Women's influence

“ THE FEMININE INTELLECT.—The intellect of women manifests itself as perfect mastery, presence of mind, and utilisation of all advantages. They transmit it as a fundamental quality to their children, and the father adds thereto the darker background of the will. His influence determines as it were the rhythm and harmony with which the new life is to be performed; but its melody is derived from the mother. For those who know how to put a thing properly: women have intelligence, men have character and passion. ”

“ I will now return to the influence of the female portion of our community. The ladies have power and influence to suppress the "Grecian bend" and other fashionable follies, if they will. I want them to consider well their standing, condition, and influence. Suppose that our wives and daughters should say to us, "Husband," or "Father, will you wear a straw hat of our make?" ”

“ In these chapters a sincere attempt has been made not so much to show what a few exceptional women have accomplished as to exhibit through a few prominent figures the essential nature of women, and to show what may be expected from a future in which women will have a larger freedom and a larger influence. ”

“ I say a more beneficial, rather than a greater influence; for the influence of women over the general tone of opinion has always, or at least from the earliest known period, been very considerable. The influence of mothers on the early character of their sons, and the desire of young men to recommend themselves to young women, have in all recorded times been important agencies in the formation of character, and have determined some of the chief steps in the progress of civilization. ”

“ The prevailing manners of an age depend more than we are aware, or [p 19] are willing to allow, on the conduct of the women; this is one of the principal hinges on which the great machine of human society turns. Those who allow the influence which female graces have, in contributing to polish the manners of men, would do well to reflect how great an influence female morals must also have on their conduct. ”

“ It is, however, not merely in fiction and in poetry that the women of this century are making their mark. Their appearance amongst the prominent speakers at the Church Congress, some weeks ago, was in itself a very remarkable proof of the growing influence of women’s opinions on all matters connected with the elevation of our national life, and the amelioration of our social conditions. ”

“ The great thing needed now by our society is more woman-influence—more woman-thought, character, and power. Our female Education is too superficial, trifling, babyish. Our girls are not half developed. Our young women do not exhibit one half their real strength and beauty. ”

“ These women are creating their own opportunities and will, ere long, achieve much in all the ranks of life and especially in their own peculiar sphere of womanly activity and influence. Woman will do more for the progress and development of the country than the sterner sex, as she has hitherto done more than he to conserve and dignify the past. ”

“ Their intellectual life found its outlet in the salon, as ours does in the club. These equally represent the active influence of women in their respective ages. Both have resulted in a mania for knowledge, a change of ideals, a radical revolution in social life, and an unprecedented increase in the authority of women. As they have certain tendencies and dangers in common, it may be of interest to trace a few points of resemblance and contrast between them ”

“ Hitherto the historian has paid little attention to the circumstances of women’s lives, for women have been regarded as a static factor in social developments, a factor which, remaining itself essentially the same, might be expected to exercise a constant and unvarying influence on Society. ”

“ And even when they are not impregnated with it themselves, the effect of feminine influence upon them is that they accept their lot with placidity, and acquiesce in the social struggle through which they are dragged. ”

“ With respect to the influence personally exercised by women over men, it, no doubt, renders them less harsh and brutal; in ruder times, it was often the only softening influence to which they were accessible. ”

“ Now, I say the women have great influence. Look at the nations of the earth. Any nation you like, no matter which, and you enlist the sympathies of the female portion of it and what is there you cannot perform? If the government wants soldiers, they are on hand ”

“ Absolute equality between men and women in position, power, and influence was the key-note of their theories, but what would become of these theories if it should appear that the female mind refused to accept the first and greatest postulate upon which they were all founded? ”

“ As women, to exert in private and in public, throughout the whole range of Social Relations, that special influence which God assigns as their appropriate function, in endowing them with feminine attributes. ”

“ He then adds this impressive testimony: "During my somewhat long experience of public life, nothing has struck me more than the influence of women in developing public spirit—an influence the greater because indirect. ”

“ In spite, however, of the obstacles which impede the progress of women towards that state of high mental cultivation for which her Creator prepared her, the tendency towards the universal dissemination of knowledge has had its influence on their destinies; and in all ages, a few have surmounted every hindrance, and proved, beyond dispute, that they have talents equal to their brethren. ”

“ so that I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women. ”

“ The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life, Lady Caroline. ”

“ But the fact remains that it was largely through the inspired vision, which looked past the entanglements of sense into the pure heart and transparent soul of an idealized womanhood, that the long-enduring sex came into its intellectual kingdom. To the old ties of interest, passion, and habit, were added those of the intellect and spirit. In this new contact of intelligences society had its birth, women took their rightful places, and the world found a new regenerating force. ”

“ I cannot better conclude than with the hope that these examples of what may be done may excite a noble emulation in their own sex, and in ours such a conviction of the value of the female mind, as shall overcome our long-cherished prejudices, and induce us to give our earnest endeavors to the promotion of women's best interests. ”

“ In these pages we have made some record of woman's work in past centuries, and also caught glimpses of duties, loves, hopes, fears, and sorrows not unlike our own. A wider sphere is now accorded, and a deeper responsibility devolves upon woman to fill it wisely and well. We should never forget that, as far as they were faithful to the duties appointed to them, they elevated their sex to a higher and nobler position, and therein performed the best work of the women of the Middle Ages. ”

“ Says Ellen Key, in The Woman Movement, "These cerebral, amaternal women must obviously be accorded the freedom of finding the domestic life, with its limited but intensive exercise of power, meagre beside the feeling of power which they enjoy as public personalities, as consummate [Pg 88] women of the world, as talented professionals. ”

“ She will realize the mission of woman's body and the holiness of all its parts. She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part is transformed into the other. From all parts of her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women. She shall dance the freedom of woman. ”

“ Of course, I do not deny for one moment—who could?—that there are women, and many women in this country, including some of the most gifted, most accomplished, most high-minded of their sex, who do feel in that way. ”

“ The process of growth, from being gradual and imperceptible, becomes violent and conscious.
There can be little doubt that what is called the “Woman’s Movement,” with its disintegrating influences on social opinion and practice, is bringing vast and momentous changes in women’s attitude towards the universe and towards themselves. A great motive and an enlarging ideal, a quickening of the woman’s spirit, a stirring dream of a new order—these are what we have gained. ”

“ Every good quality, every virtue which we regard as distinctively feminine, will, under conditions of greater freedom, develop more freely, like plants brought out into the light from a cellar in which they languished, dwarfed and blanched, without sun or air. The woman is strong in almost every woman ”

“ The feminist movement, like one dissentient voice in an excited public meeting, was querulous, hysterical, uncertain of itself. It dared not cry out that women had bodies. Its one hope of success was to prove that women had minds. ”

“ And ’tis the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude in the world, to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their minds.
A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. ”

“ If this new evaluation of woman’s work in civilization seems to err on the side of woman, we shall be satisfied if it helps to bring about a re-evaluation which shall include women not in an incidental way but as people of flesh and blood and brain—feeling, seeing, judging and directing, equally with men, all the great social forces which mold character and determine general comfort, well-being and happiness. ”

“ She makes every allowance for human nature, [Pg 81] every concession to the necessities of temperament, every recognition of the human need for freedom, and yet makes the love of one man and one woman seem the highest ideal, a thing worth striving and waiting and suffering for.
She cherishes the spiritual magic of sex as the finest achievement of the race, and sees it as the central and guiding principle in our social and economic evolution. ”

“ And when in the progress of civilization the time had fully come for the recognition of the feminine element in humanity, women, in every civilized country unknown to each other, began simultaneously to demand a broader sphere of action. ”

“ Woman as reconstructor of domestic economics, woman as a destructive political agent of enormous potency, woman as worker, woman as dancer, woman as statistician, woman as organizer of the forces of labor—in these it has been the intent to show the real woman of today and of tomorrow. ”

“ The awakening of the social conscience in women is one of the most pregnant signs of the time. But see what (in order to make itself effective) it has had to throw over at each stage of its advance—things to which beautiful names have been given, things which were assumed all through the Victorian era to be essential to womanliness, and to be so engrained in the woman’s nature, that without them womanliness itself must perish. ”

“ And when it is seen how much more attractive the wives and daughters of favored classes have made themselves by culture, how much more capable they are of training and educating their children, how much more dignified the family circle may thus become,--every man who is a father will rejoice in this great step which women have recently made, not merely in literary attainments, but in the respect of men. Take away intellect from woman, and what is she but a toy or a slave? For my part, I see no more cheering signs of the progress of society than in the advancing knowledge of favored women. ”

“ And it is this great upward movement, lifting man to a higher level, which is given into the hands of us women, touching, as it does, all the great trusts of our womanhood. What are we women going to do in the face of such vast issues for good or evil? ”

“ Women were intended for the gentler works of humanity, and who shall say that the great reformers of the earth can surpass her in this mission of love, or find a channel in all society through which her womanhood can be so beautifully perfected? ”

“ Women, in their present physical and moral state, having stronger impulses, would naturally be franker and more direct than men; yet all the old saws and traditions represent them as artful and dissembling. ”

“ Her success—as it was called—was cited as a triumphant argument for the right of women to sell their womanhood for a price: to put their strength of mind and flesh and blood, their physical and intellectual vigor, their vitality and life, upon a market that cannot recognize their womanhood ”

“ It has specially affected the middle classes, who have been thereby enabled to enter with perfect freedom into the world of letters, to follow professional and business careers—in a word, to carve out for themselves an independent course. A new conception has arisen of what is woman’s place in society. ”

“ In this century, in which women have so much wider scope, when they may paint, carve, act, sing, write, enter professional life, or do whatever talent and inclination dictate, without loss of dignity or prestige, unless they do it ill,—and perhaps even this exception is a trifle superfluous,—it is difficult to understand fully, or estimate correctly, a society in which the best feminine intellect was centered upon the art of entertaining and of wielding an indirect power through the minds of men. ”