WOMAN FREE

“Le philosophe, en étudiant les lois de la Nature, acquiert chaque jour la conviction que de leur violation seule naissent tous les maux dont gémit l’humanité.”

“The philosopher, in studying the laws of Nature, acquires more deeply every day the conviction that from their abuse alone spring all the evils from which humanity is groaning.”

WOMAN FREE.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXIII.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

XXXVIII.

XXXIX.

XL.

XLI.

XLII.

XLIII.

XLIV.

XLV.

XLVI.

XLVII.

XLVIII.

XLIX.

L.

LI.

LII.

LIII.

LIV.

LV.

LVI.

LVII.

LVIII.

LIX.

LX.

LXI.

LXII.

LXIII. L’Envoi.

NOTES, &c.

I.

“Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.”—George Eliot (“Middlemarch,” Chap. LXXIII.)

As indicated by Professor Oliver T. Lodge, “It is but a platitude to say that our clear and conscious aim should always be truth, and that no lower or meaner standard should ever be allowed to obtrude itself before us. Our ancestors fought hard and suffered much for the privilege of free and open inquiry, for the right of conducting investigation untrammelled by prejudice and foregone conclusions, and they were ready to examine into any phenomenon which presented itself.... Fear of avowing interest or of examining into unorthodox facts is, I venture to say, not in accordance with the highest traditions of the scientific attitude.”—(Address as President of the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association, 1891.)

36See also the words of Richard Jefferies:—“Research proceeds upon the same old lines and runs in the ancient grooves.... But there should be no limit placed on the mind.... Most injurious of all is the continuous circling on the same path, and it is from this that I wish to free my mind.”—(“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. X.)

“We are still the early settlers in a beautiful world, whose capabilities, imperfectly known as yet, wait until higher developments of man can understand them fully, and apply the result to the general good.”—Professor T. Rupert Jones (Address as President of the Geological Section of the British Association, 1891).

II.

“C’est l’incarnation de l’idée qui se dresse tout à coup en face des vieilles traditions obstinées et insuffisantes et elle vient ... poser sa revendication personelle et nécessaire contre les lois jadis excellentes, mais qui, les mœurs s’étant modifiées, apparaissent subitement comme des injustices et des barbaries.”—A. Dumas fils (“Les Femmes qui Tuent et les Femmes qui Votent,” p. 25).

IV.

VI.

“The preface of general history must be compiled from the materials presented by barbarism. Happily, if we may say so, these materials are abundant. So unequally has the species been developed, that almost every conceivable phase of progress may be studied, as somewhere observed and recorded. And thus the philosopher, fenced from mistake as to the order of development, by the inter-connection of the stages and their shadings into one another by gentle gradations, may draw a clear and decided outline of the course of human progress in times long antecedent to those to which even philology can make reference.”—M’Lennan (“Primitive Marriage,” p. 9)....

Id.... “I will confine myself to these examples, gleaned from all parts, and which it would be easy to multiply. They amply suffice to establish that, in primitive societies, woman, being held in very low esteem, is absolutely reduced to the level of chattels and of domestic animals; that she represents a booty like any other; that her master can use and abuse her without fear. But in these bestial practices there is nothing which approaches even distantly to marriage, and we are not in the least warranted to call these brutal rapes marriages.”—Letourneau (“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. VI.).

“Woman was the first human being that tasted bondage. Woman was a slave before the slave existed.”—August Bebel (“Woman,” Chap. I.).

Id.... “From the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by man, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Woman,” Chap. I.).

Id.... “In every country, and in every time, woman, organically weaker than man, has been more or less enslaved by him.”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. XI.).

Id....

“It is pitiful to reflect that man’s vaunted superiority over the brute, the greater activity of his brain, and the subtler cunning of his hand, have for so long lent themselves to the oppression that has resulted in such pernicious consequences, and in the still existent slavery, social and physical, of the female of his own species.”—Ben Elmy (“Studies in Materialism,” Chap. III.).

Compare the following picture of the somewhat parallel condition of a lower race at the present time:—

39“Natives may well call the monkey sire Maharaja, for he is the very type and incarnation of savage and sensual despotism. They are right, too, in making their Hanuman red, for the old male’s face is of the dusky red you see in some elderly, overfed human faces. Like human Maharajas, they have their tragedies and mayhap their romances. One morning there came a monkey chieftain, weak and limping, having evidently been worsted in a severe fight with another of his own kind. One hand hung powerless, his face and eyes bore terrible traces of battle, and he hirpled slowly along with a pathetic air of suffering, supporting himself on the shoulder of a female, a wife, the only member of his clan who had remained faithful to him after his defeat. We threw them bread and raisins, and the wounded warrior carefully stowed the greater part away in his cheek pouch. The faithful wife, seeing her opportunity, sprang on him, holding fast his one sound hand, and, opening his mouth, she deftly scooped out the store of raisins. Then she sat and ate them very calmly at a safe distance, while he

mowed and chattered in impotent rage. He knew that without her help he could not reach home, and was fain to wait with what patience he might till the raisins were finished. It was a sad sight, but, like more sad sights, touched with the light of comedy. This was probably her first chance of disobedience or of self-assertion in her whole life, and I am afraid she thoroughly enjoyed it. Then she led him away.”—J. Lockwood Kipling (“Beast and Man in India”).

VII.

“We now know that Nature, as an anthropomorphic being, does not exist; that the great forces called natural are unconscious; that their blind action results, however, in the world of life, in a choice, a selection, a progressive evolution, or, to sum up, in the survival of the individuals best adapted to the conditions of their existence.”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. I., Part II.).

40Id.... “Robert Chambers’s common-sense view of evolution as a process of continued growing.”—Professor Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson (“The Evolution of Sex,” p. 302).

“Other implements of Palæolithic age are formed of bone and horn. Among these are harpoon-heads, barbed on one or both sides, awls, pins, and needles with well-formed eyes. But by far the most noteworthy objects of this class are the fragments of bone, horn, ivory, and stone, which exhibit outlined and even shaded sketches of various animals. These engravings have been made with a sharp-pointed implement, and are often wonderfully characteristic representations of the creatures they pourtray. The figures are sometimes single, in other cases they are drawn in groups. We find representations of a fish, a seal, an ibex, the red-deer, the great Irish elk or deer, the bison, the horse, the cave-bear, the reindeer, and the mammoth or woolly elephant. Besides engravings, we meet also with sculptures.... It is impossible to say to what use all these objects were put. Some of them may have been handles for knives, while others are mere fragments, and only vague guesses can be made as to the nature of the original implements. It is highly probable, however, that

many of these works of art may have been designed simply as such, for the pleasure and amusement of the draughtsman and his fellows.”—James Geikie (“Prehistoric Europe,” Chap. II.).

Id.... The culture or appreciation of Art is of 41itself evidence of a higher nature in man; “a soul, a psyche, a something which aspires,” as Richard Jefferies calls it. For though the professional pursuit of Art may be occasionally not unmingled with mercenary motives, or with the pourtrayal of incentives to lower desire, yet the ultimate appeal of every truly beautiful picture or object of Art is, at any rate, not to man’s mercenary or meaner nature. As Jefferies again says, “The ascetics are the only persons who are impure. The soul is the higher even by gazing on beauty.”—(“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. VII.)

“The mind of man is infinite. Beyond this, man has a soul. I do not use this word in the common-sense which circumstances have given to it. I use it as the only term to express that inner consciousness which aspires.”—Richard Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. IX.).

“The fact to be insisted upon is this, that the vague sexual attraction of the lowest organisms has been evolved into a definite reproductive impulse, into a desire often predominating over even that of self-preservation; that this, again, enhanced by more and more subtle additions, passes by a gentle gradient into the love of the highest animals, and of the average human individual.”—Geddes and Thomson (“Evolution of Sex,” p. 267).

VIII.

42“The impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when, with his varied tones and cadences, he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which, at an extremely remote period, his half-human ancestors aroused each other’s ardent passions during their mutual courtship and rivalry.”—Darwin (“The Descent of Man,” Chap. XIX.).

Language is thought, we are told; so also is love. And thus the reciprocal and cumulative action of love, thought, and language stands a corollary to Max Müller’s words:—“Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate.”—(“Science of Language,” Lect. IX.)

Id.... “Even the rude Australian girl (aborigine) sings in a strain of romantic affliction:

—Westermarck (“History of Human Marriage,” p. 503).

Id.... “And again, another benefit accrues to the race from marriages of affection. Do not your ancient epics which sing of love sing also of noble deeds and acts of heroism on the part both of men and women, actuated by a pure affection for each other? Alike in your dramas and in those of Shakespeare, and of all great writers, love is the great motive power which impels to deeds of prowess, the spring of noble actions, of unselfish devotion, of words and thoughts which have enriched all later generations, the one 43sentiment which elevates marriage amongst mankind to something infinitely higher and purer than the gratification of a mere animal instinct.”—Dr. Edith Pechey Phipson (Address to the Hindoos of Bombay on Child Marriage, 1891, p. 14).

IX.

“We are entering into an order of things in which justice will be the primary virtue, grounded on equal, but also on sympathetic association; having its roots no longer in the instinct of equals for self-protection, but in a cultivated sympathy between them; and no one being now left out, but an equal measure being extended to all.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 80).

X.

“He has reaped the usual reward of selfishness, the gratification of immediate low desires has frustrated the future attainment of higher aspirations.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (Address to Hindoos).

In Egypt “the art (of literature) was practised only by the priests, as the painted history plainly declares.... No female is depicted in the act of reading.... The Greek world was composed of municipal aristocracies, societies of gentlemen living in towns, with their farms in the neighbourhood, and having all their work done for them by slaves. They themselves had nothing to do but to cultivate their bodies by exercise in the gymnasium, and their minds by conversation in the market-place. They lived out of doors, whilst their wives remained shut up at home. In Greece a lady could only enter society by adopting a mode of life which in England usually facilitates her exit.”—Winwood Reade (“The Martyrdom of Man,” pp. 35, 71).

At Athens “the free citizen women lived in strict and almost Oriental recluseness, as well after being married as when single. Everything which concerned their lives, their happiness, or their rights, was determined or managed for them by their male relatives; and they seem to have been destitute of all mental culture and accomplishments.”—Grote (“History of Greece,” Vol. VI., p. 133).

XI.

“In vain Plato urged that young men and women should 45be more frequently permitted to meet one another, so that there should be less enmity and indifference in the married life.” (“Nomoi,” Book VI.)—Westermarck (“History of Human Marriage,” p. 361).

“The feeling which makes husband and wife true companions for better and worse, can grow up only in societies where the altruistic sentiments of man are strong enough to make him recognise woman as his equal, and where she is not shut up as an exotic plant in a greenhouse, but is allowed to associate freely with men. In this direction European civilisation has been advancing for centuries.”—Westermarck (loc. cit.). (See also Note XIX., 6.)

In Greece “the modest women were confined to their own apartments, and were visited only by their husbands and nearest relations.... The courtesans of Athens, by living in public, and conversing freely with all ranks of people, upon all manner of subjects, acquired, by degrees, a knowledge of history, of philosophy, of policy, and a taste in the whole circle of the arts. Their ideas were more extensive and various, and their conversation was more sprightly and entertaining than anything that was to be found among the virtuous part of the sex. Hence their houses became the schools of elegance; that of Aspasia was the resort of Socrates and Pericles, and, as Greece was governed by eloquent men, over whom the courtesans had an influence, 46the latter also influenced public affairs.”—Alexander Walker (“Woman, as to Mind,” &c., p. 334).

XII.

That the quest of knowledge and intellectual power was literally the incentive to many a woman who accepted the life of hetaira is indisputable. Westermarck says:—“It seems to me much more reasonable to suppose that if, in Athens and India, courtesans were respected and sought after by the principal men, it was because they were the only educated women.”—(“History of Marriage,” p. 81.)

And Letourneau remarks:—“Religious prostitution, which was widely spread in Greek antiquity, has been also found in India, where every temple of renown had its bayadères, the only women in India to whom, until quite recently, any instruction was given.”—(“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. III.)

“Hetairai, famous at once for their beauty and intellect such as Phryne, Laïs of Corinth, Gnathæna, and Aspasia, were objects of universal admiration among the most distinguished Greeks. They were admitted to their assemblies and banquets, while the ‘honest’ women of Greece were, without exception, confined to the house.... A considerable number of women preferred the greater freedom which they enjoyed as Hetairai to marriage, and carried on the trade of prostitution as a means of livelihood. In unrestrained 47intercourse with men, the more intelligent of the Hetairai, who were doubtless often of good birth, acquired a far greater degree of versatility and culture than that possessed by the majority of married women, living in a state of enforced ignorance and bondage. This invested the Hetairai with a greater charm for the men, in addition to the arts which they employed in the special exercise of their profession. This explains the fact that many of them enjoyed the esteem of some of the most distinguished and eminent men of Greece, to whom they stood in a relationship

of influential intimacy, a position held by no legitimate wife. The names of these Hetairai are famous to the present day, while one enquires in vain after the names of the legitimate wives.”—August Bebel (“Woman,” Chap. I.).

E.g., Phryne, who offered to rebuild the wall of Thebes; and Laïs, commemorated in the adage, “Non cuivis hominum contingit adire Corinthum.” And as to even modern “fame,” a writer so merciless concerning her own sex as Mrs. Lynn Linton can yet say, “Agnes Sorel, like Aspasia, was one of the rare instances in history where failure in chastity did not include moral degradation nor unpatriotic self-consideration.”—(Nineteenth Century, July, 1891, p. 84.)

Why indeed should shame have attached specially to those women, more highly cultured and better treated than wives; and whose sole impeachment could be that they rejected the still lower serfdom of wedded bondage?

XIII.

“If we could imagine a Bossuet or a Fénélon figuring among the followers of Ninon de Lenclos, and publicly giving her counsel on the subject of her professional duties, and the means of securing adorers, this would be hardly less strange than the relation which really existed between Socrates and the courtesan Theodota.”—Lecky (“History of European Morals,” Vol. II., p. 280).

Since these words were written, a letter from Mrs. Mona Caird has been published by the “Women’s Emancipation Union,” in which is said:—“So far from giving safety and balance to the ‘natural forces,’ these time-honoured restrictions, springing from a narrow theory which took its rise in a pre-scientific age, are fraught with the gravest dangers, creating a perpetual struggle and unrest, filling society with the perturbations and morbid developments of powers that ought to be spending themselves freely and healthfully on their natural objects. Anyone who has looked a little below the surface of women’s lives can testify to the general unrest and nervous exhaustion or malaise among them, although each would probably refer her suffering to some cause peculiar to herself and her circumstances, never dreaming that she was the victim of an evil that gnaws at the very heart of society, making of almost every woman the heroine of a silent tragedy. I think few keen observers will deny that it is 49almost always the women of placid temperament, with very

little sensibility, who are happy and contented; those of more highly wrought nervous systems and imaginative faculty, who are nevertheless capable of far greater joy than their calmer sisters, in nine cases out of ten are secretly intensely miserable. And the cause of this is not eternal and unalterable. The nervously organised being is not created to be miserable; but when intense vital energy is thwarted and misdirected—so long as the energy lasts—there must be intense suffering.... It is only when resignation sets in, when the ruling order convinces at last and tires out the rebel nerves and the keen intelligence, that we know that the living forces are defeated, and that death has come to quiet the suffering. All this is waste of human force, and far worse than waste.”