thanks to science, we are no longer entirely blind, and we aspire to direct that mighty force for the good of humanity. We see a limitless field of possibility opening out before us; the adventurous spirit in us might leap up at the wonderful romance of life! We recognize that no power, however trivial, fails to count in the general sum of things which moves this way or that?towards heaven or hell, according to the preponderating motives of individual units. We shall begin, slowly but surely, to see the folly of permitting the forces of one sex to pull against and neutralize the workings of the other, to the confusion of our efforts and the checking of our progress. We shall see, in the relations of men and women to one another, the source of all good or of all evil, precisely as those relations are true and noble and equal,
2. Mrs. Cady Stanton believes that there is a sex stimulated to their utmost only by men [Caird's in mind, and that men can only be inspired to their note], Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815?1902), highest achievements by women, while women are prominent American women's suffragist.
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BESANT: THE QUEEN'S REIGN / 1605
or false and low and unjust. With this belief we shall seek to move opinion in all the directions that may bring us to this 'consummation devoutly to be wished,'3 and we look forward steadily, hoping and working for the day when men and women shall be comrades and fellow-workers as well as lovers and husbands and wives, when the rich and many-sided happiness which they have the power to bestow one on another shall no longer be enjoyed in tantalizing snatches, but shall gladden and give new life to all humanity. That will be the day prophesied by Lewis Morris4 in The New Order?
'When man and woman in an equal union Shall merge, and marriage be a true communion.'
1888
3. Cf. Shakespeare's Hamlet 3.1.65-66. 4. Welsh poet (1833-1907). WALTER BESANT
Besant (1836?1901) was a literary critic, historian, and novelist. His history The Queens Reign (1897) celebrated the improvements that he felt he had witnessed during his lifetime.
From The Queen's Reign
[THE TRANSFORMATION OF WOMEN'S STATUS BETWEEN 183 7 AND 1897 ]
Let me present to you, first, an early Victorian girl, born about the Waterloo year;1 next, her granddaughter, born about 1875.* * *
The young lady of 1837 * * * cannot reason on any subject whatever because of her ignorance?as she herself would say, because she is a woman. In her presence, and indeed in the presence of ladies generally, men talk trivialities. * * * It has often been charged against Thackeray2 that his good women were insipid. Thackeray, like most artists, could only draw the women of his own time, and at that time they were undoubtedly insipid. Men, I suppose, liked them so. To be childishly ignorant; to carry shrinking modesty so far as to find the point of a shoe projecting beyond the folds of a frock indelicate; to confess that serious subjects were beyond a woman's grasp; never even to pretend to form an independent judgment; to know nothing of Art, History, Science, Literature, Politics, Sociology, Manners?men liked these things; women yielded to please the men; her very ignorance formed a subject of laudable pride with the Englishwoman of the Forties. * * * There was something Oriental in the seclusion of women in the home, and their exclusion from active and practical life.
1. I.e., 1815, the year Napoleon Bonaparte was British novelist. The character of Amelia Sedley, in defeated by British and Prussian forces at the Bat-his novel Vanity Fair (1848), is cited by Besant as tle of Waterloo. typical of the 'insipid' women of the 1840s. 2. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863),
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1 582 / THE 'WOMAN QUESTION'
Let us turn to the Englishwoman?the young Englishwoman?of 1897. She is educated. Whatever things are taught to the young man are taught to the young woman. If she wants to explore the wickedness of the world she can do so, for it is all in the books. The secrets of Nature are not closed to her; she can learn the structure of the body if she wishes. At school, at college, she studies just as the young man studies, but harder and with greater concentration. * * * She has invaded the professions. She cannot become a priest, because the Oriental prejudice against women still prevails, so that women in High Church places are not allowed to sing in the choir, or to play the organ, not to speak of preaching. * * * In the same way she cannot enter the Law. Some day she will get over this restriction, but not yet. For a long time she was kept out of medicine. That restriction is now removed; she can, and she does, practice as a physician or a surgeon, generally the former.3 I believe that she has shown in this profession, as in her university studies, she can stand, inter pares,4 among her equals and her peers, not her superiors. There is no branch of literature in which women have not distinguished themselves. * * * In music they compose, but not greatly; they play and sing divinely. The acting of the best among them is equal to that of any living man. They have become journalists, in some cases of remarkable ability; in fact, there are thousands of women who now make their livelihood by writing in all its branches. As for the less common professions?the accountants, architects, actuaries, agents? they are rapidly being taken over by women.
It is no longer a question of necessity; women do not ask themselves whether they must earn their own bread, or live a life of dependence. Necessity or no necessity they demand work, with independence and personal liberty. Whether they will take upon them the duties and responsibilities of marriage, they postpone for further consideration. I believe that, although in the first eager running there are many who profess to despise marriage, the voice of nature and the instinctive yearning for love will prevail.
Personal independence: that is the keynote of the situation. Mothers no longer attempt the old control over their daughters: they would find it impossible. The girls go off by themselves on their bicycles;' they go about as they please; they neither compromise themselves nor get talked about. For the first time in man's history it is regarded as a right and proper thing to trust a girl as a boy insists upon being trusted. Out of this personal freedom will come, I daresay, a change in the old feelings of young man to maiden. He will not see in her a frail, tender plant which must be protected from cold winds; she can protect herself perfectly well. He will not see in her any longer a creature of sweet emotions and pure aspirations, coupled with a complete ignorance of the world, because she already knows all that she wants to know. Nor will he see in her a companion whose mind is a blank, and whose conversation is insipid, because she already knows as much as he knows himself. Nor, again, will he see in her a housewife whose whole time will be occupied in superintending servants or in making, brewing, confecting things with her own hand.
3. The first woman to have her name placed on 4. Among equals (Latin). the British Medical Register was Elizabeth Black-5. Modern bicycles (with wheels of equal size and well (who earned her degree in the United States), pneumatic tires) began to be manufactured in the in 1859; it took another two decades for women to late 1880s and became extremely popular in gain the right to study and take the required exam-Europe and the United States. inations in medicine in Great Britain.
