WOMEN'S "PLATFORMS."
IF a proof were wanted of the need of some better standard of education for women than is usually set before the sex, the curiously suicidal logic of Miss Matilda /d. Hays, who, as a sincere and well-proved "friend of working women," wrote an impassioned letter in Tuesday's Tim': on their wrongs, would be sufficient evi- dence to thinking persons that even some of the most vigorous and ambitious damsels among them need a very different intellectual disci- pline to that which they usually undergo. A well-known correspondent of the Times, the Honourable and Reverend Sydney Godolphin Osborne, had, while expressing the high honour in which he held a faithful wife and mother, contended that there was yet perhaps more honour, at least more arduous merit, in the work of those benevolent un- attached ministrants to human misery who are not absorbed in matrimonial or nursery duties ;—adding incautiously perhaps, "I hate to think of women as destined only to share the honour after their kind which the white mice and rabbits of one's children share after their kind "—by which, aa the context shows, he only meant to repudiate the notion that the mere animal instincts of maternity are, if dignified by no higher influences, in themselves sacred or high prerogatives. On this hint Miss Matilda M. Hays rashly spoke in a letter which certainly conveys the impression that wives, at least if they obey their husbands—nay, if they do more than enter into a convention of strict equality with them—and still more if they accept the degrading duties of presiding in the nursery as well as at the table, are among the despicable slaves of creation who deserve nothing better than "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer." "The best and noblest" women, says this true but injudicious "friend of working women," "stand aloof in isolated dignity, pre- ferring the martyrdom of unsatisfied affections and sympathies to the surrender of their independence and integrity as human souls, accountable to their God, and their God only, for what they are to do." What she complains of is expressed in, the cry that " we are allowed no share in the world's work, the world's progress, no plat- form but the childless hearth or the teeming nursery, and if these may not be ours, jostled, and pushed aside to rot in inaction, if we have the means to find ourselves food, shelter, and clothing ; if we have not, to wrest or steal a living as we best can, doing hardest, coarsest work for worst pay." We will not win the very poor and cheap victory over Miss Hays of analyzing the drift of her vague and inconsistent denunciations. If women think it degrading to be wives and mothers and sisters, we do not wonder they should com- plain of little influence. Our own impression is that women, as at present educated, have and are likely to have a vast deal more influence than they deserve or are qualified to exercise; that their "platform," if not public, is exceedingly real and effective; that they determine many questions on eonsiderations really quite inapplicable to the points at issue ; and are perhaps the more effective promoters both of the world's progress and the world's retrogressions of the two sexes. If the motive power originates with men, it is accumu- lated and concentrated by feminine conduction, or on the other hand obstructed and annihilated by the resisting medium of their prejudices. We must say that if, as Miss Hays appears to think, women are the cyphers of the social world, they have the multiplying power of cyphers on the masculine figures beside which they array them- selves.
But we will not affect to misunderstand Miss Hays. We will not deal with her very loose and not very wise statements ; but with the truth, which was evidently rankling in her mind when the unex- pected sympathy of "S. G. 0." brought it bubbling up so hastily to the surface. No doubt it is very unpleasant, and very derogatory to women, to hear themselves spoken of like chrysalises which have never succeeded in becoming butterflies, as mere unfinished intentions of God, until they are married—spoilt potentialities, worthy of a better fate. This is what they revolt at. Are there not, they would say, the full elements of humanity in women as well as in men ? Is there less possibility of a woman's nature growing to full maturity without union with man's than of man's without union with woman's ? If we put these two cases, as Miss Hays in her soberest moments would perhaps wish, exactly on a level—(in this letter, we fear she means to say that women and men are both born for "isolated dignity," especially women),—then Miss Hays would argue that the complete elementi of human nature, existing alike in both men and women, there should be an effort made to clear a fair space on all possible "platforms" for women candidates, so that they might have equal power of doing the "world's work," and, perhaps, a good deal more than equal power of obstructing it.
Bat, in fact, though we should concede to Miss Hays, as against the more prejudiced class of the apostles of masculinism, that women are much more than the complements of men—that it is as possible to place a high standard before the intellectual and moral nature of women, towards which they might make much progress by their own efforts, as before that of men—yet we do not think it con- sistent with fact to say that they could as often approach closely to that standard in "isolated dignity," as men might to the proper standard of masculine excellence. Nor is it derogatory to women to deny this : for it implies what is equally true—that women gain more in excellence from union with men than men from their union with women—which is a fact that tells wholly in favour of women. The net result of the distinction comes to this, that the charac- teristics of women's nature adapt it to grow faster, and to gain more when leaning on another than do the characteristics of men's in the corresponding relation to women. In ordinary men and women the highest levels are seldom attained except in such union ; but the man gains less by the union, and therefore loses less by isolation; the woman loses more by the effort at an un- natural independence, and therefore gains more by the natural tie. We confess it seems to us impossible to say how this state of things— if it be true, as we believe it is—bears on the wholly futile and meaningless que,stion.of the relative worth of the sexes. B profits more than A by a certain relationship, and loses more than A by being deprived of it : is A better than B, or B than A? We cannot tell, until somebody gives us a satisfactory answer to the very abstruse question, which of the two is the higher—to have the larger capacity for turning blessings to account, or the larger capacity for doing without them. We are inclined to lean to the former supposition.
In the mean time to suppose that because the very highest develop- ment of women's minds is in the relation of wives and mothers, therefore the education of their intellects and moral natures is a comparatively unimportant task, is one of the most absurd and illo- gical of suppositions. It might as well be said that because a solitary human benig would be incapable of all the higher orders of excel- lence, we might safely trust human beings to the passive influences of social life. It would be truer to say that you actually want a higher education for those who are to be placed in the most favourable circumstances than you do for those in the less favourable. In pro- portion to the range of social influences does the effective power of education really begin to tell. A great deal of light and heat must re- main for ever latent and inefficient in monotonous circumstances which is first wanted and called out by the full variety of the most natural life. To suppose, as Miss Hays appears to do, that to be the mother of rabbits or white mice is in itself quite as noble a position as to be the mother of human beings, certainly gives up her whole case. For if
there be no such thing as spiritual, moral, and intellectual elements in the maternal relation, there can be no such elements in woman her- self. If you add a number of peculiarly rich and fruitful relations to her general privileges as a woman, and nothing but animal worry and solicitude comes of it, we think we are warranted in assuming that there must have been very little moral possibility in the woman before she became a mother. Miss Hays might, perhaps, paraphrase the
philosophical maxim about the sense and intellect, and say, nihil eel in matte quod non fuit in virgin nisi ipsa maternita2, and we should en- tirely acquiesce; but still there is, in fact, a great aud much richer
ture opened, than any which is closed, by the new tie, and we hat if—as we strongly hold—a high culture of all kinds has portance for the benevolent unattached "working woman," it. have a much higher importance for the working wife and other. No one can go further than we do in denouncing the doc- trine that women are not human beings in the same sense in which men are; that they are mere planets attendant on men without a dis- tinct and independent relation of their own to God. But the more strongly we repudiate this heresy, which is so acceptable to many minds, the more are we bound to assert the fact which has lent it a certain plausibility of falsehood, that they do as a rule exert their independent responsibility with far more effect and far less spasmodic waste of force, in the way of general influence, than in the way of special enterprizes and professional energy. Not that we would arti- ficially close the latter against women. The unsuitability of the more unsuitable professions will itself be discouraging enough. And it is very important that the more suitable ones should be open to them. Still, highly as we appreciate such efforts as Miss Faithfull and others are making, it is almost essential to their success that we should recognize the plain truth that the nature of women is less adapted to positive enterprize, more adapted to that kind of pervading influence, which, like atmospheric pressure, is never felt because it is always there, than men's. If people begin to think that the covert intention of all these benevolent schemes is to teach women to sigh for "platforms," and to speak of the nursery as another sort of rabbit-hutch, we shall have public opinion re-enforcing all the selfish jealousies which still stand in the way of feminine labour—for example, among the masculine compositors. Miss Hays does not represent many of her colleagues, and we are glad to accept Miss Isa Craig's excellent protest against her views as a far truer pic- ture of the real convictions of the reformers. If Miss Craig, Miss Rye, and Miss Faithfull are to succeed, as we trust they will, in their efforts to find a place for the surplus unattached female labourers, the fewer of these foolish letters appear the better. Once, in Ger- many, in 1848, we had the pain of seeing women not only admitted to, but exclusively occupying, one of these coveted "platforms" for promoting the world's progress, and the effect was very much what it would be had Miss Hays's letter been delivered to a public assembly instead of printed modestly in a newspaper corner. "Chronicling small beer" would have been a much less injurious occupation; and "suckling [even] fools," in a motherly and affectionate fashion, an in- finitely more honourable and excellent one.
Previous page
