Nineteenth Century Thought (10 page)

16.
   
Seigneur.
The
lord of manor; a feudal lord

17.
   
Patrician:
Members of the Noble class

The
preceding considerations are amply sufficient to show that custom, however,
universal it may be, affords in this case no presumption, and ought not to
create any prejudice, in favour of the arrangements which place women in social
and political subjection to men. But I may go farther, and maintain that the
course of history, and the tendencies of progressive human society, afford not
only no presumption in favour of this system of inequality of rights, but a
strong one against it; and that, so far as the whole course of human
improvement up to this time, the whole stream of modem tendencies, warrants any
inference on the subject, it is, that this relic of the past is discordant with
the future, and must necessarily disappear.

For,
what is the peculiar character of the modern world-the difference which chiefly
distinguishes modern institutions, modern social ideas, modern life itself,
from those of times long past? It is, that human beings are no longer born to
their place in life, and chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they
are born to, but are free to employ
 
their faculties, and such
favourable
chances
as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desirable.

*
* *

On
the other point which is involved in the just equality of women, their
admissibility to all the functions and
 
occupations hitherto retained as the monopoly of the stronger sex, I
should anticipate no difficulty in convincing anyone who has gone with me on
the subject of the equality of women in the family. I believe that their
disabilities elsewhere are only clung to ill order to maintain their
subordination in domestic life; because the generality of the male sex cannot
yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal. Were it not for that, I think
that almost everyone, in the existing state of opinion in politics and

political
economy, would admit the injustice of excluding half the human race from the
greater number of lucrative occupations, and from almost all high social
functions; ordaining from their birth either that they are not, and cannot by
any possibility become, fit for employments which are legally open to the
stupidest and basest of
 
the
 
other
 
sex,
 
or
 
else
 
that
 
however
 
fit
 
they
 
may
 
be; those employments
 
shall
 
be
 
interdicted
¹⁸
  
to
 
them,
 
in
 
order
 
to
 
be preserved for the exclusive
benefit of males. In the last two centuries, when
 
(which was seldom the case) any reason beyond
the mere existence
 
of the fact was
 
thought
 
to
 
be
 
required
 
to justify
 
the disabilities of
women, people seldom assigned
 
as a
reason
 
their inferior mental capacity;
which , in times when
 
there was a real
trial of personal faculties (from which all women were not excluded) in the
struggles of public life, no one really believed in. The reason given in those
days was not women's unfitness, but the interest of society, by which was meant
the interest of men: just as the
raison d'etat
¹⁹
, meaning the
convenience of the government, and the support of existing authority, was deemed
a sufficient explanation and excuse for the most flagitious
²⁰
crimes. In the present day, power holds a smoother language, and whomsoever it
oppresses, always pretends to do so for their own good: accordingly, when
anything is forbidden to women,
 
it is
thought
 
necessary to say, and desirable
to believe, that they are incapable of doing it, and that
 
they
 
depart
 
from
 
their
 
real
 
path
 
of success
 
and
 
happiness when they aspire to
it. But to make this reason plausible (I do not say valid), those by whom it is
urged must be prepared to carry it to a much greater length than anyone
ventures to do in the face of present experience. It is not sufficient to
maintain that women on the average are less gifted than men on the average, with
certain of the higher mental faculties, or that a smaller number of women than
of men are fit for occupations and functions of the highest intellectual
character. It is necessary to maintain that no women at all are fit for them,
and that the most eminent women are inferior in mental faculties to the most
mediocre of the men on whom those functions at present devolve.

ANNOTATIONS

18.
   
lnterdicted
:
Prohibited;
forbidden

19.
   
Raison
d'etat
:
Reason of state

20.
   
Flagitious:
Shameful

For
if the performance of the function is decided either by competition, or by any
mode of choice which secures regard to the public interest, there needs to be
no apprehension that any important employments will fall into the hands of
women inferior to average men, or to the average of their male competitors. The
only result would be that there would be fewer women than men in such
employments; a result certain to happen in any case, if only from the
preference always likely to be felt by the majority of women for the one
vocation in which there is
 
nobody
 
to
 
compete
 
with
 
them.
 
Now, the most determined depredator
²¹
of women will not
venture to deny, that when we add the experience of recent
 
times to that of ages past, women, and not a
few merely, but many women, have proved themselves capable of everything ,
perhaps without a single exception, which is done by men, and of doing it successfully
and creditably. The utmost that can be said is, that there are many things
which none of them have succeeded in doing as well as they have been done by
some men-many in which they have not reached the very highest rank.
 
But
 
there
 
are
 
extremely
 
few,
 
dependent
 
only
 
on
 
mental faculties,
 
in which
 
they have
 
not
 
attained
 
the rank
 
next
 
to the highest. Is not this enough, and much
more than enough, to make it a tyranny to them, and a detriment to society,
that they should not be allowed to compete with men for the exercise of these
functions? Is it not a mere truism to say, that such functions are often filled
by men far less fit for them than numbers of women, and who would be beaten by
women in any fair field of competition? What difference does it make that there
may be men somewhere, fully employed about other things, who may be still
better qualified for the things in question than these women? Does not this
take place in all competitions? Is there so great a superfluity of men fit for
high
duties, that
society can afford to reject the
service of any competent person? Are we so certain of always finding a man made
to our hands for any duty or function of social importance which falls vacant,
that we lose nothing by putting a ban upon one-half of
 
mankind,
 
and
 
refusing
 
beforehand
 
to
 
make
 
their
 
faculties available, however distinguished they may be?

ANNOTATIONS

21.
   
Depredator:
Attacker;
severe critic.

And
even if we could do without them, would it be consistent with justice
 
to refuse to them their fair share of honour
and distinction, or to deny to them the equal moral right of all human beings
to choose their occupation (short of injury to others) according to their own
preferences, at their own risk? Nor is the injustice confined to them: it is
shared by those who are in a position to benefit by their services. To ordain
that any kind of persons shall not be members of parliament, is to injure not
them only, but all who employ physicians or advocates, or
 
elect
 
members
 
of
 
parliament,
 
and
 
who
 
are
 
deprived
 
of
 
the stimulating effect of greater competition
 
on the exertions of the competitors, as well
as restricted to a narrower range of individual choice.

*
 
*
 
*

There
remains a question, not of less importance than those already discussed, and
which will be asked the most importunately by those opponents whose conviction
is somewhat shaken on the main point. What good are we to expect from the
changes proposed in our customs and institutions? Would mankind be at all
better off if women were free? If not, why disturb their minds, and attempt to
make a social revolution in the name of an abstract right!

*
 
*
 
*

To
which let me first answer, the advantage of having the most universal and
pervading of all human relations regulated by justice instead of injustice. The
vast amount of this gain to human nature, it is hardly possible, by any
explanation or illustration, to place in a stronger light than it is placed by
the bare statement, to anyone who attaches a moral meaning to words. All the
selfish , propensities, the self-worship, the unjust self-preference, which
exist among mankind, have their source and root in, and derive their principal
nourishment from, the present constitution of the relation between men and
women. Think what it is to a boy, to grow up to manhood in the belief that without
any merit or any exertion of his own, though he may be the most frivolous and
empty or the most ignorant and stolid of mankind, by the mere fact of being
born a male he is by right the superior of all and every one of an entire half
of the human race: including probably some whose real superiority to himself he
has daily or hourly occasion to feel; but even if in his whole conduct he
habitually follows a woman's guidance, still, if he is a fool, she thinks that
of course she is not, and cannot be, equal in ability and judgment
 
to
 
himself;
 
and
 
if he is not a fool, he does worse-he sees
that she is superior to him, and believes that, notwithstanding her
superiority,
 
he is entitled
 
to command
 
and she is bound
 
to obey. What
must be the effect on his character, of this lesson? And men of the cultivated
classes are often not aware how deeply it sinks into the immense majority of
male minds. For, among right feeling and well-bred people, the inequality is
kept as much as possible out of sight; above all, out of sight of the children.
As much obedience is required from boys to their mother as to their father:
they are not permitted to domineer over their sisters, nor "are they
accustomed to see these postponed to them, but the contrary; the compensations
of the chivalrous feeling being made prominent, while the servitude which requires
them is kept in the background. Well brought-up youths in the higher classes
thus often escape the bad influences of the situation in their early years, and
only experience them when, arrived at manhood, they fall under the dominion of
facts as they really exist. Such people are little aware, when a boy is
differently brought up, how early the notion of his inherent superiority to a
girl arises in his mind; how it grows with his growth and strengthens with his
strength; how it is inoculated by one schoolboy upon another; how early the
youth thinks himself superior to his mother, owing perhaps her
overbearance
, but no real respect; and how sublime and
sultan-like sense of superiority he feels, above all, over the woman whom he
honours by admitting her to a partnership of his life. Is it imagined that all
this does not pervert the whole manner of existence of the man, both as an
individual and as a social being?
 
It is
an exact parallel to the feeling of a hereditary king that he is excellent
above others
by being born a king, or a noble by being born a
noble. The relation between husband and wife is very like that between lord and
vassal, except that the wife is held to more unlimited obedience than the
vassal was. However the vassal's character may have been affected, for better
and for worse, by his subordination, who can help seeing that the lord's was
affected greatly for the worse! whether he was led to believe that his vassals
were really superior to himself, or to feel that he was placed in command over
people as good as himself, for no merits of
labours
of his own, but merely for having, as Figaro says, taken the trouble to be
born. The self-worship of the monarch, or of the feudal superior, is matched by
the self-worship of the male. Human beings do not grow up from childhood in the
possession of unearned distinctions, without pluming themselves upon them.
Those whom privileges not acquired by their merit, and which they feel to be disproportioned
to it. Inspired with additional humility, are always the few, and the best few.
The rest are only inspired with pride, and the worst sort of pride, that which
values itself upon accidental advantages, not of its own achieving. Above all,
when the feeling of being raised above the whole of the other sex is combined
with personal authority over one individual among them, the situation, if a
school of conscientious and affectionate forbearance to those whose
strongest
 
points
 
of
 
character
 
are conscience and
affection, is to men of another quality a regularly constituted Academy or
Gymnasium for training them in arrogance and
 
overbearingness; which vices, if curbed by the certainty of resistance
in their intercourse with other men, their equals, break out
 
towards all who are in a position
 
to be obliged
 
to
 
tolerate them, and often
revenge themselves upon the unfortunate wife for the involuntary restraint
which they are obliged to submit to elsewhere.

The
example afforded, and the education given to the sentiments, by laying the
foundation of domestic existence upon a relation contradictory to the first
principles of social justice, must, from the very nature of man, have a
perverting influence of such magnitude, that it is hardly possible with our
present experience to raise our imaginations to the conception of so great a
change for the better as would be made by its removal. All that education and
civilization are doing to efface the influences on character of the law of
force, and replace them by those of justice, remains merely on the surface, as
long as the citadel of the enemy is not attacked. The principle of the modern
movement in morals and politics, is that conduct, and conduct
 
alone,
 
entitles
 
to
 
respect:
 
that
 
not
 
what
 
men
 
are,
 
but what they do, constitutes their claim to
deference; that, above all, merit,
 
and
 
not
 
birth,
 
is
 
the
 
only
 
rightful
 
claim
 
to
 
power
 
and authority. If no
authority, not in its nature temporary, were allowed to one human being over
another, society would not be employed in building up propensities with one hand
which it has to curb with the other. The child would really, for the first time
in man's existence on earth, be trained in the way he should go, and when he
was old there would be a chance that he would not depart from it. But so long
as the right of the strong to power over the weak rules in the very heart of
society, the attempt to make the equal right of the weak the principle of its
outward actions will always be an uphill struggle; for the law of justice,
which is also that of Christianity, will never get possession of men's inmost
sentiments; they will be working against it, even when bending to it.