Anarchism and Other Essays
[4] Mr. Shackleton was a labor leader. It is therefore self-evident
that he should introduce a bill excluding his own constituents. The
English Parliament is full of such Judases.
[5] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. Dr. Helen A. Sumner.
THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN'S EMANCIPATION
I begin with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic
theories, treating of the fundamental differences between various
groups within the human race, regardless of class and race
distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between
woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where
these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.
With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general
social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life
today, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory
interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our
social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall
have become a reality.
Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not
necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor
does it call for the elimination of individual traits and
peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the
nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in
oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still
retain one's own characteristic qualities. This seems to me to be
the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat
and the true individuality, man and woman, can meet without
antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive one
another; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of
Madame de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive
everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor
of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow-being conveys the idea
of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow-being
suffices. The admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of
my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire
sex.
Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the
truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and
activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers
should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of
every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.
This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation.
But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed
her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential
to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an
artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French
arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels,
and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the
expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown
plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially
in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.
Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these
words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest
and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his light and glory
was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to
direct her own destiny--an aim certainly worthy of the great
enthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless effort of the
tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything
against a world of prejudice and ignorance.
My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that the
emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied today,
has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with
the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she
really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is,
nevertheless, only too true.
What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal suffrage in a
few States. Has that purified our political life, as many
well-meaning advocates predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally, it
is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease
to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone.
Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the
laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is
altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business
and industrial world, the mottos of which are: "To take is more
blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand
washes the other." There is no hope even that woman, with her right
to vote, will ever purify politics.
Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is,
she can choose her own profession and trade; but as her past and
present physical training has not equipped her with the necessary
strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all
her energy, use up her vitality, and strain every nerve in order to
reach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that
women teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers are
neither met with the same confidence as their male colleagues, nor
receive equal remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing
equality, generally do so at the expense of their physical and
psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls and
women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of
freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of
freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In
addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a
"home, sweet home"--cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting--after a
day's hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder that hundreds of
girls are willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and
tired of their "independence" behind the counter, at the sewing or
typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of the
middle class, who long to throw off the yoke of parental supremacy.
A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest
subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal, that one could expect
woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised
independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and
stifling woman's nature, her love instinct, and her mother instinct.
Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far more natural
and human than that of her seemingly more fortunate sister in the
more cultured professional walks of life--teachers, physicians,
lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, proper
appearance, while the inner life is growing empty and dead.
The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence and
emancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her social
equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and
independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only
hinder her in the full exercise of her profession--all these together
make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom
life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing
joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul.
Emancipation, as understood by the majority of its adherents and
exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless love and
ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart,
mother, in freedom.
The tragedy of the self-supporting or economically free woman does
not lie in too many but in too few experiences. True, she surpasses
her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human
nature; it is just because of this that she feels deeply the lack of
life's essence, which alone can enrich the human soul, and without
which the majority of women have become mere professional automatons.
That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by those
who realized that, in the domain of ethics, there still remained many
decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man;
ruins that are still considered useful. And, what is more important,
a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along without
them. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existing
institutions and the replacement thereof with something more
advanced, more perfect, has followers who in theory stand for the
most radical ideas, but who, nevertheless, in their every-day
practice, are like the average Philistine, feigning respectability
and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are,
for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea
that property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe
them the value of a half-dozen pins.
The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman's
emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk-and-water litterateurs
have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of
the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every
member of the woman's rights movement was pictured as a George Sand
in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her.
She had no respect for the ideal relation between man and woman. In
short, emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin;
regardless of society, religion, and morality. The exponents of
woman's rights were highly indignant at such representation, and,
lacking humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they were
not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of
course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be good
and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove
how good she could be and that her influence would have a purifying
effect on all institutions in society. True, the movement for
woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also forged
new ones. The great movement of TRUE emancipation has not met with a
great race of women who could look liberty in the face. Their
narrow, Puritanical vision banished man, as a disturber and doubtful
character, out of their emotional life. Man was not to be tolerated
at any price, except perhaps as the father of a child, since a child
could not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately, the
most rigid Puritans never will be strong enough to kill the innate
craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied with
man's freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to
overlook the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and
devotion of each human being about him, man as well as woman.
Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of human relations that
has brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern man and
woman.
About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant
Norwegian, Laura Marholm, called WOMAN, A CHARACTER STUDY. She was
one of the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrowness of
the existing conception of woman's emancipation, and its tragic
effect upon the inner life of woman. In her work Laura Marholm
speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: the
genius, Eleonora Duse; the great mathematician and writer, Sonya
Kovalevskaia; the artist and poet-nature, Marie Bashkirtzeff, who
died so young. Through each description of the lives of these women
of such extraordinary mentality runs a marked trail of unsatisfied
craving for a full, rounded, complete, and beautiful life, and the
unrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through these
masterly psychological sketches, one cannot help but see that the