The Subjection of Women
he is by right the superior of all and every one of an entire half of
the human race: including probably some whose real superiority to
himself he has daily or hourly occasion to feel; but even if in his
whole conduct he habitually follows a woman's guidance, still, if he
is a fool, she thinks that of course she is not, and cannot be, equal
in ability and judgment to himself; and if he is not a fool, he does
worse--he sees that she is superior to him, and believes that,
notwithstanding her superiority, he is entitled to command and she is
bound to obey. What must be the effect on his character, of this
lesson? And men of the cultivated classes are often not aware how
deeply it sinks into the immense majority of male minds. For, among
right-feeling and well-bred people, the inequality is kept as much as
possible out of sight; above all, out of sight of the children. As
much obedience is required from boys to their mother as to their
father: they are not permitted to domineer over their sisters, nor
are they accustomed to see these postponed to them, but the contrary;
the compensations of the chivalrous feeling being made prominent,
while the servitude which requires them is kept in the background.
Well brought-up youths in the higher classes thus often escape the
bad influences of the situation in their early years, and only
experience them when, arrived at manhood, they fall under the
dominion of facts as they really exist. Such people are little aware,
when a boy is differently brought up, how early the notion of his
inherent superiority to a girl arises in his mind; how it grows with
his growth and strengthens with his strength; how it is inoculated by
one schoolboy upon another; how early the youth thinks himself
superior to his mother, owing her perhaps forbearance, but no real
respect; and how sublime and sultan-like a sense of superiority he
feels, above all, over the woman whom he honours by admitting her to
a partnership of his life. Is it imagined that all this does not
pervert the whole manner of existence of the man, both as an
individual and as a social being? It is an exact parallel to the
feeling of a hereditary king that he is excellent above others by
being born a king, or a noble by being born a noble. The relation
between husband and wife is very like that between lord and vassal,
except that the wife is held to more unlimited obedience than the
vassal was. However the vassal's character may have been affected,
for better and for worse, by his subordination, who can help seeing
that the lord's was affected greatly for the worse? whether he was
led to believe that his vassals were really superior to himself, or
to feel that he was placed in command over people as good as himself,
for no merits or labours of his own, but merely for having, as Figaro
says, taken the trouble to be born. The self-worship of the monarch,
or of the feudal superior, is matched by the self-worship of the
male. Human beings do not grow up from childhood in the possession of
unearned distinctions, without pluming themselves upon them. Those
whom privileges not acquired by their merit, and which they feel to
be disproportioned to it, inspire with additional humility, are
always the few, and the best few. The rest are only inspired with
pride, and the worst sort of pride, that which values itself upon
accidental advantages, not of its own achieving. Above all, when the
feeling of being raised above the whole of the other sex is combined
with personal authority over one individual among them; the
situation, if a school of conscientious and affectionate forbearance
to those whose strongest points of character are conscience and
affection, is to men of another quality a regularly constituted
Academy or Gymnasium for training them in arrogance and
overbearingness; which vices, if curbed by the certainty of
resistance in their intercourse with other men, their equals, break
out towards all who are in a position to be obliged to tolerate them,
and often revenge themselves upon the unfortunate wife for the
involuntary restraint which they are obliged to submit to elsewhere.
The example afforded, and the education given to the sentiments, by
laying the foundation of domestic existence upon a relation
contradictory to the first principles of social justice, must, from
the very nature of man, have a perverting influence of such
magnitude, that it is hardly possible with our present experience to
raise our imaginations to the conception of so great a change for the
better as would be made by its removal. All that education and
civilization are doing to efface the influences on character of the
law of force, and replace them by those of justice, remains merely on
the surface, as long as the citadel of the enemy is not attacked. The
principle of the modern movement in morals and politics, is that
conduct, and conduct alone, entitles to respect: that not what men
are, but what they do, constitutes their claim to deference; that,
above all, merit, and not birth, is the only rightful claim to power
and authority. If no authority, not in its nature temporary, were
allowed to one human being over another, society would not be
employed in building up propensities with one hand which it has to
curb with the other. The child would really, for the first time in
man's existence on earth, be trained in the way he should go, and
when he was old there would be a chance that he would not depart from
it. But so long as the right of the strong to power over the weak
rules in the very heart of society, the attempt to make the equal
right of the weak the principle of its outward actions will always be
an uphill struggle; for the law of justice, which is also that of
Christianity, will never get possession of men's inmost sentiments;
they will be working against it, even when bending to it.
The second benefit to be expected from giving to women the free use
of their faculties, by leaving them the free choice of their
employments, and opening to them the same field of occupation and the
same prizes and encouragements as to other human beings, would be
that of doubling the mass of mental faculties available for the
higher service of humanity. Where there is now one person qualified
to benefit mankind and promote the general improvement, as a public
teacher, or an administrator of some branch of public or social
affairs, there would then be a chance of two. Mental superiority of
any kind is at present everywhere so much below the demand; there is
such a deficiency of persons competent to do excellently anything
which it requires any considerable amount of ability to do; that the
loss to the world, by refusing to make use of one-half of the whole
quantity of talent it possesses, is extremely serious. It is true
that this amount of mental power is not totally lost. Much of it is
employed, and would in any case be employed, in domestic management,
and in the few other occupations open to women; and from the
remainder indirect benefit is in many individual cases obtained,
through the personal influence of individual women over individual
men. But these benefits are partial; their range is extremely
circumscribed; and if they must be admitted, on the one hand, as a
deduction from the amount of fresh social power that would be
acquired by giving freedom to one-half of the whole sum of human
intellect, there must be added, on the other, the benefit of the
stimulus that would be given to the intellect of men by the
competition; or (to use a more true expression) by the necessity that
would be imposed on them of deserving precedency before they could
expect to obtain it.
This great accession to the intellectual power of the species, and to
the amount of intellect available for the good management of its
affairs, would be obtained, partly, through the better and more
complete intellectual education of women, which would then improve
_pari passu_ with that of men. Women in general would be brought up
equally capable of understanding business, public affairs, and the
higher matters of speculation, with men in the same class of society;
and the select few of the one as well as of the other sex, who were
qualified not only to comprehend what is done or thought by others,
but to think or do something considerable themselves, would meet with
the same facilities for improving and training their capacities in
the one sex as in the other. In this way, the widening of the sphere
of action for women would operate for good, by raising their
education to the level of that of men, and making the one participate
in all improvements made in the other. But independently of this, the
mere breaking down of the barrier would of itself have an educational
virtue of the highest worth. The mere getting rid of the idea that
all the wider subjects of thought and action, all the things which
are of general and not solely of private interest, are men's
business, from which women are to be warned off--positively
interdicted from most of it, coldly tolerated in the little which is
allowed them--the mere consciousness a woman would then have of being
a human being like any other, entitled to choose her pursuits, urged
or invited by the same inducements as any one else to interest
herself in whatever is interesting to human beings, entitled to exert
the share of influence on all human concerns which belongs to an
individual opinion, whether she attempted actual participation in
them or not--this alone would effect an immense expansion of the
faculties of women, as well as enlargement of the range of their
moral sentiments.
Besides the addition to the amount of individual talent available for
the conduct of human affairs, which certainly are not at present so
abundantly provided in that respect that they can afford to dispense
with one-half of what nature proffers; the opinion of women would
then possess a more beneficial, rather than a greater, influence upon
the general mass of human belief and sentiment. 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.
Even in the Homeric age, [Greek: aidos] towards the [Greek: Troadas]
[Greek: helkesipeplous] is an acknowledged and powerful motive of
action in the great Hector. The moral influence of women has had two
modes of operation. First, it has been a softening influence. Those
who were most liable to be the victims of violence, have naturally
tended as much as they could towards limiting its sphere and
mitigating its excesses. Those who were not taught to fight, have
naturally inclined in favour of any other mode of settling
differences rather than that of fighting. In general, those who have
been the greatest sufferers by the indulgence of selfish passion,
have been the most earnest supporters of any moral law which offered
a means of bridling passion. Women were powerfully instrumental in
inducing the northern conquerors to adopt the creed of Christianity,
a creed so much more favourable to women than any that preceded it.
The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and of the Franks may be said to
have been begun by the wives of Ethelbert and Clovis. The other mode
in which the effect of women's opinion has been conspicuous, is by
giving a powerful stimulus to those qualities in men, which, not
being themselves trained in, it was necessary for them that they