Women's movement

“ Has there ever been a more revolutionary conversion than this to the Woman's Cause? For the first time in history, the woman movement is underwritten by Government. It is with this support that it's going strong all over the world to-day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dear God, what a price to pay for the freedom the feminists have asked. But this is not our woman movement. This is His woman movement, who moves in mysterious ways His ends to command. We may not know. And we do not understand. But as we watch the war clouds, we see, as it were in the lightning flash of truth, the illuminated way that is opening for women throughout the world. It is westward to us that this star of opportunity has taken its course directly from above the battlefields of Europe. ”

“ There may seem to be a disappointing lack of prophesy in a book avowedly dealing with the future; but since I believe the women's movement to be a seeking for knowledge and good, to show what is reasonable and good in the movement is to show what will persist and triumph. ”

“ Shall the vote be at once the record of the progress of women and its grave? The women's movement is world-wide, and whether or no it has taken a political turn depends on the circumstances of each several nation. That it will be of political import some day everywhere is unquestionable to us who believe that it will not die, but that it is life and "holds a promise for the race that was not at our rising." ”

“ She proved that for centuries the discontented, the indignant protest in the souls of women, which has culminated in this movement, has formed an element which has been secretly surging and seething under the surface of society. These were no new wrongs or needs of ours, she said; the women of the past, of all ages, had felt them; we are only giving voice to them. ”

“ Like that, the boards of trustees in all countries are capitulating to the Great Push of the new woman movement. All over the world to-day the hammers and chisels are ringing in reconstruction. It is the new place in the sun that is being made for woman. ”

“ It has been suggested, in all seriousness, that the secret purpose of the women's movement is the expulsion of all males from those offices and places requiring more than mere physical strength which they now hold, and their replacement by women. ”

“ Consequently there is no aggressive “Women’s Movement,” though women have their own separate clubs in all the large towns, and do useful and active work both in connection with public bodies concerned with their interests, and in political organisation. ”

“ And the movement is world-wide. I shall speak mainly of the forms it has taken in England. They vary in every country. But the world is now so well in touch that the experience of one country becomes the experience of all, and what women undergo in one country smites the hearts of all women and rouses in them the sense of personal pride, of womanly dignity, of faith in woman's work and soul. ”

“ If we do not fearlessly face it, we may as well give up talking about the women’s movement, for it will only be play. The clearest knowledge, the closest thinking, are wanted on the part of women and men ”

“ It is this vision which makes me feel, with my sisters of the Women's Social and Political Union, that life itself would be but a small price to pay for the joy of being one of the pioneers of a movement whose aim it is to prepare and reveal her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The women’s movement is felt in all departments of life. In the education and training of girls, and, since men are the sons and mates of women, in the education and training of boys; in social, economic, religious and political matters. Custom, opinion and prejudice are as important as legislation; administration of law is sometimes vastly more important than law-making. ”

“ So in land after land she took up the trust and the burden that the man who marched away had left her, to "carry on" civilisation. It was the woman movement that was to be under the flags of all nations. ”

“ So accustomed to the new status of women did we soon become that we failed to recognize how radical was the change which had taken place in the general conception of the sphere of womanhood. The very fact that there was no definite and determined movement looking to the desired end made for success. The woman worker did not come with demand for equality of recognition, with parades and conventions and speeches ”

“ News of the Women's cry for freedom came to us from North, South, East and West, and we felt ourselves part of a Universal movement. We were keyed up to any sacrifice. We felt that the fate of other women depended upon us. ”

“ But to see the three chief figures of this great movement of Woman's Rights sitting upon a stage in joint council, like the three Parcæ or Fates of a new dispensation—dignity and the ever-acceptable grace of scholarly earnestness, intelligence, and beneficence making them prominent—is assurance that the women of our country, bereft of defenders, or injured by false ones, have advocates equal to the great demands of their cause. ”

“ This great movement, which questioned the justification of the fundamental principles of the state and feudal society and helped to undermine them, may have been joined by some women to follow the fashion, to satisfy their love of intrigue, or for other unworthy motives. But a great many women were impelled to take part in this movement by their profound interest and enthusiasm for its noble aims. ”

“ Women's rebellions there have been before, utopian visions there have been, which have contributed no little to the modern movement by the force of their tradition and ever-living spirit. No Joan of Arc has led men to victory, no Lady Godiva has sacrificed her modesty—nay, even, no courtesan has taught a feeble king how to rule his country—without feeding the flame of feminine aspiration. But it is modern science which, by giving us a new view of the body, its functions, its needs, its claim upon the world, has laid the basis for a successful feminist movement. ”

“ There is nothing so dangerous as innovation.”—Thomas Love Peacock, The Misfortunes of Elphin.
The women’s movement is a great movement of adaptation. It is not directed against the community, nor against any section of the community. ”

“ Again, one may inquire why, since I have not blinked the fact that the feminist movement is making for a revolution of values in sex—why I have not included any woman who has distinguished herself by defying antiquated conventions which are supposed to rule the relations of the sexes. This requires a serious answer. The adjustment of one's social and personal relations, so far as may be, to accord with one's own convictions—that is not feminism, in my opinion: it is only common sense. ”

“ You know you asked to be treated like a being from another planet.”
“Indeed I thank you very much,” said I. “Now may I ask you about the position of women in your society?”
He laughed very heartily for a man of his years, and said: “It is not without reason that I have got a reputation as a careful student of history. I believe I really do understand ‘the Emancipation of Women movement’ of the nineteenth century. I doubt if any other man now alive does.” ”

“ That women can and do enter all these professions with credit to themselves, and that they thus enhance the feeling of pride in their sex, which is a strong impulse with women, is matter for profound congratulation, and is evidence that the animus of the Suffrage movement is not that which stirs society. ”

“ It is, then, as a phase of the great human renaissance inaugurated by men that the woman's movement deserves to be considered. And what more fitting than that a [Pg 21] man should sit in judgment upon the contemporary aspects of that movement, weighing out approval or disapproval! Such criticism is not a masculine impertinence but a masculine right, a right properly pertaining to those who are responsible for the movement, and whose demands it must ultimately fulfill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those have strangely overlooked some of the most important phenomena of our modern world, who see in the Woman’s Movement of our day any emotional movement of the female against the male, of the woman away from the man.
We have called the Woman’s Movement of our age an endeavour on the part of women among modern civilised races to find new fields of labour as the old slip from them, as an attempt to escape from parasitism and an inactive dependence upon sex function alone ”

“ Given, therefore, the persistence of the body-despising values, and the conditions to which they give rise, we may expect to see the energetic minority of women, who now lead the Feminist movement, determine the future of their sex ”

“ I propose, then, to take as a basis of what I have which opens to say about the certain outcome of the present movement amongst women the fact that religion, nature, and science are unanimous in their teaching. Everywhere we have the two principles: man, woman; mother, father. It is only, in fact, when we reach the sphere of what is called politics that the woman disappears altogether, and that the man is seen dominating and alone. ”

“ It tells what the feminist movement actually is, what the women of today want and how they are attempting to attain it. Every phase of woman’s work and aspiration is considered with sympathy and understanding, free from any partisan spirit. ”

“ The feminist movement can be dealt with in two ways: it can be treated as a sociological abstraction, and discussed at length in heavy monographs; or it can be taken as the sum of the action of a lot of women, and taken account of in the lives of individual women. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the French Revolution, at Peterloo, in the American crusade against slavery, among the Boers in South Africa, in the Chinese revolution, in Ireland now, when did women ever separate their lives and interests from those of men? ”

“ I have said that the women who are in the movement are craving two things, knowledge and scope. Many of those who are obstructing the movement are loud in their professions that they, too, want women to know more—about “womanly” matters ”

“ The Middle-Class Woman’s Movement.—There is, however, a complication between the labour woman’s movement and the woman’s movement for enfranchisement and freedom of opportunity generally, and great care is necessary to avoid confusing the issues. ”

“ But it was in England where the woman movement of yesterday had reached its highest point in organisation that the woman movement for to-day was best equipped to start. Britain counted among the nation's resources no less than fifty separate suffrage organisations, one of which alone, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, was able to send out its instructions to over 500 branches! And the mobilisation of the woman power of a nation was under way on a scale that could have been witnessed in no other era of the world. ”

“ It is not among men of talent, sprung from the people, and patronized and flattered by the aristocracy, that we look for the leaders of a democratic movement. Successful literary women are just as unlikely to prefer the cause of women to their own social consideration. ”