Women's emancipation

“ Confined three years ago to obscure corners of the newspapers, to meetings in private rooms, to the conversation of a select few, the question of woman's emancipation has suddenly become the most insistent political problem of the day. ”

“ By the term emancipation of a woman I imply neither her mastery at home nor her subjection of her husband. I have not in mind the courage which enables her to go freely by night or by day unaccompanied in public places, or the disregard of social rules which prohibit bachelor women from receiving visits from men, or discussing or listening to discussions of sexual matters I exclude from my view the desire for economic independence, the becoming fit for positions in technical schools, universities and conservatoires or teachers' institutes. ”

“ Through what hardships and dangers, privations and humiliations ran the thorny and uphill path of the early leaders of the women’s suffrage movement. The deeds of true nobility and heroic determination that were performed by the pioneers of women’s emancipation are very little known to the average man and woman of the present day. ”

“ True, the movement for woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also established new ones. The great movement of true emancipation has not met with a great race of women, who could look liberty in the face. ”

“ It needs but little observation to see that the tide of progress, in all countries, is setting toward the emancipation and enfranchisement of women; and this step in civilization is to be taken in our day and generation. Whether the Democratic party will take the initiative in this reform, and reap the glory of crowning fifteen million women with the rights of American citizenship, and thereby vindicate our theory of self-government, is the momentous question we ask you to decide in this eventful hour, as we round out the first century of our national life. ”

“ The first effect of the emancipation of women is that they are gradually liberated from the thraldom of such dogmas.
A process is going on in civilized communities which is called by some timorous spirits the decomposition of Society. It is true that even these fearful ones grant that "so far the decomposition has done only good; the women who will be, for several generations to come, most influenced by the movement, will be the very best of which our race is capable ... ”

“ As a direct consequence of these, there is finally, social emancipation, constituting principles of perfect equality between the sexes, also in matters of social and political interest. They are all of them largely [Pg 3] dependent on the growth of civilisation. It has even been said that the degree of civilisation in a nation is determined by the position of its women in the life of the community. ”

“ There is, in the first place, that physical enfranchisement which makes the woman cease to be the willess, and therefore irresponsible and soulless, slave to the caprices of a brutal master. There is, in the second place, the intellectual emancipation of women, admitting the female sex to the participation of Reason and granting them that education of the mind which is to place them on a par with the other half of humanity ”

“ For the interest, therefore, not only of women, but of men, and of human improvement, in the widest sense, the emancipation of 25 women, which the modern world often boasts of having effected, and for which credit is sometimes given to civilization, and sometimes to Christianity, cannot stop where it is. If it were either necessary or just that one portion of mankind should remain mentally and spiritually only half developed, the development of the other portion ought to have been made, as far as possible, independent of their influence. ”

“ Besides this emancipation, however, there is still the conventional, the moral, the economic, the religious, etc., to be aspired to, the object of which must always be only to establish the liberty and the right of women within the limits prescribed by the feminine nature, and to protect them against the invasions and the commands of men, or to abolish woman's dependence on the will of the men, and finally also to place woman in a position to freely act out her true nature by means of every aid. ”

“ The ultimate emancipation of woman, then, will depend not upon the abolition of the restrictions which have subjected her to man—that is but a step, though a necessary one—but upon the abolition of all those restrictions of natural human rights that subject the mass of humanity to a privileged class. ”

“ No one legislative act has ever raised the entire race even within sight of the point of elevation predicted by the champions of what is called the emancipation of woman. Hear them speak for themselves: "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"—the removal of the principle of the subordination of the wife to the husband, and the establishment of the entire independence of women, to be obtained by female suffrage. ”

“ But there is another sense to the expression emancipation of woman. It should not be ignored that, in fully peopled countries, there is urgent need of a certain reform in the social condition of woman. The less the probability of marriage for a large part of the young women of a country becomes, the more uncertain the refuge which home with its slackened bonds offers them for old age, the more readily should the legal or traditional barriers which exclude women from so many callings to which they are naturally adapted be done away with. ”

“ She could never be made to believe, as had been told her, that there was adopted in the world a standard under which to proclaim the emancipation of women. Never could she comprehend this pretension; no more than she could comprehend much of other women who, nevertheless, did not live so retired, and did not adopt a reserve so strict as the duchess. ”

“ Whoever reflects soberly on the past history of women will not be surprised at their present movement towards emancipation. Women are reclaiming a position that is theirs by natural right—a position which once they held. It may be all very well for those who accept the authority and headship of the man as the foundation of the family and of society, to be filled with bewildered fear at what seems to them to be a quite new assertion of rights on the part of the mothers of the race. ”

“ In no age have there been so many women who have demanded the emancipation of their sex as in ours, and that is the first requisite to the attainment of emancipation. First of all it is necessary to make women generally conscious of the need of emancipation, and to spread clear views not only in regard to existing injustice, but also in regard to the justice that is to be acquired.
The position of women is to-day, as always, closely connected with the entire network of the political, social, economic, and religious conditions. ”

“ Is it not very remarkable that the agitation for the emancipation of women seems to repeat itself at certain intervals in the world's history, and lasts for a definite period?
It has been noticed that in the tenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth, and now again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the agitation for the emancipation of women has been more marked, and the woman's movement more vigorous than in the intervening periods. ”

“ It was their activity, indeed, far more than the skill of the women who fought for the franchise, which made the political emancipation of women inevitable, and the noble and brilliant women who through the middle of the nineteenth century recreated the educational system for women, and so prepared them to play their proper part in life, were the best women workers the cause of women's enfranchisement ever had. ”

“ I thought it most remarkable that a woman born and reared so far from the scene of woman's struggle for emancipation should yet be so alive to its problems. I spoke to the girl of the activities of the advanced women of America, of their achievements and of the work yet to be done for woman's emancipation. ”

“ That the emancipation of women is practically the greatest egoistic movement of the nineteenth century, and the most intense affirmation of the right of the self that history has yet seen, they have no suspicion. ”

“ It might have been supposed that a female sovereign would have lent her countenance to one of the most vital of all the reforms to which her epoch gave birth—the emancipation of women—but, on the contrary, the mere mention of such a proposal sent the blood rushing to her head. ”

“ Of this social independence, independence in mating is the most recent expression, more recent even than political independence, and less fully realized or accomplished. Indeed it would be rash to predict how this type of independence may be expected to come about; apart from the gesture, sometimes gay, sometimes merely comic, of keeping one’s name in marriage, there is no conscious feministic movement, in this country at least, toward freedom in sex. The political emancipation of women came to us as a reflex from abroad, largely through England. ”

“ A few words, however, must be said on one plea, which, in England, is made much use of, for giving an unselfish air to the upholding of selfish privileges, and which, with unobserving, unreflecting people, passes for much more than it is worth. Women, it is said, do not desire, do not seek, what is called their emancipation. ”

“ But their chief advantage consists in the liberty to agitate, and in that freedom from prejudice which allows them to themselves take an active part in the work of emancipation, as the woman conventions have shown. ”

“ However,” she quickly added, “if kitchens and cooking and long dinners hadn’t been abolished, the final emancipation of women could never have been accomplished. The perfecting of the woman movement was retarded for hundreds of years, as you know, doubtless, by the slavish desire of women to please their husbands by dressing and cooking to suit them. When the last pie was made into the first pellet, woman’s true freedom began. She could then cast off her subordination both to her husband and to her servants. Women were only free, indeed, when the State prohibited the hiring of servants. ”

“ Theirs is the task of completing woman's social and political emancipation, and of educating them to meet their newfound liberties. It is possible that this present generation has a keener sense of rights than of duties; and the young women of to-day must be led to realize that the delicate adjustments still to be worked out require devotion equal to that of the earlier generations, if the toll of wasted life is not to be excessive.
What now is the relation of women to the range of political activity described in the last chapter? Have they need of the protection which government gives? ”

“ Our objective was the national enfranchisement of women. A tiny step, you may say. True! But so long as we know that this is but the first step in the long struggle of women for political, economic and social emancipation, we need not be disturbed. If political institutions as we know them to-day in their discredited condition break down, and another kind of organization—perhaps industrial—supplants them, women will battle for their place in the new system with as much determination as they have shown in the struggle just ended. ”

“ But with this sort of emancipation the feminine sex is benefited least of all. Let us but imagine the opposite case, namely, that the oppressed man is to be emancipated by a feminine education and by being assigned a feminine sphere of action. ”

“ There is another theory, that must be put forward with some hesitation, for the so-called emancipation of woman is a delicate subject to deal with, for while all the sex doubtless feel the impulse of the new time, there are still many who indignantly reject the implication in the struggle for the rights of women. ”

“ It is noticeable, too, in this deepest relation to politics that the movement among women towards their own liberation and emancipation, which is taking place all over the civilised world, has been accompanied by a marked development of the homogenic passion78 among the female sex. ”

“ The Emancipation of Woman.—Extinction of Man.—War against Beards.—Ladies Purifying the Streets of New York.—The Ladies "Go it" Alone, and have a "Good Time."
n a country where woman is a spoilt child, petted, and made so much of, who can do and dare almost anything, it is strange to find women who are not content with their lot, but demand the complete emancipation of their sex.
American women asking for complete emancipation! It makes one smile. ”

“ That the movement towards complete enfranchisement met with a varied reception and was hampered and retarded by men and often by women themselves was due chiefly to the fact that in the question of female possibilities there was much diversity of opinions at different times and among different nations. ”

“ The men, particularly, seem sunk in a torpor of dejection and settled apathy. The women, although by no means so vivacious and vigorous as our women, are, however, far more animated, and seem to have a keener relish for life, than the men. Probably [Pg 59] the comparatively recent emancipation of the women, their new political and social freedom, adds a zest to the routine of life here which men do not feel. ”

“ The Liberal press of the three countries, mindful of woman’s indirect influence on votes, bowed the knee and worshipped [Pg 124] her intelligence and magnanimity, and man’s delight knew no bounds if, at a meeting of Conservatives, a young lady hooted like a street-boy. Every number of the progressive journals contained at least one notice on the results of the struggle for the emancipation of women. Young women were expected to be as strong as men, and young women were anxious to be strong in order that they might inspire men with respect. ”