Full text of "Woman in transition"

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1980

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A RIBBON OF IRON
IN RUSSIAN TURKESTAN
RUSSIA: TRAVELS AND STUDI]

WOMAN

' ' -V * -*1U i

IN TRANSITION .

ANNETTE M. B. MEAKIN

FELLOW OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

' Non ego ventosae Plebis suffragia venor "

MICROFORMED BY

PRESRVAT1ON

SiRVICES

2 1992

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

First Published in 7907

The author, who is happy in having women
friends in every part of the globe, takes this
opportunity of acknowledging the many kind
and interesting letters in which these friends
have given her the benefit of their individual
observations. Her thanks are due, among
others, to Madame Murgoei, to Miss Frances
Best, to Miss Dora Olfsen, to Miss Estrid
Lagerborg, to Miss Helen Mackenzie, to
Miss Ingeborg Solberg, to Madame Hanau,
to Mrs L. Holden, and to Mrs John Gill.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGB

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS .... I

Changes The woman problem Girlhood in France Home
training A French mother Mariage de convenance Good
business women Girlhood in Germany Anecdote of a German
husband A widening horizon Girlhood in Finland Travelling
alone Home life in Sweden Personality of Norwegian girls
Maids of honour Visiting done away with Results of Norway's
poverty English and Norwegian girls compared Royalty in
Norway Ambition of Roumanian girls Girlhood in Italy
Mixed marriages Nice English girls Russian class prejudice
Russian aristocracy Girlhood in Spain Girlhood in Switzerland
Customs in Denmark Thoughts on flirtation English customs
shock a German Baron Husband hunting The turning-point in
life Comparison between English girlhood and Turkish girlhood
Tatar women Women in Central Asia A British penchant
St Paul and the twentieth century.

CHAPTER II

THE YOUNG WIFE. ..... 24

A wife he could command The word "obey" Woman's error
Voltaire's advice to a bride Nationality and woman Men
reduced to petticoats John Bull and the woman question The
effects of boredom A natural transition In the days of our
grandmothers A Homeric picture In the days of slavery Life
on a Virginian estate Longevity of American women The
travelling mania Overwork and examinations Empty lives
Fresh sensations Three novels a day How to improve our
literary taste.

vii

vin

CHAPTER III

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD

PAGE

Woman's real destiny Ibsen's " Doll's House" Where Ibsen
is appreciated Martin Luther and woman Motherhood Moral
hypocrisy Animal motherhood Criminal motherhood A solace
to man Heredity and instinct Our declining birth-rate Other
European countries Malthus American families The two-
children system The only child The ideal family Late marriages
in Sweden A national danger Decline of the marriage-rate ' 'An
undeveloped man " An Austrian thinker and the women of to-
day Marriage in Belgium The lowest marriage-rate in Europe
Swedish girls and marriage Luxury and the marriage-rate The
necessities of life Why men marry late Custom and curiosity
Sighing over their chains Our lowest birth-rate Higher educa-
tion and marriage Choosing partners A young bachelor's
complaint Divorce in France Progressive polygamy Divorce
in America The English press Bigamy in England Professor
Durkheim on marriage Obstacles to marriage Military service.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST .... 59

Morals in Austria The London streets Terrible consequences
Leper windows Women burned alive Prostitution in Austria
Hypocritical cant England's reputation " The most hideous
sight in London " German courtesans in England The London
police Mormon morality A negro orator in Hyde Park The
mother's dishonour Maternal anxiety Conscience money A
prostitute's soul Wild oats Bigoted opposition.

CHAPTER V

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID ... 76

A twentieth century sociologist The monogamic marriage
Woman's natural education " Oh, ye unmarried women ! " Old
maids and Martin Luther The stigma of idleness The pleasures
of hospitality Lonely women The household drudge The
world of reality After the Reformation Feminism worked by
steam Surplus women The struggle for existence The happi-
ness of others A virtue of necessity The worthiest goal The
Catholic Church and motherhood Socialism Old maids in

CONTENTS ix

PAGE

France Convents Philanthropic frenzy A visitor from Mars
Popular preachers and maiden ladies Catholic sisterhoods
Wasted energy A triumph of civilisation Homeless ladies
Single blessedness Prudishness "Someone else's family"
Girls in the marriage market.

CHAPTER VI

THE EVENTUALITY OF WIDOWHOOD ... 98

Married bliss " His will " Luther's advice to girls about to
marry The ivy and the oak Cancer A plucky woman Un-
businesslike ways of English women The average middle class
wife An incident at a tennis club A ruined reputation Capa-
bilities of French women A Scotsman's ideal woman A Russian
sociologist Testimony of a French countess Scandalised
society A Catholic bishop Not a freak of nature.

CHAPTER VII

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN THE SEXES . . Ill

The professional woman Beauty and riches Necessity of
sufficient recreation Personal appearance Housing of pro-
fessional women Life in a boarding-house Co-operative homes
Concentration of classes Segregation of the sexes The middle-
aged woman The society of good women beneficial to young men
Clubs for professional women in America " At homes" "A
strange English custom " The opposite sex Real conversation
Independent judgment Before the days of the lending library
Topics of conversation "I would not live in England again"
Spiritual commerce Monotony of married life "What is
jealousy?" Escorting a lady to church Subtle distinctions
Mental equality Englishmen in India The gravest fault in
Thackeray's novels.

CHAPTER VIII

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS . . . I2Q

An Englishman's glory Russian girls in Paris Women and
Trade Unions Economic independence Preferring servitude to
isolation Goldsmith's Chinaman The history of Women's
Clubs Uses of the Woman's Club Smoking-rooms Women
who smoke The masculine temperament The Frenchwoman's
ideal No Women's Clubs in Denmark The Suffragist in

vni

CHAPTER III

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD ....

Woman's real destiny Ibsen's " Doll's House" Where Ibsen
is appreciated Martin Luther and woman Motherhood Moral
hypocrisy Animal motherhood Criminal motherhood A solace
to man Heredity and instinct Our declining birth-rate Other
European countries Malthus American families The two-
children system The only child The ideal family Late marriages
in Sweden A national danger Decline of the marriage-rate "An
undeveloped man " An Austrian thinker and the women of to-
day Marriage in Belgium The lowest marriage-rate in Europe
Swedish girls and marriage Luxury and the marriage-rate The
necessities of life Why men marry late Custom and curiosity
Sighing over their chains Our lowest birth-rate Higher educa-
tion and marriage Choosing partners A young bachelor's
complaint Divorce in France Progressive polygamy Divorce
in America The English press Bigamy in England Professor
Durkheim on marriage Obstacles to marriage Military service.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST

Morals in Austria The London streets Terrible consequences
Leper windows Women burned alive Prostitution in Austria
Hypocritical cant England's reputation " The most hideous
sight in London" German courtesans in England The London
police Mormon morality A negro orator in Hyde Park The
mother's dishonour Maternal anxiety Conscience money A
prostitute's soul Wild oats Bigoted opposition.

CHAPTER V

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID

CONTENTS ix

PAGK

CHAPTER VI

THE EVENTUALITY OF WIDOWHOOD ... 98

CHAPTER VII

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN THE SEXES . . Ill

CHAPTER VIII

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS . . . . I2Q

Xll

CHAPTER XIV

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES .... 274

Co-education in the past The gentle English mother Pliny
and woman Feijdo and woman's inferiority A Protestant mis-
sionary Shaking their husbands Co-education and manliness
Regalvanising our grammar schools An anxious parent Causes
of hysteria among boys Self-control a disappearing art Whole-
some emulation Co-education in Russia Co-education in Den-
mark Compulsory military training Views of a South African
colonel A Dutch critic A pampered amateur British mothers
and compulsory military training The atmosphere of our boys'
schools A question asked by Major-General Colville Co-
education in France The Latin temperament Co-education and
marriage No jump into womanhood Co-education in Switzer-
land Opposition in the United States A German Catholic
divine Getting rid of prejudice Stemming the tide of woman's
progress The Spanish lady at home Spain's homage to woman
A mutual danger A great compliment to the girls Why are
Englishmen silent? Too much money Some benefits of co-
education.

INDEX

305

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

A STUDY

CHAPTER I

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS

TRANSITION and change are synonymous
terms. In these days it matters not in which
direction we look, social changes meet the eye at
every turn, and the greatest change of all is that
which is slowly, surely and steadily taking place in
woman. The woman movement is one of the greatest
problems of our age, 1 and those who travel with their
eyes open know that it may be studied in every
nook and corner of our globe. This movement has
sometimes been mistaken for a revolt, but it is no
more a revolt than is the change which a caterpillar
goes through before it can become a butterfly. 2 The

1 "La conscience humaine traverse une danger euse phase. De nom-
breux problemes se posent inevitables : il les faudra resoudre ou perir.
Et parmi ces problemes, celui des sexes apparait incontestiment,
comme 1'un des plus imperieux et des plus graves." J. Lourbet, " Le
Probleme des Sexes," 1900.

2 a When we look at a caterpillar, we like to anticipate the bright
day when it will be a butterfly. If we could talk about it with the
caterpillar, it would probably be terrified at the idea, and plead the ex-
ceeding danger of being high up in the air. We do not desire or
endeavour to force or hasten the process, yet the caterpillar becomes a
butterfly, without any final objection on its own part." H. Martineau,
" Society in America," 1837.

A l

2 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

expert can tell, with one look at a caterpillar, what
kind of butterfly it is going to turn into. But woman
is not a caterpillar and the cleverest of experts are
disagreed as to her destiny. Few writers have
approached this problem with unbiased mind and
complete freedom from prejudice, and it is too
closely entwined with the happiness, or unhappiness,
of every human being for any to approach it with
indifference.

The problem of woman's destiny is as old as our
mother Eve. French soil gave birth to the woman
movement in its present form ; British soil transmitted
it to America, and America rightly claims the honour
of nursing it to maturity. For many years Germany
appears to have escaped its influence, nevertheless it in-
fected her too, and of late opinions have changed with a
rapidity that is nothing short of startling. Scandinavia
runs Germany very close, but Finland has recently
beaten them both, and now, in many respects, Russia
is leading the van. Can we point on the map of the
world to a country where the relative position of
woman is not changing ? Who can tell whether at
the close of the great race between the nations the
first may not be last and the last first ? The end is
not yet. More than one zealous pioneer has stepped
off the right track from very eagerness to help her
sex, and has lost her way in the wood. Exhaustive
histories and volumes of facts concerning woman
have been compiled by enthusiasts, but facts, as
Buckle tells us, have outstripped our knowledge and
are now encumbering our march ; we must remember
too that an author may influence us as much by what

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 3

he leaves out as by what he says. 1 We often hear the
complaint that specialists are seldom inclined to treat
the subjects they investigate from a comparative point
of view. A fact may become distorted by its mere
isolation.

In these days of cosmopolitanism and of facilitated
locomotion the outward differences which were once
so marked between persons of the same social stand-
ing in different countries, and the differences between
their customs and way of life generally, are rapidly
becoming obliterated. It is no longer in its outer
characteristics that the middle class, or bourgeoisie of
one civilized nation differs greatly from that of
another. Let us look at the young girl of the first
decade of the twentieth century and note the degree
of liberty she enjoys, and the peculiarities of the
atmosphere by which she is surrounded. The young
girl of the upper middle class in France, especially
if she lives in Paris, is impatiently throwing off the
restraints that only a few years ago were borne by
her sisters with timid submission, and accepted as a
matter of course ; she has even begun to walk out
alone, and to ask herself why she should not be as
much the mistress of her own actions as her brother
is master of his. It is easy to predict that in her
case the manage de convenance is doomed. Here
American influence is distinctly traceable, the peculiar
influence of the American girl of the type that " hopes
to go to Paris when she dies." The bicycle too has

1 " L'ecrivain est surtout puissant par ce qu'il ne dit pas." Vogue.
I have observed this to be particularly true in the case of books on
Woman.

4 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

brought with it many innovations ; Frenchmen speak
of it as " le symbole de r emancipation feminine" and
prophesy gloomily that it will end by abolishing the
domesticity of woman. 1 And certainly, as regards
their cycling costume, French girls have shown more
independence of masculine opinion than their sisters
in other civilised countries have dared to do, since
the days of Mrs Bloomer. Less change is to be
observed among girls in the provincial towns, and
of the lower middle class. It is the opinion of an
English lady of my acquaintance who has lived for
some years in a French provincial town, that the girls
there are much better brought up than English girls
of the same class, and much more tenderly cared for
though their liberty is curtailed. As children, they
are never left to the care of servants, but are, except
during school hours, always with their mothers, who
explain their lessons to them, and are their com-
panions and friends. They do not go to a boarding
school, but receive an excellent education at the
Lycees, where they are taught among other things
how to sew and how to keep house. " Most ladies,"
says my friend, " occupy themselves with their house-
keeping in the morning, dressing very simply, and often,
alas, untidily, and then pay calls all the afternoon
dressed up to the nines." Little girls are taught from
their earliest years to help their mother entertain
her friends, and many ladies take their children with
them when they pay their calls ; consequently French
children are never shy and awkward with strangers,
but have engaging manners the natural result of
1 See Turgeon, "Le Fe"minisme Fran9ais," 1902.

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 5

knowing what to do and how to do it. They are
also taught to say the right thing at the right time,
and are " not self-conscious and dumb as English
girls so often are." Their very shyness often makes
English children appear rude and repellent and
sometimes even forward. French children are little
women, they can manage and arrange things like
grown-up people ; in fact, there is sometimes a
danger of their becoming too precocious. A French
mother will not hesitate to interview and engage a
teacher for her daughter in the child's presence. An
English mother would not think of letting her little
girl be in the room while she was trying, in however
lady-like a manner, to beat down the teacher's price,
to squeeze into the bargain a little more time than
was due, or to make her accept a little less than the
fair price for her lessons. " One visible result," says
my friend, " of the mariage de convenance is that
young French girls, at least in the provinces, do not
angle for husbands as English girls do. They have
no need to do it, for their parents undertake to
see that they are married ; it is, of course, a business
affair, though generally the girl's inclinations are con-
sulted." Even when the young couple have not seen
much of each other before their marriage, they seem,
to outsiders at least, to settle down very well together
and to be really happy. When children come they
are a tie, and the family is the most sacred institution
in France ; we see its members cling to one another
and find their greatest and tenderest pleasure in each
other's society. Perhaps the interests of their family
circle are almost too absorbing at times, for certain it

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

is that the members of an unscattered family are
almost invariably narrow-minded in their views, and
take very little interest in outside affairs.

If the French girl did not turn out a good business
woman it would be surprising, for the atmosphere
in which she is brought up is most favourable to
the development of any business capacity with which
she may happen to be naturally endowed. Her
mother is almost invariably a clever manager of
business 1 as well as home affairs, and the skill she
exhibits often surpasses that of the father or brothers.
" Nine times out of ten," says the eye-witness above
quoted, " a Frenchwoman will succeed far better than
the men of her family in getting over any hitch that
may occur in their business." How different from
the atmosphere of the average German home, where
the mother is still little more than an excellent
housekeeper, and the only relief offered from house-
hold drudgery is sentimentality or, as an American
friend has aptly put it, "vapid vacuity." Bearing
this difference in mind we are not astonished at the
exaggerated sentiment which pervades the writings
of almost every German authoress who has devoted
herself to the woman question, or at the brisk,
matter-of-fact, business-like way in which the same

1 " L'esprit d'ordre, 1'economie, la vigilance que les Franais ont
reveles dans le commerce, ont oblige la legislation a conceder aux
marchandes qui exercent le commerce en leur propre nom, une liberte
contraire a ses habitudes. ' La femme marchande publique, dit le code
Napoleon, peut, sans 1'autorisation de son mari, s'obliger pour tout ce
qui concerne son negoce, et, au dit cas, elle oblige aussi son mari s'il
y a entre eux communaute de biens.'" Art. 220. Dora d'Istria, "Les
Femmes par une Femme," 1865.

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 7

subject is approached by her French sister. The
French woman often makes her husband's business
for him. I know of a case where the wife regularly
went down to the wharf, checked the merchandise
brought by the ship and directed the whole concern.
The husband is often little more than a figure-head.
Yet, in spite of this, the Frenchman somewhat re-
sembles the German in his attitude towards his
women-folk. He fancies they are there solely to
minister to his pleasure and comfort. The French
husband is to-day his wife's lord and master, but
it is very questionable whether he will hold that
position to-morrow. The provincial husband still
lets his wife go down on her knees and unbutton
his boots, or blow up the fire, while he rests leisurely
in his armchair and scolds her before everybody.
The provincial son is not yet taught to be chivalrous
towards his mother and sisters, and he is, it must
be confessed, often very rude to strangers. He
never thinks of giving up his place to a lady in
an omnibus, but pushes her out of his way or
blows his smoke in her face. While I was in
Berlin I had an opportunity of noting German
manners in a tram car. An American lady of my
acquaintance vacated her seat in favour of a tired -
looking young German woman who entered the car,
and a burly man, who had entered at the same
moment, pushed past her and took possession of
the seat. In answer to the American lady's protesta-
tions, he replied calmly, " It's all the same, she is my
wife."

The German girl of the middle classes has always

enjoyed a certain amount of personal liberty. As
far back as the eighties she could return from a
ball in the early hours of the morning without further
chaperonage than that of some young man whom
she had met at the dance. She might, without the
least impropriety even in those days, let herself be
seen in the company of a young gentleman in broad
daylight provided only that she carried in her hand
a tennis racquet or a pair of skates. In the twentieth
century the German girl in large towns is almost as
free as the English girl, and her years before marriage
are no longer devoted exclusively to housework and
sentimentality. She is fast losing the insipidity for
which she was once so remarkable, and the little
leaven of liberated womanhood is quickly leavening
the whole loaf, as even its opponents are forced to
admit. 1 The German girl's horizon is widening, and
she travels much more than she did. Who has not
met her in Italy with her kodak? But she rarely
travels without an escort. The Finnish girl is a great
contrast to the German in this respect, for once out
of her teens her parents allow her, if they can only
afford it, to travel all over Europe at her own sweet
will, in fact the Finnish girl enjoys far greater freedom
than has fallen even to the lot of the English girl.
A charming and modest young Finnish lady told
me in 1905 that, her doctor having advised her to
pass the winter of 1904 at a hydropathic establish-
ment in South Germany, to escape the cold winds
of Helsingfors, she had travelled thither alone and

1 " Die Frauenbewegung 1st eine durchaus notwendige Erscheinung."
Dr J. Miiller, " Beruf und Stellung der Frau," 1906.

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 9

remained at the "hydro" several months, but that
the flutter which the fact of her being alone had
caused in the minds of the German ladies there
had quite spoiled the pleasure of her stay, and that
in future when obliged to travel alone she would
take care to choose Norway or Denmark in pre-
ference to Germany, for in these countries a young
lady could travel where she liked without fear of
exciting either adverse criticism or idle curiosity.
The daughters of the best families in Finland enjoy
all the freedom of which American girls can boast,
but the development of their individuality has robbed
them of none of their feminine charms, nay, it has
heightened them rather, by adding dignity to modesty
and strength of character to gentleness. No girl in
Finland ever has cause to regret, as I once heard
an American girl do, that she was not "born a
widow ! "

The Swedish girl of the upper-middle class is
allowed far less liberty than is her sister in Finland ;
her characteristics and training resemble those of the
German girl, and like the latter she still devotes
much of her time to fancy work ; she is eager to
affect Parisian dress and manners, but she is too
Teutonic ever to succeed in passing for a French
girl. Her personality and her love of independence
are nevertheless strongly marked. Wikmark 1 tells
us, with a feeling of pride which he cannot dissemble,
that all the facts related by Tacitus about the ancient
Germans were equally applicable to the women of
the North.

1 " Die Frauenfrage," Dr Elon Wikmark, 1905.

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

In Sweden, as in Germany, the young girl who
has reached a marriageable age without becoming
emancipated, is sent to act as lady-help in the home
of some relative or friend in order that she may fit
herself for the duties of a married woman. She
does not of course receive any salary, as that would
be beneath a young lady of her position. Girls of
the Swedish bourgeoisie who live in the country have
hardly heard as yet of the very new woman who
is developing so rapidly in Stockholm, and scatter-
ing her distorted ideas about the rights of her sex
throughout Europe and America.

The personality of the Norwegian girl is far more
marked than that of her Swedish sister, and her
independence has something almost mannish about
it. She will tell you that no one is rich in her
country, and everybody must therefore be a bread-
winner. Norway is the only country in the world
where it is really considered a disgrace for a woman
to stay at home and be idle. 1 There was conse-
quently great difficulty in finding ladies willing to
act as Maids of Honour to Queen Maud. All who
were invited to the Court felt great hesitation about
leaving the work they had in hand. The most
striking result of this state of things is that Nor-
wegian women have no time to spare for the petty
formalities of social life, which have consequently
been reduced to a minimum. Ceremonial calls have

1 It is interesting to hear what an American has recently said on
this subject : "An explanation is still needed for the fact that idleness
is practically regarded as a vice in men, and a virtue in woman."
Lucy M. Salmon, "Domestic Service," 1901.

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 11

practically been done away with, for no one has
time for them. There is a delightful freedom from
stiffness about their social gatherings which we
English might well envy. Norwegian girls who
visit our country find it difficult to understand why
parties are usually so dull and slow in England ;
one of them remarked to me recently that if
a dozen Norwegian girls were put in a room
together, every one of them would by her conversa-
tion, before an hour was over, have given proof
of her independent personality, whereas you might
leave a dozen English girls together for a day, and
a person who had been present the whole time would
find it almost impossible to say afterwards wherein
any one of them differed from any of the others in
anything but outward appearance. This may be a
slight exaggeration, but, if so, it is an exaggeration
of an undeniable truth. Work outside her own
home comes naturally to every educated Norwegian
girl, and many of them leave home very young in
order that they may earn their own living. Their
education is undertaken with a view to their eventu-
ally becoming economic units, and as there is very
little class prejudice a girl is not deterred from
useful work by the fear of losing caste. As far as
its women are concerned, Norway might not in-
appropriately be termed the " modern Sparta." A
king and queen, with a court and its attendant
frivolities, would seem at first to be an anomaly
in a country that has ceased to have an aristoc-
racy, but as far as the absence of an aristocracy
is concerned we have a precedent in Roumania,

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

whose highest class is merely an upper and lower
bourgeoisie, which however has no counterpart in
Norway, the haute bourgeoisie of Rou mania shows, in
the way that it imitates all that is French, a servility
which is utterly foreign to the nature of the Norwegian.
The Roumanian models herself on what she conceives
to be the highest class in France, but which is in reality
the demi-monde. She is far more free in her use of
rouge and its usual accompaniments than is the
French girl of the class she imagines she is imitating.
The Roumanian girl is like the provincial French
girl, usually over dressed when she goes to pay calls,
and very slovenly in the privacy of her own home.
She is not allowed to go out alone and is even
fetched home from school. It seems hardly fair to
compare the Roumanian girl with girls of the nations
of which we have been speaking; the moral atmo-
sphere of a Bukarest home is so far beneath theirs ;
the Roumanians, as a people, are more properly to
be regarded as a link between Turkey and the more
civilized countries in Europe than as one of the
latter ; Asiatic tendencies show themselves beneath
a thin veneer of Western culture and polish. Let us
turn rather to Italy and see how the girl of the upper-
middle class is faring there. " The position of the
Italian girl is bad," writes a friend who has lived
among them for the last six years. " Her horizon
is extremely limited, her life is fatally narrow. Her
education is in every point inefficient. Her religion
is saturated with superstition." The manners of the
haute bourgeoisie are more or less a copy of those of
the aristocracy. In the aristocratic classes a husband

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 13

has usually been chosen for a girl before she leaves
the schoolroom. In the event of the choice proving
unsatisfactory, the girl has absolutely no redress.
Her dot becomes the property of her husband.
Should life with him prove unendurable, and separa-
tion become absolutely necessary, she is nevertheless
forced to provide for him. There being no divorce,
freedom is impossible." The young girl remains a
young girl until she marries, no matter what her age,
and socially speaking, she may not, until long after
youth has fled, even cross the street alone. Italian
men who come to England, complain that the girls
of this country are "so insipid." Some bright French
girls of my acquaintance who have Italian cousins, say
that they and their girl companions appear to have
absolutely no interest in life beyond getting married.
There is no doubt that the Italian girl, like the
Spanish girl, is still almost asleep. English girls
who have been foolish enough to marry Italians, can
tell us how hard it is for a free woman to go into
social slavery. Yet there were women professors at
the Italian Universities at a time when English
women hardly knew how to read ! Still in Italy
there are signs of reawakening. But what about
English girls of this class ? Have we not many
cases before our eyes to-day, where the family con-
sists of five, six, or seven young girls, all waiting
for a husband ? It is true that they have their
hockey and golf to shorten the waiting-time, but,

" ' I am aweary and aweary. He cometh not,' she said."
I knew of one family where the daughters divided

14 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

all the duties of the household between themselves,
and the only duty left for the youngest was that of
refilling the sugar basin. Speaking of sugar reminds
me of an American girl who once sat opposite me at
a continental table d'hote, and who called to her sister
who sat lower down the table, " Josephine ! urge me
down the sugar basin, will you, please," and Josephine
" urged " it down. There are in America girls of the
same social standing as those we have been discussing,
whose one ideal is to be as English as possible ; they
assure me that they never go about alone, and that
when they were little they had an English nurse ; but
even for these girls there are customs in England
which they find it hard to understand. " When one
of us gets engaged to an Englishman," they say, " his
father almost invariably writes to ask what portion
the bride is to bring with her ! Why, with us a man
thinks that the girl of his choice is giving him quite
enough when she gives him herself!" I may add
here that it is an error to attribute the great fascina-
tion that American girls have for Englishmen to their
fathers' money-bags. There really exists in the
personality of these girls a distinctive charm. I have
seen a whole room-full of English people brighten up
and become, as it were, electrified into liveliness by
the entry into their midst of one American girl.
The conversation immediately takes a brighter tone,
as if everybody had been suddenly relieved of
some secret anxiety. I have heard it said, how-
ever, that English girls are much nicer when you
meet them abroad than they are in their own
homes.

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 15

There are still many nice English girls who would
rather die in London than live at Margate, and there
are clergymen's daughters in the Midlands who would
not like to be seen digging the vicarage garden.
There are English mothers with insufficient incomes,
and talented daughters, but many of their mothers
will not let their daughters teach as it might injure
their chances of marriage. As for Russia, she had no
haute bourgeoisie till quite recently, but there too a
gir 1 of this class seems to slip down a grade if she
begins to earn money. Class prejudice is not marked
in Russia, where there is no natural gap between
aristocrats and peasants. Where a country is being
revolutionised the position of no class can remain
stereotyped. The families of the aristocracy, who
formerly lived like gentlemen farmers on their vast
country estates, are leaving them and settling in
Moscow or St Petersburg, and the wives and
daughters of noblemen, whose time was once fully
occupied with the supervision of their wide domestic
interests, are now leading lives similar to those of
town-bred women in Western Europe. In Spain a
woman of the upper classes may be said never to go
out alone, be she maid or wife, except to early mass.
In some Spanish towns it is almost a disgrace for
a lady to be seen on foot. The education of the
Spanish girl is on much the same level as it was in
England in the early part of the nineteenth century.

In Switzerland there is a distinct difference between
girls brought up in German-Switzerland and those
brought up in the French-speaking Cantons. In the
former, woman holds the same subordinate social

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

position as her neighbour in Germany, where man
still reigns supreme ; in the latter the atmosphere is
practically French ; but in both a girl has the great
advantage of belonging to a nation which is bi-lingual.
From her earliest years she has a literature of two
countries from which to draw her ideas ; she is less
bound by class prejudice than most European girls,
and in this she approaches nearest to the Norwegian.
Whether the strong caste and class feeling which is
so much in evidence at the present day will be rele-
gated to history in the days of women's completed
transformation is a question that many have tried to
answer. All answers are coloured more or less by the
particular standpoint of the observer, or the theorist,
as the case may be. I have not found a country that
is entirely free from class prejudice. Rank there
must always be, but the question as to who is entitled
to it may be answered more wisely and more justly
towards the end of this century than it can be at the
beginning.

In Denmark, girls of the class we are now discuss-
ing are also changing ; they are strongly tempted to
break away from old customs, but a fear that tokens
of emancipation will lessen their chances of marriage
often deters them from following their inclinations.
When a girl shows signs of being too intellectually
ambitious her companions try to bring her to her
senses with this terrible warning : " No one would
dance with you if you got a University degree. You
will have to sit out all the dances." Denmark is by
no means the only country where well-to-do girls are
deterred from following their natural bent by fears of

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 17

this nature. It has recently become fashionable for
Danish girls to take a year at the University, as
English girls do at Girton or Newnham, and then
return home to the irresponsible if not idle life that
still almost universally precedes marriage in this class
of society. The reader should bear in mind that
throughout this chapter I have been dealing only
with the average girl of one particular layer in the
social pyramid, the layer that will in all probability
be the last to become thoroughly saturated with the
ideas that are transforming womanhood, and the
reason of this is not far to seek, a man's rank is in
general that of his calling ; a woman's rank is still
that of her family, and idleness is, in every country
except Norway, a badge of social superiority, just as
truly as domestic service is a badge of servitude in
the eyes of the factory girl.

" As a rule Norwegian girls are not great flirts,
they may have many good friends male friends,"
writes a Norwegian friend who has travelled a great
deal, " but I should not say that they flirt. They are
however very free in comparison with girls of other
nationalities." The French girl cannot flirt until
she is safely married. " Marriage," says a French
writer, " gives to a French girl what it takes away from
the English girl her freedom." As for the German
girl, she is too sentimental as yet to make a good flirt.
Harmless flirtation is a product of English soil and
is essentially an English pastime ; it is comparatively
rare in typical American society, as indeed is the
case in all those countries where there is free social
intercourse between the young people of both sexes.
B

Of the gay daughters of Paris, one of their com-
patriots 1 confesses : " En attendant qu'on se marie le
plus tard possible pour faire une fin honorable, on se
livre dans la belle societe a un flirt etourdissant" and
then goes on to define the word ^flirter" " It is," he
says, in two words, " Joffrir sans se donner" Strange
that those Englishmen who are so ready to condemn
every new departure that women are taking to-day as
unwomanly, have never a word to say about the un-
womanliness of flirting ! Do they think, perhaps,
that it is the only method by which a true woman
can secure the successful fulfilment of her destiny?
" Sitting out " on the stairs between the dances is
a purely English invention, which has shocked the
propriety of more than one foreigner. " You have
strange customs in your country," an old German
Baron remarked to me in the summer of 1904.
" When I and my son were staying at an hotel in one
of your country towns last year, we were roused from
our slumber about two o'clock in the morning by
strange knocks upon our bedroom door, which was
on the fourth floor. We did not get up, however, but
enquired of the waiter at breakfast as to the cause of
the disturbance ; whereupon we were informed that
the chairs of the ladies and gentlemen who were
' sitting out ' at the Tennis Club Dance had acci-
dentally been placed too close to our bedroom
door."

I have indicated that the ordinary French girl is
not a flirt, but this does not mean that she is not,
what in her language is called a coquette. She is

1 Turgeon.

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 19

taught, as we have seen, from her earliest years, just
as carefully as the Eastern girl, that the art of pleasing
is her prerogative, though it is not with her, as with
her English and German sisters, the only means to
a coveted end. " The art of pleasing is woman's
werpon," says a French writer, " it is the condition of
her sovereignty, the source of all her strength. To
attract and fix the regard of men, to enchain their
hearts, is the incessant preoccupation of the feminine
sex." 1 It was La Rochefoucault who remarked that
a woman could more easily conquer her passion than
her coquetry. Yet even Frenchmen are beginning
to see that coquetry demoralises a girl, and that a
coquette does not invariably turn into a good wife,
much less into a good mother. A friend who has seen
much of English social life in one of our great depen-
dencies writes, " I believe girls tend to be petty,
mean and jealous, because they are taught to cultivate
their emotions instead of controlling them j their
success in life depends upon pleasing men. Until
girls learn to respect themselves, and to demand
moral qualities in the men who are their friends, their
friendships with men will tend to develop the above
qualities, which, for my part, I do not think are so
natural to women as to men. Out here it is the
men who gossip most, and who set the tone of con-
versation among the women. . . . The characters of
girls out here are moulded by the men ; whereas the
men's characters are moulded by circumstances."

German mothers, although they do not arrange
marriages for their daughters, join in the husband-

1 Turgeon.

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

hunt with quite as much zest as the girls themselves.
A mother and daughter will boldly follow one
eligible youth for years together from ball to hydro,
and vice versa, and the first to propose is almost
always accepted for how can any girl who has
been taught that maternity is woman's only destiny,
dare to run the risk of losing it? Even if the
proposal comes from a man who is wildfremd (an
absolute stranger), she shuts her eyes and leaps,
provided he has the necessary means. But German
men are waking up to the absurdity of all this.
" It is almost incredible," writes one of them, " how
girls who have been brought up with the utmost
care and affection, are thrown into the arms of total
strangers of whom nothing is known but their social
position and their banking account." 1 And another
German tells us that the whole Bedeutung of femi-
nine existence depends upon a girl's securing the
right husband. " All her powers, intellectual and
physical, are concentrated upon this great turning
point in her life. Our intellect is the slave of our
will, and it is only when we are following our in-
clinations that we are fully on the alert ; our interest
in an undertaking makes us klug" ( This writer
goes on to say that when a girl meets an eligible
young man she is like a general marshalling his
troops to meet the enemy in the field, or to use
another image, she is like troops that have been
mobilized ; she wears the uniform and stands at
her post ready to strike; she now interests herself
in matters with which she has no concern ; there

1 Muller. 2 Mdbius.

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 21

is no subject in which, at such a moment, she will
not interest herself. But once her object is gained,
the fiery and brillant girl is quickly transformed
into a very ordinary and characterless one." And
this transformation is, in the eyes of every male
German, a simple and beautiful process ; an irrevoc-
able law of nature ; but it is becoming daily more
and more contemptible to the educated German
woman, as it has long been to all who really respect
womanhood. Yet, so long as marriage is her only
metier, who will blame a girl for doing with all her
might the only serious thing her hand finds to do ?
Even in England, bridge and golf and hockey and
tennis are not serious life-work to a rich society girl,
and the great drawback from which she suffers, the
drawback which poisons her existence to-day, as it
poisoned that of the women of the French salons, is
the absence of a real object in life.

And wherein is the objectless life of the European
society girl so immeasurably superior to that of the
daughter of a wealthy Turk ? Whatever superiority
there is, is fast disappearing. In Egypt and in
Constantinople girls of the highest families are
beginning to be educated according to European
methods, and more and more personal liberty is
being granted to them. Without any loss of dignity
on their part, suitable husbands are always found
for them, for every good Mohammedan can have
four legal wives, and Islam knows nothing of the
old maid. Educated Mohammedan women, especially
Tartar women in Russia, are working bravely for
the emancipation of their sex from the slavery

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

into which Mohammed himself never could have
wished them to fall. If Russia's women have made
such remarkable progress since they threw aside their
veils at the command of Peter the Great, what
should hinder the women of Islam from following
their example? The Sart women of Central Asia,
the most secluded of all women under the sun, are
actually beginning to travel, and the year 1903 saw
special compartments reserved for them in the
Russian carriages on the Transcaspian railway. Now
let us look at home. In the year 1904 a wealthy
Englishman died in one of the Midland counties.
It was found, to the amazement of some of his
friends, that he had left his flourishing business and
all his money to his sons. The girls, educated solely
with a view to marriage, are now earning their daily
bread (probably as nursery-governesses), while the
sons keep their own carriages. In what other
country in the world may a father bring his
daughters up in the greatest luxury, and then, if their
angling for a husband has not been successful, thus
leave them penniless ? " Les mceurs des pays latins"
wrote Dora d'Istria in 1865, " sont hostiles a ces
penchants, mais en A ngleterre, une fille elevee dans le
bien-etre pent se trouver exposee aux plus rudes
fyreuves" I do not believe there is another country
in the world where a parallel case to the above could
ever occur, yet it is quite usual in Britain. We are
above copying the laws of Justinian, and English
girls are brought up to be thankful that they are not
as other girls are, and to imagine that they are better
treated than any other women on earth ! Yet no

GIRLHOOD IN MANY LANDS 23

Mohammedan gentleman would leave his daughters
unprovided for. Osman Bey l tells us that Moham-
med's crime towards woman was one of lese-humanite,
and that it consisted in his adding the sanction of
religion to that of custom, and thus consecrating by
divine law a system contrary to the laws of reason
and nature. If the Prophet could only return to his
people in these enlightened days, would he not
assuredly rectify his mistake ? Surely he would see
that woman has not found her paradise beneath the
sole of her husband's foot, and would help her to find
it elsewhere. And St Paul, too, were he permitted
to revisit the earth in the twentieth century, would
he not take care that in future his words regarding
woman should be interpreted in due relation to the
time and place in which they were written, and in
due relation to the persons for whom they were par-
ticularly intended? Everything St Paul said about
women would, however, be admirably fitted to the
women of Bokhara, were they to be converted to
Christianity to-morrow.

1 " Les Femmes en Turkic," 1878.

\ - . /. ,

4" ,

CHAPTER II

THE YOUNG WIFE

A GROUP of gaily dressed Japanese ladies came
down to the quay when our steamer was
leaving Yokohama for Vancouver, and we supposed,
as they waved their handkerchiefs to the passengers
in one of the boats, that we should have, at least, one
Japanese fellow-passenger, but none were visible.
The mystery was solved on the third day of the
voyage by an American gentleman who, it turned
out, had, during a stay of five weeks in the land of
the rising sun, secured for himself, besides many
other valuable curios, a Japanese wife. He told us
frankly that his reason for taking unto himself a bride
of that nationality was that he wanted a consort whom
he " could command." He knew, he added, that such
a treasure was not to be found in America. I heard
from the stewardess towards the end of the voyage,
that the poor Japanese lady, who was attired as a
European, had been a prisoner in her cabin from
headache nearly the whole of the way, probably from
the weight of her large European hat. " And the
bridegroom ? " I asked. " Is he very attentive ? "
" He troubles her very little with his attention," was
the reply ; and I then told the stewardess how the
marriage had come about. She was an American,

THE YOUNG WIFE 25

and the look of scorn that came over her face I shall
never forget. " Oh ! indeed ! He wanted a wife he
could command, did he ? " she hissed, and with that
she threw back her head and bounced out of my
cabin. Since then I have often told the same story
to Englishwomen, but to them it does not seem so
striking. Of course we all know that the Japanese
woman's moral code, like that of the Englishwoman,
consists of three obediences ; first to her father, later to
her husband, and lastly to her son ; but every rule
has its exceptions in Japan as elsewhere, and it is
only too true that, as Dr Talmage once put it, " the
goods delivered are often very different from the
sample for which the bargain was made " ; marriage
is always, more or less, " a departure for the unknown
with the unknown."

Every German youth feels, as he grows into
manhood, says Dr Miiller, a yearning to find some
woman who will lovingly yield her whole personality
to his, in perfect self-effacement. If this is so, the
German youth will very soon be compelled, like
our American friend, to travel to Japan before he
can find the commodity in question, for German
women are becoming daily more loath to part with
their personality even in marriage. As for Norwegian
women, they inaugurated the twentieth century by
causing the word " obey " to be gently removed from
their marriage service, and there are already men as
well as women in Germany who advocate a similar
proceeding in that country, yet those very men assert
in the same breath, that, under healthy conditions,
the wife should always be dependent upon, and sub-

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

ordinate to, the man she has accepted as her husband.
The man, according to them, is the wife's head, and
the wife is the man's heart. On the other hand,
their women are deciding mildly, but firmly, to keep,
even in marriage, the heads with which their Creator
has endowed them. The men, in their eagerness to
convince the women of their error, have called science
to their aid, but their scientists have, alas ! for some
twenty years or more, been treating the cranium of
the female Teuton as a special field of research with-
out making any discovery that could have real weight
on either side of the dispute. True, the woman's
brain has been found to be relatively the smaller, and
to weigh less than the man's, but it is not the relative
size or weight of the brain, but the relative quality of
the thought, that will have to decide the question ;
and to discover this, vivisection might have to be
resorted to. It is the German too who has called
religion to his aid, as we shall see in another chapter.
The German still expects his wife to give up her
independence of thought as readily as she gives up
her name, and with no more sense of loss. But there
is one country in Europe where the wife keeps her
own name, merely adding that of her husband to it.
I allude to Spain.

Every page that has ever been written by a
German on the subject of marriage is remarkable
for the writer's wearisome repetition of the word
Liebe, whereas what the German woman really wants
in these days is Freundschaft. She agrees with the
advice that Voltaire gave to the Duchess de Richelieu
on the day after her wedding :

THE YOUNG WIFE 27

" Ne vous aimez pas trop, <?est moi qui vous en prie,
Cest le plus sur moyen de vous aimer toujours,
II vaut mieux etre amis tout le temps de la vie^

Que d'etre amants pour quelques jours"

" A husband and wife can never be friends,"
replies the German, " for one of the strands in the
rope of friendship is mutual criticism, and it would
be against nature for a wife to criticise her hus-
band." 1 Further, the German believes that the
masculine sex alone is capable of friendship, but in
this view he stands, in the twentieth century, as far
as civilized countries are concerned, almost alone, so
great are the changes that have taken place in man's
conception of the opposite sex. The Frenchman
and the Belgian take the change in woman seriously ;
the German feels an ironical contempt for it, which
he only partially succeeds in veiling with sentimental
pedantry. In America the average husband is more
his wife's obedient and devoted servant than her
friend, and the American woman of the moneyed
class resembles a spoiled and petted child. I have
heard English women complain that American men
are effeminate, but perhaps that is only because of
the way they part their hair. I do not think myself
that there is any likelihood of their being reduced
to petticoats. Or, was Cato right when he predicted
that as soon as woman had become man's equal she
would become his superior ? It was Max O'Rell
who made the discovery that John Bull 2 had a decided

1 Dr Muller.

2 " It has long been noticed in England that the John Bull type
of Englishman is disappearing." J. Lionel Taylor, "Aspects of Social
Evolution," 1904.

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

predilection for domineering over his women-folk ;
and now, in the twentieth century, the British press
is at last pointing out this evil ; it is urging the
married man, often by means of long newspaper
and magazine articles, to change his attitude towards
the wife of his bosom ; some articles, it is true, by
the Transatlantic words and phrases which we detect
in their composition raise the suspicion that the
ideas they embody may have come from America.
One favourite periodical tells us that, except on the
lowest rungs of the social ladder, the English husband
would feel it a humiliation to act openly on his wife's
advice on a matter which concerned his business ;
it urges him seriously, however, to overcome this
weakness. A popular monthly magazine strongly
advises men to be more communicative towards their
wives as to the state of their banking account, instead
of expecting them to know and act upon facts which
have never been revealed to them. These may be
small signs in themselves, but they help to show in
which way the wind is blowing. The office of the
daily press is rather to reflect than to guide public
opinion, and as soon as the sympathy of the public
has been gained over to a cause the press comes forth
as its champion.

The young wife of the upper-middle class has not,
when the honeymoon is over, enough serious occupa-
tion to keep her in good health and spirits. She has
been educated with a view to securing a suitable
husband, but when she has successfully obtained
that object, the boredom and ennui of which she
becomes the victim, especially if children do not

THE YOUNG WIFE 29

come quickly, is injurious to her health, let alone
her spirits, yet man has never even suggested a
remedy. How often have the woes of such young
women been poured into our sympathising ear ? The
husband, whose brain has been healthfully occupied
all day, often comes home at night almost too tired
to eat or speak, and naturally on such occasions finds
his young wife's demands upon his affection unreason-
ably exacting. German pedants write whole theses
to prove that her overweening demand for affection
and sympathy is an unalterable trait in the nature of
the female sex ; they are like a person who cannot
find the name of a place on the map because it is
written in letters so much larger than they had ex-
pected ; they have not advanced one step from the
position Byron described when he announced that
love was woman's whole existence. What scientists
have attributed to unchangeable biological law, is
nothing more than the natural transition brought
about by purely economical causes. In the days of
our great-grandmothers the young wife had enough
duties to fulfil in connection with the household to
keep her properly and happily occupied. Housekeep-
ing in itself was a much weightier affair then than
it is now, and the wife, as well as the husband, had
the satisfaction at the close of the day of feeling that
she had earned her night's repose ; she knew, too,
that her labours were indispensable to the welfare of
the household, and thus gained self-respect, which
expressed itself in her quiet authority and her
dignified management of the servants and depen-
dents who looked to her for daily guidance. There

30 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

are a few homes still, in Russia, where we can get
an idea of the busy, useful, and happy life led by our
great - grandmothers. The superintendence of fruit
gathering and preserving, of spinning and weaving,
of bread-making, and a thousand and one other de-
partments, all fell in former days to the lot of the
ladies of the household, no matter how aristocratic
their blood might be ; and nothing was then written
about a wife's exacting demands upon her husband's
love ; neither did the men complain of their wives'
extravagance, or their extraordinary fascination for
shops and the pleasures of shopping ; the women
were not loafers, nor did they belong to the un-
employed. We will go much further back. How
charming is the picture Homer gives of how
Nausicaa and her queenly mother employed their
time ! But the old days and the old duties are
gone for ever, and women of this class are like the
rest of their sex, dissatisfied, restless, asking for new
outlets for their energy that will take the place of the
old ones. They are at last beginning to express what
they have felt so keenly and so long in silence their
need of an earnest purpose in life, a purpose suited to
the age they live in and to the abilities which educa-
tion and culture have developed.

It has been objected that even American women
seemed perfectly satisfied with their condition in the
early days of their country's existence as a nation.
And this was quite natural, their time was well filled.
The proudest women of the Southern states did not
in those days think it beneath their dignity to attend
to household matters. In the early years of the

THE YOUNG WIFE 31

nineteenth century every garment worn by the negro
slaves on many a Virginian estate was cut out by
the ladies of the family. Married women were more
contented in the old days, for they all had a field
for the exercise of their powers, and all exercise of
our natural abilities gives us not only contentment of
mind, but a real pleasure far and away superior to
the pleasures of passive enjoyment. German pedants
might have learned this truth from Aristotle. An
idle, aimless life leads in woman, as in man, to peculiar
constitutional disorders. Laycock x devoted much
study to the complaints of those females who follow
sedentary occupations and suffer from repressed feel-
ings in civilized communities. He contended for a
special "affectability" in women so placed. He
thought that perhaps in woman it might be com-
patible with good health, but felt no doubt that in
man it was a morbid state ( ! ), the source of hypo-
chondriasis and the result of causes which depress the
powers, or excite unequally the nervous system. The
fact is, that vacuity of mind, and want of purpose,
are just as injurious to a woman as to a man, and
lead to a morbid state quite as certainly in the case
of the one sex as they do in that of the other. It
is also false to attribute the frailties of American
society women to all the women of America, no
matter whether they be moral or physical. The
nervous prostration of which we hear so much is not
a result of healthy activity or congenial employment,
as the enemies of the woman movement would have

1 Thomas Laycock, M.D., "A Treatise on the Nervous Diseases of
Woman," 1840.

32 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

us think. It is, more often than not, the result of
lives spent in objectless hustle and bustle, in the
search after pleasure and excitement, in the effort
to kill time.

When Harriet Martineau visited America as far
back as 1834, she found that the longevity of Ameri-
can women was not so great as that of English
women, and that " the feeling of vigorous health was
almost unknown." In those days the woman move-
ment was in its infancy, and American ladies thought
it unwomanly to walk. Some indeed do so still. A
young American gentleman told me recently that his
mother had always kept her carriage, and that he had
never known her walk a hundred yards. All our
healthful outdoor sports and pastimes are part and
parcel of the changing status of woman ; they origin-
ated in England and have passed thence to America,
just as other changes have come from America to
English women. But even in those days the married
woman of America had (unless she lived in Massa-
chusetts) one great advantage over her English sister,
she had her own property to manage, for America
adhered to the old Saxon law that a wife shall possess
half, or a large part, of her husband's earnings or
makings. In New York the wives of wealthy Ameri-
can business men then, as now, saw nothing of their
husbands from early morning till late at night, and
had no other employment than to wander from one
luxuriously furnished room to another, to water their
flowers, read the latest English novel, or " amuse
themselves at the milliner's, paying perhaps a hun-
dred dollars for the newest Paris bonnet." In those

THE YOUNG WIFE 33

days Paris had not begun to attract American society
as a loadstone attracts a magnet.

And are not those American women who have been
attacked by the travelling mania, and " do " western
and southern Europe in a few months, likely to suffer
from some kind of prostration on their return home ?
I was not surprised to hear from one of them how
greatly she had been impressed during her stay in
Dublin with the wonderful historical interests of
Holyrood Castle ! A similar mental state is pro-
duced in England by over-working for examinations.
A bright English girl told me that when "going in
for B.A. honours in classics " at the London Univer-
sity, she had given, when asked to describe the public
buildings of Athens, a lengthy description of the
Coliseum !

Had she but relieved the tension of her mind
before the examination by reading Byron, or even
Mark Twain, instead of classical text-books, she could
hardly have made such a mistake ; at anyrate she
would have remembered that the victims of the Coli-
seum were "butchered to make a Roman holiday."

But to return to the objectless lives of society
women. Have these empty lives no effect on the
nation in which they are lived ? Yes, it is the society
woman who sets the fashion in thought just as truly
as it is she who sets the fashion in dress ; and not
only in thought, for it is she who has the casting
vote as to the kind of food society shall take for
the nourishment of its thought. There are periods
when motors and bridge are the only really fashion-
able pabulum for mental culture, and then we hear
c

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

of publishers going bankrupt, libraries closing, and,
worst of all of authors " violating the public " 1 in
order to get readers for their novels, and bread for
their children's mouths. Aristotle says, in his
" Ethics," that it is commonly held that a man
will do what he will bear to hear, but that this
must be limited, for a man will not do quite all
that he will hear, because jesting is a species of
scurrility, and there are some points of scurrility
forbidden by law. " It may be," he adds, " that
certain points of jesting should have been also so
forbidden." Why do novelists of the twentieth
century fill their novels with what a Frenchman has
designated as "sickly immoralities ? " " La pourriture
dhopital) qui a disparu de nos hopitaux^ est dans nos
livres. Par qui ces livres sont-ils lus ? Surtout par les
feimnes" ' And what women read them ? Those who
have, in place of an object in life, an idle and morbid
curiosity and an ever restless passion for fresh
sensations. In an eloquent speech on temperance
at the close of the nineteenth century Bishop
Westcott told his hearers that startling incidents and
morbid studies of extravagant situations and persons
were characteristic of popular books of the day, and
he urged upon them that intemperance of this kind
was perilous, that it destroyed the powers of calm
thought, that it dulled the apprehension of the quiet
joys of the passing day, that it exhausted the quiet
worker when he needed refreshment, and last but

1 This expression was used by Zola in excusing the peculiar charac-
teristics of one of his earlier works.

2 Lamy.

THE YOUNG WIFE 35

not least) that it grew by indulgence. At whose
door then does the blame lie, if not at the door of
those who think that it is unfeminine to have an
earnest object in life, and who train up their girls
to idleness ? " Only a general strike among women
readers," says Lamy, "will effectually check the
stream of immoral books, and when that strike takes
place, their output will immediately diminish." " Car
les ecrivains ne sont pas sales pour leur plaisir^ mais
pour noire argent"

The proprietors of a well-known library 1 have
recently informed the public that there is a growing
desire among their members to read every new book
the moment it comes out. They tell us, moreover,
that they have many readers who change three
volumes regularly every day, and are therefore
supplied with more than nine hundred volumes in
a year, whereas those very readers would, thirty
years ago, have been content with three volumes a
week for the same money. What readers are these,
we may well ask, who have so much time on their
hands ? And what kind of literature is it that they
get through with such lightning speed? They are
the women who can afford to be idle, and who
have been taught to think that men do not like
"learned women." Yet men are everywhere being
won over to the woman movement here, as else-
where ; husbands and fathers are waking up to
the fact that superficially educated and idle wives
and daughters will not cease to get through three

1 See letter to the Daily Telegraph from the proprietors of the
Grosvenor Gallery Library, Oct. 12, 1906.

36 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

novels a day till they find something better to
do. 1 "Until we cultivate, enlighten, and train the
literary taste of our women," says a French writer,
" we cannot hope to improve the literary taste of
the general public " ; and " Everything," says another,
" which will help to tear women from the emptiness
of a worldly life is a blessing for our country and a
pledge for its future well-being." 2

1 " Detourner les femmes de la litterature legere ou vicieuse qui
s'etale dans les livres et les journaux est tout profit pour 1'esprit
national et la moralite publique, parce qu'en plus de la maternite
physique, la femme est appelee a faire ceuvre de maternite morale,
parce que ses fils selon la chair sont aussi les enfants de son ame et
qu'elle leur transmet avec le sang, avec le lait, avec la vie, tous les
germes de progres, 1'idee qui eclaire, 1'amour qui enflamme et la vertue
qui exalte et sanctifie 1'humanite. " Turgeon.

2 Madame Edgar Quinet (quoted by Turgeon).

CHAPTER III

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD

REAT thinkers of every age have expressed
their conviction that love and motherhood are
the deepest instincts of a woman's being, and that
marriage and the production and rearing of offspring
are her only real destiny. How comes it then that
woman herself is, in every class of society and in
every civilized nation, a vehement opponent of this
doctrine ? So vehement indeed has her opposition
become, and so eloquent her pleading on her own
behalf that she is steadily winning the deepest
thinkers of the twentieth century over to her side.
For years the European public laboured under the
erroneous impression that the woman movement
was confined entirely to a group of disappointed
old maids and discontented masculine women, who
threatened to grow beards and adopt male attire.
The poet Ibsen did perhaps more than any other
man to correct this mistake ; his writings have had
an almost revolutionary effect on the thought of
Scandinavia, Germany and Italy with regard to
the sphere and final destiny of woman ; to-day those
writings are affecting even England, not directly,
but through the medium of sociological writers who
have imbibed Ibsen's ideas and are giving them to

_8 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

English readers, each in his own way. Behind Ibsen
stood a woman, Camilla Collet. 1 " Ibsen's ' Doll's
House' acted like a bomb on everybody," writes a
Norwegian friend. "There was no party, no dis-
cussion, and no newspaper in those days in which
* Nora's ' behaviour was not discussed. The result
was that Norwegian women were let loose all at
once, so to speak. As for Ibsen himself, he is one
of the severest moralists of our times. Always in
earnest, he shows us the inevitable consequences of
our deeds and, almost, of our thoughts. He urges
upon us the truth that what we sow, that we shall
also reap, and that punishment will assuredly follow
if we trample our ideals beneath our feet, he teaches
us that humanity must be true to its innerself." He
is too much in earnest, and too scathing to be popular
especially in France, England or America, but he
has done his work, he has shown the world that
motherhood, even though it be woman's most sacred
duty, can never more be looked upon as her final
destiny. Martin Luther's opinion of women, that
she was created solely for man's convenience and
for the multiplication of the species ; Canon Knox
Little's opinion, that wifehood was her crowning
glory, these and other equally degrading theories
have, we trust, been buried with the nineteenth
century.

Let us for a moment throw aside the halo with
which Englishmen feel it their moral duty to sur-
round the word "motherhood." Every student of
the animal world is perfectly aware that maternal
1 See Ibsen's Correspondence.

love is an animal impulse, which, for the very
safety of our morals must, like all other animal in-
stincts and impulses, be kept within its proper
bounds. A much-maligned young Austrian author 1
dared to utter this truth when he said that the re-
latively absolute mother (if such existed), would be
ready to become a mother by any man if she
thought only of the child. Happily it is not
towards absolute motherhood that the noblest teachers
of the twentieth century are teaching our girlhood
to struggle with might and main. No really womanly
woman, in the opinion of one of Ibsen's British
adherents, would ever form an attachment, or even
know what it means, until she is requested to do
so by a man. 2 The self-respecting woman of the
twentieth century will find worthier pursuits than
that of husband-hunting. Woman is forming for
herself a far higher and nobler ideal than man ever
hit upon through his own initiative, but happily
wherever he is worthy of the name, he is helping
her with all his might to realise it. Ibsen set
before himself the task of arousing his nation and
leading it to think great thoughts even about
woman. If the state of motherhood were in itself
so ennobling to woman as the moral hypocrisy of
the nineteenth century especially strong in England
and Germany would have us imagine, how could
so sentimental a writer as Michelet speak of " la
maternite exclusive de la jeune femme concentree tout
en un enfant, tres froid souvent pour tout le rest ? "

1 Weiniger.

2 G. Bernard Shaw, "The Quintessence of Ibsenism."

40 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

Yet all of us know this purely animal form of
motherhood. We have met with the young mother
who is displeased at the slightest allusion to the
charms of some one else's child, who never speaks
of a friend's baby except that she may make a
comparison flattering to her own, and who appears
to labour under the delusion that a headache
resulting to a tired husband or to a visitor from
the ceaseless rattle of her precious darling, cannot
possibly be so painful as headaches resulting from
the noise of other people's children.

There are many kinds of motherhood, some of
them are immoral, and others are even criminal.
The knowledge that an inherited evil is certain to be
transmitted to her offspring, if she has any, does not
always deter a girl from marriage or from becoming
a mother. And sometimes the blame for this is due,
rather to the girl's parents than to herself. As long
as marriage is the only career open, so long will
fond parents be tempted to shut their eyes to
consequences, in order that they may secure a
home for their daughter. A noble mother of many
children has emphasised this to me, as an evil of our
age.

Only the other day the Earl of Lytton, 1 addressing
a Parents' Conference at Brighton, remarked that
with regard to a young man's duty towards women,
he believed the common view of this question was,
that woman's highest mission was to be a helpmate
and a solace to man, and that therefore it was the
duty of man to enable woman to carry out this lofty

1 See report of this address in the Daily Telegraph, Nov. n, 1906.

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD 41

design. This view was, in his opinion, adopted by
both sexes ; girls were brought up to become wives,
and marriage was the only future their parents con-
templated for them, they were merely kept at home
until some man could be found who would give them
a home of their own. It appears then that the Earl
of Lytton would not altogether agree with the
French political economist, 1 who has been telling his
countrywomen that it is only through the august
functions, and the terrible risks of maternity, that
woman can ever rise to man's level. A good subject
for a future address might be the discoveries that
have been made with regard to heredity. It is a
significant fact that this subject has, so far, been
almost entirely overlooked by male writers on the
woman question, and I can recall no female writer
who has treated it with the seriousness it merits. It
is now known that acquired traits are not trans-
mitted, but instincts (such, for instance, as a craving
for alcohol) can be, and are, constantly handed down
to posterity. 2 In such cases motherhood may be
criminal, as well as in others which will readily occur
to any thoughtful mind. In the happy future when
higher womanly ideals have spread around us we
shall all realise, no matter to which sex we belong,
that to hold unqualified motherhood before every
girl's eyes as her highest ideal, is to play the traitor
to our race and to humanity. But the day is, we
hope, approaching when our Empire will conspicu-
ously grapple with the problem of a declining birth-

1 Turgeon.

2 See G. Archdall Reid, "The Present Evolution of Man.

rate, and yet demand of woman that she shall strive
to realise the fulness and completeness of her indi-
vidual life, not through these elements of her being
by which she is bound to earth, but through those
by which she holds fellowship with God. 1

And what, then, are the causes of the steadily
declining birth-rate, not only in France, but in
Sweden, in Holland, in Portugal, in Russia, in
Germany, in America, and in England ? Are we
justified in attributing it chiefly to the influence of a
certain professor who published some views of his
own while he occupied a chair at Haileybury College
in the thirties of last century ? a man, by the way,
who was even during his lifetime considered to be
" the best-abused man of his age." There were men
in those days who felt it their sacred duty to tear the
reputation of Harriet Martineau to shreds as soon as
she began to interpret the views of Malthus to her
readers. And now, it is thought that the wind has
turned, and that the greatest nations of the earth
have become Malthusian in practice as well as in
theory. France it was who introduced the two-
children system into Europe, and it has been adopted
by a large section of American society. There are
scores of American society women who drive a regular
bargain with their husbands that for every child with
which the home is blessed, the mother shall take a
year's tour in Europe. Many Transatlantic ladies
have been heard to boast that they waited till three
children had appeared in order that they might enjoy
three years of European travel without having to
1 See Bishop Westcott, "Lessons in Work."

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD 43

cross the ocean more than twice. It has often been
remarked by competent observers that these American
women will be the ruin of their country. What is
more probable, however, is that these women will
only be the ruin of their own families, for there is
ever a supply of fresh, healthy bourgeoisie blood ready
to step in and fill the gaps left by decayed families
of the aristocratic and intellectual classes in every
country. But restriction of the size of family is not
confined to society women ; there are intellectual and
high-minded women in America who openly avow
that in order that they might have sufficient time to
devote to certain philanthropic causes for which
workers are exceptionally scarce, their families have
been " limited by mutual agreement." l A German
scientist has been telling the world that by the adop-
tion of the two-children system among its higher
classes, a nation must necessarily deteriorate as surely
as it must decrease. 2 In confirmation of this opinion
he quotes another writer who has enjoyed special
facilities for studying the question by a long resi-
dence in France, and who has come to the conclusion
that the only boy, and the only girl, are, as regards
their social quality, decidedly inferior to the children
of large families. Only children, we are told, are
Angstkinder\ in their case such ordinary occurrences
as measles and whooping-cough are looked upon as
calamities. Father and mother are slaves to their
child's every humour. To be " Papa's pet," or

1 See A. Gerhardt und H. Simon, " Mutterschaft und Geistige
Arbeit."

2 Mobius.

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

nd " My Benjamin

" Mama's idol," " My first-born," an
all at once, is bad for any child. 1

Most people will probably agree with Dr Mobius
that with the children of a large family, self-denial,
unselfishness, and a spirit of give-and-take are
the very air they breathe. In the large family
consideration for others, true comradeship and
solidarity are taught with every day that dawns.
The children's characters strengthen and sharpen by
mutual friction, and what is very useful for after life,
a more correct valuation of his or her individual im-
portance is obtained by each child than can possibly
be the case where a child is brought up alone. The
only son, the only daughter, are almost sure to
develop egotistic or domineering qualities. The ideal
family should contain children of both sexes, but
until a law for the predetermination of sex has been
discovered and widely promulgated, co - education
would seem the only method of correcting deficiencies
in this direction. 2 Those who argue so eloquently in
favour of small families appear to overlook the sig-
nificant fact that the Malthusianism of to-day is not
practised in cases where it would obviously eliminate
the unfit, or preserve the members of a family from
threatening starvation ; it is not popular in the pesti-
lential slums of London and Gateshead, or among
the aliens who flock from Europe to Chicago ; nor
is it in favour with the negroes of St Louis. In
some circles of American society there is a real
fear that giving the franchise to the black man

Kathe Schirmacher.

2 See chapter xiv.

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD 45

may lead to the election of an ebony president,
similar to the fear that giving the franchise to women
might lead to the highest post in the State being
occupied by some worthy successor of Susan
Anthony.

Scientists tell us that in all civilized countries the
size of families decreases in almost the exact ratio to
the increase of wealth and culture, but they have not
yet come forward with an altogether satisfactory
explanation of the cause of this state of things. In
Sweden young men of the upper classes marry much
later than they did of old ; in Germany, Austria,
France, and England this is also the case. In Ger-
many sociologists are writing of the decrease in that
country's birth-rate as a national danger, and attri-
buting it to the late marriages of its young men ;
they point out that the population of Germany is
only kept stationary by a regular influx of Poles,
Russians, Bohemians, and Italians ; 1 they are urging
young Germans to marry, and telling them that a
bachelor is only half a man. 2 The French nation 3
confesses candidly that its men marry later in life
than was formerly the case, that the marriage rate
is declining, and that marriages, when they are con-
tracted, prove less satisfactory than of old. " But,
granted that a suitor presents himself," cries a French-
man, 4 "is he likely in these days to make a satis-
factory husband ? " And he adds, " This question is
one that is calculated to make many a heart beat

1 Miiller. 2 " ein Halbmensch"

3 Dr G. Guibert, " Le Manage et les Theories Malthusiennes," 1906.

4 Turgeon.

46 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

dolefully." In Austria the state of affairs is no
better. Dr Emil Seyler, of Vienna, reminds his
compatriots that Hippocrates looked upon woman
as undeveloped man, as an incomplete, imperfect
creature, and that Hartmann and his followers
thought the old Greek was correct, but he goes on
to say that if he, Dr Seyler, were a woman, he
would not allow himself to be convinced of his
inferiority. " Were I woman," he cries, " I would
challenge these hard-hearted philosophers to turn
their attention to themselves, cast a glance at the
men of the twentieth century, and throw more
light upon their brilliant virtues, and their sublime
characteristics." Seyler then goes on to ask on his
own account, whether the man of the twentieth
century is really so perfect, as regards his physical
and psychical qualities, as a social unit, and last,
but not least, as a husband, that woman, who is
often wiser than he is, should fall on her knees
before him and recognise his natural superiority?
Dr Seyler boldly announces that man, in Austria at
least, has entered upon a state of physical degenera-
tion so visible that none can deny it. " Take,
for instance," he cries, " one of the so-called lions of
society, let him undergo a physical examination and
you will see what a miserable object he presents.
The man of the twentieth century cannot, in the
writer's opinion, lay claim to being a pattern husband ;
to call him his wife's protector is to use an empty
phrase. The Austrian of to-day marries, not that he
may maintain a wife, but that he may better himself
economically and socially, and have more money to

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD 47

spend upon his private personal pleasures. A
husband demands implicit obedience from his wife,
honour, and faithfulness unto death, and is under the
impression that his natural superiority gives him the
privilege of sinking to the lowest depths of degrada-
tion in the company of one, two and three mistresses.
Seyler tells us further, that in the last year of the
nineteenth century, Germany's Secretary of State,
Niebirding, branded our epoch with the epithet,
" A period of moral degradation," and the Members
of the Reichstag unanimously gave their assent.
This public and authorised recognition of the
demoralisation of our age is the real cause of the
increased impetus that has been given to the woman
movement on the Continent, 1 and no cynical
philosopher, be he a Schopenhauer or a Hartmann,
will succeed in stemming its flow. "And what,"
continues Dr Seyler, " does the man of the twentieth
century look for in the girl he proposes to marry ?
A young creature endowed with beauty and all sweet
feminine charms, a girl virtuous and pure in body
and soul, home-loving and modest? Oh no, she
need not be all that, but she must have money,
plenty of money, she must dress her hair in the latest
style, she must play tennis and football, she must
cycle, ride and drive, she must drink freely and be
able to smoke. Let the parents see to it then that
their daughters may be able to fulfil the requirements
of the husband she is to make happy." And in
Belgium things are no better, the Mayor of Ypres
informs us that a Belgian's conception of the contract

1 Dr Emil Seyler, " Die Frau des xx. Jahrhunderts."

4 8

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

called civil marriage is totally different from the
Christian conception of it. He states, moreover, as
a fact, that nearly three-fourths of the men of his
country who enter the marriage state are physically
unfit. 1 In Sweden the marriage rate is even lower
than it is in Belgium. We learn from the latest
available statistics that the marriage rate of Stock-
holm is lower than that of any other European
capital. " The extraordinarily low marriage rate in
our country," wrote Sundberg in 1900, "is one of the
most serious problems that present themselves to the
student of social politics." And Sundberg is quoted
as an authority by Dr Elon Wikmark, who also has
his country's good at heart. Among the upper
classes of Sweden celibacy has been steadily increas-
ing for the last thirty years among both sexes; the
number of bachelors among the aristocracy and
upper-middle class being very nearly as great as the
number of celibate women. "Why should I marry,"
says the young man, " when I can get all I want
without"? And the high spirited Swedish girl, if
she be blessed with a happy home and all the
accessories that rank and competence can bring, is
beginning to look upon marriage as a very doubtful
blessing. It is painful to hear them speak. " Every
man has many wives," cries a Swedish maiden, " even
when he is married. We know that eighty per cent,
of our men are suffering from contagious diseases,
and we cannot bring ourselves to risk the evil that
marriage might entail. No, we do not wish to

1 " Pres de trois quarts des hommes entrant le mariage contamines
et contagieux." " La femme Electeur," 1901,

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD 49

marry." 1 In Sweden, man appears to be losing his
prestige. Many thoughtful Englishmen who wish to
see their country prosper are looking askance at the
changes that are taking place among English women
of the aristocracy, and the upper-middle class.
"This increased development of the female mind,"
they urge, " and the widened outlook upon life which
must result from it will, we fear, lead to a reluctance
to enter the married state, and that in its turn will
lead to a decrease in the birth-rate in the very classes
where an increase is most to be desired for the
welfare of our race." What if they are right?
Perhaps, after all, our newspapers are laying too
much blame at the door of Malthus.

Reformers are crying out that the luxury of our
age is deterring young men from marriage. " The
demoralisation of our women through luxury," writes
a Frenchman, 2 " is the greatest reproach of our age.
A man must indeed have plenty of money before he
can offer to make a home such as the elegant nullities
of these times demand. Woman is sacrificing too
much to the demon Fashion. She seems almost
incapable of moderating her desires. Men's incomes
grow smaller, but the style in which their wives must
live is more expensive than it has ever been." What
our grandparents regarded as luxuries are now the
necessaries of respectable existence. This alone will
account for the decrease in early marriages. " I
married on four hundred a year," said a white haired
old English gentleman in my hearing, " it was ample
in those days, and my wife and I brought up our

1 See Letters published by Dr Mobius, 1905. 2 Turgeon.

50 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

four children upon it, but one could not do that now."
The demand for the superfluities of life is rapidly
increasing in Germany. I heard a German officer
gravely remark in the year 1904 that his country's
growing taste for luxurious living would soon be
comparable to that of Rome before her downfall.
And Dr Miiller tells us that it is not the lack
of sufficient means that deters Germans from mar-
riage, but their love of ease, their reluctance to
take part in the battle of life ; that is why there is
such desperate competition for the easy posts with
high salaries. " Few are the men in these days who
would be willing to embark upon a life of adventure
and of self-denial, and few are the women who would
have the pluck to accompany them."

The growing disfavour with which marriage is
looked upon in France has been attributed partly
to the influence and spread of unhealthy literature.
The average woman there, as in other countries, still
prefers a novel to any other kind of book, and the novel
tends, as Turgeon justly points out, by the pleasant-
ness of its style and the interest of its story, to
produce the very social condition it portrays. The
invention of the novelist too often becomes the
reader's model. This is sometimes true even when
crime is the novelist's theme. We have an example
in the young gardener's assistant who, when questioned
as to why he had murdered a dentist with an axe, in
a railway train near Hamburg, replied that he had
been stimulated by reading of similar crimes. 1 And
how many boys have been led to the choice of a sea-

1 See Daily Telegraph, Nov. 14, 1906.

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD 51

faring life by the perusal of pirate stories ? In Paris,
as in London, women are becoming more and more
lax in the choice of their literature ; 1 some are led, as
we have already pointed out, 2 by curiosity to read
what they should not ; but by far the greater number
do so merely from a spirit of imitation, from a wish
to be up-to-date. The society girl must be able
to read everything, and, we are told, without a
blush.

" When young people see," says a German writer,
"how married people sigh over their chains, how
impatient they appear to break them, they are not
encouraged to marry." The opinion that marriage is
merely a necessary evil is rapidly gaining ground in
Germany, but not so much among the women as
among the men, and as long as the men will not
propose, the girls can hardly be blamed for preferring
a life of independence to the joys of marriage.

It has been stated in the English papers that our
birth-rate of the first two quarters of the year 1906
was the lowest on record. The Registrar General
estimates that whereas ten per cent, of the total
decline is due to the decrease in illegitimate births,
twenty per cent, of the total decline is due to the
decline of the marriage rate. The number of men in
the upper classes who hold back from marriage in
England is increasing. And this is not, as some
people pretend, a result of the higher education of
women. Westermarck, 3 in whose native country,
Finland, there is more comradeship between the

1 Turgeon. 2 See chapter ii. on this subject.

3 "The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas,"i9o6.

52 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

sexes than there has ever been in England, tells us
that progress in civilisation has exercised an un-
favourable influence on the position of women by
widening the gulf between the sexes ; and no one
will deny that there is to-day, intellectually speaking,
a far wider gulf between them in the wealthy middle
class than in any other class in England. The
education of an English princess is much more like
that of a prince than is the education of a rich middle-
class girl like that of her brother ; it cannot then be
argued that education has lifted these girls out of
their proper sphere, though Krafft Ebing has asserted
that such is actually the case in Germany, where, ac-
cording to him, seventy-five per cent, of the marriages
turn out unhappily. In consequence Englishmen
complain that in the upper classes of English society
it is almost impossible to make the acquaintance of
a girl without becoming engaged to her. We choose
partners for life as we choose them for a quadrille.
And no girl shows her real self when she is " under
arms," as a French mother has expressed it. A
young Briton who is obviously on the lookout for a
suitable life companion has recently confided to the
public a few of his own meditations on this subject.
He is convinced that the growing frequency of un-
happy marriages in our middle class is due to the
foolish customs and conventions which circumscribe
and restrict society. " What opportunity," he asks,
" has the average man of obtaining an exhaustive
knowledge of his intended wife's character or tempera-
ment before the so-called engagement ? He may, I
admit, obtain some knowledge of her character on

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD 53

the few occasions that he finds himself alone with
her, or in the company of others, but as for gaining
a knowledge of her temperament, which is of the
highest importance, from this he is absolutely de-
barred. An excursion together say to the theatre
without other company, would mean that they were
considered practically engaged. If the man retires
in time, without being compromised or compromising
the lady, well and good, but in that case he must
retire from association with the whole family of
which the lady is a member. If, instead of retiring
he becomes engaged, whether on his active initiative,
whether by drift or on the initiative, as often
happens, of the woman the position for an ordinary
man is well nigh hopeless. He can now obtain a
thorough knowledge of his intended, but too late.
If after a few months he finds that a mistake has
been made, it is impossible to break off relations
without, to put it mildly, a great deal of un-
pleasantness. Much sympathy is felt, and no
doubt rightly, for the girl ; much abuse, without
reason, is poured upon the man. Will the average
man, human and weak, go through this ? No,
with a mistaken sense of honour towards the girl
and society, he drifts into the completion of the
contract."

Convention and custom then, as well as our love of
ease, luxury, and ostentation, are also contributing
causes to the decline of our birth-rate. If we enquire
still further we shall find that, in France, if not in
England too, the increased facilitity and fashionable-
ness of divorce are also considerable factors. The

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

official statistics of divorce in France show a steady
increase in the number of cases annually registered
from 1885 to 1898 ; and in almost every case divorce
is granted. In December 1898 at the Seine tribunal,
ninety eight couples were divorced at one sitting ;
since that year, there has, however, been a slight
decrease. 1 " How," cries Turgeon, " with upwards of
thirty unions dissolved for every thousand contracted
can we be astonished to find that our population re-
mains stationary ? " And then he adds, that but for
the strenuous resistance of the Catholic Church to the
progress of divorce, the French people would find
before long that marriage was in reality nothing more
than a kind of "successive polygamy." And what
about America ? " Easy divorce," says President
Roosevelt, "is a bane to any nation. Divorce
is an appalling curse." And he agrees with the
clergyman who has been reminding the English
people that de-civilization the fate of more than one
modern State, begins with the disintegration of the
home? In some States of America divorce is granted
for insanity, in others it is granted on account of
brutality, in others infidelity is a sufficient plea ; but
some States, if we may believe the New York Evening
Journal^ permit divorce as the result of a whim. The
American nation as a whole watches the individual
States, and is learning by their experience. Results
in Florida, in Rhode Island, in South Dakota, in
Illinois, are carefully noted and discussed. Some
thoughtful Americans are of the opinion that the
present laws are only passing phases intended to deal

J Turgeon. 2 Article in Church Times.

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD 55

with passing criminality, just as during the earthquake
in San Francisco they had to shoot a man for merely
entering a building, though nobody imagined that
that would be permanent. " The divorce problem
will in time," they say, "be solved by the natural
voluntary abolition of divorce."

The English press regales its readers almost daily
with columns of sensational divorce news. The
French press is forbidden to publish a word of the
evidence given in a divorce case or even to remark
upon it. In Austria, too, far more privacy is
maintained than in England or America. It shall be
left to the reader to decide which system is the best.
The English public has of late shown much dissatis-
faction with our existent divorce laws. Many people 1
think it unjust that misconduct on the part of the wife
is sufficient to secure a dissolution of the marriage
ties, so long as it is not considered an equally decisive
offence when committed by the man. The difference
here made between the sexes can hardly be justified
by reason or morals. Yet there are those who, know-
ing the frailty of mortals and the magnitude of the
evils to be dealt with, shudder at the thought that
in doing away with the inconsistencies and anomalies
of our present law, legislators may be led to make
divorce more easy for both parties than it is at present.
Since the Act for the Neutralisation of marriage was
passed in 1895, we are told, " applications for this form
of release have rapidly increased. Separation orders
are being signed by our magistrates at the rate of six
or seven thousand a year." 2 A very large class of

1 See article Daily Telegraph, May 7,^1906. 2 Ibid.

56 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

persons is thus coming into existence whose situation
is isolated and cheerless at the best, and in many
cases painful and difficult beyond description. A
penalty is placed upon virtue and a premium upon
frailty. The law itself points to the violation of
morality as the only way out of a cruel and unnatural
predicament. Permanent separation without divorce
in the upper-middle class often means social ruin to
women who are not only innocent of any crime, but
have proved themselves the most faithful of wives
and the most devoted of mothers ; their friends look
askance and drop away, and they soon find them-
selves under a dreadful cloud. Few of us will
disagree with those of our countrymen who tell us
that an entire revision of our laws bearing upon the
dissolution of matrimony cannot be avoided if the
ideal of happy marriage is to remain the foundation
of modern civilization, and that " it is upon the hope
that women will be levelled up to men in mind, and
men to women in morality, that the future of
humanity depends." In the meantime, there is
perhaps some consolation to be derived from the
reflection that bigamy, which occurs with painful
frequency in the first half of the nineteenth
century, and which was the chief topic of Miss
Braddon's novels, has become comparatively rare
since the passing of the Divorce Act in 1857.
There is only one case on record of an English
woman obtaining a decree of divorce before that year.
Westermarck, 1 who is perhaps the most modern
authority, tells us that human marriage is probably

1 "\Vestermarck, " The History of Human Marriage," 1901.

THOUGHTS ON MOTHERHOOD 57

an inheritance from some ape-like progenitor. This
sociologist's studies have led him to the conviction
that there never existed a primitive condition of
communal marriage, and that marriage, generally
speaking, has become more durable in proportion as
the human race has advanced. " The history of
human marriage," he says, " is the history of the
relation in which women have been gradually
triumphing over the passions, the prejudices, and the
selfish interests of men." If this be so, let woman
press onwards and courageously continue her
triumphs, but let her put her ringer in her ears when
she meets with those who would have her retrace her
steps. Durkheim, the eminent French sociologist,
strongly condemns divorce as threatening the in-
terests of the very institution of marriage. He points
out, moreover, as a statistical and historical fact,
that divorced persons commit suicide much more
frequently the exact rate being about four to one
than married people. According to him, M.
Bertillon has proved by statistics that divorce varies
in degree in every country in proportion to the
character and mental stability of its inhabitants.
Marriage is, in Durkheim's opinion, the strongest
preventative of suicide, particularly when children
are born of the union. 1 A Frenchman, however, is
forbidden by the law to marry before he has reached
the age of twenty-five without having first obtained
the full consent of his parents. This is why in the
lower classes, so many couples live together without
marriage. Amongst the obstacles to marriage in

1 See quotation from " Revue Bleu " in Public Opinion, Aug. 17, 1906.

58 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

general, we may reckon the emigration of men from
the country to large towns as well as their emigration
to other countries, and military service, but these
causes do not materially affect the classes of which
we have been speaking.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST

AN Austrian writer, 1 who appears to have spent
many years of his life in the capacity of a
Catholic priest, has ushered in the twentieth century
with an attempt to persuade the matrons and maidens
of Vienna and Berlin that it is no more a slur upon
them, and upon their sex, that some women should
earn their daily bread by a life of dishonour, than it
is a slur upon an officer of the army that some men
should choose to earn their bread as shoeblacks. He
even goes so far as to assert that such poor women
are of more service to the State than are the unmarried
of the upper classes who have no occupation at all.
He indicates very clearly however that for any man
to lead a girl to take up the useful profession alluded
to by false promises, or by any unfair means what-
soever, is criminal. It is strange that so clever a
reasoner should overlook the truth that were men to
abstain from criminally introducing fresh apprentices
to the trade for the short space of ten years they
would practically cut off the supply. Those whose
humanity has stirred them to try and help these poor
women can testify how small and insignificant is the

1 Karl Jentsch.

contingent of girls who have entered upon that life
willingly and with their eyes open. The young
mother who goes on the street to save her babes
from starvation, the girl who has not touched food
for three days, the shop-assistant whose life of hope-
less, underpaid drudgery has dulled for a time her
sense of right and wrong, the sweated needlewoman
whose brain has been turned by the misery of her
lot these cannot be said to take the first wrong step
willingly, any more than the girl who has actually
believed in a promise of marriage. And mental de-
ficiency ? Is that to be called free-will? It is esti-
mated that nearly a third of the unmarried mothers
who enter the infirmary wards in our large English
towns are of feeble mind. 1

In the year 1806 it was estimated that there were
no fewer than fifty thousand women living in London
who earned their livelihood by prostitution, and that
during the previous thirteen years from eighty to one
hundred thousand had died from the effects of that
poisonous trade. 2 The longest period for which a
girl can support such a life is five years, but few can
endure it so long. The latest estimates show that
at the commencement of the year 1906 there were
upwards of eighty thousand women in London who
were living, more or less, upon the wages of prostitu-
tion, and that of these not less than one-tenth were
removed from the ranks by death within the limits
of their first year. 3 It is clear, then, that if the male

1 See Poor Law Conference, 1905-06.

2 See "Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis," by Colquhoun.

3 See " Statistics Published by the London Female Guardian
Society," 1906.

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST 61

population of London were to restrict themselves to
the introduction of new apprentices to this trade by
open and fair means, death alone would soon thin
their ranks very perceptibly. From every sick prosti-
tute disease is spread to several men, and the evil
does not stop there, for it is constantly carried to
pure wives, and inherited by innocent children. No
police or medical suppression in any country has ever
been able to prevent this. Dr Mobius, who has gone
thoroughly into the subject, is convinced that the
majority of the men who die before the age of sixty
of so-called brain and heart affections are in reality
the victims of venereal disease. There are a number
of fatal diseases which doctors attribute solely to these
causes, and which are known to break out sometimes
as long as fifteen years after the victim has been in-
fected. It is now an undisputed fact that paralysis
and syphilis go hand in handj where the one
spreads, there the other also becomes more frequent.
Both are more prevalent in large towns than in the
country, and both are on the increase. 1 In Germany
from 12 to 15 per cent, of the adult male population
are suffering from the last mentioned disease, and
numbers of little children are found to have inherited
it. Surely the time has come for English wives and
mothers to ask themselves whether it really is "a
gross absurdity to preach the same code of morals
to both sexes."

An English doctor of the Oxford University, named
Jean de Gaddera, studied the disease of leprosy
which was so prevalent in Europe, and particularly

1 See Mobius, " Geschlecht und Krankheit," 1903.

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

in England, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
In his book on the subject, he devoted a chapter to
the spread of leprosy by women, and showed how,
by means of prostitutes, it was carried from man to
man. The fact, moreover, has never been disputed
that in those days serious cases of contagion were
far more common in England than in any other
country. In the time of Matthew Paris, who wrote
in the thirteenth century, there were more than nine-
teen thousand leper hospitals in Europe. Many
of our old churches have their leper windows 1
through which persons infected with the disease were
allowed to receive the sacrament. In ecclesiastical
writings of the middle ages constant reference is
made to the disease of elephantiasis, which had many
victims in every rank of society. Until the middle of
the nineteenth century, both these terrible scourges
were considered to be of venereal origin, and even in
our day, the bacillus of leprosy eludes discovery.
Charles VIII. of France became so horrified at the
evils resulting from prostitution in his day that he
ordered many public women to be burned alive ;
and Marshal Strozzi, on one occasion, caused eight
hundred of these wretched women to be cast into the
river. As far back as the twelfth century, all the
governments of Europe made a great effort to stop
the spread of leprosy and elephantiasis by means of
the most stringent police regulations. The Crusaders
brought into Europe the worst evils of Oriental
countries, and spread them, by means of women, far
and wide among the more civilized nations. Russia,

1 Christchurch, Bournemouth, for instance.

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST 63

the borderland between East and West, is still in-
fected with the awful disease of elephantiasis, as well
as of leprosy; English travellers need not visit the
hospitals to study it ; its victims may be seen in
pilgrim garb by church doors begging the worshippers
for alms ; they may be seen crawling along the
thronged pavements of the beautiful town of KiefT,
crawling like reptiles between the foot-passengers,
and showing too clearly that all other means of loco-
motion are denied to them. Such evils make their
way silently and unostentatiously from one country
to another. Great revolutions drive the refuse of one
country into another. Terrible scourges have before
now made their way into regions where it has been
difficult to account for their presence, and have com-
mitted their ravages under euphemistic names such
as that of "small pox." In the middle ages, syphilis
and leprosy had the same saints, St Job and St Rock.
At one time it was thought that Christopher Columbus
brought the former with him from America in 1493,
but historians have proved that it existed in Europe
before that time. Joseph Grundbeck's treatise is the
oldest extant on this disease, which has been called
"venereal leprosy." European doctors had at one
time so great a horror of it, that they would often
refuse to treat it. And now, in spite of its con-
comitant evils, Karl Jentsch would have the women
of Austria believe that prostitution is a useful and
necessary institution, and that girls of the lower classes
have no virtue to lose. Two women, however, whom
he has failed to convince, appeared in the Austrian
Court on November 2, 1906, as private prosecutors

64 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

against the white slave traffic. "A widow 1 named
Riehl had, under the guise of a ladies' saloon, and with
the knowledge, and partly under the supervision of
the police, held as prisoners, girls who had had the
misfortune to fall into her hands. She took away
their clothes to prevent their escape. The rooms they
were kept in were never aired, and the windows were
always locked. During the night the girls drank
brandy and champagne with the visitors to the saloon,
and were struck with iron hooks when they refused to
drink." Madame Riehl is evidently a disciple of Herr
Karl Jentsch : she must have studied his philosophical
writings, and been penetrated with his convictions
that, at least for the girl who has once been led astray,
there can exist no moral code. The girls may not
have objected to being locked in, and they would
very soon have fallen in with the rules of their new
profession. It seems a thousand pities that they
should have been disturbed, for they were about to
become useful members of State, far more use-
ful than the rich old maiden ladies of Vienna can
ever hope to be ; they would perhaps have joined
before long the ghastly crowds of Regent Street.
Herr Jentsch appears to be much exercised in his
mind on the subject of English morality. He declares
that the superior virtue of Englishmen is " nothing
but hypocritical cant." He believes what he has
read, namely, that English fathers are painfully
anxious to guard their growing sons from every kind
of temptation, not from any high moral motive, but
for the practical reason, that lucrative posts are more

1 See Daily Telegraph , November 3, 1906.

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST 65

difficult to obtain than formerly, and that young men
who have dulled their brain-power with debauchery
find it difficult to get through the examinations,
without the passing of which the posts in question
are not to be had. By failing to get through his
examinations a young fellow runs the risk in these
days of ruining his career. That is why anxious
fathers would like to see the whole system of prosti-
tution done away with for ever. According to this
writer, it was Martin Luther who introduced cant
and hypocrisy into this world, for, until the Re-
formation, men did not dream of pretending to be
moral.

England in particular has earned a reputation for
hating and avoiding the name of what is bad far more
than she hates or avoids the thing itself. Taine
remarked long ago that religion and morality were
a coin that every Englishman was obliged to carry
in his pocket. "Vice," says Max O'Rell, "is not
officially recognised in England, but it is tolerated
in the streets and parks, and I do not see very clearly
in what way morality is benefited." This writer has
described some of the principal streets of our capital
as being, from sunset till past midnight, the most
hideous sight in London, and called it " un spectacle
unique en Europe? During the London season of
1906, English ladies found it made unpleasant for
them even to step from the theatre into a cab when
unaccompanied by a gentleman, and one lady from
the country remarked to me, that after seeing the
present state of things she should not feel justified in
leaving her chauffeur outside a London theatre while
E

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

she attended a play. The ordinary well-behaved un-
ostentatiously dressed woman can rarely pause for a
moment before a shop-window in Oxford Street or
Regent Street after five o'clock in the evening with-
out attracting attention that she does not seek. This
may be partly due, as a lady writing to the papers
has suggested, to the increasingly cosmopolitan
nature of our London crowds, but it is none the
less a truth, as only too many ladies can testify. We
have recently been informed through the press l that
a number of notorious souteneurs have made the im-
portation and exploitation of German courtesans in
England a fine art, and that it has become a source
of substantial profit to them. " The elegantly and
showily dressed German women who infest the West-
end are brought to London by these men, organised
into a business body by them, financed by them, and
marshalled in the streets. . . . They go on observation
duty in the streets in which their white slaves are at
work for them. . . . There are sometimes as many as
fifty of these loathsome scoundrels congregated be-
tween the Circus and Regent Street and Windmill
Street ; and German is the language you will hear if
you stand among them and listen to the business
confidences they exchange. These are not the low-
bred ruffians that English people commonly connect
with the word ' bully/ the majority of them are men
of education and business skill, men who make the
women who live under their protection contribute to
their income in a dozen different ways. There is
no more infamous class in a civilized city than that

1 By G. R. Sims, Daily Telegraph^ May 1906.

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST 67

which may be seen at the corner of Shaftesbury
Avenue when, at 12.40, the crowd of gaily-dressed,
good-looking young German women, the working
staff of an alien organisation, which is practically a
Traviata Trust, begin to flock homewards. Some
of these men are actually married to the women they
exploit, and have at the same time under their con-
trol a number of other women living in the same
building. Driven out of the Fatherland by the
drastic measures of the German police, measures
taken at the instigation of the Emperor, they have
made our hospitable shores their home."

On July 1 7th, 1906, Sir E. Henry stated, in his
capacity of Commissioner of the Police, that the total
number of women charged with prostitution in the
Metropolitan area during 1903 was three thousand
seven hundred and fifty-six. In 1904, four thousand
one hundred and eighty-six were charged. In 1905,
the number charged went up to four thousand nine
hundred and twenty-nine. " I have seen it stated,"
said Sir E. Henry, "that a constable's activity in
prosecuting cases affects his promotion. This is
quite inaccurate. A constable's activity or other-
wise with regard to arresting or prosecuting persons
is not taken into account at all in considering the
question of promotion."

It has been argued that prostitution cannot be the
result of social conditions, for, if it were, outcasts
would not return to their bad life when once they
had been rescued. But the same might be said of
drunkenness and opium-eating. The truth is that
these poor women return to their evil life because, as

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

Mary Wollstonecraft put it more than a hundred
years ago, man has taught them that a woman's
honour does not depend upon her will, and that it
can be taken from her independently of her will.
Man has also made it hugely difficult for her to
retrieve the first false step, and that is why she too often
sinks to the lowest degree of vice. " The number of
women who have been deceived," says Professor M.
Benedikt of Vienna, " is far greater than the number
of those who have deliberately chosen the wrong
path, and the fall of the former class is in most cases
the product of masculine egoism." 1 rt Love may
sometimes be found in the heart of an ascetic," says
Legouve, "but never in the heart of a libertine."
Karl Jentsch would have us believe that, while the man
who leads the woman to take her first downward
step is a criminal, the man who leads her by honest
payment to take her second downward step is blame-
less. Surely the Mormon idea of morality is superior
to this ! The Mormon says, " How much better to
give the lonely woman a home while she is uncon-
taminated, honour her with your name, provide for
her for life, and recognise your own offspring before
the world." It is not really so surprising that in
the space of forty-four years, this sect should have
counted two hundred and fifty thousand souls among
its adherents, for the Mormons think that polygamy
practised openly is a better means of bringing virtue
back to earth than polygamy practised in secret.
The real originator of the sect was a German named

1 Quoted from "Die Seelenkunde," by Louis Frank, in
Femme Advocat," 1898,

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST 69

Stork, a follower of Martin Luther, who developed
into a fanatical admirer of Judaism, as it is described
in the Old Testament. He became a servile imitator
of Jewish customs and ideals, and had little difficulty
in promulgating his retrogade doctrine among the
German women of his day, for having once submitted
to take the very subordinate position assigned to them
by Luther, they had little dignity left to lose. The
Mormonism of our day is merely a recrudescence of
Stork's ideas. 1 The bevies of German women who
find it so lucrative a business to dog the steps of the
young men of England's upper classes in broad day-
light, are among the unhappy victims of Martin
Luther's low estimation of their sex, and of the gross
error of which he was guilty, when he judged that
man, though made in the likeness of his Creator,
was incapable of self-restraint. In the latter days of
the Venetian Republic troops of prostitutes were
supplied annually from Germany to Venice, while
the morals of Venetian women were noted for their
purity.

On a bright summer's morning in April 1904, I
joined a crowd of men whom I found clustering round
a speaker in Hyde Park. The audience listened
attentively while the orator, a South African negro
with ebony skin, rolling eyes and thick red lips,
explained to them that it grieved him to the heart to
see their beautiful young girls with golden hair and
blue eyes standing at the street corner because they
had not bread enough to keep them from starvation.
" You men have not enough work to do here," he

1 See Dora cl'Istria on this subject.

said, " but you ought to come out to South Africa
and work in the mines. You ought yourselves to be
doing the work that Chinamen are doing for you.
We black people are no use for manual labour of that
kind ; we are the agriculturists, the rightful cultivators
of our native soil. Let us supply you with all the
vegetables you and your families require, while you
do the work that Chinamen are doing for you. Send
them all home to China and do the work yourselves,
then there will be no need for your women-folk to
lead a life of shame." So this African negro did not
think that the prostitution of English women was
a necessary evil. Our studies in the direction of
biology show conclusively that man is the only animal
to make use of this system. Nowhere in the animal
world has another species been found in which the
female is forced to trade in its sex to minister to the
pleasure of the male.

And suppose we take it for granted that those
men are right who assert that the morality of English
homes is due to such a system. It only comes to
this, that for every honest wife, mother, sister or
daughter, some one else's wife, mother, sister or
daughter must be victimised. In 1887 it was proved
that in the town of Edinburgh there were upwards of
sixty miserable families whose only source of main-
tenance was the mother's dishonour. How many
well-to-do middle-class women were thus kept pure
and chaste ? " Any gold," says Calderon, " will keep
its colour under glass." Why does the pure English
lady turn away with such disgust from the gaudy
painted woman who now confronts her by daylight

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST 71

in every London street, and who even rides beside
her in the motor omnibus ? English women are at
last refusing to believe that man was fashioned lower
than the brute, that instincts have been given him
by his Creator which he has not the power to control,
which must therefore entail the ruin of a fellow-
creature before they can be pacified. English
women have a higher opinion of their Creator than
this, and a higher opinion of His handiwork. A man
may not steal to satisfy his hunger or his thirst ;
how long will he persuade himself that he is justified
in ruining a fellow creature in order to pander to an
appetite ? English mothers whose sons are growing
up to manhood feel that this question touches them
through their sons. " Is the pocket money I give
to my boy for his first week in London to find its
way into the pockets of a white slave overseer ? "
cries the anxious English father, " and shall my boy
part with his money thus under the impression that
he is acting blamelessly ? " " Yes, alas, it must be
so," he cries, like the man Aristotle tells of, who,
when he was beating his father, said, " My father
used to beat his father, and his father his again,
and this little fellow here," pointing to his child,
" will beat me when he is a grown man ; it runs in
the family." Prostitution has been supposed to
run in the human family, so man has borne with it
and countenanced it, and it has prospered hideously,
till in these early days of the twentieth century it is
a greater menace than ever. The evils which it has
brought in its train are undermining marriage, and
through marriage, the race.

72 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

The Catholic pays his conscience money to the
priest ; the Protestant has a pew in church, and gives
liberally to the funds of the Salvation Army. No
wonder that the dividends of the latter have reached
the height of thirty thousand pounds a year. The
few women who have dared to speak have been
well hated for their aggressive chastity, nevertheless
" the possession of a truer and more complete knowledge
on this painful subject, by women in general, would do
more to lessen the number of the most unfortunate out-
casts of society than all the secret discussions of the
House of Commons. However pleasant it may be for
women themselves to entrench themselves in decorum
and refinement from so painful a knowledge, and
however consonant such behaviour may be with the
prejudices of society yet such is not the manner in
which these terrible disorders can be remedied. Since
females are also even more interested than males in
the suppression of these evils we can see no propriety
in endeavouring to keep them in ignorance of their
existence." *

" In the eyes of the student of the Bible," says Karl
Jentsch, " those gentlemen make themselves ridicu-
lous who pretend to believe that a prostitute's soul
is in a worse state than the soul of the self-righteous,
the hard-hearted and the boaster, against whom
Christ Himself was so severe." And he proceeds to
assert that the sins of a prostitute are unavoidable,
for they are necessary to the health and happiness
of mankind. According to him and to a writer

1 Mrs Hugo Reid, "A Plea for Women," 1843. The italics are my
own.

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST 73

whom he quotes, the matrons and maidens of
Britain owe the pure and chaste atmosphere of
their homes to the existence of the seventy thousand
prostitutes who are supported by the voluntary con-
tributions of their husbands and brothers. It will
doubtless be a great consolation to the tender-hearted
ladies of England to feel quite sure that prostitution
is after all as honourable a calling as that of the
shoe-black, and that " to wish for the conversion
of one of these women is like wishing we could
persuade a cat to lay eggs." To show how great
is the moral gulf that lies between women of the
middle class and those below them, this writer tells
us that the very man who would think nothing of
robbing a barmaid or a servant girl of her honour,
would be ready to shoot the fellow who should dare
to persuade his daughter to marry beneath her.
Karl Jentsch does not deny that there are rare cases
of girls in the lower classes being gifted with a sense
of moral right and wrong. But these, in his opinion,
are anomalies, incongruities of nature quite be-
neath our consideration. According to him every
young man has a perfect right to sow his wild oats,
and neither the defenders of Women's Rights nor
the Socialists are justified in their attempts to raise
the moral tone of these poor women, who are usefully
doing the work assigned them by their Maker, " but,"
he adds, " should they (the Socialists, etc.) succeed in
doing what the Christian Church has vainly tried for
ages to accomplish, then prostitution would come to
an end.

It is my firm conviction, after devoting many

74 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

months of study to this painful subject, and wading
through the sociological and scientific literature of
many countries and ages, that there is only one way
in which prostitution and the evils it brings in its
train can be effectually grappled with. It can only
be grappled with by the direct instrumentality of our
young men. All other means, however powerful, can
only be effectual in so far as they influence our men.
As long as English doctors and teachers continue to
uphold the belief that a young man cannot practise
abstinence without endangering his health, so long
will these continue to require the sacrifice of
victims to their bestial pleasures. Twenty years ago
the mother who was nursing her child was told by
her medical adviser that it was necessary for her own
welfare and the child's that she should drink porter.
To-day no doctor dreams of ordering alcohol under
such circumstances as a necessity. Fielding, in one
of his novels, describes a scene in a sickroom where
two doctors, having held a consultation over the
invalid and having formed entirely opposite opinions
as to the nature of the complaint, talk hard at one
another for some time, with the result that each
finally succeeds in convincing himself that his own
view is the correct one. That is just the point
medical science has reached to-day with regard to the
requirements of our young men. There are already
numbers of medical men in various parts of the
world who boldly declare that the young man who
has grown up pure can remain pure till he chooses to
marry. The majority, however, still "look asquint
on the face of truth," as Sir T. Browne put it.

THE SOUL OF THE OUTCAST 75

" Sociology must not scorn to examine the most
abnormal or reprehensible forms of conduct which
ethics spurns, and pyschology too often fears to
investigate." l Medical men are not in every case
sociologists, nor do they, as a rule, care to take the
initiative.

The present position of the medical profession in
Britain is, as one of its members has recently declared, 2
far from satisfactory. " Its intellectual status is not
what it should be. As the largest body of scientific
workers, it ought to exercise a preponderating
intellectual influence. It exercises hardly any."
And he adds that it is not unusual to hear members
of other professions express the opinion that doctors
are tied as a rule to narrowness and conventionality.
Those who do venture upon initiative encounter the
most bigoted opposition, as was the case, for instance,
with Sir Joseph Lister. The British Medical Journal
reminded its readers in December 1904 that
"bacteriology was a laughing stock to most men
over middle-age up to a comparatively recent time."
Twenty years ago suggestions that man could learn
to navigate the air were received with ridicule.

1 Osman Newland.

2 J. Archdall Reid, "The Principles of Heredity," 1905.

CHAPTER V

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID

THE majestic elm, with its spreading branches
and graceful foliage, the sweet-scented pine
and the towering poplar all contribute to the
happiness and welfare of humanity as surely as the
fruitful apple tree or the slender grape-vine. We do
not plant trees along the dusty streets of our towns
in order that we may obtain fruit from them ; but
who is not thankful for their grateful shade in the
noontide heat of a hot summer day? We do not
say to every tree, " You will be a failure if you do
not bear fruit." Yet we give woman to understand
that if it does not fall to her lot to bear children she
will miss the highest ideal of which her sex is
capable, " If there is anything quite certain," says a
twentieth century sociologist, 1 "it is that the normal
destiny of a woman is to be a mother, and that any
woman, however otherwise successful, who has not
achieved this station, has essentially failed." Strangely
enough this free-thinking materialist, who has shaken
himself free from all religious belief, still upholds the
monogamic marriage without attempting to estimate
its necessary consequences. In all countries where

1 C. W. Saleeby, M.D., 1906.

the monogamic marriage prevails there must always
be numbers of self-respecting women who, for some
good reason, find themselves passing through life
without either husband or children. An American
scientist boldly announces that it is impossible to
escape the conclusion that a woman's natural educa-
tion is completed only with maternity, "which is
known to effect some slight changes in the sym-
pathetic system, and possibly the spinal cord, and
which may fairly be laid under suspicion of causing
more structural modifications than are at present
recognised." Such thinkers should, to be consistent,
strenuously oppose the monogamic marriage ; they
should hasten to bring about a more satisfactory state
of society, one in which every man could have either
two legal wives at a time, or several in quick succes-
sion. The painful biological fact the existence of
over a million female failures in Britain, and nearly
as many in every other civilised country, would then
become a happy fiction. Alas, our biologists and
physiologists are only ordinary men after all; they
may be heroes as far as the dissecting-room, or even
the hospital and the asylums, are concerned ; their
experiments may extend even " over many hundreds
of normal men and women," but when it comes to
deliberately facing public opinion, then courage com-
pletely fails them, and they leave it to their followers,
who are not always biologists, to proclaim that the
monogamic marriage is doomed ; and to " assist in
knocking down the barriers that are falling fast
enough as it is." Various anarchical socialists are
already striving with might and main to introduce

78 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

probationary marriages, easy divorce, and free love.
" Oh ye unmarried women ! " cries one of them, in a
transport of sympathy. " Oh ye martyrs to cruel
prejudice who are withering away under the cruel
designation of old maids. Ye unhappy victims of
social convention. Come to us, come and take your
place in the ever-increasing army that fights for the
emancipation of humanity."

There were no old maids before the time of Martin
Luther, they are the product of the Reformation.
Luther laid down the rule that every man should
marry, and never gave a thought to the surplus
women who before his time had found shelter and
occupation in convents ; from his day till the close of
the nineteenth century the average Protestant woman
(in England as well as in Germany and Scandinavia)
who had failed to secure a husband, was treated as a
nonentity ; she had no money, no position, no status
whatever, she lived on the forced charity of her rela-
tions, and as nephews and nieces grew up around
her, she was treated by them too with contemptuous
pity. " Aunt Margaret never goes out for a walk
without asking mother's leave," said a young English
girl to me, " though she's over fifty ; she has never
done anything in her life without asking somebody's
permission. I don't believe she could begin to take
care of herself now, she is too old." I was once talk-
ing on the subject of old maids with a group of Ger-
mans, when one of the party, a stout, good-natured
Burgomeister, exclaimed, "Yes, it is hard to be an
old maid in our country. I warned my youngest
sister that if she did not marry, the day would come

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID 79

when she would regret it, but she said she did not
love any of the men who proposed, and insisted on
having her own way. And what was the result ?
Why, to-day, while all her sisters have homes of their
own, there she is, sitzen geblieben^ eine alte Stricktante^
at everybody's beck and call, with no home that she
can call her own, and no dignity ; contemptuously
pitied by all the women of her acquaintance who are
more happily situated. I told her it would be so,
and so it is." Among Protestant nations, a certain
reproach still attaches itself to the old maid, with the
natural result that many well-to-do sensitive girls, not
having sufficient stamina to bear that reproach, rush
blindly into matrimony, when in reality they would
have done better for themselves by remaining single ;
they marry for the sake of the status that marriage
gives ; they feel that with a wedding-ring on their
finger and the title of a married woman, they will be
somebody, whereas in reality they lose more than
they gain, for once married, their glory, however dazz-
ling, is only reflected glory ; while their husbands live
they can hardly be said to enjoy any individual in-
dependence ; all the power many of them have, and it
may, indeed, be very considerable, is that of the slave
who employs cunning and intrigue to gain his ends.

If there is no disgrace in being a bachelor, why
should there be any in being an old maid ? We need
not in these days look far to find the answer to our
question. The reason why it is a reproach to be an
old maid is, that the life of an old maid is as a rule an
idle, lonely, empty life, whereas the life of a bachelor is

1 Left sitting, a knitting old maid.

8o WOMAN IN TRANSITION

usually as full of active work as that of any married
man. We do not dream of calling a woman an old
maid if she is the bright bustling matron of a hospital
or the manageress of a thriving business. Once
remove the stigma of idleness and emptiness from
a woman's life, and no reproach will be attached
to her spinsterhood. The unhappiness, too, of the
old maids is as much a result of their poverty as
of anything ; the majority of them are left without
sufficient means of maintaining a decent position in
society. Was there ever a woman who did not ap-
preciate the pleasure of showing hospitality ? Yet
this pleasure is denied to the average old maid. We
shall never know how many Englishwomen of good
family have entered the marriage state without love
because they saw before them only one alternative,
namely, that of ending their days in a garret or a
" Home for Decayed Ladies." If such marriages turn
out unhappily and end with divorce, there is nothing
in that to surprise us. Yet we are puzzled, perplexed,
and saddened at the increased frequency of divorce in
all civilized countries. Were the female sex enabled
by their early training to maintain themselves as the
other sex does, 1 were they equally invested with
property, equally independent and free from ridicule
if unmarried, equally protected by law and public
opinion, there would be less husband-hunting, less
marrying for other reasons than love, less legal and
unlegal prostitution, less work for our divorce courts,
and a less perceptible decline in our birth-rate.
England to-day contains thousands of lonely middle-

1 See "Can Woman Regenerate Society," 1844.

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID 81

aged old maids with straitened means, who were not so
very long ago merry young girls in happy middle-class
families, girls who never gave a thought to the future
while an affection ate father and manly brothers guarded
them from every ill and warded off every anxious
thought. The fathers who loved them so dearly have
been separated from them by death, and the brothers
by distance or their own family cares. There is often
no male relative to whom these women can turn when
in perplexity ; they serve as a solemn warning to
younger women, saying sadly to the young girls
of their acquaintance, " My dears, do not make the
mistake I made. Look at my lot, and take care that
you make a better use of your youth and good looks
than I made of mine." Too many of their listeners,
taking these words to heart, rush madly into the arms
of the first man who presents himself. Thus are our
poor, tender-hearted, innocent old maids a cause of
far greater evil than they themselves ever dream of.

As long as marriage is the only respectable means
by which a woman of the middle-class can rise in the
world, so long will that institution continue to be, in
thousands of cases, a miserable failure. As long as
the unmarried daughter is expected to be the house-
hold drudge, so long will girls marry in order to escape
that position. In hundreds of English homes domestic
or social affairs constantly demand the services of the
unmarried daughter, and she naturally feels the strain
as years go on and no prospect but that of an impe-
cunious and lonely celibacy arises before her. As her
parents grow older it is she who has to deal with the
cook and arrange what everybody is to eat : all the

82 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

servant worries of a large household fall upon her
shoulders. She has to arrange for the servants' holi-
days, for the replacing of those who are sick in
short, it is she who has to see to all those petty
details which contribute to the smooth running of
a household. " Ah ! " she sighs. " A married woman,
in compensation for these cares, gets the status and
authority of her position, and the admiring affection
of her husband. I only have, to support me, such
little sense of filial duty as I possess. My time is
so fully occupied that all thought of study or self-
improvement is quite out of the question. When my
aged parents are gone, and my brothers scattered and
absorbed with homes of their own, then I shall have
plenty of time on my hands, but then it will be too
late the activity and buoyant enthusiasm of youth
will be gone for ever." Old maids are not necessarily
women who have never had any work to do, far from
it ; they are almost always those who have, in forget-
fulness of self, devoted their years of youth to the
care of others ; it is not their fault that others have
ceased to need them, and that they are left stranded
without any work in the very years of their life when
the solace that work brings with it is most needed.
"If women who have been shut out from the world of
reality, and compelled by usage to endure the cor-
rosion of unoccupied thought and the decay of
unemployed powers, were able to speak fully and
truly as they sink into their unearned graves, it
would be found that their lives had been one hollow
misery, redeemed solely by that degree of action that
had been permitted to them in order that they might

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID 83

in anywise live." Thus wrote Harriet Martineau in
1837, and her words are as true to-day as when they
were written.

I never yet met with a woman over twenty who
would own that she had not received one offer of
marriage. But many a fond mother has told me
proudly that her daughter has " had plenty of
chances." It seems then that every woman gets an
opportunity, or else that she feels herself at fault if
she does not, and hides the facts accordingly. I do
not, of course, include in this category those women
of the Catholic religion who have voluntarily chosen
a life of celibacy. " After the Reformation," says a
Swedish author, 1 " woman had only one right to
existence, as wife and mother, under the guardianship
of the husband ; apart from this, she led only the
accessary existence of a fine, or ordinary, courtesan.
Finally, as old maid, she became a superfluous
member of the family, who had in modesty to efface
herself. Aside from her available or unavailable
sexuality she had no cause for existence ; she was
altogether superfluous. As the family could no
longer support the steadily increasing number of
superfluous members and endeavoured to push them
off, the Woman Question arose." Another Swedish
writer 2 tells us that the main cause of the woman
movement in Sweden was the introduction of steam
engines ; in fact some have asserted that it is there
caused entirely by steam. Fredrika Bremer, the
Swedish novelist, took up the cause of unmarried
women in Sweden about the same time that Camilla

1 Laura Marholm, - Wikmark.

8 4

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

Collet influenced Ibsen to take up the cause of
married women in Norway. It is estimated that at
the present day only one out of every three grown
up women in Sweden is married. In the German
Empire, there are very nearly a million more women
than men, while in Great Britain the " superfluous
women " number considerably more than a million.
In France there are only some two hundred and
seventy thousand more women. Taking the whole
of Europe together there are reckoned to be one
thousand and twenty-four women to every thou-
sand men. These extra women are not women with
happy homes and no need to trouble about the future,
they are not women with fathers and husbands and
brothers always at hand to advise and protect them ;
they are women who are compelled to fight life's
battle for themselves, for the simple reason that there
is no one else to fight it for them. Only a very
small proportion of them can afford to live in idle-
ness, and only a yet smaller proportion have homes
worthy of the name. How comes it then that when
these women, who are human after all, in spite of
their sex, go bravely forth into the world and join
in the struggle for existence, how comes it that in
England men who call themselves Christians can
write to the papers as they are doing and announce
that woman's proper sphere is her home, and that
in that home she ought to stay ? Just now, however,
we are only dealing with women of the middle and
upper classes of society, unmarried, without a home
they can call their own, and without any serious life
work. Medical men have constantly uttered the

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID 85

opinion that the one thing wanting to such women is
marriage. They tell us that it is purely from want
of a husband that these women wither and grow old
before their time, as if homelessness, idleness and
poverty were not in themselves sufficient to bring
about a premature old age ! Whoever saw a rich and
influential maiden lady grow old before her time?
Such old maids can afford to snap their fingers at
their married sisters and say truly that they have the
best of it. The rich old maid can show hospitality
to her heart's content, she always has more friends
than she requires. If she is kind-hearted there are
a thousand ways in which she can contribute to the
happiness of others, and there is no reason why she
should prefer to shower her benefits upon cats and
dogs in preference to human beings, except it be that
her parents were at fault in not educating her mind
and heart to nobler interests. The rich old maid may
indeed have her faded dreams, her private sorrows
and her hours of loneliness, but it is not she who
makes the woman problem. In the bright days to
come, when every human being shall be taught to
look upon work as humanity's highest privilege, and
upon an idle life as something beneath contempt,
then the rich old maids will be among the happiest
as well as the most useful members of society, though
plodding and conscientious biologists may still tell
them that they are imperfect specimens of woman-
hood.

The attitude of women towards virginity in their
own sex is truly singular. " Woman," says Weiniger,
" only respects woman when she is married, no matter

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

to whom. Women are altogether to blame for the
unpleasant associations which are so unfortunately
connected with old maids. Women and girls talk
contemptuously of old maids, but no man was ever
heard to do so : women think that old maids have
made a virtue of necessity. Virgin worship owes its
origin to men." One would think that Weiniger had
never come in contact with the doctrines of our
materialistic biologists, in whose judgment it is every
woman's biological duty to provide for the continu-
ance of her race, in spite of the fact pointed to long
ago by Col. Higginson, that children are not the sole
evidence of service rendered to the State. " The very
fact," he remarks, " that during one half of the years
of a woman's average life, she is made incapable of
child-bearing, show that there are, even for the most
prolific and devoted mothers, duties other than the
maternal." Some very good women in England are
still telling our young girls that motherhood is, for
every woman, the worthiest goal, without suspecting
that the doctrine they preach is dangerously conducive
to that legal prostitution, euphemistically known as
loveless marriage, if not to yet greater evils.

In Japan, old maids as well as old bachelors are
almost entirely unknown, according to Westermarck ;
though I myself, when in that country, met with
several of the former. Among the peasantry of
Russia an old maid is something very rare indeed,
and as I have before remarked, /this species of woman
suffers extinction in all countries that come fully
under the sway of Islam, it being a product of
Western civilization ; biologists are supported by

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID 87

socialists, protestants and rationalists in their view
that it is an evil. The Catholic Church alone has,
from the first, arid quite consistently, opposed this
theory, for it has always taught that the attainment
of perfect womanhood does not depend upon the
physiological function of maternity, and that the true
sphere of woman lies wherever she can live nobly and
do useful work. 1 Ever since the days of Augustine,
who believed that unmarried children would shine in
heaven as beaming stars, while their parents would
give out a less brilliant lustre, ever since the days of
St Paul, who told fathers that marrying-off their
daughters was good, but that not marrying them off
was better, has the Catholic Church held virginity in
honour : it has always held that marriage is not
woman's only calling ; that neither man nor woman
is dependent upon the opposite sex for the perfection
of their being ; that male and female were in truth
formed as complements to one another that they
might contribute towards the continuance of the
species, but it denies the existence of any physical
or pyschical law compelling the individual to marry in
the interest of his or her personal development. The
Catholic Church points to Christ, the second Adam,
who stands alone, in virgin purity, dedicated to the
glory of the Father and to the salvation of the
universe. The Catholic Church teaches that he who
makes our coarser animal instincts a pretext for the
necessity of marriage, dishonours man, man, who was
formed after the likeness of his Creator, man, whose
greatest privilege is his reason, and the liberty which

1 See Bishop Spalding, " Woman in Higher Education."

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

the right use of that reason involves; man, whose
first duty it is to master his instincts and to exercise
the virtue of self-control. The Catholic Church would
have us believe that he who lowers human marriage
to the stage of a mere biological function, the result
of an instinct of which men and women are the abject
slaves, robs it of its stability, by awakening the
deadliest enemy that marriage has to contend with ;
he loosens every moral chain that has ever been able
to keep in restraint the lowest of human passions.
The Catholic Church sees what many of the cleverest
protestant men and women of our day do not see,
what socialists, biologists and rationalists fail to see
that on the day when the world accepts the doctrine
that woman cannot attain to perfect womanhood
without marriage woman will find herself in a
state of more terrible subjection than has ever yet
fallen to her lot. 1

The Catholic Church teaches that a woman can be
a woman, and a man can be a man, irrespective of
fatherhood or motherhood. " To say that neither
male nor female can come to full perfection without
the other is to rob human beings of their moral
independence and personality. And this applies
to men as much as to women. Catholicism has
often been reproached for its tardy participation
in the woman movement, but, as Professor Mausbach
justly reminds us, it could afford to come late because
it had been there long before. No one can deny that
Catholicism has through all the Christian ages striven

1 See Prof. Joseph Mausbach,
leben," 1906.

Die Stelling der Frau im Menscheits-

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID 89

to care for the unmarried female in a way that no
other church or community has ever done ; it has
upheld her dignity as a woman, and it has given her
work. It has never looked upon her as failure.
" No one," says Laura Marholm, " would think of
calling a nun an old maid : nor does she feel herself
such. She carries neither in face nor in figure the
characteristic marks of one. Even in the sickly and
suffering nuns there is a calm steadfastness some-
thing noticeable exactly that which is not found in
the old maid ; and which arises chiefly from the fact
that the nun's imagination does not turn about a
fixed idea with bitter feeling, from the fact that she
does not feel herself one of those who have nothing,
and therefore compares herself enviously with those
who have more. To be a nun is an honour, a result
of voluntary renunciation. Old maidenhood is not an
honour, but a humiliation." It can indeed be nothing
short of a humiliation to any woman to find that, after
concentrating all her energies and devoting the best
years of her life to one end, she has failed publicly,
that is in the eyes of all acquaintances and friends, to
attain that end. I have seen a pitying smile on
peoples' lips when the name of such a woman has
been mentioned, and heard one of the company

exclaim, " Ah, poor Miss L , how hard she

tried ! " And this in England. In France it is not
very different. " Ce qui m'a toujours cheque chez les
hommes," cried a French lady. 1 " C'est le profond
dedain avec lequel Us traitent la femme qui a atteint

1 Madame Edmond Adam. See " Le Mouvement Feministe,"
by Comtesse Marie Villermont, 1904.

90 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

Page mur. Des ce moment, les reformateurs les
plus sens ib les cessent de s'occuper de son sort" Yet
old maids are rare in France, because Convents
are plentiful. More than a hundred and sixty-
thousand unmarried French women are to be found
to-day in these peaceful retreats, living a life full of
useful work, and free from any care for the future.
Imagine what would be the state of things if all
these Convents were suddenly shut up and their
inmates turned out into the streets to do the best they
could for themselves. Then indeed would France
have to lend an ear to the bitter cry of the old maid !
" Ah, the old maids ! " says another French writer. 1
" We do not think enough about their melancholy
destiny, these poor neglected creatures are of no
account in our society. Their lonely and mono-
tonous life ebbs noiselessly away. Yet the
bright dreams of early womanhood, the ambitious
hopes of girlhood were once shared by them. As
year after year has passed away they have been
doomed to see those visions of happiness fade
one by one and crumble into dust." " Tandis
que notre societe prodique la plus scandaleuse in-
dulgence aux vieux gar^ons, elle reserve tous ses
dedains, toutes ses rigueurs, toutes ses plaisanteries aux
vielles filles. Est-ce done toujours leur faute si elles
riont pu se marier ? "

In Protestant countries, religion and philanthropy
are looked upon as the proper source of consolation
for a lonely unmarried woman who is not actually
obliged to earn her daily bread. She attends church

1 Turgeon.

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID 91

on week days as well as on Sundays, throws herself
madly into a vortex of good works, and spends half
her time at committee meetings. A clergyman of
the Church of England was recently warned, on
coming to a new parish, against the religious and
philanthropic zeal of the unmarried ladies of his
congregation ! Miss Martineau found the same thing
in America in the early days of last century. " I
cannot enlarge upon the disagreeable subject of the
devotion of the ladies to the clergy," she wrote, " I
believe that there is no liberal-minded minister who
does not see, and too sensibly feel, the evil of women
being driven back upon religion as a resource against
vacuity." A visitor from the planet of Mars who
wished to get a good view of our Protestant old
maids, could not do better, even in these days, than
follow a popular preacher, no matter whether he be
Anglican or Nonconformist, from one church to
another for several consecutive Sundays. What can
it be but a false craving for religious excitement
which prompts so many respectable women to dog
the steps of a popular divine to arrive long before
the service is to begin and stand in a patient queue
outside the church door for half an hour or even
longer ? Such things can only occur when women
make an occupation of religion ; when they try in
this way to fill what would otherwise be a void. The
Anglican Church has sufficiently shown its apprecia-
tion of the usefulness of Catholic Sisterhoods, by
establishing Sisterhoods of its own. Many good
Protestants fear that this tends to a re-establish-
ment of the ascendency of the clergy over women's

92 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

lives, 1 but they forget, perhaps, that our women of
another generation will be in a far better position
to think and act for themselves than has ever been
the case in the past ; their individuality will be more
developed, and their self-reliance far greater; they
will be less susceptible to outside influences.

A hundred years ago the family had more room
for the old maid than it has to-day. Now the work
that once fell to her lot is done in the factory, and
there is rarely enough for her in the home of a
married sister to make her worth her keep, except
when there is sickness, and even here the trained
nurse is ousting her services. She is not wanted as a
governess after she has reached the age of forty.
Her education has not fitted her for school-teaching.
If she wants to go out into the world and work, there
is very little she can do, and as long as she has
enough to live on, her relatives protest against her
doing that little. If, as only too often happens, she
finds herself obliged to add to the meagre income
left her by her parents, she is very clearly made to
feel that by entering the service of strangers she is
disgracing her family and descending to a lower rung
of the social ladder than that to which she was born.
Her old friends drop away one by one, or, if they
still invite her to their houses, it is a feeling of charity

alone that impels them. " What do Mr B 's

daughters do ? " was a question recently put by a lady
of my acquaintance. " Oh, they don't do anything,"
was the response ; " they are ladies" There are of

1 See chapter on this subject in "Women and English Life," by
Miss Georgiana Hill.

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID 93

course certain remunerative occupations which do not
in any way involve the loss of caste, but they are all,
without exception, closed to the average old maid on
account of her age and her want of previous training.
She was educated with a view to securing a husband,
and having failed to secure one she finds it as hard
to turn that education to another use as if she were
a musician trying to turn his musical training to
account by painting pictures, or applying for the post
of ship's captain. Even when she turns all her
energies in the direction of philanthropy the average
old maid often does more harm than good. Nowhere
do trained missionaries find so many difficulties
awaiting them as in those places where kind-hearted,
but indiscriminating maiden ladies have been before
them. Even when the work of these good souls is
organised by some competent person, much time is
lost and much valuable energy wasted by the absence
of previous training in the individual members of the
organised body. One of the delegates to the
Woman's Section of the Chicago Exhibition informed
me on her retnrn, that the way in which the ladies
talked one another down at their committee meetings,
defied description. Opponents of the woman move-
ment make capital of this weakness. We constantly
hear them say how dreadful it would be to have
women in Parliament ! Yet the injustice of the
inference is obvious, for how many of the women who
meet in committee meetings to-day, have had a
training calculated to fit them for such work ? Com-
pare the education these ladies received in their
youth with that given to their male relatives, and

94 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

there will be no need to charge these shortcomings
to their sex. How I should like to turn every man
who has a word to say against the woman movement
into an impecunious old maid of the country to which
he belongs. A very short dose of such experience
would, I am convinced, render any man, with a
spark of manliness in his soul, an ardent champion
of the cause of woman. " It is one of the great
triumphs of our civilization," says an anonymous
writer in one of our English newspapers, " that we
condemn a whole host of women to be lonely all
their lives, to spend all their best years in a grim
struggle for daily bread, with the hope of being able
to save enough to keep themselves miserably alive
through an unhonoured and unloved old age. How
many thousand women are there in London to-day
who have no home in the world and never will
have ? Who likes to think about them ? " No one
likes to think about them, but they are there all the
same, they are one of the silent, unnoticed influences
that contribute to the woman movement.

In Germany as in England, the majority of the
unmarried women are of the upper and middle
classes. Dr J. Muller even goes so far as to
assert that outside these classes the sexes are re-
presented in almost equal numbers. This writer
tells us that it is contrary to nature for a woman
to remain single, but that though many women must
end their days in single blessedness whether they will
or no, on account of the scarcity of men, it is none
the less a wrong state of things which allows them
to fritter away their lives in aimless solitude. He

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID $5

very properly reminds his countrymen that the
unmarried woman has the same human rights as
her married sister, and the same individual worth :
in fact, often a higher worth. Beauty of face, size
of dowry, and family connections are three con-
siderations which go far to deciding who shall
marry, and who shall remain single, in Germany
as elsewhere ; personal worth has often very little
to do with the matter. " You seem to have followed
some special method in your arrangement of the
photographs of your lady acquaintances," said a
friend to a young lieutenant, who had handed him
his photograph album for inspection. " Yes," was
the reply, " I have arranged them according to their
probable dowries." Dr Mtiller is of the opinion
that every girl should be brought up to have some
particular interest in life, some intellectual or technical
skill by which she can earn money, and feel herself
independent of whatever money her parents may
leave her.

It must always be painful to a self-respecting
woman to feel that she is unable to stand upon
her own feet ; and the sooner those idiotic con-
ventionalities which prevent her from doing so are
done away with the better it will be. The girl who
marries emancipates herself from the authority of
her parents, the young man emancipates himself
independently of his marriage. The young woman
should be able to do likewise. The girl who marries
finds occupation ; the girl who does not marry must
also find occupation, she must not be left to rot
upon the parental tree like an unpicked apple; she

96 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

must not be bricked-in by high walls of social
prejudices, and left to pine away in solitude ; she
must go forth into the world and develop her own
personality by wrestling with the real difficulties of
life. When she does this, it will no longer be
possible to distinguish the old maid from the married
woman by her premature wrinkles, her prudishness,
her selfish eccentricities, and her melancholy counte-
nance. Dr Muller suggests that the woman who has
no home of her own shall take root in some one
else's family, and make herself one with all the
members of that family in its joys and in its
sorrows, for his German mind cleaves to the old
idea that woman's sphere is the home, and the
homeless woman must therefore, in his opinion,
force her way into somebody else's home and stay
there. In short, she is to remain after all what she
has been since the days of Luther a parasite.

Perhaps there are some German Hausfraus to be
found who would take kindly to the self-invited,
homeless woman, but I do not think there are many
married women in other parts of Europe who would
do so. Mothers with large families of young children
may often be very glad of the presence of a useful
lady-help, while the children are small, but that
they should welcome into their innermost circle
those who have come to stay, and guarantee that
they shall stay for ever, is hardly to be expected.
There can surely be no permanence about such an
arrangement ! Many of us, however, shall be able
to agree with Dr Muller when he tells his country-
men that the time has come when no kind of work

THE WOMAN WHO IS AN OLD MAID 97

ought to be looked upon as a disgrace, when a female
drone should not be thought more highly of than
a male one. Her want of a purpose in life is the
old maid's curse. A purpose in life acts like a
tonic on the individual constitution ; it strengthens
both mind and body and, if women would only
believe it, it is the surest conservator of youthful
charms that has ever yet been discovered. Yet it
is estimated that quite half the women of the upper
classes of German society are to-day living idle,
purposeless lives, and far more women are doing
the same in England and America than those who
have not looked into the matter can easily believe.
A large proportion of these are of course still upon
the marriage market, but they cannot remain there
long, for in the nature of things they will shortly
be crowded out by those younger generations who
are already treading on their heels. Let them open
their eyes and make sure in which direction they are
moving.

CHAPTER VI
THE EVENTUALITY OF WIDOWHOOD

ST GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS, the younger
brother of the great St Basil, appears to have
taken a very gloomy view of married bliss. " Look ! "
he said, " Marriage is the general prologue to all
the tragedies of Life." And it certainly is, for
many women, the prologue to an unprotected and
lonely widowhood. A Dutch author wrote a treatise
towards the latter part of the eighteenth century
proving that Eve was herself intended to be an
old maid, and would have been one but for her
disobedience ; but no one up to the eighteenth
century ever made any serious inquiry into ante-
diluvian virginity, if we may trust the anonymous
writer to whom I am indebted for the above fact.

The same authority has left us an amusing ex-
planation of the phenomena of widows being able
to find husbands so much more easily than old
maids ; he tells us that an elderly gentleman of his
acquaintance showed him very clearly how this
came about. A widow, it seems, has better nerve
than a woman who has never been married ; she
holds the line more steadily, and when she gets a
bite, receives her good luck with unruffled coolness,
and shows by her steady hand that she is a first-

THE EVENTUALITY OF WIDOWHOOD 99

rate angler. The old maid, on the contrary, be-
comes so excited at the first tug that she jerks her
rod and lets her victim escape. In other words,
the whole story is a confirmation of the adage that
nothing succeeds like success. It was under the
pseudonym of "A Young Widow," that some one in
America wrote a book of sage advice to young girls,
entitled, " How to get Married although a Woman." l
Here is a short extract from it: "There are un-
married women who do a great deal of good in the
world. They accept their solitary lot as the Will
of the Heavenly Father. But is it His Will?
Does He give the heart-longings which He w r ill
not satisfy? No. A thousand times, No. That
would be tantalizing us. Too often we make mis-
takes in life, and then declare the consequences to
be His Will. It is thus in failing to marry, girls
make mistakes in their conduct and remain spinsters.
The fault is their own. They do not know how to
attract, and so are passed by . . ." Here follows
the advice, which I slightly condense : Be as pretty
as you can. Be modest, true, industrious, sweet-
tempered, kind to your brothers, bright, jolly, sen-
sible, pleasant, and good-natured, each paragraph
urging the practice of one of the above virtues
begins with "A man likes" or "Men like." Girls
are advised to be sweet-mannered, to smile sweetly,
to be generous, gentle, courteous, healthy, hearty,
not exacting, tactful, well-read, large-minded, large-
hearted, affectionate, forbearing, not self-assertive,
not self-reliant, not jealous, not eccentric, not vain

> New York, 1895.

ioo WOMAN IN TRANSITION

and finally, when the pupil has eventually by
following this sage advice, secured a husband, she
is "never to let out anything about her husband's
shortcomings." Surely a book so full of wisdom
must have resulted from the workshop of a mascu-
line brain, especially as it does not contain a word
of advice to the kind of man who would make a
desirable husband. Let us compare the above
with the advice given by Martin Luther to girls
about to marry : l " Memores oportet conditionis suae
non superbire contra dominos sues, quando recitatis
tabellis matrimonialibus intelligere debeant se ancillas
esse factas . . . Virum honorare debeat mulier,
timere et audire . . . Huic data est subjecta. Ergo
subditas esse et reverare virum et honorare, in
omnibus obedire . . . Si ergo non licet servo contra
dominum . . . contendere^ et erigere, ita nee mulieri
contra virum." I have given the original Latin in
order that my readers may have the actual words of
the great Reformer before their eyes, and not merely
a free translation of them. But to return to the
counsel of the young widow, -it is expressly stated,
the reader will have observed, that the girl who
wishes to marry must not be self-reliant. " The frail
and delicate female is supposed to cling round the
sturdy husband's form, or to depend from his arm in
graceful incapacity, and the spectator is called upon
to admire the charming effect of the union as of the
ivy with the oak forgetful of the terrible moral,
namely that (in the case of the trees at any rate) it is

1 Luther's Works, Ed. Wittenbergae. Published 1558, quoted by
Lamy.

THE EVENTUALITY OF WIDOWHOOD 101

really a death-struggle which is going on, in which
either the oak must perish, suffocated in the embrace
of its partner, or, in order to free the former into any-
thing like healthy development, the ivy must be
sacrificed." x But it often happens that the ivy-like
wife finds herself bereft of the sturdy husband, and of
the income his work assured her, before she has
enjoyed more than a very few years of wedded bliss ;
and the more she has leaned upon him, and the more
implicitly she has followed Luther's instructions, the
more she afterwards misses his support, especially
when money is scarce and there are little ones to be
provided for. The conventional ending of story-books
" They got married and lived happily ever after "
has proved, in her case, a delusion and a snare. In
the first flush of her widowhood, friends are plenti-
ful and kind, but there are few friends indeed who
care to be leaned upon for long, and unless she can
turn one of her friends into a husband, she soon finds
herself in a very hard world. To " relinquish a pretty
home in favour of a sunless room at the back of a
dingy boarding-house is not very easy, and to get
remunerative work to do is less easy still for the
woman who has been trained for nothing but " grace-
ful incapacity." People get tired of buying her em-
broidered collars and fancy shawls, on which a
devoted husband loved to watch her pretty fingers at
work, and our widow is compelled to seek a less
graceful but more remunerative occupation. At this
point she comes sharply and unexpectedly into col-
lision with a number of women who, in somewhat

1 Edward Carpenter, "Love's Coming of Age," 1902.

IO2

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

similar straits, are trying to do likewise but who
have through sheer necessity acquired a power which
she is almost sure to lack the power to stick at a
thing and go through with it. A capacity for sustained
effort seldom comes naturally to adults who have not
been taught to practise it in their youth. " Those
who begin to build their houses when they are past
thirty, usually die," says La Bruyere, "when the
painters are at work, and the window panes are being
put into the windows." All thought of work that
requires a long and expensive training is out of the
question for the poor widow who has little mouths to
feed. And such is the state of society to-day that
bitter competition must be faced in every department
of remunerative work. " If you want to get music
pupils," said a kind-hearted lady to one who wished
to earn money by the use of her musical gifts, "you
must make people think you are actually on the
point of starvation, or the pupils will go to some one
who seems to need them more than you do." Here,
indeed, was a case where pride had to be swallowed ;
pride, which so often stands cruelly in the way of the
woman who, unprepared, starts late in life to earn
her living. M. Bertillon, who has been compiling
statistics of the deaths that occur in the city of Paris
from the all-baffling disease of cancer, has announced
that, out of every twenty Parisians, one may be
expected to die of cancer. I do not think any
statistics would be needed to authorise the statement
that out of every twenty girls of the middle classes
who marry during the year 1908, one will find herself
compelled, before many years have passed, to seek

THE EVENTUALITY OF WIDOWHOOD 103

some means of adding to her income. Yet how many
of these girls are preparing themselves for such a
contingency ? They flatter themselves that they are
happily engaged to be married, and that their future
at any rate is secure. Even those who have begun
preparing themselves in some way seem to consider
" getting engaged " as a signal for leaving off. The
girl who is taking singing lessons sings no more, the
hospital nurse leaves the hospital six months before
her final examination ; the only one who perseveres
is the girl who is learning to cook. How often we
hear some one say, " Mrs So-and-so has studied the
piano under this or that great man but now she
is married she never opens her piano, though her
husband has given her a Bechstein." A German
writer tells of a widow who, finding herself left with
a large family of children and no money for their
education, opened a boarding-house for the day
pupils of a well-known boys' school in Strasburg.
The poor lady discovered, too late, that there were
already more such boarding-houses in the town than
the pupils could fill. She knew she must find some
other means of making money, but was a long time
in despair of finding any suitable employment. At
length it happened that a lady living in the next flat
to hers was going out to a grand entertainment, and
the expected hairdresser failed to appear. Our
widow, who chanced to have a knack for arranging
hair in artistic coils, good-naturedly offered to take
the truant hairdresser's place. She did the business
so well that her handiwork met with great approval ;
and the pleasure she felt at gaining such well-merited

104 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

praise brought with it the happy idea that hair-
dressing, for which she had so decided a gift, was
work that she could do. She lost no time in follow-
ing out the suggestion, set about taking some good
lessons from a first-rate hairdresser, and then began
to seek for a clientele among the ladies of her neigh-
bourhood. Her efforts met with success, and she
soon found that she was able to make the money she
required. Her lady-friends, however, were shocked ;
they soon showed her that she was no more one of
their circle, and that, though they wished her well, it
would be impossible to treat her any longer as one
of themselves : she gradually found herself shut out
of the class with which she had been accustomed to
mingle, she had lost caste. Nevertheless she con-
soled herself with the philosophical reflection, that
her gain far exceeded her loss. Her exertions had
given her the satisfaction of being able to provide for
all her children the education that their father's
station demanded. It is not every woman, however,
who is so fortunate under similar circumstances as to
discover that she has a natural gift that can be turned
to so good a use.

It has been truly said that the difficulty of finding
suitable ways of earning a livelihood for the women
who find themselves suddenly and unpreparedly with-
out a male protector forms a central problem of
the woman movement, especially in England and
Germany. In France, where women, as we have
shown, are remarkable for their shrewd business
capacity, widows constantly carry on the business
of their departed husbands, and sometimes even with

THE EVENTUALITY OF WIDOWHOOD 105

greater success. Frenchmen visiting England have
been struck by the unbusinesslike ways of English-
women. This is hardly surprising when we re-
member that the average middle-class wife in our
country prides herself on knowing nothing about her
husband's business, and goes so far as to look upon
this ignorance as an expression of true womanliness ;
and her husband likes it because it gives him a
pleasing sensation of his own immense intellectual
superiority. The average Englishman cannot en-
dure that any of his womenfolk, and least of all his
wife, shall come anywhere near equalling him in
sagacity. The business aptitude of the French-
woman, however, is too valuable an asset to
be overlooked by her menfolk, and accordingly
they have no hesitation in benefiting by it. In
Norway, as also in Sweden and Finland, women
share the opinions expressed by Mrs Fitzpatrick, 1
namely that "nature would not have allotted a
superiority of understanding to the wife in so many
instances, if she had intended they should surrender it
to their husbands." The two countries par excellence
where the average man fears and hates superior in-
telligence in woman are England and Germany.
Only the other day at a tennis club, one of the
ladies of a group of young people of both sexes,
remarked, as a very pretty girl left the room, and
the young men were praising her good looks, " Yes,
and she is intelligent as well as pretty, she has just
matriculated." Immediately there was a look of
unmistakable disgust in the faces of the young men.

1 See "Tom Jones."

io6 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

" I felt," said the lady, as she related the incident
to me, " as if I had ruined the poor girl's reputation."
Woman's duty, according to the recently published
opinion of an Edinburgh medical man, is to " attract
by her beautiful body and her fine linen." l I have
in my mind the case of a pretty young woman whose

husband, Major B , has been struck down by

paralysis and now depends for the comforts of his
sick-room entirely upon her earnings. I am thank-
ful to say she has found a better way of attract-
ing money than that allowed her by this canny
Scotchman. The brave young wife has gone into
business ; she was doing well when I last had news
of her.

M. J. Novikow, an anarchistic sociologist, reminds us
that Madame Aristide Boucicault superintended and
managed the business of the Magdsin du Bon Marche
with rare commercial skill, and he adds that if she
had confined herself to the management of one
particular section of that great business, lookers-on
would have declared that the management of the
entire concern was quite above the capabilities of
a woman. Even to-day in that very Bon Marche
the higher posts in the various sections are allotted
by preference to men, in spite of the fact that
a woman will accept as her remuneration about
half the amount demanded by a man. Very little
pay indeed is given to the girls who serve in one
of the largest shops in Paris, where the manager,
according to the Countess Marie de Villermont,
has certain days for interviewing girls who present

1 Dr Stoddart Walker in Public Opinion^ November 1906.

THE EVENTUALITY OF WIDOWHOOD 107

themselves for employment. " He puts to each
girl one brutal question, 'Have you a protector?'
and if the poor creature, blushing and indignant,
replies in the negative, he turns his back on her
and prepares to interview another, saying that he
cannot have girls about his shop who are miserable
and dying of hunger, and the pay he gives is not
enough to support her. Such scenes as this are
enacted daily in the beautiful city of Paris, and
transactions not a whit more honourable go on in
London and Berlin, but they revolt no one, unless
indeed some woman suffragist so far forgets her
feminine modesty as to mention them in public.
Then, truly, there is an uproar, and scandalized
society longs to duck the breaker of the peace
in a mill-pond. I have actually received a letter
suggesting that it would be a good thing if I
could " show up " certain unwomanly women of
that kind in the present volume ! " The man who
steals five francs from a poor working girl is
looked upon as a thief and a rascal," cries the
Countess de Villermont, "but he who steals her
honour, to please the passing caprice of a libertine,
he who breaks her heart, and throws her into a
life of prostitution, he, I say, is received into the
best society with a smile of welcome, and when
he wishes to marry there are few mothers who
would not gladly entrust their daughter to his
care." " Anyone," continues this lady, " who looked
into the history of all the lost women who loiter
on the pavement of our large towns would be
shocked to find how enormous is the proportion

io8 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

of them who have fallen so low through once
listening too easily to the tender words of a
passer-by who had an hour to throw away."

The Countess Marie de Villermont, whose words
I have quoted, is a devout Catholic who has written
bravely in defence of her sex, and with a view to
the alleviation of the condition of woman. Those
feminists who accuse the Catholic Church of despis-
ing woman, are, in her opinion, people who are
ignorant both of its doctrine and history. The
father of the family, it seems to her, must always
be its head, " but if," she asks nai'vely, " if he is not
the most intelligent member of that family, has he
the right to believe he is the most intelligent
member ? " " Unbelievers," she adds, " refuse to
give to the woman movement a groundwork of
religion, and that is why they have made feminism
so dangerous an enemy to social order." She tells
us that perfect happiness is not to be expected on
this earth, and that those who hope to obtain it
by dissolving the family and abolishing the marriage
rite, are dreaming of a Utopia. The most perfect
laws, and the greatest possible equality of fortune,
will not save mortals from violence, murder, disease,
and death. Then she changes her theme by pointing
out how desperately man still clings to his apparent
superiority over woman. And here, at least, she
cannot be contradicted, for there are few male
scientists in these days who omit to publish theses
in support of that superiority. Catholic women in
England would do well to clear their minds of
the erroneous belief that resignation to her present

THE EVENTUALITY OF WIDOWHOOD 109

position is the first duty of a true Catholic. In
the year 1899 Bishop Spalding of Peoria delivered
an address at Washington, in connection with Trinity
College, a college founded for the purpose of the
higher education of Catholic women in America.
He told his audience that the adversaries of the
higher intellectual culture for women either did
not understand what education was, or they did
not believe in its divine efficacy. " The best is
best," he said, "whether for man or woman. What
interests the one must interest the other, and what
benefits the one must benefit the other. Women,
not less than men, need strong and open minds,
the capacity to form definite ideas and sound
judgments, to deduce conclusions logically from
premises, to weigh evidence, and to estimate the
value of proof . . . they, more than men, probably
dwell in the present, are too much dominated by
the senses, and a better education, by enabling
them to live more in the past and the future, will
tranquillize, deepen, and purify their whole being.
. . . Who shall hope by futile argument to stay her
feet in the way in which the inner voice bids her
ascend ? . . . The life that is not growing is decaying.
. . . Let us not be so dull as to ignore the gifts
of woman. Let us not be of those who still doubt
whether it is not better that she should be a
simpleton ; who think that only superficially edu-
cated women can make good wives and mothers."

Compare the words of this Catholic bishop with
those of Protestant Englishmen who are telling
every Englishwoman who shows an interest in the

IIO

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

government of her country, that she is an abnormal
phenomenon, a freak of nature, a hermaphrodite.
Compare Bishop Spalding's words with the words
of those Lutheran scientists in Germany, who are
showering pamphlets upon the reading world to
prove that the cultivation of woman's natural powers
spells degeneration for the race.

CHAPTER VII

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN THE SEXES

THE professional woman is one who has the
good fortune to be trained for the work she
has to do. Between her and the woman who takes
up what work she can find because unforeseen circum-
stances have compelled her to earn her living, there
is a great gulf. The very training of the one has
separated her from the other ; it has given the
professional woman a certain stamina ; it has taught
her self-control, self-reliance, self-respect: she is
conscious of her own value. In many of the liberal
professions she is still a pioneer; if she be not the
first, she is one of the first to strike out in what,
to her sex, is a new direction. Every true pioneer
must be prepared to make friends with solitude ;
consequently the professional woman of our day
has her hours of loneliness quite as truly as the
old maid of whom we spoke in a previous chapter ;
but oh ! how different ! Hers is an enviable soli-
tude, the solitude of the mountaineer, who after a
tedious ascent from the sultry valley emerges at
last into a clearer and more exhilarating atmosphere.
As he leaps from crag to crag he has no time to
feel his solitude ; it is only when he pauses to take

112 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

food and rest that he becomes conscious of the silence
that surrounds him, The professional English-
woman feels her loneliness as soon as time is given
her to do so. She is usually surrounded by women
with whom she has practically no interests in common.
She seldom has a club, out of London, where she
can meet friends and discuss mutual interests.
Beauty and riches would help to make her path
easy, but, if she has neither, she feels her loneliness
the more. " One great drawback for professional
women who are pioneering," says one of them in
a letter to me, "is, that no one cares to advise
you, but every one is ready to criticise and this
we feel more than men do. The strain tells on
us more quickly than it does on men, and while
we feel that strain, we are conscious all the time
that our ultimate success will depend greatly on
our personal appearance, the very part of us that
suffers most."

Professional women are only just beginning to
learn that proper and sufficient recreation is as
essential to the maintenance of their mental and
bodily fitness as it is to the maintenance of bodily
fitness in the case of men doing similar work. More
money needs to be spent on rest and agreeable
change in their case than in the case of women
who have less strain to bear. I do not believe
that, when this truth has been thoroughly grasped,
women will eventually find their personal appear-
ance more injured by ordinary strain than a man
does. Female pilots and cab drivers must, by
the way, expect their complexions to be somewhat

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 113

affected by daily exposure to wind and rain, but
even these can console themselves with the fact
that a healthy brown complexion is often more
pleasing to the eye than the unhealthy, anaemic
whiteness of a girl brought up in the lap of idle
luxury.

The housing of professional women is another of
the problems of the day. I am not now speaking of
pioneer women, but of the thousands engaged in pro-
fessional work in large cities, and whose earnings
are insufficient to secure them, singly, all the comforts
that women who have husbands to work for them can
enjoy. They often find it very difficult to get lodgings
anywhere near their work, and when they do find
them they have to take what they can get, inde-
pendently of what they require. Where half a dozen
women agree to throw in their lot with one another,
each can have a great deal more for her money ; the
larger the family the more cheaply each member can
be catered for ; but it is rare to find six, four, or even
two professional women who, without any tie of
relationship, are willing to make a home together.
" I would rather live in a garret, and call it my own,
than share a palace with other women," is what we
often hear them say. An artist who has had some
fifteen years' experience tells me that after trying life
in a boarding-house, in furnished apartments, and in
ladies' chambers, she had become heartily tired of
them all, and finally taken an unfurnished room,
provided it with the necessary furniture, and settled
down in it as her home. A charwoman cleans her
room on certain days of the week and the rest she
H

Ii4 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

does herself. A good restaurant in a neighbouring
street provides her with any meal she does not
care to cook at home. It is a modest little home
enough, but it is her own, and there lies the dignity
and charm. Many, however, dread the loneliness of
such a life, and so, in spite of its disadvantages, they
choose the boarding-house with its prim, school-
mistress-like, domineering, inquisitive manageress,
and its petty rules that may not be infringed. They
put up with the trial of having to take their meals
day after day in the company of uncongenial com-
panions, but they are not happy, nor can they call
it home. Co-operative homes on a commercial basis
have been started in several countries. There is one
in Copenhagen which, I hear, gives great satisfaction.
Ladies can have one or two comfortable rooms there
for a very low price, and their meals are served to
them in their own apartments when and how they
like, as from a public restaurant ; they can enjoy
as much privacy as they wish, for they need never
see a face besides that of the maid who answers
their bell. We have similar buildings in London on
a more sumptuous scale intended chiefly to meet the
wants of wealthy bachelors. There is also in these
establishments, besides a common kitchen, a suite
of public rooms as in an ordinary hotel, so that the
inmates can always resort thither when wishing for
each other's society. But as a writer on the subject
has observed : l " The concentration of particular
classes is seldom desirable, and perhaps one might
go a step further, and urge that the total segregation

1 See article in Daily Chronicle, July 17, 1906.

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 1 1 5

of the sexes is not the perfection of social and
civilised life." Certain it is that one of the great
drawbacks to single-blessedness in the present day,
for women as well as for men, is that they can rarely
enjoy the benefits of social intercourse with persons
of the opposite sex. The middle-aged woman de-
prived of a home of her own has no opportunity of
cultivating the acquaintance of men of her own class,
and unless her work is of a kind that throws her
among them, she may spend years of her life without
being able to exchange a thought with a male
acquaintance of her own age and station. The lady
doctor, the popular actress, and even the hospital
nurse, may have a superfluity of male acquaintances,
but how many has the middle-aged High School
teacher in a country town ? It is surprising also
to find how many young Englishmen from the
country, whose business keeps them in the towns,
spend years of their life without being able to asso-
ciate with women of their own class. Yet everybody
knows that the society of good women is the surest
means of keeping young fellows in the right path.

There are many clubs for professional women in
America, but they are hardly to be recommended ; a
woman needs to meet others besides those of her own
profession, or she will tend to become one-sided. It
may be very agreeable to meet with those who have
interests identical with our own, but it is perhaps more
important that we should meet with people who have
quite different interests. The harder the professional
woman works the more essential it is that oppor-
tunity should be given her in her leisure hours to see

ii6 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

and hear what other cultivated minds are interested
in. The woman who has no opportunity of associa-
ting with men is almost sure to lack the width of
view such association brings with it. American
women as a rule have far more freedom in this
respect than English, French, or German women,
and the whole world readily acknowledges that they
are, as women, far more interesting. Some one has
said that each sex is most itself in the presence of
the other. At any rate they cannot find common
grounds of sympathy, and give each other the advan-
tage of seeing things from new points of view, unless
some means of friendly intercourse is provided for
them. If women who are blessed with homes of
their own would think a little more about those who
have none, if they would but throw open their
drawing-rooms to their friends for a few evenings
in the year, and invite not only those who could
invite them back, but also those bachelors and
maiden ladies who could not, they would be more
helpful to society than they can ever be by giving
formal dinner parties to married couples of distinc-
tion. If instead of those absurd " At Homes " which
have made English people the laughing-stock of the
world, English hostesses would get up " conversation
evenings " for their thinking friends, with a simple cup
of coffee for refreshment, they would confer an un-
speakable boon upon many a lonely professional
woman and brighten many lives. How we are
laughed at by foreigners for our senseless " crushes " :
they have not even novelty to recommend them ;
they were in full fashion when Madame Avot visited

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 117

London in 1817, and that lively Frenchwoman has
left us a vivid description of an " At Home " to which
she was invited. It was just the same then as now,
guests fighting their way, first to the hostess to pay
their respects to her, then to the tea-table for a
cup of tea, and then back to the hall door. " I
was told on one occasion, it would be 'very quiet'/'
says Madame Avot, " so I went in morning dress,
but I found the other ladies in muslin and roses !
The drawing-room was small, and crowded to
overflowing. The ladies displayed so much jewel-
lery that I think some of their husbands must
have been jewellers and afraid to leave their more
valuable diamonds in the shop for the evening."
My readers will, I hope, pardon me for the digres-
sion if I take the opportunity of repeating a few
more of the shrewd observations made by this
lady. Bazaars had not, it seems, been introduced
from England into France at that period, for she
says, " I went to a bazaar for the first time in
my life. It is a strange English custom. I saw
a young man go up to a stall and hand a pretty
saleswoman five guineas for a watch-guard and
without bargaining ! I noticed that the prettiest
lady sold every article she had on her stall,
others were less fortunate." She tells further that
she had often heard that an Englishman would
sell his own wife when he was tired of her, but
until she saw it with her own eyes she did not
believe it. " It was at Smithfield, a sailor brought
his wife and offered her for sale. He had her at
the end of a rope. She was bought publicly for

ii8 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

three shillings. The spectators were indignant,
the police were informed, but arrived on the spot
too late to hinder the sale. The purchaser had
undertaken to support the woman and see that
she wanted nothing."

But let us return to our subject, " What good can
a busy woman possibly derive, or a man either, from
an afternoon or evening spent at an "At Home"?
Every one hates these functions, and yet we all go
when we are invited. They seem to be the easiest
and simplest method of showing our friends a little
attention, that is, of paying off our little social debts.
Once, however, I met a person who had reaped some
enjoyment. It was a boy. " I ate five aspics" he
replied, with a satisfied smile, when I asked if he had
a good time. Conversation appears to be a lost art,
for no hostess dares to invite friends now-a-days
unless she has provided music or recitations to
drown remarks about the weather. In the country
hostesses are falling back more and more upon the
pianola for quieter evenings, and few girls think the
piano worth practising unless as a means of liveli-
hood. Yet the pianola is merely an improved barrel
organ. In the days of Henry VIII. a gentleman
did riot consider his education completed if he
could not sing at sight and join in a madrigal with
the ladies. This, too, appears to be a lost art.

Those who have been long unaccustomed to
converse sensibly with their acquaintances of the
opposite sex, naturally find it a little difficult at first ;
the sound of their own voice frightens them and they
look wildly round directly there is a pause to see

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 119

whether there is not going to be some music to put
them out of the misery of not knowing what to say
next. Too large a proportion of such persons at a
social gathering will have the effect of a chill upon
the spirits of the whole party if the hostess is not
well on her guard to prevent it. Dr Johnson, whose
chief pleasure was conversation, recommended that
a table should be placed somewhere in the room with
dainty confectionary, that the guests might resort to
it at pleasure. Real conversation is that in which
the subjects successively under discussion have a real
interest for both the parties who are conversing ; it
precludes therefore all boasting, all one-sided talk
about one's self, one's possessions, or one's infirmities.
French women of the eighteenth century were famed
for their conversational powers. It is said that they
vigorously excluded from their salons, all approach
to pedantry and disputations, all personalities, and
laying-down-of-the-law. They glided smoothly from
one subject to another, and every subject that came
up received its quotum of attention, more or less,
according to the interest it awakened. The mutual
interest felt by the speakers in the subject decided
when it should be dropped. " La conversation glisse,
monte, descend, court et revient ; la rapidite lui
donne le trait, la precision la mene a Pelegance." l
Something of their conversational art has been pre-
served for us in the letters of eighteenth-century
women. We see, too, that they were great readers
of good literature. They lived in daily and familiar
communion with the great thinkers of the past, and,

1 C. and G. Goncourt, " La femme au dix-huitieme Siecle," 1896.

120 WOMAN IN TRANSITI01

what is very noticeable, they read and encouraged
the good literature of their own day. We are told
that there was not a genius in art or literature in the
eighteenth century who did not feel it worth his
while to aim at giving satisfaction to the great ladies
of his country. Those women formed independent
judgment on the productions of their contemporaries ;
they did not wait to have their opinions prepared for
them by newspaper critics. From 1700 to 1789
woman was the moving power of literature and art,
"she seemed," says Goncourt, " une puissance cTordre
superieuse, la reine des pensees de la France" In those
days every lady had her own library of books and
lived in their atmosphere, extracting from them both
pleasure and support. History, philosophy, science,
all were well represented on their bookshelves,
and along with these were to be found the
most popular works of the day, and the latest
novels. Lending libraries had not yet come into
existence.

Those who in the twentieth century peruse three
new novels a day can naturally find very little to say
about them when they need a subject for conversa-
tion at dinner parties. " Have you read ( The Green
Cat ' ? " says the gentleman as he is taking the lady
in to dinner. " Yes," she replies, delighted and
glowing with satisfaction at being able to answer
truthfully in the affirmative. "Yes, I have read
'The Green Cat.'" After this another topic has to
be hunted up, for " The Green Cat " is exhausted.
But cultivated men and women who are workers,
do not read three novels a day, and the books they

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 121

do read suggest many thoughts which, if only given
a little air, would prove valuable and helpful to
others as well as to themselves. It has been truly
said that conversation clears up ideas, and it certainly
doubles and trebles them. English people who have
resided abroad for a time, miss, on their return home,
one thing in particular, and that is sensible conversa-
tion. " No one in England seems to have any
thoughts in his head beyond motors, and how to do
something more cheaply than somebody else did it,"
remarked a newspaper correspondent when he re-
turned from the Continent for a holiday in 1906. " I
wouldn't live in England again for worlds. I cannot
endure the narrowness." The fact is, that English
people have lost the habit, if they ever had it, of
freely exchanging their ideas with one another.
They read little, and the thoughts that are suggested
by their reading they keep to themselves. When
Madame Chateaubriand was the guest of the
Jouberts they had many enjoyable conversations in
which each took part " with body and soul," as Joubert
afterwards expressed it, from the bottom of their
hearts and their intelligence. " How different," he
exclaims, " from those conversations where there is no
freedom, no gaiety, no spreading out of the imagina-
tion, no play ; where there is neither movement nor
repose, neither distraction nor relief, neither scatter-
ing nor gathering; in fact, where there is nothing
given and nothing received, and where there is no
time for spiritual commerce." l

A great deal is being said about the absurdity of

1 Paleologue, " Profils de Femmes,"

122 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

expecting married couples not to tire of one another's
company. We are told about the " stuffiness and
narrowness, moral and intellectual," of the middle-
class married life, of the " sharpness of the line which
society draws round the pair, and the kind of fatal
snap-of-the-lock with which marriage suddenly cuts
them off from the world. 1 We are told of the
horrible boredom which ensues when there is no
escape from a daily tete-a-tete, and of the dis-
approval shown by the world when for their own
pleasure, they agree to spend a day apart." It
certainly does seem absurd to expect two people,
however devoted they may be to one another, to
confine themselves entirely to one another's
company. But who does expect this ? It is only
their selfish indolence which leads them to do it.
Let them think and work a little for the good of
their own generation. Let every couple who have
a home feel it their privilege to open their doors
to a few of their acquaintances who have none, and
they will then have less cause to weary of one
another's company. Let town families cultivate
a little of the heartiness and friendly unostentatious
hospitality that makes colonial life so delightful,
and they themselves will be those who reap the
greatest gain. It is that accursed ambition to keep
up with other people, to do things as others do,
even when you cannot afford it, that narrows
people's lives, and makes them selfish and fills
them with ennui, and finally, with hatred of one
another's company. If we looked into the matter

1 Ed. Carpenter,

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 123

closely enough we should find that half the divorce
cases we hear about are traceable to simple boredom,
an evil which can far more safely be remedied in
the way we have suggested than by any meddling
with our marriage laws. Jealousy between married
people is, of course, a very unsociable quality, and
it is looked upon as the darling sin of womankind.
" If woman," says Weiniger, " had a sense of her
personal value and the will to defend it against all
external attacks, she could not be jealous. Jealousy
depends on failure to recognise the rights of
others."

That man cannot be a real friend to woman unless
he be related to her, is surely an assumption equally
degrading to both sexes. But we are too inclined
to hold fast to other people's views without examin-
ing them. We forget that it is quite as dangerous
to borrow opinions as to borrow money. 1 An
American girl, who spent a few days with English
friends when on a visit to this country, told me that
the mother of the family was incensed with^her for
refusing an offer of marriage made her by the son.
" Why, if you were not going to accept him,
did you let him escort you to church on Sunday
evening ? " she cried bristling with indignation ;
" no English girl would do such a thing." " I
was extremely sorry," added the young lady in telling
me the story, " but I never had any idea that so
simple an act on my part could ever be interpreted
so seriously."

When Athens was at its best, the refined and

1 See Bishop Westcott's " Lessons from Work."

124 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

cultured Greeks found their chief relaxation and
pleasure in the society of courtesans, other women
being deprived of the advantage of improving their
minds : l the respectable woman in those days was
compelled to be a comparative fool. Happily
it is no longer necessary for the one sex to
remain in a state of mental subordination to the
other :

" Poor thing of usages, coerced, compelled,
A victim oft when wrong, a martyr oft when right."

In these days there is no lack of educated and culti-
vated women, but they are less often to be found
among the wealthy than among the poorer classes
of society. These may be " ladies born " indeed, but
oftener than not they are unable, even by their own
professional work, to make themselves a home, and
that is why in their case rational intercourse with the
other sex is often quite out of the question in the
present state of society. In 1844, a lady wrote,
" Women can scarcely be blind to the subtle distinc-
tion which is made in the conversation between men
among themselves, and among men when in their
society to the absence of all, where women are
present, that is either dignified or solid." And she
added, " Does a woman require personal compliment
at every turn ? " What, I wonder, would this lady
think of society in 1907? In her day there were, in
England at least, very few cultured women with
whom a man could talk as with one who was
mentally his equal. Such is not the case to-day,

"Can Woman Regenerate Society," 1844.

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 125

yet Englishmen complain that the difficulty of
obtaining social intercourse with such women
is as great as ever it was. Let us look at a
middle-class dinner party of our own day. Small
nothings and empty chit-chat carry us through
the courses, and then the ladies retire to the
drawing-room to discuss the local chimney sweep
or the difficulty of obtaining honest butlers ;
the gentlemen get interested in some political
topic as they sip their wine, and elect to finish
the evening in the hall that they may continue
their political discussion instead of returning to
the drawing-room to " make conversation " with
the ladies. It is still an unwritten law of English
middle-class society that for a lady to show a
real interest in politics is unlady-like, unfeminine,
in fact, a sign of the new woman, and therefore
to be avoided at any cost. A Norwegian lady
who spent a winter in India told me on her
return that the utter absence of intellectual con-
versation there made her feel it a relief to get
away. "Ah," said a lady to whom I repeated
this, " I have lived in India a good deal, and I
know that what your Norwegian friend says is
quite true of all conversation between the sexes,
but if she had only got the ladies alone, or the
men alone, she would have found plenty of in-
tellectual conversation. Englishwomen in India
are positively afraid of showing any sign of
intellectuality in the presence of the other sex.
A girl out there once said to me : ( My sister,
who is coming out in the next steamer, is a

126

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

B.A., but I tell you this in strict confidence.
You must promise not to damage her by letting
it get known.' ' Matters are very much the same
in Germany, where the sexes seem to feel it
only proper that they should have no intellectual
interests in common. They separate after every
dinner party as if they were the builders of the
tower of Babel, " afflicted with a confusion of
tongues." 1 That woman should be an intellectual
complement to man, is still looked upon as im-
possible. But even Germany is waking up.
" Personal intercourse between men and women,"
writes Dr Muller, "has of course its difficulties
and dangers. But what is there worth striving
for that is not beset with dangers ? What heights
can we reach without the conquest of difficulties ?
Is not the married state sufficiently beset with
obstacles to be overcome ? Yet, though it causes
the shipwreck of so many lives, it is still entered
into with the same bright hopes and enthusiasm.
The fondest parents do not attempt to hold
their children back from the perilous step. Nay,
they prepare them for it as for a festival. Let
us then be brave, and face the dangers that may
present themselves. We must look them fear-
lessly in the eye before we can hope to conquer
them. Let us raise the personal intercourse of
the sexes to its rightful place, and restore its
human dignity."

Before this task can be satisfactorily accomplished,

1 H. Lange, " Intellectuelle Grenzlinicn zwischen Mann und
Frau."

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 127

the art of flirtation will have to be discountenanced.
It is an art which owes its birth to English soil, and
all the other countries that encourage it have received
it from us, and adopted the English word for it.
Max O'Rell wrote, in 1885, that such a thing as
flirtation did not exist in France. He called it an
essentially English pastime. " En France on ne flirte
pas, on est plus serieux que cela en affaires d' amour"
He also added that English girls often wrote in
Confession Albums that flirting was their favourite
amusement, whereas, " Une femme qui flirterait en
France passerait pour inconsequente voir meme
legere." Max O'Rell objected to the undignified
way young English ladies had of sitting upon foot-
stools instead of chairs. Although he wrote thus,
more than twenty years ago, flirtation is, it cannot
be denied, still one of the most serious drawbacks
to rational conversation between the sexes. I find
it seriously stated in the Almanack Feministe published
in Paris in 1900 that, in England, " le flirt est parfaite-
ment admis et consacre par I } usage quotidien? Alas !
in the present state of our upper classes of society
a man knows that, although he can flirt openly
with any girl who pleases him, he cannot converse
rationally with her on two consecutive occasions
without the risk of serious complications. How,
under these circumstances, can men and women of
refined feeling frankly exchange ideas, or attempt
to cultivate each other's acquaintance with any
other view than that of marriage ? It has been
said that the gravest fault in Thackeray's novels,
as in his manners, was the impression he gave

128 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

that he had never known a good and sensible
woman. There are many Englishmen in our day,
too, whose acquaintance with such women is pain-
fully limited by our senseless customs and our
idiotic prudery.

CHAPTER VIII

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS

<{/ TPO drive better than his own coachman is, in
JL the eyes of the young Englishman, a veritable
glory," wrote Madame Avot nearly a hundred years
ago. "Englishmen," she added, "mix very little
with ladies outside their own families, they are con-
sequently awkward and unamiable in their presence.
Men who live so much among themselves cannot be
expected to excel in politeness." It is exactly thus
with the professional and working women of our
country, they are awkward and unamiable in the
society of men, because they live so much among
themselves. Women's Clubs and Women's Unions
are the order of the day. The Russian woman, on the
contrary, who is universally acknowledged to be
more of the comrade and " chum " of her menfolk
than any other woman in the world, does not strive
in any way for the segregation of her sex. " Have
you a Russian Girl's Club in Paris ? " I asked of one
of the hundreds of Russian girls who are studying
there. "Not we," was the smiling reply. Russian
men and women like each other's society too much to
care for separate institutions of that sort : we like, not
only to study side by side, but to enjoy each other's

I I2 9

130

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

society when our work is over. I know that is where
we differ from English and German girls, who are
always arranging themselves in an opposite camp as
though man were a rival to be emulated, rather than
a brother and friend." It is the same in every class
of the Russian Empire. Trades Unions for women
will never prosper in Russia. In England, how-
ever, they are often held out as women's one
hope of salvation. " There is no argument for the
organisation of men which does not apply to
that of woman also," writes Miss Mona Wilson.
"It is indeed essential for the interests of both
sexes that women should combine as well as
men. In trades where the men only are organised
the tendency is for the woman to undersell the
men, and replace them in any work which can be
done by woman. . . . The importance of the trade
union for woman from an educational point of view
can scarcely be exaggerated. It supplies an element
which is usually completely wanting in the life of
a working woman, by developing in her a capacity
for public spirit, and by giving her wider interests."
Surely all these advantages could be far more
easily obtained by admitting women to the trade
unions of the men ? There may of course be some
preliminary difficulties in the way of admitting
women to the membership of clubs and unions
where the accommodation has been provided with
a view to the comfort of men only. Women are
refused as Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society,
for instance, not because they cannot travel and
explore, but because the present premises are too

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS 131

small to allow of satisfactory accommodation for
them ; and this is probably the case with many
other societies both for professional men and for
artisans. Still it is a difficulty that could be got over
by the expenditure of a little time and money,
perhaps less time and money than are now being
lavished upon separate associations and clubs for
women.

Many persons have expressed the opinion that
there is no reason why working women should not
attain to a very fair degree of economic independence
through such institutions as trade unions for the
unmarried. But are the present trade unions for
men so very desirable as to justify women in wishing
so eagerly to form unions for themselves after the
same model? Do they tend to strengthen or to
weaken individual independence ? Do they tend
to the cultivation of individual initiative? The
man who belongs to a trade union allows his
activity to be entirely directed by that union; he
may not, as a painter for instance, do anything but
paint ; he may not even practise carpentering in his
off-time. Trade unions forbid their men to go to
clubs in the evening and learn fresh kinds of handi-
work : they tell the men's employers (always of
course in the interests of the men) that, if it is good
for the men to attend industrial clubs, they must be
allowed to do so during their working hours; but
this the employers are, oftener than not, obliged to
refuse, for the simple reason that they cannot afford
to pay for work that is not done. The consequence
is that the man whose trade is house-painting has

132 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

to pass the winter months in absolute idleness. Bui
for his belonging to a trade union, he might spend
that time both usefully and profitably. These syndi-
cates are, as an observant French writer has said,
a result of people preferring servitude to isolation ;
they permit the individual to reduce his efforts to a
minimum^- " It must be admitted," says an English
divine, 2 " that they naturally tend to limit enterprise,
to discourage new inventions, to check vigorous ability,
to acquiesce in a minimum standard of efficiency.
In large works they separate employers and employed.
They confine their attentions to the good of a class,
and members of a trade union are often strangely
ignorant of the general conditions of their trade."
It is remarkable that liberty-loving Englishmen
should be so ready to submit to the anonymous
tyranny of the trade union. Goldsmith's Chinaman
might well be astonished to hear an English
prisoner discoursing through the bars of his
prison on the glories of freedom, with a porter
who was bowed nearly double by the burden on
his back!

The employer of a number of men in a London
suburb was for years in the habit of keeping a job for
a man if he fell ill, and also of paying more highly
for extra jobs than for regular work, but now that his
men have joined a trade union he must pay, for all
work, a regular wage, so that many of his men earn
considerably less than before. They, on their side,
may now leave his employ at two days' notice. Yet,

1 Le Bon, " Psychologic du Socialisme," 1906.

2 Bishop Wescott. Lecture on Trade Unions.

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS 133

the other day, when he discharged several men at
two days' notice, they thought it unjust, and com-
plained that he had never treated his employees like
that before ; to which he replied that, now that they
were working for him on trade union lines, he could
not do otherwise than employ them on trade union
lines.

The history of women's clubs would, if carefully
studied, give us perhaps the best assistance in dis-
covering what bent feminine activities in England
and America are likely to take in the near future. 1
Clubs for women have existed in America for the
last thirty-five years. The earliest were the " New
England Club " at Boston, and the famous " Sororis
Club " at New York. To-day these institutions may
be counted by the hundred, and form a widespread
federation. Madame Bentzon, who was present at
a brilliant debate in New York, exclaimed with
enthusiasm that if only men were also admitted to
their membership they would rival the famous
Salons of France. To which an American lady
replied with a flash in her eye, " Nous tenons a briller
pour notre propre. conipte ! " No one doubts the
usefulness of the woman's club, but for all that we
should not shut our eyes to its abuse. Among the
wealthy in America, women's clubs are tolerated as
a fad rather than as a necessity, they are often very
luxurious, and select. Many private clubs exist in
the shopping districts and are maintained for the
convenience and independence of ladies when
engaged in shopping. It is quite common for a New

1 See Madame Bentzon, " Questions Americaines."

134 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

York girl who wishes to purchase a new costume to
spend a whole morning in " pricing " articles likely to
suit her, before she attempts to make her purchase,
and a club in the neighbourhood of her exertions is
often a great boon.

A friend writing from New York on the subject
of clubs, says, " Women are there lost to male view,
as in the quicksands, they reappear after a time
as new creations of millinery and costume, clubs
being the emporium of exchange ; second-hand
theatre articles of Parisian or London manufac-
ture here change owners. The women who emerge
after an interval are undoubtedly the same,
though their habiliments differ for better or
for worse ; opinions on this point vary also
among the male critics, when their indifference is
overcome."

To the unmarried professional woman whose only
home is a garret, to which she cannot possibly
invite her friends, the club is a boon indeed ; it
enables her to return in a pleasant way the hospitality
shown her by others ; it gives her an opportunity of
making new friends, and opens to her many avenues
of pleasure from which her solitary and isolated life
would otherwise keep her aloof. Many of the London
clubs have comfortable and prettily furnished bed-
rooms, which members can make use of for them-
selves and their friends, at a price far below that
charged by an hotel. In America, smoking for
women is still looked askance at in most circles,
except in those frequented by Russian women, but in
England it is becoming more and more a recognised

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS 135

custom in certain sets. Our women's clubs have their
smoking-rooms, and in most of them smoking is
permitted after dinner in the dining-room. It is
difficult to say whether the practice is more popular
among professional or society women. A well-
known Swiss doctor, who has given particular
attention to the feminine constitution, has kindly
sent me his views on smoking for women. " In
general," he says, " smoking weakens the heart, and
affects the memory, and is injurious to the nervous
system. A great smoker may live a long life, but
his children will have less power of endurance. It
often happens that children of inveterate smokers
suffer from weakness of the stomach ; if women
smoke as well as men, the effect on their children is
likely to become yet more disastrous." In Russia
smoking does not, however, seem to have done much
harm to the women or to their children, yet the
Russian woman is quite as much at home with a
cigarette as her husband and brother. There are
very few professional women in Russia who do not
smoke. The medical woman and the school teacher
smoke quite as much as those who have no regular
occupation. I have seen a Russian lady of means
put a cigarette into her mouth as she sauntered into
a fashionable shop for the purchase of ribbons and
laces. The very woman who takes the greatest care
of her appearance and wishes to enhance in every
possible way her feminine charms is often the
one most attached to smoking. I do not say,
however, that even in Russia there are not to
be found ladies who still cherish the old English

136 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

ideas with regard to the propriety of this pastime
for women.

It has been said that, like half the things the
modern Englishwoman does, her belonging to a club
is in the nature of a protest. " Her club, to the
yellow and unwholesome eye of a man used to clubs,
is no club at all. She is not enough of an animal to
insist upon good eating and drinking. She is not
clubable, for she cannot loaf, and on the other hand
she cannot accept her fellow members in a large and
tolerant spirit. Her club is a convenience, not a
religion. The solid, ample base of temperamental
laziness and comfort-seeking which underlies men's
clubs is utterly wanting in the thing called a ladies'
club. Yet she would have us think that her club
means to her something of what a man's means to
him. . . . The ordinary Frenchman seems always
to have felt by instinct that the association of women
in his affairs, public and private, on an equal but
distant footing, made, in the end, for sanity and
stability. But in England the masculine tempera-
ment has never stood in any need of strengthening
on the side of conservatism, carefully, continually,
and for the most part brutally, we have kept women
out of things ; we have educated them as social and
political incapables. French women take themselves
as an order of beings different from men, so that the
freedoms they seek are not a mimicry of manhood,
even if they pursue power, it is through men, not
against them." 1 The Russian woman, we may here

1 See article in The Outlook, April 14, 1906, on the occasion of
M. Cambon's Address at the Lyceum Club.

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS 137

observe, pursues power neither through man nor
against him, but as his comrade and in his company.
M. Cambon told the ladies of the Lyceum Club that
the Frenchwoman's husband consults her on every-
thing, and nearly always follows her advice ; and he
told them many other things that might well raise
a feeling of envy in the breast of a married English-
woman, but the irony of it all lay in the fact that his
audience was composed almost entirely of unmarried
professional women. " He forgot," said one of his
listeners, with a bitter curl of her lip, as she recounted
it all to me, " that very few of us had homes, and
fewer still had husbands." He forgot also, it is clear,
when he indicated that his countrywomen did not
care for clubs, that some at least of the women of
France were miserable, despised, and down-trodden
old maids, who had never been asked whether they
would like to become members of a club or not !
But there must have been a touch of sarcasm in his
voice when he concluded by remarking that English
ladies seemed to spend their lives in organising all
sorts of works, charitable and otherwise. " La
Philanthropic peut, comme tout autre emploi de
notre activite, devenir affaire de mode," was a remark
made by one of his own countrymen. Clubs, com-
mittees, unions and associations are certainly in
fashion to-day as far as Anglo-Saxon womanhood is
concerned. With hundreds of women the running of
them takes the place of any other profession ; it is to
many women their chief source of pleasure in life, a
substitute for the home interests and amusements
which are so often lacking. But if M. Cambon had

138 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

but glanced at the most recent statistics of his own
country he would have seen that while five hundred
thousand French women live on their incomes and
their estates, the number of those who live by their
profession is given at 5,38 1,069.* Even the wives and
mothers of the French working and middle classes
are compelled by economic necessity to seek employ-
ment outside their homes, and it naturally follows
that they wish to be paid the true value of their
work, and fail to see the justice of their employers
paying them only one-third as much as a man
would get for work that is equal to a man's in
quantity as well as quality. French feminism,
in the opinion of M. Turgeon, was born, not of
a wish for the equality of the sexes, but of an
impoverishment of the home, through economic
causes.

Denmark has as yet no clubs for women, but
women students at the Copenhagen University are
allowed to join the men's Conservative and Liberal
Clubs. Some enterprising lady tried to start a club
for women, but it came to nothing, as the women all
preferred being members of men's clubs, and felt no
need for one for themselves exclusively. Leaders of
women's rights in Denmark do not find it an easy
matter to gain the support of University women.
The suffragist is looked upon rather as a woman who
is inclined to neglect her appearance, and as one who
scorns to turn her attention to the frivolities of dress.
The average Danish girl is still very feminine and
retiring. One of them, who is an M.A. of Copen-

1 See Turgeon, "Le Feminisme Frar^ais."

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS 139

hagen University, remarked to me that Danish
women rarely speak in public, and that she felt her
heart in her mouth whenever a lady rose to speak.
There are no women's clubs in Norway, partly
because the Norwegians are too poor ; they find it
excessively difficult to get sufficient money together
for any enterprise of that nature, but they have
women's book societies and reading rooms. By the
word " club " one usually means a more or less
luxuriously furnished centre, and this always costs
money to begin with, even if it eventually supports
itself. In Finland, however, there are many clubs
exclusively for women, those in the country being
affiliated with those in the large towns, as is the case
in America. There are the " Kvinnosaksforbundet
Unionen" and the " Deskussions Klubben" to which
women only are admitted. In the " Constitutional
Club " at Helsingfors both men and women take part
in the political discussions. There are also numerous
" Philanthropic Clubs," as they are called, as well as
" Women's Temperance Associations." In addition
to all these there are social clubs for women
of the working class. The women of Finland
are much more democratic than the women of
Sweden. They published some years ago a
substantial work, in three great volumes, on the
subject of the amelioration of the position of
women : " Reformaibet till forbattrande of Kvinnans
Stallning." It exists at present only in the
Finnish and Swedish languages.

Swedish womanhood is split up into as many
varieties as that of America ; every variety is

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

to be found in the large towns. Ladies of the
highest social class form themselves into associa-
tions for philanthropic and charitable purposes.
Their Beehive Clubs for facilitating the sale
of fancy-work done by " decayed ladies," as we
call them in England, are on a truly imposing
scale. There is still a strong feeling among
the Swedish bourgeoisie that the woman who
steps out of the privacy of her home to undergo
a University education, or to engage in any in-
tellectual or technical work, is running the risk of
losing caste, consequently there are thousands of
Swedish women who, finding they must work for
money, prefer to spend their days over an em-
broidery frame at home to going forth to more
public employment. Nowhere in the world have
I seen more exquisite results from devotion to
the needle than those produced by the industry
and taste of the ladies of Sweden: it is hardly
necessary to add that this section of Swedish
womanhood is in no way attracted by the charm
of debating clubs and political associations.

It is, however, among a section of the haute
bourgeoisie of Sweden that we find some of the
most " advanced " ideas on the women problem that
human lips have ever dared to put into words.
Here, too, are political associations for women,
and societies of every kind, if not actually clubs
in our sense of the word. The agitators of this
section draw their adherents mostly from the class
immediately below their own, such as school-teachers
and telephone workers. I remember that when the

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS 141

director of the Central Telephone Office in Stock-
holm was conducting me through that most
interesting building, and showing me the endless
rows of young women at their work, he pointed
out that these girls were almost without exception
girls of bourgeois families who had their parents'
homes to live in, and only needed to earn a small
salary sufficient for their dress and amusement.
" No girl who had to depend entirely on her salary
for her living could afford to work here," he added,
"the pay would not be anything like sufficient."
These girls work daily from nine in the morning
till four in the afternoon, after which their time is
their own. They are mostly the daughters of
clergymen, army officers, and people of a similar
rank. It is easy to understand what a gap must
exist between these girls and those of the same
social standing who from some cause or another
are thrown entirely upon their own resources, not
only a gap, but also a bitter feeling very similar
to that which exists between the two classes in
England. " Women should study the ethics of
wage-earning," cried an English professional woman
indignantly when I broached the subject to her.
" Every woman who will do work for a salary lower
than the value of the work, simply because she is
independent of it, is stealing the bread from the
mouths of her sisters who are less favourably
situated."

The telephone was introduced into Sweden in
the early eighties of the nineteenth century by a
private company. The State has now the monopoly

142 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

of all the provincial telephone lines except one, but it
has as a rival in the huge private company with some
32,000 subscribers on its list. With the exception
of the manager and a few engineers the employees
are all women. Of late the work has begun to pass
out off the hands of the class of girls I found at
work there, into those of girls of a lower and less
educated class. There are no married women
employed on the telephone. 1

Charitable Clubs for girls of the lower classes are to
be found in almost all civilized countries, and there is
no doubt that they do an immense deal of good ; but
these, like trade unions, have one serious drawback,
they bolster up the individual with outside support,
they encourage a feeling of dependence and subjec-
tion which is fatal to all initiative and self-improvement
from within. A girl who has been strengthened
and improved from without is more often than not
like an empty sack which is being held up to be
filled ; the moment the persons who are holding it
up by its brim let it go it collapses into a heap.
It has often occurred to me that the women who
benefit most by these institutions are the unemployed
single ladies and widows of means who give so
much time to their supervision, for it at least
furnishes them with an outlet for their natural
energy which they would not otherwise have. A
clergyman who died recently has left his middle-
aged widow with absolutely nothing to do ; all the
philanthropic work with which she was engaged
during his lifetime has gone to the wife of the new

1 SeeWikmark, "Die Frauenfrage, " 1905.

CLUBS AND TRADE UNIONS 143

clergyman. This good lady has tried to get
employment by visiting the patients of private
nursing homes and reading the Bible to them, but
that has been put a stop to by at least one
matron on account of her gossiping propensities.
One great attraction of philanthropy all over the
world, lies, like that of art needlework in Sweden,
in the fact that it is an occupation which does not
involve loss of caste.

The bestowal of charity, in whatever form, has
nearly always a lowering effect on the receiver.
What, for instance, is more humiliating to a demo-
cratic-spirited girl than the treatment she receives in
a governesses' home ? l Let the reader but question
a few self-respecting women who have by force of
circumstances been compelled to partake of this
kind of assistance ; let him ask them how they felt
as they retired each night to their narrow cubicles
overshadowed by the domineering presence of an
inquisitive lady superintendent. I know of one such
home where the lady in charge used to make a
nightly tour of inspection among the cubicles and
impress a kiss on the cheek of each submissive
inmate. The principal reason why girls flock to
such philanthropic institutions is that they can
there receive a few weeks' board and lodging for
a shilling or so a week less than elsewhere. An
English governess whom I met in Russia told
me that although her father had in his lifetime

1 The home for English governesses in a neighbouring capital has been
described to me by an outsider as "the most pitiful sight in the
world."

144

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

been a well-known literary man, she had now
no home on earth ; her married brother in
England, she said, had, it was true, offered her
a home with him at thirty shillings a week,
but she had found she could board more cheaply
elsewhere. There are many thousands in her
position.

CHAPTER IX

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY

IN the year 1880 a well-known English clergy-
man preached a sermon on the subject of
" Woman," at Philadelphia. He told his hearers that
women " can never by any power of education
arrive at the same mental status as that enjoyed
by men," and then proceeded as follows : " Wife-
hood is the crowning glory of a woman. In it
she is bound for all time. To her husband she
owes the duty of unqualified obedience. There is
no crime which a man can commit which justifies
her in leaving him, or applying for that monstrous
thing divorce. It is her duty to subject herself
to him always, and no crime that he can commit
can justify her lack of obedience." It is quite
possible that this sermon, which continued to its
close in the same strain, had often been preached
to English congregations without evoking a single
protest, for it contained nothing new or striking
for the average English mind. But the word now
fell on very different soil. The women of America
were pained, thunderstruck, and indignant. " Is
this the sort of teaching that Englishwomen im-
bibe ? " they exclaimed. " Why ! According to the
Rev. Knox Little, woman possesses no responsi-
K J

H6 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

bility ; she is deprived of conscience, of intelli-
gent thought, of self-respect; and is simply an
appendage to man a thing ! " l But, after all, this
Anglican clergyman was only expounding the
doctrine of Martin Luther, the doctrine meekly
accepted by all the Protestant women of England.

Yet at that very time there was, in Germany, the
most Lutheran of all Lutheran countries, a small
cloud of rebellion arising a cloud no bigger than
a man's hand. German Socialism had discovered
that all was not well with the German woman : it
had also discovered that its own most diplomatic
course would be to gain over the German woman.
A book on Woman 2 was secretly published, and
spread among the lower classes of society through-
out the length and breadth of the P"atherland. It
told the working woman that she too had a right to
economic independence ; it asked her to join the
Socialists in their endeavour to transform society,
and bring about a state of things in which all
the means of production would be the property
of the community, and in which society would
recognise the full equality of all, without distinction
of sex.

Socialism proclaimed open war against prostitution,

1 See " History of Woman's Suffrage in America."

2 Bebel, " Die Frau und Socialismus." This book has been
translated into eleven languages, and had gone through twenty-five
editions before the year 1896. See also Russell, "The Woman
Question in Germany." The more recent editions bear testimony
to the fact that Herr Bebel's views on the subject of woman's destiny
have been considerably modified since the first appearance of the work
in 1877. Its statistics are not, we may add, altogether reliable ; yet
there is no doubt but that it has done an immense amount of good.

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 147

and promised the poor half-starved German girl of
the fourth class that she should become as pro-
ductively useful as man, and thus be placed above
every degrading demand. Is it surprising that
thousands of wretched women listened to the good
tidings and became Socialists? In the year 1877
socialist associations for working women were
started in various parts of Germany, just three
years before the Rev. Knox Little preached at
Philadelphia the sermon above referred to. Social-
ism spoke also to the women of the bourgeoisie.
" Marriage," it said, " shall no longer represent
half the sexual life of the bourgeoisie, and prosti-
tution the other." Socialism spoke to the despised
old maid. " Social proscription and contempt are
now your portion ; your life is relatively the saddest
among all your companions in distress. Social
prejudice forces you to abstain from the very
occupations by which the amelioration of your lot
can be made possible." Socialism spoke to the
bourgeois mother : " What is the use of teaching
your sons virtue and morality while the State is
telling them that immorality is necessary ? The
State confronts the young man long before he has
reached mental maturity with women stamped by
government as an article of trade for his passions
to trifle with." And to all women Socialism said :
" If you had a word to say in the legislature of
the country, you would bring about many re-
forms."

Socialism had seen where woman's shoe pinched
her, and its promises of relief were gratefully

148 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

accepted by thousands and thousands of down-
trodden women of the working class. Among the
bourgeoisie it gained comparatively few female
adherents on account of the strong caste feeling
which separated the two classes, but at any rate it
helped to open the eyes of thousands to their
unsatisfactory status and to their wrongs. "Vice,"
said Socialism, " depravity, error, and crime are
bred by our social conditions. The community
is kept in a state of permanent unrest, but it is
the women who suffer most. We will give woman
the same footing as man with regard to all
those occupations for which she is qualified by
her bodily and mental powers. Woman has
always been regarded as a being inferior to man :
she has accordingly acquired the character of
humility, docility, and servility to a much greater
extent than the male proletarian. It is only by
accepting lower pay that she has obtained her
place in the factory and workshop."

There was little that was new in what Socialism
had to say to woman. Most of the arguments
contained in Herr Bebel's book had appeared long
before in both England and America. In America
at least, Mary Wollstonecraft's bold defence of
her sex had not fallen on deaf ears. Women
who proudly traced their descent from the Pilgrim
Fathers, and who had inherited from them their
passion for liberty, had for years been fighting
for the freedom, first of the coloured race, and
then of their own sex, without losing one jot
of their faith in the Bible. In England, the case

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 149

was otherwise. The fact that Mary Wollstonecraft
had been a so-called free-thinker, and the fact
that she had shown, by her private life, how little
she esteemed the marriage tie, were what really
led to the veto of society being placed upon her
book, far more than the revolutionary doctrines it
contained. If the volume could but have fallen
from the sky, if it could have been taken for
what it was worth, independent of the moral life
of its author, its influence upon English women
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would
have been infinitely greater. No one who has
studied it without prejudice will deny that its
powerful though crude treatment of its subject
has to this day remained unsurpassed. No woman
was ever more disposed to honour all promoters
of the welfare of her sex than Harriet Martineau,
yet it was she who wrote, " I never could reconcile
my mind to Mary Wollstonecraft's writings, or to
whatever I heard of her. It seemed to me, from
the earliest time when I could think upon the subject
of Woman's Rights and condition, that the first
requisite to advancement is the self-reliance which
results from self-discipline. . . . But Mary Wollstone-
craft was, with all her powers, a poor victim of
passion." The pitiful story of her short, un-
happy life was remembered, and her battle cry
smothered.

For the benefit of those who have not yet read
Mary Wollstonecraft's call to woman, I will quote
a few sentences which I have copied from a
volume of the first edition in the British Museum,

ISO WOMAN IN TRANSITION

which bears corrections in the writer's own hand-
writing.

" Why keep woman in ignorance under the name
of innocence ? "

"That mind will ever be unstable that has only
prejudice to rest on."

" It is a gross insult to advise women to become
gentle domestic brutes."

" It is unphilosophic of men to keep women in
a state of childhood."

" In every age there has been a stream of popular
opinion carrying all before it."

"That only is virtue which results from

reason."

"The regal homage women receive is in-
toxicating ; they must return to nature."

"All writers have helped to make women
artificial."

"The cultivation of women's understanding is
always subordinate to some corporeal accomplish-
ment ; they are enervated by confinement ; they
have no emulation to help their faculties ; they
dwell on effects without tracing them back to their

causes."

" Depth of understanding is as rare among the
army as among women. Officers love dancing,
crowded rooms, etc. Like the fair sex, the business
of their lives is gallantry."

" Tyrants and sensualists are right when they
endeavour to keep women in the dark ; the former
only want slaves, the latter, playthings."

"Woman's conduct should be founded on the

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 151

same principles, and have the same aims as

men's."

" To endeavour to reason love out of the world
would be to out-Quixote Cervantes ; but love
should not be allowed to dethrone superior powers."

" Does marriage eradicate habitude ? Women
taught only to please will try it on other men as
well as their husbands."

"Fondness for dress is not natural to women,
it arises from love of power."

"Women are entirely dependent on the senses
for enjoyment and employment."

" The lordly caresses of a protector will not
gratify a noble mind ; fondness is a poor substitute
for friendship."

"Why must woman's mind be tainted with
coquettish arts to gratify the sensualist, and prevent
love from subsiding into friendship ? "

" A wise woman will not model her soul to suit
the frailties of her husband, but to bear with
them."

" How will women exist when there is no giving in
marriage ? "

" Women are made to be loved ; they must not
aim at respect lest they be hurled out of society
as masculine."

"Do passive, indolent women make the best
wives ? "

" If the inferiority of women is natural, men have
increased it till women have sunk almost below the
standard of rational creatures. , . . Let their faculties
unfold,"

152 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

" Love and esteem are very distinct things."

" Woman is the only flaw in nature."

"Woman's feebleness of mind and body arises
from her education. ... If she is naturally weaker
than man, why try to make her more so ... her
dependence is called natural."

" Few men have strength enough to rise above the
surrounding atmosphere. Why should girls be ex-
pected to rise above dolls, dress and gossip?"

" Women glory in their subjection."

" Is the dignity of woman's soul as disputable as
that of animals ? "

"As women submit without reason, they will be
kind or cruel without reason."

" Must woman take reason second-hand ? How can
her religion be worth anything, if it is only that of
another ? "

" Is woman always to take things on trust ? "

" The present idea of woman robs the whole sex of
its dignity."

" Fear of departure from a supposed sexual
character has made even women of superior sense
adopt the same sentiments as men."

" Littleness would not degrade woman's character
if political and moral subjects were open to them."

" How can women be just or generous when they
are the slaves of prejudice? "

" Novel reading is acquiring knowledge from a
muddy source."

" Intellect will always govern."

I leave it to my readers to decide for them-
selves as to how many of the ideas contained in

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 153

these sentences are obsolete. It is more than a
hundred years since they were penned. For some
seventy years after its publication this trumpet-call
to the world's womanhood was hushed, at any-
rate the book sank into oblivion and the weapon
of ridicule effectually silenced the few English-
women who made signs of answering to it.

Few Englishwomen, indeed, have ever been able
to withstand ridicule, and " the pretty, soft creatures
that are so often to be found in the female sex,
and that class of men who believe that they could
not exist without such pretty, soft creatures to
resort to were in arms against the author of so
heretical and blasphemous a doctrine." 1 What
courage, indeed, would any woman have needed,
to be able to face in England during the first half
of the eighteenth century the epithets ridiculous !
heretical ! blasphemous ! No Protestant woman had
that courage, and certainly no Protestant man. The
Bible was at that time being used as a pretext for
holding woman down, and the greater her piety,
the more submissive was her subjection. Hannah
More, who refused to open Mary Wollstonecraft's
book, said : " There is perhaps no animal so much
indebted to subordination for its good behaviour
as woman ; " 2 while Horace Walpole talked about
" that hyena in petticoats."

Half a century after the publication of " A Vindica-
tion of the Rights of Woman," England's womanhood
was again startled out of its lethargy. This time
the trumpet-blast came from a man : John Stuart

1 Godwin. 2 E. R. Clough, Ph.D., "Mary Wollstonecraft," 1898.

154 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

Mill published his " Subjection of Woman." He
was one who had been brought up in Christian
England, but in an atheistic home. Those who
will take the trouble to glance at his autobio-
graphy will see that John Stuart Mill's childhood
was passed in as absolute an ignorance of the
Bible, or indeed of any religious teaching, as if
he had grown up among heathens. While woman,
then, lay "buried under a couple of Pauline texts,"
two free-thinkers, Mary Wollstonecraft and John
Stuart Mill, untrammelled by the literal interpreta-
tion of these texts, had come to her rescue in
England, just as a few years later, first Hippel, and
then some free-thinking socialists, came to her rescue
in Germany. To all who believed in the verbal
inspiration of the Old and New Testaments, it
appeared, as it still does to thousands of good
men and women in England, a sacrilege to talk
of altering her subordinate position towards man
and society. It was because certain texts from the
Old and New Testaments were so constantly being
employed to hedge women round in America, that
some of the more energetic of them eventually con-
ceived the novel idea of bringing out a " Woman's
Bible," with a special commentary on the texts in
question. " Sir," cried T. W. Palmer, in a speech
before the Senate in 1885, "my reverence for the
grandest of all compilations, human or divine,
compels me to protest against its being cast into
the street as a barricade against every moral,
political and social reform." 1 Protestantism has

1 See " History of Woman's Suffrage," vol. iv.

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 155

long ceased to bar the way to woman's progress
in America, and so indeed has Catholicism, but
Rationalists and Socialists of the twentieth century
have been sharp enough to see that no Church has,
as yet, dared to back woman in all her demands,
and they are telling her with great earnestness
that it is religion which holds her back. " Woman,"
they say, "was thrust back into the gynecaeum by
the official action of the Church under the clear
direction of its most sacred writings." And we
cannot deny the fact. "The women of England
were slow to respond (to the call of progress)
because of the ideas the clergy had instilled into
them," they add, and this too we are unable to
deny. " What proportion of the clergy support
woman in the remaining struggle for the suffrage,
for public offices, for learned professions, for uni-
versity degrees ? " they ask. Yes, it is only too
true that " the righting of the most undoubted
wrongs to which woman has been subjected, has
gone on against the determined opposition of the
Church." Free-thinkers have observed that three-
fourths of every congregation which is Protestant
or Catholic consists of women. "Why," they ask,
" do you women uphold doctrines which oppose you ?
Why are you so much more conservative than your
men? Do any of the really intellectual women of
the day, the clever workers and writers belong to
any orthodox Church ? " They remind us that even
Harriet Martineau was outside the Church, and hint
that had she been hampered by the clergy she would
never have helped to raise her sex as she did.

I 5 6

The Catholic Church is at last beginning to see
how matters stand in every Christian country.
Eminent divines are now boldly coming forward on
the side of woman. I have already quoted part of
the broad-spirited address given by Bishop Spalding
at Washington in 1899. I wish I had an equally
broad-spirited speech to report from one of our
Anglican bishops, or from one of the Lutheran
divines of Berlin. In Norway we may study only too
easily the effects of woman's separation from the
Church. It has come to this, that the churches of
that country are completely abandoned to the
peasantry. Educated Norwegian women scorn the
very idea of going to church. " Why should we go,"
they say, " and listen to long sermons from men
whose intellectual development is little if any in
advance of that of the peasants themselves ? " In
Sweden it is much the same. In Germany, scepticism
has spread hand in hand with Socialism among the
lower classes, and among the upper classes, Lutheran-
ism is getting to be looked upon as obsolete. In
Germany, as in other countries, it is the Catholic
Church which is most awake to the danger which
threatens the Faith. Devoted Catholic women are
working heart and soul among the lower classes to
counteract the influences of Socialism, which has
managed to get so tremendous a start of them. In
France, where religion is fighting for its life, where
for the last twenty years it has been turned out of the
schools ; in France, too, devoted Catholic leaders are
taking their place at the head of the woman
movement " Aucune main humaine" says M.

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 157

Lamy, 1 'riarretera la lot du temps plus que la loi de
Pespece. Les fernmes iront au savoir" This devout
Catholic has no fear that education will make sensible
women neglect their household duties. " Car, si les
occupations modes tes sont Feffroi dune femmequand elle
craint qu'on la croie faite seulement pour celles-la, elles
ont, avec leur profit^ leurs charmes pour les femmes qrfon
sait capables de plus hautes besognes. Quand -on est
reine on ne craint pas de faire la bergere" Woman, in
his opinion, gives society its tone ; men stop talking
sensibly at a party immediately a woman joins their
group, " L*entretien sarrete et rebondit sur un
badinage" As a result of this, he tells us, the life of
the drawing-room turns upon two poles, scandal and
flirtation. In such society it is the empty-headed
young men and women who shine the most, these are
in their element while sensible men and women are
at a disadvantage. The traditional aristocracy of
France is gone, and vulgar luxury occupies its place ;
the aristocracy of mind is not to be found there. On
the day when worth and intelligence begin to receive
their due the power of wealth will be already on its
decline. Dupanloup 2 said much the same in 1860.

Lamy has studied the past history of civilized
woman, and he has no hesitation in telling his
readers that Protestantism, though it wished to purify
society, really took away from woman her religious
independence, and that woman's only destiny, in the
eyes of the Reformers, was the family ; the Reformers
proclaimed her to be under a hereditary curse, as a
result of which she must for ever, in accordance with

1 "La Femme de Demain." 2 Bishop of Orleans.

158 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

the Divine Will, remain in a kind of slavery to man.
Luther, in delivering the nun from her convent prison,
imposed incarceration upon all womanhood." In
future the Protestant woman had no higher duty
than to make herself agreeable to her husband and
satisfy his material wants, " ses vertues doivent repandre
un par fume de cuisine}' In short, woman became a
Cinderella without a fairy godmother. The Catholic
Church looked on marriage as an unbreakable sacra-
ment, the Reformers lowered it to the rank of a
civil contract, subject to human inclination. Every
one knows that Luther countenanced morganatic
marriages ; manages de la main gauche^ the French
term them. As the Landgrave of Hesse found that
his finances would not allow of his bringing his
princess with him to the Imperial Diet, he took unto
himself a second wife, upon his arrival thither, with
the full consent of Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, and
six other theologians. Luther, it is true, advised him
to keep the matter quiet " lest the vulgar peasantry
should be tempted to imitate him." When, however,
it had got abroad, and when Luther was asked to
condemn the action of the Landgrave, the Reformer
replied : " It is impossible for me to condemn a man
for having more than one wife at a time, seeing that
Holy Scriptures do not forbid it." 1 " The Reforma-
tion," continues Lamy, " abandoned woman without a
struggle to the caprice of man, and sacrificed her
most essential interests and rights to his passions and
vices. Luther's disciples who received this tradition

1 Lamy took these facts from Jansen's " Histoire du peuple
Allemand," vol. iii.

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 159

not only perpetuated but aggravated it. In one year,
at Wittemburg, fifty theses were publicly read in
which woman was denied the dignity of a human
personality."

We are obliged to confess, after wide research
on this subject, that Protestantism has done
nothing to improve the condition of woman. But
has the Catholic Church done so very much for her ?
It is promising her much at the beginning of the
twentieth century, but what did it do for her in the
nineteenth ? Let us turn our eyes for a moment to
a country where Catholicism has reigned supreme
for centuries. What has it done to improve the
condition of woman in Spain? The Spanish
churches, many of them of superb architectural
beauty, draw to-day congregations composed almost
entirely of women." " Men do not go to church in
this country," said a Spaniard in Toledo, when I
remarked on the paucity of men at the church
services. " Our men," he continued, " have no longer
any faith in the Christian religion, they leave all
that to their wives and daughters : those men
amongst us who feel a psychical necessity of believ-
ing in something beyond what they can see with
their bodily eyes, go in for spiritualism, a cult which
has gained much favour of late throughout the
north of Spain." I have spoken eleswhere of the
status enjoyed by Spanish women. It does not say
much for the elevating influence of the Catholic
Church in the Peninsula. 1 And in France herself,
how, in the past, has Catholicism helped woman

1 See chapters xiii. and xiv.

160 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

towards the attainment of civil equality, let alone
political ? How came it that the Saint Simonists
gained for a time so much power over French
women ? Was it not by promising them that under
their dispensation, husband and wife should be equal
in Church and State ? The Saint Simonists promised
to do away with all such abuses as marriages of
youth with decrepitude, abuses on which the Catholic
Church is silent. Had their body but been able to
triumph over internal dissensions they would no
doubt have gained over a very large section of the
French people, through their sympathy with woman.
As it was, their women followers were strong enough
in 1831 to start a newspaper in the cause of their
sex. They called it La Tribune des Femmes^ Did
the Catholicism of the Middle Ages ever protest
against the law which in all the more civilized
countries allowed a man to beat his wife if she dared
to disobey him ? Did it ever protest against the
law called Marquette ?

The Catholic Church was heir to the synagogue,
it showed a doggedly strict adherence to Judaism long
before Protestantism had come into being.

The women of ancient Gaul went out with their
men to battle, encouraging the brave, ridiculing the
timid, and taking part in all political affairs.
Plutarch tells us that the Gauls consulted their
women in making peace or war; their social position
in those days bears comparison with that held by the
women of ancient Germany, as recounted by Tacitus.
It is clear to every student of history that neither

1 See the writings of Dora d'Istria.

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 161

Catholicism nor Protestantism had done much to
raise the status of woman before the opening of the
present century. Those who wish to know how far
Christianity has been influenced through the twenty
centuries of its existence by its adhesion to Judaism
should consult the able work of Mile. Chauvin, 1 who,
by the way, was the first woman to obtain permission
to practise at the bar in France. She begins with
an inquiry into the status of the women of ancient
Egypt, and then proceeds to draw a comparison
between the status of woman under Judaism, and
under Mohammedan rule. Moses, she reminds us,
owed his life to a midwife. Midwifery seems to have
been the only profession open to women in the East.
Here we are tempted to pause and ask, " Why did
Christendom allow man to compete with woman in
a profession that was hers from prehistoric times ? "
But to continue, Christ, we know, triumphed over the
old dispensation. How came it then that Judaism
was permitted to invade His doctrines ? In the early
days of Christianity women had their recognised
sacerdotal and public functions. There were lady
physicians and lady surgeons in the Middle Ages, a
female professor of medicine at Salerno wrote a
treatise entitled " Diseases of Woman." Judaism, as
Mile. Chauvin has pointed out, destroyed the work
of Christ for woman. One profession after another
became closed to the female sex, till at last that of
courtesan seemed to be the only one left open
Christianity has, through the influence of Judaism
countenanced for centuries the profession of prostitu-

1 Jeanne Chauvin, " Professions accessibles aux Femmes, u 1892.
L

162 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

tion. " Cette profession re$ut une organisation cor-
porative ; il y eut dans la plupart des villes des maisons
de femmes relevant fiscalement sort de la cite, sort du
seigneur ou de Ffeglise, dans les caisses desquels tombait
leur revenu net. Ces femmes elisaient une matrone qui
avait le soin de la discipline et le soin du bon ordre. II
y avait aussi des corporations de ce genre attaches au
service des artn/es" Rationalists have made some
capital out of the fact that while the profession of
courtesan has been left open to women through all
the ages, that of actress was forbidden them by the
Emperor Theodosius under the influence of the
Church. Consequently it was not till the year 1656
that an English woman dared to appear upon the
stage. 1 The earliest reference to female per-
formances in the Spanish theatre belongs to the year
1534, it was not till the latter half of that century
that it became customary in France for a woman to
appear upon the stage. When in 1629 some French
and Spanish actresses appeared in England they
were hooted by the public. An actress was still a
novelty in London in the days of Pepys, and his
Diary contains rhapsodic passages describing the
exceptional pleasure their performances gave him.
In our day neither Catholics nor Protestants would
think of regarding the profession of an actress as
unwomanly. A woman may now appear upon the
stage in the most disreputable of scenes, and
personate the most immoral of characters, she may
cast aside all feminine modesty upon the stage. A

1 See Gerhardt and Simon, " Mutterschaft und Geistige Arbeit,"
1901.

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 163

young mother may leave her babe to appear night
after night before the footlights to the injury of
her own health and that of her child. To this, the
Christian Churches have no objection. Playing
the part of an imaginary love-sick girl, the actress
may fall into the arms of the actor lover, and cling
to his neck night after night before thousands of
enraptured spectators. In this, there is thought to be
nothing unwomanly. Here at anyrate Christianity
is less narrow to-day than it was in the days of
Theodosius. 1

Now, in the twentieth century, it is the Catholic
Church which tells the women of its flock that they
have but to remain faithful, and the Church will not
only stand up for them, but come forth as their
champion and fight their cause. In Belgium, Catholic
dignitaries are already demanding the franchise for
woman, and Catholic barristers are fighting for her
civil and political rights. They have decided that
they must not leave her to be the meek victim of
Socialism. Catholic feminists and socialist feminists
are engaging in a hand to hand fight for women.
" We ought to be feminists, we Catholics," say
barristers and clergy alike. " We ought to be
feminists by tradition, from a spirit of justice, and of
charity," and they blame the French Revolution first,
and then Napoleon, for suppressing woman's civil
rights. " Woman suffers under the existing laws,
these laws are unjust, it is for us to reform them."

1 " There are jests which you would be ashamed to make yourself,
and yet on the comic stage, or again in private when you hear them, you
are greatly amused by them, instead of being disgusted by their
unseemliness." Plato's " Republic," book x.

1 64

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

These laws oppress the working classes even more
than they do the middle class. It is for us to come
to the rescue of the working woman. 1 We are told
that the divorce laws of Belgium are, in certain
respects, more unjust to woman than those of any
country in Europe ; happily they are on the eve of
reform ; but they are still so hard upon the working
woman that she is constantly tempted to ignore the
marriage rite in order to avoid the injustice of the
marriage laws. If, however, she goes through the
ceremony of marriage, her husband acquires the
lawful right to dispose of every stick and stone she
brings with her in marriage, and of every farthing she
earns with the sweat of her brow; he may drink
away her house and home, or give her property to
another woman. She has no redress, she is his slave
and he is her master. The Catholics of Belgium are
divided as to the best way of alleviating the miserable
condition of the working woman. Some are in
favour of excluding woman from all work that takes
the worker out of her home ; they think this is the
only way to protect the sacred interests of the family :
others, on the contrary, see that such a step is not
only impracticable, but impossible, they see that a
great revolution has taken place in family life, they
see what Socialists have seen for a long time, that
the husband and father can no longer earn enough
to support his wife and children, and that to prevent
the wife from going out to work would mean, in
thousands of cases, to condemn her and her little
ones to starvation or worse. It is the same more or

1 Colaert et Henry, " La Ferame Iilecteur," 1901.

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 165

less in all countries. Every lady who works among
the poor in England knows that the wife, in nine
hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand,
must go out to work if her children are to be fed and
clothed. Where the husband earns only eighteen
shillings a week, there is not much for a wife
and six children. Twenty-two shillings a week is
considered an average wage for the father of a
family of seven in many London districts, and it
is much the same in other countries. Yet, according
to German reckoning, it is impossible for a German
workman to provide himself his wife and two children
with the bare necessaries of life for less than seventy-
five pounds a year (fifteen hundred marks). " It is
useless," remarks a Belgian Catholic, " to oppose the
irresistible current," and such are the economic
tendencies of the twentieth century. The old
" home " is disappearing, and to run after it is simply
a waste of our strength and breath. A new kind of
home is already looming on the horizon, one where
woman will still be wife and mother, but where she
will no longer be slave." Socialism has told woman
that every human being has a right to work, and
Catholics are coming round to that view. " Interdise
a la femme de travailler ? c'est meconnaitre absolument
le principe du droit au travail . . . jeter une foule de
femmes dans le misere et dans la prostitution" To
forbid the married woman to work would be the
refinement of cruelty. No, let the salary of the
working woman be made equal to that of the
working man, and then, if the employers prefer men,
they will choose men. If women's work is really

i66

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

inferior, it will follow that factories will cease to employ
them. Belgian Catholics are advising the working
women to combine, that they may fight for higher
wages, and they are urging the State to pass a law
establishing a minimum wage identical for both
sexes. Catholics are no longer leaving these
demands to Socialists. What are Protestants doing ?

In travelling from one European country to
another I have been astonished to see the rapidity
with which women are taking the posts formerly
filled entirely by men. Women are now to be
found in counting houses, banks, business houses,
telephone and telegraph offices in almost every
northern country in Europe. " How has woman
managed to oust man in this fashion ? Because
she offers her services for a lower salary. Woman
was proud and pleased when first she discovered
that she could oust man so easily, but alas, she was
only 'forging arms against herself when she
agreed to undersell her services. It was the
greatest mistake her sex had made since the
day when Eve plucked the apple."

Many Catholics are to-day strongly in favour
of the extension of the franchise to woman. " La
femme riobtiendra rien tant qu'elle ne jouira pas des
droits politique. . , . II faut consider que le bulletin
de vote sera le grand moyen d^ affranchisement de la
femnie, car le legislateur fera pour son electrice bien
des choses aux quelles il rieut pas meme ' trouve le
temps' de songer s'il seftit age d'une simple citoyenne
politiquement incapable. . . . Depuis que Vouvrier
est electeur son education se fait progressivement^ il

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 167

en sera meme pour la femme" * Even the Catholic
Church is discovering that "principle must some-
times give way to circumstance."

M. Lamy is one of those Catholics who have
noted the progress of Socialism among the women
of France. He turns to his countrywomen and
says, " Socialism tells you that all existing institu-
tions must be overturned before woman can obtain
her rights. It is as if a piece of gold lay beneath
a majestic edifice and you were told that you must
raze that edifice to the ground to get possession
of the gold." The Catholics of Belgium have gone
a step further, they have been telling woman that
even when the edifice is razed to the ground they,
the women, will not get the gold. " See," they cry,
"the Socialists are divided among themselves on
the subject of claiming the franchise for you, and as
long as they have your support they will take care
not to impede their own cause by fighting your
battles. They may have written * equality of the
sexes' on their banners, but they are far too busy
just now with trying to get rid of the clergy, and of
capitalism, to take up the cudgels for woman. They
will adjourn indefinitely the struggle for your rights
with the excuse that woman is not yet capable of
exercising them." And indeed woman herself is
to-day accusing the Socialists of leaving their
wives and children as hostages in the hands of
the enemy. 2 The Belgian women who have become
Socialists in order to advance the cause of women

1 "LaFemme lecteur."

2 See article by Mme. Gatti di Gamord, cited by Colaert.

1 68

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

have been bitterly disappointed in their leaders.
Some of the more far-sighted among the Socialists
s'ingeni&rent a rattacher droitement le feminisme au
socialisme. . ." Catholicism and Socialism are now
quite alive to the fact that the women of Belgium
are no longer a negligible quantity, nay, that they
are already a force capable of destroying the
balance of power between powerful political parties.
" Socialism has organised its women," cry the
Catholics, " let us hasten to organise ours."

In France M. Lamy is reminding woman that
it was the Catholic Association of 1850 which first
voted in favour of public schools for girls, and that
the schools when started would have been at a
complete loss for teachers had not the nuns
volunteered their services. When Bebel cried in
the Reichstag, " Where woman goes there will
be victory," he stirred the Catholics of France
and Germany to action. " Socialism," says Lamy,
" promises to woman what bourgeois philosophers
have always refused her, a condition similar to
that of man, equality in work, and equality in the
pleasures of life." And he adds, " That is all very
well, but they are putting men and women into
two separate camps, and the result will be that
when the two are pitted against one another, man,
being physically the stronger, will have the advantage
on his side. fai bien peur que I 'esprit de corps
ait son egoisme le plus parfait dans I esprit de sexe
et que I'homme devenu rival de la feiume songe a
exploiter le labeur de cette rivale au profit de sa propre
paresse." M. Lamy sees what I have already

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 169

pointed out in another chapter, the danger and
the futility of segregating the sexes. He also points
out that even if woman through being numerically
stronger than man were to be able to make the laws,
her want of physical force would result in her being
crushed by the superior strength of man, and then
there would be a danger of her becoming a slave
both to man and to the State. " And what," he
continues, " will become of the Socialist woman in
her old age, when she is too old for work or pleasure ?
She will find herself homeless at the last, however
many husbands she may have had in her youth and
prime, and her children will have no more reverence
or affection for her than for other women."

The Socialists, having " dethroned their Creator,
and having suppressed His function of King of
kings as unnecessary and humiliating to man's
dignity, wish to become the conservators of a form
of government in which they are the Cabinet
Ministers." They are satisfied that they will be able
alone and unaided to bring peace and good-will
upon earth. It must not be supposed, however,
that they have the sympathy of all rationalists
and free-thinkers ; on the contrary many of these
are their deadliest enemies. Let us take, for instance,
M. Gustav Le Bon, an anthropologist belonging to
no school, who has compared Socialism to a religious
belief. This student tells us that not only is
Socialism a religious belief, but it is the one of all
others which has the lowest ideals. " Its promises are
all for this world'' And some at least of the sects
who are called Christian Socialists are looking for

1 70 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

their reward here below. Such for instance is the
hope of the American community at Jerusalem,
who have gone there to await the arrival of the
millennium. I have myself enjoyed their hospitality,
and can witness to the fact that, with the unim-
portant exception of the lady president and the
treasurer, they have all things in common, as far as
it is possible.

M. Le Bon points out that there are innumerable
sects among the Socialists, and that these sects
hate each other cordially. This writer shows
himself to be as anxious to save the middle classes
from Socialism as the Catholics are to gain over
woman. He affirms that the bourgeoisie has lost
more of its prestige in a century than the aristocracy
has done in a thousand years ; he utters the solemn
warning that if Socialism gains the day, there will
be a ""fusillade en bloc de tons les bourgeois" after
which the conquerors will lump all existing capital
together and proceed every one to help himself
the State, that is Socialism, keeping constant guard
that no man takes a penny more than he ought.
" But when all the capital is gone," ask M. Le Bon,
" where will they get more ? " * And when society
has been destroyed, by what marvellous miracle
will it re-establish itself? If it has to go through
all the successive stages again where will the
Anarchists be gainers? M. Jean Grave has
attempted to answer this question by showing

1 It is clear from recent speeches by Mr Keir Hardie that his
party despises the genius which alone can build up thriving com-
mercial houses.

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 171

that the wished for change will come about so
gradually that it will hardly be noticed, that there
will be, in his opinion, no sudden upheaval, no
great revolution brought about by force, but a
slow and sure transformation, a matter of years,
perhaps even of generations. 1 He does not attempt,
however, to deny the truth of M. Le Bon's assertion
that the whole army of Socialists and Anarchists
are marching towards the destruction of our
heritage of the past. And no one has ever denied
that Socialism can count most surely upon the
support of the least intelligent classes in every
country, upon those who would never start a revolu-
tion, but are always ready to follow one. The
crowd in our day is much the same as it was in
the eighteenth century when Fielding likened it to
an ass which pricked up its long ears as soon as
words of any weight were addressed to it. " If
you want the mob to listen to you," he said, "you
must appeal to its feelings, not to its reason." The
very same thing is constantly said about women in
our day, and there are still many English ladies
who pride themselves on being governed by their
feelings, rather than by their reason, and who look
upon a woman who is governed by the latter as
rather outre. Perhaps this is why Socialism has
been so successful with women.

M. Le Bon tells us that the reason why Socialism
is spreading to the upper classes is that they are
beginning to look upon it as an invincible force, and
to accept it without reflection, in short it has become

1 " La Societe Future."

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

the fashion. " La crainte de P opinion des imbeciles a
toujours constitue un des facteurs importants de
rhistoire" " But," he adds, "the guillotine will show
that to give in, is to give up one's life." Harriet
Martineau was shocked to find how submissively the
middle-classes of America bowed before current
opinion in 1835, and strangely enough it is the
Americans who, according to M. Le Bon, will be the
first to suffer from Socialism. Sceptical indifference,
which this writer calls " the great disease of modern
bourgeoisie" is only a cover for the moral weakness
which has not the courage of its convictions, but is
ever ready to hurl sarcasm and ridicule on those who
have. Of all the women I have met it is those of
middle-class England who have the greatest horror
of ridicule. There are thousands of English women
who would gladly make any sacrifice rather than own
that they took an interest in politics or sympathised
with those women who are fighting for the Suffrage.
Like sheep, the middle classes prefer to do every
thing in flocks.

Certain impartial sociologists of our country have
had a good deal to say of late about the hard lot of
England's lower middle class, her petite bourgeoisie.
We hear about their hard struggle to make both ends
meet and to keep up appearances, but we never hear
them accused of thriftlessness such as the classes
below theirs are so often guilty of. The dust-bin of
an English bourgeois family rarely contains anything
like so good a picking for the dustmen as that of the
artisan, and the bourgeois housewife is thankful that
she can obtain New Zealand meat from her butcher,

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 173

as it is so much cheaper than Canterbury mutton,
whereas the railway porter and the postman, the
painter and the builder, would scorn to think that
New Zealand meat ever entered their doors, it being,
in their opinion, " fit only for the dogs." I have care-
fully inquired whether the cause of this fastidiousness
did not lie in a supposition that frozen meat contained
less nourishment, but ladies who give their lives to
work among these people, assure me that the
only ground for their refusal of it is their pride.
Families where there are seven or more children, and
where the father often earns less than twenty-five
shillings a week, will not dream of paying less
than elevenpence per pound for their meat, while
thousands of bourgeois families pay eightpence and
tenpence. How comes it that we hear nothing of
these things from our English Socialists ? They are
incontrovertible facts. If the Socialists of our
country have the good of the lower classes at heart,
why do they not start a campaign against the vulgar
extravagance in the dress of respectable English
servant girls on their " Sundays out ? " The young
men, to gain whose approval these young women
spend every farthing of their wages on this superfluous
finery, are many of them members of respectable
trade unions. Should they not try and check this
growing slavery to fashion in their prospective wives ?
In no country in Europe do the women of the lower class
spend so much money upon their dress as in England.
A friend, in whose field the hay had been cut, had
invited a party of young friends to the hay-making,
and at the same time gave her servants permission to

174

invite a few acquaintances to tea in another corner oi
the field. A foreigner passing through the field that
afternoon might have been somewhat surprised to
find that the guests of the proprietress were all in
simple cotton blouses, while the guests of the servants,
maids from the houses of the neighbouring gentry,
shone in the full splendour of white silk and satin.
Similar instances will occur to every reader's mind.
And what do Socialists think about the even more
extravagant thriftlessness of our factory girls ? And
why do they not get the licence to sell alcoholic
drinks withdrawn from our petty shopkeepers ? The
facility with which working women and girls can now
obtain spirituous liquors at the smallest shops is
becoming quite as great a curse to our country as any
of the evils which Socialism promises to destroy. In
the vicinity of London, drink is doing more harm
among the mothers and future mothers of our race
than it is doing amongst the men. Women obtain
drink secretly, and unknown to their husbands, in small
quantities, and it has the effect of small and frequent
doses of poison. The men go openly to the public-
house, have a good drink and finish, for the time at
least, but the women are always at it.

" At present," says M. Le Bon, the " artisan may
dream of one day becoming a capitalist, but under
collectivism he will not be able to do so, for he will
be under the anonymous tyranny of a levelling State.
The world will be like one huge sugar-plantation."
We can console ourselves, however, that this blessed
state of things is still somewhat distant. In the
meantime we would suggest that all educated persons

WOMAN AND CHRISTIANITY 175

who call themselves Socialists should read and digest
that part of Plato's Republic which deals with the
subject of democracy and tyranny. There they will
find their own history, and that will enable them to
generalise as to the possibilities of the future.

CHAPTER X

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM

1 7^ VERY sect of the Socialists has its own
1 ^ particular views on the future of woman, and
every book published by Socialists or Anarchists has
some suggestion to make as to the amelioration of
her lot in this world. We have seen in the preced-
ing chapter how these energetic propaganda among
the female sex have at length aroused the Catholic
Church in France, Germany, Belgium and the United
States, to a sense of the danger that threatens it.
We have seen how Rationalism, conscious of the
struggle that is going on, is also joining in the fray,
not so much with a view to the reconstruction of
society as with a view to the destruction of all
religions and religious beliefs whatsoever, and the
final enthronement of human reason in their
stead.

There is absolutely nothing original in what
Socialism and Anarchism are offering to woman.
Plato, in laying down his plan for the formation of
an ideal republic four hundred years before the birth
of Christ, left woman perfectly free to develop all
her powers ; he did not attempt to define any limit
beyond which it would be detrimental to the good of

the State for her to proceed. I have seen it affirmed
176

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 177

in at least half the books on woman, of modern times,
that Plato recognised no ideal for woman. Stendhal
was, I believe, the first to propagate this erroneous idea,
and others seem to have copied his words without
taking the trouble to trace them to their source.
The fact is that Plato recognised woman's right to
the full development of all her powers as far as
her nature would allow, both mental and physical ;
he recognised, for instance, that some women might
be " born " physicians, to use a colloquial phrase of
our own, and have the same peculiar aptitude for the
pursuit of medicine as certain men

larptKov /u.ev KOL iaTpiicqv TV\V ^fX'V oyra?,

and he even thought it would be expedient for them
to enter the army. This is all the more remarkable
because, in his day, examples of women doing any
kind of work, mental or industrial, as well as men
could do it, were practically unknown. The Socialist
can look back through the ages that separate himself
from Plato and pick out women who have proved
themselves indisputably to far excel the average man
in every science, art or industry that has ever been
practised by the human race, but Plato had far less
to go upon, and it is therefore all the more remark-
able that he should have been so ready to let woman
try her hand at everything and show what she could
do. The female citizen of Plato's ideal republic was
to have full freedom to develop all her capabilities
and powers to the utmost. In short, she was to have
infinitely greater freedom in that respect than any one
of the female subjects of King Edward VII. can boast

1 78 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

of at the beginning of the twentieth century ! Plato,
as we have said, threw the military profession open
to women in his ideal State. England, twenty-four
centuries later, refuses to admit her to the bar. A
voluminous literature has been poured forth by the
male sex to prove that, as a rule, woman's work is
inferior to man's work. We are constantly reminded,
especially by Englishmen, that a man-cook gets
higher wages than a woman-cook (these gentlemen
forget, by the way, that in cooking it is a matter
rather of nationality than of sex. The French man-
cook gets the high wages not the English man-
cook), and Plato himself admitted that, though weav-
ing, and baking, and jam-making were arts in which
women reached a high degree of excellence, men
practising them could reach a still higher level. Yet
in spite of this, our philosopher did not hesitate to
let Socrates say that, " In the administration of a
State, neither a woman, as a woman, nor a man, as a
man, has any special function, but the gifts of nature
are equally diffused in both sexes : all the pursuits
of men are the pursuits of women also, and in all of
them a woman is only a weaker man," and Glaucon
answers " Very true."

"Then are we to impose all our enactments
on men and none of them on women?" asks
Socrates.

" That will never do."

"One woman has a gift of healing, another
not ; one is a musician, and another is not a

musician."

44 Very true."

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 179

"And one woman has a turn for gymnastic and
military exercises, and another is unwarlike and
hates gymnastic."

" Beyond question."

" And one woman is a philosopher, and another
is an enemy of philosophy ; one has spirit, and
another is without spirit."

" That is also true."

" Then one woman will have the temper of a
guardian and another not ; for was not the selec-
tion of the male guardians determined by these sort
of differences?"

" Very true."

" Then the woman has equally with the man the
qualities which make a guardian ; she differs only
in degrees of strength."

" Obviously."

" And those women who have such qualities are
to be selected as the companions and colleagues
of our guardians, since they resemble them in
ability and character."

" Very true."

" And being of the same nature with them ought
they not to have the same pursuits?"

" They ought"

" Then, as we were saying before, there is nothing
unnatural in assigning music and gymnastic to the
wives of the guardians : to that point we come round
again."

" Very good."

" The law which thus enacted, instead of being
an impossibility or mere aspiration, was agreeable

i8o WOMAN IN TRANSITION

to nature, and the contrary practice, which prevails
at present, is in reality a violation of nature."

"You will admit that the same education which
makes a man a good guardian will make a woman
a good guardian : for their original nature is the same."

"Yes."

" I should like to ask you a question. Would
you say that all men are equal in excellence, or
is one man better than another ? "

" The latter."

"And in our imaginary Commonwealth which
do you reckon the better, the guardians who have
been brought up on our model system, or the
cobblers whose education has been cobbling ? "

" What a ridiculous question."

" You have answered me," I replied. " Well, and
may we not further say that our guardians are
the best of our citizens ? "

" Yes, again I say the very best."

" And can there be anything better for the in-
terests of the State than that the men and women
of a State should be as good as possible?"

" There can be nothing better."

" And our course of music and gymnastic will
accomplish this ? "

" Certainly."

" Then we have made an enactment not only
possible but in the highest degree advantageous
to the State."

"True." 1

1 Dialogues of Plato, vol. iii. book v. p. 328. Tr. by Jowett.

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 181

There are Socialists in every civilized country who
tell us that the family, and family life as we know
it at present, are doomed to extinction in the near
future. We cannot deny that there is a good deal
of truth in what they say. Let us take England
first, and see whether the old-fashioned English
family shows signs of disappearing. How is it
with the classes of society where Socialism has
gained the largest number of recruits ? John and
Sarah Smith live in yonder suburban cottage with
their seven children. John is, of course, away at
his work, but we will go and have a chat with his
wife and children. Alas ! we soon discover that
the cottage is empty, the mother of the family
works all day at a neighbouring steam laundry,
the elder girl is engaged in a factory, and the
younger children are " put out " every day with a
neighbour who makes what she can by looking
after a number of such children. The family break-
fast was cooked over a gas ring, the family supper
will be prepared in the same manner. John will
find no bright fire to welcome him when he returns
home this cold, wet winter's evening, and as soon
as he has swallowed his supper he will hurry away
from his cheerless cottage into the brilliantly-lighted
and comfortably warm public-house, to pass the
remainder of the evening in the society of those
of his men friends who have followed his example.
The tired mother washes up, puts the little ones to
bed, and warms her poor frozen body with a pull
at the whisky bottle. The eldest daughter comes
out from the factory often on the point of collapse

1 82 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

from sheer bodily weariness ; it is no uncommon
thing for her to join two or three of her com-
panions in the purchase of a bottle of whisky,
which is then handed from one to the other of
the girlish group till its contents are gone. And
on Sundays ? Even on Sundays there is no real
family life. John spends the greater part of the
day in bed, incapacitated by Saturday's drinking
bout, and drinks himself drunk again in the even-
ing with the store of alcohol the payment of his
wages has enabled him to procure on Saturday.

The picture we have drawn is a typical one taken
from life, and it only varies in detail from the
kind of picture we should draw had we taken a
German or French family instead of an English
one. Who has not heard of blauer Montag or
" blue Monday," so called because of the "blue"
state in which the German artisan finds himself
on Monday morning after his week-end debauch.
And who has not heard of the absinthe craze in
France and in Belgium? What family life is there
for the wife and children of the Paris or Brussels
artisan who is steadily poisoning himself with a
drink whose effect is slow but deadly? Half the
crime that is committed in Paris is known to result
from the vice of absinthe drinking. In time the
poison affects the brain, causing an excitability
bordering on and often ending in madness. The
governments of the respective countries see the
growing evil, and are trying to check it by law ;
several Cantons of Switzerland have already
stopped its production. But if they succeed, will

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 183

they be able to restore family life to what it was
in the past, to what it was a hundred years ago,
before the invention of all the wonderful machinery
which is the real cause of the breaking up of the
home ? Not Socialism, not the woman movement,
is breaking up home life among the peoples, but
the invention of machinery. M. Le Bon reminds
us that less than a century ago the workmen's
tools in civilized Europe were of a type similar
to those depicted on the tombs of ancient Egypt. 1
To-day rapid transformations are taking place in
every kind of industry : the more we perfect our
machinery the cheaper labour must become, and
the less skill will be required. Now that a machine
capable of being worked by one man performs the
work of 10,000 men, now that one factory girl
can, with the help of machinery, get through in a
day work that would formerly have given a day's
employment to several hundreds of men, it is easy
to see how great must necessarily be the changes
brought about in the life of the lower classes. An
able German writer 2 has collected and published in
one volume heartrending descriptions and statistics
of the terrible hardships endured by the working
classes of all civilized countries in the nineteenth
century. Christian England is well represented in
her harrowing pages, and as we read them we cease
to wonder that Socialism and Anarchism have
gained so great a hold upon our working men and
women. Frau Lily Braun is of the opinion that the

1 The plough of Virgil is still in use in Galicia.
2 Lily Braun, "Die Fraunenfrage," 1901.

1 84 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

miseries of these poor people will be intensified in
proportion to the growth of great industries and
the spread of factories. Man, it seems, must become
more and more the slave of the machinery he has
himself invented. Anarchism alone, it would seem,
sees the remedy for all our ills ; in some miraculous
way it is going to preserve the individual freedom
of every human being by enforcing solidarity with
an iron hand, its theorists ignoring the obvious fact
that the two are incompatible. Woman, being in
its eyes one of the most powerful forces of revolu-
tion, must be won over.

Anarchism tells us that at the present time
women of the moneyed classes are practically
above the laws that are unjust to their sex, and
that it is only the poor woman who is still in
bondage to the letter of the law. Let these but
range themselves on the side of Anarchism, and
their delivery will be speedy. In the good time
coming all the railways will be in the hands of
the community. Poor as well as rich will be able
to indulge in the pleasures of travel, and every
sick person will be able to choose the climate best
suited to his or her state of health. 1 In that day
every human being will be free to satisfy his or
her every want. Every one will fall into the place
he or she is fitted by nature to fill, and no one
will be doing any work that goes against the grain.
The question of the bringing-up of children is to
be greatly simplified. Fathers and mothers who
wish to be relieved of the responsibility of rearing

1 See Jean Grave, " La Societe Future."

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 185

their own offspring will be free to hand them over to
those who adore children and whose joy it will be
to nurture and tend them. The complete liberty
that will be allowed to every individual will act as
a panacea to all human ills. The married couple
will be free to separate as soon as they begin to
tire of one another's company, and consequently
such a thing as divorce will be unheard of. In
short, marrying and giving in marriage will be
superfluous in this heaven-upon-earth. The wheels
of life will run as smoothly as if they had been
oiled. . Anarchy is no enemy to order ; in the eyes
of the Anarchist it is merely a political negation.
Anarchy, we are to believe, spells unified liberty,
peace and concord. This is all most promising,
but we do not quite see who is going to work the
machinery.

Under the government of Anarchism female
genius as well as male genius is to find a smooth
path prepared for it. There will be no social
ladder for weary feet to climb. Society will con-
sist of one dead level. In the existing society,
they tell us, three-fourths of those who are natur-
ally endowed with a love of art, and would gladly
devote their lives to it, are prevented by our con-
ditions of existence ; forced to spend eight, ten, or
twelve hours a day labouring for the bread they
eat, it is impossible for them to cultivate their
muse. Under the sway of Anarchism, on the
contrary, it will be possible for every one to earn
all the money required for board and lodging by
a minimum amount of labour, and then every

1 86 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

aspirant will have plenty of time and energy to
devote to his or her art ; and as the intellectual
level of the public will have been raised, every
genius will find it easy to manifest himself or
herself to the world. Truly it is sad to believe
that so many who might be great, and leave great
works behind them, are now unable to blossom
forth ! I have heard it said that for a poor
Englishman to rise in the world without influence
or family to help him is as hard as it would be
to put one's head through a brick wall. Under
Anarchism, however, there will be no rising. We
are distinctly warned that no one will be permitted
to "arriver." It will simply be a case of the tree
blossoming where it stands, and getting all the
rain and sunshine that it needs without any cold
and blasting winds or biting frosts. No one will
deny that it is very hard in these days for a male
genius born in poverty to achieve greatness, and
no one zvill deny that it is very much harder still for
a female genius ; the best part of a poor man's
life has to be spent in getting to the point where
others start. The man or woman " born in humble
rank has not the same time for success, and time
is a factor in success." x

Anarchists forget, however, that genius needs
other stimulants besides those we have mentioned,
and environment is as important as leisure or
schooling. Some one has recently remarked that
Shakespeare would never have written a single
drama if he could have run his father's business

1 B. C. Constable, " Poverty and Hereditary Genius."

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 187

successfully. When Anarchy reigns supreme there
will be neither necessity nor ambition to spur us
on. Absolute equality will destroy not only indi-
vidual freedom, as Wundt and many other thinkers
have prophesied, but also individual aspiration
towards higher things. It is very doubtful whether
the encouragement which Anarchism proposes to
give to genius will not be more than counter-
balanced by the depressing influence of an un-
sympathetic, not to say prosaic, atmosphere. We
would also ask with Wundt, What is the highest
ideal of a free personality ? And how can that
ideal personality be united to an ideal state of
human society ? These are questions that An-
archism has still to answer. Wundt has given
us his views about family life. He is convinced
that in every class the family must suffer if the
mother goes out to work, which is equivalent to
saying that the family is suffering already, seeing
that practically all mothers of the third and fourth
classes do go out to work, and many bourgeois
mothers as well. This philosopher advises that
the State should strive to arrange things so that
each husband can earn enough to support his
wife and family, forgetting that even if this were
possible, which it is not at present, nothing would
prevent the said husband from drinking himself
to death with the extra money ! And how, we
would add, is Anarchism going to free us from
the curse of alcohol ?

In addressing woman, Anarchism takes care to
remind her that in the society of the future she will

1 88 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

be, not only loved, but respected. Respected as
man's intellectual equal, in spite of the fact that her
brain is smaller and lighter than his ; Anarchism
reminds her that the scientists who proclaim her
mental inferiority are, for the most part, the very
men who talk of those who work as "the inferior
classes." Anarchism has not time to go to the source
of everything it finds in books, so it is not surprising
that it has made capital out of the oft-repeated story
of the Council of Macon, and reminded woman that
the Fathers of the Church seriously discussed the
question as to whether woman possessed a soul.
Catholic feminists are aware of this, and have recently
taken care to explain that the whole story is a lie.
To begin with, the Council of Macon was not an
ecumenical council, but a chance gathering together
of a few bishops at which one of them happened to
ask whether it was grammatically correct to apply
the term homo to both sexes. Neither the Church
nor the Catholics have ever denied that woman has
a soul. But if they did, how comes it that they have
canonised so many of them ? l

In every country, increased facilities for the
attainment of higher education, and of ultimate
university degrees and diplomas, are tempting thou-
sands of young people of both sexes to spend
precious time and money in fitting themselves for
posts which there is little chance of their ever being
able to fill. The supply is already infinitely greater
than the demand. In Russia this evil is perhaps

1 See "La Femme Jilecteur " for full refutation of the legend in
question.

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 189

more aggravated than elsewhere, 1 and the unfortunate
" intellectuals " who are turned out of these colleges
every year with no prospect of getting any work to
do, almost invariably join one or other of the revo-
lutionary bodies. In France, where the same thing
is going on, people are actually blaming the pro-
fessors for making learning so attractive to young
men and forgetting how terrible is the disappoint-
ment that awaits those who fondly hope that their
diplomas will help them to earn money. M. Le
Bon assures us that the ranks of Socialism in
France are crowded with disappointed university
men, who, having had all initiative and push
knocked out of them by a uniform academic train-
ing, are incapable of turning their energies to
account in any other direction. Every year more
and more women crowd with the men towards the
same goal, and thus make the competition keener ;
this often leads to a feeling of resentment on the
part of their male rivals. In America and in
Sweden the teaching profession is now practically
in the hands of women, for the men, as a rule,
prefer to devote themselves to business in one form or
another. Whether this will ever come to be the case
all over Europe we cannot say, but certain it is that
in Europe a university training no longer insures
either man or woman against penury, and the risks
of depending on it for ultimate support are growing
greater every year.

M. Turgeon has devoted a long chapter in his

1 See chapter on Khakoff in my ''Russia" in reference to this
subject.

190 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

book on French Feminism to the misfortunes of the
learned woman. He waxes eloquent over her zeal
for knowledge, her feminine curiosity, her burning
ambition to reap the honours she sees awarded to
scientific men, and then he depicts her bitter dis-
appointment. " What," he cries, " is to become of
the lady doctors without patients, of the certificated
teachers without pupils ? The liberal professions are
overcrowded. ... In many women the taste for
science and the love of knowledge result from a
desire to rival and equal man." He then proceeds
to show how, worn out with waiting for the position
and honours that never come, she begins to grow old,
her charms and graces disappear one by one, and it
is then that her embittered feelings become a prey to
the boldest and maddest suggestions of revenge
against fate, and she lends an ear to Anarchism.
Then health too, in many cases affected by the long
strain of hard intellectual work, breaks down at last
and she becomes, if nothing worse, a complete wreck.
The picture is a sad one truly, but the view is one-
sided and overdrawn. In real life the number of
women whose health is affected by the intellectual
strain of college work is very small as compared to
the number of women whose health breaks down
through anxiety about the future and household
worry. Turgeon argues that even if we accept the
doctrine that mind has no sex, 1 the fact remains that
it is incarnated into two distinct beings, and that
woman's body is more quickly and more seriously

1 Upheld by Feijoo, one of the most brilliant writers of the eigh-
teenth century.

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 191

affected by prolonged intellectual effort than man's,
her constitution and her temperament being against
her in the struggle; and man should therefore, in
Turgeon's opinion, continue to do as he has always
done, and keep her within her proper limits. Alas !
if all the young women of Europe could be brought
over to M. Turgeon's way of thinking, there would
still be the unhappy spectacle of thousands of help-
lessly-learned young men struggling for one vacant
post. M. Le Bon tells us that a thousand more men
are turned out of the French Universities every year
than there are posts to be filled. 1 These are all men
who cannot afford to marry until they get work to
do, and the girls they would have married, under
more favourable conditions, are obliged to look for
work too ; their fathers can no longer afford to keep
idle daughters at home. The competition between
women who content themselves with work that
requires little or no intellectual study is quite as keen,
though M. Turgeon ignores the fact, and the number
of competitors in that field is infinitely greater. Just
as young men are being turned out of the Universities
without a definite prospect of work, so are more and
more young girls without prospect of either marriage
or occupation.

Wikmark reminds us that in Sweden right up to
the forties of the last century there was plenty of
work for the unmarried girl to do in her parent's
home. Brandy was distilled in the middle-class
household, soap was manufactured, and vinegar
prepared by the burger's wife and daughters. Weav-

1 " Psychologic du Socialisme."

192 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

ing, knitting and sewing were all done at home.
Machinery has now taken away the occupation of the
middle-class woman, and left her free to go out into the
world and compete with man. Added to this there
is a growing excess in the number of women over
that of the men in the middle classes of Europe.

Swedish sympathisers have taken perhaps the
boldest step of any, to open new fields of activity to
woman ; they have started women in such occupa-
tions as watch-making and newspaper editing and
agriculture, but we are told that so far their efforts
have met with no very encouraging success ; woman
is just as much man's rival in these occupations as
she is in the Universities. In Sweden the Woman
Movement began with the women of the upper
classes. It was in full swing, according to Wikmark, 1
in 1859, though it did not receive public acknowledg-
ment till 1884. It differed from the Woman Move-
ments in England and Germany in being a movement
more of the aristocracy than of the bourgeoisie, and
one which had its roots in the eighteenth century
the century in which the ladies of the aristocracy
wielded so immense an influence on art and litera-
ture. Later when, owing to the introduction of
machinery, the Woman Movement of the lower
classes came into being, the immense gulf between
the two was bridged over by philanthropy. The
Woman Movement among the proletariat of Sweden
is, as in other countries, a far simpler problem, it is
a question of practical politics. No one in any land
has ever stood in the way of the woman of the lower

1 Dr Elon Wikmark, " Die Frauenfrage," 1905.

193

classes and told her that she was invading man's
province when she attempted to carry heavy burdens,
to lay bricks, or to do any work that would naturally
fall to the men of her rank in life ; except it be in
such activities as mining or soldiering, she has never
had to fight her way into any work by other means
than that of underselling her labour. While the
woman movement among the lower classes is a
result of the introduction of machinery, that among
the higher class is a result, not only of the introduc-
tion of machinery, but also of the preponderance of
women over men. Machinery has also taken away the
work of the middle-class woman, and the growing
preponderance of women over men in that class has
lessened the chance of the woman who has no home
of getting one by means of marriage.

Socialism and Anarchism, each in its own way,
are promising emancipation to women of every class,
and happiness unalloyed to every human being. The
evolution of the new society has already begun, we are
told, and the spirit of solidarity which manifests itself
in the mob, and the growing dread of public opinion,
are expected to be more powerful to check the trans-
gressor than all our paraphernalia for enforcing the law.

Anarchists distinctly state that they do not expect
to wipe out all our social evils by means of a sudden
and violent revolution, or by laying the axe at the
root of every cause of evil on one particular day in
the history of the human race. They hope to bring
about a quiet and peaceful evolution from the exist-
ing state of things to a better and happier one, by a
quiet propaganda, and by gentle but persistent war

194

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

against all our property, customs, habits and prejudices,
till they disappear one by one, leaving us free to adopt
a healthier and happier mode of life. This sounds
very plausible, and will doubtless meet with the
full approval of many who have the good of
society at heart, so long as they have no property and
no attack is made upon their own pet customs, habits
and prejudices.

We are reminded rather unpleasantly by those

who plead in favour of Anarchism that in the present

state of society numbers of women are regularly sold

to men in every class of society independently of their

own choice in the matter. In barbaric societies the

sale is direct, but in civilized countries it is indirect,

and takes the name of marriage or prostitution. 1

In France the young girl of the upper classes is

delivered over to a man for whom she cannot possibly

feel the least affection ; she is, oftener than not, a

victim led to the sacrifice. And when two young

people do fall in love with each other are they not

victimised by the cruelty of our conventions ? The

expensive show of the wedding ceremony, the necessity

of a honeymoon, are not these a spectacle to frighten

a modest young man from marriage? When the

young woman who has been sold in a mariage de

convenance eventually meets with one whom she can

love, divorce is made impossible for her by her religion

and by custom. Is it surprising that she so frequently

steps off the right path ? Divorce, we are reminded,

is difficult in every country, it is almost impossible in

some, and it is always more or less a matter of means,

1 J. Novikow,

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 195

and consequently inaccessible to ninety-nine out of
a hundred among the poorer classes. Anarchism
insists upon it that if a woman does not love her
husband but loves another in his place, she has a
right to leave her husband. Such a suggestion will
appear shocking to many pious minds, but surely it
is equally shocking to chain a woman for life to a
man who himself longs to get rid of her and to whom
her parents married her before she was old enough
to know what marriage meant ? Society has justice
on its side when it punishes a woman who trans-
gresses against the established order of things, but
is it equally so when it enforces a child marriage and
then casts obloquy and shame on the woman who
honestly and bravely demands that a loveless union
may be dissolved in order that a happier one may be
contracted ?

Those very persons who are never tired of pro-
claiming that motherhood is the only form of
perfect womanhood are the very ones who heap
shame upon the mother who, far more sinned
against than sinning, has no husband to support
herself and her unhappy little one. Are these
good people in no way to blame for the fact that
infanticide is the commonest crime among girls of
the lower classes all over Europe? Turning to
women of the higher classes, Anarchism points
out that these, though not now shut up in harems,
are still, married or single, unable to enjoy a
tenth part of the liberty necessary to a healthy
and happy existence. Anarchism forgets, how-
ever, that the chief reason against woman's en-

196 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

joyment of complete liberty in the streets is the con-
tinued brutality of the scum of the male sex ; her
restriction is here sometimes a result of necessity
rather than one of convention. There are streets in
Paris and London where it is unadvisable even for a
strong man to venture unprotected.

Then comes the question of freedom with regard
to woman's education. " There is not yet a single
country in Europe," says M. Novikow, "where all
the educational institutions are open to both
sexes." There is not yet a single country where
woman is considered as a human being possess-
ing the full rights of a human being. Were there
one such country, the question as to whether one
school or another should be open to women would
never arise. In some civilized countries it is still
impossible for the ordinary woman to obtain higher
education, and in others, where it is possible, she
is still greatly harassed by the opposition of public
opinion and public prejudice.

" Every woman," says Anarchy, " should have
the full control of her own property and also of
her house. She has it now in France as well
as in England and America, but nowhere else !
Catholicism is, as we have seen, also raising her voice
for this reform. Anarchism would like to see all
women allowed to serve as witnesses before the
law ; it would like to see women sitting on the
juries of England ; it argues that the most elemen-
tary idea of equity demands that half of every
jury should be composed of women, especially
when "the crime to be considered is one which

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 197

has to do with both sexes. "Justice," cries M.
Novikow, "is well known to limp in these cases.
The men are often scandalously acquitted while
the women are treated with the greatest severity."
And these are cases where, if women formed part
of the jury, the man too would have stricter justice
meted out to him.

Anarchism would have women paid the same
salaries as the men. M. Novikow gives a recent
case of a Russian girl who, when detected working
at a factory in the dress of a man, explained that
she had found that by means of that disguise she
could earn three times as much for the same work
as when dressed as a woman. It is really sur-
prising when we come to think of it, that such
cases do not occur more frequently. When, as
often happens, a woman has to support several
children and an invalid husband by her earnings
it seems hard indeed that her sex alone should be
sufficient to disqualify her from receiving a man's
wages. Civil and political rights ought never to
be based on sex, but always on capacity, say the
Anarchists. "A woman ought to have the right
to become prime minister if she has the talents
necessary for the fulfilment of that function." 1
Anarchism fights for the individual independently
of sex, and it urges that when a woman is refused
a high post merely on account of her sex, her
dignity receives a cruel wound, and nothing is more
probable than that she will be filled with hatred
and bitterness as a consequence of such treatment.

1 M. Novikow.

198

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

M. Novikow considers woman not only patriotic,
but more of a patriot than man ; he sees in her
a most necessary aid to the peaceful conquest of
one people by another, in the gradual assimilation
of one nation to another, and while he attributes
the widespread power of France during the
eighteenth century to the influence of its women,
he points to the political weakness of Turkey as
a direct result of the seclusion and subjection of
the Turkish woman.

Anarchism considers it a cruel brutality to shut
woman out of political life. " We are forcing her
to live in a species of mental isolation. What
greater injury can we inflict upon a human being?
At present, while woman is held outside the citadel,
she looks on herself as an inferior creature, and
abandons herself to stagnation of thought. And
men too are quite willing that she should remain
at this inferior level, but once give her political
rights, and men will immediately perceive the
necessity of instructing her. ... In refusing
political rights to women we are arresting their
intellectual development."

Any wronged husband in France has a right
to put his wife to death without the least fear
of the law of the land. If French women once
obtained the franchise there is no doubt that
they would put a stop to this hideous injus-
tice; and Anarchism thinks they would be right
to use their power in that direction, for it cannot
see why the wife should not have the same right
as the husband. " True," it cries, " that a woman

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 199

by infidelity may introduce illegitimate inmates
into the family and enable spurious heirs to rob
the lawful ones of property and wealth, but may
not a man by his infidelity introduce illegitimate
inmates into other families and ruin their happi-
ness and prosperity quite as thoroughly ? " * Is
the property of the rich so much more sacred
than the honour of the poor?

"Many women," says M. Novikow, "are perfect
dolls, and one constantly asks oneself if such
creatures can have souls." But then he recollects
that it is not nature but man himself who has
turned these women into dolls. If one woman
were a doll by nature, would it not necessarily
follow that all of them would be dolls unless in-
deed the dollish character be an individual trait ?
Anarchism has heard good Protestants and Catholics
echo and re-echo the parrot-cry that if woman were
not intellectually inferior to man there would have
been, before this, examples of female genius equal
to that of man. "How strange," said one of
them, 2 " that there has never been a female Shake-
speare ! " " How remarkable," said another, " that
there has never been a female Beethoven ! " " And
how truly surprising," cried a third, "that there
has never been a female Burns, for Burns enjoyed
less educational advantages than the average woman !
And to be a Burns was open to every woman ! "
Anarchism has heard all these sage ejaculations and
it answers them by asking the question, " If all these

1 M. Jean Grave. 2 Edmund Gosse.

2OO

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

men you mention had been brought up in harems
what would have become of their genius ? " What
respectable girl of the lower classes in England or
any other civilized country has ever enjoyed the
liberty of action that was allowed to Burns? And
what girl, with a past like that of Burns, would
have had the drawing-rooms of the rich thrown
open to her and had her failings overlooked on
account of her genius? Would not the woman
who started out to become a female Burns require
infinitely more courage than Burns himself ever
required ? All who have studied the question with-
out prejudice are perfectly aware that the difficulties
which would lie before a female genius attempting
to rise from the lower classes of society are in-
finitely greater than those which oppose the ad-
vancement of a male genius.

The parrot-cries of the Anarchist and the Socialist
are often calculated to shock sensitive ears, but
they have at least the advantage of virility, which
many of ours have not ; their cries are raised by
men whose earnest wish it is to improve society ;
ours, for the most part, are raised by men who
would cry " peace " where there is no peace, and
whose one aim is to keep woman where she is.

CHAPTER XI

THE WORKING-WOMAN

OOCIALISTS and Anarchists are like the rest
Vv3 of the world in one respect at least, they see
their own side of the question more clearly than they
do any other. Those of them who have risen from
the ranks through unspeakable hardship, toil and
privation have much to excuse them for the one-
sidedness of their views, while their lack of education
is often a sufficient excuse for their limited horizons.
Education is like a telescope, it enables us to see a
great distance, but only on condition that we look
through the right end ; the cultured man who,
having become embittered by failure and the injustice
of his fellows, persists in looking through the wrong
end, sees less clearly than the simple peasant who
has nothing to depend on but the naked eye. It
is easier to point out a social evil than it is to point
out a safe and effectual remedy ; the sufferings of the
working-classes in all civilized lands during the last
hundred years are in themselves a fact sufficiently
terrible to account for the existence of the extremist
views of the Socialist and even of the Social-anarchist ;
many of which, however, are as impossible as they are
unreasonable.

Much has been done, and much is being done

202

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

in all countries, to alleviate the distressed condition
of factory-workers, but such is the wretched
position of hundreds of thousands of working
men, women, and children to-day, that a
true book could be written about their miseries
which, without any exaggeration, would read
like a description of hell itself. English Socialists
appear to think that capital, or the capitalist,
they are not quite sure which, is really the
devil himself in disguise. Hence the ferocity
of their attacks, and the venom of the epithets
they hurl at their supposed enemy. The Social
Democrats of Germany are more shrewd, they know
that, at least for the present, the world could not
get on without the capitalist, so they confine their
attacks to an assault upon capitalism, and concentrate
their forces upon an abstract term. One result of
the efforts of English Socialists is that many capit-
alists are already finding themselves compelled to close
their factories, and turn thousands of men out of
work because those factories have not only ceased
to bring in profit but are actually costing money.

High rates, introduced by good men who have the
welfare of the poor very much at heart, are closing
the factory door upon the workman and swelling
the ranks of the unemployed. English capital is
taking unto itself wings and fleeing to other climes.

English Socialists, true to our national character,
are illogical ; they rave at the injustice of letting the
illegitimate child suffer for the sins of his parents,
but they have no more compunction in ruining
those who, by the chance of birth, have been brought

THE WORKING- WOMAN 203

up in the lap of luxury and refinement than the mobs
which, at the beginning of the last century, caused
some of the most ingenious inventors of our factory
machinery to die in poverty. They have right on
their side when they fight for improvements of the
lot of the servant girl, but are they justified in going to
the extreme of ignoring the woes of their increasingly
anxious and careworn mistresses ? Would England
really be better off without a bourgeoisie?

The lot of the working-woman has of late been
studied and examined in a way that it has never been
before, by philanthropists of every religious creed
and by politicians of every party. There are people
who wish to better her condition independently, and
in spite of, the classes above her ; there are others
who wish to do so by means of these ; while there are
others again who wish to accomplish the same end
on behalf of the upper classes, as much as on behalf
of the poor women themselves. The kind of remedy
proposed almost invariably bears the stamp of the
proposer's point of view. The student who really
wishes to reach the true solution of this great
problem should examine without prejudice each
individual remedy, and make an honest effort to look
at the evil to be removed from the point of view from
which the proposer of that remedy approached it.
Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Nonconformists,
Jews, Anarchists, Social Democrats, Christian
Socialists, all have remedies to suggest for the
alleviation of the miserable lot of the working-woman,
and for the preservation of the family. German,
French, English, Belgian, Russian, Austrian, Swiss,

204 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

Italian, Scandinavian and American writers have
published their views on the subject.

One of the truest well-wishers and one of the
most sedulous workers on their behalf is Frau Lily
Braun, as her able work sufficiently testifies. 1 Yet
her views are by no means those of the majority.
This writer appears to look upon herself in the light
of a social-politician, but further than that, her
writings give no hint as to her religious faith or her
adhesion to any particular party ; and as I propose
to put a few of her views before my readers, I am
glad to know nothing more about her, that my
treatment of her opinions may be impartial and
absolutely unbiased. I have myself had many
favourable opportunities of inspecting factory work
and home industries in various countries, particularly
in Russia, a country, by the way, of which the writer
in question tells us very little, and I agree heartily
with Frau Lily Braun when she says that the develop-
ment of women's work through the introduction of
machinery, in spite of all its accompanying evils, is
one great step towards the emancipation of the female
sex. Her views on the vexed question of married
women in factories are of particular interest ; she
is fully alive to the disadvantages of which their
presence in the factory is the direct cause, but she
is convinced that every fresh restriction made by
law on their behalf will increase rather than lessen
those disadvantages. Married women are con-
tent to work for low pay because their aim is
simply to add to what their husbands make, just as

1 "DieFrauenfrage."

THE WORKING- WOMAN 205

the young girls who live with their parents are
content with low pay, because their earnings have
only to pay for part of their expenses and not the
whole ; clearly then the young girl and the married
woman are making the path of the single woman
who has to depend on her earnings for her entire
support and often for that of an aged parent as well,
very hard indeed. The statistics gathered from
many countries show that thousands of such women
are still being paid for their work less than it costs
them to live, and are therefore compelled to try and
make up their incomes by overwork, by denying
themselves necessary food, by living in unhealthy
rooms, and, last but not least, by prostitution.

The presence of the married woman in the factory
is both the cause and result of the lowness of her
husband's wages ; he is no longer regarded as the
only bread-winner of the family, and the fact militates
against an increase in his wages; wherever, too,
women work in large numbers in factories the men's
wages are exceptionally low. All the trades which
give high wages are a monopoly of the male sex.
Yet Frau Lily Braun is convinced that the increase
of married women-workers in factories is rather a
sign of their mental and spiritual development than
of their deterioration. In most cases it is a wish to
benefit their little ones that makes them go out to
work, a wish to add a little brightness and comfort
to the miserable home. It is not their working that
is bad, but the conditions under which they work.
Women are gradually being shut out of those
factories where the work is liable to have poisonous

206 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

or injurious effects, and that is well, but how much
better it would be if the men could also be shielded
from these dangers. Those who have the welfare
of the coming generation at heart should care for
the health of the fathers as well as for that of the
mothers. If the white lead glaze on our porcelain
is injurious to the factory-worker, would it not be
better for us to content ourselves with porcelain
that is not glazed at all? I, for my part, have never
been able to see why English ladies should hesitate
about wearing birds in their hats, while they can
take pleasure in the beautiful Venetian glass, the
manufacture of which kills off the factory-workers
in their prime. Surely the life of a human being is
of more value than that of a bird !

Frau Braun is not alone when she considers that all
forms of needlework in excess are particularly injurious
to woman. Sedentary work which requires little or no
concentration and allows the thoughts to wander aim-
lessly has a benumbing effect on the intellect, there-
fore machinery is doing her a good turn in taking that
occupation more and more out of her hands. The
factory girl who has to superintend machinery in
the factory has to give it a far larger amount of
attention than she gave to her needlework in the old
days, and if only this were accompanied by the same
proportion of bodily and mental exertion that the
men get, woman's lot would indeed be improved.
Seventy years ago Harriet Martineau expressed her
surprise that men should have so little to say about
the evil effects of needlework upon woman's health,
while they had so much to say about the evils that

THE WORKING-WOMAN 207

would result from giving her a better education.
Needlework is, without doubt, one of the direct
causes of the many failings characteristic of woman.
Our author is quite right when she urges that women
should be placed in surroundings where they can get
rid of their artificial qualities in order that the way
may be cleared for them to develop their natural
ones.

A fierce warfare is waged by Frau Braun against
all home industries against all work that the poor
do in their own homes or workshops for the pay of
the capitalists. She is very severe upon the good,
kind English ladies who wish to force the married
woman out of the factory and let her do work at
home instead. For the good of the public as well as
for the welfare of the poor, she urges them to drop
sentiment and look facts in the face. She reminds
them of the dangers that attend the public through
the spread of home industries, of the ways in which
garments and other articles manufactured in the
miserable homes can carry microbes and diseases of
every kind into the homes of the rich. Then she
looks at it from the other side and shows us how the
poor who work at home are cutting their neighbours'
throats, as it were, by working for too low a
remuneration and thus cheapening the labour of
those who work in the factories. The poor woman
who formerly managed to knit one pair of socks in a
day can now turn out twelve pairs by means of a
portable knitting machine ; she does not know the
value of her work and is unable to demand a proper
remuneration. Knitting and sewing machines are

208 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

forcing their way into the attics and the cellars of
large towns, and even into the cottages far away in
the country. Every machine that human hand can
work is bought, hired or paid for by instalments.
Machines of every description whiz in the miserable
homes of the slaves of capital ; you see the women
bent double over them even among the mountains of
Switzerland, and blooming little girls of the Swiss
villages are being turned into flat-breasted pale
workers, hardly to be distinguished from the factory-
workers of the towns. Here, I do not altogether agree
with Frau Lily Braun, for I have seen that the life of
Swiss children is very hard even without the introduc-
tion of machines. The heavy weights they carry at a
tender age and the hard bodily work that falls to their
lot are also factors in making them look like grown up
people before they have reached their teens. I once
travelled on a Lake steamer with a party of Swiss
Sunday school children from one of the most beauti-
ful districts, who were going on their annual summer
treat ; not one of them had the face of a child ; there
was an expressionless, careworn look on every little
face, and it made me sad to look at them. What
use had the glorious mountain air and the exquisite
scenery been to these little ones? They were not
children, but little old men and women, wearied with
the cares of life. In some Cantons the women work
in the fields dressed like men and, when seen thus
with pipe in mouth, are apt to be mistaken for men. 1
We hear a great deal in these days about taking the

1 In the north-west provinces of Spain most of the agricultural work
is done by women. See chapter xiii.

THE WORKING- WOMAN 209

people "back to the land," as though that were a
sure method of curing all their ills, but my own
observation, in many European countries, of those
who have never left the land, leads me to fear that
the remedy is a vain one, at least during the present
state of society. There is a resigned hopelessness
about the lives of the country poor, which is quite as
painful in its way as that of those in the cities. I do
not speak of model villages under the superintendence
of rich philanthropists, but of the real country as it is
in our day. It is the one wish of the young people
in the most distant parts of our island to get away
from the stagnation of life in the country. A poor
woman's ambition for her little daughters is often that
they shall go to work in a town ; even those families
who appear to have a comparatively happy lot, whose
homesteads embrace, say, a couple of cows, and a
little farmyard of chickens and pigs, are full of the
same desire. In all of them there is a restless longing
for something different, and they impart their feelings
to me without reserve.

Then too there are the fisher- folk, whose lot in every
country is quite as hard as that of the factory- worker,
though the former are more resigned to their circum-
stances. A friend who visited the Faroe Islands in
August 1906, has furnished me with the following
interesting particulars about the wives of the Danish
fishermen there. " The women are, physically, not
nearly so fine as the men, and their life, mostly spent
indoors in peat smoke, cannot be healthy. They are
all very religious, but it is the resignation of religion
which seems most to appeal to them. When one
o

210 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

talks to them there is a kind of hopelessness
as regards storms, falls from precipices, and
epidemics, which seems to amount to fatalism. It
can only be the very strong who survive here, for,
quite apart from the hardships to which all are
exposed, the absolute ignorance of the laws of health
is appalling. Every winter on the island of Baajs
(where I have been living with a peasant family)
there is an outbreak of diphtheria, and no wonder
when one sees the arrangements for drinking water
and smells the ditches and streams that run past the
very doors. And they related to me a singular fact,
that if a stranger is put into a bed recently vacated
by a scarlet-fever patient he very often takes that
disease ! Then, as the doctor costs money, they
usually send for a ' quack,' an old man of eighty-
four, who considers himself very enlightened, because,
after visiting numbers of infectious cases, he hangs up
his infected clothing in an outhouse that serves as
a larder among all the food ! The women here
never attain their ' legal majority ' ; I mean no
woman of any age, single, married or widow, can
dispose of her capital without the consent of the men
who act as ' guardians.' . . . They are certainly marvel-
lously hard-working and strikingly contented ; con-
tentment and resignation seem to be the two points
in their religion that appeal most to the women.
They all do needlework beautifully, knit as they walk
along, carry weights on their backs, look after the
cows, and cook better than British labourers' wives :
they make all their husbands' clothes and those of
their numberless children, and can often pull an oar

THE WORKING-WOMAN 211

in a heavy sea. In fact their accomplishments
amaze one. Many women of sixty or sixty-two
have not a grey hair in their heads, possibly
because they never wear a hat. ... It is curious
to watch the poorest of the women spreading out
split cod-fish to dry : they seldom seem to speak,
and then apparently it is only a word about their
work, whereas the men, as soon as they begin to
row, chatter and talk incessantly, one can hear them
from the shore. The women do not seem to have
the energy to joke."

My friend also informs me that when a guest dines
at a man's house his women-folk never think of
sitting down to dinner with him, but stand, even if
they are old women. It is agreed by all the more
intelligent spirits of the island that three-fourths of
the wrecks in that part are due to the drunkenness
of the men, who are all of them fishermen more or
less. My friend went through the experience of a
hurricane, and described it as truly awe-inspiring to
see the faces of the poor women as they crawled
forth in their shawls to look out at the sea as soon as
the wind would allow them to stand. There were some
nine hundred men away with a fishing fleet. My cor-
respondent concluded her letter with the information
that some time ago there was a very slight agitation
for Woman Suffrage on the Faroe Islands, or rather
an attempt to arouse interest in the question, " but,"
she added, "every woman here to whom I have
mentioned this subject is absolutely opposed to the
idea." It is clear that the women of the Faroe
Islands are mentally several stages behind the

212

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

country women of England, and there is a still
greater gap between their stage of mental develop-
ment and that of the ordinary English or German
factory girl. The women of the Faroe Islands are
still in that state of irresponsible semi-consciousness
which, while it lasts, precludes all wish for improve-
ment or progress ; they are conscious of a relative,
but not of their own individual, personality, and thus
leave all the thinking to their men folk. It is
not capitalism that has arrested their development,
but needlework ; and peat smoke too may have
had something to do with their objection to the
franchise.

Frau Lily Braun is a staunch enemy of capitalism ;
she is confident that as long as human motor power
is cheaper for the enterpriser than steam or electricity,
so long will he encourage home-industry the bastard
child of the factory, he will encourage it till it out-
grows its own parent. Shops for the sale of ready-
made clothing have sprung up since the middle of the
nineteenth century like mushrooms in the night ;
they continually undersell one another by means of
the sweated home industries, without which they
could not exist. Capital makes no distinction
between the worker and the machine, and is ever
ready to grind a little more profit out of the former
by making its employees buy the necessaries of
life at its own shops and at its own price,
or by paying labour with goods instead of with
money. This is what we in England call the
" truck system."

Capital cannot dispense with the work of women

THE WORKING-WOMAN 213

in its factories as they are at present organised ; it
cannot dispense even with the work of the married
woman ; in many cases it has been found that the
work of married women is more reliable than that
of the unmarried. The former put more heart into
their work and get through it more steadily and
become more skilled than the latter, by whom it is
looked upon simply as temporary occupation to fill
up the time before marriage. Frau Braun does not
suggest for a moment that any woman should be
kept out of the factories, but she insists upon it that
home-industries should be put a stop to, not by laws
cruel in their suddenness, but by a gradual system of
preventive laws based upon a definite plan, the first
step being to forbid all combinations of the home
with the workshop, and to make it illegal to give out
work to be done in the home. Special workshops
should be provided for the poor who now work in
their homes, and these in themselves would be a
great check to an evil which impedes social progress,
both physical and intellectual. This writer, though
evidently holding many views in common with the
Social Democrats of her country, is also at one with
some of the most ardent opponents of Socialism 1 in
her belief that the first aim of those who would help
the poor should be to help them to get rid of all
feeling of subjection, even to trade unions, by
inculcating self-respect and self reliance in place of
cringing servility. She points out with earnestness
how great is the harm done by philanthropic women
of the bourgeoisie, who, by force of religion and

1 See Le Bon, for instance,

214

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

custom have a fixed idea that philanthropic action,
such as visiting, and caring for the sick, giving money
to those who are in want, and taking them under
their protection, are the means by which the poor
are to be raised. These methods have the effect of
weakening the feeling of justice, both in the giver and
in the receiver, and blinding the latter to the truth
that every working human being has a right to the
means of existence. Our author is opposed in
particular to many of our English philanthropic
institutions, which, she says, encourage a baneful
feeling of subjection and dependence. She disagrees
with the views of the English Women's Federal
Association with regard to factory-workers, and says
that it was their ignorance of the needs of the poor
that led them to demand equal rights for both sexes.
She thinks that the Association in question has
been guided too much by the requirements of
individual women rather than by the actual needs
of the many. Democratic Socialism, according
to her, goes to the roots of an evil, while philan-
thropic women of the bourgeoisie^ especially in
England, are too much led by that which appeals to
their feelings. She insists again and again on the
fact that the cause of the working-woman is one of
class more than of sex ; and that every effort should
be made to unite the men and the women in a strong
pull and a long pull to better their own condition.
Separating the sexes into two forces will only make
them an easier prey to their common enemy. The
cause of the woman is the cause of the man (as I
have myself tried to show in my remarks on trade

THE WORKING- WOMAN 215

unions), and the cause of the parents is the cause of
the child.

Biologists talk much in these days about the
increasing sexual specialisation of higher social
development ; 1 and scientists are beginning to ponder
over the question how far feminising and masculinis-
ing should be allowed to continue unchecked. The
probability is that circumstances resulting from
irresistible changes in the conditions of life in all
classes will prove stronger than those who may wish
to check any particular line of development. Human
life shows no signs of conforming more closely to
biological principles than it has hitherto done, and
if increased sexual divergence be one of them we
may safely prophesy that it will have received many
a rude check before the first half of the twentieth
century is over. In this age of machinery and
factories there is a distinct tendency of the sexes to
approach one another both in the lower grades of
society and in the higher. The unused qualities of
the working-woman, as Frau Braun points out, are
beginning to be developed, she is exercising muscles
which have never before been brought into play, and
she is being taught, what woman has always so sadly
lacked, method. The physical powers of the working-
man are, on the contrary, less and less required in
proportion to the increasing perfection of machinery,
and not only his physical force, but even his mental
powers, are in less requisition, for the machines of
which the management formerly demanded some
skill are now many of them workable by the

1 See J. Lionel Taylor, "Aspects of Social Evolution," 1904.

2l6

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

unskilled. And if we examine a higher class of
society, that of the petite bourgeoisie, we find there no
signs of increased sexual divergence, on the contrary,
man's work and woman's work are now seldom
to be distinguished from one another, and there
is less distinction still between their tastes and
pastimes.

Frau Braun does not believe that any real better-
ment of the condition of the men can result from
societies founded under the auspices of the churches,
with the aim of bringing about more amicable
relations between capital and labour. She looks
upon this class of philanthropy as a delusion and
a snare, and has noted how such societies always
decide everything in a way most favourable to the
employer, 1 the persons for whose benefit these
societies are ostensibly formed, that is the employees,
never daring to utter an opinion contrary to those
expressed by their employers. A society to pro-
mote kindlier feelings between mistresses and their
lady-helps or " Frauleins " was recently founded
in Berlin, but the lady-helps, we are informed,
have not a word to say as to its management,
resolutions being passed even in their absence !
A Christian society for the organising of home-
work in the same city was started in 1899, but
according to Frau Braun, it threatens to run to
pure philanthropy and turn the proletariat into
serfs.

Frau Lily Braun has also given much careful

1 I have heard the same complaint in Spain, where priests are often
the presidents of clubs for working-men.

THE WORKING- WOMAN 217

study to the servant question, and here again her
attitude is one of defiance towards the employer.
She tells us that much was said in Germany about
the need for the improvement of the servant as
early as the beginning of the nineteenth century,
but it was always for the sake of the masters and
mistresses, rather than for the direct good of the
servants themselves ; she quotes Matilda Weaver,
who wrote as late as 1886, that the badness of the
servant was due to their not having been properly
trained, and says that this opinion had the direful
effect of making the employers more strict, and the
servant's life more miserable, than before. Frau
Braun urges that there are psychological, economical
and moral reasons quite strong enough to account
for the present scarcity of good servants, but she
does not appear to realise that the feeling of caste
is stronger, if anything, among the working classes
than it is in the higher grades of society, and that
there are classes within classes which are at first
absolutely bewildering to an outsider. Germany
has long been universally recognised as the country
of caste par excellence, but there is no caste more
marked in the world than that of the Parisian
artisan, or that of the English factory girl. A
young woman whose relations work in a factory
loses caste if she becomes a domestic servant. I
know cases where the old companions of such a
girl at once drop the title of " Miss," and speak
of her by her Christian name. Factory girls in
England speak of one another as " ladies," and even
a kitchen-maid will announce to her mistress the

218 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

arrival of a charwoman with the words " the lady
has come, ma'am," but no factory girl looks upon
a domestic servant as a lady. The caste feeling
among factory-workers themselves is very strong,
and will no doubt eventually raise obstacles to the
levelling-up scheme of Socialism. A girl in a
London pencil factory, who was threatened with
consumption of the throat, caused by the pencil dust,
refused point-blank to accept a comfortable situation
as a domestic servant, which I had found for her
with some difficulty, because " it would break
mother's heart if I went into service." Yet the
doctor had warned her that she was risking her
life.

The finery of the English factory-girl is purely
a means to an end. It invariably disappears at
her marriage, sometimes more completely than the
husband would wish. During the South African
War a case came under my immediate notice.
The marriage, to a respectable young fellow, of a
good-looking factory-girl whose dainty appearance
had been the envy of many of her companions was
the case in point. Once the marriage ceremony
over, all daintiness disappeared, and the poor
husband learned to his bitter disappointment that
he had married a slut. After a baby had appeared
on the scene, it and its mother and the home pre-
sented such a miserable appearance that at length
the husband, in a fit of despair, offered his services
for South Africa. Soon after he got out there
his regiment was broken up, and he was at liberty
to return, but the thought of that wretched home

THE WORKING- WOMAN 219

was too much for him, so he got work out there
and did not return. There is no danger here of
generalising from the particular or even from the
average, as all who have worked among factory-girls
can testify.

CHAPTER XII

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

THE average English girl's first object in choosing
a profession is to make money. The idea
that every woman who teaches children does so
out of a special fondness for the little ones is
absurd, as absurd as the idea that every woman
who becomes a hospital nurse does so out of
sympathy with the sick. The career of many a
daughter in these days is decided upon by her
parents entirely with regard to the cheapness of
the training required and the amount of time that
will have to be devoted to it. When a girl shows
no particular talent or inclination for one pursuit
more than another she is not likely to evince any
particular enthusiasm in the calling chosen for her.
On the other hand many girls who have a special
bent are unable to follow it on account of the cost,
and when the training is over they know there will
come the anxious time of looking for a post. There
are still very few professions in which a woman can
expect to make as much money as a man would
do in her place. In the teaching profession, as well
as in almost every other, the difference between
salaries of male and female teachers is very marked
in all European countries, and even in America. In

220

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 221

Sweden the difference is that of one-half. Yet
teaching is a profession that has always been open
to women.

Many leaders of the woman movement firmly
believe that the opposition that men have shown,
and still show, to women entering the liberal
professions is really a form of their "bitter cry"
forced from them by the keen competition that
already existed among themselves. If this be true,
we can easily understand why Socialists and
Anarchists have no objection to seeing women
occupy posts that were formerly open only to men.
Socialist and Anarchist propagandists are for the
most part people who despair of being able to get
posts for themselves; they have clearly less reason
to fear the rivalry of women.

Those who are anxious that women should remain
"womanly," and be satisfied with womanly occu-
pations, overlook the fact that the more womanly
the work the worse the pay and the more grinding
and often humiliating the task. Where the parents
have spent all their available funds on their sons, the
daughters must of necessity choose a line of work
that requires little skill and short training, and this
means that they will have to work hard and get
little pay for the rest of their lives unless they chance
to marry. Yet how many families do we see around
us where there is not enough money forthcoming
even to give the sons a profession, and where the
brothers are forced to begin life as office boys and
work their way up as city clerks ! Unless these
are specially gifted with energy and push, their future

222

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

is anything but promising ; years and years of toil
are before them and one fortnight's holiday in
twelve months. Thousands of them can never hope
to make more than three hundred a year, and what
prospects have these of ever being able to marry
a girl of their own rank and support a family.
Their sisters' lot is hard, but not harder than theirs.

There is nothing of promise for a young man to
do in London in these days, unless he has powerful
influence to back him or a father or an uncle who
can take him into a business of some kind. The
youths who courageously venture forth to try a new
sphere are the ones who succeed, not the ones who
stay at home and plod. Many feminists are apt
to forget in their enthusiastic efforts to help the
young woman, that the young man's difficulties have
increased during the last few decades quite as
rapidly as hers.

At first sight the woman movement among the
middle classes seems to be entirely a fight of the one
sex for the position and privileges of the other, an
attempt on the part of woman to occupy man's sphere
as well as her own, but if we look into the matter
it becomes evident that the struggle for existence in
our congested cities is growing desperate for the men
as well as for the women ; man is, moreover, as much
hampered by the unsatisfactory position of women
as she is herself. The father who finds his health
failing and his grown-up daughters unmarried and
unprovided for is not the person who will prevent
their taking up the work for which they are found to
be most fitted simply because it is less womanly

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 223

than another. The brother who, having his own
wife and family to work for, finds himself unable to
support his unmarried and homeless sisters, is not
the man to refuse to let them take up the work
for which they are best adapted.

Men may oppose woman's progress collectively,
but they are no longer found opposing her in-
dividually, the time for that is past. If women
would only keep this important fact before them
I believe they would make their own path of
progress far easier. It is less necessary to organise
the middle-class woman into a force that shall
resist the middle-class man, than it is to show the
men that the women's interests are theirs too.
Macaulay went to India in order that his sisters
might not have to be governesses. But in these
days of competition and rivalry, the average bachelor
brother cannot support his sister even if he does
go to India. The utmost he can usually do is to
take her out there with him, and thus give her a
better chance of finding a husband than she would
get if she remained behind in England ; and many a
sister who is taken out to India returns to England
after her brother's marriage without having bettered
her own condition. Surely it would be less risky for
her to learn a trade !

One reason why young men and young women
continue to press towards the universities in spite
of the fact that working for a degree leads to dis-
appointment and breaks down health in so many
cases, is that the young people have the laudable
wish to better their position socially, and the gaining

224

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

of a university degree seems a great help in this
direction. Next to that of wealth the chief class
distinction in America is that of college and non-
college, and though this distinction is not the chief
one in European countries it plays a very prominent
part. A friend writing to me from an American
university town assures me that where the interests
and culture are the same the feeling of class prejudice
against the poor grows less and less. I hardly think
there is another civilized country of which that can be
said, except it be democratic Norway, but that little
country, having become once more monarchical, will
probably soon go the same way as the rest. Sweden,
like Germany, is a land of strong class prejudice, and
the Swedish woman, however " advanced," takes the
rank of her father or husband, even if her profession
be one that would give her a higher rank than that
of her father, but because of her sex it cannot raise
her as it would have raised her brother. She shares
this sex disability with the women of most civilized
countries.

English women are in the habit of flattering them-
selves on their superior status and privileges, but my
travels in many climes have shown me that this
feeling of satisfaction enjoyed by so many of my
countrywomen is the result of an insular delusion.
To begin with, the position of woman in the United
States is infinitely more enviable. In no country
does woman as a sex meet with more respect,
except perhaps it be in Russia. In America,
woman is, generally speaking, a queen, and man
her devoted subject. In Russia man and woman

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 225

are comrades ; in England man is the master. I
would not, however, infer that in England man
has the best of it ; for to be a master or a mistress
does not necessarily mean that your servant or
slave is unselfishly devoted to your interests. There
are ways in which a slave can twist a weak master
round his little finger, and there are ways in which
a servant can torment a mistress; there are ways,
too, in which a subject may be guilty of treason
towards a sovereign, and even comrades may betray
one another's confidence. " It is in vain for a man
to be born fortunate," said Dacier, "if he is not
fortunate in his marriage."

The welfare and happiness of the two sexes are
bound up together, and everything that affects the
one affects the other. The true philosopher knows
this, for he can see beneath the surface. But in
these pressing times philosophers are rare, and those
who talk the loudest and express their views with
the greatest vehemence, though they do not pass
their days in a state of mental apathy, are still
often far from being philosophers ; they are too
often persons who content themselves with floating
on the top of a question without attempting to
fathom its real depth. Such people are caught by
the parrot-cries of the first party with which they
come in contact ; and once their opinion is formed
on a subject, men, as well as women, are very loath
to change it, whereas in reality, an opinion, as Milton
observed, is but knowledge in the making.

Those men who think that woman should be
kept where she is, at any cost, who fear that her
p

226

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

zeal for her own development will lead her,
unchecked by man, to act in direct contradiction
to the dictates of her nature, are strange scientists,
and what is more, they are strangely blind to their
own interests. They are, we may safely say, in
every case, men whose women-folk have not been
allowed free scope for natural development, they
are men who have never had the opportunity of
studying the effects of true emancipation upon a
woman's nature. They are the husbands and
brothers of women who have grown up in the chains
of custom and prejudice, and who are too servile
even to wish for liberty. The only free women
of whom these men know anything at all
are the woman who imitates male habits and
male attire, and the courtesan. They naturally
shudder to break the chains of convention that
bind their wives and sisters, lest their beloved ones
should go the way of either of these ; they are,
above all, men whose women-folk are not obliged
to work.

It is the women-folk of such men as I have alluded
to above who are most opposed to any alteration
in the status of women. They are like birds who
have been hatched in cages, and who have never
tried their wings, nor been tempted by ambition
or necessity to wish to do so. If among their
acquaintances there is a woman who earns her
living, they take care to make apologies for her
behind her back, and hint very openly that their
friendly relations with her are actuated by a feeling
of pity. The simple fact that they can afford to be

227

idle while she cannot, is like a wide sea between
them and her, and they are conscious of their
immense superiority. Such women have not
sufficient mental stamina to hold opinions of
their own, their highest wish is to be like other
people ; many of them feel that philanthropy is
a safe outlet for their energies, and they rush into
it with fury, for the sake of passing the time in an
orthodox manner, and often for the opportunity it
affords for social advancement. If they are un-
married they will not willingly own that they have
ever heard of such a low topic as Woman's Suffrage.
When that vulgar subject is broached in their
presence they quickly explain that they know
nothing whatever about it. If they are young
widows they are vehement against all women
who wish for rights ; they will tell you with
angelic sweetness that it is Heaven's will that the
wife should ever be in subjection to her husband,
and that their reverence for the Scriptures prevents
them having any wish to alter the position which
Christianity has assigned to women ; they (the
young widows) will tell you with great and uncon-
cealed humility that woman is mentally, as
well as physically, man's inferior. Yes, in the
twentieth century there are, in England, thousands
of middle-class women who firmly and gladly believe
that anthropologists have proved that the normal
woman must ever remain man's intellectual inferior.
But this significant fact must be remembered ; they
are all women who have a man to stand between
them and the world, or who hope to find a man who

228 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

will do so in the near future. They are profoundly
conscious that the smallest suspicion of self-assertion
on their part might ruin their chance of success in
life, or, if they are matrons, that of their unmarried
daughters.

The women who are most hostile to freedom
are those who have staked their interests, or those
of their daughters, in the matrimonial market. The
English matron who desires to see her daughters
well married, is as vehement against woman's rights
as her daughters are themselves ; she will allow her
sons, while they are still at school, to talk in her
presence of the mental superiority of man, and will
actually assent when the youth asserts that woman
is an inferior being. u The most hopeless of our
opponents," say the leaders of woman's progress
in America, " is that large class of women whose
merits are not their own ; who have acquired some
influence in society, not by any noble thought they
have framed and uttered, not by any great deed,
but by the accident of having fathers and brothers,
or husbands, whose wealth has elevated them."
Themselves unused to any noble labour, either
physical or mental, they naturally dread the intro-
duction into society of a new element, which may
establish the necessity of their being themselves
energetic or efficient. To such women an intellectual
female is a monster. 1

Some have affirmed that all class prejudice is
woman's affair, and that it would cease to exist
but for her. If this be so the Socialists are wise

1 See "History of Woman's Suffrage in America."

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 229

to try and gain her over to their views. We
may confidently assert that no country, not even
America, is entirely free from caste. A lady who
has lived for many years in Australia told me that the
polite touching of the cap, and other small homages
of the English working classes, to the gentry, were
pleasing to her on her return, after experiencing for
so long the rough manners and unrefined ways of
colonials, but that her son, born in Australia, and
accustomed from his earliest years to colonial rough-
ness, found the little politenesses of the lower classes
in England painfully servile, he regarded them as a
sign of a lack of dignity in the English poor. Yet
even Australia and Canada are not free from class
prejudice. There are, of course, cases where the
female breadwinner making a great name for herself
in art, or literature, or medicine, is able to secure
a position in the world, a position that carries her
above class prejudice, and makes even princesses
glad to know her, but these are the exception. I
have already alluded to this subject in a previous
chapter, but have I dwelt with sufficient force upon
the fact that class prejudice is perhaps the greatest
enemy that women of the middle-classes have to
contend with ? It is this which drives them in shoals
to the Universities, it is this which makes delicate
girls overwork themselves and strain every nerve to
keep up appearances, and often choose occupations
for which they are entirely unfitted. If a young lady
who had a taste for fancy-work, coupled with a
capacity for business, could open a fancy-work bazaar
for the benefit of her own pocket, without the risk of

230

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

being shunned or pitied for ever after by all her
former friends, we should find that there would be
many such bazaars, and their success would be pro-
portionately as great as that of our Charity Bazaars
themselves. The very girls who help to make
Chanty Bazaars a success would be the most success-
ful, for they would turn their years of practice with a
needle to a good account.

Pity is always plentiful in cases where young ladies
of good social position are compelled to become
dressmakers, or milliners through family misfortune ;
but pity is galling to the sensitive soul, especially
when it comes from the companions of a woman's
former prosperity. Guilds for distressed gentle-folk
are all very well in their way, but the very fact that
these should be required is a testimony to the exist-
ence of class prejudice, and false pride, and above all
a testimony to the hide-bound views of those who are
blind because they fear to see.

English girls of the middle classes are not yet
thoroughly awake to the fact that they have before
them a choice of occupations which is very nearly as
wide as that which lies before their brothers. It
would be hard to name a dozen callings that are now
closed to the female sex. It is a sign of the way in
which initiative has awaked in women of recent years,
that we find them to-day engaged successfully in
almost every calling on the face of the earth. They
are earning their bread as civil-engineers, architects,
surveyors, agriculturists, sea-captains, pilots, musical
composers, band conductors, dramatists, poultry-
raisers, bee-keepers, horticulturists, steeple -jacks,

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 231

barristers, physicians, surgeons and even house
painters. In Berlin, of all places under the sun,
there are female house decorators ; they are said to
have shown themselves particularly successful in the
painting of artistic signboards which go far to
beautify the streets of the German capital ; these
ladies wear, while at their work, blouses and knicker-
bockers like those of their masculine colleagues, and
what is still more important they earn the same
wages. 1 In the United States there were, in 1904,
more than three thousand women preachers, one
thousand lawyers, more than seven thousand women
doctors, some seven hundred women dentists, nearly
a thousand women commercial travellers, four
hundred female electricians, forty-five lady chauffeurs,
and a fair sprinkling of female grooms, stone-
masons, tram - conductors, firemen, butchers and
jockeys. 2

Women have at last entered the financial world.
America can boast that it has at least one woman
engaged in business in Wall Street, a woman who
can boast of business capacity combined with beauty
of feature and elegance of form. Mrs Minnie M.
Folliette is meeting with success in that centre of
commercial activity in a line of work never before
attempted by a woman. Mrs Folliette's first business
enterprise was as a stock-broker in Cleveland, where
she frequently handled from eighteen to twenty
thousand shares a month. Desiring a larger field of
operations this lady went to New York and there

1 See "Almanack Feminist e," 1900.

2 See Ellen Key, " Ueber Liebe und Ehe," 1904.

232 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

collected information with regard to stocks. After
twelve years' study of the subject she has now set
up business with an office of her own and six
assistants. 1 Another American lady, Miss Louise E.
Hanck, who was admitted to the bar as an attorney
and counsellor -at -law, has preferred to turn her
attention to the practice of contractor and builder,
and with a record of having built some thirty com-
fortable and convenient houses for satisfied customers,
has now the honour of being the first woman to
be admitted to the Master Carpenters' Association.
Her story confirms the fact that women can be as
successful as men in this department. It was once
thought that no woman would ever choose the rail-
road as her sphere of usefulness, but now Miss Agnes
M. Mullen, who began her business career as a
typewriter in the General Passenger Agency Office
of the Monon route, has now permanent charge of its
advertising department, where she is highly valued
on account of her business acumen and her compre-
hensive grasp of railway business. Miss Eva A.
Weed is another of these enterprising American
women ; she holds the unique position of topo-
graphical draughtsman in the department of Taxes
and Assessments in the Surveyor's office of New
York City ; her duties consist of the preparation of
maps from deeds and surveys for the levying of the
city taxes.

In Russia women pharmacists are opening chemists'
shops in all the larger towns and meeting with en-
couraging success. I entered one which is prominently

1 See the Home Magazine, July 1906.

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 233

situated in the very centre of the traffic in the Nevsky
Prospect and found it a "dream of white." The lady-
chemists all in white, served out the drugs standing
behind white counters, the walls and the ceilings were
also of the same snowy hue. I hear that a similar
establishment has been opened by Russian lady-
chemists at Paris and that it also is a dream of white,
and is said in consequence to have " un aspect tout a
fait virginal" I am fairly confident that when these
Russian women-chemists give their annual soiree the
opposite sex will not be conspicuous by its absence,
as was the case at the annual festival of England's
lady-chemists, at which I had the honour of being
present. England holds the palm for the separation
of the sexes as far as white-skinned nations are
concerned.

In the year 1900 the University of Berlin granted
the diploma of a doctor of philosophy to Miss Eliza
Steumann. This was the first time it had conceded
such an honour to a woman.

There are women barristers in France, in Italy and
in Switzerland, and hundreds of Russian women are
studying for that position in Paris and other European
centres. " Women are not yet allowed to practise at
the Bar in Russia," replied a Russian lady when I
questioned her on the subject in 1906. "But they
will be very soon," she added, cheerfully, "and we
wish to be ready." These are not disappointed old
maids, but handsome young women who would
grace any drawing-room. It was on June 3Oth,
1900, that French women were for the first time ad-
mitted to practise at the Bar. Mile. Chauvin has

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ct'l.

234 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

since been joined by two other ladies, 1 both of whom
are remarkable for their attractive appearance and
prepossessing manners. It is now an established fact
that mental training, when undergone in a reasonable
manner, increases rather than diminishes the charms
of a beautiful woman. One of the most earnest
objections men have made to the advancement of
women has been that the development of their
mental powers and their freer intercourse with men
would result in the deterioration of their beauty, and
to a diminution of their most valued feminine charms.
But as M. Lourbet has so well pointed out, 2 ideas of
beauty are capable of change like all other human
ideas. The ancient Greeks prized beauty of form,
independently of mental expression, but the twentieth
century will see men demanding something more
than mere plastic beauty in the woman who is to be
their comrade through life. " And when a beautiful
soul harmonises with a beautiful form, and the two
are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of
sights to him who has an eye to contemplate the
vision." 3

" If liberty would diminish women's beauty, we
should protest against their emancipation," cries
M. Lourbet. And, indeed, there are few women who
would not readily echo that cry. How long is it
since pretty women showed signs of undervaluing
their good looks ?

1 Madame Benezech, wife of the distinguished barrister of that name,
and Mile. Mille, were admitted to the Bar, Nov. 13, 1906.

2 Jacques Lourbet, " Les Problemes des Sexes," 1900.

3 Plato's " Republic," book iii., 447 B.C.

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 235

True culture does not consist in spending days and
months in the vitiated air of libraries poring over
books, nor does it consist in standing for long and
weary hours in laboratories, nor in passing difficult
examinations which are little more than useless
memory tests. Because a few hundred women have
passed through such ordeals and come forth pale and
unstrung, it is supposed that this hasty cramming
and over-work is culture ! We are apt to forget that
during the last thirty years almost every woman who
has worked for a university degree has gathered
knowledge with a view to exploiting it like any other
merchandise, and with cruel necessity driving her all
the time. Even at the present day women rarely
allow themselves sufficient leisure to do their mental
work pleasantly and agreeably. It is not the exercise
of their minds that ruins their health and robs them
of their good looks, but the mad way in which they
set about it, and the tension under which they are, for
one reason or another, compelled to work. Quiet
and peaceful brain-work, under healthy conditions,
rewards the student with " aesthetic sensations which
tend to realise themselves in the expression of the
countenance." A little more intelligence in the
glance of a woman's eye will not spoil, but heighten
beauty. " Erudition, which encumbers the memory,
shuts the heart to poetry and drives away en-
thusiasm. Erudition may be inimical to beauty,
but a healthily developed intellect will only serve to
heighten a woman's charms." 1

Overwork, and above all anxiety of every kind,

1 Lourbet.

236

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

is as injurious to woman's health and beauty as it is
to man's. I have already alluded to the sad loss
of childish beauty occasioned to the little Swiss
children by their hard manual labours. It is not
work, but overwork, and worry under unhealthy
conditions that tend to deteriorate our women, and
through them the coming generations.

But to return to the subject of new openings for
women. In England an organisation has recently
been founded for the education of women as accoun-
tants. It is called The Institute of Accountants and
Book-keepers, and is the pioneer of the movement
for allowing women to enter the ranks of professional
accountancy. The institute admits members of
approved practical experience, or on passing examina-
tions equivalent to those of the chartered accountants.
It has already a membership of nearly three hundred,
with branches in Bombay and South Africa. 1
Another line of work for women is that of Sanitary In-
spectors. A year ago there were more than fifty female
Sanitary Inspectors in the provinces, besides those
of the metropolis, arid their number has since then
increased with great rapidity. This is a class of work
in which patience, perseverence and, above all, tact,
are indispensable. The salaries of this department
range from 80 to i 50 a year. Women Sanitary In-
spectors in London work for about eight hours daily. 2
The Sanitary Authorities seldom appoint women
under the age of twenty-five.

The American women who are making money in

1 See The Standard, May 22, 1906.

2 See article in Lloyd's Weekly , June 10, 1906.

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 237

the business world are, like most of the rich men of
that country, people who have risen from the ranks.
We have recently been told by one of themselves
that they usually begin on the lowest rung of the
social ladder. There are very few cases of English
women having risen in this way. The air that
English women breathe is too contaminated by con-
vention, and the conviction that what is must be.
There is not enough of the oxygen of liberty in it to
give their lungs a healthy expansion. An American
girl has often been known to have begun with a
salary of a pound a week, and found herself enjoying,
at middle-age, an income of two thousand a year.
" This is a long leap," says the writer above alluded
to, "but women have taken it" A woman must
prove that she has more than business ability to win
such promotion, she must prove that she has tact,
resource, and a power of strict reticence in matters of
business. She must be so valuable that to replace
her would entail serious inconvenience. " In the great
steel company from which Mr Carnegie and others
have derived so many millions, there are women
employees amply trusted with secrets of business
projects." There are also women employed in the
Standard Oil, and other large corporations. As
advertising agents, American women are, we are
told, making from five hundred pounds to two
thousand four hundred pounds a year. Women con-
tractors in America do not hesitate to embark on enter-
prises involving enormous risks. It is not the business
women who suffer from nervous prostration, but the
idle society-butterflies and the foolish globe-trotters.

2 3 8

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

A great deal has been said about marriage, or the
hope of marriage, hindering women from doing their
best, and from throwing their full energies into their
work. Marriage has been called Nature's handicap.
Especially in connection with the fine arts, it has
been said over and over again that women can never
hope to reach the first rank. " I think," says one
who has studied the subject, " that those women who
persevere with the professional ranks are not as
successful as one might have hoped. There are very
few who come quite into the first rank. Taken
altogether they do not hold their own with the men."
There is found to be a want of energy, and, worst of
all, a want of originality in the woman artist, and
then there is also a want of muscular strength, even
in painting pictures. " There are, too, very few
women artists who command high prices. I doubt
if a single one of them is making what would
usually be called a large income." *

We are told, moreover, that only some twenty-five
per cent, of our English artists are women, and that
of them only a proportion of one woman to three
men exhibit at the Royal Academy. Most of the
women artists are practically amateurs, they do not
need to make money, and they lack the greatest
of all incentives to good work ambition. The
American girl has ambition. The average English
girl has practically none, except as regards her
marriage. What has been said about painting
applies equally to sculpture. Among the beautiful
jubilee presents presented by the various Catholic

1 The Hon. John Collier, article in The Majority,

239

countries to Pope Leo X. was an exquisite life-size
statue of St Peter in prison, in white marble.
It was the work of a woman, and the gift of the
Austrian Government. I shall never forget the
pleasure afforded me by the contemplation of that
beautiful example of woman's work. We find that
in the English Society of Portrait Painters only two
of the fifty members are women. Why are our
women so inferior to our men in the art of portraiture ?
Here there are no artificial difficulties in the way, it
is true, but there are the results of an artificial
upbringing ; the atmosphere of a girl's school is not
the atmosphere to foster either ambition, energy, or
initiative, it fosters plod and perseverance enough,
but these alone will never make a successful portrait
painter. The portrait must express the character of
the sitter; it must be painted by one who has a
sufficiently developed mentality to be competent to
grasp the character of another. The soul of the
sitter must shine out of the eyes of the portrait, and
no woman whose soul is asleep can ever hope to
interpret even the soul of a little child. The English-
woman's soul is still asleep. I predict that the best
women portrait painters of the twentieth century will
be those who have breathed a freer air than the
average Englishwoman breathes to-day. Perhaps
they will be Finns or Australians ! At any rate they
will not be women who stake their all in trade
unions ; nor will they be of those who seek safety in
numbers. The atmosphere of the English home,
and even of the English High School, is one calcu-
lated to stifle the budding genius. To begin with,

240

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

English Head Mistresses though often unmarried
themselves still consider it their pious duty to tell
their pupils that motherhood is woman's highest
destiny ; and the pupils imbibing this doctrine
continue though they would never own it to make
matrimony their first aim, and other success in life
has consequently to take a second place. In Finland
and in Australia, as in America and Norway, the
young girl is taught that woman's highest destiny is
within the reach of every woman ; that her highest
destiny and her highest ideals depend, not on some
man who may or may not come her way, but on
herself \ and that the highest ideal of womanhood is
to be a true woman. The English girl is only too
conscious that if she does not marry she will be
regarded as a failure though no one may say so in
her presence. If she does not succeed in securing a
husband and in propagating the race, she will have
failed to reach the highest ideal that Christian
England has been able to find for English women.
In Finland woman is looked upon as man's
equivalent ; in England she is still looked upon as
his handmaid. But educated and cultured Finland
has shaken off the trammels of the Lutheran doctrine
concerning woman. Will England do the same?
Will English Protestant divines rise up and tell
our women that the truth shall make them free?
If they do not do this ; if they remain silent a few
years longer, that which has happened in other
Protestant countries will happen in England. Creeds
that are made a pretext for keeping woman in sub-
jection to man, are doomed to lose their power.

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 241

Catholicism has been forced by atheistic France to
realise this truth, but English Protestantism remains
blind to the danger which threatens it. The danger
is, nevertheless, imminent. In a country where there
are a million and a half more women than men it is
worse than foolish to teach young girls that mother-
hood is their highest destiny. Such teaching if
persisted in will lead to greater evils than we care
to contemplate even at a distance. " Besides the
sacred duties of motherhood, there are the equally
sacred duties of fatherhood, yet man does not allow
these latter to interfere with his mental growth.
Men, indeed, " preach the doctrine of altruism and
get their women to practise it." 1

We hear much from Englishmen of woman's un-
natural wish to be independent, yet, as a writer has
recently observed, " Many parents know well how
thankful they feel at the sight of the gay courage
with which the daughters take their share of the
family burden." "It is somewhat cruel so to under-
line the fact that the working-woman sometimes
looks worn and tired, especially when it is remem-
bered that a weary mother engaged in the lofty
task of nursing her sick children, also bears visible
tokens of anxiety upon her face. Surely when we
deal with this woman's question, we should stop
cavilling at the amazon regiments fighting for mere
existence in the battle of life. They do their best
and men should respect them, and not so often
assure them that they are losing all their woman-
hood in the conflict." I imagine that the writer of

1 R. E Hughes, "The Making of Citizens," 1902.
Q

242 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

these words must be a woman. The following extract
is from an article by Miss C. Smedley :

" Polly P. has been brought up not only to put the kettle on,
but to perform all household tasks under the guidance of her
mother ; she is obedient and dutiful to an extent which precludes
her having a will of her own ; and where ordinary youth is
shirking responsibility, escaping home and generally having its
fling, Polly is a model of domesticity. How will Polly meet
her future lord and master? Not in the kitchen. Dances and
tennis are the hunting-ground, and thither Polly's mother takes
her.

" But do the gay young bachelors rush up to secure this
treasure, trained from her infancy to minister to their comfort ?
Not a bit of it ! The men flock round Maudie D. who has an
eighteen-inch waist, wicked eyes, and a disrespectful tongue,
and who has as little notion of cooking as of obedience to
her parents. Now, is this fair to Polly? May not she, sitting
with her mother or dancing with partners painfully procured
by her parents, feel that, after all, there are two sides to a
bargain, and while she has laudably fulfilled her's, man is
scarcely acting in the same conscientious and self-immolating
spirit ? To the end of the world the woman whose negative
virtues make her a pattern housekeeper and servant, will be
passed over by that traitor man for the egotistical and
irresponsible coquette ! Can it be wondered therefore that
girls of spirit and intelligence are beginning to realise that
to concentrate on husband-hunting is to embark on the most
precarious of all careers. As for the expression of fatigue
which may be seen on the faces of the women returning
home after a day's work, is not that exhaustion as plainly
written on the faces of the wives and mothers of that class ?
All work tires ; the lot of the wife of the clerk whose salary
totals thirty shillings or two pounds a week is not such a
rosy one.

" Look at the train-loads of middle-aged, plain, unattractive,
listless women, the wage earners, the independent sisters !
Yes, look at them and realise they are the women who are
superfluous for man's purpose, who used to be hidden in the

GIRLS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 243

home of their more fortunate sisters, their drudges, { old-maids,'
over- worked and slighted, eating the bitter bread of charity.
Now they are coming forth painfully winning a pittance, still
jibed at as ' failures ' and ' unnatural.' But the joy and pride
of work is for their sisters who are following them ; the
drudgery of work has always been the lot of woman. There
are those who wish to see her conscious of the joy of it ; then,
and then only, will the problem of the superfluous woman be
solved. She will have her niche in the world, her self-respect,
her pride, and her prosperity."

English women are not all clamouring for the
parliamentary franchise, it is true, but they are
showing unmistakable signs of dissatisfaction with
regard to the disabilities of their sex, and that dis-
satisfaction is reflected daily in our newspapers. I
could fill my pages with the complaints of anonymous
female correspondents culled from our daily press ;
they are the sign of the times which no editor
feels he can afford to pass over in silence. I will
add one editorial note selected at random.

"As to the remark often heard that women are
foolishly eager to exchange their highly-privileged
position for a worse one, one of them replies, cogently
enough, that women want to do away with the privi-
lege of being shut out of all the paying professions
and most of the trades. They offer to change places
with the men as regards the Divorce Law. They
ought to think it great fun to be respectfully denied
university degrees which they earn, but they do not.
The privileges of staying at home, doing nothing,
and looking pretty, or of staying at home and
toiling fourteen hours a day and not looking pretty
if you are the appendage of a man, and if you

244

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

are not, of starving in a garret they feel to have
been a little overdone." 1

As Miss Jane Addams has remarked, it is so easy
to be stupid, and to believe that things which used
to exist still go on, long after they are past.

1 Public Opinion, Oct. 26, 1906.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN

IF it were possible to dissect the minds of human
beings and to find out as many facts concerning
them as a biologist can find out about the physical
organs of a frog, there would be less discussion as
to what is the true nature of woman, and wherein
her psychology differs from that of man. We should
soon have the facts before us in black and white,
and all who valued the truth and were open to
conviction would come to an amicable agreement
as to the meaning of the restlessness and dis-
content with their lot, as a sex, that women
are evincing in almost every part of the world at
the beginning of the twentieth century. If all
is not well with woman, it is woman whom we
must study in order to diagnose her complaint and
administer an effective remedy.

We begin with the normal woman. We eagerly
compare all that we have as yet been able to
discover about the true nature of normal woman-
hood, with all that we have discovered about normal
manhood. Are the thousands of educated women
in Europe and in America, who are to-day straining
every nerve to better the lot of their sex, acting
in direct contradiction to the dictates of their

245

246 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

natures? Why is woman rebelling against her
intellectual servitude ? Why is she demanding
civil and political rights only granted so far to
the male sex ? Why is she evincing such a
craving for what has till now been considered men's
work?

Biologists are telling us that the higher and more
complicated the organism the wider must be the
divergence between the sexes, that a healthy
organism must be first manly, or womanly,
throughout its entire development. 1 But who is to
decide what is manly and what is womanly?
Woman claims to-day that she has human rights
far above any man-made regulations, and a destiny
as vast as man's. 2 But while she clamours for justice
man is calmly telling her that she does not know
the meaning of the word. Woman is at length
beginning to doubt the oft-repeated statement that
she is morally man's superior, but intellectually his
inferior. She is at last beginning to object to the
maxim that immorality is man's privilege, and virtue
woman's duty. 3 And now not only philosophers,
but statesmen, politicians, professors, medical men,
and Church dignitaries, bewildered by what is hap-
pening, have begun to study, in a way they never
thought of doing before, the psychology of woman.

Is there, or is there not, a normal division of
functions of the higher intelligence of human beings

1 "Aspects of Social Evolution,";. L. Taylor, M.R.C.S., 1904.

2 Auguste Maire, "La Question du Manage."

3 See Irma von Troll-Borostyani, "Die Gleichstellung der Ge-
schlechster," 1888.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 247

into two sexes, male and female? Is there really
such a thing as sex of mind ? Here is a question
that has attracted and puzzled the greatest philos-
ophers of all ages. Feijoo, who published his
brilliant treatise, " In Defence of Woman," at Madrid
in 1778, believed that the notion of sex in mind
was a vulgar error which required to be dissipated
by the light of reason. " Well may these women
remain firm," he cried, "who say that the 'soul is
neither male nor female,' because they are right." And
before Feijoo's day a Jesuit, in a work entitled "An
Examination of Vulgar Prejudices," declared that
woman was in no way inferior to man as regards her
capacity for the arts and sciences and for business
of all kinds. "Aristotle," said Feijoo, " remarked that
people with small heads were capable of the deepest
reflection." " I conjecture," he adds, " that he took
careful measurements of his own head before writing
thus. Other philosophers vote in favour of large heads."
Almarico, a blind follower of Aristotle, announced
that nature had originally intended that there should
be no women, and that man was meant at first to
live for ever in a state of innocence. The errors
of this philosopher were very properly condemned
by a Council of Paris in 1209, and the same Council
prohibited the perusal of Aristotle's writings. Pope
Gregory IX. confirmed this prohibition. Earlier still
in the writings of Christian doctrine there appeared
theologians who boldly asserted that in heaven all
women would become men, and thus be perfected.
St Augustine opposed this theory. 1 It is perfectly

1 See Lib. 22 de Civit. Dei., c. 17.

248 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

clear to those who have taken the trouble to study
the thoughts that great thinkers of all times have
left us on the subject of women that they, one and
all, perceived that there was something wrong some-
where. Feijoo saw no reason why one sex should
be considered superior and the other inferior. " My
task," he wrote, "is not to persuade that one sex
has the advantage of the other, but that they are
equal." 1 And here he followed Seneca, who con-
sidered that woman was man's equal in all the
valuable qualities of the mind. " Quis autem dicat
naturam maligne cum mulieribus ingeniis egisse, et
virtutes illarum in arctum retraxisse."
In a little country town in a secluded corner of
Spain, five hours' carriage drive from the nearest
railway station, I found a thoughtful, learned medical
man, whose life is devoted to study and whose house
is crowded with books. Somehow or other we
drifted, in the course of our conversation, into the
subject of the position of woman in the universe.
"Ah," he said, "there is no doubt that the relative
position of woman to man is changing somewhat, but
it is quite certain, from what science has discovered
with regard to her mental and physical qualities, and
specially the latter, that she must always remain
man's inferior both in mind and body." I listened
with interest, and was trying to conjecture how and
by what course of study this isolated philosopher had
come to such decided conclusions, when he answered
my look of interrogation with the words, " I have

1 " Mi empeno no es persuadir la ventaja-sino la igualdad."

2 In Consol : ad Martiam,

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 249

been reading the writings of a German scientist, the
writings of Professor Mobius."

" And have you read no confutation of his theories,"
I asked quickly.

" No," he replied, with a look of surprise. It had
never occurred to him that such an authority as
Mobius could be contradicted, much less refuted !
And then he began to tell me how difficult it was
to get books in that out-of-the-way part of the
world.

And what are the wonderful discoveries about the
nature of woman by means of which Professor Mobius
is convincing us that woman is where nature intended
her to be, and that inferior to man she must ever
remain? Three of his publications on the subject
lie before me as I write. 1 I take one entitled " Ge-
schlecht und Entartung" (Sex and Degeneration), a
pamphlet obviously intended only for the masculine
eye, daringly unscientific nevertheless. The Pro-
fessor has read carefully a great number of books,
by men as well as by women, in favour of the woman
movement, he has noted the rebellion of the women
of his own country against their chains of subjection,
and he has resolved to crush them as he would crush
a turning worm on his garden path with his foot.
He is clever, but more cunning than scientific. He
prefaces the pamphlet in question with a few remarks
on the manly man and the womanly woman, here
he betrays, by his very cunning, the motive that lies
beneath all that he has to say on the subject in

1 "Beitrage zur Lehre von den Geschlechts-Unterschiedenheiten,"
1903-5-6.

250 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

question. He states, in short, his conviction that
strict monogamy is contrary to the nature of a
healthy man. In letting this cat out of the bag he
gives us a clue to all his brutal diatribes against the
amelioration of the lot of civilized woman. He is
actuated by a growing dread (resulting from the per-
usal of much feministic literature) that "healthy"
woman, if not put down at this critical juncture with
the iron hand of scientific authority, may actually
succeed in protecting her weaker sisters from the lust
of "healthy" man succeed in forcing upon man the
unsavoury truth that what the mind wills the body
can and must. Professor Mobius is clever enough to
see the danger that threatens the liberty of man in
the twentieth century, and is using all the artifice of
which he is capable to frighten honest men from
helping honest women in the coming struggle He
classes certain isolated male cases of disturbance of
sex as Feministic, in the hope that those noble
men who are tempted to take their stand by
woman's side in the thick of the fight may quail
before his coarse and diabolic insinuations. He
hopes to take away their courage by instilling into
their minds a terror of incurring the contempt of
their fellows. Goldsmith said, "An Englishman
fears contempt more than death." Mobius is trading
on every man's dread of contempt. He suggests
covertly that the man who has the courage of his
convictions runs the risk of being mistaken for an
abnormal specimen of humanity, an example of sex
disturbance. Surely this arch hypocrite will not by
so dastardly a means quell the enthusiasm of hale

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 251

and hearty fathers of flourishing families, though he
has doubtless succeeded in chilling the budding
enthusiasm of a few truly effeminate and egoistic
German bachelors. But enthusiasm that can be thus
checked would prove of little value, and might even
be a hindrance to the cause of woman. In freeing
her from such superfluous defenders, Mobius is only
saving her from her worst friends after all.

And now we come to Professor Mobius' definition
of a healthy woman. He says, " It is characteristic
of the life of a healthy woman that its central point
is the performance of her sexual functions. Only
things connected with her sexual life can arouse her
interests. Only where her sexual being is involved
does she shozu peculiar capacity or accomplish anything
great." The italics are my own. With one stroke of
his weighty pen Mobius warns every woman who
does not wish to be condemned by the medical world
as an example of " sex disturbance " that she must
confine her enthusiasm, her mental energy, and all
the ambition of which her soul is capable, to the
narrow circle of doll-dressing during childhood,
husband hunting during her maidenhood, and child
producing and rearing during the whole of her after-
life. "The maiden," he continues, "must lie in wait
for a husband, but she must hide her longing, and in
order to do this she will be compelled to dissimulate.
Man's love," he says, "is like a flash of lightning,
woman's, like a steadily burning flame. Monogamy,
therefore, appeals far more to woman's nature than
to man's. Man's love tires, but woman's never."
Such is the verdict of a German scientist who is fully

252

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

conscious of the weight that his name lends to his
words.

But let us ask Professor Mobius one little question
Where is the irrefutable proof that what is must
always be?

The reader must disabuse his mind of the idea that
Professor Mobius has anything new to tell us about
either of the sexes. His new things, if we may
borrow a phrase from Disraeli, are not true things,
and his true things are not new things ; besides
which, his most interesting bits of information are
drawn from the researches of other scientists whose
word he takes on trust. Some have called him
a woman-hater, but that is not the case; he is
over fond of women if anything, but he wants to
keep them as they are, hence his harsh criticism of
every effort they make to throw off their so-called
feminine weaknesses. He quotes statistics from
Duchatelet and Lombroso, and labours to prove
that the greater part of those unfortunate women
who lead a life of prostitution are born with a strong
bias to a criminal life. But he does not see in this
truth a reason why their healthy and more fortunate
sisters should shelter and protect them. He quotes
Bunge, 1 who stated in 1900, after much research, that
in the towns of Central Europe the majority of
women were incapable of nursing their own children,
and adds that this evil is hereditary, like mothers,
like daughters, from one generation to another, till
the family is extinguished ; and he adds, " We can,

1 " Die zunahmende Unfahigkeit der Frauen ihre Kinder zu stillen."
Munchen, 1900.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 253

with absolute certainty, conclude that if civilization
and culture continue to step forward, as they are now
doing, the nations will perish." Bunge has succeeded
in tracing the last mentioned evil to its source,
attributing it to a craving for, and over indulgence in,
alcohol. He says that a woman whose father was an
habitual drunkard can rarely nurse her own children,
and that the capacity to do so is lost for ever to all
succeeding generations. Mobius believes this last
statement of Bunge's implicitly, and very possibly it
may be true, but where is the proof that our conjectures
about posterity are correct ? Throughout his writings
on sex Mobius constantly mistakes assertion for
argument and conjecture for knowledge.

I must confess, however, in all justice to Mobius,
that he has a sharp eye for the failings of the female
sex, as they exist to-day, and it cannot do woman
any harm, in fact it may do her much good, to see
herself as Mobius sees her, and note where there is
room for change and improvement. She need not let
herself be imposed upon by any false reason he
may be pleased to give for any particular failing.
Each can think the reason out for herself after she
has found out that the cap fits.

It is wonderful how many fallacies about the
causes of female defects have at one time and another
been stated by scientists, and, having been once
stated, have been copied with docile servility by
thousands of later writers. One by one, however,
they are being refuted by incontrovertible fact.
The fallacy about woman's respiratory organs
differing from man's, to take a single instance, was

254 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

fossilized in Havelock Ellis's " Man and Woman,"
and accepted and repeated by hundreds of successive
writers, male and female ; yet we know now that the
cause of the difference did not lie in the sex but
in the corset, as B. Antonio Marco has satisfac-
torily proved. 1

Then there is the fallacy about woman's brain
having been proved to be intellectually inferior to
man's. There are thousands of educated women in
England to-day who believe implicitly in that
fallacy, and what is very serious, make it their excuse
for neither reading nor thinking. "It has been
proved that our skulls are smaller than men's,"
said one of them to me, "and that the size of our
brains and the quality of our brain power being
inferior to man's we can never rise to the same
intellectual height as men." But this lady could
not inform me by whom all this had been proved,
or how. Mobius takes up the same standpoint
and argues as though anatomists had succeeded in
measuring the relative brain power of the sexes ;
yet he has nothing more to found his conviction
upon than the facts that Riidinger, who dissected
the brains of a number of new born infants, found
the brain of the male infant to contain more
circumvolutions than that of the female infant ;
and that BischofT found, after weighing all he
could get hold of, that the average weight of a
woman's brain was less than that of a man's ; yet
Broca and others protested against the supposition

1 See also "Das Weib und der Intellectualismus," by Oda Olberg,
1902.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 255

that the weight of the brain had anything to do
with the development of intelligence ; and as for
the fact of the circumvolutions of a man's brain
being more numerous than those of a woman's, it
is no more a convincing proof of man's intellectual
superiority than is the fact of a cat's brain having
more circumvolutions than any other animal's a
sign of superior intelligence in a cat. All students
of natural history are aware of the peculiarity of
the cat's brain, but, as Soame has remarked, not
one has urged it as a proof of superior intellectual
capacity. It is astonishing, as Oda Olberg has
pointed out, that Mobius does not refer to the
researches of Eberstaller and Cunningham, while he
lays so much stress on Riidinger's observations,
for their results are exactly the reverse of his, as
regards the brains of new born infants. Mingazzini,
who published a little book on the brain in relation
to psychology, in I895, 1 shows, as a result of his
researches, that nature has made very little distinc-
tion between the brains of man and woman. Is
this silence on the part of Mobius quite worthy of a
distinguished representative of German research?
If we examine history we find that there was
practically no difference between the intellectual
powers of men and women in the early days of
civilization, and among modern savages we certainly
find no intellectual superiority of one sex over the
other. As Letourneau, Westermarck and others
have pointed out, there has always been a division

1 See Oda Olberg, who quotes from " II cervello in relazione coi
fenomeni psichici."

256 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

of labour between man and woman. Novikow goes
so far as to say that the present subjection of woman
is a result of this diversity of occupations, she
having sunk in the estimation of man in proportion to
her gradual exclusion from all the more intellectual
pursuits. " Confined to despised occupations," says
Novikow, "she has shared in the contempt that
has attached itself to her work." And it is
Westermarck, one of the most distinguished anthro-
pologists of our day, who has told us, in his most
recent book, 1 that progress in civilization has
exercised an unfortunate influence on the position
of woman by widening the gulf between the
sexes, for, till the present day, the higher culture
has been almost exclusively the prerogative of
man.

And Darwin ? How came so great a thinker as
Darwin to judge of woman's capacities for all time,
by her past achievements, in the face of such truths
as these ! Liberty, as Lourbet has pointed out, is
the mother of originality, not servitude.

More than one educated Englishman following
Darwin has told me that woman's lack of origin-
ality in the past is a sure proof of her intellectual
inferiority. Woman, in the eyes of the majority
of Germans, Englishmen and Turks, is regarded
primarily as a creature of sex ; man, as a creature of
mind, hence their real objection to granting her the
civil and political rights which she is beginning to
demand. Many women, too, still believe that woman
is a "harp furnished by the Creator with only two

l " Moral Ideals."

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 257

strings, imagination and sentiment," as a Spanish
poetess of the nineteenth century l has gracefully ex-
pressed it.

Mobius tells us that even the new cooking recipes
and the new fashions in female dress are invented
by men a sign, he says, of woman's lack of indepen-
dent thought. Yet Legouve distinctly states that it
is the women of France who have made Paris the
world's citadel of good taste. He says it is a shame
that young men should serve in the drapers' shops
of Paris, when women have made the French drapers'
shops the centre of European commerce that it is.
" Seutes les femmes de France^ artistes et e"nergigue-
ment vivantes, ont disputt pied a pied ce domaine, et
pour etre plus sures d?y avoir un role^ elles se le sont cree.
Oui, cest leur genie inventif qui a doti le commerce
naturel de la plus elegante de ses gloires. Si le gout
fran^ais regne meme chez nos ennemis, si nos fabricateurs
<? ornaments d* ajustements rencontrent partout des
disciples et nulle part des rivaux^ a qui ce doit on ? Aux
femmes." 2

And the cooking recipes ? Mobius has quite over-
looked the fact that in many a household famed for
culinary excellence the cooking is all done by women
who invent plenty of excellent recipes, but who,
from excessive modesty and diffidence, and absence
of help and encouragement, fail to publish them.
Mobius also lays it to woman's charge that all the
new cooking utensils are invented by men, as if the
fact that until now the whole art of making these

1 Rosalia de Castro.

2 Ernest Legouve, " Histoire Morale des Femmes."

258

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

utensils has been monopolized by the male sex were
not a sufficient explanation for women's lack of
ingenuity in this line ! When English women start
making pots and kettles they will probably invent
new kinds and improve upon those made by man, at
least there is no proof to the contrary.

Englishmen are ever eager to admit that woman
is morally man's superior, yet they are convinced
that it is for the good of society that man should
have the upper hand, a strange inconsistency ! The
fact is they believe that it is her very subjection
that has brought about this moral superiority of
character, and they prefer to let well alone.

It has been well said that the first step towards
raising woman must be to raise her dignity, to
raise her opinion of her own sex. 1 But what
are students of woman telling her to do. " It is
precisely by the august functions, and the terrible
risks of maternity, that woman raises herself to man's
level," says Turgeon. 2 Such words as these would
only come from the lips of a Lutheran. No Catholic,
no Socialist, no Anarchist would ever utter words
so degrading to woman, and so specially insulting
to the woman to whom circumstances have decreed
a life of single blessedness. The mother of an illegiti-
mate child has risen nearer to man's level, in the
eyes of Turgeon, than the unmarried woman who has
scorned to stoop so low. If this is all that Pro-
testants can learn from the Bible without notes it
might be better for them to read it with notes.

1 Felix Remo, " L'Iigalit des Sexes en Angleterre."
8 " Le Feminism Frangais," vol. i. p. 124.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 259

A Frenchman, writing of Napoleon's code, re-
marked " Le code ne distingue la femme de fhomme que
quand il sagit de la f rapper ^

" Since when have women mixed themselves up
with politics ? " asked Napoleon of Madame de
Stael.

" Since they began to be guillotined," was the
lady's quick reply.

Mary Wollstonecraft, who spent half her life in
teaching little girls, affirmed that if tin soldiers were
given to them to play with in the first instance, in
place of dolls, they would like them just as well.
Devotion to a doll is not, moreover, the distinct
peculiarity of little girls. I know a little boy of five,
one of the manliest little fellows in the world, who
told me that if he went to bed without his woolly bear
doll he would feel lonely while his mother was down
at supper. If her doll is a little girl's chief or only
toy it is not surprising that she clings to it with
affection. Seyler, in his study of woman, has given
us the history of the doll. " As we know, Charles
VI. of France was weak in the head. His ennui was
driven away by the continual invention of fresh toys
to attract his wandering attention. There came one
day to France a man from Padua with a number
of mules laden with boxes. His name was Pufello,
and in these boxes he carried ninety-six little wooden
dolls which he himself had carved and dressed to
represent well known French and Roman woman
characters. These dolls were greatly admired,
Pufello found ready customers for them and was
soon summoned to the French Court. Among the

26o

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

dolls was one representing the Roman Empress
Poppea, and this the King decided to buy, giving
Pufello three hundred franks for it. Then dolls
became the fashion and not only courtiers but also
the bourgeoisie were soon eager to purchase them.
There was soon a doll in the house of everybody who
could afford the price of one, and as the King's doll
was called Poppea all the others received the same
name. From Poppea was derived poppee and
poupee, and in Germany the word became Puppe." 1

No one will deny that laws and customs have
greatly accentuated the original difference between
man and woman. The women of Galicia who, on
account of the emigration of their menfolk to South
America, are compelled to devote themselves to
agriculture, are as virile in their movements as some
of our city clerks are effeminate. These women are
remarkable for their splendid muscular development,
for their untiring and cheerful energy, and, above
all, for the enormous burdens which they can carry
with ease upon their heads. Trained to it from her
earliest infancy a Galician woman will often carry,
on her head, from the town fountain to a third story
flat as many as seventy large buckets of water in
succession on a summer's day without evincing any
sign of fatigue. I have seen a Galician woman trip
unconcernedly down the street with a marble topped
four legged table that would seat six persons,
balanced jauntily on her head.

" The weight that our women carry on their heads

1 Dr Emil Seyler, "Die Frau des xx. Jahrhunderts." Leipzig,
1900.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 261

is atrocious," said one of their countrymen to me
when I approached him on the subject ; " our men
could not do it they carry everything upon their
shoulders." I shall never forget the shock I experi-
enced when, upon opening my bedroom door in a
Galician hotel, I beheld the chamber maid who had
brought me my early coffee standing at the top of
the stairs with an iron bound cabin-sized travelling
trunk upon her head ; she had brought it up for a
gentleman who had just arrived and was about to
deposit it in his bedroom. What is more she seemed
in no hurry to deposit her load, but stood with her
hands on her hips composedly talking to one of
the other maids. The whole weight almost invari-
ably rests, as in this case, upon the top of the
head, and the hands are only used occasionally to
steady it.

And what sort of brains have the Galician women ?
is a question that one naturally asks. The answer
is unexpected. Their brain power is better
developed than that of the men. The Galician
woman of the working class is acknowledged by
all who have had the opportunity of judging to be
worth two of her men folk in every kind of work
she undertakes, i have watched these women
working in factories and I have watched them
ploughing their fields : they are in every way equal
to the men in their energy of both mind and
body.

Some ten years ago the workmen employed in
roofing a public edifice at Santiago struck for
high wages. Their masters at once sent for a batch

262

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

of workmen from Portugal, but, lo and behold, when
these arrived by train they were met at the
Santiago railway station by a crowd composed
entirely of the womenfolk of the strikers, who
hurled stones at every man of them who attempted
to alight. A fierce struggle ensued, with the result
that the Portuguese workmen never got farther
than the station, but returned to Portugal by the
next train, and the strikers were taken on again at
the wages they had demanded. So much for the
determination of Galician women ! The remarkable
strength of their spines, necks and skulls is entirely
due to continued practice. I once saw a baby of
two years old being trained by its mother to stand
with a little bundle on its head ; every time it
felt the weight it gave a scream, upon which the
mother removed the bundle for a moment to replace
it again almost immediately. There is a charming
dignity of carriage about these women which is
an inevitable result of the custom in question, they
never stoop or slouch but hold themselves like
queens.

In Sweden, Poland and Russia we see women
employed as bricklayers and quite happy at their
work, which is far less injurious to their health than
the occupation of an English seamstress. Yet
English women cry out with horror at the mere
thought of the former, and take the latter as a matter
of course. In some parts of Spain I have had my
luggage carried from the hotels by female porters
who rewarded me with a cheery smile when I dropped
the usual tip into their brawny hands. No, I have

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 263

seen too much of the world to believe that the
pronounced physical inferiority of woman to man
which predominates in civilized countries is due to
anything more than centuries of custom and
prejudice. " Habits are produced from the exercise
like to them," said Aristotle. 1 Even among women
of the upper classes in England to-day there is a
great difference between the physiques of those
brought up in the country, and those brought up
in towns.

How far the existing mental inferiority of the
average woman to the average man is due to habit,
training and customs, will be made clear when the
same intellectual advantages have been enjoyed by
both sexes for a couple of generations. At present
the wisest of us have only conjecture to go upon.
But as regards some of the other so-called character-
istics of the sexes we need not wait so long.
How absurd, for instance, is the charge so
frequently brought against women, that they cannot,
as a sex, keep a secret, when everybody knows
that women have been employed for years with
perfect success as secret police ! Napoleon's code
makes midwives as well as doctors and chemists
punishable by law if they disclose secrets confided
to them.

Mobius says that "lying" is woman's natural
weapon, and that it would be foolish to wish to
deprive her of it, seeing it would be impossible for
her to get on without it. Possibly this statement
may be perfectly true as regards the middle-class
1 See his ''Ethics."

264 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

women of Germany, but if it is, the sooner the
German women are relieved from the necessity of
telling lies the better it will be for the Fatherland.
In France also the above quoted statement very
probably holds good. "La femme francaise reste
legalement assujettie ; elle en profite a chaque
occasion pour exploiter son seigneur et maitre et y
reussit singulierement," wrote Mary A. Cheliga in
I9OO. 1

I have before me a recent letter from an English
lady residing in France in which she says, " I have
never known a Frenchwoman who did not lie ; they
do so to get themselves out of difficulties, or to please
the person they are talking to. They do not seem
to think anything of it." Is it surprising that
French and German women of a nobler mould
should wince at the thought that untruthfulness
has at last come to be classed as a natural trait of
their sex ?

Mobius tells us that courage is a trait uncalled for
in women except in a case of defending her children,
and he adds that this, like all other manly qualities,
such as a desire for knowledge and a spirit of
adventure, would interfere with her duties as a
mother, and they have therefore been given to her
only in very small doses. It is evident that he has
forgotten that there are situations innumerable in
which courage is quite as necessary to a woman as
to a man. Imagine, for instance, the hospital nurses
who follow our armies to the field of battle without
courage ! And what has history to teach us on this

1 "Almanack Feministe."

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 265

point? As for a desire for knowledge, woman
has for ages been supposed to have inherited that
quality from her mother Eve, along with the three
curses attached to it ! ! Why did Eve pluck the
apple ?

" Woman interests herself in persons more than in
ideas, she is narrowly personal," says Henri Marion, 1
and this is a common charge which we cannot deny,
but is it, or is it not, an innate quality, a sexual one ?
Many believe it to be not only inherent to the sex
but one of the necessary traits of a true woman.
" The man for society," they cry, " the woman for the
man." Marion is sure, however, that no husband with
a shadow of manliness about him would wish his
wife to be absorbed in the worship of himself; but,
he adds, that women are too often found to be lacking
in patriotism through absorption in family affections
and interests. But when was true patriotism ever
found among slaves ? And slaves the women of
France are always to remain, according to Marion,
for, in speaking of how women should be brought up,
he says, " il faut leur inspirer sans doute un esprit de
subordination volontaire, et de sacrifice? The fact
that he thinks it men's duty to inspire them
with a spirit of subordination proves that the
writer does not consider a spirit of subordina-
tion as natural to woman. It must be artificially
instilled.

Have girls a greater aptitude for imitation than
boys? It is generally admitted that they have.
Marion remarks that whenever a play contains a

1 " Psychologic de la Femme," 1905.

266

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

child's part, it is always a little girl who is chosen to
perform it, but he forgets that the majority of little
girls, especially in France, are always acting a part,
more or less, from the moment they can walk, and
run much more risk of being overdressed and made
much of by strangers than is the case with little boys.
I believe Mme. Necker de Saussure was perfectly
right when she affirmed that (if brought up naturally
without distinction) the two sexes were almost
identical till the age of ten years. As the result of
much personal observation and experience I have
come to the conclusion that where no difference is
made till that age by their parents, teachers and
nurses, no perceptible difference exists either of
temperament or of character that can truly be said to
be a difference due to sex. I have constantly found a
boy of ten far more sensitive than a girl of the same
age. I believe further that it is a vulgar error to
attribute greater sensitiveness to one sex than to the
other. Sensitiveness, like many other traits thought
to be more pronounced in women, should be attributed
to individual temperament and not to sex. The
error is easily accounted for when we remember that
while men are taught from their infancy to restrain
their feelings, it is considered woman's privilege to
show hers. Michelet, who thought otherwise, was
perhaps the worst enemy that French women have
ever had, because he was an enemy in disguise.
Catholics tell me that he was an arch calumniator of
their religion, and if he treated the Catholic Church
half as unjustly as he has treated woman he deserves
the epithet. His lies are nauseating, and all the

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 267

more so because mixed with truth and clothed in
such poetic language. Marion, like many others, has
been infected by their subtle poison, hence his absurd
remarks about the proper treatment of budding
girlhood. 1

It is generally acknowledged, in England at least,
that women bear pain better than men. Lombroso
and others are now explaining this by the statement
that women are physically less sensitive, and that
kind nature intended that it should be so. I await
the verdict of medical women on this point, and
therefore suspend my own judgment. When capable
women shall have devoted as much study to the
psychology of their sex as men have to the study of
theirs, we shall have more material to form our
opinions upon than we have at present. Surely,
granted an equal amount of intelligent intuition and
careful study, each sex should be its own truest
exponent.

Marion tells us that love is woman's supreme
interest throughout life, and, agreeing with Mobius,
he is sure that nothing which is not connected with
that passion, visibly or invisibly, can really interest
her. There are English Members of Parliament
who are quite of the same opinion. All I can
say is ; that in each case these gentlemen are either
appropriating borrowed opinions, or they have formed
their own from observation of the ladies of their own
respective family circles. The sooner such ladies are
allowed to have some other interest in life the better

1 Many of these lies are well refuted by Gerhardt and Simon in
" Mutterschaft und geistige Arbeit," 1902.

268

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

it will be for them even if it be Woman's
Suffrage !

We are told that women are more egoistic than
men, and that they are infinitely more jealous. In
the case of women for whom love is the only interest
in life, this naturally follows.

Are women naturally ambitious? "Yes," replies
Marion ; " worldly ambition is very keen among them."
He is right, women are ambitious for their menfolk,
if not for themselves directly, provided they are
endowed with sufficient intelligence. But in many
cases a woman's ambition for her husband's worldly
advancement clashes with his own cherished hopes,
and ends by piloting him into a region of dangerous
rocks. In such cases a woman is more ambitious
than she is wise. Few unmarried women are so
ambitious of honour in their own personal cases as to
refuse a suitable marriage in order to gain it. There
may be such cases, though none have as yet crossed
my path. But with change of environment who shall
say that there shall not also come a transformation
in the nature of female ambition ?

Marion and Mobius both assert that woman as a
sex is incapable of independent thought. This is a
serious charge to be laid at the door of half the
human race in the twentieth century of the Christian
era. Marion, like Mobius, goes so far as to approve
of this functionary weakness as a token of true
womanliness ; and he adds that those women who do
happen to be gifted with indomitable energy meet
with little sympathy. He adds further that they
lack not only initiative but the patience that is re-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 269

quired in the execution of any work which is to attain
perfection, and adds that, they begin well but few
know how to finish. This is a true statement, and
women should lay it to heart ; but let them beware
of falling into the error of believing these grave faults
to be natural traits of their sex. If they look round
they soon find that men, and even nations and races,
are being accused of these very weaknesses.

Mobius tells us that all progress starts from
man, but if this be true to-day, it does not therefore
follow that it will be true to-morrow. Mobius goes
so far as to tell us that had the world consisted
entirely of individuals with only the characteristics
of woman there would never have been any civiliza-
tion at all. He says that woman sometimes does
good as a drag to the man who would go too fast,
but that she also hangs like lead upon the noble
spirited man who ought to be freed from every
hindrance that he may advance along the path of
progress. Are all your lady friends of that type,
Professor Mobius ?

" Woman," says the same critic, " is incapable
of self-control. Her tongue is her sword. Gossip
gives her intense pleasure, it is her own peculiar
sport. Her study consists in committing to memory,
but she forgets quickly. Her mental sterility is in
proportion to her parrot-like memory." Now the
question for women to put to themselves is How far
are these qualities due to sex, and how far are they
due to social conditions, and individual temperament ?
Whenever an exceptional woman rises up and
demands that man shall give woman free play to

270

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

unfold her true nature the masculine mind gives
token of great uneasiness. There is a flutter in
the male dovecots, and many tongues and pens
are at once set in motion to show the awful danger
to the State, and to the race, that might ensue were
women allowed to mark out a line of conduct for
herself.

Men have told women for centuries that she is
morally their superior, but in reality they believe
no such thing. No truly intelligent man could ever
believe such a fallacy. Moral superiority, in the
true sense of the word, would necessarily entail in-
tellectual superiority. Morality entails definite prin-
ciples, or springs of action, which have their source
in reason. When men say that woman is morally
their superior, they merely mean that her sub-
ordinate position is an effectual safeguard to her
purity of action. And indeed while she rejoices in
the characteristics of which we have been speaking
it is perhaps just as well that, for her own good, she
should be kept under lock and key. But how, we
may well ask, is she to learn to swim without going
into the water ? How is she to free herself from
those failings which -subject her to man's contempt^
and acquire those virtues which, till now, man has
appropriated as his own peculiar property? " Une
belle femme qui a les qualites (fun honnete homme est
ce qu'il y a au monde cTun commerce plus delicieux ;
Ion trouve en elle tout le merite des deux sexes? x And
may not even a plain woman benefit herself and her
surroundings by appropriating the qualities of which

1 La Bruyere.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 271

La Bruyere was thinking? Even if it were dis-
covered that the appropriation of noble qualities in
place of despicable ones prevented some mothers of
to-day from nurturing their own children, as Mobius
would have us believe, that discovery would not
account for the fact that in Austria only ten
out of a hundred are able to perform that duty.
The lower class women of that country are among
the most backward, and the upper class among the
most frivolous and empty headed, women of Europe.
Overwork is as injurious to a man's brain as it is
to a woman's. The brain is healthier when it is
properly used than when it is left to rust Yet
Mobius looks on stagnation of intellect as a distinct
advantage to a mother : he treats her from a strictly
biological standpoint and sees no earthly use in
her when she has brought her children through the
earliest years of infancy. His contemptuous remarks
about old women are calculated to make his female
adherents (if he has any) commit suicide when they
find themselves approaching the age of fifty. Mobius
stakes all on the investigations of Lombroso. He
states, for instance, that Lombroso has proved the
intellectual inferiority of woman, but he is discreetly
silent on the insignificant fact that the conclusions
of this Italian scientist have been rejected by the
greater number of those who have studied the
subject in France, Germany and Spain, as well
as in his own country. One of the most pro-
minent of Lombroso's opponents is Baer. 1 u Lombroso

1 See his monograph on the subject, and Dr Seyler's " Die Frau des
xx. Jahrhunderts," 1900.

2/2

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

is a modern psychologist who is always bringing
new and staggering discoveries into the market,"
says Dr Seyler ; "he gives an example of this
in his article in the Forum when he declares that
'Christopher Columbus was a "paranoiker" of the
most dangerous kind, who ought in reality to have
been confined in a mad-house.' ' The thoughtful
reader is tempted to wonder where Lombroso himself
will end his days.

If women of the twentieth century become students
of the psychology of the sexes they too may bring
fresh theories into the scientific market.

But women may still thank Professor Mobius for
his writings on their sex ; it is possible after all for
them to gain more than they lose by their perusal,
for the first step towards an effective cure is to
understand the disease. Most of the miserable
failings which this Professor has detected in the
women of Germany are only too plentiful among
women all the world over. Women are in the main
slaves to custom, have no sense of honour, are
frivolous, selfish, narrow, pigheaded, fond of dress,
over fond of colour, deceptive, hysterical, cowardly,
unjust, jealous, lacking in initiative and independent
thought, servile, hard on one another, full of
contempt for their sex, inconsequent, impatient,
guided by the heart rather than by the head, etc.
etc., but, happily for the progress of the race, there
are to-day men as well as women who are
determined that the female sex shall for the future
be urged, encouraged and helped to drop these
artificial qualities, and to replace them by

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 273

nobler ones. Committees of ways and means are
rising up in all parts of the world. One of the
schemes under consideration is that of co-educa-
tion, which we propose to examine in the following
chapter.

CHAPTER XIV
CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES

IN many countries co-education has been prac-
tised among the lower classes for more than
one generation ; not as a result of any high moral
motive, but purely and simply as a matter of
expedience, above all, for the sake of economy.
This is particularly so in Norway, the poorest of
European countries, where every farthing has to be
carefully considered. In the backwoods of America,
in villages where it is cheaper to have one school
teacher than two, co-education of the children was in
practice long before it was adopted in towns and in
schools provided for children of a higher social grade. 1
In Wales, too, we have long had our communal
schools for village children ; but the question that
is puzzling so many people to-day is whether the
same system should, or should not, be universally
adopted in the education of the petite and haute
bourgeoisie. I use the French term because, for
some reason or other, the English equivalent has
been found to give offence to some democratic ears.
Are the sons and daughters of medical men,
university professors, army and navy officers,

1 The French philosopher Condorcet was one of the pioneers
of co-education see Louis Frank.
274

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 275

merchants and millionaires to receive their education
side by side in the same classroom from the same
teacher ?

The first thought that arises in the mind of the
gentle English mother is one of horror at such a
suggestion. " What ! " she cries, " are my manly little
boys to go to school with girls ? Are they to have
all their masculine qualities repressed and their
boyish play interdicted that they may become fit
associates for girls? Is leap-frog to be supplanted
by the skipping-rope ? And shall our glorious
Eton and Harrow, our Winchester and our
Wellington, be modelled henceforth on the plan of a
boarding-school for young ladies ! What, indeed, will
be the fate of Britain if her sons, who have vowed
they never will be slaves, are turned into women !
" But think of your daughters too," someone mildly
suggests. " Will it not be good for them to have the
same advantages as their brothers, to have their
minds broadened and their physique improved by
the healthful atmosphere of a boy's public school ? "

" What ! " cries the same gentle mother in even
greater horror than before. " Are my sweet little
girls to be turned out boys? to lose their winning
ways and their pretty manners by daily contact with
rough and rude schoolboys ! The thing is out of the
question. It is monstrous. Am I to live to see my
darling Arabella stride into the drawing-room like a
man, her hair unkempt and her dress neglected. Am
I to hear school-boy slang from her girlish lips, and,
what is worst of all, see her health give way under
the pressure of Latin and Greek examinations,

276

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

through useless emulation of masculine intellect ?
Heaven preserve my children from such a fate."

To all this we would reply. Let the gentle
mother in question ask herself whether there is
absolutely no room for improvement in the present
system of education for boys, as well as girls, in
England, whether our girls and boys are turned
out of existing educational machines such perfect
types of men and women as to leave no room
for improvement. Let her give a few hours to
the study of the female character as it is portrayed
by Mobius. Let her ask herself whether her sons
would be any the worse for assimilating some of
their sisters' feminine qualities modesty for instance.
Modesty has always been considered to be a pre-
eminently feminine quality. Pliny went so far as
to state that female corpses float down a river
face downwards " veluti pudori defunctarum parcente
natures" while male corpses invariably float on
their backs. Her modesty is said to be woman's
greatest safeguard, and certainly not even the up-
holders of co-education would wish her to be de-
prived of it. Nevertheless, it is in reality an
acquired trait, 1 absent among the women of many
savage peoples. If it has been so extensively
acquired by women as to be mistaken for a sexual
characteristic, since the days of Pliny, by all means
let men acquire it too. Is not modesty one of
the attributes of greatness of soul ? Feijoo 2 pointed
out in the eighteenth century that a little more

1 See G. Archdall Reid "The Principles of Heredity," 1905

2 See his " Defensa de las Mujeres."

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 277

modesty in men as to their intellectual superiority
over women would not do them any harm. " St
Thomas," he says, "speaking of presumption, re-
marks that this vice is always founded on some
error of the understanding, and that putting the world
straight as regards woman's intellectual capacities
would not add presumption to her list of faults
but would remove it from man's." It is worthy
of note, moreover, that Feijoo was a native of
Galicia, a province of Spain that has been famous for
centuries as well for the creative musical and poetical
genius of its women, 1 as for their remarkable
superiority to their men folk in both mental and
physical energy. In the spring of the year 1907,
I came across an earnest English Protestant Mis-
sionary conscientiously using all the eloquence at
his disposal to show the fishermen on the Galician
coast that their women ought to be put down
a peg. " The Bible teaches us," he said, " that
the woman should be number two, but with you
Gallegan fishermen she is number one." I was
going to murmur something about putting the
clock back, when the Missionary's young daughter
interrupted me by exclaiming, " The women here
actually take hold of their husbands and shake
them ! "

" How dreadful ! " I exclaimed.

It is quite clear that among the lower classes
in Galicia co-education might instil more manly

1 See Sarmiento " Memorias para la historia de la Poesia y Poetas
Espanolas." "Ellas son las que componen las coplas sin artificio
alguno y ellas inventan los tonos 6 aires a que las han de cantar."

278

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

courage into the man and more modesty into
the woman. But let us put the question seriously,
" Would co-education in secondary schools rob our
English boys of their manliness? Would it really
result in effeminizing the British youth ? Yes,
without doubt, if co-education means sending our
boys to be educated at their sisters' boarding-
schools, especially to such schools as they exist
to-day.

But in this chapter we are not treating of board-
ing-schools, either for boys or for girls. We do
not wish to do away with all such institutions with
one clean sweep, but we should like to see their
number gradually diminish and their place taken
by first-class co-educational day schools. There has
been much talk of late about the desirability of
regalvanizing our grammar schools. Yes, by all
means let them be regalvanized, let their building
premises be enlarged, let them be adapted for the
conjoint education of both sexes. The British
boarding-school is a hotbed of narrowness, ex-
clusiveness, and pettiness if of nothing worse. It
fosters the self-satisfied undemocratic spirit which
to-day threatens ruin to our Empire.

Let the middle class mother ask herself, not,
whether attending the same classes as his sister
will rob her son of his manliness, but whether her
boy is growing up manly enough. At what sort
of a school was that boy educated, who, on finding
himself a parent in his turn, wrote to a daily paper
as follows :

" SIR, Many parents of the middle class have been puzzled

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 279

like myself with the problem ' what shall we do with our sons.'
Why cannot we have a 'gentleman's corps' where social
position would be recognised as a qualification for entrance ?
Many sons of professional men and others of the upper middle
class would join such a corps as privates, if they were sure of
meeting men of their own position." 1 TlTUS.

From what, we would ask, is this loving parent
so anxious to protect his tender sons? Is there
not something effeminate about his very anxiety ?
If co-education were suggested for his darlings,
would he not, in all probability, be laid low by a
violent attack of hysteria? This disease, by the
way, is common to both sexes. Workmen, sailors,
and even military men, have before now fallen
victims to hysteria. 2 Doctors tell us that smoking
and alcoholic drinks are among the causes of
hysteria among boys, robbing them, to begin
with, of that manliest of all manly qualities, the
art of self-control. Co-education will not weaken
a boy's powers of self-control, but strengthen
them.

1 This letter appeared in the Daily Telegraph, Sept. 29, 1905.

2 " Was den Beruf oder Stand der von Hysteric am meisten befallenen
Individuen anbelangt, so berichtet Ziehen, dass beim weiblichen
Geschlecht die verkehrt Erzogenen, nur auf Romane und sinnliche
Zerstreuungen denkenden, beschaftigungslosen Damen der besten
Stande, dann Arbeiterinnen und Prostituirte tiberwiegen ; bei den
mannlichen Geschlechte soil aber die Hysteric am haufigsten bei
Arbeitern, Matrosen, nach Coleri bei Vagabunden und Bettlern, nach
Dupouchel, Gilles de La Tourette, etc., auch beim Militar vorkommen."
Dr Emil Segler, "Die Frau des xx. Jahrhunderts." Leipzig, 1900.
And the same writer adds a little later, "am schwersten 1st es, wie
Ziehen bemerkt, die Hysteriker gegen Affecte abzuharten, da die
Kunst der Selbst-beherrschung Folge einer mangelhaften Erziehung
doch dem grossten Theile unserer sogar gesunden und modernen
Jugend vollkommen abgeht,"

280

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

Let us suppose that the middle-class girls and
boys of a county town are educated at the same
grammar school. The girls will of course enter
by their own door, through their own cloakrooms,
and the boys by theirs. The boys' play-ground
will be separate from that of the girls. But once
in school, under the eye of a watchful teacher, boy
and girl will work side by side, and in the class-
room their will be no distinction made between
the sexes. If the girls are quicker than the boys,
and more eager to learn, as so many teachers assert,
a little wholesome emulation will not harm the boys.

A Russian lady, who has since 1901 been carrying
on a co-educational school for the children of upper-
class families at Kieff (modelled on those of England
and America), took me over the establishment in
1904. I found forty-five children, twenty girls,
and twenty-five boys. At this school, to which a
kindergarten is attached, the children of both
sexes remain till the age of fourteen, but my friend
hoped that the Minister of the Interior would soon
extend the age to fifteen. In this school the sexes
are never separated for work or for play, but never
under any circumstances are they left without the
supervision of a teacher. School begins at nine
o'clock, and the school hours, playtime included,
cover six hours in all. There are never more than
fifteen in a class, generally less. Neither marks
nor prizes are given, but there is an exhibition of
each pupil's work once a year. The desks and stools
have, like many other things in the school, been
taken from American models,

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 281

" There is not a trace of coquetry in my girls," said
their mistress smiling, "flirtation is out of the question
when boys and girls are brought up together. I do
not deny that romping with their boy schoolfellows
rubs off a little of their girlish gentleness, but
the gain far outweighs the loss. As for my boys,
they learn from the first that the accident of sex is
no disqualification to a woman, and when they
grow to manhood they will not turn into tyrants
nor petty despots, their women folk will be their
comrades and their friends."

On another occasion I discussed the subject with
a charming young Danish lady who was educated at
a co-educational school till the age of fourteen, and
pursued her studies at home with a governess till
the age of eighteen, when she took the full University
course at Copenhagen University, working side by
side with the male students. This lady, in answer
to my questions as to her views on co-education,
told me that she believed in it thoroughly. "The
mistake is," she said, " to think that the sexes should
be separated from the age of thirteen or fourteen till
entrance in the University. There should be no
separation}- Boy and girl should work together
right on from the kindergarten to the close of the
university course. With proper supervision such
a line of education must prove highly satisfactory

1 "The bald fact must be recognised that between the asexual or
hermaphroditic period of childhood, and that of the fully-sexed man-
hood and womanhood there is a period, long or short, when blood
runs warm and hearts beat fast. It is then that a youth rightly looks
to age for guidance and restraint. It is just this period of adjustment
that needs frank teaching and skilful handling. This period needs no

282

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

for both sexes. It is not the boys and girls who
have grown up with these advantages who go in for
silly love affairs at a premature age, it is those who
have never had the chance of learning how to behave
in each other's company. The boy who has learned to
respect all girls as he respects his sister has learned
a lesson that will be useful to him through life, and
to all the women with whom he is eventually thrown
in contact." It is very rarely, if ever, that a man in
our country marries one of the girls with whom he
has been educated,' 3 she added, smiling.

If the English mother fears lest co-education may
rob her sdns of their manliness, why is she so opposed
to the introduction of compulsory military training
for every male Briton ? Surely that would prove
an effectual antidote to the effeminacy she so much
dreads. Is it perhaps because her anxious heart
fails to see the distinction between compulsory train-
ing and compulsory service ? " We hear much now-
adays upon the question of physical degeneration,"
writes a patriotic Englishman ; " I wonder whether
the anti-conscriptionists have ever considered the
effect that a few years' discipline, regular living, and
steady drilling would have upon the many round-
shouldered weaklings we have about us to-day ? "
" Compulsory military training would teach our
youth discipline, obedience, self-control, self-respect,"

seclusion. To separate the one sex from the other increases the
sexual tension. Let boy and girl look in each other's eyes frankly and
truthfully, not slyly and surreptitiously. Once this frank look of sex
on sex has occurred, there is no fear for the future." R. E. Hughes,
M.A., Oxon,, "The Making of Citizens," 1902.

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 283

writes another, who has thought deeply on the
subject, and he adds, " It would greatly improve the
physical and general health of the whole nation." An
English lady who returned to England from India in
1906, after an absence of several years, told me that
it distressed her to see the slouching gait and the
degenerate appearance of the Englishmen in our
streets. They constitute," she said earnestly, " by
their appearance alone, the most eloquent of pleas
for compulsory military training." And a year
before, a South African colonel, writing to the papers
on the same subject, said, " Undeniably we have lost
the taste for military service ; it is equally true that
we have degenerated physically . . . one has only
to walk through the streets of London to observe
how anaemic-looking, weak, and round-shouldered
the majority of the men are. . . . The best, indeed
the only way to remedy such physical weakness is to
compel men to drill. The word ' compel ' has an
ugly sound to freedom-loving people, but we English
have become used to it lately. Have we not com-
pulsory vaccination, compulsory education, why not
compulsory drill ? " The same writer heard a Dutch-
man say of some of the militiamen we sent out to
South Africa, " These little boys ought to be at
home ; they are no good." And we hear on all
sides that the average officer in the British army is
looked upon as " a pampered amateur, a soft sort of
imitation of the real thing." l

To many English people the word co-education,

1 See correspondence on this subject in The Daily Telegraph, Sept.
1905.

284 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

like the phrase compulsory military service, is a
red rag to a bull, but the former need not necessarily
mean making girls boyish, or boys girlish, and the
latter does not necessarily involve universal regis-
tration, nor three years' service in barracks. " For
every youth in this country to go through sufficient
service in either navy, army, militia, or volunteers,
in order to make himself an efficient citizen involves
no hardship for anyone. ... It would be much
more amusing than watching other people play
football." 1

If the British mother of to-day blindly refuses to let
her boys receive a military training it is because the
poor woman had in her day no education but that
afforded by our typical boarding-schools for girls.
Let us give our girls the benefits of a wider outlook,
let us educate them with our boys. Let us instil
into our children of both sexes the duty of patriotism,
of self-control, of courage, of self-sacrifice. Some of
our girls will have to fight the battle of life unaided
by any manly arm, by any masculine counsel. Some
of our boys will owe success or failure to the self-
control and courage of wife, sister, or daughter. All
the essential virtues of man or woman are equally
needed for the happiness and welfare of the human
family. Let us purify the atmosphere of our boys'
schools, let us make it fit for their sisters to breathe.
If our present centres of education are not suited
for the teaching of boys and girls together, let us
make them suitable ; and then, when the girls, by
intercourse with companions of the opposite sex, have
1 See letter in Glasgow Herald^ Aug. 22, 1905.

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 285

become more courageous, they will not be likely
to take from the boys the manliness they already
have. No, their own standard of true manli-
ness having been raised, they will demand
greater things of their male comrades and later,
of their husbands and sons, even though these
greater things involve compulsory military training.

" How can the nation be made to understand that
its existence depends on its attitude toward military
service?" asks Major-General Colville, and he adds,
" The day will come when strangers will teach us
what we cannot learn by ourselves." And it was
Lord Kitchener, who, writing from India on the same
subject, said, " Are we sure that with our present
system we shall be able to discharge the heavy
obligation which will devolve upon us ? If I thought
it possible I would gladly say so, but I am convinced
that such is not the case." Let co-education and com-
pulsory military service be introduced simultaneously,
and very soon Great Britain will have cause to be
thankful for nobler minded women and manlier men.

M. Turgeon, who appears to have read widely on
the subject of co-education, thinks that the intro-
duction of the system into France would be fatal to
the morals of that country. But surely it would be
difficult to make French morals worse than they are
at present. What has the separation of the sexes
until marriage done for France ? Is there really
something in the French temperament that would
make the co-education of the sexes utterly impractic-
able? The anchorites who withdrew from the world,
in the early days of Christianity, to live on bread and

286

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

water in the desert, did it that they might prove by
their own lives that a pure life was not an impossi-
bility, even to an Asiatic in a southern clime. These
anchorites were Asiatic Christians. What was
possible for Asiatics in the early days of Christianity
should be possible for French Christians in the
twentieth century. If French boys are not fit at
present to mingle with girl comrades in the class-
room and the lecture hall, let their parents and
teachers set about making them so. If their Latin
temperament is unruly let them be taught to master
it, that they may not grow up to be its slave. Even
Turgeon owns that the French boarding-school is one
of the curses of France. But the weak spot in his
determined opposition to the system of co-education
is that he ridicules the arguments that have been
brought forward in favour of it when he finds himself
powerless to refute them.

It has been suggested that co-education will favour
marriage, and in one way it certainly will do so.
The boy who has grown up among girl comrades
should be much more likely both to choose wisely
and to make a good husband to the woman of his
choice, yet Turgeon thinks otherwise, " L 'experience
attested he asserts, "que dans tons les pays, ou fleurit la
co-education^ le divorce sfoit plus que partout ailleurs^
He has merely overlooked the statistics of divorce in
his own country ! He goes on to assert that both
catholics and liberals are opposed to co-education,
but he forgets that the idea is still a new one to
many thinkers, and that every reform meets with
opposition at first. Opposition proves nothing.

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 287

Another of M. Turgeon's arguments against co-
education is that girls are naturally infinitely more
precocious than boys, that between the ages of twelve
and sixteen a girl comes suddenly to maturity, both
of body and mind, like a flower opening in the sun-
shine, while a boy's development is slow and steady.
Here Turgeon is simply quoting Marion, who in his
turn quoted Michelet; and Michelet's rhapsodic studies
were not taken from normal healthy girlhood he
knew nothing of the healthy farmer's daughter and
the factory girl. There is no. jump into womanhood
which need prove an obstacle to co-education, though
it is true that there may always be delicate girls and
delicate boys for whom quiet study at home with a
governess or tutor will be more beneficial than school
education. It was M. Marion who asserted that girls
tell lies for the pleasure of lying. 1 If that psycholo-
gist had lived for a few months in Spain, he would
have learned by experience that boys find equal
pleasure in that pastime. The Spaniard tells a lie as
readily as he draws his breath ; his women folk can-
not compete with him there.

Some people are afraid that co-education will
involve too great a taxation of a girl's brain. But
this need not be so. There is no reason why, in a
class composed of boys and girls, a judicious teacher
need grind more work out of individual pupils
than is good for them. It is the present system of
cramming for examinations, particularly as it is
carried on in our High Schools for girls, which is bad.
Why should we wish every child in a particular class

1 " Psychologic de la Femme."

288 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

to answer, after long months of hard work, a fixed
number of questions, in a fixed manner, within a
fixed limit of time, on a fixed day ; and then stamp
upon each young heart a fatal conviction of failure
or success according to the results of that particular
ordeal ? Is this the way to develop intellectual
personality ? Is this the way to prepare young
warriors for the battle of life ?

I hear that the first trial of co-education in Swiss
secondary schools met with very poor success and
was abolished in consequence, but that now a fresh
start is being made, and that a secondary school for
boys and girls together is shortly to be opened at
Lausanne.

In a few of the older towns of the United States
co-education continues to be as strenuously opposed
as ever, otherwise it is highly approved of all over
the country, and the system begun in the infant school
is continued through school and college.

In Germany, where women are waking up so
amazingly, there is still very little talk of so bold
an innovation as the co-education of the sexes, and
all but the boldest pioneers still believe that there
is a wide and impassable gulf between the psychology
of man and woman. " Beim Manne herrscht der
Wille und Verstand vor, bet der Frau Gemut und
Empfindung ; darum ist der Mann fur Grunde
zuganglich, denkt folgerichtig und logisch ; die Frau
dagegen ist fur Eindrucke empfdnglich und ist sprung-
haft und unlogisch" wrote a German catholic divine
in 1902, and he was only expressing what Germany
believes to be the truth. The sooner co-education

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 289

is introduced into the Fatherland the better, that
the men may be freed from their supreme self-satis-
faction, and the women from their blind ignorance
of their own capabilities.

Russians are crying out for justice to their women.
All over that vast Empire there is a movement on
the part of the men to demand for their women
the same civil and political rights they are demanding
for themselves. Co-education is perhaps less impera-
tively needed in the Empire of the Czar than it is
in the British Empire.

In France, in spite of all that Turgeon may say,
co-education has many partisans among the intel-
lectual and the learned. Lourbet, to a certain extent,
writes eloquently in favour of it. He remarks that
free collaboration of the sexes would result in our
getting rid of much prejudice, and that to find a
rational system of education is one of the problems
of our day. " // faut supprimer la defiance imbecile
entre les sexes" he cries, but he, too, like most male
writers, lets himself be carried away by sentiment
when he begins to discuss woman.

Why should there be a greater difference between
male and female intellect among the upper classes
of society than there is among the lower ones ? This
is a question that no opponent of the woman move-
ment has as yet been able to answer satisfactorily.
In those parts of America where co-education has
been long enough established this difference has
practically ceased to exist ; while in Italy and in
Spain the gulf is still very wide. There is no
possibility of intellectual sympathy between the

290

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

average educated Spaniard or Italian and his women-
folk. I recently asked the daughter of a learned
Spanish archaeologist if she did not admire some
picturesque ruins her father was showing me. The
girl shook her head, while her father replied, "O
no! if a young lady in this country showed an
interest in archaeology we should think she had
gone off her head, she would be locked up." And
the daughter who was listening, answered sweetly,
"I don't understand anything about these things,
but I am very fond of plain sewing."

Those English and American people who scoff at
the woman movement those aristocratic ladies
who are using the influence that their high birth
and social position ensure to them in order to stem
the tide of woman's progress should go and live for
a few months in a provincial town of Spain or Italy,
and mix only with the ladies there. The average
Spanish lady of the twentieth century is practically
less educated than are the children of our board
schools. Her mind has never been opened. Her
position in the house is that of working house-
keeper, or rather of head drudge, in a house where
she is the only good servant. She never dresses to
receive friends except on stated occasions few and
far between. If a stranger calls at the house, she
peeps through a little hole above the lock of the
front door and asks imperatively, "What do you
want?" If the stranger then proposes to hand in
a card for her lord and master she opens the door
an inch, puts out her hand for the card, and then
slams the door while she goes to look for her husband,

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 291

who is quite likely to be a well-to-do and respected
citizen. If she has grown-up daughters their crass
ignorance is painful ; there is a dull, sheep-like
curiosity in their large dark eyes when they gaze
at their father's visitors from their balcony, a look
which carries one to the harems of Turkey. On
Sunday afternoons the mother, her head wrapped
up in a black veil, escorts her fatted daughters for
a walk, or rather a husband hunt, in the Alameda.
The girls, who never go out alone, are painfully
over-dressed on these important expeditions, and
look just what they are slaves on the marriage
market awaiting the highest bidder.

"The fate of a middle-class girl in this country,
if she does not marry," said a Spanish solicitor to
me a few weeks ago, "is extremely painful. There
are only two courses open to her : she must either
enter a convent, or become a kind of domestic servant."
Yet Spain has never, since the days of the Roman
Empire, been without her women of energy, learning
and genius. There is perhaps no country whose
history furnishes us with so glorious a list of illus-
trious females. And Spain herself is very proud of
them too. She has recently put up a fine statue of
her famous woman criminologist of the nineteenth
century Concepcion Arenal in the public gardens
of Orense, the town of her birth. What statues
of her women of genius has England to show to her
visitors? In one Spanish province I found a collec-
tion being made towards the raising of a statue of
a woman writer who is still alive and in her prime !
Yes, the Spaniard's treatment of his women is a

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

strange contradiction. I predict a grand future for
the Spanish woman when once she steps clean out
of her harem. It is to her women we must look for
the regeneration of Spain.

The best educated men in the Peninsula are, as a
rule, to be found in the priesthood. With one of
them I discussed the possibilities of the introduction
of the system of co-education into Spain. At first
his attitude was one of pious horror. " It would
never do," he cried. "You might as well propose
that our boys and girls should use the same bath !
It would lead to terrible immorality." But after
some discussion he conceded that a class-room and a
swimming-bath are not quite one and the same thing,
and that girls and boys might occupy desks side by
side under careful supervision, but, how could the
teacher's eye follow each child safely to its home ?
This seemed to my sacerdotal friend an insurmount-
able difficulty, and he shook his head very decidedly.
" The sexes will always be a mutual danger to each
other," he said, " a danger which can never be re-
moved." " Your fatalistic Asiatic notions do not
astonish me," I cried. " The Moors could not have
resided in Spain for eight centuries without leaving
some trace of their way of thought behind them."
" That is the most cruel thing you could have found
to say," replied the priest. " If there is anything that
makes us wince it is to be compared with Asiatics."
We shook hands and parted.

Another objection to co-education put forward by
Turgeon is that, in order to protect the girls from the
roughness of the boys, teachers in such schools will

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 293

be obliged to make it a hard and fast rule that the
boys shall always give in to the girls. This, he says,
will be inevitable, and the result will be disastrous.
The little girls, accustomed thus from earliest child-
hood to see their boy companions bend to their will,
must acquire bit by bit a false notion of their role in
life, a notion which will engender selfishness and
vanity, a spirit of domination and other grave, moral
evils. In fact, M. Turgeon is afraid that the girls
would grow up with the very same erroneous notions
about the inferiority of men to women, as are held
to-day by the men of France as to the inferiority of
woman to man ! He dreads seeing the boys grow up
with a feeling that they are intellectually inferior to
the girls and that their position is a subordinate one.
It is certainly paying a great compliment to the girls
to think that they will be able to accomplish so
much when once they are given the same educational
advantages as their brothers. I do not myself think
that, even given the same advantages as man in
every respect, woman will ever prove herself man's
superior. I cannot believe that it would be for the
happiness of any living species that one sex should
be fundamentally superior to the other. But in a
case of emergency a great fire, for instance if the
best means of escape from the burning house
happened to occur to the brain of a woman, I do not
think that even the man who had the greatest con-
tempt for the female sex would hesitate to save his
life by adopting it.

Boys educated side by side with girls will doubt-
less grow up to look on women as their equals. And

294 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

the thought of such a result is naturally hateful to all
those small-minded, tyrannical, sensual and selfish
men who feel that they would be lost without their
white slaves, ever ready humbly to minister to their
lordly desires. I foresee that many thousands of
such men, armed to the teeth with every possible
objection, will oppose the introduction of the system
of secondary co-education into Great Britain, into
France, into Germany, and into Spain and Italy with
tooth and nail.

Universal co-education is the door by which the
full equality of the sexes will be reached. All those
artificial differences between the sexes of which so
much has been made, those differences which have
been man's main excuse for keeping woman in sub-
jection, will disappear. We shall remember them
only as we remember a dream. Men will not lose
their respect for women by growing up in close
contact and in friendly intercourse with girls of their
own social status.

" We needs must love the highest when we see it."

And as a noble-minded Frenchman wrote, towards
the close of the year 1906, "Nous esptrons, en effet,
que les jeunes gens qui sont attires vers la femme
ne recherchent pas Passouvissement bestial de leurs
instincts, mais plutot un moyen qui leur permette de
laisser deborder une affection qui ne peut rester
enferme'e. Ce qui le prouve, dest que ceux qui sont
entoures de r affection des leurs peuvent rester plus
facilement continents que les autres, ce qtii explique
qua la campagne, en Von voit mains de ctttbataires

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 295

tloignts de leurs famille, on ne connait pas la prosti-
tution"**- Co-education is likely to be the most
efficacious remedy for the curse of Christian society.
If Christian men object to try this remedy for the
calamities which daily result from this horrible evil,
it is for them to find a better one. If we cannot
prevent the young men of to-day from seeking their
pleasure in the streets, let us at least do something
for the children who are growing up in our midst,
that they may not go the same way.

It is only in England that Christian men are silent.
It is only in England that they dare not denounce
the evil growing so rapidly in their midst. It is only
in England that men are satisfied with the position
their women occupy to-day. Protestant England,
the home of the Bible Society, is the only country
which persists, in the twentieth century, in drawing
a veil over its hideous sore, as it folds its hands in
prayer and turns its eyes to Heaven. It is not to be
wondered at that English women, brought up in
Christian homes, sheltered from sight and sound of
everything that is evil, and ignorant of the very
world they live in, should thank Heaven that English
women are not as other women ; but how comes it
that English men who read and see and hear and
travel freely how is it that these can cry " Peace "
when there is no Peace ?

M. Turgeon urges that if the same studies, the
same examinations, the same interests, are imposed
alike upon children of both sexes the superiority
of the husband over the wife and his authority in

1 Dr Georges Guibert, "Le Mariage," Paris, 1906.

296 WOMAN IN TRANSITION

the home will be jeopardised, thanks to which
married life will become a sort of two-headed
monster, when violent struggles for mastership can
only find one solution, that of divorce. Woman,
like fire, is in M. Turgeon's opinion a very good
servant, but a bad master. She must therefore be
kept well under control. " By all means," he cries,
" let girls be taught to take care of young infants,
let them learn how to administer household medi-
cines, to cut out dresses, to do plain sewing, to
cook, and to cultivate flowers." As a servant to
man, and as his housekeeper, he does not object
to her perfecting herself to the highest possible
degree. " But, if co-education were introduced, the
boys would have to learn all these things too," he
cries ! " Fancy the husband arranging the flowers,
turning the beef before the fire, and polishing his
wife's boots. No. It is clear that each sex has its
own particular role in life, and that it would be
folly to attempt giving the same preparation to
both." He then throws himself back upon Mon-
taigne's advice l to the mothers of his day, and goes
on to point out that the only reason why the
French government has permitted co-education in
its universities is necessity. To build a university
for women would have cost too much money.

I foresee that in the near future the French govern-
ment will be induced to permit secondary co-education
for a similar reason. It is wonderful how many
changes a spirit of economy can effect, changes

1 Montaigne said, "II ne faut qu'eveiller un peu et rechauffer les
facults qui sont dans les femmes."

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 297

which can be brought about by no other earthly
means.

It is erroneous to think that all those who are
working zealously to better the position of women
are bent on forcing young girls through the uni-
versities. If our High Schools seem to have a
leaning that way it is only a passing phase, and
as more and more ways of earning their living are
thrown open to girls, there will be less and less
unthinking desire to cull university honours. It is
foolish to be frightened at the swing of the pendulum.
Neither higher education nor co-education will ever
rob the normal woman of her sexual traits.

When co-education has been universally adopted
for a quarter of a century new books will have to
be written on the psychology of woman, and on
the feminine temperament. Once the mechanical
division of training and labour between the sexes
has been done away with, the organic difference,
as H. Lange has so well put it, will have a chance
of being perfected. " It is only of late," says that
writer, " that man's judgment has been criticised by
woman, and he, surprised and indignant, has retorted
by showing her his contempt. Give each sex full
room to unfold its capabilities in every possible
direction, and then, and then only, shall we see
wherein the true difference lies." 1

In these days when so many English families
consist of one only child, a boy or a girl as the
case may be, co-education will help in a great

1 Helene Lange, " Intellectuelle Grenzlinien zwischen Mann und
Frau." Berlin.

298

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

measure to make up for the loss resulting from
the absence of brothers and sisters. Not only in
their childhood will co-education benefit these
children, but all through their after-life they will
feel its good effects. The boy who has no sisters
will have, as he grows into manhood, a number of
women friends of his own rank in life, and the girl
who has no brothers, as she grows into womanhood,
will have men friends, whose goodwill and sympathy
will be invaluable, should she have to go forth into
the battle of life alone and unprotected.

Every woman who, breaking through the barriers
of custom and prejudice that hedge her in on all
sides into a newer and fuller life of individual
development and independence, proves, by her
conscientious fulfilment of the duties the calling
she has chosen entails upon her, that the world she
lives in is the better for the effort she has made
and the success she has achieved is helping on the
woman movement, by the courage she inspires in
the breasts of her weaker sisters and by the cheering
example she affords them. Almost every book on
the subject cites numbers of such women. I do not
know a country or an age that has been without
them. Their names alone would fill a volume.
One by one her disabilities, civil and political, are
falling before woman as she advances more and more
boldly to take her place beside man, not as his rival,
but as his friend and trusted comrade in the battle
that both have to fight shoulder to shoulder. Until
now humanity has advanced with halting gait and
uncertain step along the path of civilization and

CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES 299

improvement. Woman in her helplessness born of
ignorance, has constantly checked the advance of
man, but now that her ignorance is being changed
into knowledge and her helplessness into strong
courage and the power of self-control, the time is
near when of her own freewill, and with an en-
lightened understanding, she too will move forward,
keeping pace with man ; and the resources of progress
will be doubled.

END

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INDEX

ABSINTHE craze, effects of, 182
Actresses, once banned by the

Church, 162

Affection, lawful, -versus passion,
wholesome avenues for the
former, 294, 298

Alcoholism, some consequences of,
41, 67, 174, 187, and some
causes, 181-2, 253
Ambition, in women, 268
America

divorce in, 54-5
flirtation rare in, and why, 17
menace to, from Socialism, 172
occupations open to women in,

231-2, 236

restriction of families in, 42-3
woman movement in, 2
women's clubs in, 133-4
American girls, charm of, 14, free-
dom of, 9

wives, and husbands, 27
women, past and present, 30,

31-33
status of, superior to English,

224
why more interesting than

others, 116

Anarchism and women, 176 et seq.
Arenal, Conception, Spanish woman

criminologist, 291
Arts, the, modified success of women

in, 238-9

Athens, the hetairae of, 124
"At Homes," absurdity of, 116-9
Austrian
men of to-day in, degeneration of,

46-7

wives, modern ideal of, Seyler on,
47

BACHELORS and old maids, differ-
ence of esteem accorded to,

79. 90
" Back to the land/' a vain cry, 209

Barristers, women, countries ad

mitting, 233

Bazaars, a French view of, 117
Beauty enhanced by mental training,

2 34
Belgian women and Socialism,

Catholic views on, 167 et seq.
Belgium
Catholic attitude to the woman

movement in, 163 et seq.
divorce and marriage laws of,

their harshness, 164
men and marriage in, 47-8
Bible, the, as a "barricade against

reforms," 154

Bicycle, the, as an emancipator, 3, 4
Bigamy, decline of, in England, 56
of the Landgrave of Hesse,

Luther's view, 158
Biologists and the old maid, 76, 77,

84, 85-6
Birth-rate, decline of, widespread

of, causes of, 42 et seq.
Bon Marcht, the, of Paris, and its

manageress, 106

Bourgeoisie, the, its danger from
Socialism, Le Bon, and Grave
on, 170-2
the petite, in England, struggles

of, 172-3
Brain of woman, alleged inferiority

of, 26, 188, a fallacy, 254-5
Bricklayers, women as, 262
Britain (see also England, and
Wales), the woman movement
in, 2

Building trades, women in, 232
Business aptitude of French women,
6, 7, 104-5

CALLINGS open to women, 230-1
Cambon, M., on French women,

J 37
Capital and the Capitalist, Socialist

attitude towards, 202

3<>5

306

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

Caste (see also Class), in the Colonies,

229
feeling in the working classes,

instances of, 217-8
Catholic Church, attitude of, towards

women, present and past, 87-9,

108-9, X 56> 159-60. 163, * 66, 167
Celibacy in various countries, 45,

48-9
Character of men and of women,

how moulded, 19
Charitable clubs, who most benefits

by, 142
Charity, effects on the receiver, 142,

143

Chemists, female, Russian, 232-3
Children, French and English, com-
pared, 4, 5
young, differences between, less of

sex than of training, 266
Christianity and woman, 145 et seq.
Church-going, abandoned by Nor-
wegian women, 156
Civil and political rights, sex equality
in, claimed by Anarchism,
197-8

Class distinctions in America, 224
and co-education, 274, 278
in male and female brain capacity,

289

prejudice, inimical to women's
work for pay, 10, 15, 16, to
certain kinds of work, 92, 103-4
woman's direst enemy, 228-9,
230

Clubs, see Women's Clubs
Co-education, 274 et seq.
advantages of, 280-1, 284
countries in which practised, 274,

280, 281, 288, 289
countries in which attempted, 288
English objections to, 275, 282,

284

overwork unnecessary in, 287
reasons leading to adoption of,

274, 296
Collet, Camilla, her influence on

Ibsen, 38, 84
Compulsory military training,

benefits from, 282-3, 285
Convention, a cause of declining

birth-rates, 52-3, 123
Conversation, men's condescension

in, 124-6, 157
pleasures of, 116, 121, 125
real, defined, 119

Co-operative homes for women-
workers, 115

Coquetry, French, 18, 19

Country poor folk, restlessness of,
209

Courage, woman's need for, and
exhibition of, 264

Creeds, and the woman movement,
240-1

Culture, true, what it consists in ,235

DANGEROUS trades, need for pro-
tection of both sexes, 206
Danish fisher-women on the Faroes,

characteristics of, 209-12
girls, position of, 17, 18, and see

281

Daughters, British, absolute depen-
dence of, on parents, 22
unmarried, drudgery of, 81-3
lack of training and freedom

among, 80, 92-4, 95, 220-1
right of, to emancipation, 95-6
Denmark, co-education in, 281-2
women admitted to men's clubs

in, 138
Desire for knowledge, and curiosity

in women, 264-5
Dinner-party conversation, 125
Diseases due to, and allied with,

prostitution, 61 et seq.
Divorce, causes of, 80
in relation to character, mental

stability, suicide, 37
in relation to the declining birth-
rate, 53
Divorce and marriage laws of

Belgium, harshness of, 164
D.Ph. degree first granted to a
woman by Berlin University,
233

Dolls, the history of, 259
Dowries, and other points governing

selection for marriage, 95
Dress, extravagance in, of British
servant maids and factory girls,
173-4, i ts s l e a > 2J 8
Drink, see Alcoholism

EARNING a living, by old maids,
wives, and widows, difficulties
of, 60, 92, 101 et seq., 141, 161,
166, 191-2, 204. et seq., 220-1
loss of position involved by certain
forms of, 10, 15, 17, 92-3, 104,
140, 217-8

INDEX

307

Earning a living (contd. )
Norway the exception to the rule,

10, ii, 17
some forms now open, 230 et seq.

Editorial note, an, on women's dis-
satisfaction and its causes, 243

Education (see also Co-education),
disproportioned to openings for
educated, 188-9

Educational freedom for women,
196

Elephantiasis, spread by women,

63-4
Emancipation of the daughter, 80,

95-6
England, attitude in, towards the

social evil, 65, 69
conventions hindering marriage

in, 52-3, 123

divorce in, as affecting birth-
rate, 33

inequalities in the law of, 55-6
flirtation, etc., in, 17, 18, 127
husband-hunting in, 5
lowest birth-rate in, causes of, 51
married women's work in, pro-
blem of, 105

narrowness of interests in, n, 121

England and other lands, decay

of home life in, causes of, 181

et seq.

English "At Homes," absurdity of,

116-9
children, compared with French,

4. 5
girls and women, position of, 13,

15. 224-5

husbands, a change of view on, 28
Socialists, tactics and illogicality

of, 202-3

women, aristocratic and middle
class, attitude of towards
marriage, 49

misconception of, as to
superiority of their status,
etc., 224

unbusinesslikeness of, 105
women's clubs, 134-6
Englishmen, small acquaintance of,
with women other than rela-
tions, and why, 52-3, 123, 127,
128, 129

Equality between the sexes, co-edu-
cation as a means to, 293 et seq.
Europe, "superfluous women" in,
84

FACTORY girls, caste ideas among,

217-8

dress of, its sole aim, 218
Faroe Islands, fisher folk of, hard

life of, 209, 212

Families, large, advantages to mem-
bers of, 44

restriction of, and the results, 42-4
Family, the, its decadence, 181

and the causes, 182 et seq.
life, in France, 5

Faults common to women, sum-
marised, 272
Female sex, number of, in excess of

male, various countries, 77, 84
Finance, women in, 231
Finland
comradeship between sexes in,

51-2

equality of the sexes in, 240
woman movement in, 2
women's clubs in, 139
Finnish girls, freedom enjoyed by,

8-9

women, democratic views of, 139
Fisher folk, hard lot of, in the

Faroes, 209-12
Flirtation in various countries, 17

et seq. , 127
France
co-education for, why objected to,

285-6, 292-3
unless in favour, 289
divorce in, as affecting the birth-
rate, 53-4

girls of the middle class in, 3
limitation of births in, 42
old maids rare in, and why, 90
parent of modern woman move-
ment, 2
parental consent to marriage in,

consequences of, 57
retarded marriage age in, 45
Saint Simonists of, and their

women followers, 160
"superfluous women" in, 84
untruthfulness a feminine trait in,

264

Franchise, the, for women
Catholic attitude to, 166
women's attitude to, various

countries, 138, 211, 227, 243
French children, compared with

English, 4, 5

feminism, origin of, Turgeon's
view, 138

308

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

French women, business aptitude of,

6, 7, i4-5
the Catholic Church in relation

to, 159-60

M. Cambon on, 137
professional, numbers of, 138
of the i8th century, salons of,

119-21
Friendship between men and women,

123
in marriage, 26, 27

GALICIAN women, characteristics of,
bodily and mental, 260-2, supe-
riority of, to men, 277
Gaul, ancient, women of, 160
Gentleman's corps, a suggested, 279
German
girls, husband-hunting by, 20-1

increasing freedom of, 7, 8
manners, male, 7
mothers, and the husband-hunt, 19
Socialism, and the woman ques-
tion, 146 et seq.
souteneurs in London, 66-7
wives, the husband's view, 25
women, domesticity and senti-
mentality of, 6
Germany

decreased birth-rate in, 45
ideas on male and female psy-
chology in, 288

minimum earnings essential in, 165
occupations open to women in,

231

old maids in, 78-9
points governing selection for mar-
riage in, 95

retarded marriage age in, 45
segregation of the sexes in, 126
spread of scepticism in, 156
"superfluous women" in, 84
venereal disease in, high per-
centage of, 6 1
woman movement in, 2
Girls, growing, maligned by various

writers, 266, 267, 287
Girls' personality and position,

various countries, 3 et seq.
Governesses' Homes, inimical to

self-respect, 143

Great Britain, "superfluous women "
in, 84

HEREDITY, in relation to mother-
hood, 39, 40

Hesse, Landgrave of, his bigamy,

158
Home, the, its decadence, 165, 181,

and the causes, 183
the woman's sphere, a biological

controversion thereof, 84
Home industries, challenged by Frau

Braun, 207, 212, her remedy,

213

Homeric womanhood, 30
Housing of professional women,

H3-5

Husband-hunting, and husband-
awaiting, 5, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19,

20, 39. 53
Husbands, American, English,

French and German, 7, 27, 28,

224-5
Hysteria in men, 279 and note

IBSEN, Hendrik, effect of his writings
on the woman question, 37-8, 84

Idleness a mark of gentility, 10 and

note, 15, 17, 92
Norway the exception, 10, 17

Imitative powers of women, 265-6

Independence, 87 et seq. , and inter-
dependence of the sexes, 295

India, men's dislike of female
intellect in, 125-6

Infanticide, commonness of, and the
cause, 195

Initiative and patience in women,
denied by Mobius, 268-9

Institute of Accountants and Book-
keepers, the, 236

Intellectual inferiority of woman,
alleged, 26, a fallacy, 254 et seq. ,
so recognised by Anarchism,
1 88, 199-200

Intelligence in women, male attitude
to, 105, 125-6

Italy, mixed marriages in, draw-
backs to, 13

Italian girls, backward position of,
12, 13

JAPAN, old maids rare in, 86
Japanese women, as wives, 24-5
Jealousy, a cure for, 123
Judaism of the Catholic Church, as

affecting women, 160, 161-2
Juries, women on, a desideratum of

Anarchism, 196

INDEX

309

KNOWLEDGE in women, advantages
of, Lamy's views, 157

LANGE, H., on scope of both sexes,

297

Leprosy, spread of, by women, 61-3

Literature (see also Novel-reading),

as a deterrent to marriage, 50-1

Little, Canon Knox, views of, on

wifehood, 38, 145
Livelihood, earning, see Earning a

living

Lombroso's views on woman's in-
feriority, and their opponents,
271-2
London

Prostitutes in, numbers in 1906,
60 ; chiefly German, 66 ; num-
bers prosecuted, 1903-5, 67;
state of the streets on account
of, 65-7

London clubs for women, 134
Loneliness of the old maid, 80, 81,

85, 94

of the professional woman, in
Love as woman's one interest, 26,

29, 267

side issues, 268

Luther's opinions of women, and
their effects, 38, 69, 78, 83, zoo,
146, 158, 240
Luxury as a deterrent to marriage,

49
Lying, "woman's natural weapon,"

263-4, 287

MACHINERY, and the decadence of
the Home, 183, 184

and the old maid, 92

and the woman movement, 83
Machines versus women, in Sweden,

I 9 1 '3
Macon, Council of, an error exploded,

188
Male attitude toward the change in

woman, 27, false basis of, 226
idea of woman, 256
Malthus, and his views, 42 et seq.
Man's economic position in regard

to the woman movement, 222-3
Map- making, women in, 232
Mariages de convenance, and their

consequences, 3, 5, 13, 194
Marriage, American advice on

achieving, 99
and co-education, 281, 282,285,288

Marriage, evolution of, 57
later age of, various countries, 45

et seq.

Luther's advice on, 100
obstacles to, 49, 52-3, 57, 123
Married couples, alleged boredom

of, and its cure, 122
women in factories, etc., 138,

181-2, 187
Belgian and Socialist views on,

164-6

Frau Braun on, 213
neglect by, of their arts and

crafts, 103
position of, in various countries,

25 et seq., 164

Martineau, Harriet, cited, passim
Maternal love, animal character of,

38,40
Meat, daintiness concerning, of

British artizan class, 173
Medical profession, the, in relation

to the social evil, 74, 75
on women's complaints, 31, 84-5
Men, condescension of, in conversa-
tion with women, 124-6, 157
students, disproportion of, to

openings for, 189, 190
young, and the solution of the

social evil, 74
Mental equality of the sexes, Feij6o's

views, 190 and note, 247, 248
Plato's view, 176 et seq.
Seneca's view, 248
why not as yet manifested, 199,

200, 256, 263

Michelet, an indictment of, 266
Midwifery, the prehistoric female

profession, 161
Military training, compulsory,

benefits from, 282-3, 285
Mill's "Subjection of Women," 154
Mind, question of sex in, 190 and

note, 247

Mobius, on woman's inferiority to
man, 249 et seq., opposing views,
254-6, 257

Modesty desirable in men, 276-7
Mohammed's crime towards woman,

23
Monogamy, Mobius on, 251

and the Old Maid, 76 et seq.
Moral code of the Japanese woman,

2 5
justice, equality in, claimed by

Anarchists, 198-9

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

Moral superiority of woman, admis-
sion of, curious deductions
from, 56, 258, 270

Morality in relation to prostitution,

70-5
Mormonism versus prostitution,

68-9
Motherhood, in various nations,

37 et seq.
absolute, 39, degrading view of,

258

heredity in relation to, 40, 41
the "normal destiny of woman,"
76, biological controversion
of this, 77
wrong kinds of, 40
Mothers, matchmaking, hostility of,
to freedom of women, 228

NAME of woman, retention of, on
marriage, 26

Necessity as good fairy, 296

Needlework, an indictment of, 206-7

Nervous prostration, some causes
of, 31-2

Norway
co-education in, 274
women's reading rooms in, 139

Norwegian girls, manners of, men
friends allowed, 17 ; strong per-
sonality and independence of,
10, ii

women, attitude of, to church-
going, 156
as wives, 25

Novels, objectionable, and novel-
reading, 34 et seq.

Nuns, contrasted with Old Maids,
89

Nursing of children, causes of
inability for, 252-3

OBJECT in life, need of, for all

women, 13, 21
Occupation, serious, lack of, and

consequences personal, 28 et

se <l-> 79> 94, 97. and racial, 33

et seq.
Occupations open to women, 192,

207, 220, 230 tt seq.
Old Maid, the, 76, origin of, 78,

81, false disgrace attaching

to, 79

Old Maids, poor, position of, 81-4
rich, position of, 85
Protestant, chief resources of, 90

Old Maids, unskilled work of, and

loss of caste, 92
Only children, and co-education,

297-8
inferiority of, reasons for this,

43-4

Opinion, an, denned by Milton, 225
Overwork, ill effects of, 33, 205,

207, 271
not a necessity, 190, 235, 287.

PAIN, power of bearing of the

sexes, 267
Paralysis in relation to venereal

disease, 61
Parasitic life of old maids decried,

96-7
Patriotism, why often lacking in

women, 265
Pay, equality of male and female,

165-6

urged by Anarchism, 197
Personal appearance, effect on, of
overwork, mental or domestic,
241, 242

Philanthropy (see also Religion),
drawbacks to, urged by Frau
Braun, 213-4, 216
one great attraction of, 143
Physical degeneration and its

remedies, 282-3
Plato's views of women's powers,

176-80
Pocket-money pay, immorality of

accepting, 141, 166, 205
Porters, and load carriers, women

as, 260, 261, 262

Portrait painters, essentials in, 239
Professional woman, the, defined,

clubs for, 112, 115
first rank rarely reached by, 238
housing of, 113-5
loneliness of, 111-2
in the Middle Ages, 161
recreations overlooked by, 112
Professions for English girls, how

decided on, 220
Progressive polygamy, 54
Property of women, in countries in

which secured to them, 196
Prostitution, an Austrian view of,

59, 63-4, 68, 72-3
causes leading to, 60, 68
and Christianity, 161-2

INDEX

Prostitution, co-education as a re-
medy for, 294-5
consequences of, to both sexes,

60- 1
legal, causes conducive to, 86,

194
war proclaimed against, by

Socialism, 146-7

Protestantism, and women's inde-
pendence, 157-9
Psychology of woman, 245 et seq.

RAILROAD advertising, women in,

232
Ranking by male relatives, a sex

disability, 224

Rationalism and the woman move-
ment, 148-55, 176-80
Recreation, need of, by professional

women, 112

Religion and philanthropy, the re-
source of the British old maid,
90
and women, specious Rationalist

arguments on, 155
Respiratory organs, female, fallacy

about, 253-4
Ridicule, English middle class dread

of, 172

Englishwomen's dread of, 153
Roumanian girls, position of, 12
Russia

co-education in, 280-1
elephantiasis and leprosy in, 62-3
lack of class prejudice in, 15
old maids rare in, 86
revolutionary bodies in, whence

recruited, 189
woman movement in, 2
women-chemists in, 232-3
Russian girls, camaraderie between,
and men, 129, 136-7, 224-5 >
caste lost by work among,
15

SAINT Simonists, the, their hold

over French women, 160
St Paul on women, relativity of his

views, 23
Salaries in large shops, inadequacy

of, 106-7
Sale of a wife, 117

of women, euphemisms for, 5, 13,
194

consequences of, 194-5
Sanitary inspectorships, female, 236

Scandinavia (see also Norway,
Sweden, and Denmark), woman
movement in, 2
Secrecy, proved possibility of, among

women, 263
Self-control, lack of by women, and

other defects, Mobius on, 269
Self-reliance, drawbacks and ad-
vantage of, 99 et seq.
Self-respect, training of the poor in,

Frau Braun on, 213
Self-support by women, a cure for

many evils, 80
a German endorsement, 95
Seneca's view of male and female

mental equality, 248
Sensitiveness practically equal in the

sexes, 266
Separation, permanent, of married

persons, drawbacks to, 56
of the sexes (see also Convention),

52, in education, 281-2 note
in England, 233, and elsewhere,
13,15,111,115,126,127,129,214
ill-effects of, various views on,

169, 256
Servant question, the, Frau Braun

on, 217
Sex in mind, question of, 190 and

note, 247, 248

Sexual specialisation of higher Social

development, the tendency to

equalisation, Frau Braun on,

215-6

Sexes, independent perfection of, 87 ;

interdependent welfare of, 225
social intercourse between, in

et seq.

widening gulf between (see separa-
tion), 52
Smoking by women, question of,

134-6

Social distinctions, dwindling of, 3
status (see also Caste and Class),
and university degrees, 223-4
Socialism and Anarchism, in relation

to women, 176 et seq.
danger from, to the bourgeoisie,

170-2
among Frenchwomen, warnings

against, 167 et seq.
and the old maid, 147
and woman, 146 et seq.
Socialist aspirations, limits of, 169
Societies, some philanthropic, for
bringing together capital and

312

WOMAN IN TRANSITION

labour, why they fail, Frau
Braun on, 216
Sons of poor parents, hard lot of,

221-3

Soul, possession of, by woman, 188
Spain

horror of co-education in, 292
lying-in, men more expert than

women, 287
state of religion in, 159
Spanish girls and women, the
Catholic Church in relation to,
159, position of, 15, limita-
tions of, 290-2, some exceptions,
291

Spalding, Bishop (R.C.), on the gifts
and development of women,
109

Steam, and the spinster, 83
Stockholm, lowest marriage-rate of

Europe in, 48

Struggle for life, the, keenness of
not confined to intellectuals,
191
Suicide, in relation to divorce and

marriage, 57

Superfluous women, in Europe, 84
Luther's attitude to, 78
predominance of, in upper and

middle classes, 94
Sweden
marriage in,
late age of, 45
low rate of, 48
old maid question in, 83-4
political associations for women

in, 140

" superfluous women "in, 84
woman movement in, progress

of, 192-3

women's club in, 140
Swedish attitude to women's work,

140
girls, personality and limitations

of, 9, 10
and women, attitude of, towards

marriage, 48
Swiss children, hard work of, as

affecting physique, 208, 236
girls, position of, 15, 16
Syphilis, and allied diseases, spread
and consequences of, 61 et seq.

TEACHING profession, America and
Sweden, monopolised by women,
and why, 189

Teaching Profession, difference in
salaries, male and female in,
220-1

Telephone employees in Stockholm,
small pay of, 141

Thought, independent, denied pos-
sibility of, in women, 268

Trade Unions, drawbacks to, 131-3
women's, objections to, 129 et seq.

Training, lack of, its consequences,
80, 92-4, 220-1

Travel-mania, American, results of,

Turgeon, on Co-education, and on

French boarding-schools, 285-6

on French feminism, and the

woes of the learned woman,

190-1

Turkish girls, education and mar-
riage among, 21-2
men, attitude of to women, 236,

care of, for daughters, 22
Two-children system, prevalence of,
racial deterioration a result,
42-4

UNDERSELLING of work by women,

dangers of, 60, 107, 141, 148,

1 66, 193, 204-5, 2O 7
Unmarried woman (see also Old

Maids), attitude to, of the

Catholic Church, 87-9
Utopia, the, of the Anarchist, 184

et seq.

VENEREAL disease, little recognized
concomitants of, 61 et seq.

Venetian Republic, German pros-
titutes in, 69

WAGE of women (see also Under-
selling), lowness of, conse-
quences of, 107, 148

Wales, co-education in, 274

Wealth and culture in relation to
decrease in size of families, 45

Widows, difficulties encountered

by, 101 et seq.
and remarriage, 98

Wifehood and its duties, Canon Knox
Little's views, 145

Wives, sale of, direct, 117, indirect,

5, 13, 194-5

in various lands, position of, 24
et seq.

INDEX

313

Wives, young, upper-middle class,
their lack of serious occupa-
tion, its results, 28 et seq.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, selections
from her writings on women,
150-2
Woman, in Belgium, no longer

negligible, 168
healthy, as defined by Mobius,

251
not rival but comrade of man,

298-9

separation of, from the Church
in Norway and Germany,
156

Woman movement, problem of, i
geographical progress of, 2
in Sweden, machinery in relation

to, 83

"Womanly" work, specially ill-
paid, 221
Woman's highest destiny, English

and other ideals contrasted,

239-41

rights, present-day view of, 246
Women, attitude of, to unmarried

women, 85-6
hostile to woman's freedom,

attitude of, 227-8
supplanting men in work, and

why, 166
Women's clubs, objections to, 129 ;

why they fail, 136
work, development of, through

use of machinery, 204-5
Work, woman's share in, past and
present, Miss Smedley on,

243

of married women (see also Under-
selling), pros and cons of,
138, 164-6, 181-2, 189, 213
Working-up from below, rare in

English women, 237
Working- woman, the, 201 et seq.

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