Page images
PDF
EPUB

·

newspaper, now a bi-weekly, which holds the fort of advanced feminism in England, declares itself to be the only journal of recognised standing expounding a doctrine of philosophic individualism.' The German feminist, Rosa Mayreder, speaks of progressive persons as those who live their lives in freedom' undisturbed by the opinion or conduct of the society to which they belong.' The woman movement is to her 'the battle for the rights of an unfettered personality.' Woman, says the Swedish feminist, Ellen Key, has suddenly discovered that instead of moving forward, as heretofore, only in and with the general progress, she can increase her own motion by self-assertion. To-day young girls live to apply the principle of the woman movementindividualism.'

These words are significant when we remember the reiterated feminist claim that women must be free to 'live their own lives,' to 'develope their personality,' instead of being merged in the family and regarded only as a part of it. Among arguments brought forward in favour of woman's possible independence are some culled from natural history. The 'domestic slave' or 'servant wife' or female parasite' is reminded of the high estate of her sex in geological ages when 'puny, pygmy, parasitic males struggled for existence, and were used or not, as it happened, like a half-tried patent medicine.' Or she is told to find comfort in the female cirriped, who carried a few extra husbands in her scales 'lest she should lose one or two,' and in the ferocious spider, who uses her hapless little mate to coldly furnish forth a marriage breakfast' (sic).† She may even find satisfaction in the theories of some biologists who believe that life began with and was carried for some distance by the female organism; or that the 'male element . . . on its initial appearance was primarily an excrescence, a superfluity, a waste product of nature . . . strictly speaking, man is undeveloped woman.'§ To an average person it may appear extraordinary that feminists should feel obliged

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

to grope so far back, or go to such lengths in order to give a woman 'a guid conceit o' hersel'.'

There is another line of attack which seems equally inconclusive. A favourite argument for those who feel it necessary to explain woman's comparatively few achievements in the world of art and science is to assert that her mentality has been suppressed by man-that she has had neither education nor opportunity. As some of the greatest work done by men has been accomplished in the teeth of exactly these difficulties, the argument does not carry us far, but there is really no agreement among feminists on this point. Olive Schreiner, for instance, asks nothing better than that women should regain the status enjoyed by their Teutonic fore-mothers of twenty centuries ago. In The Subjection of Woman' J. S. Mill asserts confidently that from the days of Hypatia to the Reformation, with the possible exception of Heloisa, women 'did not concern themselves with speculation at all'—an amazing generalisation which colours his whole conclusions. Prof. Barnes also suffers from the delusion that female 'education' began about 1850; but Ellen Key is quite prepared to allow that

'numbers of women had appeared who, in classic culture, in the practice of learned professions, in political, religious, intellectual or æsthetic pursuits, stood beside the men of Humanism, the Renaissance or the Reformation.' *

In short, the biological and historical sketches with which many feminists preface their philosophy cannot be taken very seriously. They have been made to illustrate theories rather than to assist in forming them. Even Dr J. L. Tayler, whose sane and sober little book has an air of reality lacking in most feminist literature, is inclined to build up his conclusions on biological premises which are, to say the least, controversial. Also, at the crucial point in the development of his argument, he introduces an altogether empirical value-his conception of the meaning of 'bloom' as applied to women. It is true he does not define 'bloom' too closely, but he certainly leaves the impression that it connotes a surface

* In 'Six Medieval Women' Mrs Kemp Welch shows that culture in the Middle Ages was more easy of acquisition by women than by men.

quality of innocence, purity or modesty, and as our standards of these are matters of geography and social custom, varying with class, latitude or period, it is difficult to follow him. The fruit analogy, so dear to sentimentalists of last century, is, in fact, hardly worthy of a place in a serious book on the woman problem. What we are concerned with is the soundness and ripeness of the fruitits perfection of maturity-without which bloom' is deceptive and useless. Nevertheless there are many wise things in Dr Tayler's book; his chapter on female education is specially valuable and suggestive, and he has done a real service to the student of feminine psychology in reprinting part of a powerful essay by W. C. Roscoe, first published in the National Review' for October 1858.

The first concentration of feminist efforts on a practical basis is found in the struggle which opened for women the door to higher education and levelled up the teaching of girls and boys. Sixty years ago, when the fight was beginning, there was an exaggerated belief in the value of book-learning, not only among women but among those who looked forward to an educated democracy.' Hitherto book-learning had been confined to a small minority of the nation; and among these the line between the sexes had gradually become markedly favourable to men. Colleges, schools and endowments, originally intended for both sexes, were restricted to one; and women specialised more and more in those arts and crafts which had their centre in the home. Nevertheless the women of the upper classes certainly acquired somehow a culture which made them quite as interesting and interested as any college-bred girl of to-day. Read the letters, not even of the brilliant French women of the 18th century salons, but of the country-bred English women of the late 18th and early 19th centuries-Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Frances Lady Shelley, Lady Elizabeth Coke, Lady Sarah Spencer Lyttleton, Lady Dorothy Nevill-not 'blue-stockings,' but ordinary society women, and you will find in them not only a keen appreciation of the events of their own time, but a humorous judgment and a critical faculty applied to books, music, and the conversation of their friends. How many a young society lady of to-day, writing lively and entertaining letters to a midshipman brother, would recommend for his reading

[ocr errors]

Sully's Mémoires,' or quote Madame de Staël? When we are estimating the gains and losses from the point of view of feminine advancement of the last half-century, we may well ask ourselves whether, among the hosts of clever women-writers of to-day, there are any names worthy to be placed beside those of Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronté, George Eliot, Mrs Oliphant, Mrs Browning, and Mrs Gaskell; and yet these are all middle-class women of a period which is supposed to have seen a complete eclipse in female education.*

At the same time it is only fair to suppose that, while talent, character and genius may have triumphed over an environment not specially favourable, the latter was certainly a hard and stony ground for less sturdy seeds. Especially in the middle class, which was growing to wealth and power during the first half of the 19th century, the social conditions placed women at a disadvantage. Boys had to make their way in the world without the help of those family influences which could be safely relied on in the upper classes; hence money spent on their equipment was regarded as a good investment. The same argument did not apply to girls, who, educated or not, would generally marry, or, if they remained single, would still be a charge on their men-folk. The increased dependence, uselessness, and luxury of this class of women was an important factor in the early days of the woman movement, and still constitutes a serious social problem-not to be met by turning out girls to do men's and boys' work in an inferior manner. Feminism therefore concentrated on that education which was believed to be the open-sesame to all kinds of new worlds for women as for men.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Amid a great deal of futile talk about the relative intellectual capacity of men and women, the battle of higher education was fought and won; but the argument which prevailed with the British paterfamilias was not the favourite contention that the educated woman would be a better mother and more the companion and equal of

* De Quincey, writing in 1840 ('Essay on Style'), and Macaulay, in his History published in 1848, declare that the educated women of their day speak and write 'purer and more graceful English' than is elsewhere to be found. (See 'John and Irene,' p. 165.) Can this be said of the high school and college-bred women of to-day?

her husband. The pioneers of female education in this country, and English women in general, are apt to have an exaggerated idea of man's desire and capacity for intellectual companionship while they consistently underestimate his needs in other respects. The British husband and father accepted the task of educating his daughters very nearly, if not quite, as expensively as his sons, because economic pressure and the growing standard of feminine expenditure convinced him that his girls might have to work for their living. Domestic labour being still cheap and academic honours believed to be the passport to well-paid work, he felt he was doing the best thing for his girls, and they accepted the situation most conscientiously. School and college days-for the average girl-became not so much periods of mental and moral growth, as short and strenuous years in which the largest possible number of unrelated facts must be earnestly assimilated. A few women have taken high academic honours, to the great jubilation of those who desire to prove that there is no sex in brain—you might as well talk about a female liver,'* but serious doubts prevail, even in academic circles, as to the real value of the education for which so much is sacrificed.

[ocr errors]

At the present time, with the spread of high-schools and colleges taught by college-bred women all over the land, middle-class female education has been levelled up, very nearly, to male standards, with the important exception that the real educational value to boys of school and college life (which is not essentially connected with the amount of book-learning they absorb) is very largely absent from girls' schools. Prof. Barnes, after sixteen years' close association with co-education in the United States, makes some useful observations on the tendencies and effects of some three generations of education for women. He notes that no attempt has been made to evolve a distinctive type of education. With us, and in some American colleges, the women's part is merely an annexe to an old foundation; while in others, as in our newer universities, although men and women are admitted on the same footing, the courses have been framed to meet the needs of the male sex. It is true that 'domestic

* C. P. Gilman, 'Woman and Economics.

« PreviousContinue »