Women's role

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then let us have our daughters educated as women, and not as men. Let us have them trained for the duties of the household and the nursery, and the sweet enchantments of the domestic hearth. "Be that you are—that is, a woman; if you be more, you're none." ”

“ They may be better adapted to the constitution of the female sex, but the question arises, Are those in which women now engage, except domestic duties, more congenial [Pg xii] to their taste, more acceptable to their feelings, more likely to develop their mental powers, and rightly direct their moral nature, than many others in which they might engage? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps that is so; but people putting in practice commonly this sense of interest in the ordinary occupations of life rather startles me. I will ask you a question or two presently about that. But I want to return to the position of women amongst you. You have studied the 'emancipation of women' business of the nineteenth century: don't you remember that some of the 'superior' women wanted to emancipate the more intelligent part of their sex from the bearing of children? ”

“ 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. ”

“ May I not take it as the very embodiment of all that I have been urging on the women of this day, the immense possibilities of good that lie latent in our womanhood, the vast issues of good to the nation, and through it to the world, if that womanhood is only true to itself? ”

“ But the most interesting question for women to consider is this: Who conducts this picturesque consistory, with its rites, its titles, and its uniforms? Which sex is it that makes up this society, and twenty other societies so absorbing in their “work” that some worthy persons have a “society” for almost every evening in the week? ”

“ 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 ”

“ But no matter what our views may be of the destinies, characteristics, functions, or limitations of the sex, certain reforms are indispensable before woman and, through her, family life can reach their highest development. ”

“ The many beautiful examples which one meets to the contrary, of a perfect relationship between the two sexes, cannot be said to belong to the rule. Women, it is true, govern in the home and in social life, but that is frequently rather through their weaknesses than their virtues. ”

“ In these progressive days, when so much energy and discussion are devoted to what is termed equality and the rights of woman, it is well to remember that there have been in the distant past women, and girls even, who by their actions and endeavors proved themselves the equals of the men of their time in valor, shrewdness, and ability. ”

“ ALL LABOR IS NOBLE AND HOLY!”
That man should provide and woman dispense are the radical conditions of domestic service; conditions which I believe are highly favorable to the development of the highest type of womanhood. But at the same time they are far from embracing all women capable of high development, nor are they perhaps suitable for every phase of character included in that myriad-minded creature—woman. ”

“ And the woman when she had joined that great company of women, who, in these modern days labor behind the doors through which they must go alone, found them to be good women—good and brave and true. And most of them, she found, were in that great company of workers just as she was there—just as every woman who knows her womanhood is there—through circumstances, the custom of the age, necessity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They connect the duties of woman with the propensities and faculties peculiarly her own. To the men, they leave the defence of the country and the administration of public affairs; to the women, they assign the government of the home, the guardianship of the family hearth, and the education of children. ”

“ Let her determine that for herself she will do her own thinking; that she will form her own opinions from her own investigations; that she will persist in holding the highest principles of womanly morality and the virtuous attainments which constitute a true womanhood. When she has done this, let her call to her aid all the force of character she can command to enable her to persist in being a woman of the true stamp. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Let her be encouraged to open a store, to work a garden, plant and tend an orchard, to learn any of the lighter mechanical trades, to study for a profession, whenever her circumstances and her tastes shall render any of these desirable. Let woman, and the advocates of justice to women, encourage and patronize her in whatever laudable pursuits she may thus undertake ”

“ WOMEN AND POLITICS
'We do not find that European homes are made wretched, or that husbands are set at nought, because our women may choose their own religion, their own priest, and have unchecked intercourse with the family physician.
'Is it impossible to imagine a woman sweet and yet strong, high-minded and yet modest, tender if self-reliant, womanly if well-educated? Would a fine political conscience necessarily deaden-or depress the domestic one? ”

“ The former may add to the luxuries of life; the latter is essential to the happiness of home—to the joys and endearments of a family, to the affection of relations, to the fidelity of domestics. “Woman’s mission” has become almost a phrase of the day. That there are other duties for women besides household, and for some women especially, we by no means deny. But here are the broad, general, and permanent duties of the sex. ”

“ Such conditions must, as time went on, have profoundly modified the women’s outlook, bending their desires to a steady, settled life, conditions under which alone the germ of social organisation could develop. ”

“ And we claim it not specially in the interest of women, but as essential to the growth of the human race. This is not the place to discuss whether women have, or ought to have, any other than merely domestic relations. ”

“ and women can do more towards this even than men, for women are the real architects of society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I leave to you women the task of working out the woman's share in the fashioning of the latest begotten of the ages; in providing them with their bodily subsistence, their mental pabulum, their moral guidance; in having the first and largest opportunities of forming their habits and their characters. Woman's influence on the future men and women is paramount as well as primary. What do women require in order to use this influence for the best ends? ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ And then—well considering in what light most men, in their hearts, regarded women—if one might judge from their laws and their conduct and their literature, and the society that they had organized—admiration from this sex was a thing scarcely to be endured. ”

“ The young women, intrepid figures, are significant not only of the long-continued struggle for political deliverance, but of the historical progress of womenkind toward intellectual and social freedom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our dames were the physicians of their time and districts. An exaggerated sense of sex wastes accomplishments on the pursuit of mere feminine attractiveness, which might minister to and promote the highest interests of society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Note.—I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear of both the jargons now current everywhere (for they are equally jargons) ; of the jargon, namely, about the "rights" of women, which urges women to do all that men do, including the medical and other professions, merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do; and of the jargon which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women, and should be "recalled to a sense of their duty as women," and because "this is women's work," and "that is men's," ”

“ The fears of the faint-hearted and the regrets of the conservative cannot alter the established fact that the practical [pg 345] status which women achieved in the nineteenth century is theirs, to be recognized and furthered. ”

“ Of more importance is the charge which might be made, with equal justice, of acquiescence in somewhat low and coarse ideas of the relations between the sexes, and of the destinies and proper aspirations of young women. ”

“ A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers and nurses of legislators and statesmen, and the cultivation of their powers of reflection and moral feelings supersede the exciting drudgery by which they are now crammed with knowledge and accomplishments. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptory exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance. ”

“ Feminine charity, feminine activity as a nurse, feminine petitions for the pardon of criminals, infinite other samples of women’s kindly dispositions must convince us that these activities are an integral part of their emotional life, and that women perform them only, perhaps, in a kind of dark perception of their own helplessness. ”

“ 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. ”