; and that
the mutual desire to please has enabled each sex to help the other,--the
sex which is naturally the more refined taking the lead. But I should lay
more stress on this mutual influence, and less on mere feminine
superiority, than would be laid by many. It is often claimed by teachers
that co-education helps not only boys, but also girls, to develop greater
propriety of manners. When the sexes are wholly separate, or associate on
terms of entire inequality, no such good influence occurs: the more equal
the association, the better for both parties. After all, the Divine model
is to be found in the family; and the best ingenuity cannot improve much
upon it.

IV

THE HOME

    "In respect to the powers and rights of married women, the law is by
    no means abreast of the spirit of the age. Here are seen the old
    fossil footprints of feudalism. The law relating to woman tends to
    make every family a barony or a monarchy or a despotism, of which
    the husband is the baron, king, or despot, and the wife the
    dependent, serf, or slave. That this is not always the fact, is not
    due to the law, but to the enlarged humanity which spurns the narrow
    limits of its rules. The progress of civilization has changed the
    family from a barony to a republic; but the law has not kept pace
    with the advance of ideas, manners, and customs."--W.W. STORY'S
    Treatise on Contracts not under Seal, § 84, third edition, p. 89.

WANTED--HOMES

We see advertisements, occasionally, of "Homes for Aged Women," and more
rarely "Homes for Aged Men." The question sometimes suggests itself,
whether it would not be better to begin the provision earlier, and see that
homes are also provided, in some form, for the middle-aged and even the
young. The trouble is, I suppose, that as it takes two to make a bargain,
so it takes at least two to make a home; and unluckily it takes only one to
spoil it.

Madame Roland once defined marriage as an institution where one person
undertakes to provide happiness for two; and many failures are accounted
for, no doubt, by this false basis. Sometimes it is the man, more often the
woman, of whom this extravagant demand is made. There are marriages which
have proved a wreck almost wholly through the fault of the wife. Nor is
this confined to wedded homes alone. I have known a son who lived alone,
patiently and uncomplainingly, with that saddest of all conceivable
companions, a drunken mother. I have known another young man who supported
in his own home a mother and sister, both habitual drunkards. All these
were American-born, and all of respectable social position. A house
shadowed by such misery is not a home, though it might have proved such but
for the sins of women. Such instances are, however, rare and occasional
compared with the cases where the same offence in the husband makes ruin of
the home.

Then there are the cases where indolence, or selfishness, or vanity, or the
love of social excitement, in the woman, unfits her for home life. Here we
come upon ground where perhaps woman is the greater sinner. It must be
remembered, however, that against this must be balanced the neglect
produced by club-life, or by the life of society-membership, in a man. A
brilliant young married belle in London once told me that she was glad her
husband was so fond of his club, for it amused him every night while she
went to balls. "Married men do not go much into society here," she said,
"unless they are regular flirts,--which I do not think my husband would
ever be, for he is very fond of me,--so he goes every night to his club,
and gets home about the same time that I do. It is a very nice
arrangement." It is perhaps needless to add that they are long since
divorced.

It is common to denounce club-life in our large cities as destructive of
the home. The modern club is simply a more refined substitute for the
old-fashioned tavern, and is on the whole an advance in morals as well as
manners. In our large cities a man in a certain social coterie belongs to a
club, if he can afford it, as a means of contact with his fellows, and to
have various conveniences which he cannot so economically obtain at home. A
few haunt clubs constantly; the many use them occasionally. More absorbing
than these, perhaps, are the secret societies which have so revived among
us since the war, and which consume time so fearfully. There was a case
mentioned in the newspapers lately of a man who belonged to some twenty of
these associations; and when he died, and each wished to conduct his
funeral, great was the strife! In the small city where I write there are
seventeen secret societies down in the directory, and I suppose as many
more not so conspicuous. I meet men who assure me that they habitually
attend a society meeting every evening of the week except Sunday, when
they go to church meeting. These are rarely men of leisure; they are
usually mechanics or business men of some kind, who are hard at work all
day, and never see their families except at meal-times. Their case is far
worse, so far as absence from home is concerned, than that of the
"club-men" of large cities; for these are often men of leisure, who, if
married, at least make home one of their lounging-places, which such
secret-society men do not.

I honestly believe that this melancholy desertion of the home is largely
due to the traditional separation between the alleged spheres of the sexes.
The theory still prevails largely, that home is the peculiar province of
the woman, that she has almost no duties out of it; and hence, naturally
enough, that the husband has almost no duties in it. If he is amused there,
let him stay there; but, as it is not his recognized sphere of duty, he is
not actually violating any duty by absenting himself. This theory even
pervades our manuals of morals, of metaphysics, and of popular science; and
it is not every public teacher who has the manliness, having once stated
it, to modify his statement, as did the venerable President Hopkins of
Williams College, when lecturing the other day to the young ladies of
Vassar.

"I would," he said, "at this point correct my teaching in 'The Law of Love'
to the effect that home is peculiarly the sphere of woman, and civil
government that of man. _I now regard the home as the joint sphere of man
and woman, and the sphere of civil government more of an open question as
between the two._ It is, however, to be lamented that the present agitation
concerning the rights of woman is so much a matter of 'rights' rather than
of 'duties,' as the reform of the latter would involve the former."

If our instructors in moral philosophy will only base their theory of
ethics as broadly as this, we shall no longer need to advertise "Homes
Wanted;" for the joint efforts of men and women will soon provide them.

THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION

Nothing throws more light on the whole history of woman than the first
illustration in Sir John Lubbock's "Origin of Civilization." A young girl,
almost naked, is being dragged furiously along the ground by a party of
naked savages, armed literally to the teeth, while those of another band
grasp her by the arm, and almost tear her asunder in the effort to hold her
back. These last are her brothers and her friends; the others are--her
enemies? As you please to call them. They are her future husband and his
kinsmen, who have come to aid him in his wooing.

This was the primitive rite of marriage. Vestiges of it still remain among
savage nations. And all the romance and grace of the most refined modern
marriage--the orange-blossoms, the bridal veil, the church service, the
wedding feast--these are only the "bright consummate flower" reared by
civilization from that rough seed. All the brutal encounter is softened
into this. Nothing remains of the barbarism except the one word "obey," and
even that is going.

Now, to say that a thing is going, is to say that it will presently be
gone. To say that anything is changed, is to say that it is to change
further. If it never has been altered, perhaps it will not be; but a proved
alteration of an inch in a year opens the way to an indefinite
modification. The study of the glaciers, for instance, began with the
discovery that they had moved; and from that moment no one doubted that
they were moving all the time.

It is the same with the position of woman. Once open your eyes to the fact
that it has changed, and who is to predict where the matter shall end? It
is sheer folly to say, "Her relative position will always be what it has
been," when one glance at Sir John Lubbock's picture shows that there is no
fixed "has been," but that her original position was long since altered and
revised. Those who still use this argument are like those who laughed at
the lines of stakes which Agassiz planted across the Aar glacier in 1840.
But the stakes settled the question, and proved the motion. _Però sim
muove_: "But it moves."

The motion once proved, the whole range of possible progress is before us.
The amazement of that Chinese visitor in Boston, the other day, when he saw
a woman addressing a missionary meeting; the astonishment of all English
visitors when young ladies teach classes in geometry and Latin, in our high
schools; the surprise of foreigners at seeing the rough throng in the
Cooper Institute reading-room submit to the sway of one young woman with a
crochet-needle--all these simply testify to the fact that the stakes have
moved. That they have yet been carried halfway to the end, who knows?

What a step from the horrible nuptials of those savage days to the poetic
marriage of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett--the "Sonnets from the
Portuguese" on one side, the "One Word More" on the other! But who can say
that the whole relation between man and woman reached its climax there, and
that where the past has brought changes so vast the future is to add
nothing? Who knows that, when "the world's great bridals come," people may
not look back with pity, even on this era of the Brownings? Perhaps even
Elizabeth Barrett promised to obey!

At any rate, it is safe to say that each step concedes the probability of
another. Even from the naked barbarian to the veiled Oriental, from the
savage hut to the carefully enshrined harem, there is a step forward. One
more step in the spiral line of progress has brought us to the unveiled
face and comparatively free movements of the English or American woman.
From the kitchen to the public lecture-room, from that to the
lecture-platform, and from that again to the ballot-box,--these are far
slighter steps than those which gradually lifted the savage girl of Sir
John Lubbock's picture into the possession of the alphabet and the dignity
of a home. So easy are these future changes beside those of the past, that
to doubt their possibility is as if Agassiz, after tracing year by year the
motion of his Alpine glacier, should deny its power to move one inch
farther into the sunny valley, and there to melt harmlessly away.

THE LOW-WATER MARK

We constantly see it assumed, in arguments against any step in the
elevation of woman, that her position is a thing fixed permanently by
nature, so that there can be in it no great or essential change. Every
successive modification is resisted as "a reform against nature;" and this
argument from permanence is always that which appears most convincing to
conservative minds. Let us see how the facts confirm it.

A story is going the rounds of the newspapers in regard to a Russian
peasant and his wife. For some act of disobedience the peasant took the law
into his own hands; and his mode of discipline was to tie the poor creature
naked to a post in the street, and to call on every passer-by to strike her
a blow. Not satisfied with this, he placed her on the ground, and tied
heavy weights on her limbs until one arm was broken. When finally released,
she made a complaint against him in court. The court discharged him on the
ground that he had not exceeded the legal authority of a husband.
Encouraged by this, he caused her to be arrested in return; and the same
court sentenced her to another public whipping for disobedience.

No authority was given for this story in the newspaper where I saw it; but
it certainly did not first appear in a woman-suffrage newspaper, and
cannot therefore be a manufactured "outrage." I use it simply to illustrate
the low-water mark at which the position of woman may rest, in the largest
Christian nation of the world. All the refinements, all the education, all
the comparative justice, of modern society, have been gradually upheaved
from some such depth as this. When the gypsies described by Leland treat
even the ground trodden upon by a woman as impure, they simply illustrate
the low plane from which all the elevation of woman has begun. All these
things show that the position of that sex in society, so far from being a
thing in itself permanent, has been in reality the most changing of all
factors in the social problem. And this inevitably suggests the question,
Are we any more sure that her present position is finally and absolutely
fixed than were those who observed it at any previous time in the world's
history? Granting that her condition was once at low-water mark, who is
authorized to say that it has yet reached high tide?

It is very possible that this Russian wife, once scourged back to
submission, ended her days in the conviction, and taught it to her
daughters, that such was a woman's rightful place. When an American woman
of to-day says, "I have all the rights I want," is she on any surer ground?
Grant that the difference is vast between the two. How do we know that even
the later condition is final, or that anything is final but entire equality
before the laws? It is not many years since William Story--in a legal work
inspired and revised by his father, the greatest of American jurists--wrote
this indignant protest against the injustice of the old common law:--

    "In respect to the powers and rights of married women, the law is by
    no means abreast of the spirit of the age. Here are seen the old
    fossil footprints of feudalism. The law relating to woman tends to
    make every family a barony or a monarchy, or a despotism, of which
    the husband is the baron, king, or despot, and the wife the
    dependent, serf, or slave. That this is not always the fact is not
    due to the law, but to the enlarged humanity which spurns the narrow
    limits of its rules. The progress of civilization has changed the
    family from a barony to a republic; but the law has not kept pace
    with the advance of ideas, manners, and customs. And, although
    public opinion is a check to legal rules on the subject, the rules
    are feudal and stern. Yet the position of woman throughout history
    serves as the criterion of the freedom of the people or an age. When
    man shall despise that right which is founded only on might, woman
    will be free and stand on an equal level with him,--a friend and not
    a dependent."[1]

We know that the law is greatly changed and ameliorated in many places
since Story wrote this statement; but we also know how almost every one of
these changes was resisted: and who is authorized to say that the final and
equitable fulfilment is yet reached?

[Footnote 1: Story's _Treatise on the Law of Contracts not under Seal_, §
84, p. 89.]

OBEY

After witnessing the marriage ceremony of the Episcopal Church, the other
day, I walked down the aisle with the young rector who had officiated. It
was natural to speak of the beauty of the Church service on an occasion
like that; but, after doing this, I felt compelled to protest against the
unrighteous pledge to obey. "I hope," I said, "to live to see that word
expunged from the Episcopal service, as it has been from that of the
Methodists. The Roman Catholics, you know, have never had it."

"Why do you object?" he asked. "Is it because you know that they will not
obey?"

"Because they ought not," I said.

"Well," said he, after a few moments' reflection, and looking up frankly,
"I do not think they ought!"

Here was a young clergyman of great earnestness and self-devotion, who
included it among the sacred duties of his life to impose upon ignorant
young girls a solemn obligation, which he yet thought they ought not to
incur, and did not believe that they would keep. There could hardly be a
better illustration of the confusion in the public mind, or the manner in
which "the subjection of woman" is being outgrown, or the subtile way in
which this subjection has been interwoven with sacred ties, and baptized
"duty."

The advocates of woman suffrage are constantly reproved for using the terms
"subjection," "oppression," and "slavery," as applied to woman. They simply
commit the same sin as that committed by the original abolitionists. They
are "as harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice." Of course they talk
about oppression and emancipation. It is the word _obey_ that constitutes
the one, and shows the need of the other. Whoever is pledged to obey is
technically and literally a slave, no matter how many roses surround the
chains. All the more so if the slavery is self-imposed, and surrounded by
all the prescriptions of religion. Make the marriage tie as close as church
or state can make it; but let it be equal, impartial. That it may be so,
the word _obey_ must be abandoned or made reciprocal. Where invariable
obedience is promised, equality is gone.

That there may be no doubt about the meaning of this word in the marriage
covenant, the usages of nations often add symbolic explanations. These are
generally simple, and brutal enough to be understood. The Hebrew ceremony,
when the bridegroom took off his slipper and struck the bride on the neck
as she crossed his threshold, was unmistakable. As my black sergeant said,
when a white prisoner questioned his authority, and he pointed to the
_chevrons_ on his sleeve, "Dat mean guv'ment." All these forms mean simply
government also. The ceremony of the slipper has now no recognition, except
when people fling an old shoe after the bride, which is held by
antiquarians to be the same observance. But it is all preserved and
concentrated into a single word, when the bride promises to obey.

The deepest wretchedness that has ever been put into human language, or
that has exceeded it, has grown out of that pledge. There is no misery on
earth like that of a pure and refined woman who finds herself owned, body
and soul, by a drunken, licentious, brutal man. The very fact that she is
held to obedience by a spiritual tie makes it worse. Chattel slavery was
not so bad; for, though the master might pervert religion for his own
satisfaction, he could not impose upon the slave. Never yet did I see a
negro slave who thought it a duty to obey his master; and therefore there
was always some dream of release. But who has not heard of some delicate
and refined woman, one day of whose torture was equivalent to years of that
possible to an obtuse frame,--who had the door of escape ready at hand for
years, and yet died a lingering death rather than pass through it; and this
because she had promised to obey!

It is said of one of the most gifted women who ever trod American soil,--
she being of English birth,--that, before she obtained the divorce which
separated her from her profligate husband, she once went for counsel to the
wife of her pastor. She unrolled before her the long catalogue of merciless
outrages to which she had been subject, endangering finally her health, her
life, and that of her children born and to be born. When she turned at last
for advice to her confessor, with the agonized inquiry, "What is it my duty
to do?"--"Do?" said the stern adviser: "Lie down on the floor, and let your
husband trample on you if he will. That is a woman's duty."

The woman who gave this advice was not naturally inhuman nor heartless: she
had simply been trained in the school of obedience. The Jesuit doctrine,
that a priest should be as a corpse, _perinde ac cadaver_, in the hands of
a superior priest, is not worse. Woman has no right to delegate, nor man to
assume, a responsibility so awful. Just in proportion as it is consistently
carried out, it trains men from boyhood into self-indulgent tyrants; and,
while some women are transformed by it to saints, others are crushed into
deceitful slaves. That this was the result of chattel slavery, this nation
has at length learned. We learn more slowly the profounder and more subtile
moral evil that follows from the unrighteous promise to obey.

WOMAN IN THE CHRYSALIS

When the bride receives the ring upon her finger, and utters--if she utters
it--the promise to obey, she sees a poetic beauty in the rite. Turning of
her own free will from her maiden liberty, she voluntarily takes the yoke
of service upon her. This is her view; but is this the historic fact in
regard to marriage? Not at all. The pledge of obedience--the whole theory
of inequality in marriage--is simply what is left to us of a former state
of society, in which every woman, old or young, must obey somebody. The
state of tutelage, implied in such a marriage, is merely what is left of
the old theory of the "Perpetual Tutelage of Women," under the Roman law.

Roman law, from which our civil law is derived, has its foundation
evidently in patriarchal tradition. It recognized at first the family only,
and that family was held together by paternal power _(patria potestas)_. If
the father died, his powers passed to the son or grandson, as the possible
head of a new family; but these powers could never pass to a woman, and
every woman, of whatever age, must be under somebody's legal control. Her
father dying, she was still subject through life to her nearest male
relations, or to her father's nominees, as her guardians. She was under
perpetual guardianship, both as to person and property. No years, no
experience, could make her anything but a child before the law.

In Oriental countries the system was still more complete. "A man," says the
Gentoo Code of Laws, "must keep his wife so much in subjection that she by
no means be mistress of her own action. If the wife have her own free will,
notwithstanding she be of a superior caste, she will behave amiss." But
this authority, which still exists in India, is not merely conjugal. The
husband exerts it simply as being the wife's legal guardian. If the woman
be unmarried or a widow, she must be as rigorously held under some other
guardianship. It is no uncommon thing for a woman in India to be the ward
of her own son. Lucretia Mott or Florence Nightingale would there be in
personal subjection to somebody. Any man of legal age would be recognized
as a fit custodian for them, but there must be a man.

With some variation of details at different periods, the same system
prevailed essentially at Rome, down to the time when Rome became Christian.
Those who wish for particulars will find them in an admirable chapter (the
fifth) of Maine's "Ancient Law." At one time the husband was held to
possess the _patria potestas_, or paternal power, in its full force. By law
"the woman passed _in manum viri_, that is, she became the daughter of her
husband." All she had became his, and after his death she was retained in
the same strict tutelage by any guardians his will might appoint.
Afterwards, to soften this rigid bond, the woman was regarded in law as
being temporarily deposited by her family with her husband; the family
appointed guardians over her; and thus, between the two tyrannies, she won
a sort of independence. Then came Christianity, and swept away the merely
parental authority for married women, concentrating all upon the husband.
Hence our legislation bears the mark of a double origin, and woman is half
recognized as an equal and half as a slave.

It is necessary to remember, therefore, that all the relation of subjection
in marriage is merely the residue of an unnatural system, of which all else
is long since outgrown. It would have seemed to an ancient Roman a matter
of course that a woman should, all her life long, obey the guardians set
over her person. It still seems to many people a matter of course that she
should obey her husband. To others among us, on the contrary, both these
theories of obedience seem barbarous, and the one is merely a relic of the
other.

We cannot disregard the history of the Theory of Tutelage. If we could
believe that a chrysalis is always a chrysalis, and a butterfly always a
butterfly, we could easily leave each to its appropriate sphere; but when
we see the chrysalis open, and the butterfly come half out of it, we know
that sooner or later it must spread wings, and fly. The theory of tutelage
implies the chrysalis. Woman is the butterfly. Sooner or later she will be
wholly out.

TWO AND TWO

A young man of very good brains was telling me, the other day, his dreams
of his future wife. Rattling on, more in joke than in earnest, he said,
"She must be perfectly ignorant, and a bigot: she must know nothing, and
believe everything. I should wish to have her from the adjoining room call
to me, 'My dear, what do two and two make?'"

It did not seem to me that his demand would be so very hard to fill, since
bigotry and ignorance are to be had almost anywhere for the asking; and, as
for two and two, I should say that it had always been the habit of women to
ask that question of some man, and to rest easily satisfied with the
answer. They have generally called, as my friend wished, from some other
room, saying, "My dear, what do two and two make?" and the husband or
father or brother has answered and said, "My dear, they make four for a
man, and three for a woman."

At any given period in the history of woman, she has adopted man's whim as
the measure of her rights; has claimed nothing; has sweetly accepted
anything; the law of two-and-two itself should be at his discretion. At any
given moment, so well was his interpretation received, that it stood for
absolute right. In Rome a woman, married or single, could not testify in
court; in the middle ages, and down to quite modern times, she could not
hold real estate; thirty years ago she could not, in New England, obtain a
collegiate education; even now she can only vote for school officers.

The first principles of republican government are so rehearsed and
re-rehearsed, that one would think they must become "as plain as that two
and two make four." But we find throughout, that, as Emerson said of
another class of reasoners, "Their two is not the real two; their four
is not the real four." We find different numerals and diverse
arithmetical rules for the two sexes; as, in some Oriental countries,
men and women speak different dialects of the same language.

In novels the hero often begins by dreaming, like my friend, of an ideal
wife, who shall be ignorant of everything, and have only brains enough to
be bigoted. Instead of sighing, like Falstaff, "Oh for a fine young thief,
of the age of two and twenty or thereabouts!" the hero sighs for a fine
young idiot of similar age. When the hero is successful in his search and
wooing, the novelist sometimes mercifully removes the young woman early,
like David Copperfield's Dora, she bequeathing the bereaved husband, on her
deathbed, to a woman of sense. In real life these convenient interruptions
do not commonly occur, and the foolish youth regrets through many years
that he did not select an Agnes instead.

The acute observer Stendhal says,--

    "In Paris, the highest praise for a marriageable girl is to say,
    'She has great sweetness of character and the disposition of a
    lamb.' Nothing produces more impression on fools who are looking out
    for wives. I think I see the interesting couple, two years after,
    breakfasting together on a dull day, with three tall lackeys waiting
    upon them!"

And he adds, still speaking in the interest of men:--

    "Most men have a period in their career when they might do something
    great, a period when nothing seems impossible. The ignorance of
    women spoils for the human race this magnificent opportunity: and
    love, at the utmost, in these days, only inspires a young man to
    learn to ride well, or to make a judicious selection of a
    tailor."[1]

Society, however, discovers by degrees that there are conveniences in every
woman's knowing the four rules of arithmetic for herself. Two and two come
to the same amount on a butcher's bill, whether the order be given by a man
or a woman; and it is the same in all affairs or investments, financial or
moral. We shall one day learn that with laws, customs, and public affairs
it is the same. Once get it rooted in a woman's mind, that for her, two and
two make three only, and sooner or later the accounts of the whole human
race fail to balance.

[Footnote 1: _De L'Amour_, par de Stendhal (Henri Beyle). Paris, 1868
[written in 1822], pp. 182, 198.]

A MODEL HOUSEHOLD

There is an African bird called the hornbill, whose habits are in some
respects a model. The female builds her nest in a hollow tree, lays her
eggs, and broods on them. So far, so good. Then the male feels that he must
also contribute some service; so he walls up the hole closely, giving only
room for the point of the female's bill to protrude. Until the eggs are
hatched, she is thenceforth confined to her nest, and is in the mean time
fed assiduously by her mate, who devotes himself entirely to this object.
Dr. Livingstone has seen these nests in Africa, Layard and others in Asia,
and Wallace in Sumatra.

Personally I have never seen a hornbill's nest. The nearest approach I ever
made to it was when in Fayal I used to pass near a gloomy mansion, of which
the front windows were walled up, and only one high window was visible in
the rear, beyond the reach of eyes from any neighboring house. In this
cheerful abode, I was assured, a Portuguese lady had been for many years
confined by her jealous husband. It was long since any neighbor had caught
a glimpse of her, but it was supposed that she was alive. There is no
reason to doubt that her husband fed her well. It was simply a case of
human hornbill, with the imprisonment made perpetual.

I have more than once asked lawyers whether, in communities where the old
common law prevailed, there was anything to prevent such an imprisonment of
a married woman; and they have always answered, "Nothing but public
opinion." Where the husband has the legal custody of the wife's person, no
_habeas corpus_ can avail against him. The hornbill household is based on a
strict application of the old common law. A Hindoo household was a hornbill
household: "a woman, of whatsoever age, should never be mistress of her own
actions," said the code of Menu. An Athenian household was a hornbill's
nest, and great was the outcry when some Aspasia broke out of it. When the
remonstrant petitions legislatures against the emancipation of woman, we
seem to hear the twittering of the hornbill mother, imploring to be left
inside.

Under some forms, the hornbill theory becomes respectable. There are many
peaceful families, innocent though torpid, where the only dream of
existence is to have plenty of quiet, plenty of food, and plenty of
well-fed children. For them this African household is a sufficient model.
The wife is "a home body." The husband is "a good provider." These are
honest people, and have a right to speak. The hornbill theory is only
dishonest when it comes--as it often comes--from women who lead the
life, not of good stay-at-home fowls, but of paroquets and
hummingbirds,--who sorrowfully bemoan the active habits of enlightened
women, while they themselves

  "Bear about the mockery of woe
  To midnight dances and the public show."

It is from these women, in Washington, New York, and elsewhere, that the
loudest appeal for the hornbill standard of domesticity proceeds. Put them
to the test, and give them their chicken-salad and champagne through a hole
in the wall only, and see how they like it.

But even the most honest and peaceful conservatives will one day admit that
the hornbill is not the highest model. Plato thought that "the soul of our
grandame might haply inhabit the body of a bird;" but Nature has kindly
provided various types of bird-households to suit all varieties of taste.
The bright orioles, filling the summer boughs with color and with song, are
as truly domestic in the freedom of their airy nest as the poor hornbills
who ignorantly make home into a dungeon. And certainly each new generation
of orioles, spreading free wings from that pendent cradle, affords a
happier illustration of judicious nurture than is to be found in the
uncouth little offspring of the hornbills, which Wallace describes as "so
flabby and semi-transparent as to resemble a bladder of jelly, furnished
with head, legs, and rudimentary wings, but with not a sign of a feather,
except a few lines of points indicating where they would come."

A SAFEGUARD FOR THE FAMILY

Many German-Americans are warm friends of woman suffrage; but the editors
of "Puck," it seems, are not. In a certain number of that comic journal,
there was an unfavorable cartoon on this reform; and in a following
number,--the number, by the way, which contains that amusing illustration
of the vast seaside hotels of the future, with the cheering announcement,
"Only one mile to the barber's shop," and "Take the cars to the
dining-room,"--a lady came to the rescue, and bravely defended woman
suffrage. It seems that the original cartoon depicted in the corner a
pretty family scene, representing father, mother, and children seated
happily together, with the melancholy motto, "Nevermore, nevermore!"
And when the correspondent, Mrs. Blake, very naturally asks what this
touching picture has to do with woman suffrage, Puck says, "If the
husband in our 'pretty family scene' should propose to vote for the
candidate who was obnoxious to his wife, would this 'pretty family
scene' continue to be a domestic paradise, or would it remind the
spectator of the region in which Dante spent his 'fortnight off'?"

It is beautiful to see how much anxiety there is to preserve the family.
Every step in the modification of the old common law, whereby the wife was,
in Baron Alderson's phrase, "the servant of her husband," was resisted as
tending to endanger the family. The proposal that the wife should control
her own earnings, so that her husband should not have the right to collect
them in order to pay his gambling debts, was declared by English advocates,
in the celebrated case of the Hon. Mrs. Norton, the poetess, to imperil all
the future peace of British households.

Even the liberal-minded "Punch," about the time Girton College was founded
in England, expressed grave doubts whether the harmony of wedded unions
would not receive a blow, from the time when wives should be liable to know
more Greek than their husbands. Yet the marriage relation has withstood
these innovations. It has not been impaired, either by separate rights,
private earnings, or independent Greek: can it be possible that a little
voting will overthrow it?

The very ground on which woman suffrage is opposed by its enemies might
assuage these fears. If, as we are told, women will not take the pains to
vote except upon the strongest inducements, who has so good an opportunity
as the husband to bring those inducements to bear? and, if so, what is the
separation? Or if, as we are told, women will merely reflect their
husbands' political opinions, why should they dispute about them? The mere
suggestion of a difference deep enough to quarrel for, implies a real
difference of convictions or interests, and indicates that there ought to
be an independent representation of each; unless we fall back, once for
all, on the common-law tradition that man and wife are one, and that one is
the husband. Either the antagonisms which occur in politics are
comparatively superficial, in which case they would do no harm; or else
they touch matters of real interest and principle, in which case every
human being has a right to independent expression, even at a good deal of
risk. In either case, the objection falls to the ground.

We have fortunately a means of testing, with some fairness of estimate, the
probable amount of this peril. It is generally admitted--and certainly no
German-American will deny--that the most fruitful sources of hostility and
war in all times have been religious, not political. All merely political
antagonism, certainly all which is possible in a republic, fades into
insignificance before this more powerful dividing influence. Yet we leave
all this great explosive force in unimpeded operation,--at any
moment it may be set in action, in any one of those "pretty family scenes"
which "Puck" depicts,--while we are solemnly warned against admitting the
comparatively mild peril of a political difference! It is like cautioning a
manufacturer of dynamite against the danger of meddling with mere
edge-tools. Even with all the intensity of feeling on religious matters,
few families are seriously divided by them; and the influence of political
differences would be still more insignificant.

The simple fact is that there is no better basis for union than mutual
respect for each other's opinions; and this can never be obtained
without an intelligent independence, "I would rather have a thorn in my
side than an echo," said Emerson of friendship; and the same is true of
married life. It is the echoes, the nonentities, of whom men grow tired; it
is the women with some flavor of individuality who keep the hearts of their
husbands. This is only applying in a higher sense what Shakespeare's
Cleopatra saw. When her handmaidens are questioning how to hold a lover,
and one says,--

    "Give way to him in all: cross him in nothing,"--

Cleopatra, from the depth of an unequalled experience, retorts,--

    "Thou speakest like a fool: the way to lose him!"

And what "the serpent of old Nile" said, the wives of the future, who are
to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, may well ponder. It takes two
things different to make a union; and part of that difference may as well
lie in matters political as anywhere else.

WOMEN AS ECONOMISTS

An able lawyer of Boston, arguing the other day before a legislative
committee in favor of giving to the city council a check upon the
expenditures of the school committee, gave as one reason that this body
would probably include more women henceforward, and that women were
ordinarily more lavish than men in their use of money. The truth of this
assumption was questioned at the time; and, the more I think of it, the
more contrary it is to my whole experience. I should say that women, from
the very habit of their lives, are led to be more particular about details,
and more careful as to small economies. The very fact that they handle less
money tends to this. When they are told to spend money, as they often are
by loving or ambitious husbands, they no doubt do it freely: they have
naturally more taste than men, and quite as much love of luxury. In some
instances in this country they spend money recklessly and wickedly, like
the heroines of French novels; but as, even in brilliant Paris, the women
of the middle classes are notoriously better managers than the men, so we
often see, in our scheming America, the same relative superiority. Often
have I heard young men say, "I never knew how to economize until after my
marriage;" and who has not seen multitudes of instances where women
accustomed to luxury have accepted poverty without a murmur for the sake of
those whom they loved?

I remember a young girl, accustomed to the gayest society of New York, who
engaged herself to a young naval officer, against the advice of the friends
of both. One of her near relatives said to me, "Of all the young girls I
have ever known, she is the least fitted for a poor man's wife." Yet from
the very moment of her marriage she brought their joint expenses within his
scanty pay, and even saved a little money from it. Everybody knows such
instances. We hear men denounce the extravagance of women, while those very
men spend on wine and cigars, on clubs and horses, twice what their wives
spend on their toilet. If the wives are economical, the husbands perhaps
urge them on to greater lavishness. "Why do you not dress like Mrs.
So-and-so?"--"I can't afford it."--"But _I_ can afford it;" and then, when
the bills come in, the talk of extravagance recommences. At one time in
Newport, that lady among the summer visitors who was reported to be Worth's
best customer was also well known to be quite indifferent to society, and
to go into it mainly to please her husband, whose social ambition was
notorious.

It has often happened to me to serve in organizations where both sexes were
represented, and where expenditures were to be made for business or
pleasure. In these I have found, as a rule, that the women were more
careful, or perhaps I should say more timid, than the men, less willing to
risk anything: the bolder financial experiments came from the men, as one
might expect. In talking the other day with the secretary of an important
educational enterprise, conducted by women, I was surprised to find that it
was cramped for money, though large subscriptions were said to have been
made to it. On inquiry it appeared that these ladies, having pledged
themselves for four years, had divided the amount received into four parts,
and were resolutely limiting themselves, for the first year, to one quarter
part of what had been subscribed. No board of men would have done so. Any
board of men would have allowed far more than a quarter of the sum for the
first year's expenditures, justly reasoning that if the enterprise began
well it would command public confidence, and bring in additional
subscriptions as time went on. I would appeal to any one whose experience
has been in joint associations of men and women, whether this is not a fair
statement of the difference between their ways of working. It does not
prove that women are more honest than men, but that their education or
their nature makes them more cautious in expenditure.

The habits of society make the dress of a fashionable woman far more
expensive than that of a man of fashion. Formerly it was not so; and, so
long as it was not so, the extravagance of men in this respect quite
equalled that of women. It now takes other forms, but the habit is the
same. The waiters at any fashionable restaurant will tell you that what is
a cheap dinner for a man would be a dear dinner for a woman. Yet after all,
the test is not in any particular class of expenditures, but in the
business-like habit. Men are of course more business-like in large
combinations, for they are more used to them; but for the small details of
daily economy women are more watchful. The cases where women ruin their
husbands by extravagance are exceptional. As a rule, the men are the
bread-winners; but the careful saving and managing and contriving come
from the women.

GREATER INCLUDES LESS

I was once at a little musical party in New York, where several
accomplished amateur singers were present, and with them the eminent
professional, Miss Adelaide Phillipps. The amateurs were first called on.
Each chose some difficult operatic passage, and sang her best. When it came
to the great opera-singer's turn, instead of exhibiting her ability to
eclipse those rivals on her own ground, she simply seated herself at the
piano, and sang "Kathleen Mavourneen" with such thrilling sweetness that
the young Irish girl who was setting the supper-table in the next room
forgot all her plates and teaspoons, threw herself into a chair, put her
apron over her face, and sobbed as if her heart would break. All the
training of Adelaide Phillipps--her magnificent voice, her stage
experience, her skill in effects, her power of expression--went into the
performance of that simple song. The greater included the less. And thus
all the intellectual and practical training that any woman can have, all
her public action and her active career, will make her, if she be a true
woman, more admirable as a wife, a mother, and a friend. The greater
includes the less for her also.

Of course this is a statement of general facts and tendencies. There must
be among women, as among men, an endless variety of individual
temperaments. There will always be plenty whose career will illustrate the
infirmities of genius, and whom no training can convince that two and two
make four. But the general fact is sure. As no sensible man would seriously
prefer for a wife a Hindoo or Tahitian woman rather than one bred in
England or America, so every further advantage of education or opportunity
will only improve, not impair, the true womanly type.

Lucy Stone once said, "Woman's nature was stamped and sealed by the
Almighty, and there is no danger of her unsexing herself while his eye
watches her." Margaret Fuller said, "One hour of love will teach a woman
more of her true relations than all your philosophizing." These were the
testimony of women who had studied Greek, and were only the more womanly
for the study. They are worth the opinions of a million half-developed
beings like the Duchess de Fontanges, who was described as being "as
beautiful as an angel and as silly as a goose." The greater includes the
less. Your view from the mountain-side may be very pretty, but she who has
taken one step higher commands your view and her own also. It was no dreamy
recluse, but the accomplished and experienced Stendhal, who wrote, "The
joys of the gay world do not count for much with happy women."[1]

If a highly educated man is incapable and unpractical, we do not say that
he is educated too well, but not well enough. He ought to know what he
knows, and other things also. Never yet did I see a woman too well educated
to be a wife and a mother; but I know multitudes who deplore, or have
reason to deplore, every day of their lives, the untrained and unfurnished
minds that are so ill-prepared for these sacred duties. Every step towards
equalizing the opportunities of men and women meets with resistance, of
course; but every step, as it is accomplished, leaves men still men, and
women still women. And as we who heard Adelaide Phillipps felt that she had
never had a better tribute to her musical genius than this young Irish
girl's tears, so the true woman will feel that all her college training for
instance, if she has it, may have been well invested, even for the sake of
the baby on her knee. And it is to be remembered, after all, that each
human being lives to unfold his or her own powers, and do his or her own
duties first, and that neither woman nor man has the right to accept a
merely secondary and subordinate life. A noble woman must be a noble human
being; and the most sacred special duties, as of wife or mother, are all
included in this, as the greater includes the less.

[Footnote 1: _De l'Amour_, par de Stendhal (Henri Beyle): "Les plaisirs du
grand monde n'en sont pas pour les femmes heureuses," p. 189.]

A COPARTNERSHIP

Marriage, considered merely in its financial and business relations, may be
regarded as a permanent copartnership.

Now, in an ordinary copartnership there is very often a complete division
of labor among the partners. If they manufacture locomotive-engines, for
instance, one partner perhaps superintends the works, another attends to
mechanical inventions and improvements, another travels for orders, another
conducts the correspondence, another receives and pays out the money. The
latter is not necessarily the head of the firm. Perhaps his place could be
more easily filled than some of the other posts. Nevertheless, more money
passes through his hands than through those of all the others put together.
Now, should he, at the year's end, call together the inventor and the
superintendent and the traveller and the correspondent, and say to them,
"I have earned all this money this year, but I will generously give you
some of it,"--he would be considered simply impertinent, and would hardly
have a chance to repeat the offence the year after.

Yet precisely what would be called folly in this business partnership is
constantly done by men in the copartnership of marriage, and is there
called "common sense" and "social science" and "political economy."

For instance, a farmer works himself half to death in the hayfield, and his
wife meanwhile is working herself wholly to death in the dairy. The
neighbors come in to sympathize after her demise; and during the few
months' interval before his second marriage they say approvingly, "He was
always a generous man to his folks! He was a good provider!" But where was
the room for generosity, any more than the member of any other firm is to
be called generous, when he keeps the books, receipts the bills, and
divides the money?

In case of the farming business, the share of the wife is so direct and
unmistakable that it can hardly be evaded. If anything is earned by the
farm, she does her distinct and important share of the earning. But it is
not necessary that she should do even that, to make her, by all the rules
of justice, an equal partner, entitled to her full share of the financial
proceeds.

Let us suppose an ordinary case. Two young people are married, and begin
life together. Let us suppose them equally poor, equally capable, equally
conscientious, equally healthy. They have children. Those children must be
supported by the earning of money abroad, by attendance and care at home.
If it requires patience and labor to do the outside work, no less is
required inside. The duties of the household are as hard as the duties of
the shop or office. If the wife took her husband's work for a day, she
would probably be glad to return to her own. So would the husband if he
undertook hers. Their duties are ordinarily as distinct and as equal as
those of two partners in any other copartnership. It so happens that the
outdoor partner has the handling of the money; but does that give him a
right to claim it as his exclusive earnings? No more than in any other
business operation.

He earned the money for the children and the household. She disbursed it
for the children and the household. The very laws of nature, by giving her
the children to bear and rear, absolve her from the duty of their support,
so long as he is alive who was left free by nature for that purpose. Her
task on the average is as hard as his: nay, a portion of it is so
especially hard that it is distinguished from all others by the name
"labor." If it does not earn money, it is because it is not to be measured
in money, while it exists,--nor to be replaced by money, if lost. If a
business man loses his partner, he can obtain another: and a man, no doubt,
may take a second wife; but he cannot procure for his children a second
mother. Indeed, it is a palpable insult to the whole relation of husband
and wife when one compares it, even in a financial light, to that of
business partners. It is only because a constant effort is made to degrade
the practical position of woman below even this standard of comparison,
that it becomes her duty to claim for herself at least as much as this.

There was a tradition in a town where I once lived, that a certain Quaker,
who had married a fortune, was once heard to repel his wife, who had asked
him for money in a public place, with the response, "Rachel, where is that
ninepence I gave thee yesterday?" When I read in "Scribner's Monthly" an
article deriding the right to representation of the Massachusetts women who
pay two millions of tax on one hundred and thirty-two million dollars of
property,--asserting that they produced nothing of it; that it was only
"men who produced this wealth, and bestowed it upon these women;" that it
was "all drawn from land and sea by the hands of men whose largess
testifies alike of their love and their munificence,"--I must say that I am
reminded of Rachel's ninepence.

ONE RESPONSIBLE HEAD

When we look through any business directory, there seem to be almost as
many copartnerships as single dealers; and three quarters of these
copartnerships appear to consist of precisely two persons, no more, no
less. These partners are, in the eye of the law, equal. It is not found
necessary, under the law, to make a general provision that in each case one
partner should be supreme and the other subordinate. In many cases, by the
terms of the copartnership there are limitations on one side and special
privileges on the other,--marriage settlements, as it were; but the general
law of copartnership is based on the presumption of equality. It would be
considered infinitely absurd to require that, as the general rule, one
party or the other should be in a state of _coverture_, during which the
very being and existence of the one should be suspended, or entirely merged
and incorporated into that of the other.

And yet this requirement, which would be an admitted absurdity in the case
of two business partners, is precisely that which the English common law
still lays down in case of husband and wife. The words which I employed to
describe it, in the preceding sentence, are the very phrases in which
Blackstone describes the legal position of women. And though the English
common law has been, in this respect, greatly modified and superseded by
statute law; yet, when it comes to an argument on woman suffrage, it is
constantly this same tradition to which men and even women habitually
appeal,--the necessity of a single head to the domestic partnership, and
the necessity that the husband should be that head. This is especially
true of English men and women; but it is true of Americans as well.
Nobody has stated it more tersely than Fitzjames Stephen, in his "Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity" (p. 216), when arguing against Mr. Mill's view
of the equality of the sexes.

    "Marriage is a contract, one of the principal objects in which is
    the government of a family.

    "This government must be vested, either by law or by contract, in
    the hands of one of the two married persons."

[Then follow some collateral points, not bearing on the present question.]

    "Therefore if marriage is to be permanent, the government of the
    family must be put by law and by morals into the hands of the
    husband, for no one proposes to give it to the wife."

This argument he calls "as clear as that of a proposition in Euclid." He
thinks that the business of life can be carried on by no other method. How
is it, then, that when we come to what is called technically and especially
the "business" of every day, this whole fine-spun theory is disregarded,
and men come together in partnership on the basis of equality?

Nobody is farther than I from regarding marriage as a mere business
partnership. But it is to be observed that the points wherein it differs
from a merely mercantile connection are points that should make equality
more easy, not more difficult. The tie between two ordinary business
partners is merely one of interest: it is based on no sentiments, sealed by
no solemn pledge, enriched by no home associations, cemented by no new
generation of young life. If a relation like this is found to work well on
terms of equality,--so well that a large part of the business of the world
is done by it,--is it not absurd to suppose that the same equal relation
cannot exist in the married partnership of husband and wife? And if law,
custom, society, all recognize this fact of equality in the one case, why,
in the name of common-sense, should they not equally recognize it in the
other?

And, again, it may often be far easier to assign a sphere to each partner
in marriage than in business; and therefore the double headship of a family
will involve less need of collision. In nine cases out of ten, the external
support of the family will devolve upon the husband, unquestioned by the
wife; and its internal economy upon the wife, unquestioned by the husband.
No voluntary distribution of powers and duties between business partners
can work so naturally, on the whole, as this simple and easy demarcation,
with which the claim of suffrage makes no necessary interference. It may
require angry discussion to decide which of two business partners shall
buy, and which shall sell; which shall keep the books, and which do the
active work, and so on; but all this is usually settled in married life by
the natural order of things. Even in regard to the management of children,
where collision is likely to come, if anywhere, it can commonly be settled
by that happy formula of Jean Paul's, that the mother usually supplies the
commas and the semicolons in the child's book of life, and the father the
colons and periods. And as to matters in general, the simple and practical
rule, that each question that arises should be decided by that partner who
has personally most at stake in it, will, in ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, carry the domestic partnership through without shipwreck. Those
who cannot meet the hundredth case by mutual forbearance are in a condition
of shipwreck already.

ASKING FOR MONEY

One of the very best wives and mothers I have ever known once said to me,
that, whenever her daughters should be married, she should stipulate in
their behalf with their husbands for a regular sum of money to be paid
them, at certain intervals, for their personal expenditures. Whether this
sum was to be larger or smaller, was a matter of secondary importance,--
that must depend on the income, and the style of living; but the essential
thing was, that it should come to the wife regularly, so that she should no
more have to make a special request for it than her husband would have to
ask her for a dinner. This lady's own husband was, as I happened to know,
of a most generous disposition, was devotedly attached to her, and denied
her nothing. She herself was a most accurate and careful manager. There was
everything in the household to make the financial arrangements flow
smoothly. Yet she said to me, "I suppose no man can possibly understand how
a sensitive woman shrinks from _asking_ for money. If I can prevent it, my
daughters shall never have to ask for it. If they do their duty as wives
and mothers they have a right to their share of the joint income, within
reasonable limits; for certainly no money could buy the services they
render. Moreover, they have a right to a share in determining what those
reasonable limits are."

Now, it so happened that I had myself gone through an experience which
enabled me perfectly to comprehend this feeling. In early life I was for a
time in the employ of one of my relatives, who paid me a fair salary but at
no definite periods: I was at liberty to ask him for money up to a certain
amount whenever I needed it. This seemed to me, in advance, a most
agreeable arrangement; but I found it quite otherwise. It proved to be very
disagreeable to apply for money: it made every dollar seem a special favor;
it brought up all kinds of misgivings, as to whether he could spare it
without inconvenience, whether he really thought my services worth it, and
so on. My employer was a thoroughly upright and noble man, and I was much
attached to him. I do not know that he ever refused or demurred when I made
my request. The annoyance was simply in the process of asking; and this
became so great, that I often underwent serious inconvenience rather than
do it. Finally, at the year's end, I surprised my relative very much by
saying that I would accept, if necessary, a lower salary, on condition that
it should be paid on regular days, and as a matter of business. The wish
was at once granted, without the reduction; and he probably never knew what
a relief it was to me.

Now, if a young man is liable to feel this pride and reluctance toward an
employer, even when a kinsman, it is easy to understand how many women may
feel the same, even in regard to a husband. And I fancy that those who feel
it most are often the most conscientious and high-minded women. It is
unreasonable to say of such persons, "Too sensitive! Too fastidious!" For
it is just this quality of finer sensitiveness which men affect to prize in
a woman, and wish to protect at all hazards. The very fact that a husband
is generous; the very fact that his income is limited,--these may bring in
conscience and gratitude to increase the restraining influence of pride,
and make the wife less willing to ask money of such a husband than if he
were a rich man or a mean one. The only dignified position in which a man
can place his wife is to treat her at least as well as he would treat a
housekeeper, and give her the comfort of a perfectly clear and definite
arrangement as to money matters. She will not then be under the necessity
of nerving herself to solicit from him as a favor what she really needs and
has a right to spend. Nor will she be torturing herself, on the other side,
with the secret fear lest she has asked too much and more than
they can really spare. She will, in short, be in the position of a woman
and a wife, not of a child or a toy.

I have carefully avoided using the word "allowance" in what has been said,
because that word seems to imply the untrue and mean assumption that the
money is all the husband's to give or withhold as he will. Yet I have heard
this sort of phrase from men who were living on a wife's property or a
wife's earnings; from men who nominally kept boarding-houses, working a
little, while their wives worked hard,--or from farmers, who worked hard,
and made their wives work harder. Even in cases where the wife has no
direct part in the money-making, the indirect part she performs, if she
takes faithful charge of her household, is so essential, so beyond all
compensation in money, that it is an utter shame and impertinence in the
husband when he speaks of "giving" money to his wife as if it were an act
of favor. It is no more an act of favor than when the business manager of a
firm pays out money to the unseen partner who directs the indoor business
or runs the machinery. Be the joint income more or less, the wife has a
claim to her honorable share, and that as a matter of right, without the
daily ignominy of sending in a petition for it.

WOMANHOOD AND MOTHERHOOD

I always groan in spirit when any advocate of woman suffrage, carried away
by zeal, says anything disrespectful about the nursery. It is contrary to
the general tone of feeling among reformers, I am sure, to speak of this
priceless institution as a trivial or degrading sphere, unworthy the
emancipated woman. It is rarely that anybody speaks in this way; but a
single such utterance hinders progress more than any arguments of the
enemy. For every thoughtful person sees that the cares of motherhood,
though not the whole duty of woman, are an essential part of that duty,
wherever they occur; and that no theory of womanly life is good for
anything which undertakes to leave out the cradle. Even her school
education is based on this fact, were it only on Stendhal's theory that the
sons of a woman who reads Gibbon and Schiller will be more likely to show
talent than those of one who only tells her beads and reads Mme. de Genlis.
And so clearly is this understood among us, that, when we ask for suffrage
for woman, it is almost always claimed that she needs it for the sake of
her children. To secure her in her right to them; to give her a voice in
their education; to give her a vote in the government beneath which they
are to live,--these points are seldom omitted in our statement of her
claims. Anything else would be an error.

But there is an error at the other extreme, which is still greater. A woman
should no more merge herself in her child than in her husband. Yet we often
hear that she should do just this. What is all the public sphere of woman,
it is said,--what good can she do by all her speaking and writing and
action,--compared with that she does by properly training the soul of one
child? It is not easy to see the logic of this claim.

For what service is that child to render in the universe, except that he,
too, may write and speak and act for that which is good and true? And if
the mother foregoes all this that the child, in growing up, may simply do
what the mother has left undone, the world gains nothing. In sacrificing
her own work to her child's, moreover, she exchanges a present good for a
prospective and merely possible one. If she does this through overwhelming
love, we can hardly blame her; but she cannot justify it before reason and
truth. Her child may die, and the service to mankind be done by neither.
Her child may grow up with talents unlike hers, or with none at all; as the
son of Howard was selfish, the son of Chesterfield a boor, and the son of
Wordsworth in the last degree prosaic.

Or the special occasion when she might have done great good may have passed
before her boy or girl grows up to do it. If Mrs. Child had refused to
write "An Appeal for that Class of Americans called Africans," or Mrs.
Stowe had laid aside "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or Florence Nightingale had
declined to go to the Crimea, on the ground that a woman's true work was
through the nursery, and they must all wait for that, the consequence would
be that these things would have remained undone. The brave acts of the
world must be performed _when occasion offers, by the first brave soul_ who
feels moved to do them, man or woman.

If all the children in all the nurseries are thereby helped to do other
brave deeds when their turn comes, so much the better. But when a great
opportunity offers for direct aid to the world, we have no right to
transfer that work to other hands--not even to the hands of our own
children. We must do the work, and train the children besides.

I am willing to admit, therefore, that the work of education, in any form,
is as great as any other work; but I fail to see why it should be greater.
Usefulness is usefulness: there is no reason why it should be postponed
from generation to generation, or why it is better to rear a serviceable
human being than to be one in person. Carry the theory consistently out: if
each mother must simply rear her daughter that she in turn may rear
somebody else, then from each generation the work will devolve upon a
succeeding generation, so that it will be only the last woman who will
personally do any service, except that of motherhood; and when her time
comes it will be too late for any service at all.

If it be said, "But some of these children will be men, who are necessarily
of more use than women," I deny the necessity. If it be said, "The children
may be many, and the mother, who is but one, may well be sacrificed," it
might be replied that, as one great act may be worth many smaller ones, so
all the numerous children and grandchildren of a woman like Lucretia Mott
may not collectively equal the usefulness of herself alone. If she, like
many women, had held it her duty to renounce all other duties and interests
from the time her motherhood began, I think that the world, and even her
children, would have lost more than could ever have been gained by her more
complete absorption in the nursery.

The true theory seems a very simple one. The very fact that during one half
the years of a woman's average life she is made incapable of child-bearing
shows that there are, even for the most prolific and devoted mothers,
duties other than the maternal. Even during the most absorbing years of
motherhood, the wisest women still try to keep up their interest in
society, in literature, in the world's affairs--were it only for their
children's sake. Multitudes of women will never be mothers; and those more
fortunate may find even the usefulness of their motherhood surpassed by
what they do in other ways. If maternal duties interfere in some degree
with all other functions, the same is true, though in a far less degree,
of those of a father. But there are those who combine both spheres. The
German poet Wieland claimed to be the parent of fourteen children and
forty books; and who knows by which parentage he served the world the
best?

A GERMAN POINT OF VIEW

Many Americans will remember the favorable impression made by Professor
Christlieb of Germany, when he attended the meeting of the Evangelical
Alliance in New York some years ago. His writings, like his presence, show
a most liberal spirit; and perhaps no man has ever presented the more
advanced evangelical theology of Germany in so attractive a light. Yet I
heard a story of him the other day, which either showed him in an aspect
quite undesirable, or else gave an unpleasant view of the social position
of women in Germany.

The story was to the effect that a young American student recently called
on Professor Christlieb with a letter of introduction. The professor
received him cordially, and soon entered into conversation about the United
States. He praised the natural features of the country, and the
enterprising spirit of our citizens, but expressed much solicitude about
the future of the nation. On being asked his reasons, he frankly expressed
his opinion that "the Spirit of Christ" was not here. Being still further
pressed to illustrate his meaning, he gave, as instances of this
deficiency, not the Crédit Mobilier or the Tweed scandal, but such alarming
facts as the following. He seriously declared that, on more than one
occasion, he had heard an American married woman say to her husband, "Dear,
will you bring me my shawl?" and the husband had brought it. He further had
seen a husband return home at evening, and enter the parlor where his wife
was sitting,--perhaps in the very best chair in the room,--and the wife
not only did not go and get his dressing-gown and slippers, but she even
remained seated, and left him to find a chair as he could. These things,
as Professor Christlieb pointed out, suggested a serious deficiency of the
spirit of Christ in the community.

With our American habits and interpretations, it is hard to see this matter
just as the professor sees it. One would suppose that, if there is any
meaning in the command, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the
law of Christ," a little of such fulfilling might sometimes be good for the
husband, as for the wife. And though it would undoubtedly be more pleasing
to see every wife so eager to receive her husband that she would naturally
spring from her chair and run to kiss him in the doorway, yet, where such
devotion was wanting, it would be but fair to inquire which of the two had
done the more fatiguing day's work, and to whom the easy-chair justly
belonged. The truth is, I suppose, that the good professor's remark
indicated simply a "survival" in his mind, or in his social circle, of a
barbarous tradition, under which the wife of a Mexican herdsman cannot eat
at the table with her "lord and master," and the wife of a German professor
must vacate the best armchair at his approach.

If so, it is not to be regretted that we in this country have outgrown a
relation so unequal. Nor am I at all afraid that the great Teacher, who,
pointing to the multitude for whom he was soon to die, said of them,
"Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister
and my mother," would have objected to any mutual and equal service between
man and woman. If we assume that two human beings have immortal souls,
there can be no want of dignity to either in serving the other. The greater
equality of woman in America seems to be, on this reasoning, a proof of the
presence not the absence, of the spirit of Christ; nor does Dr. Christlieb
seem quite worthy of the beautiful name he bears, if he feels otherwise.

But if it is really true that a German professor has to cross the Atlantic
to witness a phenomenon so very simple as that of a lover-like husband
bringing a shawl for his wife, I should say, Let the immigration from
Germany be encouraged as much as possible, in order that even the most
learned immigrants may discover something new.

CHILDLESS WOMEN

It has not always been regarded as a thing creditable to woman that she was
the mother of the human race. On the contrary, the fact was often
mentioned, in the Middle Ages, as a distinct proof of inferiority. The
question was discussed in the mediæval Council of Maçon, and the position
taken that woman was no more entitled to rank as human, because she brought
forth men, than the garden-earth could take rank with the fruit and flowers
it bore. The same view was revived by a Latin writer of 1595, on the thesis
"_Mulieres non homines esse_," a French translation of which essay was
printed under the title of "_Paradoxe sur les femmes_," in 1766. Napoleon
Bonaparte used the same image, carrying it almost as far:--

"Woman is given to man that she may bear children. Woman is our property;
we are not hers: because she produces children for us; we do not yield any
to her: she is therefore our possession, as the fruit-tree is that of the
gardener."

Even the fact of parentage, therefore, has been adroitly converted into a
ground of inferiority for women; and this is ostensibly the reason why
lineage has been reckoned, almost everywhere, through the male line only,
ignoring the female; just as, in tracing the seed of some rare fruit, the
gardener takes no genealogical account of the garden where it grew. This
view is now seldom expressed in full force: but one remnant of it is to be
found in the lingering impression, that, at any rate, a woman who is not
a mother is of no account; as worthless as a fruitless garden or a barren
fruit-tree. Created only for a certain object, she is of course valueless
unless that object be fulfilled.

But the race must have fathers as well as mothers; and if we look for
evidence of public service in great men, it certainly does not always lie
in leaving children to the republic. On the contrary, the rule has rather
seemed to be, that the most eminent men have left their bequest of service
in any form rather than in that of a great family. Recent inquiries into
the matter have brought out some remarkable facts in this regard.

As a rule, there exist no living descendants in the male line from the
great authors, artists, statesmen, soldiers, of England. It is stated that
there is not one such descendant of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Butler,
Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, or Moore; not one of Drake,
Cromwell, Monk, Marlborough, Peterborough, or Nelson; not one of Strafford,
Ormond, or Clarendon; not one of Addison, Swift, or Johnson; not one of
Walpole, Bolingbroke, Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Grattan, or Canning; not
one of Bacon, Locke, Newton, or Davy; not one of Hume, Gibbon, or Macaulay;
not one of Hogarth or Reynolds; not one of Garrick, John Kemble, or Edmund
Kean. It would be easy to make a similar American list, beginning with
Washington, of whom it was said that "Providence made him childless that
his country might call him Father."

Now, however we may regret that these great men have left little or no
posterity, it does not occur to any one as affording any serious drawback
upon their service to their nation. Certainly it does not occur to us that
they would have been more useful had they left children to the world, but
rendered it no other service. Lord Bacon says that "he that hath wife and
children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great
enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of
greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or
childless men; which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed
the public." And this is the view generally accepted,--that the public is
in such cases rather the gainer than the loser, and has no right to
complain.

Since, therefore, every child must have a father and a mother both, and
neither will alone suffice, why should we thus heap gratitude on men who
from preference or from necessity have remained childless, and yet
habitually treat women as if they could render no service to their country
except by giving it children? If it be folly and shame, as I think, to
belittle and decry the dignity and worth of motherhood, as some are said to
do, it is no less folly, and shame quite as great, to deny the grand and
patriotic service of many women who have died and left no children among
their mourners. Plato puts into the mouth of a woman,--the eloquent
Diotima, in the "Banquet,"--that, after all, we are more grateful to Homer
and Hesiod for the children of their brain than if they had left human
offspring.

THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO MOTHERS

From the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals we have now
advanced to a similar society for the benefit of children. When shall we
have a movement for the prevention of cruelty to mothers?

A Rhode Island lady, who had never taken any interest in the woman-suffrage
movement, came to me in great indignation the other day, asking if it was
true that under Rhode Island laws a husband might, by his last will,
bequeath his child away from its mother, so that she might, if the guardian
chose, never see it again. I said that it was undoubtedly true, and that
such were still the laws in many States of the Union.

"But," she said, "it is an outrage. The husband may have been one of the
weakest or worst men in the world; he may have persecuted his wife and
children; he may have made the will in a moment of anger, and have
neglected to alter it. At any rate, he is dead, and the mother is living.
The guardian whom he appoints may turn out a very malicious man, and may
take pleasure in torturing the mother; or he may bring up the children in a
way their mother thinks ruinous for them. Why do not all the mothers cry
out against such a law?"

"I wish they would," I said. "I have been trying a good many years to make
them understand what the law is; but they do not. People who do not vote
pay no attention to the laws until they suffer from them."

She went away protesting that she, at least, would not hold her tongue on
the subject, and I hope she will not. The actual text of the law to which
she objected is as follows:--

    "Every person authorized by law to make a will, except married
    women, shall have a right to appoint by his will a guardian or
    guardians for his children during their minority."[1]

There is not associated with this, in the statute, the slightest clause in
favor of the mother; nor anything which could limit the power of the
guardian by requiring deference to her wishes, although he could, in case
of gross neglect or abuse, be removed by the court, and another guardian
appointed. There is not a line of positive law to protect the mother. Now,
in a case of absolute wrong, a single sentence of law is worth all the
chivalrous courtesy this side of the Middle Ages.

It is idle to say that such laws are not executed. They are executed. I
have had letters, too agonizing to print, expressing the sufferings of
mothers under laws like these. There lies before me a letter,--not from
Rhode Island,--written by a widowed mother who suffers daily tortures, even
while in possession of her child, at the knowledge that it is not legally
hers, but held only by the temporary permission of the guardian appointed
under her husband's will.

"I beg you," she says, "to take this will to the hilltop, and urge
law-makers in our next legislature to free the State record from the
shameful story that no mother can control her child unless it is born out
of wedlock."

"From the moment," she says, "when the will was read to me, I have made no
effort to set it aside. I wait till God reveals his plans, so far as my own
condition is concerned. But out of my keen comprehension of this great
wrong, notwithstanding my submission for myself, my whole soul is
stirred,--for my child, who is a little woman; for all women, that the laws
may be changed which subject a true woman, a devoted wife, a faithful
mother, to such mental agonies as I have endured, and shall endure till I
die."

In a later letter she says, "I now have his [the guardian's] solemn promise
that he will not remove her from my control. To some extent my sufferings
are allayed; and yet never, till she arrives at the age of twenty-one,
shall I fully trust." I wish that mothers who dwell in sheltered and happy
homes would try to bring to their minds the condition of a mother whose
possession of her only child rests upon the "promise" of a comparative
stranger. We should get beyond the meaningless cry, "I have all the rights
I want," if mothers could only remember that among these rights, in most
States of the Union, the right of a widowed mother to her child is not
included.

By strenuous effort, the law on this point has in Massachusetts been
gradually amended, till it now stands thus: The father is authorized to
appoint a guardian by will; but the powers of this guardian do not entitle
him to take the child from the mother.

    "The guardian of a minor ... shall have the custody and tuition of
    his ward; and the care and management of all his estate, except that
    the father of the minor, if living, and in case of his death the
    mother, they being respectively competent to transact their own
    business, shall be entitled to the custody of the person of the
    minor and the care of his education."[2]

Down to 1870 the cruel words "while she remains unmarried" followed the
word "mother" in the above law. Until that time, the mother if remarried
had no claim to the custody of her child, in case the guardian wished
otherwise; and a very painful scene once took place in a Boston court-room,
where children were forced away from their mother by the officers, under
this statute, in spite of her tears and theirs; and this when no sort of
personal charge had been made against her. This could not now happen in
Massachusetts, but it might still happen in some other States. It is true
that men are almost always better than their laws; but while a bad law
remains on the statute-book it gives to any unscrupulous man the power to
be as bad as the law.

[Footnote 1: Gen. Statutes R.I., chap. 154, sect. 1]

[Footnote 2: Public Statutes, chap. 139, sect. 4.]

V

SOCIETY

    "Place the sexes in right relations of mutual respect, and a severe
    morality gives that essential charm to woman which educates all that
    is delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and
    learning, conversation and wit, in her rough mate; so that I have
    thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of
    good women."--EMERSON, Society and Solitude, p. 21.

FOAM AND CURRENT

Sometimes, on the beach at Newport, I look at the gayly dressed ladies in
their phaetons, and then at the foam which trembles on the breaking wave,
or lies palpitating in creamy masses on the beach. It is as pretty as they,
as light, as fresh, as delicate, as changing; and no doubt the graceful
foam, if it thinks at all, fancies that it is the chief consummate product
of the ocean, and that the main end of the vast currents of the mighty deep
is to yield a few glittering bubbles like those. At least, this seems to me
what many of the fair ladies think, as to themselves.

Here is a nation in which the most momentous social and political
experiment ever tried by man is being worked out, day by day. There is
something ocean-like in the way in which the great currents of life, race,
religion, temperament are here chafing with each other, safe from the
storms through which all monarchical countries may yet have to pass. As
these great currents heave, there are tossed up in every watering-place and
every city in America, as on an ocean beach, certain pretty bubbles of
foam; and each spot, we may suppose, counts its own bubbles brighter than
those of its neighbors, and christens them "society."

It is an unceasing wonder to a thoughtful person, at any such resort, to
see the unconscious way in which fashionable society accepts the foam, and
ignores the currents. You hear people talk of "a position in society," "the
influential circles in society," as if the position they mean were not
liable to be shifted in a day; as if the essential influences in America
were not mainly to be sought outside the world of fashion. In other
countries it is very different. The circle of social caste, whose centre
you touch in London, radiates to the farthest shores of the British empire;
the upper class controls, not merely fashion, but government; it rules in
country as well as city; genius and wealth are but its tributaries.
Wherever it is not so, it is because England is so far Americanized. But in
America the social prestige of the cities is nothing in the country; it is
a matter of the pavement, of a three-mile radius.

Go to the farthest borders of England: there are still the "county
families," and you meet servants in livery. On the other hand, in a little
village in northern New Hampshire, my friend was visited in the evening by
the landlady, who said that several of their "most fashionable ladies" had
happened in, and she would like to show them her guest's bonnet. Then the
different cities ignore each other: the rulers of select circles in New
York may find themselves nobodies in Washington, while a Washington social
passport counts for as little in New York. Boston and Philadelphia affect
to ignore both; and St. Louis and San Francisco have their own standards.
The utmost social prestige in America is local, provincial, a matter of the
square inch: it is as if the foam of each particular beach along the
seacoast were to call itself "society."

There is something pathetic, therefore, in the unwearied pains taken by
ambitious women to establish a place in some little, local, transitory
domain, to "bring out" their daughters for exhibition on a given evening,
to form a circle for them, to marry them well. A dozen years hence the
millionaires whose notice they seek may be paupers, or these ladies may be
dwelling in some other city, where the visiting cards will bear wholly
different names. How idle to attempt to transport into American life the
social traditions and delusions which require monarchy and primogeniture,
and a standing army, to keep them up--and which cannot always hold their
own in England, even with the aid of these!

Every woman, like every man, has a natural desire for influence; and if
this instinct yearns, as it often should yearn, to take in more than her
own family, she must seek it somewhere outside. I know women who bring to
bear on the building-up of a frivolous social circle--frivolous, because it
is not really brilliant, but only showy; not really gay, but only bored--
talent and energy enough to influence the mind and thought of the nation,
if only employed in some effective way. Who are the women of real influence
in America? They are the schoolteachers, through whose hands each
successive American generation has to pass; they are those wives of public
men who share their husbands' labor, and help mould their work; they are
those women who, through their personal eloquence or through the press, are
distinctly influencing the American people in its growth. The influence of
such women is felt for good or for evil in every page they print, every
newspaper column they fill: the individual women may be unworthy their
posts, but it is they who have got hold of the lever, and gone the right
way to work. As American society is constituted, the largest "social
success" that can be attained here is trivial and local; and you have to
"make believe very hard," like that other imaginary Marchioness, to find in
it any career worth mentioning. That is the foam, but these other women are
dealing with the main currents.

IN SOCIETY

One sometimes hears from some lady the remark that very few people "in
society" believe in any movement to enlarge the rights or duties of women.
In a community of more marked social gradations than our own, this
assertion, if true, might be very important; and even here it is worth
considering, because it leads the way to a little social philosophy. Let
us, for the sake of argument, begin by accepting the assumption that there
is an inner circle, at least in our large cities, which claims to be
"society," _par excellence_. What relation has this favored circle, if
favored it be, to any movement relating to women?

It has, to begin with, the same relation that "society" has to every
movement of reform. The proportion of smiles and frowns bestowed from this
quarter upon the woman-suffrage movement, for instance, is about that
formerly bestowed upon the anti-slavery agitation: I see no great
difference. In Boston, for example, the names contributed by "society" to
the woman-suffrage festivals are about as numerous as those which used to
be contributed to the anti-slavery bazaars; no more, no less. Indeed, they
are very often the same names; and it has been curious to see, for nearly
fifty years, how radical tendencies have predominated in some of the
well-known Boston families, and conservative tendencies in others.

The traits of blood seem to outlast successive series of special reforms.
Be this as it may, it is safe to assume, that, as the anti-slavery movement
prevailed with only a moderate amount of sanction from "our best society,"
the woman-suffrage agitation, which has at least an equal amount, has no
reason to be discouraged.

On looking farther, we find that not reforms alone, but often most
important and established institutions, exist and flourish with only
incidental aid from those "in society." Take, for instance, the whole
public school system of our larger cities. Grant that out of twenty ladies
"in society," taken at random, not more than one would personally approve
of women's voting: it is doubtful whether even that proportion of them
would personally favor the public school system so far as to submit their
children, or at least their girls, to it. Yet the public schools flourish,
and give a better training than most private schools, in spite of this
inert practical resistance from those "in society." The natural inference
would seem to be, that if an institution so well established as the public
schools, and so generally recognized, can afford to be ignored by
"society," then certainly a wholly new reform must expect no better fate.

As a matter of fact, I apprehend that what is called "society," in the
sense of the more fastidious or exclusive social circle in any community,
exists for one sole object,--the preservation of good manners and social
refinements. For this purpose it is put very largely under the sway of
women, who have, all the world over, a better instinct for these important
things. It is true that "society" is apt to do even this duty very
imperfectly, and often tolerates, and sometimes even cultivates, just the
rudeness and discourtesy that it is set to cure. Nevertheless, this is its
mission; but so soon as it steps beyond this, and attempts to claim any
special weight outside the sphere of good manners, it shows its weakness,
and must yield to stronger forces.

One of these stronger forces is religion, which should train men and women
to a far higher standard than "society" alone can teach. This standard
should be embodied, theoretically, in the Christian Church; but unhappily
"society" is too often stronger than this embodiment, and turns the church
itself into a mere temple of fashion. Other opposing forces are known as
science and common-sense, which is only science written in shorthand. On
some of these various forces all reforms are based, the woman-suffrage
reform among them. If it could really be shown that some limited social
circle was opposed to this, then the moral would seem to be, "So much the
worse for the social circle." It used to be thought in anti-slavery days
that one of the most blessed results of that agitation was the education it
gave to young men and women who would otherwise have merely grown up "in
society," but were happily taken in hand by a stronger influence. It is
Goethe who suggests, when discussing Hamlet in "Wilhelm Meister," that, if
an oak be planted in a flower-pot, it will be worse in the end for the
flower-pot than for the tree. And to those who watch, year after year, the
young human seedlings planted "in society," the main point of interest lies
in the discovery which of these are likely to grow into oaks.

But the truth is that the very use of the word "society" in this sense is
narrow and misleading. We Americans are fortunate enough to live in a
larger society, where no conventional position or family traditions exert
an influence that is to be in the least degree compared with the influence
secured by education, energy, and character. No matter how fastidious the
social circle, one is constantly struck with the limitations of its
influence, and with the little power exerted by its members as compared
with that which may easily be wielded by tongue and pen. No merely
fashionable woman in New York, for instance, has a position sufficiently
important to be called influential compared with that of a woman who can
speak in public so as to command hearers, or can write so as to secure
readers. To be at the head of a normal school, or to be a professor in a
college where co-education prevails, is to have a sway over the destinies
of America which reduces all mere "social position" to a matter of cards
and compliments and page's buttons.

THE BATTLE OF THE CARDS

The great winter's contest of the visiting-cards recommences at the end of
every autumn. Suspended during the summer, or only renewed at Newport and
such thoroughbred and thoroughly sophisticated haunts, it will set in with
fury in the habitable regions of our cities before the snow falls. Now will
the atmosphere of certain streets and squares be darkened--or whitened--at
the appointed hour by the shower of pasteboard transmitted from dainty
kid-gloved hands to the cotton-gloved hands of "John," and destined
through him to reach the possibly gloveless hands of some other John,
who stands obsequious in the doorway. Now will every lady, after John
has slammed the door, drive happily on to some other door, rearranging,
as she goes, her display of cards, laid as if for a game on the opposite
seat of her carriage, and dealt perhaps in four suits,--her own cards,
her daughters', her husband's, her "Mr. and Mrs." cards, and who knows
how many more? With all this ammunition, what a very _mitrailleuse_ of
good society she becomes; what an accumulation of polite attentions she
may discharge at any door! That one well-appointed woman, as she sits
in her carriage, represents the total visiting power of self, husband,
daughters, and possibly a son or two beside. She has all their
counterfeit presentments in her hands. How happy she is! and how happy
will the others be on her return, to think that dear mamma has disposed
of so many dear, beloved, tiresome, social foes that morning! It will
be three months at least, they think, before the A's and the B's and
the C's will have to be "done" again.

Ah! but who knows how soon these fatiguing letters of the alphabet,
rallying to the defence, will come, pasteboard in hand, to return the
onset? In this contest, fair ladies, "there are blows to take as well as
blows to give," in the words of the immortal Webster. Some day, on
returning, you will find a half-dozen cards on your own table that will
undo all this morning's work, and send you forth on the warpath again. Is
it not like a campaign? It is from this subtle military analogy, doubtless,
that when gentlemen happen to quarrel, in the very best society, they
exchange cards as preliminary to a duel; and that, when French journalists
fight, all other French journalists show their sympathy for the survivor by
sending him their cards. When we see, therefore, these heroic ladies riding
forth in the social battle's magnificently stern array, our hearts render
them the homage due to the brave. When we consider how complex their
military equipment has grown, we fancy each of these self-devoted mothers
to be an Arnold Winkelried, receiving in her martyr-breast the points of a
dozen different cards, and shouting, "Make way for liberty!" For is it not
securing liberty to have cleared off a dozen calls from your list, and
found nobody at home?

If this sort of thing goes on, who can tell where the paper warfare shall
end? If ladies may leave cards for their husbands, who are never seen out
of Wall Street, except when they are seen at their clubs; or for their
sons, who never forsake their billiards or their books,--why can they not
also leave them for their ancestors, or for their remotest posterity? Who
knows but people may yet drop cards in the names of the grandchildren whom
they only wish for, or may reconcile hereditary feuds by interchanging
pasteboard in behalf of two hostile grandparents who died half a century
ago?

And there is another social observance in which the introduction of the
card system may yet be destined to save much labor,--the attendance on
fashionable churches. Already, it is said, a family may sometimes reconcile
devout observance with a late breakfast, by stationing the family carriage
near the church-door--empty. Really, it would not be a much emptier
observance to send the cards alone by the footman; and doubtless in the
progress of civilization we shall yet reach that point. It will have many
advantages. The _effete_ of society, as some cruel satirist has called
them, may then send their orisons on pasteboard to as many different
shrines as they approve; thus insuring their souls, as it were, at several
different offices. Church architecture may be simplified, for it will
require nothing but a card-basket. The clergyman will celebrate his solemn
ritual, and will then look in that convenient receptacle for the names of
his fellow-worshippers, as a fine lady, after her "reception," looks over
the cards her footman hands her, to know which of her dear friends she has
been welcoming. Religion, as well as social proprieties, will glide
smoothly over a surface of glazed pasteboard; and it will be only very
humble Christians, indeed, who will do their worshipping in person, and
will hold to the worn-out and obsolete practice of "No Cards."

SOME WORKING-WOMEN

It is almost a stereotyped remark, that the women of the more fashionable
and worldly class, in America, are indolent, idle, incapable, and live
feeble and lazy lives. It has always seemed to me that, on the contrary,
they are compelled, by the very circumstances of their situation, to lead
very laborious lives, requiring great strength and energy. Whether many of
their pursuits are frivolous, is a different question; but that they are
arduous, I do not see how any one can doubt. I think it can be easily shown
that the common charges against American fashionable women do not hold
against the class I describe.

There is, for instance, the charge of evading the cares of housekeeping,
and of preferring a boarding-house or hotel. But no woman with high aims in
the world of fashion can afford to relieve herself from household cares in
this way, except as an exceptional or occasional thing. She must keep house
in order to have entertainments, to form a circle, to secure a position.
The law of give and take is as absolute in society as in business; and the
very first essential to social position in our larger cities is a household
and a hospitality of one's own. It is far more practicable for a family of
high rank in England to live temporarily in lodgings in London, than for
any family with social aspirations to do the same in New York. The married
woman who seeks a position in the world of society must, therefore, keep
house.

And, with housekeeping, there comes at once to the American woman a world
of care far beyond that of her European sisters.

Abroad, everything in domestic life is systematized; and services of any
grade, up to that of housekeeper or steward, can be secured for money, and
for a moderate amount of that. The mere amount of money might not trouble
the American woman; but where to get the service? Such a thing as a trained
housekeeper, who can undertake, at any salary, to take the work off the
shoulders of the lady of the house,--such a thing America hardly affords.
Without this, the multiplication of servants only increaseth sorrow; the
servants themselves are often but an undisciplined mob, and the lady of the
house is like a general attempting to drill his whole command personally,
without the aid of a staff-officer or so much as a sergeant. For an
occasional grand entertainment, she can, perhaps, import a special force;
some fashionable sexton can arrange her invitations, and some genteel
caterer her supper. But for the daily routine of the household--guests,
children, door-bell, equipage--there is one vast, constant toil every day;
and the woman who would have these things done well must give her own
orders, and discipline her own retinue. The husband may have no "business,"
his wealth may supersede the necessity of all toil beyond daily billiards;
but for the wife wealth means business, and the more complete the social
triumph, the more overwhelming the daily toil.

For instance, I know a fair woman in an Atlantic city who is at the head of
a household including six children and nine servants. The whole domestic
management is placed absolutely in her hands: she engages or dismisses
every person employed, incurs every expense, makes every purchase, and
keeps all the accounts; her husband only ordering the fuel, directing the
affairs of the stable, and drawing checks for the bills. Every hour of her
morning is systematically appropriated to these things. Among other things,
she has to provide for nine meals a day; in dining-room, kitchen, and
nursery, three each. Then she has to plan her social duties, and to drive
out, exquisitely dressed, to make her calls. Then there are constantly
dinner-parties and evening entertainments; she reads a little, and takes
lessons in one or two languages. Meanwhile her husband has for daily
occupation his books, his club, and the above-mentioned light and easy
share in the cares of the household. Many men in his position do not even
keep an account of personal expenditures.

There is nothing exceptional in this lady's case, except that the work may
be better done than usual: the husband could not well contribute more than
his present share without hurting domestic discipline; nor does the wife do
all this from pleasure, but in a manner from necessity. It is the condition
of her social position: to change it, she must withdraw herself from her
social world. A few improvements, such as "family hotels," are doing
something to relieve this class to whom luxury means labor. The great
undercurrent which is sweeping us all toward some form of associated life
is as obvious in this new improvement in housekeeping, as in coöperative
stores or trades-unions; but it will nevertheless be long before the "women
of society" in America can be anything but a hard-working class.

The question is not whether such a life as I have described is the ideal
life. My point is that it is, at any rate, a life demanding far more of
energy and toil, at least in America, than the men of the same class are
called upon to exhibit. There is growing up a class of men of leisure in
America; but there are no women of leisure in the same circle. They hold
their social position on condition of "an establishment," and an
establishment makes them working-women. One result is the constant exodus
of this class to Europe, where domestic life is just now easier. Another
consequence is that you hear woman suffrage denounced by women of this
class, not on the ground that it involves any harder work than they already
do, but on the ground that they have work enough already, and will not bear
the suggestion of any more.

THE EMPIRE OF MANNERS

I was present at a lively discourse, administered by a young lady just from
Europe to a veteran politician. "It is of very little consequence," she
said, "what kind of men you send out as foreign ministers. The thing of
real importance is that they should have the right kind of wives. Any man
can sign a treaty, I suppose, if you tell him what kind of treaty it must
be. But all his social relations with the nations to which you send him
will depend on his wife." There was some truth, certainly, in this
audacious conclusion. It reminded me of the saying of a modern thinker,
"The only empire freely conceded to women is that of manners,--but it is
worth all the rest put together."

Every one instinctively feels that the graces and amenities of life must be
largely under the direction of women. The fact that this feeling has been
carried too far, and has led to the dwarfing of women's intellect, must not
lead to a rejection of this important social sphere. It is too strong a
power to be ignored. George Eliot says well that "the commonest man, who
has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between
a lovely, delicate woman, and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference
in their presence." At a summer resort, for instance, one sees women who
may be intellectually very ignorant and narrow, yet whose mere manners give
them a social power which the highest intellects might envy. To lend joy
and grace to all one's little world of friendship; to make one's house a
place which every guest enters with eagerness, and leaves with reluctance;
to lend encouragement to the timid, and ease to the awkward; to repress
violence, restrain egotism, and make even controversy courteous,--these
belong to the empire of woman. It is a sphere so important and so
beautiful, that even courage and self-devotion seem not quite enough,
without the addition of this supremest charm.

This courtesy is so far from implying falsehood, that its very best basis
is perfect simplicity. Given a naturally sensitive organization, a loving
spirit, and the early influence of a refined home, and the foundation of
fine manners is secured. A person so favored may be reared in a log hut,
and may pass easily into a palace; the few needful conventionalities are so
readily acquired. But I think it is a mistake to tell children, as we
sometimes do, that simplicity and a kind heart are absolutely all that are
needful in the way of manners. There are persons in whom simplicity and
kindness are inborn, and who yet never attain to good manners for want of
refined perceptions. And it is astonishing how much refinement alone can
do, even if it be not very genuine or very full of heart, to smooth the
paths and make social life attractive.

All the acute observers have recognized the difference between the highest
standard, which is nature's, and that next to the highest, which is art's.
George Eliot speaks of that fine polish which is "the expensive substitute
for simplicity," and Tennyson says of manners,--

  "Kind nature's are the best: those next to best
  That fit us like a nature second-hand;
  Which are indeed the manners of the great."

In our own national history we have learned to recognize that the personal
demeanor of women may be a social and political force. The slave-power owed
much of its prolonged control at Washington, and the larger part of its
favor in Europe, to the fact that the manners of Southern women had been
more sedulously trained than those of Northern women. Even
at this moment, one may see at any watering-place that the relative social
influence of different cities does not depend upon the intellectual
training of their women, so much as on the manners. And, even if this is
very unreasonable, the remedy would seem to be, not to go about lecturing
on the intrinsic superiority of the Muses to the Graces, but to pay due
homage at all the shrines.

It is a great deal to ask of reformers, especially, that they should be
ornamental as well as useful; and I would by no means indorse the views of
a lady who once told me that she was ready to adopt the most radical views
of the women-reformers if she could see one well-dressed woman who
accepted them. The place where we should draw the line between independence
and deference, between essentials and non-essentials, between great ideas
and little courtesies, will probably never be determined--except by actual
examples. Yet it is safe to fall back on Miss Edgeworth's maxim in "Helen,"
that "Every one who makes goodness disagreeable commits high treason
against virtue." And it is not a pleasant result of our good deeds, that
others should be immediately driven into bad deeds by the burning desire to
be unlike us.

GIRLSTEROUSNESS

They tell the story of a little boy, a young scion of the house of Beecher,
that, on being rebuked for some noisy proceeding, in which his little
sister had also shared, he claimed that she also should be included in the
indictment. "If a boy makes too much noise," he said, "you tell him he
mustn't be boisterous. Well, then, when a girl makes just as much noise,
you ought to tell her not to be so _girlsterous_."

I think that we should accept, with a sense of gratitude, this addition to
the language. It supplies a name for a special phase of feminine demeanor,
inevitably brought out of modern womanhood. Any transitional state of
society develops some evil with the good. Good results are unquestionably
proceeding from the greater freedom now allowed to women. The drawback is
that we are developing, here and now, more of "girlsterousness" than is apt
to be seen in less enlightened countries.

The more complete the subjection of woman, the more "subdued" in every
sense she is. The typical woman of savage life is, at least in youth,
gentle, shy, retiring, timid. A Bedouin woman is modest and humble; an
Indian girl has a voice "gentle and low." The utmost stretch of the
imagination cannot picture either of them as "girlsterous." That perilous
quality can only come as woman is educated, self-respecting, emancipated.
"Girlsterousness" is the excess attendant on that virtue, the shadow which
accompanies that light. It is more visible in England than in France, in
America than in England.

It is to be observed, that, if a girl wishes to be noisy, she can be as
noisy as anybody. Her noise, if less clamorous, is more shrill and
penetrating. The shrieks of schoolgirls, playing in the yard at
recess-time, seem to drown the voices of the boys. As you enter an evening
party, it is the women's tones you hear most conspicuously. There is no
defect in the organ, but at least an adequate vigor. In travelling by rail,
when sitting near some rather underbred party of youths and damsels, I have
commonly noticed that the girls were the noisiest. The young men appeared
more regardful of public opinion, and looked round with solicitude, lest
they should attract too much attention. It is "girlsterousness" that dashes
straight on, regardless of all observers. Of course reformers exhibit their
full share of this undesirable quality. Where the emancipation of women is
much discussed in any circle, some young girls will put it in practice
gracefully and with dignity, others rudely. Yet even the rudeness may be
but a temporary phase, and at last end well. When women were being first
trained as physicians, years ago, I remember a young girl who came from a
Southern State to a Northern city, and attended the medical lectures.
Having secured her lecture-tickets, she also bought season-tickets to the
theatre and to the pistol-gallery, laid in a box of cigars, and began her
professional training. If she meant it as a satire on the pursuits of the
young gentlemen around her, it was not without point. But it was, I
suppose, a clear case of "girlsterousness;" and I dare say that she sowed
her wild oats much more innocently than many of her male contemporaries,
and that she has long since become a sedate matron. But I certainly cannot
commend her as a model.

Yet I must resolutely deny that any sort of hoydenishness or indecorum is
an especial characteristic of radicals, or even "provincials," as a class.
Some of the fine ladies who would be most horrified at the
"girlsterousness" of this young maiden would themselves smoke their
cigarettes in much worse company, morally speaking, than she ever
tolerated. And, so far as manners are concerned, I am bound to say that the
worst cases of rudeness and ill-breeding that have ever come to my
knowledge have not occurred in the "rural districts," or among the lower
ten thousand, but in those circles of America where the whole aim in life
might seem to be the cultivation of its elegances.

And what confirms me in the fear that the most profound and serious types
of this disease are not to be found in the wildcat regions is the fact that
so much of it is transplanted to Europe, among those who have the money to
travel. It is there described broadly as "Americanism;" and, so surely as
any peculiarly shrill group is heard coming through a European
picture-gallery, it is straightway classed by all observers as belonging to
the great Republic. If the observers are enamoured at sight with the beauty
of the young ladies of the party, they excuse the voices;

  "Strange or wild, or madly gay,
  They call it only pretty Fanny's way."

But other observers are more apt to call it only Columbia's way; and if
they had ever heard the word "girlsterousness," they would use that too.

Emerson says, "A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene." If we
Americans often violate this perfect maxim of good manners, it is something
that America has, at least, furnished the maxim. And, between Emerson and
"girlsterousness," our courteous philosopher may yet carry the day.

ARE WOMEN NATURAL ARISTOCRATS?

A clergyman's wife in England has lately set on foot a reform movement in
respect to dress; and, like many English reformers, she aims chiefly to
elevate the morals and manners of the lower classes, without much reference
to her own social equals. She proposes that "no servant, under pain of
dismissal, shall wear flowers, feathers, brooches, buckles or clasps,
earrings, lockets, neck-ribbons, velvets, kid gloves, parasols, sashes,
jackets, or trimming of any kind on dresses, and, above all, no crinoline;
no pads to be worn, or frisettes, or _chignons_, or hair-ribbons. The dress
is to be gored and made just to touch the ground, and the hair to be drawn
closely to the head, under a round white cap, without trimming of any kind.
The same system of dress is recommended for Sunday-school girls,
schoolmistresses, church-singers, and the lower orders generally."

The remark is obvious, that in this country such a course of discipline
would involve the mistress, not the maid, in the "pain of dismissal." The
American clergyman and clergyman's wife who should even "recommend" such a
costume to a schoolmistress, church-singer, or Sunday-school girl,--to say
nothing of the rest of the "lower orders,"--would soon find themselves
without teachers, without pupils, without a choir, and probably without a
parish. It is a comfort to think that even in older countries there is less
and less of this impertinent interference: the costume of different ranks
is being more and more assimilated; and the incidental episode of a few
liveries in our cities is not enough to interfere with the general current.
Never yet, to my knowledge, have I seen even a livery worn by a white
native American; and to restrain the Sunday bonnets of her handmaidens,
what lady has attempted?

This is as it should be. The Sunday bonnet of the Irish damsel is only the
symbol of a very proper effort to obtain her share of all social
advantages. Long may those ribbons wave! Meanwhile I think the fact that it
is easier for the gentleman of the house to control the dress of his groom
than for the lady to dictate that of her waiting-maid,--this must count
against the theory that it is women who are the natural aristocrats.

Women are no doubt more sensitive than men upon matters of taste and
breeding. This is partly from a greater average fineness of natural
perception, and partly because their more secluded lives give them less of
miscellaneous contact with the world. If Maud Muller and her husband had
gone to board at the same boarding-house with the Judge and his wife, that
lady might have held aloof from the rustic bride, simply from inexperience
in life, and not knowing just how to approach her. But the Judge, who might
have been talking politics or real estate with the young farmer on the
doorsteps that morning, would certainly find it easier to deal with him as
a man and a brother at the dinner-table. From these different causes women
get the credit or discredit of being more aristocratic than men are; so
that in England the Tory supporters of female suffrage base it on the
ground that these new voters at least will be conservative.

But, on the other hand, it is women, even more than men, who are attracted
by those strong qualities of personal character which are always the
antidote to aristocracy. No bold revolutionist ever defied the established
conventionalisms of his times without drawing his strongest support from
women. Poet and novelist love to depict the princess as won by the outlaw,
the gypsy, the peasant. Women have a way of turning from the insipidities
and proprieties of life to the wooer who has the stronger hand; from the
silken Darnley to the rude Bothwell. This impulse is the natural corrective
to the aristocratic instincts of womanhood; and though men feel it less, it
is still, even among them, one of the supports of republican institutions.
We need to keep always balanced between the two influences of refined
culture and of native force. The patrician class, wherever there is one, is
pretty sure to be the more refined; the plebeian class, the more energetic.
That woman is able to appreciate both elements is proof that she is quite
capable of doing her share in social and political life. This English
clergyman's wife, who devotes her soul to the trimmings and gored skirts of
the lower orders, is no more entitled to represent her sex than are those
ladies who give their whole attention to the "novel and intricate bonnets"
advertised this season on Broadway.

MRS. BLANK'S DAUGHTERS

Mrs. Blank, of Far West--let us not draw her from the "sacred privacy of
woman" by giving the name or place too precisely--has an insurmountable
objection to woman's voting. So the newspapers say; and this objection is
that she does not wish her daughters to encounter disreputable characters
at the polls.

It is a laudable desire, to keep one's daughters from the slightest contact
with such persons. But how does Mrs. Blank precisely mean to accomplish
this? Will she shut up the maidens in a harem? When they go out, will she
send messengers through the streets to bid people hide their faces, as when
an Oriental queen is passing? Will she send them travelling on camels,
veiled by _yashmaks?_ Will she prohibit them from being so much as seen by